#I am Sick and Tired I ain’t spending more than an hour

[lordny-of-the-lake]

Some Allium and Moon post-SoS :)

She would 100% be a little bitch towards him

[another-cancer]

Day 9, July 15th Pixie

“Pixie is it? That’s what the media has been calling you,” he said in his twisted voice.

She growled, “One person is allowed to call me that and you sure as hell ain’t him.”

Look I am back! Hopefully with semi-regular updates as I try to finish this.

///

She had been having a bad day. An unlucky one above anything else. Marinette still carried luck from her days as Ladybug. But luck runs out. Especially when the old Ladybug holder had been spending so much time with a current Black Cat holder.

The bad day started with a coffee malfunction, her coffee machine broke. So she went to her favorite cafe. They were closed due to a break in the night before. She ended up giving up on coffee. Instead, she opted to visit work.

While Marinette mainly worked from home, she did officially have an office at Wayne Enterprises where she oversaw the JTodd fashion company, her mini-empire that continued to be commission only after all the years. Named after Jason Todd. MDC had died when Ladybug did when the original Marinette Dupain-Cheng passed. Now, this version of Marinette headed an up-and-coming fashion empire, overseen by WE.

However, while she was making her way to the office building, faith proved to have other plans for her. A kidnapping. By the one and only Joker. Fuck.

///

“Pixie is it? That’s what the media has been calling you,” he said in his twisted voice.

She growled, “One person is allowed to call me that and you sure as hell ain’t him.”

Her arms were tied back above her head as a bomb sat in the middle of the room equal distance from her and the Joker.

“Well, sweetheart that other person isn’t here are they?”

Knowing the answer she looked around the room, they were alone. Jason was nowhere to be seen. She was alone. She blacked out.

///

Blink. Blink.

“Looky here, it looks like the doll is finally awake again,” Joker said to an empty room.

She was tired, from just hanging there. She wondered why she wasn’t dead yet. Why was he keeping her alive?

“Oh no you look a bit sleepy again, what a shame,” he said as she drifted back out of consciousness.

///

Loud. Pain. Needle? Blood. Dark. Quiet. Sleep.

How long had it been?

///

Fifteen hours. She hadn’t been seen for fifteen hours. She was kidnapped. And he was terrified. Marinette always texted or called, she checked in constantly. At hour three he considered it a fluke, at hour five he questioned Adrien, at hour six he searched Wayne Enterprise, at hour eight he started searching the city.

“You need rest,” B told him.

“No, I need to find her!”

“Jay we are going to find her, I promise, but right now you look like Tim, you’ve been out here too long,” Dick joked.

“How the fuck are you joking at a time like this?”

“I’m just trying to lighten the mood a bit.”

“Fuck that shit, Marinette has been missing for fifteen hours, we don’t know who the fuck has her or where the fuck she is,” Jason was steaming.

///

Marinette vomited. What the fuck was going on? Cameras. The Joker was no longer with her. It was just the bomb and her. And now a camera, a camera with a blinking light. She was being recorded, probably live-streamed knowing Joker’s flair for the dramatics.

He was going to find her. Barbara could help. She would be okay.

“Jay,” she whispered, staring into the camera, “Jay.”

She repeated it over and over until she couldn’t. She said it until she couldn’t speak.

‘I love you,’ she mouthed.

He would never get it. He wasn’t able to read lips.

///

“What do you mean you can’t trace it?” Jason demanded to know.

Barbara said, “It’s bouncing off too many towers, I can’t find an exact location.”

“What if they’re moving?” Tim suggested.

“What?” Jason asked, refocusing his attention.

“Look in the video Mari is swinging back and forth, and she threw up, she gets motion sickness. That would explain why the signal is bouncing off a bunch of towers.”

“You’re right, that would explain it, but it would need to be something big. Like a truck. I’ll start looking,” she turned back to the screen.

Tim continued analyzing the video footage looking for clues. Perhaps trying to figure out what Marinette had mouthed. And Jason. Jason felt useless. All he could do was wait for an answer. Wait for a location. Tim had the video muted so Jason didn’t have to listen to her repeating his name. So he didn’t have to listen to her suffer.

///

Someone had apparently given Bruce the news of a breakthrough. He was back in the cave with Damian and Dick. Jason thought it was stupid that no one was out looking for her. But what did he know? He needed to take a fucking break. Bullshit. Everyone standing in the cave without Marinette felt empty as they filled Bruce in.

“What happens when we find her?” Damian asked.

“We rescue her,” Jason stated as the most obvious thing in the world.

“No Damian has a point, there is a bomb. If we do anything too dramatic it will blow. A truck that size has a large gas tank, that could take out half a city block. We need to lure the truck out of the city somehow,” Dick suggested.

“Do you know how long it has been?” Jason quietly asked.

“What?” Bruce prompted.

Speaking louder he repeated, “Do you know how long it has been?”

Everyone stared blankly.

“Twenty-Three hours. She’s been missing for twenty-three hours. She has been throwing up on live television for the last six hours. I haven’t seen her in over twenty-six hours. We need to rescue her as soon as possible.”

“We understand, but we need to protect the city. We can’t let that truck blow,” Dick reasoned.

“Fuck the city. This is Marinette we’re talking about.”

“Jay, we can’t just-”

“You don’t understand, I- We- She-” Jason couldn’t find the words, “She’s important.”

“We know she’s family.”

“She’s more than that. I need to save her.”

He loved her.

///

She couldn’t open her eyes. They were too heavy.

Everything hurt.

Where was Jason?

///

He stopped every truck he came across. But he didn’t need to stop the one in front of him to know.

She was there. He could feel it.

It calmed him, around her aura he was more rational.

///

An explosion shook the whole city.

Her body was in his arms.

She had no pulse.

Tears welled up in his eyes as he let her go to perform CPR.

As he attempted to bring life back to her he repeated, ‘I love you,’ over and over.

And then a pulse.

She was still alive.

She had a chance.

Red Hood checked Pixie Todd into the hospital ten minutes later.

///

Jason came rushing into the hospital five minutes later.

“I’m here to see Pixie Todd,” he demanded.

“Mr. Wayne, she is in surgery, when she is out it will be family only until she awakes.”

“We have the same last name.”

“While I won’t question how you know what name she was checked in under, I will say you yourself have confirmed to the media, you aren’t related to the girl. I’m sorry, we understand she is your friend, but you won’t be able to see her until she’s awake.”

“We got married, '' he blurted out, “last year we didn’t want the media to know. I just want to see my wife when she gets out.”

He lied effortlessly.

“Oh, I’m sorry I assumed-”

“It’s okay, I just would like an update on her condition.”

“Of course, I can go get her surgeon.”

“Hey, can you not tell anyone about the marriage?”

“Of course Mr. Wayne.”

She was going to be okay.

Masterlist AO3

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[bedbellyandbeyond]

Enough Talking

(Story Post)

The rest of the day went surprisingly well. Kent was so keen on spending as much of his time as possible with the twins that he barely cared what anyone else was doing around him. Nathan figured they'd need to talk at some point, but he was fine letting him get his fill at the moment. It allowed more time for him to take a break. He, Dax, and Reid went into town for dinner so they could each eat something more catered to their own diets, rather than the Bambi burgers Kent had on supply. Nathan made sure the twins were fed before they went out, but he was nervous leaving them alone with their father. He gave Kent a rundown on everything the twins needed and how to take care of them, but Kent insisted that he could do it and it would only be an hour or two anyway. It was their bedtime, so it was a matter of just getting them to sleep and not waking them up. APID had provided Kent's place with a pair of cots for the kids and they went down easy after running around for an hour in their beast forms.

When they got back from dinner, the adults had to figure out their own sleeping arrangements since they were one more than expected. Reid volunteered to sleep on the couch which made things a lot easier. Kent wanted to sleep with the cribs in his room but Nathan vetoed that and they'd stay in the living room by Reid, where Nathan could see them from the loft. Dax would join him up there again. Before they did go to bed though, Nathan still wanted a chance to talk to Kent. He knew the bear man was more likely to open up a bit when they spoke one on one, so they sat out on the porch alone. “What do you want, then?” Kent huffed, sinking into a patio chair with a beer in hand. Nathan sat down with him and crossed his ankles. “…I wanted you to know, I think it's really cool of you to let Dax come back up here to talk to me.” “It's nothin',” Kent just said before taking a sip. “I understand it might not have been easy,” Nathan said. “After all, for a moment, it could’ve been you, me, and the kids alone, like you’d been talking about before.” “That wasn't anything, just some dumb thoughts… It's not like it was ever gonna be that,” Kent said. “You brought that ghost guy anyway without even tellin' me. But it's not like I don't get it. You’re scared to trust me. Everyone is.” Nathan rubbed his neck. “…I still barely know you, really… I’ve known Reid and Dax the entire time you were gone. I know I can trust them, for the most part. I just need you to show me I can rely on you.” “I am, ain't I?” Kent retorted. “I watched my kids fine, they love me. And I know how to change a diaper now, so I can do that too, if I gotta…” Nathan patted his arm. “You did a good job today. I'd like to see more days like this. That's all.” “I can do it. And you're teachers, right?” Kent said. “It's summer, so do you gotta keep bringing them on only weekends? It's summer break, ain't it?” “Yeah, we can work out some kind of arrangement,” Nathan said. “For now though, I go where the twins go, so if you expect to see them more days out of the week, expect to see Dax and I more too.” “It's fine, I don't care,” Kent said. “I got the space.” Nathan smiled softly. “So, what do you think of Dax, then? Are you getting along?” Kent grit his teeth. “He's fine… I mean, he's limp as a long sittin' tea biscuit, but he's the right guy for you and ‘em. Smart and kind and loyal, and all that…” “So, you're okay with me dating him?” Nathan said. “Being with him and raising our kids?” Kent sat up uncomfortably. “It's not like I got a choice in the matter, is it? You already picked him and I’m just gonna be me n’ this here cottage for whenever you decide to show up…” “Kent, please just tell me how you really feel about it,” Nathan said. “They are your kids, and you will get to see them… But, do you just want to see them, or do you like seeing me, too?” Kent looked away, but his ears turned red. “…Listen, I…You're an okay guy, Nate, but I'm… I'm not…” Nathan took a breath. “Dax knows I have feelings for you,” He stated plainly. “Do you have feelings for me?” Kent looked back dumbfounded. “…You do?” “Yes.” Nathan felt his face warming up too, but he wasn’t going to retreat now. “I’m scared to admit it, because I'm worried it's the wolf and not me, but that's why I kissed you.” Kent's face went beet red. “…Yeah.” “Yeah, what?” “I…” Kent grit his teeth. “Nate, I love you.” Nathan froze, processing it. “…What?” Kent grimaced and looked away again. “I said what I said…” “You…?” Nathan shook his head. “I said I have feelings for you, but this is…” Kent growled and clutched his beer bottle tightly. “Just forget I said anything, then.” “No, no…” Nathan was still a little flustered. “Kent…” “It's dumb and stupid and I know that,” Kent growled. “I don't hardly know you, and I ain't gay, so I don't get it at all… But I am…in pain when I am around you because I can't have you. Is that what you wanted to hear?” He then drank down the rest of his beer. “No, I…” Nathan stood up. “I didn't think it was that deep… I knew you liked me, but that's, like…” He crossed his arms uncomfortably. “Are you sure?” Kent just glared at him. Nathan waved a hand. “I…no, I understand.” “Now that I told you, I imagine you won't want to be ‘round me no more,” Kent said. “And you'll run along and tell your boyfriend and he won't want me ‘round neither.” “No, that's not true…” Nathan wavered on the spot. “Listen, um… We'll talk tomorrow, okay? I think, you, Dax, and I.” “I don't want to talk to him about none of this,” Kent said, getting up. “I'm not asking for nothin' but bringing back my kids to see me. That's all. I’m sick n’ tired of talkin’.” He then opened the door and went back inside. Nathan stood there awkwardly, trying to figure out what to do. It took him a few moments, then he went inside too. Kent wasn’t in sight; Nathan assumed he went straight to bed. Reid was already passed out on the couch, which was good because he looked like he was always severely lacking sleep. Dax was in the loft just looking at videos on his phone. Nathan climbed up beside him and put a hand on his arm. “Hey, um…” Nathan whispered. “Yeah?” “How attracted to Kent are you?” Nathan asked. Dax paused his video and narrowed his eyes. “Is this a trap?” “No, no, seriously,” Nathan said. “If you could, you know, sleep with him properly, would you?” Dax looked at Nathan. “…Why?” Nathan sighed. “Come on, I just want to know…” Dax tilted his head. “I'd rather sleep with you.” Nathan smiled. “That's sweet, but that doesn't answer my question.” Dax looked at his phone and then put it down. “And you promise this isn't a loaded question? You know, after what happened…” “I swear this isn't loaded.” Dax frowned. “Okay… With your permission…I might possibly consider sleeping with Kent if the opportunity presented itself. Only with your full support, though. Like, if we had an open relationship or something. Which to be clear, I am not asking for. I am speaking hypothetically. Please tell me why I am being asked this.” Nathan sat back on his heels. “…I would to.” Dax looked at Nathan. “Okay… So you asked me all that just to tell me you would be open to sleeping with Kent?” “Yeah…” Dax blinked a few times then turned his video back on. “Alright then. Good for you, I guess?” Nathan took Dax's phone and placed it down beside him. “So, would you want to right now?” Dax looked at his partner. “What?” “Sleep with Kent right now. Do you want to? I want to if you want to.” Dax stared. “Did I miss something? Where is this coming from?” “We talked and I think Kent is more interested in us than it seemed,” Nathan said. “I mean, he likes you and he admitted he loves me.” Dax sat upright. “He what?” “Dax, the point is, I am turned on right now,” Nathan said. “But we are a pair. I would only be comfortable sleeping with Kent if you participated as well. If I'm talking crazy, slap me on the wrist now, but I'm just trying to be transparent about this.” Dax took a moment to process what he was hearing. “…So what you're saying is…a threesome with Kent is on the table?” “Yeah.” Dax felt himself start to sweat. “…Uh, what about the twins?” “They are asleep. I brought the baby monitor.” “And Reid?” “He too is asleep.” Dax wet his lips. “…Is this your idea or Kent’s?” “Mine. We would have to ask him, too.” “And you think he'd want me involved?” “He's already slept with you once. I am asking you first though, because you are my boyfriend, not him.” Dax rubbed his thighs and thought for a moment. “…Well, since it's your idea, yes. I would say ‘yes’ to sleeping with you and Kent.” Nathan smiled sheepishly. “Okay. So that's that, then. Let's go. Of course, if you don't want to, or you want to stop, you can tell me.” He gave Dax a kiss and then started to climb back down the ladder. Moments later, they were both standing outside Kent's bedroom door. Nathan knocked lightly. “Kent?” “I said, I don't wanna talk no more,” Kent’s voice came through. “We're not here to talk,” Nathan said. “What, then?” Nathan opened the door and they stepped inside. Kent was on his bed, looking at his phone too, but he stiffened seeing both Nathan and Dax in his room. “What is this?” Kent huffed. “I didn't say you could be in here.” Nathan set the baby monitor down on Kent’s wardrobe. “What do you say we do this properly?”

[tlou-1]

Joel x Reader (Home) - Chapter 15

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 | Chapter 15 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17 | Chapter 18 | Chapter 19 TBA

Chapter 15 - Life being pregnant in Jackson with a protective Joel and Ellie on hand. (A bit of fluff) 

A couple months later you were working your shift in the Tipsy Bison. It had been a few days since you had been able to come on shift, turns out you hadn’t escaped the morning sickness but rather it would hit you at the beginning of your second trimester. It felt nice to be out of the house and doing something. Molly was sat with you to keep you company before Joel and Ellie came to meet you. Things had changed quite a bit over the space of these two months, Molly and Jesse were not together but still friends (thankfully for you). She had explained that he needed to be with someone his own age, Jesse was pretty wise for his years but maybe Molly was right. 

Joel and Ellie arrive in the bar a little late, their patrol must have taken longer than expected. They went to sit alongside Molly, Ellie removing her bag and taking a seat when Joel asked “I thought you were to supposed to be finished work?”. 

It had only been an extra hour you had been on shift. “I was, I thought you two were supposed to be back a while ago?” you retaliate.

“She’s got us there” Ellie sighs. The pair had started patrols together last month and had been out together frequently since. It all started with an argument between you, Maria and Joel and Ellie. You were adamant you could still go on patrol, Maria supported this decision for the early stages of your pregnancy but well Joel and Ellie wouldn’t hear any of it. 

“Maria you ain’t seriously thinking of letting her go out there?” Joel hissed 

“Joel I am standing right here. I swear to god if you talk across me again… I can go out there and it’’s not like you wouldn’t be there to keep an eye!” You shout

“You’re both stubborn as mules” Maria sounded exhausted by it all. 

“I’ll take her patrols with Joel” Ellie volunteered. You protest again.

“Fine I can take most of her patrols, you could still go out occasionally. Compromise for everyone?” Ellie shrugged. It seemed the best deal and looking at how good the time together had been for Joel and Ellie’s relationship it had its positives. 

Later that night after Ellie had joined you both for dinner. You and Ellie were sat on the sofa chatting away whilst Joel cleaned the dishes. “We will need to take Junior, when they are old enough!” Ellie smiles her knees tucked under her chin. You laugh and rest your hands upon your ever growing belly “Definitely although we might need a better tour guide than Joel it sounds”.

“What are you two laughing at? I heard my name” Joel appears from the kitchen still drying his hands. 

“Oh I am just hearing about the museum. Sounds like you are quite the Dr John Hammond” You tease your husband but he doesn’t seem to care. 

“The women knows Jurassic Park, I knew I loved you for some reason darlin” he exclaims pointing at you before planting an over dramatic kiss on your cheek which you playfully swat away. 

You continue to tease Joel with Ellie’s assistance when he returns to the kitchen. “Well Joel I think you could take some lessons from Ellie by the sounds of it” you call. 

“I think it sounds like all my girls are ganging up on me in there” he laughs and goes to sit in-between you both finally finished with the dishes. 

“Oh I dunno we could have a little guy in here, might make it even numbers for you” you tease placing a hand on your bump. Joel goes still for a second before falling back into the sofa.

“Oh Christ a boy? I don’t think I’d know what to do with a boy” he sighs looking up at the ceiling. You and Ellie just laugh shaking your heads at him.

That night you all rewatched Jurassic Park together. Ellie had tried balancing the bowl of popcorn on your ever growing stomach,

“Ellie would you stop trying to use my wife as a table” he tutted her away.

“Oh Joel you know the older child always acts up when they are about to have younger sibling” you joke lying your feet along him, getting comfy. Before Ellie laughs sarcastically throwing a handful of popcorn at your face.

“I see what you mean” Joel smiles and Ellie just rolls her eyes at you both.

The further into the pregnancy you got the more Joel fussed over you, sometimes it was endearing, other times it could be infuriating. It was Spring which meant you could spend more time outdoors but Joel preferred you didn’t do too much hard labour. He got his wish as by the 6th month it was damn impossible to do the simplest of tasks. In the mornings before your walks with Bruce there were multiple occasions where you had to have Joel tie the laces to your shoes. He could feel your frustration at this so wouldn’t say very much in these type of moments worried about getting caught in the crossfire. 

“This is ridiculous, I still have another three months. I cant not be able to tie my shoes until then… I am getting huge” you almost cry with the irritation.

Joel stays crouching after tying your shoes, “Baby I am going to be here to tie your shoes every single day and I believe you to be absolutely stunnin” he takes your hand in his. 

One night you wake with a jolt. Joel wakes up almost immediately too, he never had been a heavy sleeper. “What is it? What’s wrong?”.

You relax back against your pillow, smiling “They are kicking”. It was the strangest sensation you had experienced, it felt so odd and yet so comforting. You reach for Joel’s hand and hold it against the top of your bump, there is nothing for a few seconds and then. Joel laughs softly, smiling at the sensation of feeling your child’s foot against your skin. 

“That’s amazing” you say fascinated.

“Isn’t it? Let me try something” Joel shifts himself so he is propped comfortably right next to your stomach. He begins to talk softly, he talks about Jackson, Ellie, Bruce and your life together as a family. 

“Joel, what are you doing?” You ask sleepily, his voice was soothing to listen to. 

“Your Mama is looking pretty tired little one, do you think you can give the kicking a rest so she can get a bit of sleep?” He smiles up at you. 

[remmushound]

Curse of the Clans part 36! @brightlotusmoon @selfindulgenz @scentedcandlecryptid

Content warning!! Physical attack, restraint, cursing

SMACK!

April woke up to a solid, heavy thud. It took her a moment to recognize her own room; it was her first night staying in her house for almost three weeks. Every time her parents would go away on their business, the house would be too quiet for her to want to stay in it very long. But now the lair was just as quiet, and with her brothers gone, she didn't want to spend much time there either. It just made her sad. Her conflict with Splinter and Cassandra served to make things worse.

SMACK!

That sound came again, and this time her head snapped immediately to the window. Another impact, and another. A steady, drumming sound. April slid out of bed and into her slippers, slowly approaching the window and pulling back the darkened blinds. Surely the brothers couldn’t be back so soon?

April gave a shout and fell away as another projectile was launched at the window and smacked against it. Was that a rock? Quickly, she scrambled back over to the window and peered outside. Then she opened the window, just barely ducking her head in time to dodge another rock. She slowly peeked back over the windowsill and threw her arms open.

“What the hell Casey?!”

“Sorry!” Cassandra called back from the streets, “You opened the window!”

“No shit, Jones!” April snarled back, and then fell to a weak laugh. “What are you doing throwing rocks at my house at…” She checked the time, “Two in the morning?”

“Come down!” Sunita called up; she was in her human form, which hadn’t changed at all in the years April knew her. Skin a shade darker than April’s own, and hair of ink pulled tight again her scalp in braids.

“Not tonight, yall.” April leaned on her window sill and gave a tired smile.

“What?” Cassandra scoffed in an exaggerated fashion, “Why not?!”

“I have a headache.” Was April’s excuse; she didn't have one, but she certainly didn't feel good. She just couldn’t exactly pin point what part of her body it was that ached.

“I have ibuprofen!” Cassandra held up her purse.

“Good night, girls.” April closed the window.

***

“Well, that stinks.” Sunita put a hand on her hip as she turned to face the shorter Cassandra. “Should we knock again?”

Cassandra considered. She gave a smile that was undetectable due to her mask and cracked her fingers and neck. “I have a better idea~”

***

April was more than happy to enjoy the warm, weighted embrace of her comforter, hugging her childhood teddy bear to beckon sleep to return to her faster. With her injuries, this was shaping up to be the most boring summer of her life! But to be fair, the promise of a simple, normal summer of relaxation definitely appealed to her, no matter how far out of her reach she knew it was. A girl could always dream, right?

April’s body shuttered. It told her to open her eyes, and when she did it was like her worst nightmares came true, though for only a moment before her mind caught up with the fear in her heart and recognized the silhouettes standing over her like villains in the night.

“Casey? Sunita? What are you—?”

Cassandra grabbed April around her waist and hoisted the teen over her shoulder.

“Casey! Put me down!” April growled and kicked her legs, but Cassandra only laughed.

“Sunita— help me! Get her legs!” Cassandra howled, and Sunita hurried to restrain April’s legs while Cassandra supported her front, both of them holding April between them like a hammock. “You’re coming to girls night April!”

They started to carry April toward the open window. April’s initially startled screams slowly turned to laughter. She still struggled, but her actions were more playful than anything. They stopped at the window, though Cassandra had already climbed out of it.

“She ain’t got no shoes, get her shoes!” Cassandra laughed.

Sunita’s arm turned from human back to its slime form and extended out to grab April’s shoes and a pair of socks. Cassandra forced April’s feet still so Sunita could put her shoes on, and then they continued out the window and into the fire escape.

“Guys— I need a mask!” April laughed.

“Got one!” Cassandra reached into her purse and pulled out a blue mask, fixing it over April’s mouth and nose while still carrying her with one arm. Down the fire escape they went, and only when their feet had touched the ground did they put April down.

“Are you proud of yourselves?” April huffed, putting her hand on her hip.

“Very.” Cassandra smirked.

“You could at least have let me get dressed!” April laughed, “I can’t go out for girls night in my PJs!”

“Why not?” Sunita asked innocently.

“Cause It's not proper for a social setting!” April scoffed.

Sunita was quiet for a time before whispering, “Humans are so weird…”

“Oh yeah. Forgot you’re a slime dude.” Cassandra turned to face April, “You’ll be fine! It’s not like we’re going drinking! You’re not old enough; believe me, I’ve checked.”

“Then what are we doing?” April asked, genuine curiosity seeping into her voice.

***

The trio got close enough to see the mutant hippo known as Hypno Ron wandering the shadows of the streets; he didn't seem to have a care in the world as to being spotted. After all, he could always just Mesmer any human to forget! April wasn’t so keen on how reckless the mutant was being, but Cassandra locked on to the hippo almost immediately from the rooftops.

“Oh! Oh! I got this one!” Cassandra cleared her throat, and when she spoke again, it was in a heavy accent; her best attempt at mocking the way Hypno spoke. “Oh oh, deary me! I simply have to find a tiny suit for my tiny worm friend for our anniversary! How am I ever going to find one in time to enjoy tiny tea cakes and orange peels with the lovely Warren Stone?”

“Orange peels?” April scrunched up her nose.

“What? Worms taste with their body.” Cassandra shrugged.

“Oh! There’s one!” Sunita spotted the next mutant, Repo Mantis, buzzing around. She dropped her voice low and raspy. “Rrrrr. I just know there’s a birthday cake to repo ‘round here somewhere. That three-year old’s hiding well, but I’ll sniff em out with my sniffer.” Sunita made exaggerated sniffle motions that made April and Cassandra almost fall over laughing.

“This one’s mine!” April claimed a few buildings down when they spotted the mutant prairie dog wandering an alleyway, her nose twitching in the search for decent morsels. April didn't know her name, so she had to improvise, clearing her throat. “Can I dig here? Noooo this isn’t a good place for digging? Here? Maaaaybe not? Here? No. Man, none of these places are good for digging!”

Sunita and Cassandra were covering their mouths trying to keep their laughter to a minimum. The prairie dog seemed to hear them anyway, looking up from her curious search to twitch her ears in search of the noises.

The girls all ducked down low to hide from her sight, all covering their mouths and their snickers until the suspicions had died down. Then, at Cassandra’s command, all three of them peeked back over the edge and down at the mutant as she continued her work.

“Ohhhh the voices are back!” April carried on, this time in a lower whisper, “Hm? However will I pass the time? I know!” she cleared her throat and started to sing in her mock accent. “Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene! I’m begging of you please don’t take my man! Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Joleeeene! I’m singing this song just because I caaaaan!”

The prairie dog looked up again. “Did someone call me?”

That made the trio of girls fall apart laughing until their sides hurt and they felt like they might be sick if they laughed any harder. Through the next hour, they found more and more people to mock from afar, both mutants and humans, but after the hour had passed, April was starting to feel completely exhausted. The constant running and laughing made the soreness of her side ache even worse, and now her head really was hurting, and her stomach too.

“Sorry gals.” She told the two of her friends when she felt her body couldn’t hold out any longer. “Really gotta turn in for the night.”

“What?” Cassandra groaned, and Sunita seemed disappointed, “Come on! We still got two hours before the sun comes up!

“And I really should be spending it sleeping.” April sighed, “But I had a really good time! I’ll see you in the morning, girls?”

“Do you want us to walk you home?” Sunita asked softly.

“No, no, don’t trouble yourselves!” April waved her hand, “I know you two are having fun, and I can handle myself.”

“Are you sure?” Cassandra asked, “It’s no trouble…”

“It’s fine! I grew up with the turtles, I can handle myself!”

“If you say so…”

“I’ll be fine. Really.” April tried to reassure.

“At least take my knife.” Cassandra said, giving the long blade over to April, “I feel bad for abducting you without your bat.”

“You don’t have to do that.” April said.

“I want to!” Cassandra beamed. “Besides, I’ll just come back and get it in the morning! No big whoop.”

“Well then… thank you.” April turned the knife over in her hands a few times. “I promise I’ll give it back.”

April found where she was by checking the nearest street signs. She wasn’t more than a few blocks from home. The streets would be far easier to traverse than the buildings; as much as she had trained with the brothers, she never did quite get the hang of building jumping. That’s why Donatello had his special seat in his armor just for her! Thinking of Donatello, April felt a sudden sadness wash over her. She missed his sarcastic voice, his dramatic flare, his simple presence!

When she was out of view of Cassandra and Sunita, the first thing April did was let herself finally release the bile that had been churning her stomach for the past ten minutes, and she felt a lot better when the vomit was outside instead of in. Then she started to cry immediately after, but she didn't know why. She missed Donatello, sure, but enough to cry? And though her head hurt it wasn’t the agonizing, ripping headaches that usually plagued her, so it wasn’t the pain. Maybe it was just a bit of everything mixed into one, and that was why she felt so… not good. She wanted to feel better, and maybe crying could help that! It wasn’t like she could stop now. Once the tears started to fall, they just got heavier.

The tears fell hard as April entered a shortcut alley. Then she stopped when she saw a man at the other end; a man that looked to be just minding his own business, leaned up against a wall drinking from something within a paper bag. She already had a hunch of what it could be, and she certainly didn't want to cross his path. Not when there was a longer, but safer, path she could take instead. Gripping the knife in her pocket, April started to back away; it was preferable to turning her back on the man. At least, that’s what she thought before she collided with a bigger, heavier weight.

April tried to turn around. Powerful arms wrapped around her, one around her chest holding her in a grip so tight she thought her ribs might break, and another holding a cloth to her mouth. She held her breath for as long as she could, kicking out and trying repeatedly to strike the mans legs and groin, but all she met was muscle and what must have been an athletic cup protecting him. Figures! Just her luck!

When April could hold her breath no longer, she squeezed her eyes shut as the acrid fumes overwhelmed her, followed quickly by darkness.

[pynkhues]

C&C prompts!!!!! someone is sick?? preferably someone who is a horrific patient and it's early enough in that the whole little family unit is still trying to find their footing together and the whole thing's a mess???

Attempting this challenge has been a real reminder that I am no good at short things, haha, but look! 2k isn’t too bad for me????? 

(I hope you like it 😘)

Set in The Center & Circumference Universe.

(Early in the relationship, as requested ;-))

-

It goes like this:

Elizabeth sneezes.

She sneezes and it ain’t some cute little ladylike nothin’ sneeze neither. It’s some loud, fucked-up-sinus, mucous-mouthed thing that echoes around the warehouse and makes everyone stop working, and shit, even Demon looks taken aback. Rio bites his tongue, gaze sliding from him back to Elizabeth, who suddenly stands up taller to meet his look, squares her shoulders, and he has the sudden, vivid memory of Jane doing this at the foot of their bed last week.

“What?”

And yeah, Jane had said that too.

Elizabeth though, she’s got this indignant edge to her voice that means she’s getting defensive, like her hair ain’t frizzing at her sweaty temples, like her skin ain’t flushed, peaked, her eyes ain’t starting to water, and he’d known it this morning before she’d left ahead of him for school run, but okay - - maybe he’d let himself believe her. Maybe he’d let her bat those baby blues at him, let her distract him by leaving the top couple of buttons undone on her ugly floral blouse so he could see the flushed curve of her breast, let her tell him - -

Rio works his jaw, huffs out a breath.

“You said you were good.”

“I am good,” she says right away, voice a little too loud, like he won’t hear the hoarseness that way and when Rio squints at her, she flails out a wobbly hand. “It’s allergies.”

He pops an eyebrow at that.

“In July?”

Behind him, Demon snorts on a laugh, and he sees Elizabeth’s focus snap to him, her own jaw rock, the flush at her cheeks deepening. She shifts her weight, side-to-side, and that ain’t good either, because she looks halfway to wobbling too far and topplin’ over, but still, she blinks.

Takes too long to blink.

Like her eyes close and she doesn’t entirely wanna reopen them.

She does though, just enough to glare.

“Not all allergies are seasonal,” she says, and her voice cracks a little at the end, and he can see it – how much she needs to sit down, and he’s of half a mind to get her arm over his shoulder and drag her over to a seat, but also is she really tryna play him like this?

It’s the latter thought that wins out, because - - whatever. He’ll catch her if she passes out.  

“So it ain’t got nothin’ to do with last week?” he asks, and shit, it’s like some game of chicken, because Elizabeth firms her look, wets her lips, tilts up her chin.  

“I’d tell you if it was.”

And this has pretty clearly proven she wouldn’t, but still, Rio rolls his shoulders back, and turns on his heel, starts walking again to the meeting room in the back where they’re supposed to be hearing a pitch from some new associate, because fine, if this is what they’re doing, it ain’t no skin off his nose. And okay, maybe they set up in the meeting and he spends most of the time watching her, because her skin’s less flushed now and more paper pale, and maybe she wobbles a little in her seat as she trains glazed eyes on the kid pitchin’ them the idea for smugglin’ hormone pills to Cleveland across Lake Erie, and maybe she tries to subtly swipe at her damp forehead as she curls her hair behind her ears and maybe he can hear her swallowing coughs, and maybe he should’ve taken her home before she passed out, but, y’know, he said he’d catch her, and he did, so he can’t really be faulted for that.

 *

 Last week went something like this:

Danny sneezed.

Danny sneezed then Jane sneezed then Emma, Marcus, Kenny, and Rio was vaguely reminded of sitting in front of the TV and watching A Christmas Carol as a kid himself, seeing the ghost of Christmas past, present, future in symptoms across the five of them while he and Elizabeth both wrangled tissue boxes and kiddie aspirin, cough syrup and glassy eyed tears over Frozen, Frozen 2, Wreck It Ralph, Frozen, Moana, Frozen, Zooptopia, Moana, Frozen.

(He might have thrown the bluray of that fuckin’ movie out before Annie came over with extra supplies and cooingly installed Disney+ on their TV, and shit, he’s had a lot of reasons to kill her before, but they all pale in comparison).

And okay, maybe it was a thing, because they were still pretty new to all of this and Rio didn’t need to be as good at math as he was to know that handlin’ five sick kids was gonna be worse than one, but still. He doesn’t think he’ll ever feel as close to burnin’ a house down as he did tryna handle three sobbing, snuffling kids at once, and they’d gotten well and the handover had happened and he’d maybe never been happier to give a mostly-better Marcus back to Laura and see the rest of them (also mostly-better) off to Elizabeth’s dumbass ex, and piling into bed after.

Him and Elizabeth hadn’t even fucked, they’d just collapsed back onto the mattress and looked at each other.

“If you get sick, I’m leaving you.”

He can’t remember which one of them said it.

 *

 It goes something like this:

Elizabeth sneezes.

Elizabeth sneezes and Rio throws a tissue box at her bedridden form as he works on his laptop in the reading chair in the corner, his own legs propped up on the ottoman he’s dragged up from the living room, as he works on the specs for the associate’s Cleveland pitch.

“Your bedside manner leaves a lot to be desired, you know that?” she asks him, nose so blocked at this point her voice comes out somehow both hoarse and reedy, and Rio glances up at her over the top of his laptop, biting back a grin.

Thing is, she really does look like hell. The bags beneath her eyes are so purple they almost look like bruises, her skin so pale it’s almost translucent. He’d managed to get her into her favourite, ugliest pyjamas when he’d hauled her back into the house, and she looks comfy, between them and the approximately 800 blankets she’d demanded he pull out to cover her.

She’d sweat the fever out pretty quick, and he’d made awkward but proficient work of takin’ care of her – wiping her brow, feedin’ her flu medicine, and making thin, tasteless soup he somehow hadn’t managed to completely fuck up (then again, the only ingredients had been stock, salt and slivered vegetables) – and hours had gone by and she’d slept and glowered and offered frail excuses, and now - -

Well.

“Ain’t what you said last night,” he hums, clicking through the spreadsheet, and he feels more than sees Elizabeth’s eyeroll in reply.

“I said bedside manner, not - - in-bed manner,” she sniffs, before pulling out a tissue and blowing her nose, and Rio glances up at her red cheeks and wet eyelashes and grins.

“Figured what we did counted more as bed-side.”

And maybe it was semantics, but whatever. It was fun in the moment of it, rememberin’ both their toes curled in this carpet, her body bent like an L atop their sheets, ass up towards him, and - -

“Bed-over,” Elizabeth corrects, and it surprises him enough that Rio barks on a laugh, glancing up at her again, grinning when he spots the subdued but still-a-little-playful look in her eye.

“Yeah, somethin’ like that, huh?”

The look on her face is as close to affectionate as she ever gets, and he shifts a little in his seat, feels himself warm beneath it, as she flops back into their pillows, still snuffling. He can pretty much smell the sweat on them at this point, and he wonders vaguely if he can change the sheets before he slips in tonight, because shit, they are damp, and he’s spent enough time hovering over the kids’ feverishly moist beds over the last week to like the idea of somethin’ a little crisper, when Elizabeth suddenly says:

“You stayed though. So that’s - - you know. That’s some sort of bedside manner.”

His gaze darts up, takes in her pink, mottled cheeks, her crooked nose, her dimpled chin, and her voice was high. Light and airy in that way she ain’t, and there’s a knot between his shoulders when he shrugs.

“Well, we got a mortgage now,” he drawls, eyes skirting back down to the spreadsheet on his laptop screen but not taking any of the figures in.

“A big one,” Elizabeth agrees, like they don’t both know they’ve paid it outright, and Rio hums, willing her complicity in the moment of it, because fuck, if that ain’t just - -

Easier.

And he can’t really think about what that means, not really, but maybe he doesn’t have to, because suddenly Elizabeth says:

“I bet you’re terrible when you’re sick.”

Rio jerks his head up, eyebrows raised, and Elizabeth snuffles, closing her eyes briefly, shuffling back into their pillows. The air around her is thick, her body tired, slumped, but glowing with the sheen of her fevered sweat. He wets his lips, works his jaw, meets her eye.

“You’re probably like the - - the poster child for man flu,” she adds, which is a little rich comin’ from the woman who passed out halfway through a meeting. Rio arches an eyebrow back at her, and somewhere in the pocket of his jeans, his cell buzzes. Somewhere outside of here, he can hear afternoon traffic and a neighbour yell. He can hear a lot of things, but he can’t see anything that ain’t Elizabeth, awkward and beautiful and a straight up fuckin’ mess, sprawled out in their bed.

“You talk to every man who takes care of you that way, or just me, huh?”

And her head jerks at that, neck forcing at an odd angle, shoulder shoving up to suffocate the pillow against the bedhead.

“All of them,” she decides after a moment, and Rio snorts on a laugh, closing his laptop and putting it aside. The knot between his shoulders is settling, and he ain’t exactly taking in the specs anyway (he thinks the deal’s a no-go, but he figured lookin’ it over was the least he could do for the kid, given one of his potential bosses rolled out of her fuckin’ body halfway through his pitch), so he starts towards the bed, planning on folding in directly beside her, when Elizabeth shakes her head, pushing him gently away.

“No,” she says. “I’m not - - I - - ”

She’s fumbling for the words, and Rio looks at her, taking her in all over again, seeing the uncertainty not the set of her, and so he ignores her, returning her gentle shove with one of his own and lying down in their bed, and he can’t explain it. The feeling in his chest when she casts wide eyes at him.

“What?” he grunts, and she opens her mouth once, twice, says:

“I - - Dean - - ”

Her mouth clamps shut.

She stares at him, and Rio stares back, watching her mandible clench, her lips twitch, her bambi eyes blink. After a moment, she shakes her head, wriggles down in the bed.

“You’ll only have yourself to blame if you get sick.”

Rio snorts.

“Darlin’, we both know I probably already got it.”

She rolls her eyes then, but keeps wriggling down until they’re eye level again, and Rio leans over, just enough to hook a finger beneath her chin, flick it up over the dimple there, and he watches as her tired eyes glaze over or - - maybe not. Maybe they’re just overtaken somehow. By somethin’ that just makes her look at him in a way he still ain’t used to. Naked almost, open and tired and warm.

“Probably,” she agrees quietly, and she turns into him. Rio’s fingers lift from her chin to brush over her wet lips.

“’Sides,” he tells her. “Where else would I wanna sleep?”

Like they don’t have at least five other bedrooms in this house.

Like there ain’t the promise of something warmer, cleaner, fresher, safer somewhere in this house, but he don’t want it.

This is his bed.

She’s his - -

“Fine,” she says, pointedly closing her eyes, and Rio does the same, and maybe he pretends he doesn’t notice the way she shuffles – ever so slightly – closer before they both fall asleep.

 *

 It goes something like this:

Rio sneezes.

Rio sneezes and Elizabeth fuckin’ laughs.

[samwrights]

Two Little Lines Pt. 2

More babies!! WOW I’M SORRY I DIDNT MEAN TO MAKE A WHOLE ASS FIC OUT OF FUKATUCHI.

Er, warning? Implied alcoholism in Semi’s.

Terushima;

To say that you and Terushima lived a perfect life together would be an outright lie.

Sure, the two of you had been together since your guys’ third year of high school and you have always found a way to make the relationship work.

But you were so tired.

So tired of acting more like his mother than his girlfriend of the last four years. He hardly helped around the apartment, never cooked a meal, and if he was home and not passed out, he’d ditch you to go hang out with his friends.

It just didn’t feel like a relationship anymore; it felt like you were roommates who slept in the same bed.

And Terushima Yūji was entirely oblivious to the fact.

To say that it broke your heart would be an understatement.

But even so, you held onto the hope that you and Teru would make this all work and everything would go back to the way it used to be.

Hope in the form of crying out the anguish in your soul every night as you went to bed.

You ain’t slick though, but Terushima just doesn’t know what to do—

he’s terrified to confront you about this because what if you finally realize that he’s really just a piece of shit and you should have left years ago?

I love Terushima but lowkey I feel like he’s toxic 💀

But he tries—tries in the form of actually talking about topics that have real substance for the first time in months.

It actually goes rather well!

Too well.

It was nice to have your boyfriend back, even if temporarily.

To have human, physical contact with him was needed.

But also landed you in your current predicament—sitting on your bathroom floor, waiting for the results of the pregnancy test you felt you needed to buy earlier.

You were tired—way more than usual lately. The morning sickness, however, was what prompted you.

It was currently 2am. Yūji would be home soon from wherever he decided to go to, and the timer on your phone goes off signaling for you to check.

Not that you needed nor wanted the confirmation, but the two little lines were the nail in the coffin.

Lmaofuck.

“[name]?” Terushima calls out from the hallway. He must’ve noticed you weren’t in bed despite the late hour.

Hearing his voice brought tears to your eyes and you wished you could lie and say they were from joy.

The sobs are what captures his attention, prompting him to barge into the bathroom. “Babe? What’s wrong?”

You don’t say anything; you’re afraid you’ll say everything you’d been harboring inside for years. Instead, you point to the pregnancy test with a shaky finger.

“Wha—oh. Oh!” Aside from the three syllables that left his lips, he had no idea what else to say.

Because he knows.

Terushima knows that things haven’t been going all that great and the both of you just loved each other too much to let the other go.

“I don’t know what to do, Yūji.” Your voice is devoid of all emotion, reflecting the emptiness you’d been feeling for so long.

“The choice is yours, always. But...” Terushima comes to sit with you on the tiled floor, tugging at your cheek so that you can look at him. “This is my sign, I guess, that I have to be better. We aren’t kids anymore, shit we could be having a kid—I can’t just do whatever the hell I want.”

“You shouldn’t have been in the first place,” you seeth, “Yūji, we’ve been in a partnership since high school.”

“And you’ve been carrying the team.” At least he acknowledges it. “Now you’re literally carrying the team.”

“Dude,” you smack his arm lightly, not missing his joke. “Be serious.”

“I am. I mean it. I don’t want to lose you, [name], so I’m going to try. I want to be better for you, for both of you.”

Semi;

Was Semi Eita perfect? No.

Did you need him to be perfect? Also no.

But for the last three years, there had always been some kind of disconnect between you two regarding what you wanted for the future.

You both were incredibly supportive of each other’s respective paths—shit, you were Semi’s biggest fan when it came to his music.

But considering he often had to travel, he just couldn’t see eye to eye with you and your need for stable roots.

What was the point of spending money on a house when your two bedroom apartment suited you just fine?

He did concede to the two of you getting a dog, so that was nice at least.

But above all, you wanted to be a family. Married, kids, a yard—the whole package. He knew this, but always had an excuse.

“My career is just taking off. If we get married, I don’t want to abandon either of you—I want to be able to dedicate the proper time to both of you.” Okay, fair.

“We don’t have enough saved for a house yet.” Also fair.

“Being a parent is a full time job.” He had valid points to everything, but that did little to quell your desires.

But for Semi, you were willing to make some sacrifices.

Kinda.

However, Semi doesn’t notice the subtle changes that have come from you.

You’re working more, home less, and if you were home, you’d already have had dinner and hanging out in the bathtub while chugging a bottle of wine.

At first, Eita just thinks that you’ve had a rough day at work or something and he gives you your space.

But one bottle turns into four, and he’s had to carry you out of the tub more than once or twice.

“Babe, talk to me. What’s wrong?” Semi had left work early one day just to make sure he caught you before you started your evening ritual.

“Nothing’s wrong, Eita!” But he could hear the forced optimism along with the way your grin didn’t make your cheekbones close your eyes at the corner like they always did.

“[name], please. Don’t shut me out.” Have you ever heard Semi Eita beg? No? That’s cause it never happens.

“I swear, I’m fine! Just had—“

“A hard day at work, I know. I don’t doubt that but you’re avoiding me, babe. Just tell me what’s going on.”

You don’t know how to answer without being selfish. You know what Semi wants out of life and you had comes to terms with it. So why couldn’t you just let it go?

“I-I just...need time. To come to terms with the fact that we want different things in life.” If Semi was a crier, he would have right then and there. Watching the air leave your lungs in broken bubbles coming up as hiccups as you cried broke his heart.

“Do we? I just want you.”

For the first time in months, you didn’t pick up a bottle. After having dinner together, you finally got to be in the comfort of your loving, life partner.

Fast forward to present day—two months later you still indulge yourself in one glass of wine but no more bottles in the bathtub.

Semi’s thankful af for that 💀 even it wasn’t the ideal recovery

But he notices you’ve been waking up in the middle of the night to go throw up, and he’s starting to wonder if there were days you were sneaking them in.

“Eita, I swear I stopped doing that.” He’s giving you benefit of the doubt, trying to come up with other potential culprits.

There were days when you would PMS bad enough to make you sick.

But never for more than a few days—you were entering week 2.

“I’m calling the doctor,” he declares after you’d hurled for the third time that day. When he sees your hesitance, he adds, “I don’t think this is normal withdrawal. You never quit cold turkey, so I just wanna make sure you’re safe.”

Semi Eita’s intuition is both a blessing and a curse.

Blessing, in the sense that he was 100% right in regards to you needing to see a doctor.

Curse, because the two of you found out that you were pregnant. And while the two of you were doing much better than you were a few months ago, the “talk” about your future had never resurfaced.

“So, what are we going to do, Eita?”

“Well, I suppose I’ll have to consolidate my studio to make room for a nursery and I’ll probably have to start working from home part time at least to help you out—“

“Wait, what?” Why did he make it sound like you were keeping the baby?

“Well I’m not gonna leave you to do this alone, [name]. It’s my kid too.”

“Semi-Semi, you don’t want kids.”

“Yeah, but I want you.” He sounds so sure, so confident, that you aren’t even sure if the man beside you is really your boyfriend. “And by association, that includes our baby.”

Futakuchi;

Oh my god.

Why—or rather how in the fuck did this happen to you?

Well, you know how it happened. You did have sex education when you were in high school, after all.

But you and Fukatuchi always used condoms—there was no room for negotiation on that.

Part of you wishes you would have broken off this hook up arrangement a long time ago

But you know you’re lying to yourself because the two of you just meshed so well.

Almost like a real couple, but you knew that a relationship was the last thing he wanted.

And now, you sat on your bathroom floor with your head buried on your knees after throwing the pregnancy test that revealed two little lines of positivity.

Well, fuck.

You start dodging his 2am calls, passing it off as you had a paper or a lab that you desperately needing to finish.

Kenji isn’t buying it. He knows you’re always on top of your schoolwork.

“Why are you avoiding me?” Comes a text in broad daylight—something comepletely atypical of Futakuchi.

Avoiding turns into ignoring as you’re almost three months pregnant.

To which he calls out with another text send before booty call hours. “Alright, this is getting ridiculous. Whoever you’re fucking now can’t be better than me. Just answer me and I’ll prove it.”

Blocked.

Another weak goes by and, surprisingly, your pregnancy has been relatively smooth. Even if it did suck going through it alone.

A part of you missed Futakuchi. Not that you’d ever tell him that. But you tried to tell yourself you missed the D and nothing else.

But you missed the way he’d hold you overnight, occasionally brushing hair out of your face almost endearingly. You missed the warmth, the lust fueled kisses that you swore were almost loving.

Only to remember he was always gone before you woke up. He was only a booty call, and you had to remind yourself of that.

So why the fuck was he at your doorstep in the middle of the afternoon on a Sunday?

“Why the fuck did you block me?” He snarls, barreling his way into your apartment. You were so thankful that you were wearing an oversized hoodie and that you weren’t showing that much yet. .

“Dude, get out. Obviously, I blocked you for a reason.”

“Oh no, you don’t get to get out of this so easily. You would have told me if you started seeing someone else—“ his wording slips, he knows it, but Futakuchi can’t bring himself to fix the statement.

“We weren’t seeing each other in the first place!” The words sting him like rubbing alcohol on a fresh wound.

You try to usher him out of the apartment but, thanks to you being 16 weeks along and much weaker than him, your efforts are futile.

“You’re so cute when you play hard to get.” He retorts, wrapping his arms around your waist and picking you off the ground to carry you both out of the door way.

But as soon as he does, you’re immediately prying yourself away—fearful that he can feel your hardening belly. Fighting him off, however, seemed to make him squeeze harder. “Kenji, let me go! Fuck!”

He notices the use of his first name. He notices the flailing. But most of all, he noticed that your body felt different, even underneath the plush cloth of your hoodie.

He lets you go, unceremoniously dropping you into the ground out of shock because he finally is putting the pieces together. “You’re pregnant?”

“Get out, Kenji.”

“So you didn’t wanna see me because you’re pregnant? I’m sorry, I don’t quite understand the logic here,” his tone is snarky, painted with a vicious bite, “unless you were hooking up with someone else at the same time is me, there was no reason for you to keep this from me.”

But he knew that you weren’t. He knew by the way you’d clutch at his chest lovingly after sex that part of you longed for a real relationship with him.

And by the way it took everything in him to not stay through the morning, Kenji knew that somewhere along the lines, he wanted it too.

And he planned on telling you the last time he called, just before you started avoiding him.

“There was only you.” You answer quietly to the implied question.

“So, it’s mine.” He states bluntly. Losing your voice, you only nod. “You know,” he starts again slowly after you’ve both nodded off to a silent lull, “I started texting you in the middle of the day because I didn’t want you to think it was just about sex anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“I actually wanted to give us a try, but I wasn’t sure if you’d break things off if you didn’t want to move forward, and I didn’t wanna risk finding out.”

“And now, instead, you’re finding out that you’re going to be a dad.”

💀💀💀 I-

Haikyuu!! Tag List - Let me know if you’d like to be added!

@hihiq​ @dreamyjaems @tamcitrus

[lupienne]

The Reality - Negan and Lucille

Hey guys, here’s a little Halloween fic of Negan and Lucille. I started it like two years ago and never felt motivated to finish it. So I finally sat down today on Halloween and wrote the end of it, and while I’m not really happy with it... whatever. Here it is anyway! I think it’s kind of bittersweet, but that’s just me. 

-

The Reality

Gourds were on porches, leaves on the ground, and the stores were filled with pumpkin-flavored everything. The crisp air was a slap to the lungs, in a good way.

I'd always loved Fall, and I'd always looked forward to Halloween. That night when reality wavered on the edge. When you could be dark or light, the opposite of yourself – when you could be anything for just a few hours.

I hadn't been a fan of the days passing by lately. Dread sat like a tumor in my stomach.

The reality was... that reality fucking sucked.

I watched my breath puff out white as I came home on Thursday. Maybe it wouldn't fucking rain this Halloween. We might get snow instead.

After dinner, I polished off a few apple cider donuts, then settled on the couch to watch TV with Lucille. She was quiet and sleepy-eyed as the clock ticked towards my bedtime. The holiday was days away, falling right splat on a Saturday.

“Tony said he found some fuckin' booze flavored like Candy Corn. I hope that's not all he's gonna have, because that's gross as fuck.” I yawned. “What do you think I should dress as? Fuck, I shouldn't have waited until the last minute.”

We always attended Tony Synder's party down the block. I wasn't really crazy about the guy, but I'm not gonna pass up free food or secretly laughing at the neighbor's costumes. (I always looked fucking amazing.) I liked to switch up my style, but Lucille usually dressed as a witch. And not some sloppy, warty green hag...but a hot fucking witch. Her slim figure in a black corset, her tits pushed up, her cascade of black curls falling over one eye. In years past, we'd come home from that party partly drunk and ripping each other's costumes off as we stumbled through the door. God damn. I was almost getting hard thinking of it.

Almost. The past few years, Lucille had me at arm's reach and I couldn't blame her. I was shit, I was an unfaithful piece of shit, but she-

That shit didn't matter anymore.

“He-Man,” she said with a chuckle. “I want to see you rocking that little leather harness.”

“Goddamn, that's right on the edge of indecent exposure. Isn't he practically naked?”

“Why do you think I suggested it?”

“I would make a hot blond.” I slid closer to her, and she nestled against my side. “You gonna be my Bewitching Beauty as always?”

She was quiet for so long I thought she'd fallen asleep.

“...think I'm gonna sit this one out.”

“But why?”

“I don't know. Just not up to it, I guess. But you go, have fun. Maybe you'll find a hot date.”

I swallowed hard. After everything....I couldn't laugh at those types of jokes.

“...Stop that shit. You're the only hot date I want. I don't wanna go alone. We don't have to stay long.”

“Look, Negan, they won't want me there.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? Tony adores you, which is why I ain't his biggest fan, cause I know he's always wanted to stick his dick in you-”

She let out a laugh that was more of a scoff. “Doubt he feels that way now. Nobody wants a dying woman at their party, making things awkward.”

I felt like I'd been punched in the goddamn balls. My stomach went to my throat and I roiled with sudden nausea. Eyes burning with acid. I fought it, I fought it motherfuckin' hard . My jaw clenched like I was in rigor mortis, my body shuddering.

“Don't...don't say fucking shit like that.”

She nudged my ribs. “God, calm down, Negan. What about this, huh? I don't have any hair.”

“It's Hallo-fucking-ween. Everyone is wearing a motherfuckin' wig right now. You'll fit right in.”

She leaned her head on my arm. “I'm tired. I'll think about it. Ok?”

That meant no. But it wasn't official yet, so I was gonna stop at the party store and buy that fucking He-Man getup and the best witch wig I could find. She'd change her mind right quick once she saw me in that loincloth.

As she went to bed, I stared out the window at the orange light of our Jack-o-lantern. The nausea had settled back into my bones. A constant undercurrent, moving through my veins like poisoned blood.

Too many tricks, life. Not enough treats.

---

Friday night. I stopped at the party store. The cashier rung up my purchases, then looked me over with a twinkle in her eye. I refused to be flattered – ok, I was kind of fucking flattered. The wig for Lucille was the most expensive they had. If you squinted, it looked nearly like her natural spill of curls.

At home, I put my hand on the package, and felt a rush of fucking darkness come over me. I had to fucking sit there, like so many nights, fighting the thoughts that stung like needles. If I let them keep stinging, the tears would come – the fucking breakdown would follow.

So I fought it. I shut it down. I fucking locked it up, because Lucille doesn't like it when I fall apart – and why should she? I'm the man. I'm supposed to be her rock. She hates it when I cry. I hate it when I cry.

So I fucking smiled when I walked in the door. I smelled Chinese food. Lucille was already piling mine onto a plate – the sweet n' sour chicken I love. All she ordered was a tub of Wonton soup. I frowned, but said nothing. At least she's eating.

She looked at the bag in my hand, and she too, said nothing. “Dinner's ready. And I rented some Halloween movies.”

We ate and watched Child's Play and Micheal Myers and a leprechaun who makes bad jokes. I didn't mention the costume or the party, but I knew I'd be going alone. I spend the last movie wondering how I'll excuse my wife's absence, and how the fuck I'm gonna endure the pity in their eyes. It fucking pissed me off. That they're putting her in the ground already. That she's putting herself there.

“Honey,” she rubbed my tense arm. “You ok?”

“Yeah, babe. Just...indigestion.”

And damn this woman, she got up to make me a cup of peppermint tea. I sat there numb, wondering what the fuck I'm going to do without her.

----

“By the POWER OF GRAYSCALE, behold my glorious sword! ...and by sword, I mean dick.” I adjusted He-Man's fake-fur loincloth. Played with it, flipped it around. I wore some black boxers under it, but I was still worried about...slippage. I looked so fucking ridiculous.

I slid on the blond bob wig, examining the hot mess in the mirror. “Haha, oh yeah! What a fine motherfucker. Jesus H Christ. I am a glutton for punishment. Ok, babe. I'm decent! Come check me out before I head over there!”

“It's Grayskull, not Grayscale. Get it right, Negan.”

The bedroom door swung open and my mouth dropped. My Lucille stood there, the black wig cascading over her shoulders. Her body, slimmer than ever, hugged by a slinky black dress and purple corset. Glitter dusted her chest and cheeks.

“Goddamn, woman.”

“I couldn't miss out on that Candy Corn booze.”

I smiled, but we both knew she wouldn't be drinking that. She'd be spending the night over the toilet. I had to banish that thought fuckin' quick. She already spends too many nights over the toilet.

“I'll taste test it for you first. Let you know exactly how fucking disgusting it is.”

-

We headed down the block, passing early Trick-or-Treaters. The rain had come after all, but merely presented as a pathetic drizzle. The mist in the air diffused the street lamps into yellow balls of light. I wish I'd brought my coat to drape over Lucille's bare shoulders. Spooky music played from our elderly neighbor's house and he waved at us. Lucille waved back.

Tony's yard had become a graveyard of cardboard tombstones and dry ice. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lucy shiver.

“Want me to go back and grab a coat?”

“Don't be dumb. We're almost there.”

On the porch, Tony's tween kid sat in a lawn chair with a bowl of candy. No costume, how quaintly rebellious. She looked bored as fuck until we rolled up, and then she snickered openly. Dear fucking God. I hoped my loincloth was in place. My nipples were like fucking pebbles on either side of the plastic harness. I quickly banged on the door.

Tony opened it. “Negan! And Lucille! Very nice, very nice. Love the costume, although I'd never call you a witch. Or anything rhyming with it.”

We did an obligatory laugh. The tween rolled her eyes.

“You look cold, Negan. Better step inside. I got the lager ready to go.” Tony had the same damn smirk as his kid.

“Why did you pick this costume for me again?” I muttered. We passed through the entryway strung with a beaded curtain of bats and spiders. The living room was bathed in red light and Monster Mash blasted from the stereo. Tony's wife always went all-out with this shit. A skeleton sat in the armchair and fake cobwebs were every-fucking-where. I hoped the dry ice didn't affect Lucy's breathing.

Wifey Tanya came over, hugging Lucille and complimenting our costumes. I glanced down, wondering how they saw her. Did they know the shadowed eyes and gaunt cheeks weren't make-up? Did they notice the weight she'd lost?

I still saw beauty. The cut flower, vibrant and blooming –just don't think of the future, the withering-

Freeze that shit in time. I closed my ears to nothing but the soundtrack of screams and creaking doors, back-lit with the wailing of ghosts. Party guest voices blabbered over it all. We melted into the past. It was another party like the parties of years before. Slightly pathetic in that 'thirty-something's hanging out' kind of way. Laughing too loud. Secretly sizing each other up.

At least the lime green jello shots were good.

So yeah, it was just another lame party, and because of that, it wasn't. Because for a while...we were normal. Lucille laughed. I saw her smiling. Within her costume, she wasn't the Sick One. She was the mischievous witch, mingling with devils and cowboys and kitty cats.

Mrs Tillerman from school was there. She drank too much of that nasty Candy Corn atrocity. I caught her checking me out and I felt – for maybe the first time ever – ashamed. Other women looked at me too, making slightly-tipsy comments in my direction. I was glad Lucille was across the room, no doubt bored out of her mind listening to Ms Crouch talk about her fucking kids. And by kids, I mean her cats.

“Mmm, hello, He-Man. Nice sword. Remember that time after school?” Mrs Tillerman, winking and nudging.

“Sorry, He-Man has no fucking recollection of that.”

She'd sucked my dick once. Just once. That was really enough for me. I think I'd only allowed it because I could. Now, I saw what a fucking piece of trash I was. Hopefully, when she sobered up, she would too.

“You don't?” She took another swig from her solo cup and let out a burp. I quickly turned her in the direction of the bathroom. Just in time, because Lucille was drifting my way.

“Motherfuckin' crowd is getting drunk. There's probably going to be barf in the apple-bobbin' water. As if bobbing for apples isn't fucking gross enough.” I had to yell as The Addam's Family theme blasted from the speakers.

“Yeah.” She looked pale under the glitter.

“You had enough?”

I knew she had. We'd done it, we'd made our appearance, we'd given proof of life. I squeezed her hand, then found our host. I was tired, had papers to grade, been a great party...you know the bullshit, Tony.

-

We walked home silently. I wanted to ask how she was feeling. It was a lump in my throat. She'd probably just be annoyed. Say I was worrying too much. Say she was fine.

The warm glow of our porch washed over us. It sparkled the glitter on her cheeks, flushed pink from the cold. I wanted badly to kiss her. Instead, I fumbled in my He-Man boot for the house key.

Kids screamed and laughed on the street, swinging their bags of candy. It was just another Halloween in a long line of them, stretching out into our future. Maybe ten years from now, our kid would join the others.

Tomorrow, I wouldn't think like this. But tonight – fucking dammit, I was going to pretend we had years ahead of us.

I got the door open, got us in, shut it against the chill.

“Fuck. Don't know if that was worth going to. You have fun?”

The orange glow filtered in through the glass panel of our front door. Moonlight through the windows, silvering the interior. Everything was dark, but sharply edged with white. Lucille turned to face me. She discarded her witch's hat, the wig – no...her hair, looking real and soft and luscious, spilling onto her shoulders. She slowly drew one hand up my naked stomach and my skin shivered under the touch.

“He-Man,” she rasped. “I've put you under my spell.”

“Lucille...?”

“It's Lucianna. Maiden of the Night. And I've cast my spell upon you.”

I imagined she'd gotten that crap from those dumb novels she liked to read. The ones with guys who wished they were as hot as me on the cover. “Oh yeah? What spell is that?”

Her hand drifted under my loincloth. I let out a breath. Shit. I hadn't felt her touch me there for weeks.

“The spell of Lust. I'm irresistible to you.”

She didn't need a spell for that.

She rose to her tiptoes, her cold arms against my chest. “...Negan. Make love to me. “

“...but...Lucille...”

It's too strenuous for you. You'll be tired. I'm afraid I'll hurt you -

She didn't look tired. Her eyes were dark and wide, her skin sparkling. The chilled hands sliding under the plastic harness were strong and sure. Her lips hungrily pressed to my chin. “...Don't resist me, He-Man. Give me this night – a Halloween like we used to have.”

I fucking melted like the half-frozen rain under the burning Halloween moon. What could I do?

“By the power of Grayscale, I pull forth my sword, Lucianna!”

“That's Grayskull, He-man!” She laughed as I backed her to the couch, my hands fumbling at her corset. “Ooh, that's such a big sword you have. You sure you can lift that thing up?”

“Witch, I'm gonna impale you so fuckin' deep with my hard steel. You just fuckin' wait.”

“Oh, I'm waiting, but you still have your clothes on.”

Heh. Good thing He-Man was half-fucking-naked already. The witch was helpless to my brute strength as I lifted her and carried her into the bedroom.

-

To be honest, there wasn't anything rough or hard about it. Even on devil's night, I had to maintain some sense of restraint. My hands gently stroked ribs under frail skin, planted kisses onto delicate shoulders and licked along a ridge of collarbone. Lucianna, my withering flower, her beauty stretched across bones.

Her hands, digging hard into my shoulders, her legs, wrapping me like squeezing pythons – well, they felt anything but weak.

After, we lay breathing and nestled together. The light outside came and went, broken up by drifting clouds. Lucille's sharpened features were softened. Her wig was still on and still looked real as fuck – money well spent. Her eyes, half-lidded, were tired, but tired in a good fucking way.

“Not a bad fucking Halloween, huh, Lucy?”

“Pretty damn good fucking Halloween,” she whispered.

She closed her eyes, and I watched her, drowsing there in the dark. Her spell was slowly melting away; her magic could only veil the truth so long.

But for a few hours, reality shifted and wavered on the edge. She was alive, she was here, and we would spend our nights beside each other, just like this.

For just the brief span of our last Halloween night, I could have it. It was my reality.

And the reality was... that reality was fucking great.

[buckyscrystalqueen]

The Resistant Omega: Part 3

Pairings: Omega!Mickey Milkovich x Male Alpha!Reader

Warnings: Swearing, homophobia??? 

Word Count: 3,287

Part 1 / Part 2

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Well look-ie here, boys. It’s the Queen fucking fairy himself.” Terry Milkovich yelled as loud as he could not a second after you walked into the Alibi like you did every Friday night. “How you doin, fairy?”

“Leave it.” You growled as you headed over to the bar. You purposely ignored Mickey in the corner and pulled your wallet from your pocket.

“Usual, (Y/N)?” Kate asked as she started grabbing cups.

“You know it, baby girl.” She blushed, and looked away as you put a fifty on the bar.

“I still don’t know how you fucking do it, man.” Your friend, Sam said as he leaned on the bar next to you. “You have them wrapped around your fucking fingers.”

“No, not at all.” You teased with a glance over at him. “My cock, maybe.” He laughed and punched your arm as you blew a kiss at Kate and grabbed your glass. You grabbed your usual table in the far corner as Jax started to wrack the balls on the pool table.

“So I got word down the line.” Sam said softly as you grabbed a cue from the holder on the wall. “New box coming out of the North in the next five beats.”

“Where’s it coming out of?”

“New York.”

“What’s the haul?” You asked as you got chalk on your hand.

“There’s no manifest.” Jax muttered as he reached in front of you to grab a cue, too. “So there’s no guarantee….”

“Then we don’t fucking touch it.” You said flatly as you stepped around him and grabbed your beer. “We don’t fucking take runs we aren’t sure of. That’s how we get fucking caught, or how we end up with shit we can’t dump.”

“Dude… we are getting low…” Jax tried as you grabbed the cue ball and set it down on the table where you wanted it.

“Then we get low.” You growled as you looked up at him. You glanced down at the table and made your shot before standing up to look at him. “Do you think I don’t fucking plan for this shit, dumbass? Really? I’ve been thirty steps ahead of you for fucking years and you still haven’t fucking caught up. I have fucking pipe everywhere. We don’t need some manifest-less crap shot. Now far fucking be it from me to tell you what the fuck to do, Jax because I am not your Goddamn keeper. You wanna take the fucking run, go right on ahead. But shit coming outta New York with an unknown fucking manifest could mean Pfizer or it could be fucking Johnson and Johnson baby soap. So get me a fucking manifest or shut the fuck up about it. Sam, play.”

“What fucking pipe do you have?” Jax hissed as you pulled your cigarettes out of your pocket and habitually scanned the room for assholes and eavesdroppers alike.

“The kind that you don’t need to fucking worry about until I tell you you need to fucking worry about them.”

“You know, you really are a fucking asshole.”

“Yea, story of my fucking life.” You grumbled around your cigarette as you lined up for your next shot. “Much easier being a fucking asshole than tolerating the fucking bullshit in the fucking world.”

“Don’t get fucking married then.” He chuckled as he subtly sold some pills to one of the bar regulars, Kermit. “You have to be a fucking asshole and deal with the fucking bullshit.”

“That’s why you don’t get fuckin’ married.” You laughed as you walked around the table. “Problem fucking solved, bitch.”

“You hear that, Joey? The faggot thinks it can get married.” You glanced over and ducked Joey’s fist, but Terry’s caught you right in the middle of the stomach. Your beer glass shattered to the floor as you slammed into the wall behind you.

“Kev!” Kate screeched as you ducked Terry’s next punch while Sam tackled Joey to the floor to keep the fight even. Your claws almost literally came out as you slammed your fist into his face with the full intention of breaking every fucking bone in the man’s face not for your sake, but for Mickey’s. 

“Alright, alright. Get him up!” Kev yelled as Terry managed to get a solid hit to your jaw. 

“Fucking fag!” He shouted at you as Jax dragged you back away from the fight.

“Oh, it’s OK, Terry.” You taunted with a wide, bloody grin. “I know you fucking wish you could be sucking my cock tonight, mother fucker.”

“You sick fuck!” He shouted as he lunged toward you just as the first cop walked in. “Fucking faggot!” You laughed and held your hands up in surrender as a few more cops filed in to the bar. You were just about to put your hands behind your head when Mickey ran up and punched you hard in the face, easily breaking your nose.

“Mother fucker!”

“On the ground, Milkovich!”

“Good hit, boy!” Terry shouted as you were man handled on to your knees. You felt one of your friends slip a wad of cash into your sock, which you would absolutely need on the inside since this assault charge would land you at least a few months. You cracked your knuckles behind your back and glanced over at Jax.

“Get my fucking lawyer and keep your fucking phone on.” He nodded his head as you looked at the cop that had hand cuffed you. You purposely put the breaks on, since John was a beta that liked to dance on the wild side in your bed when his wife was at her sister’s, and glanced at Mickey’s back as he was carted out the door. “There’s a Franklin in my pocket to get Mickey into honor block, away from the others, and in my cell. It’s consensual. And he lawyers up with my lawyer without his fucking narrow-minded dickhead of a father finding out.” John looked down at you with a small nod and gave you a firm shove forward.

“Call it even with Shannon’s inhalers next month.” You nodded in agreement and got into the back of the cop car with a heavy sigh. 

“Fucking Milkovich.”

——

“I called bottom an hour ago.” Mickey said without even moving his arm away from his face.

“You’re gunna take whatever fucking bed I fuckin tell you to fucking take after you broke my Goddamn nose, bitch.” Your Omega shot up off the bed as you dropped your bed roll on the top bunk.

“I…”

“Scoot over. I’m fucking tired.”

“Alpha…”

“Scoot!” You barked as you grabbed your paper thin pillow and your pack of smokes. “Jesus Christ.” He scooted back against the wall as you dropped your pillow on top of his and handed him a lit cigarette. “Had to fucking gun for the fucking nose?”

“I fucking panicked, OK?” He snapped. You nodded your head and ashed on the floor as you laid down on the bed just as the lights in your cell went out since it was the middle of the night and the rest of the block was asleep.

“The fuck were you thinking, Mickey?” He shrugged and pulled your legs across his lap.

“Being without you.” He sighed. “That’s all I thought.” You exhaled forcefully and reached your hand down to find his hip.

“The fuck am I gunna do with you?” He shrugged in the darkness and stretched forward to ash on the ground as well.

“Well I can think of one thing you can do to me.” You made a loud buzzer sound and shook your head as you took one long, last drag before you called it a night.

“Your ass is fucking grounded until further notice.”

“What, because I fucking hit you?”

“Yep, and because I didn’t want the first time I actually spent the whole night with my Omega to be in a fucking jail cell.” You smirked and got up to put your cigarette butt in the toilet and to take off your stupid orange jumpsuit to get comfortable for bed. “So you can thank your Old Man for you not getting laid tonight.”

“I can’t fucking win.”

“You never will.” You huffed as you tossed his finished cigarette in the toilet and flushed them both. “Get used to it. Get your spot, ‘mega.”

“You sleep in my bed, you’re gunna out me…”

“I’m not gunna out you because just like every time I come to fucking jail, I will spend my days sitting in a fucking corner by the phones, doing puzzles, playing solitaire, and making sure my business doesn’t fucking collapse in the next couple months. And you can either be your adorable Alpha self far away from me so your image is protected or you can make a choice to be seen doing puzzles, playing cards, and working for me. I leave that up to you. But you jump on the faggot train in here and I will put you in your Goddamn place just like I would everyone else. And I’m gunning for your fucking nose first.”

“Yes, Alpha.” He chuckled as he pulled your arm around his chest and kissed your fingers. “Good night, (Y/N).” You smirked and kissed his shoulder.

“Good night, baby boy.”

——

“OK, get a fucking pen.” You growled to Jax the second he picked up the phone. “I got a lot to fucking get through in a short period of time.”

“Well good fucking morning to you, too.” He chuckled. “Sleep well?”

“Fuck off.” You growled as you leaned against the wall. “Alright, first and foremost, I need you to go to Gertie’s. Let Sandra know I’m going to be gone a while, but that won’t stop you from getting her meds.”

“What meds…”

“Don’t… fucking interrupt me.” You growled. “Just fucking tell her the shit will be delivered like usual. Then, go to my fucking house. Upstairs in my bedroom under the bedside table on the far side of the bed, is a cardboard box with suppressants in it. I need a month supply. Don’t! Ask fucking questions!” You barked when Jax tried to cut you off again. “Fuckin a! Get those, some blues, and like 2 grand in cash to the jail within the next two hours. Skids is running visitation today and he’ll get them to me. Now, the list of Gertie’s meds is on the bulletin board in the fucking laundry room hidden under the fucking menu for that Chinese place up the block. Just pay attention to the names and doses and match them up carefully. There’s a Spanish bus coming up the coast in about four days. Should spit out enough beans to keep everyone fucking grassy for a nice long while. I’ll set it up from in here.”

“Need a burner?”

“Got one. Just keep my books up and I’ll check in.”

“Need me to leave visitations open for anyone?” Your eyes darted over to where Mickey was watching the morning news on the only, shitty TV.

“No… fuck that. Ain’t no one need to see me in here. Just lock up my house on the way out and keep an eye on it and Gertie for me. I’m lookin’ at max three months which ain’t shit but an annoyance.”

“Yea, you got it.” He sighed. “I’m leaving the house now.”

“You somehow manage to burn my fucking business to the ground and I’ll cut your fucking throat out.”

“I know the fucking drill, asshole.” He laughed before he hung up the phone. You dropped the receiver on the holder and turned toward ‘the bubble’ where the guards all sat. You wordlessly told them that you’d have a delivery in a few hours, and grabbed your seat at your table to settle in for a long next few months. You grabbed one of your last cigarettes and sparked it up as you pulled the top off the box of a lighthouse puzzle that was probably missing pieces.

“Hey, bitch! What you got there?” Mickey asked in a cocky tone as he grabbed your cigarettes off the table. “Well, don’t mind if I fucking do.”

“You put that fucking cigarette in your fucking mouth and I’ll cut your fucking dick off.” You replied as you started to slowly separate the pieces.

“Oh, is that a fucking dare?” He asked as he sat down at the table beside you. You looked up at him to see that he was alone and used a puzzle piece to push your matches toward him.

“Fucking promise. I’m gunna need you to be a fucking runner for me in here. Got one of my guys bringing in some blues, and I surprisingly don’t have fuckers in H block right now to work for me. So you just got hired.”

“Wow… so I’m a bitch, now.”

“Personally, I wouldn’t announce it to the fucking universe if I were you.” You teased with a smile. “But I’m not paying you with dick for you to keep your back on my enemies. Turn the fuck around and do your goddamn job so I can jigsaw in peace.”

“Fuckin’ bossy.” He huffed as he got up and sat down across the metal table from you with his back to you. “The fuck you lookin’ at?”

“Bark, bark.” You muttered under your breath as you matched two edge pieces.

“Fuck you.”

——

You were expecting a few weeks of incarceration, but on only day three, someone posted your bail.

“(Y/L/N)! You posted!” You actually froze in your spot with a puzzle piece in your fingers, as you ran through the list in your head on who would have thought wasting their money on you was a good idea.

“Fucking idiots.”

“Don’t…” Mickey practically whispered as you started cleaning up the puzzle pieces.

“I’ll post your bail the second I hit the streets.” You said under your breath. “You’ll be home in no time.” He barely nodded his head and held out his hand to pass you the rest of your pills and your money. “Just unload it and unload it fast.” You said as you took the cash. He hummed as you got barked at again to hurry up. You slid some cash into Mickey’s suppressants box, just in case, and grabbed your still untouched bed roll from your bunk. The process of you getting out took about half an hour, and your first phone call was going to be to Jax had Sandra not been waiting for you.

“Honey, what are you doing?” You asked as she came over and gave you a hug.

“Mom has been screaming for two days. Jax came in instead of you and she just lost her mind… I couldn’t even leave for work yesterday and she barely let me out of the house this morning until I swore I’d come back with you.”

“OK. OK.” You said with a nod as you kissed the top of her head and pulled out your wallet. “Look, I need you to do one more thing for me before I take you home. I need you to bail someone else out. I can’t, I’m a felon. Mikhailo Milkovich.”

“OK… Wait, what is the name?”

“I’ll write it down.” You chuckled as you handed her five hundred bucks. “Keep the rest for your troubles and to cover gas and my bail. And I’ll make sure he shows up for court.”

“I don’t doubt it.” She said as she took your note turned to head toward the bail bondsmen again. When she was out of earshot, you pulled out your phone and called Jax.

“How the fuck are you calling from your phone?” 

“Apparently, you scared the fuck out of Gertie, so Sandra had to come bail me out. Get a fucking pen.”

“What the fuck is with you and pens?”

“Because you’re a fucking scatterbrained mother fucker and you’d probably forget your own Goddamn name if you’re Omega wasn’t screaming it at all hours of the fucking day.”

“Fuck you.”

“I need you, Sam, and Daryl at my house in two hours. I need a satellite, and street maps of everything south of Chicago, east of Peoria to the state line, and North of Champaign. I’m also gunna need every available man and vehicle we can get our hands on this weekend and the cars ready. And a large fucking pie because jail food sucks dick.”

“Wait… are we going after the New York haul?”

“No. We’re going after a big pharma distribution truck I just heard about before another crew gets to it.”

“We’re what now?”

“Be at my fucking house.” You repeated before hanging up the phone at the same time Sandra walked out of the office. “Thank you, sweetheart. You OK to wait for a bit?”

“Absolutely.” She said with a smile as you pulled out your cigarettes and held the pack out to her. “John’s staying with mom today until I could get you home and I get another day off this week to breathe.”

“So what the hell happened?” You laughed as you followed her over to her car to wait. “Did she throw things?”

“I had to walk over what I assumed was a shattered glass vase and then had to spend an hour separating and reorganizing a med container that she threw at him but all in all, she was just doing a lot of screaming.”

“She’s always been a fucking pistol.” You laughed as you both leaned against the side of her car.

“So who’s this guy to you? Someone special if I’m bailing his ass.” You smirked and looked up at the jail with a small shake of your head.

“My Omega.” You glanced over at her as she pouted out her bottom lip.

“Awww!!!!”

“Stop.”

“But my big brother finally has an Omega!”

“Yea, but he’s not out yet and he’s a fucking mess so we’re not gunna bring it up until he’s ready, OK?” 

“Aww! You’re all protective, how cute!”

“Fuckin’ shit.” You chuckled as you bumped her shoulder with yours. She giggled and laid her head on your arm with a heavy sigh.

“Young love is a beautiful thing.” You nodded your head and put your arm around her shoulders as you fell into a comfortable silence to wait.

“Who the fuck is this bitch?” You looked over at the side door Mickey was walking out of almost an hour later and gestured to him dismissively. 

“That’s your first impression? Mickey, Sandra who is as close to a sister as I’ve ever had. She’s the reason we’re walking free so show some fucking respect. Get in, asshole. I got shit to do.” He rolled his eyes at you and got in the back seat as you took the keys from Sandra, and headed around the car to open her door. Once you got in, you adjusted your seat and the mirrors and looked back at Mickey. “Which house?”

“The fuck you talkin’ about?”

“Bitch, she’s fucking family. She had you fucking made as someone close to me the moment I had her bail your ass outta fucking jail. So what fucking house? I got shit to do and the boys comin’ over…”

“Yours.” He said as he sat back in his seat and glanced at Sandra. She pouted out her bottom lip again and looked over at you as you headed home.

“Shut up.” You chuckled as you reached over and pushed her face away.

“You say a Goddamn word and I’ll fucking kill you!” Mickey threatened, causing you to growl at him as you caught his eye in the rearview mirror.

“‘mega, I will kick your fucking ass.”

Part 4

[suffering-and-happy-about-it]

Tequilla and Autumn Sunsets (Favored Ones, Part 9.)

Series description: Many things were surely fucked up in the year 2038, but no-one ever told anyone how all of it went down. What happened before a group of people left for Seattle to handle personal matters? Why did one girl refuse to leave all of it be? And why there were so many dead in the end?

Part Summary: So far, everything seemed to be good - you were happy with the thing Joel and you had, Jackson was keeping you busy and you were even talking to your friends again... Until one patrol came and everything seemed to change, making the cycle start once again. 

A/N: And I oop-

Warnings: Mentions of smut, violence, murder and guns.

Word count: 4.2 K

Tagging:  @nemodoren @xxgoldenhour @missdictatorme​ @peakymarvels​ @davnwillcome​ @pickleriiick​ @jodiereedus22​ @gladiosamicitias​ @tamkashi​ @eternallyvenus​ @avengerssstuff​ @fangirl-inthe-us

Series master list: H E R E

Joel Miller’s playlist for the bonfire occasions: H E R E

The fall of 2037, 5-4 months before the incident:

In the end, it wasn't as hard to make things work as you thought it would be. When you weren't in the mood, you just found a while to tell him. When he wanted you to come to stay the night, he told you. It wasn't even that hard or weird - sometimes, he just stopped by your shop to tell you, sometimes you just told him while having a casual talk when you met in town, and no-one was suspicious of you two talking. You did that before you were weird with each other - why shouldn't you do that when things were ok?

Joel showed you and taught you many things you didn't know about sex or yourself before - for example, what a doggy style means. Or that you can take cock much deeper in your throat that you initially thought.

Yeah, sure it was a long process and it was the try-and-see kinda thing, but Joel was the best person you could choose for this matter. Sometimes, when you weren't exactly feeling like fucking, you stayed up late, just drawing the curtains in his room while he learned you some more guitar songs. Or he was willing to sit through a movie with you - he especially liked these dumb 80s' ones, but you couldn't deny they're quite amusing to watch. The things were just like you were used to them - you joked around a lot, you laughed and had some good fun.

You didn't see each other every day. These sessions, which was a code name you came up with, were quite physically challenging at times. So when you or Joel had some stuff to deal with or you simply weren't in the mood, you didn't meet up for that day and once even for a week.

Diego somehow couldn't understand your sudden shift in behavior - before Joel asked you to see him again, you were affectionate with the boy, spending as much time as you could with him. But after that? He barely saw you. And it wasn't just him - even Dina and Ellie noticed that you're not spending as much time with them as you used to. But both of the ladies just dismissed as you being having too much stuff at the moment. Which was also true.

Tommy and Maria kept each of you properly busy. Sure, there were regular patrols and these where you had to take a random kiss from the group with you, but as the winter was coming by, there was more stuff to do - helping with harvesting the veggies, taking care of animals, occasionally even helping out with the pottery or sewing new clothes. It was almost November when you decided to visit Eve again, bringing her the last blossoming flowers you could find.

"Hey there." - You whispered, sitting down on your jacket while you looked at the tombstone. - "How you've been, hm?" - You asked, smoothing the leaves and other stuff out of the grave. When you were alone for almost a minute, you knew it's your time to speak up again. - "Geez, you can't shut up sometimes, huh? Let me talk too, man." - You laughed nervously. It was still strange not having her around to make fun of her, but you hoped that she's better now. Also, you could talk about Joel openly, and that wouldn't be possible if she would have an actual chance to respond.

"I am seeing this one guy. You would be weirded out, but its Joel fucking Miller. Weird, right? I can't quite process it myself if I have to be honest with you." - You giggled, leaning your cheek into your knee as you watched her name craved into the gray stone. - "But he's treating me nice, with respect. When I don't like something, all I have to do is tell him, you know? I trust him, I would say. He asks about how I'm doing even though he doesn't have to." - You smiled and looked at the grass.

You should've seen that there's something off about the whole thing way before you saw it. It was hard to determine what made you feel things such as these - if it were the nicknames he was giving you, or the stares he was watching you with or the warm approach to the whole situation. It happened a long time - you falling for the man. You just didn't know at the moment - your head was too distracted with too much of good fucking.

"When we were just laying there one night, he asked me about you and listened to every single shit I told him. It was nice. And I hadn't even cried during it, which is a big win, right?" - You sighed with a shy smile, hearing the first thunder in the distance. Well, at least you didn't have to go for a patrol that day. Or, so you thought until you saw Maria slowly walking to the grave with her palms behind her back. She waved at you and you waved back, not telling a word until she reached you.

"Hey." - She whispered, sitting down next to you as well. You smiled back, still looking at the tombstone. - "You weren't at home or Ellie's, so I figured out you'll be here."

"Did something happen?" - You asked back, being visibly alarmed at the moment. Maria shook her head quickly to assure that no matter the situation she had for you, it wasn't as bad as it sounded.

"It's just... Can I ask you something? I know you've been patrolling almost every day last week..." - She sighed. The matter was embarrassing. You were out of Jackson for almost every day now, each day taking a different route, yet she had to come and ask you. - "But Tommy had caught some cold or what and he's having a fever. And since he's in pair with Joel, he asked me to ask you if you'd be so kind and take this one. He told me 'ask that kiddo, 'cause she's probably the only one who ain't havin' tendencies to murder my brother while he sleeps'. Like... He told me he's good to go, but... And don't want to ask Ellie and you know Tommy." - Yeah, of fucking course you knew Tommy. He was probably even more hot-headed and mulish than his older brother at times. And the bit about murdering Joel? That wasn't too hard to believe either since he had the reputation of basically bullying down everyone when Ellie was about to leave Jackson. It was quite unbelievable, but these Miller boys were quite hard to get along with at moments.

You were fucking tired, to be honest, but you wouldn't Tommy go if he was ill. That would worry the shit out of Maria and you didn't like her when she was scared or worried. She was even more bossy, rude, and straightforward than normal. So you nodded.

"Of course, I won't let his sick ass to go on a patrol. Especially in this weather." - You looked at the iron clouds above you. The blonde woman sighed with relief, smoothing your palm with her while she closed her eyes.

"You're the best. I'll make Seth prepare you some extra tasty snack on your way, okay?" - She asked, getting up to leave again. You stayed there for a little longer, looking at Eve.

"Stop laughing up there, I can hear it down here. That's just my luck, you know?" - Just as always, you kissed the tips of your fingers, smoothing the cold stone. - "Take care. I'll see you again, okay?" - With that, you put the jacket on your shoulders, leaving to get your backpack. As usual, put the empty automatic gun there, a water bottle and in the end, you swung your bow and quiver of your shoulder. When you saw the damn weather, you packed another sweatshirt with you. A storm was about to start soon - which you could hear at the stables as well. The horses were far from calm, but Sadie got better once you smoother her neck and gave her an apple. Joel came there soon after you, having these small devils in his eyes. But to tell him nothing ain't happening on the patrol, you shook your head and as usual, the man calmed down immediately. It was nice to have someone who listened to you.

"Have the food and ammunition, I hope we'll get it done before it starts to rain." - Joel told you when you were leading your horses away in the direction of the gate.

"I doubt it. This route is pretty long and off-hand. But who knows?" - You smiled gently and sat on the horse's back. The patrol was fine - you were talking through the most of it, trying to fill the void on the road. You were barely three hours away from Jackson when you noticed it. There was a fire in the woods - but not a wild one. You let the horses on remnants of an asphalt road between a few houses, walking the rest on foot.

Joel saw them first, pulling them down to hide in the tall grass. You observed them for a moment, trying to make out if they were friendly or not. That was decided at the moment when you have seen a few dead bodies lying just a few meters away from them - that was the fire. The sweet smell was making you sick, but Joel put his hand on your shoulder, making you focus.

"I'll go in and try to take them out silently. Do you remember your way with the bow?" - He asked you. For a moment, you were just looking him in the face - these people killed other people. Which you'd be able to understand under some situations... But they were burning their bodies now. Which made your stomach turn upside down. - "Hey, no panic now, focus here. Right here." - The man whispered, catching your jaw in his palm. - "Do you remember it? I need you right now."

Finally, you nodded to answer the question. After that, Joel loaded his revolver for all the cases, giving you a magazine as well. He turned at you one last time before he finally sneaked off to take an upper hand on the situation. - "Good girl. Just stay with me until we done, 'kay?"

You nodded, this time to support and hype yourself up. Joel put his trust in you. You could do it. You trained for this - and you couldn't let Joel alone in this at all. Slowly, you moved into a good potion, hitting one of your palms with a rock. The pressure almost made your head pop since you thought they'll know about you, they didn't even notice - yet another thought crossed your mind. Distraction. Joel needed a distraction. So you picked the rock up and threw it off to a distance. It caused some noise that made the men turn around. There was four of them as it turned out when they started to inspect the situation around.

After a while, you saw Joel pinning one of them down, dragging him to the grass as he choked him. Your time to do something. A long breath left your breath as you positioned yourself, looking at one of the guys. What the fuck were you doing? This wasn't right. Maybe you and Joel could talk it out with them? Bullshit, they had a fireplace from a pile of dead bodies. They were a threat to you, Joel, and potentially to Jackson. You had to do it. It took you a long time to aim because you were shaking like crazy, but in the end, your arrow didn't miss its target - it ended up in his the guys head, and watched him as he fell straight to the fire along with other bodies. He was dead at the moment you did it. You were a fucking murderer. You killed a non-infected.

Sure, you were realizing you've just killed someone for the first time, but the adrenaline rush inside you, and the fear for Joel, was way stronger than that. Also, these bitches could notice where did that arrow come from, so it was a matter of time before they'd find you. And you were so terrified you couldn't move. For a second, you closed your eyes and prayed to God to be merciful and let them kill you fast without any fuckery around. Just when one of the guys was about to approach you, Joel caught the other remaining one, circling his forearm around the man's neck. - "Stop where you are and hands in the air." - Your old man ordered calmly, throwing the guy's gun on the ground, putting his revolver to his temple. When the other guy didn't listen and still aimed at Joel, Joel defused the gun.

"I ain't playin', son. Throw the gun on the ground right fuckin' now." - In horror, you listened to two shots being fired. With a cry, you jumped on the guy's back, stabbing his throat with your arrow again and again. You couldn't stop yourself - even when you were both already on the ground and his head was cut off of his body, you continued. You just continued with stabbing him as you cried. He shot Joel. You were too afraid to look if your man was alright, so you just sat on that guy's chest, finally giving in to the urge to cry. You were terrified of yourself.

You practically collapsed on the dead body, having a full-blown panic attack. At that moment, you felt someone's arm circling your chest, pulling you off. You tried to stab them as well, but firm hold on your palm made you realize it's Joel. A shaky breath left you as you gave in into the touch, having the man rock you from side to side.

"You're good, girl. You're good. You're good." - He whispered and hugged you even tighter. At that moment, a rumble of thunder shook the ground, and rain started to fall heavily. But you couldn't even move. All you were capable of was to climb deeper into Joel's arms while you cried. - "Lemme get you outta here girl, come on." - The man hummed into your hair, lifting you off of the ground.

Never, not even when you left the Fireflies, have you killed someone. At least not someone healthy. What the fuck have you done? What did you do? In the middle of Joel making your way to the houses, you jumped off and ran to puke the fuck out into the grass. You felt fucking sick. This was something so disgusting. You've just taken another person's life. One of your palms was leaning into a wall of one of the houses as you stood there, cried and puked. It didn't matter that you're soaking wet already - the rain couldn't wipe away what you've done, the blood was soaked into your clothes and even if you managed to get the blood off of your palms, it was still there, hot and sticky between your fucking fingers. Joel understood what you were doing through - he was the same when it was his first time.

But he knew that he has to get you out of the rain before it will be too late, you could catch tome flu or something like that. And he also knew that worse demons will find a way into your head once you'll think you've solved the matter for good.

"I need you to get inside the house. Can you do that for me?" - He came to you and smoothed your back gently. It took you a moment to nod. - "I'll brin' the horses in and come to you, 'kay? Just wait for me there."

You both did as you agreed on. Your way to the houses was rough - the ground around you was shaking and spinning, your knees felt almost too weak. Joel led the horses inside the garage and found you collapsed on the ground in front of the doorstep when he entered the front door. You were snuggled into a tight position, rocking yourself from side to side. You were pressing your head between your knees to find some relief, but none was coming.

Quickly, he prepared you a place to lay on, took the jacket off his shoulders before coming back to you. Just like the first time, you've almost attacked him before realizing who he was.

"Come with me, girl." - He mumbled quietly, helping you in your feet. Before he shifted his attention to you, he made sure that the doors and windows are closed - you were even so lucky to find a place with a fireplace, so at least, he started a fire. First, he took the clothes covered in blood off of you, putting your wet sweatshirt on your upper body. It was better than nothing. Then, he laid you down on the big couch, lying next to you so he copied your body with his before he covered you both with the wet sleeping bag.

You were shivering. And a feeling of being cold was taking over your body. Yet your brain kept on replaying you what you've just done. - "Attagirl." - The man mumbled, nuzzling his face to the nape of your neck before he kissed it. - "You're with me now. These guys won't hurt you."

With that, you turned to him, putting your palm over his side. Your faces were just inches from each other, so he could feel the rhythm of your warm breath gently breezing over his face. - "Am I a terrible person? I mean, what if he had a family? Kids? What if we misread the situation?" - With that, Joel could tell that you're shaken to your core.

It was more than understandable. If you'd be living in the old world, you'd never have to think about killing someone. That thought would probably never cross your mind if the world wasn't completely fucked up. And until that day, you never had a reason to kill a human being. Infected? Sure, he saw you killing infected. But to know it were normal, thinking, breathing living persons, that was a serious lot.

"I would talk to 'em if they weren't burnin' other bodies. These people weren't good ones, 'kay? You've done it for me." - There wasn't much more to say. In any way, no matter how hard would Joel try, he couldn't tell you anything to make you feel at least a bit better. With closed you nodded, finally closing your eyes.

"Will you sing something for me? Just like you did back then?" - You whispered, giving in to the feeling of Joel's palm smoothing your shoulder. Of course, he did sing for you. And this time, it wasn't some Johnny Cash song. You remembered this one - it was one of the songs he played for you when you sat at the bonfire.

To be honest, you fell asleep pretty quick - you were tired, every inch of your muscles hurt and the pain in your eyes was too great to open them. The man stayed up for another hour, watching small spasms and furrows changing in your face. The sleep sure as hell wasn't peaceful. Yet when he was sure that you'll sleep for at least a while, he took a quick nap next to you as well.

The smell of the burning wood had woken you up. It wasn't exactly the burning wood, but the smoke of the fire ending was tickling your nose so bad you had to sneeze. Fortunately, it didn't wake Joel up. When you opened up your eyes, you expected to see his face just inched away from yours, so you gently picked up your head, feeling the muscles on your neck and back hurt. It took you a few more winks to realize that you have a clear view of the fireplace. Joel was laying on his back with one of his palms used as a pillow, his other arm pulled over your shoulder.

Sure, it was pretty normal to sleep next to each other at that point, sometimes having his arm or leg thrown over your body, but you had never slept anywhere near to something like that... All snuggled up to each other. There was a contained smile on Joel's lips, even though he was asleep. And if you'd be okay, it would make you lose your shit for real.

But you just laid down again, watching the dying fire. It was just like being stuck in some kind of a cycle - there was a time you felt numb, not alive at all. This came after something happened - when you ran away from Salt Lake City or when you watched Harry getting eaten alive, the day Maria came to your home to tell that Eve didn't make it... And that evening as well. When you got over the bad phase, there was something you could call being lifeless. It were the days when all you could do was to lay down in your bed, look into the ceiling, thinking about your life. And when you'd get through this, you'll slowly get better as the time would pass. Just to wait before another thing comes and brings you down, repeating the cycle over and over again.

Joel was most likely right. He was living in this world for a lot longer than you were - he knew a lot of things you had no idea about. For example, the forearm which was holding you close and warm could suffocate someone. He also was very really haunting when he was holding one the gen as a hostage. How could the man who was calling you girl in the warmest tone of voice, the one who was playing guitar for you and the man who was fucking you like there was no tomorrow - how could he kill someone with such calmness?

The men certainly weren't good. They could be hunters - people you've never encountered, you've only learned about them from Joel and Eve, sometimes Ellie told you her stories about this kind of people. That would explain why they were burning naked bodies of people... But... What if they caught some sort of illness? What if the people were their friends and they had to kill them? Why didn't you try to talk with them? Maybe you didn't have to go in as hotheaded as you did.

At that moment, there were two people inside your head having a big argument - one of them thought about the thing you have done was straightaway bad, no excuses could explain what you did. ON the other hand, there was the other one, the cold one, was telling you that these people would fire a bullet to your forehead as soon as they'd see you approaching.

With a long sigh, you closed your eyes once again as you hugged Joel tighter, pulling yourself so tight you copied every inch of his body. This was helping at least a tiny bit. For the first time when the cycle had restarted, you didn't feel completely alone. There was someone you could pull yourself closer to feel at least a bit safe.

"How you feelin'?" - A raspy voice asked you just as Joel had woken up. Even when you were both up, he hadn't taken his arm off of your shoulder - actually, his palm started to draw small patterns there. Joel still kept his eyes closed and it could be seen that he's feeling completely contained at the moment. Which seemed weirdly off rails, but you decided to ignore it.

"I feel... Nothing." - You answered quietly, slowly getting up. This felt too emotional. Sure, it was probably just to keep you feeling at least a bit good and away from going coo-coo. And it worked just as he expected it to.

"Give it a few days, it'll settle down. You'll be good, trust me." - Joel mumbled and watched you getting food from Seth out of your backpack before sitting down to look at the dying fire. - "What made you conclude this?" - You asked and gulped.

"You're a survivor. Just like Ellie is, just like Jesse is... And just like I am." - He answered shortly, letting the silence to take over the situation you got there at the moment. Just like the last time you were on a patrol with Joel, everyone could tell that something went off rails as soon as they saw you in the distance. You were both late, and your trousers were covered in dried blood.

Ellie was patiently waiting for you in front of the stables to ask you about what has happened when Joel pulled you back a bit, looking you in the face. - "Do you want me to come today?" - He whispered. It was a nice offer, but you shook your head nonetheless. - "I'll see you... When I'll feel better, okay?" - You whispered back, having him nod with a neutral expression, and with that, you watched him leaving for home, not entirely sure what to feel anymore.

[apollo-writes-random-shit]

“Don’t pass out on me! Please! Don’t pass out!”

Fun fact! I didn’t even have to think about a topic for this one for once lol. This is actually based off part of an rp I have with @kakerunotanurse! The two chunks of dialogue in the ‘flashback’ is torn straight from the rp lmao. I played Spot, Hotshot and the twins while he played Race and Splasher. Naturally, I’ve changed a lot to fit the prompt a little more plus I wanted to add more angst lol

Now, a bit of backstory for this (well mainly two of the characters). Viper and Jumper are two of my ocs and they’re asshole twins:

Viper: Older by a few minutes and the most dangerous of the pair. He’s known for manipulating anyone he could and waiting for the right moment to strike, hence his nickname. His favorite target is Jumper, who he’s convinced that he has to listen to/do everything he says because he’s the elder of the two and the only family he has left. He’ll drop Jumper the second he could if it meant he’d get an advantage. 

Jumper: The younger of the two and easily manipulated. He doesn’t like what he does but does whatever Viper orders him to. He’s the one who will ‘jump’ into a fight and do the dirty work needed. 

The two got kicked out for a range of things including beating up the little kids and trying to overthrow Spot and Hotshot. Due to their behavior and threats, Spot sent runners to the other boroughs to warn them about the pair and each borough decided to blacklist them both. After being kicked out, Viper got super pissed and decided the best thing to do would be to oh you know attempt to fucking kill Spot and overtake Brooklyn like that. After a while, the two started working at the refuge (something else Jumper hated) but Viper got even more pissed after the strike because it got shut down and ignored Jumper’s urges to get a job somewhere else. 

Jumper has slightly redeemed himself. He got so tired of everything and decided to stand up for himself. How? He just dragged Viper to a police offer and turned them in so they’re now behind bars!

Anyway, onto the story! 

Tw: Attempted murder via gunshot, implied sexual content.

Race shivered slightly as he hugged himself tighter, wondering what he was going to say to Spot. Now that he had time to think about it, he knew he had overreacted this morning during the argument but he hated laying in the bedroom, all alone in the lodging house as everyone else was out selling and having fun...But he could understand why Spot was worried about him. Newsies couldn't afford to be sick and Spot was protective of his boys and that included him.

Shaking his head, he sighed softly, empty pape bag lightly bouncing against his leg, he decided to say whatever popped into his head when he was standing face to face with his boyfriend. Looking up from his feet, he froze, blood running cold as he noticed a small crowd gathered by the pier. Before he even registered it, he found himself shoving his way through the startled crowd, freezing once more when he spotted what was going on, brain both running a thousand miles an hour yet blank and empty at the same time, eyes darting between Spot, looking calm as ever on this makeshift 'throne' at the pier and the set of twins, one with pure rage on his face while the other shifted from foot to foot, fingers clenching and releasing around the handle of the old wooden bat that rested in his hands, his eyes too darting between the Brooklyn leader and his angry twin, eyes pausing when they noticed Race frozen on the other side of the dock.

He swallowed, tearing his eyes away from the blond as Spot spoke voice level and calm as he looked down at the twins, unaware that his boyfriend was in the crowd. "Viper, you need ta clear out. Hotshot 'nd I gave you three chances and you ruined them all. Now take ya brudder get out."

"We ain't fuckin' leaving Conlon! We fucking lost our jobs causea you damn newsies! You blacklisted us from all the fuckin' boroughs!"

The newsie leader sighed and jumped down from his post. "You did it to yaselves. You 'nd Jumper were the ones beatin' on littles and pickin' fights with us older ones. This shit right here is why ya got your asses kicked out. We don't keep toxic assholes around! Same goes for every other groups out there. No one wants some punk coming in and pickin' fights as well as tryin' ta overthrow anyone more powerful than you. So I'ma tell you once more. Get the fuck outta my turf before I throw you out myself."

A soft click of two fingers was the only warning Spot got before Jumper was rushing him, quickly slamming the bat down on his shoulder roughly before stumbling back, pale in the face at the grunt. He knew they shouldn't have come back but his brother was insistent that they needed revenge and Viper was older by a few minutes plus he was the only family he had left so he had to obey whatever he said....right?

"Viper. Put. The. Gun. Down." Spot ignored the pain screaming through his shoulder as he stared down the former newsie in front of him. Part of him felt sorry for Jumper, knowing full well the teen was being manipulated every second of the day, forced to do things he clearly didn't want to but still did in hopes of making his brother proud. "Just turn around 'nd walk away. I ain't changing my mind, nor am I giving up my role as leader and handing it to you of all people."

He knew he shouldn't but Spot took a step closer, not even feeling the pain as five bullets tore into his skin, nor did he hear the startled noises of the onlookers as the twins bolted. No...All that mattered was the blond dumbass that had bolted over and taken a bullet for him. "Race? Ya okay?"

Stumbling over, he did his best to appear strong, keeping the fear out of his voice as he looked at the blond on the ground, blood spreading across the Manhattan's shirt slowly from a small wound located on the side of his stomach. "We gotta get ya back to lodging okay?"

Shaking his head, the blond patted a hand on the ground next to him, a silent urge for him to sit down, one which Spot gladly fulfilled, praying that it would at least relieve some of the pain flowing through his body like a tidal wave. "We can't stay here for long okay? We gotta head back and I'll send one o' the fellas over Jack ta let him know what happened." Carefully, he wrapped an arm around the blond, allowing him to sob and shake against him. Spot would cry later, once he was out of the public eye and safe in his tiny bedroom.

"‘m so sorry spot..I didn’t mean what I said this morning..ya ain’t controllin..i’ll try ta not be so annoyin...an’ I'll keep my mouth shut if ya really want me to.”

"Hey...I know ya didn't mean it. We'se were both frustrated and said stuff we didn't mean. I never meant ta make you feel like you were annoyin' or that you needed ta shut up." He carefully rubbed his arm, matching the soft tone his crying lover was using. "I didn't mean ta go off at you like that."

In the haze of his pain, he remembered the fight from the morning, harsh words thrown back and forth over whether Race should spend one extra day or sell that morning which lead with him storming out and running back to Manhattan.

"I can tell ya holding back coughs n shit! Sides, I'se gonna be telling them all ta sell in pairs n if they'se got a problem wit it, they can take the day off! Ya can wait one more day fa fucks sake so shut up and get back in bed!"

“Spot I sell with Rai almost everyday goddammit! if anything I could use bein sick ta sell more damn papes but you won’t let me cause ya gotta be so damn controlling with shit like this! god, Spot! it’s my job to be a damn newsie so let me damn be one for crying out loud! You tryin ta keep me from doin my damn job just cause’a some cold is getting on my damn nerves!”

"We both meant none o' that and you know it, Pretty Boy...We're fine." Spot forced himself not to smile and kiss the blond's forehead when no one was looking at the sight of a watery smile, one much weaker than the ones that he normally got when he called his boyfriend by his favorite pet name.

He sighed, laying down a bit before closing his eyes to take a few deep breaths and calm himself down, knowing that the twins were long gone by now. Viper may be cocky but even he would stick around after shooting someone with so many witnesses.

Closing his eyes was the wrong thing to do in this situation as Race's breathing instantly picked up, thin hands carefully shaking him. "Don’t pass out on me! Please! Don’t pass out! Spot please!"

"M fine." He smiled weakly, opening his eyes again. "Sun just hit me in the eyes is all." He hummed lightly, tuning everything other than Race out. "It's okay. We're okay."

Finally zoning back into the world around them, he noticed Hotshot running towards the two, closely followed by his own boyfriend, Splasher.

"Shit...The hell happened ta you two?"

"The demon twins is what happened. Assholes got their hands on a gun 'nd thought it'd be fun ta come here and act like smartasses. Well, Viper did. Jumper just did the normal shifting thing 'fore followin' orders."

Hotshot just sighed as he watched Splasher carefully pull Race to his feet before he himself leaned down to help his leader up, fighting back a wince at the look in Spot's eyes. "Good fa you nerds, we ain't too far away from lodging." With a nod to his boyfriend, the two started supporting the others back to the lodging house. Well, more like Spasher supported Race while Hotshot was forced to walk normally with Spot being too stubborn to actually accept help despite the fact he looked ready to collapse.

"Honestly ya moron. Just take the help, Sean. Ain't no one gonna judge."

"Alexander. I'se dunno if the assholes are still hangin' round. Can't let them know they'se got ta me so much."

"You are *fucking* hopeless." He shook his head, gently punching his brother's arm after making sure there were no wounds. Falling silent, the two walked, keeping an eye on not only their boyfriends walking ahead. He couldn't help but worry about the short boy next to him who's breathing seemed to be more and more laboured with each step. If he could, he'd scoop him up and bolt to the lodging house to fix him up, knowing full well that the short one would refuse. He couldn't help but let out a breath he didn't know he was holding when he saw the lodging house down the street.

Hotshot couldn't help but seed up slightly, urging the injured boy alongside him to match the pace. Without looking, he knew people were staring, well, more like staring at the dark stain spreading across Race and Spot's shirts.  

He could tell that Spot was afraid but if it was for himself or Race, he couldn't tell. All he knew was that he had to hurry both of them upstairs so he could carefully pull the bullets out of them and stitch them up. He wasn't as good as their 'medic' but damn it, there wasn't enough time to sprint to the other side of Brooklyn to find the lanky boy and drag him back. No. It was up to him and Splasher right now to save their friends.

Biting his lip, he dragged Spot upstairs as carefully as he could, glad Splasher had already gotten Race into Spots room, the tiny medkit the Brooklyn newsies owned resting on the bed next to the blond.

Hotshot honestly wasn't surprised to see Race stumble to his feet, frantically telling him to work on Spot first, despite the shorter boy's protests that he was okay.

Giving up, Hotshot just gently shoved Spot onto the bed, holding back a wince at how his brother looked. Spot may be a force to be reckoned with, but seeing him lying in bed, pale and shivering while doing his best to appear strong just reminded everyone how young he was...How young all of them were.

Shaking his head roughly he carefully stripped his leader, ignoring all the scars and the hickies on the other, instead focusing on carefully pulling out the bullets from his chest, doing his best not to twitch whenever he slipped the pair of tweezers into each small hole until he felt the bullet, carefully pulling it out before dropping it on the bed, only to go back for another one.

Swallowing after he had pulled out all bullets, he pretended not to hear Race struggle to hold back tears as he watched his boyfriend being worked on, watched as Hotshot's hands shook ever so faintly as he carefully stitched up each tiny hole after cleaning each wound.

"Right Higgins. Lay ya twink ass down on your side so I can take the damn bullet out of you. Don't worry, you'se'll get a small scar so you can still pull off ya bullshit 'look how cool I am, look at the scar fuckers' thing."

"Yeah yeah okay." Casting a worried look at Spot who had shuffled closer to the window to make room for him. Sighing, the blond carefully lay down  on his side after pulling his shirt off, unable to hold back a wince as his skin pulled slightly at the small movements. Subtly, he clenched the thin sheet below him as he felt cool metal slowly entering the burning wound on his side. It seemed like forever before the tweezers were removed from his body, a soft clink ringing through the room as the newsie above him allowed the bullet to fall into the pile with the others.

After stitching up Race's side, Hotshot nodded to himself and stood up. "Right. I'll leave you two alone fa now. Pull those stitches and you'll be hearin' from me. You don't want that, trust me." He tossed the two clean shirts. "Put those on 'nd leave the dirty ones to me. Now relax 'nd shit. No dirty stuff either! I don't want ta hear you fucking!"

Spot just chuckled and rolled his eyes. "Like we don't hear you two goin' at it all the time. Fuck off 'nd get outta my room." Gently, he wrapped an arm around Race, carefully pulling him closer. "That was 'nd order Alexander."

"Yeah yeah Sean. Just no sex until everythin' has healed ya morons." With that, he pulled his own boyfriend out of the room, closing the door behind him.

Smiling, Spot kissed Race's cheek, doing his best to calm his tense lover down. "We're alright Tony. I promise."

[unityghost]

Release

For the 27th installment of Post-Asmodeus Sabriel Feels, I'm fulfilling two requests from Twistedlove on Archive of Our Own: write something that takes place a little earlier in the series, and show Sam's response to one of the fainting spells to which past stories have alluded.

“You mentioned this chapter [’To Slip and Fall’] about him losing consciousness in the past. I wonder how Sam reacted to that.”

I envision this as taking place somewhere between the second and third entries ("Heavy" and "Midnight Blue"). I've said it before: continuity is a little out of my reach because this was never supposed to become a series (whoopsie), but I do what I can to keep things as smooth as possible.

Got me thinking about the time I fainted in front of a crowd while giving a poetry reading. Womp womp.

Thanks for reading!

On the seventh consecutive day of rain, time began to feel crooked. Gabriel fell asleep at lunchtime and woke two hours later to his door creaking open.

Sam smiled when Gabriel rolled over to look at him. “Hey, Gabriel.”

Gabriel groaned and pressed the heels of his hands over either temple to try and ease an oncoming headache. “Good to see you, Sam. My favorite part of the reunion was when you didn’t knock.”

“You must’ve slept through it. We haven’t seen you in a few hours. Everything okay on your end?”

“I’m fine. What do you need?”

“Just wanted to let you know we saved some casserole for you in case you were hungry. I mean, you haven’t eaten since …”

Gabriel shoved himself upright. “I don’t remember either.”

Sam frowned at him, then glanced over his shoulder into the hall. “Hey … is it all right if I step in for a second?”

Gabriel scanned Sam’s face, his hands, his body. “What for?”

Sam looked a little surprised by the shift in Gabriel’s tone. “You can say no.”

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

“I’m not …” Sam offered an uncertain smile. “I’m not here to punish you or whatever, if that’s where your mind went.”

Gabriel cleared his throat and ran a hand through his hair. “No, that isn’t what I thought. Um, yeah, make yourself comfy, champ.”

Sam stepped inside and shut the door behind him. “I was only looking to check up on you. Figured maybe you wanted to talk to me.”

Gabriel almost asked, Why? What am I doing wrong? Instead he answered with, “About what?”

“Well,” said Sam, “For one, you look kind of … awful.”

“That’s according to plan. The last thing I’d want to do is make any one of you feel jealous.”

“And also, you - ”

“Wait.” Gabriel held up a hand. “Listen, Sam: I’m sorry, but at the moment I’m not sure I have the stamina to rifle through a scrapbook full of bad memories. You know better than anybody how much that kind of works takes out of the both of us.”

Sam shrugged. “We don’t have to do anything like that. We could just … hang out.” He waited for Gabriel to reply. When Gabriel said nothing, Sam declared, “No problem. In the meantime, I guess maybe I’ll go get some coffee and hang out in the library. Dean just now told me he thinks he might’ve found us a case to work on in Connecticut. Nothing’s for sure yet, but might as well use the time to dig up whatever info might end up being useful, right? So if you need me - ”

“Don’t know why I would.”

“ - I’ll be in the library.” Sam turned, and placed a hand on the doorknob.

“Hold on,” said Gabriel, and Sam turned back. “Don’t go all the way to Connecticut.”

“We don’t have plans yet. Plus, I don’t have to be the one to go if it makes you nervous.”

“No one’s nervous; I just … I … you know.”

Sam looked puzzled. “No. I don’t know.”

What was Gabriel doing? It was ridiculous - not to mention wildly imprudent - that he should try and dictate Sam’s actions. It was even more absurd that he should feel threatened by the prospect of Sam not being nearby.

“Ah, never mind,” said Gabriel. “You can totally go to Connecticut. Pennsylvania. Arkansas. Colorado. The Pyrenees. Anywhere that tickles your fancy, Sam.”

Sam let go of the doorknob. “Gabriel, don’t take this the wrong way, but I think you’re spending too much time alone.”

Gabriel glanced at the floor, thinking of the nightmares and flashbacks to which Sam had been witness since Gabriel first arrived at the bunker several weeks earlier. He was afraid that, if he said anything now, he would be perpetuating a trend that he did not want to continue. “There’s some way to describe what’s up with me, but I’m not confident about getting it right.”

“Bad dreams?”

“Yeah. For sure. Always.” He continued to avoid Sam’s gaze. “They come at odd hours when I can’t keep track of day and night. The rain, you know? Not like we can see it from here. But I feel it. It’s weird, actually; it’s like I can sense it in a way I couldn’t before. Near-gracelessness and whatnot - makes me tired, causes pain … everything feels different now. But it’s not about the nightmares - that isn’t new.”

“So what else, then? Can you tell me?”

Gabriel remained silent.

“Gabriel,” Sam said, “You’re the only one who knows what you’re feeling.”

Gabriel shook his head. “I’m the only one who feels what I’m feeling. But I don’t know what it is, or how to give an accurate picture. Headachey, I guess. Exhausted.”

Sam waited for him to say more. When Gabriel didn’t go on, Sam took a few cautious steps toward the bed and sat beside him.

“I feel like you might be getting worse,” Sam said softly, “Not better.”

“Yeah, well ...”

“You’re spending a lot of time by yourself. And whenever any of us tries to get you to hang out, or eat, or go for a walk, or whatever, you just sort of … hide.”

“I don’t hide.”

“What would you call it?”

“Voluntary seclusion.”

“I’m not prosecuting you. You know that, right? It isn’t wrong if you need time to yourself. It’s just that I’ve never thought of you as a wallflower.”

“Excuse you. I’m the prettiest of all wallflowers; I’m a whole-ass bouquet.”

“You want to tell me what’s going on?” Sam’s tone was gentle. “As best you can?”

Gabriel fidgeted. “I mean … sure. I can give you what I know. But that’s all I’ve got.”

“Yeah, tell me.”

Gabriel took a deep breath, released it, and began: “You guys have a good, solid rhythm going. Your own thing. Your own little family. Who am I to look for a place in that, huh? Plus - and I know you won’t be happy about this, Sam, but it is what it is - sometimes I prefer not to be around the others. Dean is … intense, Cas is hard to read - especially when my grace is low and I can’t always communicate with him in ways I might have before - and Jack is … look, the fact of the matter is Jack is a stranger. I’m sorry, but you’re the only one I can trust even a little bit, and otherwise I’d rather be alone.

“There’s one more thing, and it doesn’t make a lick of sense: most of the time, I wish I wasn’t by myself - but I feel like I have no choice. Now, obviously, nobody’s depriving me of the option to saunter out there and say, ‘Screw it, I know not one of you is looking to throw me around like a bargain-bin Raggedy-Ann knockoff.’ But here I am, some castaway watching a cruise ship glide past on still waters, and I’m not doing a damn thing to get myself rescued.” Gabriel clenched his jaw. “So I go with plan B: lock myself in here like a sick kitten and cry.”

He heard Sam shift beside him.

“The point is,” Gabriel went on, “None of this makes sense. I don’t make sense.”

“I think it makes sense.” Gabriel tried to catch any revulsion or annoyance in Sam’s voice and couldn’t. “All of it makes sense to me.”

“Bully for you, Sam. I don’t know what metric you’re using, but something ain’t adding up.”

“I think you just need to let yourself adjust. Give yourself some space to heal. And time - you gotta give yourself time before you can expect to really feel better.”

Gabriel raised his eyes to meet Sam’s. “Time and space sound fantastic, but they’re not what I need. I need my grace. I need to forget about Asmodeus. And - ”

Sam furrowed his brow. “And?”

Gabriel swallowed. “And I need that now.”

Sam lifted a hand. “Can I - ”

“No,” said Gabriel, “Please don’t touch me.”

Sam lowered his hand. “Look ... Gabe … there’s no forgetting. That isn’t what you need. And you can’t hold yourself to that standard, because you’re setting yourself up for failure if you decide that the only way to improve is to forget.”

“Yeah, well, no one’s trying to make a case for its likelihood. All I’m saying is that’s the only thing that could ever make a difference. You asked me to talk, we can talk - but if you can’t handle the truth then maybe find another conversation partner. However, if you think you can metabolize it, you want to know what I’ve learned since coming here?”

“What’s that?”

“You really want to know?”

“Yeah, Gabe. I really do.”

“Dandy.” Gabriel made sure to hold Sam’s gaze this time. “Here’s your appetizer: on my first night here, I learned that sleep doesn’t have anything to do with rest, and that the unconscious brain can hold about ten different storylines at one time. A little meatier: after that I learned just how committed a graceless body can be to purging itself of phantom danger even when there’s nothing left to throw up. By now - and here’s your entree - I’ve learned that getting out of Hell doesn’t mean I’m not still there. How was I to know I’d be scared of my own brother? Scared of Dean? How was I supposed to plan for that? And how was I supposed to anticipate just how much help I was going to need when I ought to be damn well capable of helping myself?” Gabriel turned away. “Hope you enjoyed. Don’t forget to leave a tip.”

“Gabriel …” This time, Sam simply took Gabriel by the shoulder.

Gabriel jolted away. “Stop it, I told you not to!”

“Sorry. I’m sorry.” Sam softened his voice. “I really didn’t think. Listen, buddy, don’t be so hard on yourself about all this.”

Gabriel gave a cold smile. “Even when it’s happening all the time?”

“‘It?’ What’s happening all the time?”

“I see Asmodeus everywhere, Sam. Around every corner, behind me, next to me, in every one of you. Even you - sometimes. And I … that’s not all right, and I’m sorry.”

“You won’t get better by being sorry, Gabriel.”

“You worry about me holing myself up in here, away from the rest of you? You worry about not being able to monitor me all the time?”

“No. I get that there’s no reason to keep tabs on you twenty-four/seven. I worry because it’s nothing like you to pull yourself away from everyone around you and I feel like you might need … I don’t know. Something.”

“Yeah? And what do you think you’re gonna do when I finally agree to set the party ablaze with this killer personality Asmodeus cultivated for almost a millennium? You know, Sam, sometimes humans throw around this idea that it’s better to get it all out - to let yourself be messy, to break down freely. Because sure, all right: your kind aren’t built to house your pain in those bodies indefinitely. And then there’s me.” Gabriel laughed, harshly and quietly. “I can hold it. I can keep myself together. But, just like you, like any human being, I reach a tipping point. Fair enough; I can accept that. Except here’s one other fun tidbit I’ve learned: losing control doesn’t help. Sobbing myself into a coma never does a damn thing to make the pain anything but more real. Think twice about whether you’re prepared to see that for yourself, Sammy.”

There was a lengthy pause after he finished. Gabriel listened to the footsteps in the hall, the occasional click of a door, Dean shouting a question to Castiel.

When Sam didn’t speak, Gabriel kept on: “It’s easier, Sam. It’s just plain easier to hide. For me, and for you. For all of you. The truth is I’m - I mean - I’m scared out of my wits, and I don’t know how to change that.”

“That’s how you’re supposed to feel after somebody hurts you,” Sam replied before Gabriel could add I’m sorry. “And do you really think it’s easier to lock yourself up?”

“Why else would I be doing it? When have I ever done anything other than take the easy way out?”

“You don’t think maybe you’re making this harder for yourself on purpose?”

“I have no idea what I’m doing to myself!” Gabriel was beginning to feel sick. “I don’t know how much is me and how much is him.”

“You aren’t going to feel any better, any freer, if every time you feel like you’re back in Hell you reinforce it by holding yourself hostage. Gabriel - look - I won’t make you listen to me or talk to me, but I need you to know that I’m not as scared of seeing you in pain as you are. You don’t have to dedicate any amount of time to me or anybody else, but we’re here. I’m here. And I really don’t think you have anything to be ashamed of.”

Shut up, Gabriel wanted to say. I have everything to be ashamed of. But he couldn’t speak: his throat was locked tight, exactly the way he locked himself in the bedroom when he didn’t want the rest of them to see what was happening to him.

“You have the power to drown him out,” Sam continued. “He’s gone and you have the power to make sure he stays gone.”

Gabriel shook his head. He hadn’t had any kind of power for a long time now.

“And you’ve got more than that,” Sam reminded him. “You’ve got us. Me especially, if that’s all you want right now.”

“I don’t want anything,” Gabriel whispered.

If there could be no forgetting, he realized, then there had to be acceptance. Letting the others in - letting any of them, especially Sam, any nearer - would facilitate just the opposite by bringing the pain into the full sight of everyone, including Gabriel; allowing the others to see, to watch, would be to keep the pain alive.

Acceptance necessitated tolerance. Welcoming their gestures of goodwill not only showed intolerance for the memories that haunted him but signaled that he was prepared to fight what he knew would never, ever go away unless he could erase it from his mind completely.

He leaned forward, so that his forehead was close to his knees, and buried his fingers in his hair.

“Are you okay?” asked Sam.

“Yes.” But the truth was that Gabriel was struggling to breathe against the tightness in his throat. His headache had, within the last few minutes, grown exponentially stronger.

“Gabriel,” Sam murmured, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” His heartbeat increased as he struggled to draw breath. He knew that he was able to breathe, knew that this was simply an unwelcome byproduct of the battle, but he struggled nonetheless.

“Gabe, what’s the matter?” He felt Sam put a hand on his back, and this time Gabriel didn’t startle. “Can you sit up, maybe? Are you gonna be sick?”

He sounded worried. Gabriel wanted to tell him not to worry, that nothing was seriously wrong; that sometimes, this was what it looked like when he decided not to give in, not to let go.

It occurred to Gabriel then that Sam had seen him break down before, and perhaps there was little point in going to these lengths just to shield Sam from something he’d already witnessed.

Then he remembered that thinking in that direction - the direction of maybe just this once - would trick Gabriel into believing that it was all right to put himself on display, to showcase this obscenely vulnerable side of himself to anyone who might toy with it; or, worse, to someone like Sam, who would probably never do any such thing and allow Gabriel to take advantage of him.

Way to breathe, dumbass, Gabriel thought as he grew dizzy; and then he realized that somebody was calling his name and that he was on the floor with no recollection of having placed himself there.

He tried to piece together the last few seconds - moments? Minutes? - and found that he couldn’t. Then he realized what must have happened, but why was there another presence? Who was standing over him?

“No,” Gabriel groaned, and tried to sit up just as a pair of hands seized hold of him. “Don’t - ”

“It’s just me, Gabriel, just me.”

“Let go,” Gabriel ground out, and Sam did. Gabriel lay back down again.

“What the hell was that?” Sam demanded. “What happened? Gabriel, man - you wouldn’t wake up for about two minutes.”

“Oh.” Gabriel closed his eyes.

“No!” Sam commanded, and Gabriel’s eyes flew open. He stared up at the ceiling, not daring to move. Sometimes moving, trying to get away - that only made it worse.

“Just stay awake,” Sam said, softening his voice. “Just - I need to know you’re all right.”

Gabriel turned his head to get a better look at Sam, who was knelt on the floor beside him, pale and wide-eyed but apparently not as angry as Gabriel had believed.

“I was going to call someone else in,” Sam explained, “But I figured if you woke up and there was another person here you might get nervous.”

“Sometimes,” Gabriel slurred.

“What? Sometimes what?”

“Happens sometimes. Like oops.”

“Gabriel,” Sam said, “I need you to give me a single coherent sentence before I decide not to get help.”

“No. Not a big deal. I get a little upset. Tired. Whatever. And then this.”

“Do you know where you are? Who I am? What year it is?”

“Floor; Sam; post-moon landing, pre-teleportation.”

“How do you feel right now?”

“Floppy.”

“Why’d you pass out?”

“I don’t know.”

“Really?”

“I mean … it’s like when I get sick, sort of. Moderately less degrading.” Feeling a little more alert, Gabriel pushed himself upright. Sam looked tempted to assist, and Gabriel was grateful when he didn’t try.

“A stress response,” Sam said. “One you didn’t mention.”

“Never came up.”

“So right now, just now - you worked yourself up to the point that you couldn’t even stay conscious?”

“Good at it, aren’t I?” Gabriel leaned against the bedframe and pulled his knees to his chest. He couldn’t tell what Sam was feeling, but he sensed a certain level of frustration. Perhaps Gabriel was confusing desperation with anger; but whatever emotions were driving Sam’s reaction to this episode, there could be no mistaking what Gabriel himself was feeling. He told himself not to be afraid of Sam, and yet …

“I didn’t mean to,” he told Sam. “I really didn’t mean to. I didn’t - ”

“I know you didn’t mean to.” Sam sighed. “I’m not mad, all right? I’m sorry. I’m not. That was just really weird to watch. You went white and started falling off the bed. I grabbed you when half your body was already on the floor, so you didn’t hit your head or anything, but - ”

“Thank you, Prince Charming. My head already hurts like a bitch so I’m glad to be spared.”

“This happens a lot?”

Gabriel tethered his gaze to the floor. “No. It happens when I decide to fight.”

“Fight? Fight what?”

“My instincts. When I decide not to buy into what I said about letting yourself just lose control. There’s no reason to indulge in a breakdown if all it does is make me feel worse. Sometimes this is a … a, ah, side effect of that.”

“God, Gabriel. This is why you need to look for someone instead of running away from us.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah. Of course. What?”

Gabriel peered up at him. “Can you look me dead in the eyes and tell me that you know from firsthand experience that giving yourself space to parade your emotions around for others to witness and potentially ransack has proven a helpful strategy?”

Sam blinked. “I … no. I can’t.”

“Then what the hell are we doing?”

“I never had a chance to find out for myself.” Sam gave a rueful smile. “But I know what I needed.”

“You’re not - oh.” Gabriel looked away again. “I didn’t mean to be an ass.”

“None of this is about me. I’m more interested in making sure you don’t collapse again.”

“I won’t. That only happens when I’m grossly inconvenienced by my own coping mechanisms.”

“Can I help you up?” Sam offered his hands, apparently to hold onto Gabriel; but Gabriel, who didn’t take well to the notion of being touched like that when he was too weak to retaliate, grabbed Sam’s hands instead and let him pull him up that way.

“Wanna lie down?” Sam asked as Gabriel retook his seat on the bed.

“No. No sleeping. No nightmares. Not right now. I just - I can’t.”

“Not even if I stay here with you?”

“You busted in here to talk, didn’t you? Not to watch me while I sleep. Don’t be weird.”

The mattress creaked as Sam sat back down.

“Oh, and for what it’s worth” Gabriel added, “I appreciate your discretion. Thanks for not bringing anyone else in.”

Sam smiled. “I’m glad you’re not too banged up.”

“Well, I’m sorry. For being such a diva. ‘Look at this, Sam; watch me swoon.’ Have you ever seen such melodrama in your life?”

“It’s not melodrama. If you’re struggling that bad - if you’re sick and tired and passing out and crying - that means something’s wrong. It means you need help. What good is there in bullying yourself just for needing help?”

Gabriel surveyed him. Sam looked alert, concerned - perhaps even a little frightened. “Sam … you know the feeling of when someone wants to hurt you and you’d do anything to escape? And the panic is so strong you forget how to put up a rational fight, and all you can do is throw yourself around like a trapped insect? Being kidnapped, or tortured, or held in place - you know that violent, helpless, hysterical feeling?”

Sam looked vaguely nauseated. “Yeah.”

“That’s what I feel whenever I know help is nearby. And if I give in to that feeling, I’ll scream myself raw and it won’t do any good. Losing control doesn’t make things better. It hurts. It hurts me, because I can never get it all out; I’m never empty, Sam, and that feeling is never gone.” His voice trembled. “Frankly, everything made way more sense in Hell. It all added up to an even integer. I was afraid because I was locked in a cell at the mercy of a narcissistic screwball who’d been handed complete power over me. But now? Now I have no reason to feel trapped and alone.”

“And you need one,” Sam said, “So you give yourself one.”

“No! I mean - do I? See, what does that tell you? I’m nuts. I’ve gone off the freakin’ rails. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. All I know is I need help and I’m not going to be okay no matter how much I get. So what’s the point in wringing myself out for something that’s not even going to make a difference in the end?”

Fragments of memory crept forward: Gabriel, screaming and sobbing through the stitches across his mouth, while Asmodeus laughed above him.

“I can plead until time flips itself inside-out,” Gabriel told Sam, “And nothing - nothing - is going to make all that fighting worth it.”

“Not with Asmodeus.” Sam offered his hand. After a moment’s deliberation, Gabriel accepted it. “He liked to waste your time. Here, with us, you don’t have to beg for anything. Food, water, help. Whatever. You don’t have to tear yourself apart just to get what you need.”

“It doesn’t do anything,” Gabriel pleaded. “Letting go, losing control - it just makes things worse. It makes the pain stronger, Sam. I can try and try and it’s still caught inside of me and it won’t come out no matter how hard I pull at it.”

“When you’re by yourself, sure. It’s not a one-man job.”

“I should be stronger than this. Stronger than any of this. Stronger than him, stronger than my own mind, stronger than this feeling. Sam - I don’t want to be like this. I don’t want to be whatever it is he turned me into.”

Sam squeezed his hand. “He didn’t turn you into anything. You’re still Gabriel.”

“But that’s not … I don’t …” Gabriel didn’t know how to explain that “Gabriel,” whomever that might be, had always been diseased, and that Asmodeus had simply hurt what needed to be hurt.

“I’m confused,” said Gabriel. “I don’t understand what’s happening to me.”

“You’re trying to heal. I think sometimes that can be as rough as whatever it is you’re trying to heal from.”

“I’m tired. Tired and terrified and - and I hate what I am, and how I see everything now; I hate that I don’t know how to keep myself under control. I hate that I come in here to cry. I don’t know; I don’t understand. I’m not - I don’t - ” Gabriel used his free hand to cover his face. “Everything is wrong with me.”

“But in what universe are you not supposed to be scared and upset and confused after everything that happened to you?”

Gabriel shook his head. His voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “I don’t know.” He felt tears glide over his cheeks and kept his face hidden as best he could with the one hand.

“Well,” Sam said, “If anybody would know, don’t you think it’d be you?”

Gabriel didn’t reply.

“Look.” Sam’s voice was gentle. “I really think you should consider swallowing your pride once in a while and maybe pushing back against your own instincts. Don’t bury yourself in whatever it is Asmodeus put into your head.”

Gabriel gave a strangled laugh and slid his hand from his face, forgetting for a moment that Sam could see the tears. “Is that really what you think? That my instinct is to hide and not come running to you? Sam, the only instincts I ever have tell me to throw myself at your feet and grovel.”

“Grovel? For what?”

“For understanding. For affection. For touch. I don’t know; all I can tell you is I need something from you and I have to push myself in the opposite direction so that I don’t disgust you. And so that I don’t get cozy, because that could be taken from me so fast. The number of times he laughed at me, Sam, or kicked me in the face because I didn’t stop crying when he told me to …”

Sam looked repulsed. “Gabriel, I would never do that to you!”

“He used to say, ‘I wish you could get a glimpse of yourself; even you wouldn’t believe you were looking at an archangel. You know what you are, don’t you? You’re a roach with a busted leg and guts all over the floor. You’re lucky I don’t just squish the life out of you here and now.’”

“Yeah,” said Sam, “Okay. Stop. I don’t think that about you; none of us think that. Don’t trust anything he told you. The guy was a monster.”

“Well, so is this thing inside of me, Sam. This thing that tells me to go looking for help - this thing that makes me so afraid and panicked and desperate - it’s insatiable and trying to feed it just makes it hungrier.”

“With him it would have. Yes. Because you tried to get what you needed and he didn’t let you have anything. If you really wanna look at it like that, as something that needs to be fed - I mean, what are you supposed to think if it’s always been starved?”

Gabriel couldn’t think of a response.

“I’m tired,” he said at last. “I feel sick and exhausted. I’m not - ” He leaned against Sam, who released Gabriel’s hand to put an arm around him. “I just don’t feel well at all.” He turned to press his face into Sam’s shoulder.

“This has been a hard time,” Sam agreed. “I know that. Trust me, I know. And that isn’t your fault.”

“I should be - ”

“Who’s holding you to anything, huh? You’re not supposed to be any one way about this. Really.”

Gabriel almost asked, Then why isn’t it acceptable for me to lock myself away? Then he thought better of it, because Sam had been right: it wasn’t like Gabriel to make himself unknown. He had run away, certainly - but he had not remained in the shadows. Gabriel had never kept himself entirely hidden. Never.

He didn’t often think of who he had been before his imprisonment. For all he knew, that version of himself was the one Asmodeus hated most, the version that had deserved the most punishment.

But the thought that Gabriel might never get that part of himself back, the possibility that Asmodeus had forced him into wanting to stay hidden - somehow this notion flooded him with horrified grief that came on like a surge of nausea. He didn’t miss whatever it was he had been - at least, he didn’t think he missed it, although since he deliberately paid so little attention he couldn’t be sure - but the absence of something that had made him who he was suddenly felt unbearable.

The tears came silently, blurring his vision and stealing his voice. The knot in his throat stung like needles and tightened his chest, so that he had trouble breathing again.

I’ll never get that back, Gabriel thought. It belongs to Asmodeus now.

Sam pulled him in closer and Gabriel grabbed onto him, afraid that Sam would let go. He remembered moments like this with Asmodeus - clinging to him in exactly the same way. It was only when Sam muttered, “I know, I know it’s rough; I know,” did Gabriel realize that he could distinguish between the two experiences.

Gabriel heard himself make a horrible, choked groan into Sam’s shoulder. He gritted his teeth against the urge to scream - an urge that soon became too much and manifested not as a scream but as fractured moaning.

“I know,” Sam murmured again. “I know. But it’s gonna be all right. You’re doing just fine, I promise.”

Gabriel tried to speak, but the words slid into each other and ricocheted off of each breath so that nothing could be understood.

“What?” Sam asked.

“I - I can’t,” Gabriel sobbed. “I can’t.”

“Can’t what?”

“Stop. I can’t stop. I’m trying. I’m sorry.”

“Nobody’s telling you you have to stop. Especially not me. Take whatever time you need.”

“I don’t know.” Gabriel shuddered in Sam’s grasp. “I can’t - can’t stop.”

“Then don’t. Nothing wrong with that.”

“No, I want - I need - I can’t stop; I need it to - ” He was gasping, choking. “Because it won’t do - won’t change anything, and I need it to stop.”

“Don’t think about that. Just relax. I’m here. You’re safe.” Sam paused, then added, “I didn’t mean to make you so upset. I just wanted to check on you because - ”

“Because you knew I was already upset.” Gabriel gave a shaky laugh. “Because you knew that I - that this was - ”

Somehow Gabriel couldn’t say it, but perhaps Sam understood: Gabriel had needed this, or something like this, to remind him that he was no longer in Hell. That there was no pain, no punishment, no derision. There was no clawing at the bars of a filthy cell and howling into a damp chamber full of bloodthirsty phantoms. Certainly, there was self-disgust; there was shame just as powerful as any he had felt with Asmodeus - but there was no fear.

Did that mean he truly would never be able to stop?

Gabriel pressed his face deeper into Sam’s shoulder.

Even if I can -

“All right there?” Sam asked.

- this will still happen again.

“I’m so sorry,” Gabriel whimpered.

“No.”

“I am. I really am.”

“What for?”

“For all the times you might have to see this.”

“Hey, no, come on.”

Gabriel didn’t ask whether Sam meant Come on, it’s not gonna happen again or Come on, of course you don’t have to be sorry. He was afraid of the answer.

“Think about it this way,” Sam said after a while. “If it were one of us - ”

“I know, Sam.” Gabriel closed his eyes. “But it’s not.”

“Yes it is.”

There was a knock at the door. Gabriel wrenched himself away from Sam.

“No one else needs to see,” he explained.

“Okay.” Sam got to his feet. “Let me handle it, then.”

Whoever it was knocked a second time. “Gabriel?”

Dean.

Sam opened the door. “Can you give us a minute?”

“Nope. Because if he ain’t gonna take what’s left of the casserole then it belongs to me.”

Sam sighed. “Dean …”

“Hey, I don’t make the rules, Sammy. But I did make the casserole.”

“He hasn’t eaten; can’t you just - ”

“It’s perishable. It’s a delicate recipe. Gabe!”

“Don’t,” Sam said quickly. “He’s - let me ask him.”

“It’s fine,” Gabriel said. He tried to speak loudly enough for Dean to hear, but his voice was hoarse. He cleared his throat and repeated, “It’s fine, Dean. Take it. I don’t need your germs.”

He heard Dean shift - perhaps trying to step inside. “Sounding a little rough there, bud.”

“Dean,” said Sam, “Go away.”

A pause. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Sam told him. “Just …”

In the silence that followed, Gabriel had the sense that Dean was trying to read whatever signals Sam might be sending.

“You know what?” Dean said at last. “I’m suddenly in the mood for burgers. Gabe feels up to it, he can have the casserole. So I guess I’ll, uh … I’ll catch you two later.”

“Yeah.” Sam sounded relieved. “All right. Thanks.” He closed the door.

“Thanks yourself,” Gabriel said as Sam came to sit down again. “No need for him to see me like this. But hey, Sam - you know I’m not trying to monopolize your time, right? Because you have a lot of other jobs besides babysitting a whiny recluse.”

“Man, you have got to stop talking about yourself that way. Besides, I don’t have anything more important right now.”

“What about the case in Connecticut?”

“We don’t even know if we there is a case.”

“So go do a little digging, find what you can find; maybe it’ll help you decide what you’ve got on your hands here.”

“Really. There’s nowhere I need to be.”

“Sam, I’m gonna feel better if you move on from what just happened without any fanfare, all right? My energy is shot. I think it’d be good for me to take a hot second to breathe and you to get done whatever work might lower the odds of you getting yourself bloodied up in some elitist New England suburb.”

Sam looked both surprised and hesitant. “Do you wanna come with me?”

“No. Just give me a few minutes and then I’ll … if I need you, I’ll get you. How’s that sound?”

Cautiously, Sam stood up. “If that’s really what you think would be helpful.”

“Yeah. Go. And thank you.” Gabriel glanced away. “You had a point.”

“About what?”

“About - come on, don’t make me say it. You know what.”

Sam considered him. Then he nodded, and Gabriel hoped he remembered: It’s not a one-man job.

“I’ll be close by,” Sam told him. “And please - don’t try to pretend, okay?”

“Fine. But I’m good, Sam. For now, I’m good.”

Sam remained in place for a few more seconds, contemplating whether to heed Gabriel’s request. Then he smiled, tentatively, and moved toward the exit.

“But you can leave the door open,” Gabriel called, and Sam did.

Gabriel could hear Dean, Cas, and Jack somewhere in another room - although he couldn’t be sure which one. He slid off of the bed and moved toward the sound. They were in the kitchen.

The three of them, seated around the table with bottles of beer (When did those melonheads start giving Jack alcohol? Gabriel wondered), all fell silent when they saw him.

“Hey fellas,” said Gabriel. “Got room for one more?”

[imaginewithmgk]

Would you do a one shot where the reader just had a really stressful day at work and kells helps by taking a hot bath with her and giving her some wine and it ends in fluffy bathtub smut?💜

I CAN DO HAPPY, I CAN DO NORMAL

request ten

summary: they take a bath together and colson pleasures her because she’s had a hard time recently. 

word count: 2,158

warnings: smut, alcohol

Y/N’s P.O.V.

I pace around my bedroom, running my fingers through my hair as I go over the events of today. First, I got a call from Casie’s school saying that she had gotten into a verbal altercation with another student. Apparently, another child was bad-mouthing her dad so she fought back. I obviously went to her to school to pick her up and she explained the situation to me, I wasn’t mad at her at all but I did give her some stern advice on what to do next time it happens. She seemed to take my advice on board, quickly apologising to the child and myself as well. I took her out for lunch before dropping her off at her mum’s house, after all, it was her week. I was hoping that would be the end of today’s “excitement” but of course not. I ended up running into my ex-boyfriend while I was at the store buying some groceries. 

I walk through the aisles aimlessly looking for things we need at home. I find myself near the fridges looking for almond milk when I feel someone tap me on the shoulder. I spin around only to be met by the face of my vile ex-boyfriend. “Ugh leave me alone,” I groan and begin to walk away. “Where’s your new play toy?” He grins. “What happened, he finally leave you? He realise you’re fucked up beyond fixing?”“Colson hasn’t left me. He’s working in LA, something you know nothing about.” I mumble. “Whatever. It’s just a matter of time before he leaves you because you’re so fucked up,”“You know nothing about him. He is nothing like you, you’re a fucking prick!” I begin to raise my voice. He puts his hand on his heart and pretends to be hurt.“Oh ouch. You know he’s the reason we broke up yeah? He’s standing in the way of our happiness baby,” He reaches out to place a hand on my shoulder but I move out of his way quickly. “He’s not standing in the way of nothing buddy. You being a whore and a drug addict is what ruined our relationship,“ “Whatever Y/N, you just ain’t tired of him yet. I know he can’t do you like I do you, make you feel the way I used to make you feel,” He smirks. I roll my eyes and turn away from him. “Leave me the fuck alone," "I’m not leaving you alone until you admit that you miss me and want me back,”“I don’t miss shit about you and I will never want you back!”“He isn’t good for you, I mean look at his lifestyle! He’s probably fucking bitches in LA while you’re at home pining over him. He will never understand you like I do Y/N,” Will this dude ever quit it? “Whether you like it or not, I am happy. You never even came close to making me as happy as he makes me. Leave me alone,”“But that’s just it Y/N… you don’t do happy, you don’t know what happy and normal is. It’s just a matter of time before you fuck it up and come running back to me,” He chuckles. “No, I won’t. I love Colson, a lot more than I ever loved you.”“Don’t worry baby, you will see. You will never be good enough for him. He’s going to realise that and leave you, then who will you go to? Me. Just like every other time,” I drop my basket on the floor and storm out of the shop.

I’m especially sick to death of him but also people judging Colson and I’s relationship. Why do they have to play games with my mind? I know Colson loves me, I can do happy, and I can do normal. Maybe this is why he calls me baby because I am a fucking baby and he has to take care of me. What if he never comes back? His album could be finished for all I know. Maybe he left just to get away from me. It truly has been one of the worst days I’ve ever experienced, the only thing that could fix my horrible mood is if my man was here. Fuck I need to hear his voice, I won’t be able to sleep tonight with these thoughts running through my mind. I need him here with me. I decide to call him, at least his voice can calm me down.  “Hey baby,” He answers almost instantly. “Hey,” I mumble. “Are you okay?” He asks. I bite my lip as tears brim in my eyes. “Y-yeah, I just miss you,” I admit. “Are you sure? Did something happen to you?” His voice sounds as soothing as ever, I sob into the phone. “Baby what happened?”“I just had a difficult day,” I breathe out. “You know I hate to ask this because I know you’re busy but can you come home?” I almost whisper. “Of course darling. I’ll be home in 6 hours. I love you,”“Thank you. I’ll meet you at the airport.” I hang up the phone and collapse onto the bed we share. I can’t believe I made him come home, I can’t believe he actually got on a plane and came. He loves me, I know he loves me. Fuck what people think. 

I waste time watching Netflix and napping for a few hours before I make my way to the airport. His plane lands shortly after I arrive, instantly I feel better when I see his face. I run over to him and jump onto him, wrapping my legs around his waist and bury my face into his neck.“What’s wrong baby girl?” He asks hugging me back tightly.“I’m okay now that you’re here,” I whisper. “Something happened, I can tell,” He places me on the ground and grabs my chin forcing me to look into his stunning blue eyes. He kisses my lips delicately and I almost fall apart right then and there.“Come on, I’ll tell you as we drive,” I kiss his cheek and intertwine our fingers as we make our way to my car. I explain what happened today, he just holds my hand throughout it all and plays with my fingers.“You don’t believe that shit do you?” He asks and I don’t answer. “You can’t believe that!”“Maybe he was right… I can’t do normal. You’re perfect, how can you be so perfect? I don’t deserve someone like you.”“Baby I’m not perfect. You of all people should know this. But what I know is that we are perfect together, we are endgame.”“I love you,”“I love you! You’re never going to get rid of me,” He laughs. We continue chatting as we make our way home. “I’m so tired from all this stressful shit,” I admit as we walk through the front door and towards our room. “We can put on a movie or sum and just cuddle if you want bubba,” He offers, to which I nod at him. I change out of my clothes from that day into a pair of booty shorts and a tank top. He simply pulls off his top and pants so that he’s left in only his boxers and lays down on the bed. I stand there staring at him, how the fuck did I get such a gorgeous and caring man to love me?“You gon come here and give me some lovin or you just gon stand there checking me out?” He chuckles. I shake my head at him and get into bed, moving around so my head is laying on his chest. I trace the tattoos on his stomach as he puts Netflix on and picks a movie. “Hey, do you want to have a bath first?” He asks. “I’m too tired,” I admit. “Come on, I’ll set it up for you. I promise it will make you feel better,”“Okay sure,” I smile as he kisses my cheek and makes his way to our ensuite. Colson’s P.O.V.

I walk into our ensuite and turn on the cold water, and then the hot to make it a nice warm temperature. I grab an assortment of bath oils, making sure that one of them is eucalyptus because I know Y/N loves the smell. I add some bubble bath and then shut off the water before making my way back to the bedroom. “You ready baby?” I smile at her. She nods and extends her arms signalling for me to pick her up. I do so, and take her into the bathroom. I sit her down on the bench and pull her tank top off, and then her shorts. “God, you’re so beautiful,” I kiss her neck lightly. She moans at the contact and pulls my boxers off me. She begins to lightly stroke my member as I keep kissing her neck. “We’ll continue in the bath,” I mumble and pull myself away from her. I get into the tub, leaning against one side so she can sit in between my legs. She hops in after me and presses her back up against my stomach. I grab some soap and a loofa and begin washing her back, stomach, breasts, anything I can reach really. We spend a long time in the tub and share a glass of wine before getting dressed and going back to our bed. I lay down and she places her head on my chest. 

Y/N’s P.O.V.

All of a sudden I feel a cold breeze on my breast. Without me noticing, Colson had pulled my tank top down and began to massage me.“What do you think you’re doing?” I giggle. “What? I can’t appreciate my woman?” He says mischievously. He moves us around so he can kiss my breasts. He moves down and lightly sucks on my nipple. “You know my boobs are my weakness, Colson,” He just hums. “And you know this is my favourite thing to do… watch a movie with my girl and play with her boobies a lil,” He says which makes me laugh. He finally stops and just leaves a hand resting on my breast while we try to watch the movie that was interrupted by our bath. 

I sigh loudly halfway through what we were watching,“What’s up girl?” “I’m tired but I can’t sleep, I’ve got too much shit on my mind,” I admit. He starts to play with my hair.“Want me to make you feel good baby girl?”“Yes please,” He doesn’t waste any time, he gets off the bed and makes his way down to the edge. Colson grabs my bare thighs and pulls me towards him so I’m sitting at the end of the bed, and he’s on his knees facing me. He kisses the inside of my thighs lightly before curling his fingers around the material of my shorts and pulling them down my legs. I kick them off, leaving my bottom-half naked. “Damn you’re already wet,” He smirks and traces his finger up and down my slit. I lean my head backwards in pleasure as he licks my folds gently. I can tell that he wants this to be all about love, rather than the raunchy fucking we usually partake in and I do not mind one bit. He traces his tongue from my core, all the way up to my clit. He kisses just above my sensitive area before latching his lips to my clit and sucking hard. I let out a loud moan as he moves his tongue in all different kinds of directions. I grab the back of his head with my hand and buck my hips as he plunges his tongue into my core. “Oh fuck Colson,” I pull his hair. I can feel him chuckle, the vibrations almost sending me over the edge. I let out some porn star-like moans as he grabs my hips and pushes me further towards him. He moves out of my core and back to my clit where he licks and sucks intensely. “O-oh my god,” I practically yell. “F-fuck me with your tongue,” He does what I say and moves back down to my core, sticking his tongue in as far as possible. I push his head further into me if that’s even possible. I can feel his nose rubbing against my clit which is sending me over the edge. “I’m g-gonna cum,” I moan.“Cum on my tongue baby girl,” I let myself go at his words. He licks me up and down and then uses an old t-shirt to clean me. I lay back on the bed, panting with my eyes closed. 

“I can’t believe I just made you cum with only my mouth,” He grins. “Shut up,” I mumble and pull him towards me so we can cuddle. 

-

tagged @2dead2function @s-j-g-x @bakerkells @mayaslifeinabox @Onlybadthingz @PumpkinQueenest19 @mrsambroserollinsacklesmgk @Feeding-into-darkness @xxkellsvixen19xx @lovemythsworld @xwhitewalkerx @deanwinchesterswife121 @jindongdongie

[arabellaflynn]

For anyone who didn't catch it on other social media, I have finally moved out of the "temporary" apartment I was stuck in for 7 months, thanks to a lot of emotional and logistical support from friends, and a generous amount of financial support from the folks who gave to my GoFundMe. I am endlessly grateful to all of you, and if I weren't so goddamn tired right now I'd be more eloquent in saying so.

I've spent the past few weeks of unpacking and working out the bus routes around my new place trying to figure out how to explain what was so terrible about the last one. Most attempts devolved into page upon page of rage, which is not really what I want to be doing here. On the other hand, I also don't want to downplay how bad it was. 

Spoiler: The temp apartment was Very Very Bad.

The tl;dr is that I was offered someone's spare room on the condition that I help out a little extra with household chores and caring for their rats, because the pet owning roommate had recently had back surgery and was still mobility-impaired. What actually happened is that as soon as they realized I had any basic life skills whatsofuckingever, I was cornered into becoming the 24/7 on-call House Adult. I would have gone on strike, but the other two people in the apartment were so terrible at coping with absolutely any aspect of being alive that if I had, one or both of them would probably be dead now.

That is not hyperbole. I sat back at one point and realized that I had talked to 911 dispatch five times in the preceding four months. None of those calls were for me. To be clear, I ain't mad about other people having medical problems. All five of those calls were appropriate and necessary uses of emergency services. I just resent the hell out of being the default option for handling all of it, even though none of the medical emergency problems were mine, and there were other people in the house. Literally, Short Roommate had a catastrophic asthma attack one night, and when she was wheezing too hard to talk she passed the phone to Tall Roommate -- who immediately ran to the other end of the apartment, banged on my door, and handed the phone to me. It got to the point where I just told the operator what was up, went downstairs to unlock the door for EMS, stood in the corner answering the occasional question until they hauled someone off to the hospital, and then went right back to bed, because none of this was my problem. And that's just the 911 calls, not even counting the number of times I had to talk her down out of a dissociative episode, or any of the other shit I was not warned about and did not volunteer to do. They wore me down until my only response to "a fellow human can't breathe" is "fuck's sake, why am I even involved here".

They both needed a lot more, and a lot more professional, help than they could possibly have gotten out of a random civilian roommate. They both fought tooth and nail against actually getting any of it. Every time Short Roommate was dragged to the hospital, her discharge papers included a big fat packet full of social services, resources, and business cards for actual physical people to phone. I know this because whenever I cleaned the apartment, I found them on the fucking floor, whereupon I placed them on her fucking keyboard, and told her point-blank to call these people. As far as I know, she never did.

I am neither qualified nor equipped to be a live-in caregiver for anybody. There is a fucking reason I have never wanted children. I keep critters because if you give them food, water, toys, and boxes to sleep in, you can leave them to entertain themselves for hours while you work or sleep, and no one will arrest you.

There was a bunch of other stuff. Tall Roommate rarely if ever cleaned anything, including herself, unless directly ordered to do so and given a detailed list of instructions of what you meant by "clean". I only ever got her to wash her own damn dishes once, and I did it by messaging her from the other room 'I just found a mouse in the sink eating snacks off your dirty plates GO DO YOUR DISHES'. She had a laundry list of problems, but the relevant one here is that she was high-support-needs autistic with no support and zero inclination to find any. 

[Did I mention the mice? We had mice. All over. The rats murdered two of them when they got into the cages, looking for the free-feed bowl.]

Short Roommate clearly loved her rats but didn't actually do any of the rat care beyond petting and playing. One of them was tremendously sick at one point and needed meds q6h. She was supposed to be helping with that and didn't, which meant that I went several weeks on a maximum of six hours of uninterrupted sleep a night. I tore the fuck into her for that one, pointing out in exactly so many words that some of these meds were painkillers and if the rat didn't get them on time HE SUFFERS. Not doing any of the grunt work, Short Roommate evidently thought rats were so easy she should just keep getting more of them! She rescued two, one of whom was preggo, kept several of the babies, and started talking about waiting for one of the girls to grow up so she could breed him with one of her younger boys. 

Gentle Reader, I promise you the only reason I did not strangle her in her sleep that very night was that I knew, deep in my heart, that I could not move the body down two flights of stairs by myself, and if I left it up to Tall Roommate, the corpse would still be in the apartment today.

If I were inclined to any sympathy, it would have died when Short Roommate moved out to shack up with New Boyfriend and New Boyfriend's Mother. She initially took all the rats with her, which made them officially not my problem anymore, but I woke up one morning to a message that said something like "[New Boyfriend's Mother] says that if I show up to our new place with the rats she's not going to let me in, [Tall Roommate] is coming back with all the rats and everything they own". I found out later that this was because their new place was in section 8 housing, where you are not allowed to have pets that aren't service or support animals. Which Short Roommate had known the entire time, and just... made no plans for. At all. Unless "ignore everything until bitchslapped by reality, then panic and make unreasonable demands of other people" counts, I guess.

Eight rats. She dumped eight rats on me. Eight. I wound up taking care of them all without help; Tall Roommate was incapable of keeping anything in her habitat clean, including herself, and I wasn't willing to let her neglect animals. I was actually down to one rat of my own, having lost my two venerable old men, and was looking for a new friend or two for Tseng. Which I had to stop doing, because nine fucking rats is a lot of rats, and I couldn't in good conscience bring Rats nos. 10 & 11 into this shitshow. Naturally, none of the rats got along; two pairs of boys had to be kept apart, and both of them tried to pick fights with poor Tseng, and four of them were girls that had to be kept away from all of the boys for obvious reasons. It was exhausting and a catastrophe.

Once I had the rats she apparently made no further effort to re-home them, although she did keep telling Tall Roommate to come knock on my door and take pictures of them. (I put a stop to this. Tall Roommate did it because Short Roommate had broken up with her to shack up with New Boyfriend, and Tall Roommate had literally no way to cope with this other than try desperately to get her back.) I bugged her to do something about this until, predictably, I had to contact the local rat rescue people to find fosters less than a week before my moving crew was scheduled. When I told her, she replied "oh, I was just about to submit that". Sure you were. And while you're here, I have this nice bridge to sell you.

[The four girls and two youngest boys went to Mainely Rat Rescue. It looks like the boys have already found a home, but the girls are up for adoption. I kept the two old men, who both have special care needs; Garion has breathing problems that involve his own asthma inhaler and a steady diet of NSAIDs, and Errand has attitude problems that involve picking fights with any rat who isn't Garion. They're both just shy of three(!) and unlikely to find homes through a foster program, plus I'm already their third caretaker, so I couldn't send them off with a stranger. They are currently sulking because I wouldn't supplement their dinner with all of my dinner -- which is to say, they're fine.]

The point is, my brain just about died off. The only time in that apartment that I didn't spend cleaning up after three grown adults, two of whom weren't even me, were the weeks after Short Roommate moved out to shack up with New Boyfriend, which she had broken up with Tall Roommate to do, and Tall Roommate took it so badly she ended up inpatient before she ate a bottle of Tylenol. (I called 911 when I overheard her plans. It was about 50% "a fellow human is in need of help" and 50% "argh jesus fuck THIS IS NOT MY JOB please go talk to someone who is actually paid to deal with this".) I am slowly clawing my way back to the surface, so if you'll just bear with me, I'll be back on Twitch this Sunday 3-7 Eastern, and type out more things that have been on hold while I tried to retain at least some of my marbles.

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[perspective-series]

Vampire Perspective (5/17)

By: @arc852 and @hiddendreamer67

Warnings: Death threats, slight starvation, unwanted touching, fear, Virgil

First Chapter || Previous Chapter || Next Chapter

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The next evening, about an hour after sunset, Virgil finally rose from his coffin. He pushed the lid to the side, giving a wide yawn. 

 Logan’s tired gaze immediately went to the vampire’s coffin as it was opened, revealing said vampire. He had tried to take a nap during the time he was alone but he found it difficult. He, maybe, got an hour rest at the most, so he was thoroughly exhausted. 

 And also very hungry.

Virgil came over, a pleased sort of expression on his face. “Evening.” He teased, looking into the cage.

 Logan found himself scooting further back, trying to put as much distance between himself and the vampire as he could. He didn’t answer back, just looked down as he half-consciously clutched his stomach.

Virgil looked over the borrower. Something seemed… off. Was it getting sick? That would certainly be gross, almost like spoiled food. But it didn’t look particularly green. Still, Virgil sensed that this was more than just plain fear. It would be faster to just eat the borrower and be done with it, but now he found himself growing curious.

“What?” Virgil squinted. “What’s wrong with you?”

 Logan bit his lip. “I-I am quite...hungry.” He said, not meeting the vampire’s red gaze. “I know you do not plan on me surviving here long but something to fill me up will surely make your own...meal of me a bit larger.” He hated that line of reasoning but he had to assume it would be the only one the vampire would listen to. 

“...crap.” Virgil muttered to himself. He had forgotten mortals needed actual food. What did mortals eat these days, anyhow? Regardless, the borrower had a point. It would be more satisfying if the borrower was healthy (probably), and Virgil could always wait longer. He wasn’t feeling very famished tonight anyways.

“Alright, stay here.” Virgil gave a groan, puffing out into a bat and flying off into the forest. Humans were hunter/gatherers, and if borrowers still stole from humans they must eat the same things. Some meat would suffice, and likely any meat.

It was with this thought process that Virgil returned to his bedroom a few hours later, looking a bit bedraggled and holding his catch by its tail.

“Will this do?” Virgil asked, swinging the dead squirrel slightly back and forth.

 Logan looked at the dead rodent in shock and disgust, holding his arm up to his nose to block out the horrid stench coming from it. “Er, n-no, I-I don’t eat raw meat...or cooked squirrel for that matter. Either could get me sick.” Who knew what kind of diseases the animal had?

“Are you kidding me?” Virgil’s nose crinkled in annoyance. “You’re seriously that picky and delicate? Jeez, how do you even survive.”

 By not eating that. Logan thought, but didn’t say out loud. “We survive by living off the humans we live with. Taking scraps of food they leave out and things they wouldn’t miss to use as supplies.” Logan explained.

“Well, in case you haven’t noticed, I ain’t human.” Virgil snarled. “What can you eat that’s outside?”

 Logan flinched back before quickly trying to compose himself. “I...suppose berries would suffice. As long as they aren’t poisonous, of course.” Thankfully, Logan had been taught to tell as he was sure the vampire had no idea of such things.

“How the hell am I supposed to tell if they’re poisonous?” Virgil muttered, more to himself as he stomped out the door.

The vampire returned shortly, a strange assortment of berries in his hand and no dead squirrels in sight.

“Here.” He said gruffly, opening the cage and dumping them in.

 Logan moved out of the way as the berries were dumped near him. He slowly moved closer, watching the vampire warily, before inspecting the different berries. He nodded. “Yes, most of these are safe to eat as far as I can tell.” He would avoid the few he wasn’t sure about or knew to be fairly poisonous. He picked one up and took a bite, almost moaning at finally having some food in him. He then paused. “...Thank you.”

“Sure thing.” Virgil found himself watching the borrower, curious about his eating habits. He seemed to get weirdly into some of the berries, which was a bold statement for a guy who lived off blood.

 Logan continued to eat, until he noticed the vampire staring at him. He paused and coughed awkwardly. “May I...help you?”

“You’re weird.” Virgil said bluntly.

 Logan blinked, setting the berry down. “I’m...sorry?” The vampire was calling him weird?

“Borrowers are so strange.” Virgil frowned, now going off on a bit of a tangent. “If you all are so little and fragile, I don’t understand how you’ve survived this long.”

 Logan sighed. “I understand why it may be hard for you to understand but it really is quite simple.” Logan adjusted his glasses. “We hardly ever venture out outside, at least, for the most part. We stay indoors and live off whatever humans live in the building. We stick to the inside of walls and make our homes there, hidden and away from anyone who might want to do us harm.”

 Logan looked away, examining another berry. “Yes, it is very dangerous. But it’s life. I, and other borrowers, have been living this way for many, many years.”

“Believe me, I know, I was there.” Virgil gave an amused smirk.

 Logan met Virgil’s eyes after a moment. “...Oh? How old are you, exactly?” He had heard vampires lived a long time but never knew what that meant.

“Older than you’ll ever be.” Virgil said cryptically. 

 “I...well, yes, I would assume so, I have heard vampires could live to be hundreds of years old. But that doesn’t quite answer my question.” Logan said, raising an eyebrow.

“Aww, c’mon, don’t you know it’s rude to ask a vamp his age?” Virgil teased. “But go on, guess. How old do I look? Just remember I don’t take well to insults.” Virgil gave a playful snap of his teeth.

 Logan flinched back and gulped, adjusting his glasses. “Well...you look like you are only 22, maybe 24 at the most. But I know that is not the case based on how you are acting.” Logan hummed, looking the vampire over. “I’ll guess...200 years? Give or take a few years, of course.”

Virgil stared at the borrower for a long time, taking pleasure in the way he squirmed uncomfortably.

“You flatter me.” Virgil finally said, giving him a pleased- well, not exactly a smile, but not the usual condescending smirk either. “I’m older, actually. 764 years come December.”

 Logan’s eyes widened. “That...is certainly a long time to be alive.” He would be but a small blip in the vampire’s timeline. A thought that really put his own existence into thought.

“Yeah.” Virgil shrugged. The whole immortality thing lost its appeal somewhere in the century or two he spent alone. “How old are you, anyhow?”

 “I am 24.” Logan answered.

“Weird.” Virgil tried to think back to when he was 24- he thought it had something to do with the plague.

 Logan thought that was a better way to summarize the vampire, not himself. He ate another bite of a berry in careful thought. “I know...it does not really matter. But it’s getting tiresome referring to you as ‘the vampire’. What is your name?”

Virgil blinked, surprised the borrower was even curious. “Why do you care? I thought you were supposed to be quaking in your boots and cowering in my shadow.”

 “Oh, I am very much terrified of my fate.” Logan admitted, shifting his stance. “But at this point, it’s not worth it  to dwell in my own fear. I...still have a little time. I don’t want to spend it unable to do anything.” Not to mention, focusing on fear would stop him from finding a way to escape; but he wasn’t about to let the vampire know that.

...huh. “Virgil.” Virgil introduced himself, tilting his head. This borrower was certainly...strange. 

 “Logan.” He introduced back, despite not being asked. “I would say it was pleasant to meet you but...I believe that kind of courtesy does not apply here.”

Virgil snorted, that dark gleam in his eye again. “You only say that because I’m only keeping you around until I can suck you dry.”

 Logan felt a chill go down his spine and he shivered. “Well...yes. That’s why I implied it was not nice to meet you. I’d rather we had never met, in fact.”

“Lucky for me you didn’t get a say then.” Virgil glanced out the window, frowning at how it had begun to lighten. “Ugh, it’s nearly morning already? Great, I spent the whole night scouring the stupid forest for plants.”

 “Already?” Had the night passed so quickly already?

“Yeah, that’s how time works.” Virgil grumbled, getting back into his coffin. “Don’t go anywhere.”

Logan furrowed his eyebrows. “Where would I go?” He asked, looking around at the cage that had him effectively trapped.

“Oh yeah.” Virgil seemed to find this amusing, a smirk on his face before he was once again encased.

 Logan sighed and prepared for another long day alone with his thoughts. He wondered if tonight was the night he would be eaten…

-----------------------------------------

 Logan glanced out the window where the sun was just starting to set. He let out a tense sigh, curling in on himself as he stared down at the metal floor. He knew there was no use dwelling on the past...but he couldn’t help it. His mind kept wandering to Roman and what Virgil had told him before.

Roman was...gone. Was it his fault? Logically he knew there was nothing he could have done but some deep rooted part of him was blaming himself for all of this happening. If he had just been paying more attention or-or something then maybe he wouldn’t be here, awaiting his own death.

 Maybe Roman would still be alive.

 Logan didn’t want to give up but he was finding it difficult to figure out a way out. He had already scoped out the cage he was in several times and so far, nothing had presented itself as a way to escape. He truly was trapped and at Virgil’s mercy.

 Well...at least he would be seeing Roman again soon.

There was a shuffling from the coffin a few minutes later, the vampire appearing once the window had gone dark.

Virgil gave a groan, stretching his arms above his head. The familiar scent of borrower wafted around his room, making Logan into almost an aromatherapy candle.

Virgil felt himself growing hungrier, but still the thought of just eating the borrower felt… anticlimactic. Yes, surely that was the reason for the tightening in his throat. It would be too easy.

“Evening.” Virgil greeted, crossing his arms in an intimidating fashion and creeping over to the cage.

 Logan felt his heart rate spike up in fear. He forced his facial features to remain neutral, though. He nodded. “Evening.” His hands tightened it’s hold on the fabric of his jeans, waiting for the news that this was it. His last few moments.

“You’re fairly polite for a snack.” Virgil teased, reaching out to unlock the enclosure with agonizing slowness.

 Logan’s eyes widened, forgoing the neutral expression and he jumped to his feet. “L-Like I said, I see n-no point in letting my...my fear consume me.” Although he would admit, he was having a hard time getting a handle on it right now. 

“Fear consume you, huh?” Virgil grinned, showing off his fangs as he snatched up the borrower. “Unfortunate choice of words.”

 Logan yelped, shaking in the vampire’s tight grip. “I-I, that was com-completely unintentional.” He stuttered. He stared into Virgil’s mouth and at his fangs for only a moment before he had to turn his head away.

Virgil gave an appreciative hum. “You know for someone who’s claiming to be unafraid, you’re shaking quite a bit.”

 “Well it’s...it’s a little hard when I know-when I know what’s about to h-happen.” Logan winced. He truly wished he could stop but his body wasn’t listening.

“Oh, really?” Virgil tilted his head, pretending to be confused. “And what exactly is going to happen? Tell me.”

 Logan shut his eyes tight at the demand. “You...You are going to e-eat me.” He said quietly, a few tears escaping his closed eyes.

Virgil paused, watching the borrower break down in his hand. He had hoped this would help rouse some of his predatorial instincts, but now he just felt that terrible nausea again, throwing him briefly back to horrible memories. Curse this stupid sympathetic spirit of his, it only landed him in trouble. 

“...nah.” Virgil shrugged, giving a laid back appearance.

 Logan blinked, a few more tears falling. He looked up at Virgil. “Wh-What?” He felt hope rise up in his chest but he pushed it down, knowing it couldn’t be that simple.

“Not tonight, that’s too easy.” Virgil decided. Maybe tomorrow he’d be hungry enough to go through with it.

 “I see…” Not what he was hoping but it seemed like he at least had another night to live. Part of him was thankful though the other part was simply wishing to be done with it already. “So...why am I out then?” He asked, squirming some more in the grip.

“I got bored, and it’s fun to see you struggle.” Virgil’s expression darkened maniacally, with a flick of his wrist sending the borrower into the air.

 “Ah!” Logan screamed as he was suddenly airborne. He landed with a soft thud and a groan back onto Virgil’s palm. His shaking had increased. “P-Please, don’t…”

“Don’t what?” Virgil tossed again, catching with his non-dominant hand this time. “Need I remind you of my cat-like reflexes?”

 Logan screamed again, shakily sitting up as he landed again. “A-All the same, one wrong move and I could…” He gulped, catching how far up he was from the ground.

“Fall to an early untimely death?” Virgil supplied, twisting his wrist and dangling Logan upside-down by his fingers.

 “Y-Yes!” Logan answered as he felt a rush of blood go to his head. Already he was becoming dizzy. “Put me down!” He struggled for a second before realizing how bad of an idea that was and stilled.

“Oh come now, I don’t think you’d really die from this height.” Virgil slowly began to swing the borrower back and forth. “But if you’re a betting man… hey, it’s your funeral. I’m happy to indulge you to prove it. The roof, however, that would be fatal for your brittle baby bones.”

 “No! I am certainly not, please, I thought you wanted me alive when you ate me!” Logan exclaimed, once again using logic the vampire would take to.

“Eh, blood is blood, even if freshly killed.” Virgil wondered if maybe that would make it easier to stomach. Maybe he should just off the borrower and be done with it. Once the borrower was dead there’d be no use in wasting it.

 Logan’s eyes widened but...he knew there was nothing he could do. If Virgil wanted to kill him now then...then he would be killed. At least he wouldn’t have to be eaten alive anymore. He slumped, ceasing his struggles. “Well...I cannot stop you.” He shut his eyes tight, preparing for a fall and hoping his death was quick and painless.

[carol-effing-danvers]

knock me the fuck out (i dare ya, babe), finale

Weep with me tears of joy and fulfillment for this soft boy and his cuddly boyfriend.

i have some more thoughts about this universe that i may or not get to, but they aren't really relevant to the story i wanted to tell here, so those will have to be for another tale :D

part one, part two, part three

(if you’d prefer to read this in Ao3′s format, click here)

Billy is deliciously warm, deliciously relaxed and deeply asleep when the phone rings on the table beside the bed. He gives a displeased grunt and buries his face into the pillow as Steve rolls away from him to pick up the call, hoarsely croaking “’ello?” There’s a pause as he listens to the caller, then surprises Billy by tapping him on the shoulder. “For you, Billy.”

What the fuck? He mumbles a confused “Hello?”

“I’m so sorry.” Max sounds as tired as he is, maybe more. “But Lauren refuses to go to sleep – I told her that you’d be back in the morning, but it’s already almost midnight, and the more tired she is, the more upset she gets. Can you please talk to her for just a few minutes?”

“Yeah,” he slurs. “’a course. Lemme get up first so we ain’t talking in Steve’s ear while he’s tryin’ to sleep.”

“Oh my god,” Max says miserable and guilty, repeating “I’m so sorry, Billy.”

“No, no, no – it’s okay,” Gently, he closes the door behind him, thankful that Steve owns a cordless phone and trying not to walk into a wall. “I shoulda knew she’d bug out if I didn’t come home.”

Max murmurs “Lauren, Uncle Billy wants to talk to you.”

His whole heart breaks – Lulu is sucking in air hard, sobbing quietly. Poor Max must’ve been trying to get her to sleep for hours. “Hey, my girl. Why won’t you let Mommy tuck you in?”

“Wh-wh-why did you leave?!” she wails, sorrow all renewed.

“I didn’t leave you, baby. I’m having a sleepover with my friend, I’ll be back tomorrow. Mommy told you that, right?”

In a tiny voice, Lulu replies, “Yes.”

“I’m never gonna leave you without saying goodbye, Lulu,” he says softly. “I promise. Who’s my girl?”

“I-I am,” she hiccups, but she sounds a few shades calmer now.

“That’s right. And it’s gonna snow tomorrow, so I thought I’d take my girl out to make a snowman,” he says solemnly. “But we can’t do that if you’re too tired to play outside, Lulu. Can you lay down and close your eyes for me?”

“Don’t hang up!” she says, a bit frantic, and Billy feels another tug on his heartstrings.

“Won’t hang up, baby. Close your eyes for me and lay down. Okay? Lulu, skip to my Lu. Lulu, skip to my Lu. Lulu, skip to my Lu. Skip to my Lu, my darlin’…”

He has to stay with her, and sing to her, for he doesn’t know how long. He won’t leave until he’s sure that she won’t feel abandoned and there’s a period of calm before Max whispers “She’s asleep now. Thank you so much, Billy.”

She sounds close to tears herself. She’s probably been up since four or five o’clock this morning and as it turns out, Lulu isn’t the only girl with a piece of his heart. “Sweet dreams, little sister.”

“Sweet dreams, big brother.” Max sniffles.

Billy stumbles back toward the bedroom and finds Steve basically doing what he was doing for Lulu, except that Steve is singing his song to his fucking cat, a dark blob resting on his stomach as he pets her, scratching her around the ears and beneath her chin. “With no lovin’ in our souls, and no money in our clothes, you can’t say we’re satisfied…”

His voice is a beautiful purr, husky with sleep, warm and loving to an animal that Steve obviously cares about.

Billy is leveled like the Starcourt fucking Mall.

He blurts out, “You’re gettin’ the words wrong. It’s ‘coats’, not ‘clothes’.”

Fuckin’ smooth, Hargrove. Real fuckin’ smooth.

“Mmkay,” Steve says serenely, eyes closed. “It sounds better my way.”

Anything coming out of your mouth sounds better. “Yeah, it kinda does, doesn’t it?”

As he slides back underneath the covers, Angie gets annoyed with them moving around the bed and hops off to wander back out of the room, tail held high. Steve curls around him, humming contentedly under his breath. Steve’s nose brushes along his neck, breathing inward, and Billy feels like he’s gonna die, because this much happiness at once just can’t be good for you. His mouth has gone dry.

Steve gives another contented hum, wrapping an arm around his waist and a leg around his hips. His hand, resting at Billy’s heart, caresses down the scarred skin and muscle to rest near the waistband of his boxers, and Steve’s thumb leisurely strokes up and down his lower belly, through the trail of hair leading down to his crotch. He murmurs against Billy’s skin “I never get this.”

“Hm. I hope I’d remembered getting you to feel me up,” Billy replies, grinning at the quiet darkness.

“No.” He feels Steve grin against his shoulder, which is…just…the best feeling. “A bed. Talking. Just…letting me kiss you.”

“Letting you,” Billy repeats, a bit sarcastically. “It’s become my cross to bear.”

Steve lightly bites him on the shoulder, and Billy can feel the way his mouth still stretches around a smile. “Okay, you know what I’m saying here.”

“Yeah, I guess I do. But ain’t no hardship, sweetheart.” He squeezes Steve’s hand, and he’s silent for long enough that Billy asks, “What’chu thinkin’ about, Stevie?”

Steve sighs, low and sweet, fingers still petting at his belly. “Billy Hargrove thinks I’ve got heartbreaker’s eyes. I’m thinking ‘bout that.”

“You do,” he whispers, earnest, heart in his throat. “Took your sunglasses off and I see these big brown eyes – and my soul left my fuckin’ body, Steve, I swear. I remember-” Billy swallows, and part of him can go back to that scared, raging, confused boy. “I remember thinking that it wasn’t fair, that no boy should be able to break my heart with just eyes.”

Steve laughs, ducking his face into Billy’s neck sheepishly, even though Billy can’t see him anyway. His skin is hot against his own, lashes like the flutter of his butterfly wings over his skin, making his heart thud harder. “You are a real romantic. I never get that, either.”

Billy snorts, but he can’t really deny it. “It’s too bad, y’know. Cause you’re pretty good at this part, darlin’. Where the hell is my lullaby, though?”

Steve pets his skin some more, slow and lazy, and Billy thinks that maybe he’s already falling asleep-

“Which way you goin’, Billy? Can I go, too?” he croons, fingertips warm and gentle on his skin, petting his abdomen and stroking along the tendons of his neck, lips warm and whisper soft upon his skin. “Which way you goin’, Billy? Can I go with you? You are my whole, babe, my heart and soul, babe. I’d have nothing to show, babe, if you go away…”

He’s got chills running up and down his spine, even though his face and chest feel hot and feverish. Billy’s dying, he’s dying, because he knows now that his love was never wasted on this boy. “Who’s the real romantic?” he whispers hoarsely, relaxing his weight back against Steve’s body. “You’re sweet, Stevie.”

“You’re not fooling me,” he murmurs back and kisses beneath his ear, soft and wet. Billy shudders. “You are, too.”

He takes Steve’s hand, smooth from a life of finger-paint and glitter-glue, and presses his mouth to the palm. “Gotta keep that our special secret, darlin’.”

Sleepily, Steve says “Ain’t a secret, baby.”

---

Steve spends a week just sort of walking on fucking air.

“What’s up, buddy?” Steve doesn’t even bother to ask who it is – Dustin calls him at five o’clock on the dot, every Monday. “Excited to finish up your midterms and come home for a little while?”

“Yeah, I’m going straight to a study group as soon we’re done.” He sounds as cheerful as he ever is, but by now, Steve is also intimately familiar with what he sounds like when he’s tired, too.

“Okay, but try to make sure you get enough rest,” Steve says, holding the phone on his ear with his shoulder as he lifts Angie onto his lap. “You’re smarter when you’ve slept longer than four hours a night, buddy.”

“Yeah, I know.” Then, a little less cheerfully, “So, uh…how are you feeling?”

Steve frowns. Had he been sick the last time he talked to Dustin? He didn’t think so… “Uh…fine? Why?”

“Well, you know…the ten year anniversary is coming up,” Dustin says awkwardly. He sounds distinctly like he’s also frowning now. Unhappy. “And like…I get worried about you, and stuff.”

“Dustin…”

“-and you always say you’re fine, even when you’re definitely not fine…”

“…pal…”

“Robin says you’re okay, which I guess is good but…”

“Dustin.”

“-it’s not the same as be able to see for myself…”

“Dude, seriously-”

“And you’re lonely, man, the people there treat you like shit!”

“DUSTIN!” Steve says loudly, scaring poor Angie right off his lap. “…I have a boyfriend.”

He says the words before really thinking about them and all of their implications. Dustin lets out this hilarious little ‘eep!’ before shrieking “Oh my god, really?!” like he’s suddenly sixteen again and asking Steve how two men have sex, in the technical sense, and jeez-

Steve really misses him, feels his eyes sting. “Yeah. I mean…it’s a new thing, but we’ve already gone on a few dates and it’s going pretty well.”

“Really? Okay, well, what’s he like?!” Dustin asks impatiently.

“Uh, well…” Nervously, Steve wishes that he hadn’t bought a cordless phone. His fingers have nothing to play with in moment like these. “You sort of already know him…Or, I guess, knew him, would be the better way to put it.”

Exasperated, Dustin says, out of the blue, “Oh my god, if it’s Tommy Hall, Steve, I know he had a crush on you, but you can do way better-”

“What?! No, Tommy Hall didn’t-what the fuck, who gave you that idea?”

“Robin,” he says, with an obvious ‘duh’ at the end.

“What the fuck?!” Steve repeats, this time at a volume that makes Angie cower under the coffee table. “Oh Ang, I’m sorry, baby – c’mon. Daddy’s sorry.”

Apologetically, Dustin explains “She told me and Erica not to tell you, because she didn’t wanna out Tommy to you even though she was pretty sure he wanted to fuck you. Then after your crisis, we agreed he wasn’t good enough for you.” Steve feels a sudden headache coming on, because this entire scenario has ‘Scoops Troop’ written all over it in big bold letters. “If it’s not Tommy Hall, then who?”

“Billy. Max’s Billy.”

There is a pause before Dustin asks “…is he okay now?”

The thing about Dust is that he’s so outwardly goofy that it’s easy to forget that he’s so smart, and he’s so smart that it’s easy to forget that he’s so empathetic. “Yeah, he’s okay now. He grew up a lot more when he went back to California.”

“Is he nice?” It’s less a question and more a demand.

“He’s really nice,” Steve says honestly, finally coaxing Angie back onto his lap after earning her forgiveness. “And he’s more…patient now. More relaxed. I think Lauren might be his best friend – he calls her Lulu, and I see him every morning when he drops her off. He um…he works for El.”

Jane Hopper is something of a…not exactly a sore spot for Dustin, but mentioning her tends to make him droop like a wilting daisy. They are not close and probably never will be. Steve used to think Dust was exaggerating when he said that Eleven didn’t like him, but she tends to shut down in one on one conversations with him, and she’ll do just about anything to avoid being left in a room alone with him.

Steve doesn’t really think that it’s because El straight up doesn’t like him, he thinks that it’s more of a matter of a sheltered person like El not quite knowing how to deal with a personality as loud and attention-grabbing as Dustin’s could be. That reaction crushes his self-confidence though, so the Scoops Troop try not to bring her up, and Steve tries to do El the courtesy of not overwhelming her too often.

“Oh good, Mike was just telling me she was getting busy enough to start needing help,” Dustin says neutrally. There was a pause, and then, more quietly, he asks “Is Max doing okay?”

It’s a little weird, because even though they’re all the same age, Max kind of had to grow up the faster, because while the others were thinking about the end of their freshman year of college, Max was giving birth and dealing with a marriage and a mortgage. “I think she’s excited to have Billy back in town – he’s hinted that she was having a bit of financial trouble before he got here.”

“So, you don’t think that she and Justin will be getting back together?”

Steve sighs, irritated. “If Lucas wants to make me a spy, the least he could do is ask me the questions himself.”

“That’s not a yes,” Dust coaxes. “Just yes or no, I refused to ask you anything else.”

“No, I’m pretty much sure that if he comes back to town, Max will be asking to borrow the nail bat.”

“Hm, there’s a long line for that. Can you pick me up from the station?”

“Uh-huh. Eight o’lock on the 30th, right?”

“Right.” Dust sighs, and again Steve’s heart gives a painful pang at hearing how tired he sounds. “Sorry, it’s time for my study group. Love you, Steve.”

“Love ya, kid.”

---

He has way more work to do now, since Robin insists that the original bet was for only a make-out session and he kind of ended up with a boyfriend, so she gleefully dumped upon him all of the quizzes she gave before the students began spring break, including the twenty page midterms she made them do. He didn’t have to grade the three page essays at the end but that still left seventeen pages to mark through forty-five times.

Despite the stack of paperwork in front of him, Steve’s still got a huge grin on his face as he sits across from Robin in the diner and lifts his coffee mug. Dazed, he says “I’ve got a boyfriend.”

He can’t say it too loud, that’s inviting trouble on himself that he doesn’t need, but he can’t hold it in.

Robin looks up, threads of hair escaping from her messy bun, and smirks at him, but her eyes are enormous and warm. “Yeah, you do.” Setting down her pen and flexing her fingers, Rob rests her chin on her hand. “And you still haven’t given me any details on dates number two and three.”

Steve’s brain helpfully provides him with the dreamy vision of both of those.

Date number two was a pool house in Evansville, drinking beer, talking trash at each other that was at least half flirting, and finding reasons to brush up against Billy in public, until Billy stood behind him as he was making a shot and growled in his ear, “Get in the fuckin’ car, darlin’. Gonna bite you where you like it.”

They steamed up the windows of the Impala that was the Camaro’s spiritual successor, and Billy pulled him on his lap, yanked opened the buttons on his shirt and assaulted Steve’s chest – pinched, kissed, sucked, and yes bit him, until Steve had his hands braced on the roof to keep himself grounded in a world that kept spinning, and cried “Oh fuck, Billy, stop, I’m gonna come.”

“Mm, I don’t hear a downside anywhere in there. Lemme get you off, heartbreaker.”

Right there in the driver’s seat, Steve’s head thrown back and mouth wide open as he tugged frantically on Billy’s shortened hair, coming without a hand ever touching his dick because he had Billy’s groaning mouth sucking at his nipples. Limbs shaking, Steve shoved his hand down the front of his pants and jerked Billy off with sharp rotations of his wrist, kissing all over his face, his neck, his chest. “Baby, baby,” he murmured, nipping at Billy’s neck. “Look at me.”

Billy’s eyes were the blue of distant oceans, like he kept a part of California in him wherever he went. Steve whispered “Fuck, Billy, you’re beautiful” and suddenly his fingers were soaked with come, Billy staring up at him in stunned rapture, like Steve was the sun and he couldn’t bring himself to look away.

Date three was Billy making California-style tacos for him (he had no idea that avocados were so delicious, what the hell!) and then watched Stand By Me, the Friday night movie on tv, head on Billy’s shoulder while he explained how Stephen King basically ripped off The Party’s life story, minus Maxine and Eleven.

Billy looked so startled when Steve started groping him on the sofa. There were sometimes moments that Billy really seemed to think that Steve was some kind of stuck-up prude, when he looked absolutely flabbergasted that Steve was as into this as he was, could be as aggressive as he was.

“Bed?” Billy asked in his ear, grinding down against him, his hands squeezing Steve by the hips. Thick, throbbing against him, making Steve’s mouth water and his heart beat three times faster. His belly was wet with pre-come, smeared all over his skin, burning hot where their skin met.

Steve had his teeth clenched together, trying not to shout so loudly that all his neighbors knew his guest’s name was Billy. He grabbed Billy by the upper arms and squeezed hard, sweating and arching his hips into his every motion, thighs tightened around his hips. “Billy, if you stop right now, I swear I’ll kill you.”

“Yeah?” The dummy was so surprised. “Getting close, heartbreaker?”

Sometimes, Billy still seemed surprised that Steve even reacted to him, like he was an untouchable statue. My ice princess. But he was flesh and he was blood, and it scared him, how much he wanted Billy to touch him. How bewildered he felt at the sight of Billy lying next to him in the morning, face down in the pillow.

He’d show him a goddamn ice princess.

“Give it to me good, baby, c’mon,” he moaned, and Billy bucked faster, breathed harder. Steve could feel his arms shake and smiled against his mouth. Raking his nails down his back, Steve slid his hands beneath the back of Billy’s boxers and got two handfuls of his ass, rasping “That’s it, like you mean it. Fuck, don’t stop, Billy. Right there! Baby-baby-!”

“Steve-o, earth to Steve-o!” Robin sing-songs. “What planet did you land on, dingus? Care to share with the class?”

He waves her off. “You don’t want to hear all the sweaty, manly details, Rob…”

She watches him drift off, pale skin flushing warm and vivid. “Oh my god, what’s that face for? What did you do?!”

Blushing like a schoolgirl, Steve hides his face. “After the boning, he made me hot chocolate and we spent three hours cuddling on the couch!”

“Oh my god, Steve, leave it to you to get embarrassed by the high school romance bits,” Robin is laughing at him, loud and happy. “What a dingus!”

Despite her laughter, Rob is practically glowing. Has Steve’s new relationship really made her this happy? With a bit of a whine to his tone, Steve says, “Well it’s not like I haven’t done the other parts before! I didn’t even know Billy wanted to do the sappy shit!”

She clicked her tongue, grinning fondly. “You love it.”

“I do,” he admits, bashful. “He’s all…romantic and stuff. Y’know.”

“And stuff? Come on, you can give me better details than that.” Steve can’t manage to do anything but blush harder and Rob smiles like the Cheshire cat. “Oh, that good, huh? I bet he brings you breakfast in bed and calls you pet names.”

Steve is hiding a smile behind his fingers, a lost and awed expression in his eyes. “Heartbreaker.”

“Hm?”

“He calls me sweetheart, and darlin’, and-and heartbreaker.” Self-conscious with himself, Steve buries his head in his arms and moans, “Oh god, please don’t make me say anything else.”

“That’s ridiculous and I love it,” Robin replies, with an enormous grin.

“Buckley, why are you torturin’ my guy?” Neither of them heard Billy walk into the diner, but there he is – blue flannel, fleece-lined jacket, and heavy denim. Steve becomes a puddle in the booth and it must be obvious because Rob looks positively gleeful and Billy is starting to look smug and maybe a little besotted.

Fuck.

---

Billy knows that Robin must’ve been teasing him – Steve’s pretty face is all pink, even the tips of his ears are red. Buckley, on the other hand, is almost demonic with glee. Clearing his throat, Steve gives him such an adoring expression that it leaves Billy nearly breathless. “Hi there, Harrington.”

“What are you doing here?” Steve asks playfully, with a smile that veers dangerously close to naked flirtation.

He shrugs. “Lulu went to her friend Sam’s birthday party. Wanted to check on you, since you said the slave driver chained you to your paperwork.”

Buckley huffs. “I won that bet fair and square!”

Steve huffs back, with an endearing little pout. “I never agreed to it, you bully!” He throws Billy a look with those devastating eyes. “She’s going to abandon me to see a movie. Wanna keep me company?”

If anyone ever figures out how fucking easily he falls to that gaze, he’s a dead man. Aw shit. From Buckley’s face, she’s already figured that out. “Yeah, ‘course.”

Buckley rolls her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, like getting to moon at your new boyfriend is such a hardship.”

“Rob!” Steve hisses, looking at nervously.

She scoffs, getting up from the opposite side so that Billy could take her place. She gives Billy sort of a challenging stare, and tosses her head. “If he didn’t wanna go public, he should’ve said no the first damn time, when you warned him.”

Maybe Billy’s answer would be different if his father were still alive. But he ain’t. “It ain’t that big a deal – just don’t wanna get Harrington into any shit.”

She pitches her voice so that it won’t carry. “You don’t get to take whatever you want in private and leave him out in the cold in public.”

He can’t even imagine how Old Billy would react to having a woman talk to him like this. But by the hardness in her eyes, he does know that even Old Billy wouldn’t have scared her. Robin Buckley has fought monsters far more disturbing the one he used to be. She also, judging from the steel in her jaw, has seen people (men? women? both?) do this to Steve before. Take their physical pleasure from him in dark of night and then pretend they can’t see him in the light of day.

She looks ready to knock his teeth out if she doesn’t like his answer, and Billy can both understand that anger, and respect her desire to protect Steve from pain. “Down girl,” he murmurs, “I wouldn’t leave him out in the cold anywhere, never mind around these wolves.”

“Rob,” Steve says lowly. “Don’t give him a shovel speech. I can take care of myself.”

“You shouldn’t have to,” she responds, with a smile that’s equally sweet and poisonous. Billy’s opinion of her skyrockets. “Have fun, boys.”

Steve sighs at her retreating back, looking put upon for a moment before he smiles at Billy again. Flicking his hair out of his face, he pushes his glasses up his nose and admits, “I actually do have to work on these. Sorry.”

Billy steals his coffee mug. “Yeah, I kinda assumed that.” He pulls a dog-eared copy of Red Dragon from his jacket pocket. “Don’t worry, I can keep myself entertained. Besides, I got somethin’ real pretty to look at.”

He throws in a wink just for good measure, just because he knows he’ll be well rewarded with another rosy blush coloring Steve’s cheeks.

It’s relaxing, sitting around like a normal couple, nobody giving a shit about the two of them sitting there. Understandably, he’s pretty surprised when something – or someone – touches his dick under the table.

His eyes immediately shoots up to Steve’s face as the arch of a socked foot presses into the fly of his jeans, rubbing gently against the rapidly thickening semi there. The question on his lips dies almost instantly. He hardly needs to ask if it’s an accident – Steve’s gaze is already fixed on Billy, biting down on the corner of his lip as he tries to hide the curve of a wicked smile, his eyes dark behind the frames of his glasses.

Billy’s mouth drops open slightly as Steve’s toes curls around the rigid line of cock, wedged painfully against his zipper. Steve makes a low noise, a satisfied kind of purring, at how quickly Billy goes from semi to fully hard. Gripping the edge of the table with one hand and squashing his book into an open position with the other, Billy croaks “Steve.”

Oh so innocently with his angel-faced smile and his creamy rose blush, Steve says “What are you reading?”

Billy has to bite down a pained groan as Steve rubs him just a little harder. It’s torturous – there’s too many layers between them to get Billy off, which he suspects that Steve is well aware of, but it also feels so good that he doesn’t really want him to stop. Too late, he recalls Robin’s words about Steve in the 11th Hour. He likes to flirt with danger. He’s addicted to risk.

He honestly couldn’t think of anything riskier than Steve trying to bring him off in the middle of one of the town’s busiest attractions, only edged out by the churches and the bars. Billy stares at him helplessly, wide-eyed and voiceless with the force of his surging arousal. There is the hint of a command in his voice when Steve repeats, “What are you reading, Billy?”

“R-red-Red Dragon,” Billy responds hoarsely, fighting to stop himself from humping Steve like a fucking animal. He can’t stop himself from letting go of the table and sliding his hand under the cuffs of Steve’s slacks, wrapping his fingers around his ankle to keep him there.

Steve looks very pleased indeed and gives Billy’s dick another rub, finding his cockhead through his pants and flexing his toes right around it. “Steve,” he says weakly. “Are you trying to give me a fetish?”

Surprised, he asks “Do you have one?”

“No, but-” He holds in a whine and hisses, “Keep touchin’ my dick like that, and I’m gonna start having inappropriate thoughts about your feet, sweetheart.”

Surprised and curious now, Steve presses harder. “Can you come this way?”

“I don’t-I don’t know.” Billy has to hold back another whine and quickly lets go of his book before he can start accidentally ripping out pages. “Why…why are you…?”

Shyly, which is very rich coming from someone in the middle of giving him a footjob in public, Steve says “Just trying to make you feel good. Can’t use my hands from all the way over here.”

Despite these words, his stare on Billy is hungry, and he can hear Steve panting softly through his words. The distant part of his mind that’s still rational wonders what is that’s doing it for him – that Billy is kinda weirdly turned on by his feet, that Billy is somewhat at his mercy, or that anyone could catch them doing this. Or maybe it’s a little of all three.

Unable to take it any longer, Billy gently pulls Steve’s sock off, preferring to be able to touch warm skin, and cups the top of his foot against his dick. He strokes Steve’s ankle and rolls his hips as subtly as he can, swallowing a moan as Steve’s dark longing stare holds him captive.

“Dunno where you got an idea like this, heartbreaker,” Billy croaks.

“We can stop,” Steve suggests sweetly, pushing his heel against his aching balls and flexing his toes again. Watching Billy’s eyelashes flutter and the way the hand still on the table clenches and unclenches spastically. Steve nibbles his lower lip and lowers his voice to a suggestive, throaty husk “Or you can just come for me.”

“Steve.” He doesn’t know which is stronger, surprise or desperation or fear.

“Nobody’s watching,” he promises, still in that honey-sweet persuasive purr. He emphasizes this with an up and down rub against the denim seam and licks his lips with an obscene flick of the tongue.

Billy’s cock twitches hard, weeping pre-come into his boxers, and he knows that Steve can feel it because he’s losing the effort to hold in that wicked smile now. His tongue darts out again, like he can taste Billy in the air, and Steve squirms around like he’s trying to relieve the pressure on his own cock.

He sinks down in the booth and spreads this thighs apart, holding Steve against his prick with a little more pressure. He pleads “F-faster, darlin’. Just a little…”

Billy can feel the muscles and tendons in his ankle flexing and shifting as Steve immediately gives in, all coy teasing over as rubs at a pace clearly meant to bring Billy off even through the thick fabric. An echo from the past murmurs “Yeah, it’s me. Don’t cream your pants.”

His lips form around a silent ‘fuck’, trying not to be extremely obvious when he bucks into the contact, choking off his noises to soft helpless whimpers.  

“Fuck, you are so hot,” Steve breathes in the present, nostrils flaring. He’s almost openly panting now and his eyes look nearly black.

Black holes that want to completely consume him. Billy bites down a scream and comes, wet and sticky, because beneath that angel-faced sweetness is a wicked, hungry smile. Just for Billy.

Lazily, Steve takes a twenty dollar bill from his jacket and slaps it down onto the sticky table. “Gimme my sock back,” he says, collecting all his papers and fondly stroking down Billy’s thigh before taking his foot back. “Do you like French silk?”

“Who doesn’t?” Billy says faintly, dazed.

“Good,” Steve says, all sugar and sweetness again. Billy’s fucking dizzy, man. “I made us one. Let’s go.”

“Don’t you want…?” His eyes dart down to Steve’s lap.

“Already did,” and there’s a hint of that dark gleam again. “Watching you, baby.”

Holy fucking shit.