#I can feel how long these issues have weighed on these people or the time they’ve spent just doing regular work to achieve their ends

[chewwytwee]

Better call Saul is da best show evarrrrr xD

[fic-over-cannon]

Part 6: The Mistake

part 5 | series masterlist | ao3 link

jason todd x f!reader

summary: jason flees the aftermath of your night together

tags: angst, jason todd’s usual poor self esteem issues, off screen violence

rated explicit (mdni) | wc: 1.1k

Jason is freaking the fuck out. He’s literally just fucked up the one bright spot in his life and he has no idea how to fix this. His first mistake was beating that masked asshole up instead of quietly letting him rob the two of you. He’s got a civilian identity for a reason and he’d blown it all to hell because he didn’t like the way that fuckhead had looked at you. The way his gun had swung from Jason to you when you were struggling with the clasp of your necklace. All he had known in that moment was that there was a couple in an alleyway, a man with a gun, and a pretty pearl necklace. The only thing missing was a little boy to watch on in horror.

His second mistake was taking you home. It was a stupid, rookie mistake, the kind he hadn’t made even as Robin. He had panicked at your blank stare and violent shivering, and your home had only been the next building over. Of course he had known the code to your building. Of course he had known which apartment was yours. He’s spent enough time staring longingly through it’s window. Jason just hadn’t expected your terror to abate long enough to realize just how strange the whole situation was. 

His next mistake had been kissing you back. Scratch that, it had been blurting out the truth of his identity. Revealing to you of all people that Jason Todd is nothing more than an ill fitting suit of clothes for the Red Hood to move through the world in. He’d been so fucking stupid. There’s going to be repercussions for that. There’s going to be repercussions for all of his mistakes. He should have known this wouldn’t work, that he wasn’t fashioned for any life but violence. 

Jason curses, fingers angrily crushing the cigarette held between them. The wind is cold, cutting across the rooftop and digging its fingers under the collar of his shirt. He lets it, embracing the grounding sting of the cold. His position on the roof of the building opposite yours and has a perfect vantage point of your window. You still lie in bed, curled around the shape of his missing body. He shouldn’t have kissed you. The blanket slips off your shoulder as you turn in your sleep and Jason has to swallow through a suddenly dry throat. If he closes his eyes, he can still taste you. Feel the warmth of you under him, the tight vice of you around him. Jason savours the memory of last night because it’s the only time he’s going to let it happen. He should have pushed you away because he’d known better. But you had asked, and Jason had known exactly what it felt like when your skin got too tight and you can barely think except to make that feeling stop.  So he had kissed you again and been lost. 

You start to stir, sleep weighing your limbs down. Jason’s never seen anything more beautiful. You stretch an arm out, reaching out for something that isn’t there.  He realizes who you’re looking for a moment before you freeze. Jason can’t hear you, not from up here, but he swears he hears you call his name anyway. The answering silence of your apartment must echo because it rings in his ears too. Your shoulders tense and then start shaking, arms coming to wrap around your knees. The sight sends a curl of something awful and acidic down his throat. 

In his pocket, his phone starts to vibrate. His knuckles go white. It stops vibrating. He manages one heavy sigh before it starts buzzing again. He pulls it out but lets it go to voicemail anyway. Leaving was another mistake too, and he’s not sure he’s ready yet to face up to everything he’s done wrong. 

“Jason? Look, it’s me,” your voice wobbles and he hates the way his name sounds. “ Like I know we didn’t make any promises, or talk about things at all really. But I woke up and... and you weren’t there.  You’re not here.” There’s a heavy breath on the line. "Can you– can you just call me back? Please? 'M not gonna beg, but can we just talk? Or, or something. Is this about the Red Hood thing? ‘Cause I’m not gonna tell, God who would I even tell without getting myself arrested too? Just... Jesus what the fuck Jason? Because I thought– I thought we were actually friends at least. Just, what the fuck was that.” 

The recording ends abruptly and Jason watches you throw your phone onto the bed. This anger, this frustration feels different. More private. There’s already a sickness lurking in his gut, he doesn’t need to add to it by intruding on this moment. He leaves that rooftop and all it’s flavours of betrayal behind him. He’s fucked up enough in the past 24 hours to know that this would be another mistake. 

The thing is, Jason doesn’t know if this is fixable. If he is fixable. He refuses to settle you with the burdens of him because one day it’ll drive you away. He knows that he won’t survive breaking you but watching you walk away one day will break him. So he’ll destroy his own heart now, instead of letting the inevitable happen. He can live with setting this tender thing between you on fire if it means he gets to keep you. If he’ll never have to wait for the day you’ll discover the truth of him and leave with disgust in your eyes. No, better to make the break early before he becomes too addicted to your approval. So he’ll swallow down the words he wants to say until he chokes on them. He’ll– he’ll make it up to you in any way he can, but this, this is the one thing he can’t give you.

Jason doesn’t answer your voicemail for another day. He needs every minute of that time to convince himself of what he knows needs to do. It hurts. If his heart wasn’t kept artificially beating by whatever toxic sludge the Lazarus Pit was made of, he’s sure his heart would have stopped from longing at least five times over. It becomes a little easier to remember the rules and why he’s put them in place when he’s standing in a warehouse full of dead bodies and staring down the disappointed faces of his former family. Maybe he went a little overboard, let the heart sickness in him bleed out onto his fists, but these were men who were going to die anyway. Had to die or else Black Mask wouldn’t get the warning about encroaching on his territory. There’s new stakes, keeping those under his protection safe, because now you’re one of his in so many ways.  

Time is ticking away and the longer he leaves things unsettled, the slimmer his chances of having any part of you at all. He clears his throat and picks up the phone.

part 7

[inchidentally]

Okay so I was thinking about why Oscar didn’t go and congratulate Lando right after his win but I think the answer is quite simple. It’s because he felt a little at odds with himself.

He lost out in that race because of the safety car the same one that secured Lando’s chance. (you can hear him audibly swear over the radio when it came out, which he NEVER does) He was pissed at the timing and then to top it all off gets his race ruined by Carlos of all people (again) and THEN when he’s desperately trying to force his way back thought he field he’s told to stop fighting because Lando is in the lead.

So whilst I’m sure he was happy for Lando, he was, at the same time, mourning his own loss. As he should! He’s a racing driver. he should be pissed at losing especially at no fault of his own.

So he gave Lando the space, let him take in his well deserved victory and once he’d calmed he congratulated Lando earnestly, without his feeling for his own race getting in the way!

And I think it’s says a lot about how understanding and kind Oscar is. He knew if he congratulated Lando as soon as they crossed the line he wouldn’t have meant it enough so he waited until he did mean it.

What do you think?

KES BABE you're gonna make me long post !!!

I've actually got to weigh in (pun intended) with a very real technicality that my cousin pointed out when I was looking for Oscar once we finally got to watch!

all of the drivers who congratulated Lando not only were father figures/big brother figures to him, they also finished in the top 10 and quite literally had finished their weigh in nice and quick - the exception being Daniel who did not have to go and see the stewards. quite literally Oscar had to wait toward the back of the queue to finish his parc ferme shit (did we ever even get eyes on him?) from there he had to go see the stewards. depending on who they spoke to first out of him, Carlos and KMag and how long they kept him in the meeting, from there he'd have had to find out where Lando was (celebrating? interviews? cool down room?) and then run around to wherever he was. and ofc if he was in cool down he wouldn't have been allowed in.

so technically maybe Lando would've still been easy to find in Oscar's gap between finishing in parc ferme and going to the stewards, he might also have been stood waiting for his interview or even doing it or he might have already headed to the cool down room etc etc etc.

but I am NOT going to expect Oscar to try and navigate all of that when he not only had his top 3 position ruined but now he also had to go and find out if he was going to be penalized as well !!

especially when he knows he's got ample time to congratulate Lando anyway and Oscar is not remotely the type to care if cameras are around to broadcast it or not. the other non-podium drivers were going to entirely different garages and who knows when they'd cross paths with Lando again.

so honestly I personally think this all came down to technicalities more than anything else and if Oscar had finished in the top 10 at least then he would've absolutely been right there to congratulate Lando both for the ease of it but also bc it wouldn't have been as awful a result even if did receive a penalty.

and equally if he had the time to think of it, he would've assumed Carlos was already headed up there to congratulate Lando (and possibly could have seen him) and it was not !! the time for Oscar and Carlos to cross paths at that moment !!

BUT AS YOU SAID !! I think if there was time for him to get past the frustration and anger at what had happened to his own race and those mitigating factors weren't as much of an issue as I'm guessing they were, we know damn well that he'd be thinking what you said <3<3 bc even when things are going horrendously for him, Oscar never loses his head. and if he at all thought he'd bring his own negativity to the biggest moment in Lando's career so far then no WAY would he have risked it.

and bottom line is that one hug has ended up paling in comparison with how much Oscar was there for Lando in Oscar accepting 50% of the upgrades, obeying team orders for Lando rather than trying to get back in the points, showing up for Lando's celebrations twice in a major way, then going out to celebrate him all night long and posting about his win on social media for days afterward <3 like sure it would've had wider publicity if there'd been a hug right after - but Lando's beaming smile and thanking Oscar shows that he doesn't rate publicity as being more significant than everything else Oscar did for him that weekend ;__;

and what's actually really killed me is that surely surely there had to be an element of it for Lando where he remembered last year telling the press how it stung and hurt that Oscar had achieved any kind of win before him. that Oscar was never a showboat about it and always specified that it was a sprint win and not a real race win. that Lando was always the one to bring it up and give Oscar his dues but that Oscar never brought it up again afterward himself. and the mounting anxiety for Lando of what if Oscar got that race win before him? and how much that anxiety must have been at it's peak watching Oscar leading in Miami?? literally I think it would've been too much to humanly expect Lando to cope at all well. I think the absolute least amount of grace we would have given him would be to not go and immediately celebrate it with Oscar but honestly? if he'd decided to just do his post race interviews and slip away quietly until the video with Andrea then none of us would have judged him for it AT ALL. it would have been an unavoidably bittersweet day and knowing what the press and haters would have done to him would have paled in comparison to Lando having to live with knowing that Oscar got there first and so much quicker. and genuinely I think it would have taken a certain amount of shine off of it for Oscar as well and he would not have even slightly expected Lando to put himself through any more of it than strictly necessary for appearances.

(seriously I think we all breathed a sigh of relief over this win as much as we were elated about it !! we will never have to exist in a timeline where Oscar got his race win before Lando)

so not only will Lando have not remotely expected Oscar to show up in parc ferme for a hug, he has clearly counted every moment of Oscar celebrating his win as golden and beyond the call of teammate duty. and that not only did he make sure that posterity recorded Oscar's achievements earlier in that race, he made sure that he thanked him by setting the example of what could be done on just half the upgrades.

we all expected each of the hugs Lando got right after that race. each of those men has helped to raise Lando and has watched him since he was small and awkward and painfully shy and suffering heart-wrenching race results. they needed to hold their boy in his moment of purest happiness.

but none of us could have reasonably assumed how Oscar - only just out of his rookie season and Lando's teammate of just one season and a bit - would react to such a devastating race for himself while also on the biggest day of his teammate's career to date.

one hug would honestly have been a perfectly fine bare minimum and plenty of other drivers would have called that good and begged off.

equally tho one measly hug shouldn't make anyone underestimate how extraordinarily above and beyond and then some Oscar has been for Lando for the past week. that not only has he celebrated it and celebrated Lando, he's done so in proportion to people older than him who have known Lando much longer than him and who are not direct rivals to Lando.

like genuinely, the general F1 fans keep saying what a gentlemen and exemplary one-of-a-kind teammate Oscar has been through all of this and they're absolutely right. we not only got to rejoice in Lando's win, we also get to rejoice that he has a teammate who has proven his worth and made the McLaren driver partnership secure for the years they have to come <3<3

[ghoulfuckersincorporated]

Joshua Graham (Fallout: New Vegas, Honest Hearts DLC) NSFW Headcanons

Massive voyeur. He's attracted to you the moment he meets you, but his religious beliefs/the probable age gap/the circumstances/his own fucked up self-image keep him from saying anything. It doesn't keep him from watching you closely, though, from studying your habits and your daily schedule. Especially interested in what times you usually leave camp. He already disappears sometimes without anyone really knowing where he's gone; despite his positive working relationship with the Dead Horses, Joshua's energy is off-putting overall, and he's intimidating. It makes people nervous if they have to interact with him one-on-one for too long. Due to this, he has the freedom of sort of coming and going as he pleases, since no one wants to be the person to question him, though more often than not he can be found working away at weapons in the Angel Cave. That said, he is prone to sneaking away for an hour or so in the evenings (to stretch his legs and occasionally sneak a cigarette), slipping out unnoticed amid the hustle of the busy camp; his schedule for this changes once you come around, but, he'd swear it has nothing to do with you if confronted. He just so happens to want to take a little stroll right around the time you go to find somewhere private to bathe. The commitment to promptness only increases when he realizes that you sometimes use this little bit of "alone time" to masturbate.

He won't even touch himself 95% of the time; seems the type to get off on denying himself. Trust me, he desperately wants to, though. On a day where he gets especially worked up watching you, he might stroke himself over his clothing, or even cum untouched, but he won't take the risk of exposing himself fully. This usually happens on days where he gets to watch you touch yourself, caught up in studying every detail of how to bring you pleasure while openly lusting over your body. However, most of the time he'll simply sit in silence, hidden away out of your line of vision as he takes in every ounce of your beauty.

If he notices you starting to get close with someone, it'll be enough to prompt him to reveal his own feelings. The man is deeply jealous in an ugly way, and the idea that someone else would have you just because he failed to ever say anything is repellent to him. Doubly so if that person is Daniel. Once he's confessed his interest, he'll be quite possessive, even if you're still weighing your feelings for him against your feelings for someone else. Knowing this will drive him crazy, and he'll be quickly desperate to "mark his territory" in some way.

In terms of your intimate life, he doesn't have much energy for sex despite his sex drive and attraction to you being quite high. As long as his wounds go unhealed, he's in a lot of pain, and pain is exhausting. He may want to bend you over every flat surface in Zion pretty much every second of the day, but he simply does not have the energy.

He's sinned a lot in the past, so he's not exactly sexually inexperienced (his faith has clearly always been important to him, but I think the level of fervor we see in him in current day is a result of him seeking some feeling of salvation from all the things he's done/a doubling down after his incident), but it has been a long time since he's done anything with anyone. When you two grow close and eventually start dating, he'll fully intend to wait until you get married to have sex. It won't work out that way. At the very most, you two may be able to resist penetrative sex until after you fully commit, but you won't be able to keep your hands off of one another overall. He chastises himself (and, when he's in a darker mood, you) for failing to resist temptation, but ultimately he thinks that God likely has more of an issue with other things he's done than not waiting until marriage to let you blow him or whatever.

Absolutely knows what "soaking" is. Shocked and quite taken aback if you also know what "soaking" is.

That Legion history of his starts to poke through once you start spending a lot of alone time with him, once he feels comfortable showing his true face. He isn't abusive, but he is still quite controlling in some aspects. It's not that he denies you of options, but he does have a tendency to make it difficult for you to make choices he doesn't agree with. More often than not, he exercises control when he worries for your wellbeing, but there are times when he exercises control over you simply because he wants to see you bend to his will. Sex is one of the aspects of your relationship he often uses to this end. He'll make you cum until you can't see, but make no mistake; he's making you cum because he wants to, because it feeds his ego to see how you react when he breaks you down completely and commands your body. He also knows that it'll be easier to keep you around if he tries his best to make you happy, to ensure your needs are fulfilled, including the intimate ones. Yes, he will take very good care of you in bed, but know that ultimately it's sort of a form of control. I mean...you're still allowed to enjoy it. But keep that in mind.

Does it even need to be said that the Mormon former Legionary has a massive breeding kink? I don't think he believes he deserves to have children, but that doesn't stop him from fantasizing about seeing you so swollen with his child that you can't effectively get away from him. Definitely buys into the idea that adults are supposed to procreate as much as they can stand; in his ideal world, he'd have you pregnant every two or so years for a good portion of your life. He'll worship every inch of your body before he fucks you, fantasizing silently about how a pregnancy would change it.

[slut4thebroken]

Partners

── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──

Pairing | Jackson Rippner x assassin!reader

Summary | You and Jackson are paired together on an assignment. The job in question? Pose as a couple in a bdsm club and lure your target somewhere more private.

Warnings | Sexual content, 18+, smut, humiliation, public humiliation, voyerism, exhibitionism, praise, degradation, objectification, face fucking, deep throating, girl on girl kissing💅🏻, grinding, fingering, vaginal sex, unprotected sex, breeding, choking, spitting, ?, lol.

Words | 7k

Notes | Somehow I wrote this in like one day lol but I kinda love it.

Ao3 link | <3

Masterlist

If there’s one thing you hate, it’s working with a partner. You’re perfectly capable doing a job on your own, but your employer said you could either work with someone or be fired. Fired means dead— he can’t have people who know what you know, not working for him— so obviously you chose the former. 

Your assignment this time was simple; retrieve his phone, leave him alive. What made it difficult were the amount of guards he had on him 24/7 and his major trust issues. You couldn’t just walk up to him and start flirting— he’d get too suspicious. Which is where your partner came in. 

The target regularly attends a bdsm club and you don't know how your employer knows this, but when he’s there, he only goes to one of the private rooms if it’s with a pair, not just one person. Which unfortunately meant that you have to play submissive with a man you met only a few hours ago— and not just any man. After your brief amount of time together, it didn’t take long for you to completely hate him. He was cocky and unnervingly charming, but had an undertone of misogyny to him— that much was obvious in the way that he undermined your work. But it was this, or death. So you had to put up with him. 

“What should I call you?” He asked, standing in front of the mirror as he adjusted his tie. You were sitting on the bed, buckling the straps of your outrageously high heels. 

“My name?” You said, as if you were talking to a child who just asked a stupid question. He paused and turned to you.  

“No sub goes to a bdsm club with a dom and is called by their real name. Should I choose for you?” He condescended, making you clench your jaw. Should you just come up with a name you don’t actually use or like? You probably won’t be able to get in character as easily though. 

“Princess I guess.”  

“Great.” He said dryly, making you roll your eyes. “You can just call me sir.”  

“Great.” You repeated, in the same tone as him. 

The drive was awkward. Neither if you talked unless it was about the mission, but both of you already knew what to do. You arrived before the target, so you took the time to get a feel for the place and get into character. While this isn’t your first time in a place like this, you haven’t been often and it still makes you blush. He led you over to a quiet corner, then sat down. When you started doing the same, he stopped you. 

“Kneel on the ground.” He explained, making you clench your jaw, but obey. You know what kind of partnership the target prefers. You have to just swallow your pride and do this with a stranger who already infuriates you after only a few hours together. You dropped to your knees next to him, trying to adjust your skirt so it wouldn’t show anything, but it was useless. It didn’t even cover your ass when you were standing, let alone sitting. You were just glad you were wearing underwear. The top wasn’t much better— your breasts were spilling out of it and it was short enough to barely be classified as a crop top. It was basically just a skimpy bra. The collar weighed heavy around your neck and while this wasn’t your first time wearing one, you’re usually in a deeper headspace and with someone you actually like while wearing it. Right now it was just a constant reminder of the demeaning position your boss put you in. You turned over your shoulder to look at the door, but he stopped you. 

“Look at me or your lap. I’ll tell you when he’s here.” 

“We’re just going to sit here until then?” That would be even more suspicious. 

“No. We have to already be doing something when he walks in.” 

“No shit. Like what, genius?” You spat, growing nervous when his lips twisted up into a smirk. 

“Grind on my foot.” He said, extending his leg. You gaped at him, too caught off guard to figure out what to say. 

“What? I'm not— No!” 

“Princess,” he warned, leaning forward to grab your cheeks in his hand, “if you want to live through this and not be killed by the target or your boss, you’ll do what I say.” He said lowly, making you swallow down a moan.  

“Fuck— fuck, fine.” You hissed and he let go of your face, letting you position yourself over his shoe. You let out a heavy breath through your nose and clenched your jaw, not able to look at him as you lowered yourself down until your clothed heat met the smooth leather. 

You started out slow, tentative, your arms moving around awkwardly, not sure where to put them. 

“Hands behind your back.” He said, making you look up at him. Your hands moved behind your back without hesitation and you internally groaned at the fact that you’re already slipping into that headspace. 

“Good girl, just like that.” He cooed mockingly, making you glare at him. 

“Shut the fuck up.” You spat, even though his words added to your unwanted arousal. 

“Careful, princess. Anyone could be listening.” He smirked, flexing his foot up, making you gasp as your hips bucked toward the pressure. He didn’t keep his eyes on you for long, wanting to instead scan the crowd and keep an eye out for the target. 

“I don’t like this, Jackson,”

“Try again.” You just gritted your teeth and rolled your eyes, not wanting to call him that unless you absolutely have to. 

“I don’t trust you, I want to be able to see.” You finished. 

“Your options are this or sitting on my lap, but I’ll have to touch you another way to keep up appearances.” Fuck. Is being able to see the room really worth him touching you like that? He’s probably going to need to do so eventually, though…

“Fine.” You said, standing up. “Over my clothes.” You turned around and sat on his lap, feeling slightly less tense now. 

“Clothes?” He scoffed, making your cheeks flush. 

“Shut up.” You hissed. His hands suddenly settled on your thighs and your breath caught in your throat. He teased you, dragging them up and down, barely brushing the bottom of your skirt. He placed a hand on your chest— your cleavage— and you were about to say something, but he just pulled you back so you were leaning against his chest. 

“Open your legs.” He whispered against your ear, making your shiver. 

“I don’t exactly want to give the entire room a view up my skirt.” 

“Sweetheart.. they’re going to get much more than that soon enough. Might as well just rip the bandaid off.” You gritted your teeth at the pet name, but still did what he said. “Good girl.” One of his hands started drifting higher, pushing under your skirt until he brushed your core, making you bite down on your lip to contain any sounds. 

“You think I want this too? I didn’t exactly picture my next job being spent feeling up a whore assassin in the middle of a bdsm club.” 

“Fuck you, Jackson.” You spat and he reeled his hand back then brought it down just as fast, making you jolt as a quiet whimper escaped you. 

“What did I fucking say?” He growled, roughly cupping your cunt over the lace. 

“Fuck you, sir.” You said viciously, but the breathiness in your voice took away some of the bite. “You think I wanted to spend my next job getting felt up by some ammatuer?” His other hand shot up to grab your neck and roughly pull your head back against his shoulder as he squeezed. 

“If I were in your position, I wouldn’t speak like that.” He hissed. You grabbed the arm of the hand on your neck, clawing at it to get him to let go. “Now, how about you shut the fuck up and be a good little girl, like your employer told you to be, and stop drawing attention to us, hm?” You were suddenly hyper aware of the few pairs of eyes that were now watching you. Your hands went lax and dropped to your sides, making his grip loosen slightly. The hand on your cunt was moving more purposefully now, rubbing your clit slowly as your eyes fell shut and you squirmed, trying to ignore the fact that you were being watched and this was a stranger rubbing your clit right now. 

“I have to know your secret. What did you say to her?” A man suddenly asked and you opened your eyes to find him and a woman standing in front of you. “My girl likes being a brat but it usually takes longer to get her to submit, isn’t that right, pet?” 

“Just helping you practice your authority, sir.” She said sweetly and if you weren’t in your current predicament, you would’ve laughed. 

“Oh you know, the usual threats.” Jackson chuckled with a shrug. 

“C’mon, you gotta help me out— look at her! Only seconds ago she was acting out.” Jackson laughed quietly behind you and you wondered how he was going to play this. 

“I got lucky— she’s a cock hungry little whore. All I gotta do is just threaten to not give it to her and she fixes her attitude almost instantly.” He said proudly, making you blush as you whined and turned your head. “She gets a little shy. This is our first time here and she’s not used to so many people.” He explained and the man hummed in understanding. 

“Well, welcome. I’m Nick.” 

“Jackson. I hope it works out for you.” You could tell he was smiling through the obvious dismissal. 

“Thanks. I’ll give it a try next time.” They both walked away and you let out a heavy breath as his hand slowed to a stop. 

“Screw you.” You muttered, making him chuckle under his breath. 

“Yeah I thought you might like that.” You took deep breaths, trying to calm down and not let your nerves consume you. “We need to do more. We stick out too much like this.” Looking around the room, you knew he was right. Everyone was either engaging in some kind of nudity and/or intense sexual act, or they were watching one. 

“I know.” You sighed. “Like what?” 

“You can suck me off, or if you want to keep watching the room, I can finger you.” He suggested, making your blush deepen. His hands rubbed up and down your legs as he waited for you to decide. 

“Fine. You can finger me, just leave my underwear on please.” You said quietly. It was almost as if he could sense your nervousness about the situation because he didn’t respond with a mean retort or a jab at you. 

“Okay.” Was all he said. One of his hands snaked up, then wasted no time slipping in your underwear and brushing through your folds. “Jesus.” He said through a breathy laugh. 

“Don’t act like I’m not sitting on your fucking hard on right now.” You hissed, making him go quiet. 

“Fair enough.” He pushed a finger in and your hand gripped his leg as you stiffened. He started curling it slowly and you bit your lip hard enough to draw blood. “Feel good?” He rasped and you couldn’t tell if he was making fun of you or not. You cursed under your breath and squeezed your eyes shut, trying not to completely give in to the pleasure. When he started kissing your neck, you couldn’t hold down the moan anymore. 

“Fuck,” You whimpered, hips grinding against his hand. 

“You like having your neck kissed?” God— it’s one of your favorite things. For some reason, the simple act never fails to get you hot and bothered and turn you into a pliant, needy mess. 

“Yes, sir.” You whispered, gasping when he pushed another finger in. 

“Look at that…” He cooed. “Just a few fingers and you’re already slipping. I can’t wait to see how dumb you get on my cock.” You whined, hips moving incessantly. Even though you knew he wouldn’t actually fuck you, the thought still made you dizzy. When he lightly nipped at the skin, you let out a low moan and squeezed his leg harder. 

“No marks.” You whispered, despite the fact that your body was begging for the opposite. 

“Wouldn’t dream of it, princess.” He mumbled sarcastically. You let your eyes fall shut and rested the full weight of your head on his shoulder as he kept kissing the sensitive skin. He was grinding the heel of his hand against your clit as his fingers curled inside you relentlessly and you could feel your orgasm rapidly approaching. 

“He’s here.” He whispered, making your eyes snap open. Sure enough, he and about five men were walking in. He walked over to a booth and waited as one of the guards spoke to the people sitting there, making them instantly scramble out of their seats for the man. 

“How should we play this?” You whispered and his fingers slowed to a stop, but didn’t leave you. 

“We can’t come on too strong, but we also need to do something to get his attention.” 

“He won’t want it if it’s too easy though.” You added, groaning internally at what that meant you had to do. “We have to be the most desirable people here.” 

“Draw a crowd.” He confirmed, removing his fingers, making you swallow down a whine.  

“How do we do that?” You don’t know why you were asking him and not just deciding. Actually, that’s not true— it’s because you were already so close to entering a head space that you should not be in while working. 

“Get on your knees again. I’ll be right back.” You stood up and watched him walk over to Nick who was watching someone getting spanked while his.. “pet” was working his cock over in her mouth. You kneeled, but kept your eyes on him as you waited. They both looked at you, then back at each other, now with smiles as Jackson patted the man’s shoulder. He made his way back to you as Nick started talking to a few other people. 

“I’m getting a crowd.” He explained. “Just play along. I’ll keep watching our guy and tell you when he’s coming over, okay?” You nodded and he cupped your cheek, brushing his thumb over your bottom lip. “Ready to put that mouth to good use?” He smirked and you swallowed thickly. His attention was drawn away from you when Nick approached, followed by a few other people, some of them crawling and being led by leashes. 

“I was telling our friend here how you want to work on your “stage fright.’” He explained, putting on a show for them. “What do you think, princess? This a big enough crowd for you?” You stared up at them with wide eyes, trying not to shrink under all of their gazes. 

“Yes, sir.” You said meekly. 

“Atta girl. Now how about you get to it? We don’t want to keep them waiting.” You nodded and reached for his belt with shaky hands. When you finally freed his cock, you choked on a gasp at the sheer size of it. You tentatively took him in your hand and stroked slowly, getting a feel for it. 

You’re no virgin, but you’ve been so busy with work for the past few months that you’ve been relying on your vibrator. So you’re a little out of practice and his size isn’t helping much. He placed a hand on your head to pet your hair. 

“You know what I want. Don’t be a tease.” He warned, making you look up at him. 

“Sorry, sir. Just got distracted.” You heard the group behind you chuckle. 

“What’d I say, huh, Nick? Cock hungry whore— she’s practically obsessed with it. Can’t even go a day without it.” He took in a sharp breath when you suddenly enveloped the tip in your mouth, still stroking the base. “Fuck, there you go. Give our friends a show, yeah?” You whined at the reminder that you were being watched, making his hips flinch forward. Despite his request, you kept your mouth on the head of his cock, not going much further. He suddenly grabbed your hair and yanked your head back, making you gasp and choke on a moan. He leaned down close to you and you grew nervous because of his expression. 

“I didn’t invite them over to watch you do a half assed job. Either do it right, or I’ll get someone else to do it and you’ll go the rest of the night without it.” He growled, making you press your thighs together. “Do you understand?” 

“Yes, sir. I’m sorry.” You whimpered and he loosened his grip as he leaned back up. You kept your hand at the base, but started bobbing your head more now, taking most of his cock in your mouth. 

“Wow she really is cock hungry.” Nick said, making you whine. 

“It’s a blessing and a curse.” Jackson said through a breath, starting to guide your head. “Can’t get anything done if she’s around.” He chuckled, making the rest of them laugh along with him. 

“Mind if I take her for a spin?” Your stomach dropped at that. Sucking off a stranger who you’ve known for a few hours is different than sucking off one you just met barely ten minutes ago. 

“Maybe next time. Like I told you, this is our first time and she’s already pretty nervous.” He said and you could’ve cried in relief. 

“No worries, man. My girl was the same for our first time.” Jackson was about to respond before you accidentally went down too far and gagged around him, making him moan. 

“Shit— Let’s show ‘em what you can really do, yeah? Attract some more people.” You were pretty sure that meant the target wasn’t watching you yet. You hummed around him in acknowledgment and he adjusted his grip on your head, then started moving you up and down. “Hands behind your back.” You immediately released his cock and put your arms back. He sped up slightly, but was still going slow enough to let you get a feel for it. When he pulled you down, then held you there, your cunt pulsed when you realized what he wanted. 

“Relax your throat, princess. Let me in.” He said through a breath. You tried to obey, but you started gagging, making it almost impossible. “She just needs a little help sometimes.” He said before roughly pulling you down until he breached your throat barrier, making you choke and sputter as he groaned. He yanked you off, then slapped you across the cheek, the suddenness of it all making you dizzy. 

“If I feel your teeth again, you’re done for the night.” 

“I’m sorry- I’m sorry, sir.” You rasped, then opened your mouth, waiting. 

“Fuck- she really is eager.” Someone commented with a snicker. 

“Oh you have no idea.” Jackson said before pushing you back down, then extending his leg so his foot was between your legs. “Go ahead, bitch. Show everyone how much you love my cock.” You whined, but had no control over your body when you started grinding on his shoe. You moaned around his length as you desperately bucked your hips, missing the stimulation you were getting from his fingers before. The tip of his cock was punching the back of your mouth with each thrust, making you gag and writhe. 

Eventually he gave you a break. He pulled you off his cock then immediately forced your head between his legs, pushing your face against his balls. 

“Suck.” He growled, making you obey instantly. As you worked him over in your mouth, he was letting out breathy moans and grunts that had you whining against him, wanting more. “I don’t know what you were so nervous about, baby. You seem to be fine with all the people watching you.” At first, you whined at the reminder, but then you realized that he might’ve said that to let you know the target was watching now. 

“She like rimming?” Someone asked, making you panic because no, you absolutely do not like rimming. You almost pulled away to speak, but he beat you to it. 

“She has to be pretty deep into subspace to get that filthy.” He said, making you relax a little. With his balls in your mouth and his cock resting on your face, you already felt pretty filthy. But it was just the right amount to make your hips move more eagerly against his shoe. He suddenly pulled you back and you looked up at him with an open mouth, waiting. 

“Spit on it.” Your eyes widened at the request but you quickly gathered the saliva in your mouth and spit it on his cock. The second you finished, he was rubbing his length over your face, smearing your saliva, making you grimace. He slapped your cheek with his cock a few times before letting out a quiet chuckle. 

“This filthy enough for you?” He asked, turning your head to face the audience, giving you confirmation that the target's eyes were indeed on you. 

“Can I make a request?” The same man from before asked and you prayed he wouldn’t request anything that required you to get anywhere near an asshole. 

“Depends on what it is.” Jackson said, playing along as he turned you back around to keep rubbing his spit soaked cock on your face. 

“Let some of us spit on her too, yeah? Really get her nice and filthy.” Jackson looked down at you and you were trying to come up with a response. It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. Sure, you’d have to take a very thorough shower later, but at least if it was interactive, it might entice your target to join. He seemed to be thinking the same thing. 

“What do you say, princess? Wanna be a good girl and let them do this?” You nodded with pink cheeks and he yanked your head back. “Use your words.” 

“Yes, sir. I- I want it.” You whimpered, making him grin. 

“You heard her.” He said, releasing your hair and taking a step back as he slowly stroked his cock. You turned around and the man moved forward, then looked at Jackson before doing anything. 

“Can I grab her face?” 

“If she agrees.” 

“You can touch my face, sir.” You said quietly, staring up at him through your lashes. He looked down at you and cursed under his breath before grabbing your cheeks and leaning down a bit. You flinched when the spit hit your face, then whined when he rubbed it in. 

“Fuckin’ disgusting. She likes it too, huh?” He chuckled, looking at Jackson again as he stepped back. 

“Oh she loves it. I’m sure she’s making a mess all over the floor.” He replied, making your whole face turn red because it sure felt like you were making a mess all over the floor. But from Jackson, not from these other people. 

Someone else stepped forward and carded his fingers through your hair before grabbing it and gently pulling your head back. His cock was out of his pants, fully erect, right in front of your face and you watched it jump when you whimpered after the man spat on you. 

Nick walked forward this time, having the woman kneeling at his feet crawl forward with him. 

“You have a safe word?” He asked and you nodded. 

“Red.”

“Good.” He leaned down and spat on your face, this one feeling more forceful than the others, making you flinch again when it hit your face. “Now, pet, after she tells us her color, I want you to lick it off her face, understand?”

“Yes, sir.” They both turned to you expectantly and your eyes flicked over to the target for half a second before going back to them. 

“Green.” You said quietly, making him beam. The woman shuffled forward and placed a hand on your thigh to steady herself as she leaned closer and slowly licked up your cheek. 

“Clean it all unless she says her safe word.” He commanded and you let her lap up the spit on your face, including over your lips. Your entire face was on fire when she pulled back slightly, her breath fanning your lips. 

“Ever kissed a girl before?” She asked sweetly, making your eyes widened as you choked on your spit. You shook your head, making her grin. “Do you want to?” 

“I- I have to ask first.” You said through a breath, almost forgetting where you were for a moment. Your whole focus was on her— the hand on your thigh, breath on your lips, even her words were intoxicating enough to make your brain go blank. 

“Go ahead then.” She smirked, pulling back a bit, making you finally feel like you could breathe. You cleared your throat, then turned around, looking up at him. 

“She asked if I want to kiss her.” You said meekly. 

“And do you?” 

“I want what you want, sir.” It was hard to tell if you were still pretending. 

“I think it’ll be a good way for you to practice feeling more comfortable in front of a crowd— might even attract some more people.” You knew that by “more people” he meant the target, so you nodded and bit your lip as you turned back around. Her smirk was still intact and she moved back toward you, placing one hand on your cheek and the other on your thigh. When she started moving forward, you closed your eyes and waited. 

The kiss started out slow and tentative, but quickly grew hungrier. Her hand snaked around your neck to hold you against her as she practically devoured your mouth. You could faintly hear whistles and more talking, but it was all hard to focus on. Hands were suddenly on your shoulders and you jumped, but quickly relaxed when you heard Jackson’s voice. 

“Spit on her face.” He rasped, grabbing your chin and tilting your head up once she pulled back. Her eyes flickered between you and Jackson for only another moment before she did what he said. You gasped and he gripped your cheeks tightly to keep your jaw open. “Now in her mouth.” You couldn’t hold down the moan when you felt her spit land on your tongue. 

“Be a good girl and lick it up again.” Nick added and she leaned forward to lick her spit from your face, then kissed you again, forcing her tongue in your mouth, making you whimper. 

“Fuck— that’s it. You’re getting quite the crowd, baby.” He said quietly, then placed a hand on your waist and squeezed to really make sure you understood that wasn’t just a normal statement. When the woman pulled back, a string of saliva connected your lips and you panted, trying to catch your breath and clear your head enough to have a coherent thought. 

“Who else wants to spit on her?” Jackson asked, somewhat loudly. A few people started to agree, but quickly stopped once your target stepped forward. “I think we have another volunteer, princess.” He smirked and the woman in front of you crawled back to Nick. You looked up at him through your lashes, trying not to do anything that would accidentally blow your cover. 

“She’s a pretty thing.” He said, stepping even more into your space, making you crane your head back to look at him. 

“Oh yeah. Pretty, but stupid— the perfect toy.” Jackson said proudly as he stood up from where he was crouched behind you. 

“I bet.” He chuckled, making you flush and avert your gaze. “I saw how eager she was with a cock in her mouth. Is she just like that with you? Or is she like that with any cock.” 

“Any cock. But we weren’t going to do much more than this. It’s our first time here and she’s pretty nervous.” 

“I see. That’s disappointing.” He sighed and you craned your neck around to look at Jackson. 

“Permission to speak, sir?” You were really trying to play it up in front of the target. 

“Yes.”

“I don’t mind. I’d just prefer going to a private room than staying out here.” You said meekly and he gave you a small smile as he pet your hair. 

“You sure, princess?” 

“Yes, sir. If he’s okay with going to a room.” Jackson looked at the man expectantly and he stared down at you, thinking. 

“I don’t mind.” He finally said, glancing at a guard and giving him a curt nod. “Shall we?” He motioned to the hallway where the rooms are and you started to stand, but Jackson stopped you as he tucked his erection back in his pants.  

“You can crawl.” He said and you flushed but dropped down to your hands and knees, following along behind them.  

The door shut softly and you waited on your knees expectantly. 

“How about I test that mouth, huh? See how eager she really is.” He smirked and you prayed Jackson would make a move sooner rather than later. He took his cock out of his pants, then roughly grabbed your hair, making you whimper. When he suddenly forced you all the way down, you choked and your hands shot out to push at his thighs. He suddenly released your hair and you pulled off with a cough, finding Jackson’s arm wrapped around the man’s neck, strangling him. After another minute he finally went limp and Jackson let him fall to the ground in front of you. 

“You couldn’t have done that before he fucking punched my throat with his dick? That hurt.” You complained, grabbing his phone from his pocket, then standing up on sore legs. 

“I needed to wait until his guard was down.” He explained and all you did was roll your eyes and start walking toward the door, but he grabbed your wrist to stop you. 

“We can’t leave yet. His guards will be right outside the door and they’ll know something’s up if we leave now.” You paused, then let out a groan at the fact that he’s right. 

“Fuck— fine. But I’m laying down.” You said, snatching your wrist from his hand and walked to the bed. You grabbed one of the small towels from the side table and wiped your face with a grimace as he rounded the bed and sat on the other side. 

“You did a surprisingly good job.” He admitted, making you turn to him with narrowed eyes. 

“Thanks.” You said, in place of ‘fuck you.’

“I just meant that I didn’t think you’d take it that far.” He defended and you calmed down a bit. 

“Neither did I.” You muttered. 

“You make a pretty good sub when you’re not being a stuck up bitch.” He snickered. You threw the towel at his face, then laid down, deciding to ignore him… as well as the arousal still making your cunt ache. 

“If we’re going to be here a while, the least you could do is let me sleep.” 

“Fine.” 

“Good.” You turned away from him and closed your eyes, feeling the bed dip and clothes rustle as he laid down. When he let out a low groan, you stiffened and strained your ear. The second time, you turned over, ready to yell at him, but it died in your throat when you saw his head thrown back as he rapidly fisted his cock. 

“What the fuck are you doing?” You hissed, making his lips curl up into a smirk. 

“Denial isn't one of my kinks, sweetheart. At least, not for me.” 

“Well— You could at least have the decency to not do it in the bed I’m trying to sleep in.” Your tone was not nearly as stern as you wanted it to be.

“My cock was literally down your throat, but you have a problem with this?” He scoffed a laugh, making your cheeks heat up. “Besides, it won’t be believable if I walk out of here rock hard.” He said, like it was obvious. “You could always help me and speed it up.” He suggested, making your mouth fall open. 

“I’m good.” You spat, making him chuckle. 

“Sure, princess. You keep acting like your pussy isn’t dripping down your thighs and maybe you’ll even start to believe it.” You flushed with anger, embarrassment, and arousal this time. 

“Maybe it is. But if I’m gonna get someone’s help, then I’ll ask the girl who caused it.” You smirked, making him freeze.  

“That’s cute.” He said sarcastically and your smirk widened. 

“Maybe I’ll go get her— tell the guards he wants a foursome instead.” You moved to get up, but he roughly grabbed your hair and yanked your head back until you were laying down again, then got on top of you.  

“Keep testing me. You’re not going to like where it gets you.” He warned, making your cunt throb. 

“I’m not your sub, Jackson. Get that through your thick skull.” He placed a hand on your neck and squeezed, making your breath hitch. 

“Maybe not. That doesn’t change the fact that you want me to fuck you.” That made you scoff. 

“Please get your head out of your ass, it’s not a good look for you.” 

“Sure, baby. Keep pretending I’m wrong.” He smirked. “You have a safe word. Use it.” He dared and you narrowed your eyes as you clenched your jaw. 

“Fuck you.” You spat, pushing at his chest, making his grip tighten on your neck. 

“Use it.” 

Your gaze hardened as you stared up at him, gritting your teeth. You couldn’t make yourself say it though. You’re too curious— too eager to know where this is going. 

“That’s what I fucking thought.” He spat, making you roll your eyes. He removed his hand from your neck to slap you, then immediately put it back. This slap was so much harder than the one he gave you out there and you almost whimpered at the sting on your cheek. 

“Go fuck yourself.” You said lowly, watching his cheeks tense as he clenched his jaw and let out a heavy breath through his nose. 

“I’m sick of your fucking attitude.” He was turning you on your stomach before you even knew what was happening. When you tried to lift yourself up, he pushed you down and held you there with a hand on the back of your head. It was harder to breathe like this, but you couldn’t even slightly  care about that when he roughly pushed your skirt up over your ass, then pulled your panties down just enough to free your cunt. 

The blunt tip of his cock brushed your entrance and he didn’t bother teasing you before forcing it inside, making you let out a strangled whimper at the suddenness of it all. He only stopped once his hips were flush with your ass and you gripped the sheets as you did your best to adjust to the intrusion. 

“Fuck— I can’t believe such an annoying little bitch has such a good cunt.” He said through a breath. When you tried to push yourself up to curse him out, he just pushed down harder on your head, making you whimper. 

He slowly dragged out until only the tip was inside, then snapped his hips forward, making you scream and try to move up the bed away from the intense feeling. 

“Ah ah ah— You’re not going anywhere, bitch. I’ve waited all fucking night for this.” He continued the same pace of slowly dragging out, then roughly slamming back in and you wished he’d do something that felt better for you— not that this felt bad… there are just other things that’ll actually feel good. 

He moved his hand to the back of your neck and you were able to turn your head to the side so you could actually breathe again. At a particularly rough thrust, you let out a choked moan and cried out. 

“I can’t believe you think people could ever see you as a respectable assassin after this. Not when you played your part a little too well.” You squeezed your eyes shut with a whimper, trying not to let yourself believe his words. “This is probably the only kind of job you’ll get from now on. No dignity, no self respect, just a wannabe assassin being used as a whore.” You let out a choked sob, his words going straight to your cunt. 

“And I’ll bet you’ll like it too. You’ll fuck anyone he tells you to, not just because it’s your job… but because you want to.” 

“Jackson,” You cried and he shushed you softly. 

“It’s okay, princess. You can’t help it— you were born to be a whore.” 

“Fuck,” You sobbed out, “oh god, please make me come.” 

“Of course you fucking like that shit.” He scoffed, making you whine. 

“Please, Jackson!” He pushed down harder on your neck, making your breath catch in your throat. 

“Last chance.” He said lowly. 

“Please, sir! Please make me come!” 

“Good girl… No.” You let out an anguished cry at the denial. 

“Please!” He was fucking you brutally now, his hips smacking your ass with each thrust and his cock punching the breath out of you everytime it was forced deeper inside. 

“You can fucking wait.” He hissed, voice getting more and more breathless. “Don’t you wanna be a good girl for me? Come when I tell you to?” He cooed, his tone significantly gentler now. You whined, torn between wanting your long awaited pleasure and wanting to be good for him. “I know, baby. I’m so close though, can’t you just wait a little longer?” You nodded with a whimper, watching him smile through your peripheral vision. “Atta girl.” He said proudly, making your walls flutter around his length. He let out a choked moan at the feeling, then leaned up and removed his hand from your neck to spread your ass apart for a better view of his cock stretching you. You whined loudly when he spat on your hole, adding more lubrication even though you were already doing a good enough job of that on your own. 

“God- you’re so fucking easy.” He groaned. “Praise is what does it for you, huh? Just need to be told you’re a good girl and you get all dumb and pliant?” You whined loudly, burying your face in the sheets to hide your blush. 

“Pathetic.” He spat, letting go of your ass to grab your hips and thrust even faster. 

“Fuck— sir, please.. I don’t think I can hold it.” You whimpered, fisting the sheets and trying to will your orgasm away. 

“I know, princess, it’s okay. You get a cock in that sloppy little cunt and you go all brain dead and come hungry… You poor thing.” He cooed mockingly, bringing you closer to your orgasm. “Go ahead and come, baby. You can let go now.” He said softly— a harsh contrast to his rough thrusts. When you didn’t come immediately though, he got impatient. 

“Go on, needy fucking slut. Come on my cock- prove that you’re nothing more than a brainless little whore.” The knot of arousal in your stomach snapped almost violently and you sobbed out a moan when your orgasm finally crashed over you. His thrusts barely even slowed, not deterred by your walls spasming around his length. 

“Jesus— fucking…” He hissed. That was the only indication you got that he was affected by this. As your orgasm finally started to fade, it was quickly replaced by a more painful pleasure when he continued. 

“Sir- sir, wait,” You choked out, trying to move up the bed to get away from him. He fell over you, completely flush with your back, and kept rutting into your sore hole desperately as he chased his own orgasm. “Fuck— oh fuck, it hurts.” You whimpered, squeezing your eyes shut to try and focus on something other than the overstimulation. 

“Shut the fuck up already.” He spat, moving his arm in front of your body to place a hand on your neck, squeezing hard enough to cut off any kind of sounds you tried to make. You clawed at his arm, your head starting to feel swollen and your eyes falling shut from a lack of oxygen and blood flow. “You can breathe after I fucking come.” He growled, ignoring your choking and your gasps for air. 

“God- you’re so much hotter when you can’t fucking talk.” He groaned, resting his forehead on your shoulder as he focused on his impending orgasm. You were genuinely starting to worry that you’d pass out before he came, but just as your eyes grew too heavy to keep open and your hearing muffled, you could faintly hear him groaning as his hips stilled, occasionally bucking into you. He released your neck and you gasped and wheezed, heaving in large gulps of air as your head rushed with the sudden blood flow. Now that you could actually focus on other sensations, you noticed how hot your walls felt with his come inside you. 

“Fuck— you didn’t use a condom.” You rasped, letting your head fall onto the bed, too tired to hold it up. 

“I don’t fucking care.” He said, almost amused. 

“…Me neither.” He chuckled breathlessly and rolled off of you, laying on his back. You turned your head so you were laying on your other cheek, wanting to face him. His eyes were closed and he was lightly panting, and you couldn’t help but notice how pretty he is. 

“Stop staring.” He mumbled, making you smile. 

“Why?” 

“Because it’s creepy.” Despite his words, the corners of his lips just barely turned up into a smile. 

“Do you think it’s been long enough yet?” You asked, turning on your side so your neck wasn’t bent uncomfortably anymore. 

“Not even close. I’m just catching my breath before round two.” He glanced at you with a small smirk, making you roll your eyes with a blush. 

[jolapeno]

x. oh, just to be with you

javier peña x f!reader | chapter ten of late night texts

summary: It's the year 2000. Javi is minding his own business on the porch of his pop's ranch when a text from an unknown number vibrates his phone. The only problem is, no one knows he has a phone and no one has his number.

chapter warnings: we're back to texts and phone calls. sorrowful!javi, two idiots pining for one another. fluff. flirting. continuous romcom vibes. falling in love. idiots in love. pls don't be mad at me ✨ wordcount: 3k.

text key: bold is you/reader | italics is javi

He's aware of everything. 

How the porch creaks when he steps on it, the way the back door doesn’t quite meet the frame unless it’s locked. How the wind is knocking something else, far across the tall grass and fence posts.

Right now, his focus is on how his curtains don’t quite close. That they're letting the thinnest crack of moonlight cascade through his room. How the smallest luminescent slither keeps dancing in the breeze, yet it still lands perfectly on the propped-up photo strip on his dresser, highlighting the two of you, as though he hadn't committed them to memory. 

He can’t remember the last time someone had managed to slide around his walls—bypass his common sense and begin weaving themselves into him. Javi also can't remember the last time he wanted something more than a win.

Then came you.

Not that he complains that you're the exception. He'll never complain when it comes to you. 

Having people close has never been his issue. It’s letting himself fall that he’s forever found hard. He can be a lover who makes a night all about the other; he can be a protector, shielding and doing what is needed. 

It’s the parts after when he feels he clams up. A portion of him constantly weighing up risks, calculating the damage he could cause—either by a choice he could make or others—long before the city that housed Escobar. 

Javi knew his reluctance had stemmed from before he left Laredo, but it was now carved somewhere deeper in him. Something you managed to find with relative ease and cut out of him as if it was nothing. 

All smiles. All radiance and fucking beauty, with a laugh that could make his lips curl even if his bones are aching and his muscles are tired. 

If he closes his eyes, he can almost convince himself that he’s back there, in the hotel room. Because even if you’d never been here, your room is full of him. 

His bag of spilt-out clothes from your time together, slowly letting the scent of your perfume seep out across the room. Your jacket, hung on the closet handle, and the photos and sign you made on his dresser, all perfectly in sight. 

you have nice handwriting  I did try my best, sometimes I get lazy and letters blur together more.  I like how you wrote baby Does this mean I’ve got the whole set now? Cause you like how I say it, how I write it, how I mouth it. 

Even when he had known you’d needed to get some sleep, Javi had desperately wanted to beg you to stay up. Sending back a text here or there, already missing you so much more than he was sure he could handle. 

He felt lovesick. Like the singer in all those songs that make people either stare at a loved one or bite back tears because they lost theirs. Suddenly relating to a sea of them he’s heard on the radio in the kitchen or hummed in the back of his pop’s throat. 

Javi had been happy to see his pops, somewhat surprised he even came out of the house to greet him. But, as soon as his eyes landed on him, he became suddenly more aware of his old man’s age. Noticing the lines on his face, the ones that tell a thousand stories—not all of them he’s sure he’s heard. Curling into the hug he’d barely reciprocated before, unsure how to form the words to thank him for convincing him to go. 

Naturally, he asks about you. 

It’s more of an interrogation if he’s honest. He shows the photos, the ones now on his dresser, watching his pop smile as he continues to answer the array of questions, until he yawns for the tenth time in the space of five minutes.  

“You should get some sleep, Pop.” 

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead, Javi. Tell me more about your lady.”

Your lady. 

Those two words stand out as if they’ve been illuminated in bulbs, twinkling and shimmering. 

now youre back in reality you sure about us  Never been more sure about anything, baby.  just wanted to check  You’re beginning to sound like me, worrying.  left a mark on me  Think that’s fair, you’ve left a lot on me too. Especially my chest.  

“Tomorrow. Promise. The drive took it out of me.” 

But Javi isn’t tired. 

Somehow, he had suspected he wouldn’t be the moment he watched you leave.

For longer than he cares to number, he's struggled with it. Had developed an unhealthy live-able balance of it when he was working, something he managed to keep as a prize in his return. 

Now, it’s different.

There’s an edge to it. As though he's now having to pay back the stolen sleep he enjoyed when he had been lay with you. When he slept with ease and not struggle. Leaving him feeling now like he’s in a lull, a dream. All aware, not in a daze anymore, noticing things he had never given much attention to before his trip out of town. 

You had been so warm, so soft. His fingers gliding up and down your side, soothing you as much as it was him. But, you slept with ease. Falling almost instantly once you'd stopped talking, a little jolt and a soft sigh punctuating it.

Fuck, he misses you.

Thumb and index pinching the bridge of his nose, eyes clenched shut. Unsure how he's supposed to manage, and cope, until the next chance he gets to see you.

Till he gets to hold you in his arms, stare at your smile as it grows across your face or feels the light tap of your hand when he’s teasing you...

Something ugly curls inside of him. At first, soaked in sadness, before it shakes itself and burns bright with annoyance. Irritation. Anger at how unfair it all is. 

How is it, after all, he’s given up—he’s fallen for the one person not even in his state? A person he had to say goodbye to hours ago, for reasons out of his or their control. 

He almost snorts, unsure if it’s due to the tiredness or the reality that after all he’s faced, life would continue to be cruel and deal him such a hand. Tempted to get up, kick off the sheets and pull out the crossword from before he left town.

Javi doesn't. Instead, he closes his eyes, shaking his head—to no one but himself. Because he can't do them without you now. A promise, one given with ease.

He hears the whisper of the wind, the rustle of the trees. Something needling at him that if he wasn't so broken, this would be the perfect amount of quiet to fall asleep to.

Now, it's not the loud of a Colombian city he misses now. It's how your leg slides over his, how your breaths feel on his chest—how you twitch, ever so slightly, as you first fall asleep. 

But, it’s the quiet as to why he hears his phone vibrate, practically darting out of bed, knowing it can only be you. 

why aren’t you asleep?

Because I can't sleep without you. Apparently.

I miss you too. 

I really hate this. I even miss you digging your knee into my hip. 

told you that you’d miss it once it was gone

I feel like telling you that you’re right will mean your head will inflate.

youre right

One day, right?

if I could make that tomorrow I would

You really missing me that much? 

not enough words in the world to describe how much, baby 

Gonna make me cry. 

dont cry I can’t wipe them from here 

So not wise for me to tell you I cried the entire flight home. 

did the person you sit next to seem to mind 

They didn’t say anything until we landed. Then promptly told me that I deserved better. 

so they thought you were broken up with 

I think I may have led her to believe that from the amount I was crying. 

fuck you like me a lot 

I like you a regular, normal amount. 

I don’t think I like you a normal regular amount 

That’s the tiredness talking. 

you know it isnt 

I feel the same. I really miss you. 

I miss you too but you should try to sleep you have work tomorrow 

Okay, but so do you! 

ill be fixing a shed or a pen baby you have to deal with people 

go to sleep and then tomorrow we can call as planned 

You’d told him that you suspected the first day would be the hardest.

Not the goodbye (and that had been fucking painful) but the following day when they were apart. 

Javi hates that you’re right. 

It twists inside of him how much he loathes it—grateful that he gets to push some of his anger into repairing the side of the shed. Hammer meeting nail, again and again. Each time with more fury than is needed, only worrying after whether he’s done more damage to the shed post than pre. 

"Mijo."

He doesn't find a judgemental look, but one filled with sympathy.

His pop not quizzing him, just handing him a beer. A cold one, droplets descending down the can, sliding across his palm and down his wrist—attempting to soothe the boiling blood in his veins. 

“It’ll get easier.” His pop tugs his hat down, shielding his eyes, before staring off into the distance. “When me and your mama first began, we couldn’t see each other all the time either.” 

Letting out a sigh, Javi grinds his teeth. A sea of biting comments lathered on his tongue, all set to pounce, to poison. 

Instead, he kicks the ground, swallowing most of them back. “She wasn’t hundreds of miles away, though.” 

“No,” his Pop says, clapping his hand on his back—both for comfort and likely stability. “But we didn’t have landlines, or tha' other thing you do on y’phone. The tapping."

The tapping.

He doesn't snort, even if it sits at the back of his throat. Burying it in the liquid that slides down his throat with ease.

"Come on, ‘need to head into town, and my truck is acting up.” 

Javi doesn’t question it, why he’s the one sliding into the passenger seat of his own truck. 

If he’d thought about it, he’d have asked why the truck was acting up or why Pop was driving instead of him. But he doesn’t—didn’t. Just let it happen, staring off as the shades of grass pass him by, fingers playing with the cap on the can, twisting and twisting it. 

To fill the silence, he rolls the edges of the can around in his hands. Crunching the sides every now and again, making him wince from the noise. 

Then, he finds himself staring at the fingerprints left in the dust from you touching his dash—eyes catching sight of a hair grip on the floor near his boot. 

He’s rolling it in his fingers when they’re back on the road, silence smothering them until he watches his pop turn on the radio. As soon as it springs to life, it becomes desperate to try and cut through it. The broadcaster mumbles about heavy rain and increased traffic, but he’s lost in a sorrow of sadness all cast by the spell of a good week to care. The fog around him making it hard to see the wood through the trees, never mind the hope through the misery. 

“Dios mio. More trucks passing through now since the bridge opened. Y’noticed, mijo? So many.”

“Hmm.” 

Eyes fixed on the grip, the one more worn on one side than the other—imagining your face, the night when he’d watched you take them out, face fresh, one of his tees on your frame. 

Then, because the world isn’t cruel enough, the song changes. The radio playing a game with him now, as well as everything else, as he lifts his head, trying to focus on the road. Hearing the soft thud of his pop’s fingers on the steering wheel, his jaw tightened as the lyrics washed over him. Faintly hearing you humming along with the chorus.

Because he heard the song in the diner with you. 

Heard it on the radio one afternoon, then again in the bowling alley—how it wrapped its tune around the two of you. 

“Heard our song today,” he says, fingers massaging his temple.

He's thankful his pop said he had plans, the quietness settling over the rest of the ranch.

Before he met you, he dreaded the nights he was left alone. His thoughts gearing up, ready to pounce. The minor differences he could have made if he took a step back and stared at the facts, how he should have noticed how deep the corruption was—how much Colombia was taking from him, bit by bit. 

Now, he tries not to grin when his pop says he’s going out.

When he’s left alone, allowed full reign to talk as loud as he wants to you—rather than being huddled near the phone, whispering like a teenager. 

“Our song?” 

“Yeah.” 

Javi can practically hear you smirk. “And how does that go, charmer?” 

He’s not a singer. Not by a long shot, but he does his best. Humming the tune at first, softly singing the words from the chorus until he trails off.

You snort, before you try to muffle it in a cough. 

“You tricked me.” 

“Maybe. But, just because I wanted to hear you sing.” 

Smirking, he pulls the phone from his ear—shaking his head—before replacing it back to hear you add:

“You have a beautiful voice.” 

“Fuck you, baby.”  

Your laugh rips from you, hurtling down the phone right to his soul—making fireworks explode in his chest and warmth kiss his nerves. 

Because now he can imagine what you look like. Likely head thrown back, eyes closed—nose scrunched a little as your hands grip onto something for leverage. 

And it was beautiful. You’re beautiful—your laugh and your smile. Something he feels he should have said long before now. He’s about to rectify that, when he hears it merge into a sniffle—veering into tears and half-suppressed swallows before a noticeable little sob breaks through—as his throat dries instantly, closing. 

Turning, he places his palm on the fall as he tries to keep his chest from tightening. The knot in his chest, the one he suspects is tied to you in some way, constricts, pulling taught around his lungs.  

“I—I miss….”

You sniffle again, louder. “I've been looking forward to this all day,” you whisper, voice catching, words struggling to fall as sweetly as they usually do. “But, is it bad for me to say that phone calls aren’t the same now I’ve had the chance to be with you in person?”

Leaning his forehead against the kitchen wall, Javi wipes his chin. “Took the words outta my mouth, baby.”

He hears you chuckle, almost both heavily and heavenly, before you ask about his day. 

He rambles because it’s easy too. You listen, lapping up every single thing. Hearing about his trip to town, his pop making jokes—trying, desperately, to crack through the mist that had descended. 

“How was yours?” 

Then you sigh, all tight. You tell him about Aish and her interview, before your voice softens as you begin whispering about the prep you’re doing for your interview. He’s about to comfort you, when you continue about the asshole you work alongside has been taken out for lunch by your boss and that you snagged your favourite pair of tights on a desk.

“But, enough about that—guess what I’m wearing?”

Smiling, he bites down on his knuckle, Javi lifting his head, groaning as he tries to think. “All of your clothes at once? Anything else might short-circuit my brain.” 

“Won’t tell you then.” 

“No. Please. Tell me, baby.” 

He hears you move, and is almost sure he can hear you swallow. “You realise that you’re missing something, Javier?” 

Fuck, the way you say his name. How it drips from your tongue. Laced in lust and swirling down the phone line to his brain. 

He quickly tries to think of his washing, the piles he made—the attempted sorting. And it hits him. His eyes widened, head half-lifting, feeling his eye twitch. 

“Fuck—“

“Yes. I’m sat in that. And underwear, of course.” 

“Hermosa…”

His throat is dry, painfully so. Mind arranging an image of you from the days he spent with you. And fuck. 

“Wasn’t sure this shade of pink was my colour, but I was wrong.” 

Jutting his jaw, he closes his eyes—picturing the sight of you. The underwear he’d had the chance to peel off of you, the way it set against your skin—now, accompanied by his shirt on your arms. The buttons are likely undone, showing off more skin than he can currently process thinking about. 

“It’s nice on my skin,” you whisper, all honeyed. “Be better on my floor.” 

Clenching his fist, he bites his lip. “Baby…” 

“Maybe I’ll show you one day.” 

Snorting, he traces his teeth with his tongue. “You better. Now, tell me about the underwear.” 

“Only if you can answer six across. Clue: now.” 

Mouth parting, his jaw rolls to the side, eyes picking a spot on the wall. Thinking. And thinking. 

“Want an extra clue?” 

“An extra? You're spoiling me.” 

He hears you giggle, low and in your throat. “It’s an Italian word. And, ‘I want to see you… blank—“ 

His eyes flick up, a smile spreading. “Pronto.” 

“Correct,” you reply. “Seven words, silenced. You did this to me when you had your mouth on my—“

“Shushed,” he says quickly, fist clenching, trying to stare at the mark on the wall again, and not let the image of you populate in his head. 

“You okay, baby?” 

Gritting his teeth, he sighs. “You’re devious, you know that?” 

“I think it’s your shirt. It’s making me… flirty.” 

Grinning, he turns on the spot, back against the wall—head tilting up, eyes closing. “I miss you.” 

“I miss you too….” your tone softer, frayed at the edges. “I’m kinda glad I stole your shirt.” 

“Me too. Means I get to see you to steal it back from you.” 

“Off me.” 

It comes out quickly—purposefully chosen, spilt. 

Frowning, he opens his eyes. “What?” 

“Off me. You’ll have to steal it from my body.” 

Grasping the phone, breathing through his nose, letting out a murmured, “Fuck, baby,” under his breath.  

AN: for all those wondering if they'll be together in person again, they will. i am a happily-ever-after kind of writer unless otherwise stated. but it was so important to me that they had a magical week, and then returned to their lives.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

hey—maybe, as your followers, we can all work to limit the number of asks we send you. because it really sounds like this was something that used to be fun for you but has steadily become something that is very exhausting due to the sheer volume of asks, along with the clarity of some of their contents. I really appreciate what you do but I feel burnt out for you. I hope I’m misreading this at worst—I just think we need to ease up a little, remember that Google is a thing, and maybe give you a break or two.

look, I want to be so clear: I can and do give myself a break whenever I need to. I love answering sex ed q's, but I also love my peace of mind. I've gotten comfy closing the inbox when it's overfull. I'll leave questions sitting as long as I need to before getting to them. and, guys? I delete a LOT of asks. like, TONS. for all kinds of reasons, none of them personal.

I've been trying to spend less time on tumblr for lots of reasons lately, namely that I have other demands on my time and I focus better when I can't fall into the trap of infinite scrolling through my dash and my own notifications. like I said the other day, I write a LOT more when I'm on tumblr less, and I really like that sense of accomplishment.

if there was any change I'd want to see in the inbox, I would love for people to actually have a sense of understanding what it is that I can actually answer. I'm not a healthcare provider, and as such I don't feel responsible weighing in on pressing medical issues. I'm in no position to be offering advice to people explaining complex traumas that would be better discussed with therapists. and I have absolutely no ability or desire to tell people how to navigate their relationships with romance partners because that's none of my business. those kinds of asks, I could definitely do with less of.

[hyperactively-me]

king!ghost x reader -- duties

warnings: none

Five months.

Five months, two weeks, three days, and seven hours since he’s been gone.

More weeks pass, and you’ve fallen into your role quite comfortably. You have no more troubles juggling daily tasks, council meetings, and managing the kingdom’s affairs. The weight of your responsibility has become a familiar companion, and you navigate the challenges with a grace born from necessity. Yet, Simon’s absence has gnawed you to your bones. 

You were barred from stepping even a single toe outside of the castle gates, confined to the castle walls. It had frustrated you to no end, but you understood where the concern stemmed from. Obviously. 

The war continues, and each day brings its own set of difficulties. The reports from the front lines aren’t as optimistic as they once were, but there’s still a glimmer of hope. The Southern Kingdom persists in its aggressive pursuit, but Kastron’s forces stand resilient. Simon’s letters start to arrive at irregular intervals, long stretches of time going by without hearing from him. 

It makes you nervous, only receiving letters every three to four weeks instead of the usual once a week. 

Your worry etches lines on your face as you pore over the maps and reports. The uncertainty of Simon’s safety hangs heavy in the air, and the constant dread becomes a silent companion in your daily life. Your familiar routine is resolutely tainted with the anxiety of the unknown.

Soap remains a steadfast friend, standing by your side throughout the days. Some days, you don’t really see him, other days he’s practically glued to your side. He’s become not just a protector, knight, and guard, but someone you can be vulnerable with. A true friend.

One evening, as you sit in the dining room with Soap, a familiar voice interrupts your thoughts.

“Your Majesty, a messenger has arrived with urgent news,” announces a royal guard, stepping into the room.

You look up, setting down your fork. You have to take a breath, wanting to groan about how you haven’t had a moment of peace in months. 

You know Soap is already running through strategies in his mind, wanting to take some of the burden off of you. 

“What news do they bring?” you ask wearily. 

The guard hesitates before delivering the message. “The Southern Kingdom has launched a major offensive. Our forces are engaged in battle, and we need reinforcements.”

Your heart pounds in your chest. The war has escalated, and the threat to Kastron has never been more imminent. Soap’s expression darkens as he stands by your side, exchanging a glance that conveys the gravity of the situation.

“We need to act quickly,” Soap says, his voice steady. “I’ll gather our forces here and organize them to be sent to the front lines immediately.”

He stands from his seat, his armor clinking as he moves. The urgency in his demeanor is quite apparent, and you nod in agreement. Soap’s efficiency and decisiveness makes you feel slightly better, knowing that he’s capable. As Soap departs to mobilize the forces, you rise from your seat. The familiar routine of your ruling takes over, and you find yourself issuing orders to prepare for the impending conflict. 

. . . 

Later in the week, you’re faced with more harrowing news of villages spread throughout Kastron who were unfortunately caught in the crossfire of the war. 

The reports of the collateral damage weigh heavily on your heart. Villages once filled with life and laughter are now marred by the scars of war. The people, innocent bystanders caught in the turmoil, look to you for guidance and aid.

Now, more than ever, you’re spending all of your effort in your waking hours to provide them with relief. The castle’s war room became a somber gathering place as you, Soap, and key advisors discuss what supplies and support is to be sent to the villagers. 

“I will not let my own people suffer,” you declare, determination burning in your eyes. “We must send help to these villages immediately. Food, medical supplies—whatever they need. I want it done, now.”

Many advisors nod in agreement. “We’ll organize relief efforts. Ensuring the safety of our citizens is of utmost importance, your majesty.” 

As they begin coordinating the relief missions, you allocate resources and personnel to help the affected villages. You go through countless lists and inventories of important supplies, deeming which ones are needed and necessary to be distributed to the afflicted villages. You also spend time gathering doctors, knights, and other important personnel to send them out to tend to the villages. The castle’s front courtyards transform into bustling hubs as supplies are gathered and medical teams prepare to depart.

In the midst of the chaos, a messenger arrives with a letter. The familiar wax seal of the royal family signifies that it’s a letter from Simon. A surge of anticipation courses through your veins as you break the seal quickly, hands slightly shaky from the adrenaline.

Your eyes scan the familiar writing, clutching the paper tightly. The letter carries both relief and worry. Simon recounts the intensity of recent battles and expresses concern for the well-being of Kastron. He reassures you of his safety multiple times, yet it does little to ease your heart. He emphasizes the importance of your resilience, saying that your efforts from the castle have not gone unnoticed from the battlefield. 

As you absorb his scratchy handwriting, Soap approaches, his gaze curious. “News from the front lines?” he asks quietly.

You nod, a mixture of emotions bubbling within. “Yes. Simon is well, but he doesn’t seem as optimistic as they once were. I mean, the letter was dated about two weeks ago, so there’s no way of telling what’s currently going on.” 

Soap’s brow furrows in concern. “Well, we just sent the reinforcements a few days ago, I’m confident they'll do more than help.” 

You appreciate Soap's attempt to offer reassurance. “I hope so. It’s just, the war hasn’t let up at all, and it’s really starting to concern me… And everyone keeps saying that we’re doing well despite some setbacks, but I can’t help but feel as though something bad is going to happen…”

Soap places a reassuring hand on your shoulder. “I ken that feeling. It’s a heavy burden, but remember, Kastron has weathered storms, and we’ll weather this one. Yer doing more than you realize. And, nothing bad will happen, not with me around and his majesty out there alongside Price and Gaz. We’ve got this.” 

You swallow thickly, nodding. You take a few breaths, trying to calm your frayed nerves. 

He’s right, after all. You have Soap here looking after you, and a castle packed to the brim with guards and knights. You sent out reinforcements to struggling villages, you sent out hundreds of more soldiers to the front lines. You’ve been taking the reins in every single Kastronian affair, from advising noble people to organizing relief efforts. Your determination and resilience have been the beacon for your people, a symbol of hope in these trying times.

You’ve got this. 

. . . 

Days turn into nights, and nights into more weeks. The war room remains a constant hub of activity, but there’s a sense of progress. Reports start to arrive detailing the impact of the reinforcements and the relief missions. Villages that were once on the brink of collapse are now showing signs of recovery. The people, though scarred, hold on to the hope you've instilled in them.

As the days go by, the momentum continues to shift. The Southern Kingdom, faced with the new Kastronian reinforcements, begins to slowly lose its steam. Not to say the threat is receding, but you now have more hope than you’ve had since the war started. 

One evening, after a particularly long day, you and Soap find yourselves on the balcony overlooking the courtyard. The sounds of the night echo a strange sense of serenity and ominous undertones despite the ongoing turmoil.

Soap leans against the balcony railing, his gaze fixed on the distant horizon. “Ye’ve done well, yer majesty. The people look up to ye, and I think we’ve gotten past the worst of it. We’re on the path to recovery.”

You turn to him, grateful for his presence. “And I couldn't have done it without you, Soap.”

He gives you a half-smile, “Nah, you give me way too much credit. I’ve done nothing. It’s all you, yer majesty. All you.”

You smile, shaking your head. You can see where he’s coming from. 

Soap’s eyes meet yours, a glint of sincerity reflecting in them. “But I appreciate the sentiment. It's been a tough road. Yer strong, resilient, and caring. The people see that, and they believe in you.”

You lean against the balcony, the night air carrying some unexplained tension. “It’s not over yet, Soap. The war has really affected everyone, and even if we’re turning the tide, there’s still a long way to go.”

Soap nods, understanding your hesitancy. “Aye, there is. But ye’ve already set the wheels in motion for a better future. The relief efforts, everything you’ve been doing, it’s all making a difference, ‘specially in the long run.”

As you both stand in silence, a gentle breeze rustles the leaves, and the distant sounds of the horses in the stables break through to you. Soap breaks the silence, his voice low but determined. “I just also wanted to say, yer doing Simon proud. I can see it in everything ye do. And when he comes back, he’ll find you in your prime, and Kastron stronger than ever.”

A bittersweet smile tugs at the corners of your lips. “Thank you, Soap. I just wish he were here to see it for himself.”

Soap places a comforting hand on your shoulder. “He’ll be back. And when he does, Kastron will be upright. Ye’ve kept the flame burning, y’know.”

The war is not over, but the worst seems to have passed.

Or so you thought. 

- - - - -

(masterlist)

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Yo! Good morning/evening, hope you are fine^^💝. I wanted to ask you a question but I was afraid that it may bother you or something (you know..that feeling when you are scared that you might disturb someone or being an unwelcome person) but yeah I will ask you since i was serious about your answer for some time now so I hope I'm not annoying you or something *feel free to answer only if you wish^^. You seem to know the characters pretty well, you are quite capable and great at reading and understanding them, one of the things I'm serious about is what do you think would make someone qualified enough to be with malleus? Do they have to be of the same species?certain Reputation, stature or traits?(sorry can't help it since I can't rest until I know everything about what interests me and figure it all out😅). Thanks for giving me some of your precious time I really like your blog, you're amazing💜

No worries, you’re not bothering me at all ^^ I love to talk about my hyperfixations www

Now, I know a lot of fans (particularly on the EN side) like to ship Malleus with their OC and especially with Yuu so I want to first make it clear that my response is NOT meant to invalidate those Malleus shippers. Whatever I say here is based on my own interpretation of canon lore (and let’s be real here, TWST won’t ever confirm if anyone is romantically interested in Yuu because it might not work with how some players view their own relationship with that character). In fanon, anyone can be with anyone, but in canon there are very specific in-universe rules and expectations laid out for Malleus so these are what I will be referring to.

I also want to emphasize that the final traits I discuss in this post do NOT reflect Malleus’s personal tastes or views. He has little say in what kind of an individual his spouse would be, so his own preferences are not speculated about or taken into account here. The traits I will be bringing up are based on what I believe the lore implies are the desirable traits for those marrying into the Draconia royal family.

We got it? Good 👍 Read more below the cut!!

Firstly, I’m completely disregarding the ideas of “Malleus can love whoever he wants to love”, “Malleus can scare people into accepting who he loves”, and/or “Malleus can change the law so he can marry who he loves” (a la Sultan from Aladdin or through some other Disney magic or logic). Here’s why:

In general, those solutions for “high stakes issues” are too simple, and that has never been how Twisted Wonderland tackles complicated problems. Just look at every single OB boy’s backstory. They’re so complex that they aren’t totally resolved by the end of their books; these problems persist and are long term things each of them are working on addressing. This is also true of the politics TWST introduces to us; Leona for example explains how there is social pushback and resistance to the idea of infrastructure reform because the culture of the Sunset Savanna stresses harmony with nature. This has made it difficult for them to adopt new technologies because real politicians in their world have to seriously weigh their cultural values with their health and societal progress. The only time there are really easy solutions are in events or vignettes where the emotional stakes are not super high, but who Malleus marries is, in fact, super important since this will entirely change the life of a main character and his country.

With that first bullet point in mind… No, Malleus cannot love whoever he wants to love. Certainly, he may feel affection for another but he can never truly be with them. He is royalty and the only heir to the throne of Briar Valley. It follows that he is expected to marry for political reasons/to better his nation. This is a non-negotiable obligation for him.

Rather than saying, “Malleus cannot scare people into accepting who he loves”, I think it’s more accurate to say Malleus knows he probably shouldn’t. I mean, yes, he may be upset about his S/O not being accepted by his people but I feel that is discrediting a lot of the loyalty he has for his own country. As a kid he may have thrown tantrums when he was upset and potentially harmed staff, but as a 178 year old he has a much better understanding of decorum and maintaining it in spite of his own grudges. For example, even though he personally dislikes Leona he still commands Sebek to apologize to him because, at the end of the day, this could harm Briar Valley’s relationship with the Sunset Savanna. That’s not to say that Malleus can’t be petty (he definitely is)—but implying he would be petty toward basically his entire country just because they would disapprove of the one he loves?? (We know this would likely be true because Sebek’s parents faced similar backlash when they got together.) I feel like his own sense of awareness and responsibility for his country, crown, and people would override that. As an example, Malleus states that he has never been in a car before because the senate would be against it and often kept Malleus in the castle. Someone of his power could easily ignore them and sneak out and do whatever he wanted, yet the dialogue implies Malleus didn’t. He obeyed his political advisors even when he was younger and arguably much more immature. Malleus might not like certain decisions made about his life but it sounds like he ultimately complies with them.

Continuing from the previous point, let’s say for the sake of argument that Malleus does scare everyone into line. What about his public image and the mental health of his S/O? Maybe Malleus can frighten people to not talk out of turn to his face, but he cannot control what people whisper about him behind closed doors or to treat his S/O well or like they actually like them. Not only would they be alienated (away from their own home and forced to adapt to a new one) but they’d be treated oddly by others too. What kind of reputation is that for Malleus? To be a tyrant king who throws a hissy fit anytime someone talks about his partner in a way he doesn’t approve of? With a spouse who is not at their best mentally because of the constant ostracization? (This is similar to what Leona experienced in his childhood.) I don’t think Malleus would want to subject anyone to that kind of life, especially not one he loves. And again, this attitude would be the vast majority of his people. It’s not like it can be avoided or resolved in an easy manner, especially when the people of Briar Valley have proven to be against change.

Lastly, Malleus would not change the law so he can be with whoever he wants to. To begin with, I doubt this is a unilateral position the senate would approve of. But okay, let’s accept that Malleus is royalty so his power overrides the advisors’ power. So he effectively just changed a law for a very selfish and personal reason rather than changing something to actually benefit his people. That doesn’t feel in-character for him, not when Malleus seems to understand that it is the duty of those in higher status to help those below them rather than themselves (see: Riddle’s Suitor Suit vignettes. Malleus has acted selfish before, yes (who remembers Endless Halloween Night? His Dorm Uniform vignettes? I do.)—but never at the cost of changing the status quo of his country. (Book 7 is not included here because he’s in a very distressed emotional state then; this “new law” scenario posits that Malleus is in a normal state of mind.) This is a major change—change which Briar Valley, its people, and most importantly, Malleus, are not ready for. You think there wouldn’t be social pushback against this? From a society that has become complacent with its own way of life and is still isolated from the rest of the world? That Malleus, someone who struggles greatly with accepting life changes himself, could enact such a big change so easily? (On a more technical level, you don’t just pass a law and it instantly becomes tangible or real, there is a process of approval and then implementation.)

Additionally, it’s made clear in Ghost Marriage that “[Malleus] cannot enter into an engagement lightly”, which is why Sebek goes in his place. Eliza, the Ghost Bride, is royalty (er, albeit dead) but it seems that royal status is not enough to qualify as his partner. Maybe this is because she’s dead and doesn’t have anything of value for Briar Valley (no land, no people, no political power), but it could also mean that the partner has to be given the thumbs up by other parties.

All that being said, here are some of the conditions I think would have to be met for Malleus’s future spouse:

Has to be someone of equal or at least high status. This means they also have to be a royal or at least of nobility. This appears to be true of Malleus’s dad, who is referred to as a duke.

Because of how self-contained Briar Valley is + nocturnal fae having beef with diurnal fae, I imagine his partner would have to also be a nocturnal fae. This would also solve the MASSIVE lifespan difference between fae and non-fae because at least fae would be far closer to each other even if their lifespans fluctuate but subspecies.

Someone suited to rule by his side. Being married into any royal family is no joke—it comes with the expectation that you will contribute somehow, and the partner should be fully equipped to enter the world of politics with him.

Piggybacking off the last point, I think mental fortitude is also a prerequisite. This is because being a politician (navigating the social climate both within your country and outside of it, keeping your people and colleagues happy, maintaining public approval, managing laws, dealing with potential attempts on your life, etc.) can be very stressful and can hurt those who are faint of heart or not prepared for the responsibility. Leaders have to make tough calls at the drop of a hat, and they have to be ready for it.

Has a lot to offer in terms of benefits to Briar Valley as a country. This could be in terms of resources, connections, and/or political savvy. This appears to be true of Malleus’s dad, who acted as a diplomat for Briar Valley.

Vetting and formal approval from the senate. lmao good luck with that

Has to be able and willing to have a child. They at least need an heir to the throne to succeed Malleus. (However, knowing how exclusionary and conservative as heck the senators are, I doubt they would accept anything but a biological child 💀)

Preferably someone with powerful magic or is skilled at magic already so as to lessen the chance of “tainting” the bloodline with a weak mage or a non-mage.

I believe that Briar Valley would prefer someone with old fashioned values like them, not someone pushing for massive reform. They have a culture that is resistant to change and a history of fighting for resources with outsiders, so if Malleus’s new spouse tries to introduce a bunch of technology or open its borders to other countries (even if they have good intentions), the people + the senate may oppose them. His father is implied to be open-minded, but he at least understood that such change isn’t reasonable without time and effort dedicated to the endeavor.

All that being said 💦 I think that this topic is actually less about what Malleus as an individual wants and what his country, his people, and, yes, even his asshole senators, want. This is basically an arranged marriage situation so that their country can maintain power and relevance. It’s about the collective and what Malleus must do for their perceived security and prosperity.

[immaturityofthomasastruc]

Every Episode of Miraculous Ladybug Season 5 Ranked (Part 2)

Part 1

(This site's stupid 30 images per post forced me to do this, so thanks for nothing, Tumblr)

#14: Transmission

I swear, I'm not doing these on purpose. This is just how I've been ranking the episodes.

Like I said in the last part, this episode just did not need to happen. The first half is cheap melodrama between Marinette and Adrien and the second half is a run of the mill Akuma fight with two different heroes. This is the story that seriously warranted two parts this season?

I just can't stand the fact that Marinette and Adrien gave up their Miraculous so easily here. Maybe if it was Season 2, Season 3 at the latest, I'd buy it, but near the middle of Season 5? They honestly view their love lives as more important than the battle with Monarch. If it was anything else like the stress or physical danger, I'd also be understanding, but Tikki and Plagg decide that Marinette and Adrien are so miserable that they need to be happy by losing their Miraculous without a fight. Remember, this was just two episodes after “Reunion”, which showed Joan of Arc was a Miraculous holder. So fighting in the Hundred Years' War didn't get so much as an ounce of concern from Tikki, but teenage angst is too much for her little heart to bear?

Maybe it's the benefit of knowing this won't be permanent, but the issue I have is how much the show draws this out for so long, as if the audience is supposed to buy it. “It's really happening, guys! Ladybug and Cat Noir won't be the stars anymore, we swear!” This kind of plot can work under the right circumstances. All you needed to do is at the very least, make it something they choose to do instead of their Kwamis taking their Miraculous away so we can see them weigh the benefits of giving up life as a superhero in ways that aren't exclusively about their love lives. I'd even buy it if it's something Ladybug and Cat Noir actually agreed on before quitting.

While I can sort of get Alya becoming Scarabella due to her experience with the Ladybug (even if she chose to give up using any Miraculous at the end of Season 4), Zoe getting the Cat just feels like the writers put a bunch of names in a hat and picked hers. The two just don't have as compelling a dynamic as Ladybug and Cat Noir do, because they don't get a lot of time to know each other. Alya and Zoe have almost never interact with each other, so the masks don't really shake up their relationship, because there's no relationship to speak of.

Also, the Akuma here was really forced. We know nothing about this new character while the show acts like we're supposed to know who he is based on some minor hints with Nora calling earlier. While I will give the show credit for arguably giving us the most powerful Akuma of all time due to being both a man and a bear, he's as forgettable as a villain as Kitty Noire is as a hero.

Just about nobody here comes out smelling like roses in this episode. The Kwamis are morons for caring about one ship becoming canon, Marinette and Adrien are selfish cowards for giving up their Miraculous with little hesitation, their friends are ignorant buffoons for thinking some random attempt to get Marinette and Adrien to talk will somehow seal the deal, and Alya and Zoe are idiots for not thinking that they should take off the shiny ring that tracks their every movement. It's a terrible episode, and the only reason why “Deflagration” is ranked higher is because it didn't irritate me as much as this one did.

#15: Determination

And now we're onto the really bad episodes this season.

This episode is pretty much what you've come to expect by Season 5. People keep forcing Marinette into situations she's clearly uncomfortable, and we're supposed to just laugh at her anxiety, because we still have eight episodes to go before the show decides to take her mental health seriously.

What makes this episode really sting for me is that it's Luka and Kagami that are forcing Marinette into these unfunny antics this time. For the most part, they never really stooped to this level and didn't try to force anything with their respective love interests until they had trouble in their relationships that required them to communicate. But now, even though one knows Marinette and Adrien are superheroes while the other is usually very blunt with her feelings (at least, before she became this season's next victim), they're going to try forcing Marinette and Adrien to spend time together even they both know they have feelings for each other and MY GOD, THIS IS SO STUPID! It's just a cheap excuse for more pointless shenanigans that stopped being funny years ago.

Yet somehow, that's not the worst of the Love Square drama this episode. It's here where we learn that Adrien fell in love with Marinette over a season ago, during a scene where she violated his personal space. In addition, Adrien somehow showed no signs of attraction to Marinette until the plot demanded it, and came right after another episode showing him falling for her. Why not make it the fake confession Marinette practiced with Cat Noir in ��Glaciator 2”? The kiss Marinette gave Adrien at the end of “Heroes' Day”? I'd even take another umbrella scene callback like in “Mr. Pigeon 72”. But no, it's the statue scene that the writers decided on. It's like they noticed all the criticism Marinette got in that episode and were like “Joke's on you! Adrien actually liked being lusted over like an object!”.

And then the masks come on and make things even more convoluted. Adrien at least got to reflect on the events of a previous episode to explain his new feelings for Marinette, but what caused Ladybug to suddenly fall for Cat Noir after four seasons?

The writers don't even bother with an explanation for this. Ladybug spontaneously becomes attracted to Cat Noir with absolutely no foreshadowing, buildup, or even callbacks to earlier episodes. The writers either wanted to complicate things one last time before Adrienette became canon, they wanted to bury the Ladynoir conflict arc from last season in the sand, or the most likely option, a combination of both.

The idea of the public turning on Ladybug was an interesting one to take, seeing how she's been universally beloved for the past four seasons. But despite hinting at it in “Multiplication”, this is the farthest is goes, and even then, guess who's behind it? You can't keep raising points against the main characters if it's only Chloe who does it. It doesn't open debate on the story and essentially tells the audience that they're wrong to agree with her, no matter what kind of point she makes.

As dumb as the way it happened was, Ladybug still screwed up and endangered the city by losing the other Miraculous, but we can't actually challenge children by acknowledging that the hero actually did something wrong and needs to grow as a person. We need to use a recurring character as a strawman to tell the audience that only bad people think this way! Way to remove any interesting internal conflict, writers.

The Akuma was pretty weak, just being an older Puppeteer, down to using wax statues like what happened in “Puppeteer 2”. The army of wax heroes could have been interesting, but there wasn't enough time to do much with the idea. The one thing I liked was how the Ox Miraculous' Resistance was used. It felt like an upgrade instead of a core power Manipula got.

This episode pretty much set the stage for a new level of frustrating Love Square drama this season, and it was one of the season's first outright awful episodes.

#16: Conformation

The only reason this episode isn't at the bottom is because the rest of the ones on this list are far worse by comparison. Make of that what you will.

Like most season finales, this one continues the tradition of being better at buildup than actual execution. Gabriel's plan is pretty decent, even if it's just Heroes Day on a global scale. He utilizes his public influence and business skills to plan out a plan to get almost all of humanity working for him. While I don't like the Miraculized, I still think Gabriel being on top works here, especially since he's not going out into the field like the last three finales.

But other than an okay evil plan, this episode is still pretty bad. Marinette being infected with nightmare dust only happens to get her to the Agreste manor because the writers forgot that Marinette learned Gabriel was Monarch last episode. It could have been a decent way to up the stakes by showing Ladybug not being at 100%, but like everyone else, she just fights off the nightmare dust and doesn't have a single problem during her fight with Monarch. In general, the nightmare dust isn't really utilized well, only being an excuse to bring out the Miraculized. It doesn't impact everyone fighting off the Miraculized, and there's no lesson or theme about fear that's conveyed here.

Speaking of nightmare dust, I'm pretty sure the only reason why it was introduced in the first place was to bench Adrien, which is still easily one of the dumbest decisions the show has ever made. While everyone else had no problem resisting the nightmare dust, Adrien is just physically incapable of doing so because of some half-assed character arc the show pretended happened. So either Adrien got a more potent dosage of the nightmare dust, or Adrien's just too weak to actually overcome his fears. “Sandboy”? Never heard of it! The fact that the writers also tried to claim they were being subversive with fairy tale tropes and cliches didn't help, since it devalues Adrien as a character even further. He's not a superhero and Ladybug's closest ally. He's just some damsel in distress who needs to be saved. Let me just remind you, if the genders were reversed, this would not be seen as some bold move, but the same overused cliche trying to be something new.

I already talked about my problems with Nathalie in “Passion”, and the stuff she does here isn't really different. Despite enabling Gabriel for five seasons, the episode has the balls to act like Nathalie always had morals and is appalled by Gabriel planning to sacrifice someone to save his wife. Just remember, “Passion” established that Nathalie had a history as a treasure hunter, so this is like Indiana Jones not knowing what the Holy Grail does. Nathalie only got dumber than in “Passion” because she somehow thought she could take on a supervillain with nothing but a crossbow and a body that already has one foot in the grave. And just like Felix, Nathalie can't even apologize to Ladybug for the aiding and abetting a terrorist thing. Between Nathalie, Felix, and Gabriel, does using the Peacock Miraculous just make you an idiot?

While the buildup is decent, it's just not enough to really get audiences excited for the second part.

#17: Representation

This episode is yet another example of the show's double standards.

Without going into detail too much, this episode came right after “Revolution”, the one that essentially portrayed Audrey taking control of Chloe's life as a karmic punishment. What happens in this episode? We learn Felix's father literally took control of his life and it's portrayed as wrong as child abuse should be. That's why this episode is still better than “Revolution”. It at the very least understands how serious child abuse is, and tries to tell Felix's story with as much dignity as two teenagers in white onesies can have.

With that being said, there's a reason why this episode is as low as it is. The Sentimonster play used to tell Marinette about Felix is just so stupid. The sets and costumes look ridiculous, it's hard to take the story seriously with Felix and Kagami doing all the voices, and most of it is unnecessary since the whole point is to tell Marinette that Gabriel is Monarch... something that the writers decided she needed to find out on her own in the next episode. It comes across less like Felix trying to alert Ladybug to who Monarch really is and more like he's just trying to justify his own actions. Hell, the actual reason he decided to tell Marinette about Gabriel was because he and Kagami were worried about their own relationship being ruined by him. And yet somehow, Ladybug lets him on the team at the end of the season.

The stuff with Adrien was also pretty dumb. It's cheap fanservice that reminds the audience of Cat Blanc when none of the characters should know who Cat Blanc is. You can call him Anticat all you want, but everyone can see that he's just Cat Blanc with blue hair. It's bad enough that this was what all the times Cat Noir almost Cataclysming people this season was meant to lead up to, but this is pretty much the reason why Adrien is benched during the finale.

This episode really shows how desperate the writers are to make people take this show seriously by showing serious topics like genocide and child abuse, as if the show didn't already ignore the horrible implications previous episodes (like the very last one before this) raised and will continue to raise during the season finale. So much of the episode is just dark for the sake of being dark. It's nothing too horrifying for children, of course, but the issue is how obvious it is that the writers are trying to raise the stakes right before the season finale and show how mature the show's writing is. For lack of a better term, it's this show's equivalent to “Ow The Edge”.

#18: Revelation

Get ready for the episode where the writers abandon all attempts to be subtle and create an episode specifically to attack people who think Chloe isn't the most evil character on the show. Because how dare they be optimistic and try to see the good in people! What do they think this is, a kids' show?

While a big problem with the Lila episodes was how stupid the class is, this episode made it so Marinette got to join in on losing brain cells too. Despite outright admitting to neglecting her duties as class representative (as absurd as it is to be in charge of notifying teachers about student progress they should be aware of), we're supposed to agree with her for not telling her teacher about Chloe cheating. Not only does this make no sense since you'd think Marinette would want to see Chloe get punished, but her claiming that all Chloe does is abuse her privileges loses any point to it because Marinette admitted to not doing her job as class representative, making her just as lazy as Chloe and unintentionally helping her through not telling the teachers. And that's not even getting into how many times Marinette has broken the secret identity rule despite also being the one to enforce it the most as the Guardian.

If the episode at least admitted to Marinette having personal issues that prevented her from displaying any form of professionalism towards Chloe (especially since this episode takes place after “Derision”), that'd be fine. Sometimes, people just can't let bygones be bygones and let their emotions dictate how they handle things. If she willingly resigned from her position by admitting she was just as at fault for Chloe getting as far as she did with her cheating, that would have worked. Instead, the episode does the same things it did with Adrien for the last few seasons: Go out of its way to vindicate Marinette's complaining and never even consider the idea of her being wrong in the slightest.

It's also hilarious to see Ms. Bustier act like an actual teacher for once and plan to work with Chloe to help make up her missed work, but portray it as a bad thing because in Marinette's eyes, that's not a punishment. Since the school year is almost over, Chloe will have to attend summer school at best and be held back or even expelled at worst. How the hell does that not count as a punishment, Marinette?

And don't forget how she gets not one, but two separate scenes insulting people for being idealistic and not wanting to write off people as beyond saving, the second one being copied from Astruc's Twittter.

And remember, this was right before a string of episodes where characters were able to change their ways, including Sabrina (Chloe's accomplice), Andre (Chloe's enabler), and Gabriel (Chloe's supervillain contact). How the hell is Chloe the only one being written off as irredeemable when she didn't pull off any of her evil plans without help? You can still punish Chloe. All I want is for the other characters to be punished as well.

But let's talk about the main event for this episode: Lila. In one of the most confusing “twists” in the show's history, she's now an identity thief who lives with three different mothers. Why? Because the writers have no idea how to hype people up for her being the main villain for Season 6, so they think just making her mysterious for the sake of making her mysterious is enough to build her up as a villain. It's like the writers realized Lila had absolutely zero resources of her own, so they felt like they needed to establish her as an evil genius to compensate. “Who cares if there's no logical explanation for how she's gotten as far as she has despite constantly boasting about her celebrity connections in public? We have to make her vague and mysterious, damn it! It worked for Judas Traveller and Kaine, didn't it?”

This episode takes multiple shots at fans and tries to make Lila seem more compelling than she actually is. It feels more like damage control than an actual plot-relevant episode.

#19: Illusion

Want to see the main characters acting like idiots for almost a half-hour? No? Too bad!

So much of this episode's conflict, the characters trying to investigate a possible lead related to Monarch, comes from everyone making stupid decisions. Nino tries to get one of the most influencial men in Paris akumatized, talks about it in public, falls for his trick, and lets him into his secret alliance. This season really cemented his role as the Zapp Brannigan of Miraculous Ladybug with how incompetent he is. If you really want to start portraying Nino as a tactical genius, maybe you should actually show him doing something smart instead of getting outsmarted by obvious tricks.

Of course, the other characters aren't immune to Nino's stupidity either. Marinette, Adrien, and Alya just go along with his asinine plan to get Gabriel akumatized, never question his logic, and ultimately still go along with the Resistance despite how obnoxious their leader is. The worst part is Ladybug not recognizing her own partner being stung by Venom... when they're fighting someone with access to over a dozen Miraculous. I know Cat Noir was born with glass bones and paper skin, but I don't think he literally freezes in terror when he's scared. And of course, Ladybug never questions the tiny invisible men who stunned Cat Noir after this scene.

The cafeteria scene is something that should really be cited as an example of how terrible this show is with acknowledging continuity. You thought there would be some compelling drama discussing the secret identity rule and all the double standards it has? NOPE! It's a funny joke about how confusing the identity stuff is at this point. The fact that Nino somehow doesn't understand the concept of secret identities in this scene is yet another reason as to why he isn't even qualified to lead an anime club, much less a resistance against Monarch.

The idea of Monarch using an illusion to fight Ladybug and Cat Noir was an interesting one, but it still had some holes. For one thing, what if the two heroes can't dodge one of the illusion Collector's attacks? What if they're fast enough to try tying him up, only to dispel the illusion? The entire plan pretty much relies on the fact that Ladybug and Cat Noir are too slow to catch the Collector.

But one scene that has only become more questionable after the finale is Ladybug trying to reach through to the illusion Collector. Like several episodes this season, it comes across like the show is spitting on idealism and wanting to solve problems peacefully because Monarch tricked Ladybug into believing he willingly rejected an Akuma. Remember kids, if someone says they want to change, it's really a trick as part of an evil supervillain's plan to maintain his secret identity.

This episode is like a microcosm of everything wrong with Season 5. Poor morals, characters acting like idiots, shooting down any potential for plot development, and being told characters are right when their actions say otherwise.

#20: Confrontation

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the episode where the writers just gave up.

There is just so much that happens in this episode that the writers cram in. There's Marinette's “final” confrontation with Lila, the battle with Reflekta, Sabrina's redemption, Juleka's character development, Ms. Bustier's character development, Mr. Damocles' character development, and the reveal of Lila's true nature. I don't think I need to tell you that the writers struggle to make all of these plot threads work in less than a half-hour.

First off, Marinette and Lila. The previous episode implied that Marinette let Lila have this short-term victory because she had her own plan to expose her. This episode puts that plan into action. See, she has the genius idea of going along with submitting school application forms to Lila and Chloe with no actual countermeasure in place, waiting for Sabrina to have a sudden change of heart so they can work together to expose Lila and Chloe through a bathroom peephole. This is the kind of tactical intelligence that will be studied in the history books, let me tell you. There's just no weight to Marinette and Lila's final battle of wits because there isn't any. There's no series of gambits or scenarios that actually pit their minds against each other, so you don't get a lot of satisfaction from Marinette's triumph over Lila. It doesn't help that there's more focus on Sabrina than on Marinette, but I'll get to that later. Even the actual payoff is anti-climactic. Most of the class' apology to Marinette was deleted because Mr. Damocles using a Magical Charm shield was just too important to leave on the cutting room floor according to the writers.

This episode really shows just how Marinette's classmates are like NPCs in the Lila-centric stories. They don't second guess Lila's accusations due to their past experiences with Marinette, and as soon as Marinette's name is cleared, they instantly apologize to her and don't even think about how easily they were fooled by Lila and Chloe. The worst example is Alya, Marinette's confidant and someone who was trusted to temporarily use the Ladybug Miraculous last episode, falling for this and not trusting Marinette. My sister in Christ, your friend goes out and saves lives on a weekly basis at least. How can you fall for Lila's story? This is why I think the Lila episodes should have all been set pre-Season 4, so Alya falling for Lila's lies is a little more believable since she isn't already in on Marinette's biggest secret.

I also have to roll my eyes at how melodramatic the talk about everyone's “futures” is. Yes, I don't know a lot about the French education system (If there's anything I'm getting wrong here, don't hesitate to let me know), but I don't get why they're treating their high school choices like such a big deal. Maybe if it was college, I'd get it, but high school? Why can't you just transfer if it doesn't work out? But then again, this is the same show created by a man who thinks school uniforms are a sign of fascism.

THIS IS WHAT THOMAS ASTRUC ACTUALLY BELIEVES.

Speaking of futures, this episode also showed just how little the writers cared about Adrien at this point, with how a supposedly heartwaming moment is him having no plan in life other than Marinette. I know this might seem weird given my problem with him last season was his refusal to think about anyone but himself, but there's a difference between wanting someone to follow orders without complaining and giving them absolutely no motivation outside of their significant other. And once again, if you swap the genders, this becomes sexist as hell.

But the big problem comes in the form of how the side characters are utilized. I don't know why the writers decided to focus on developing characters like Sabrina, Juleka, Ms. Bustier, and Mr. Damocles with five episodes left in the season. This should have been done in earlier episodes, not in the middle of a major story arc. I'm just left not caring about the development because it takes away from the conflict between Marinette and Lila, to say nothing about how little Adrien and Alya contribute to the story.

To me, this episode feels like the writers had no idea how to make Marinette outsmarting Lila into an episode, so they crammed in all these half-assed character arcs to pad out the runtime. While “Revelation” personally upset me more, I personally think this is the worse episode of the two from a writing standpoint.

#21: Revolution

Given how often I've criticized the way Chloe has been handled over the years, I bet you're surprised that this one isn't at the bottom of the list. You'll be even more surprised to learn that I think Chloe is one of this episode's saving graces.

This episode (along with “Derision”) provide an example of the Chloe we should have gotten ever since Season 3 ended: A villain who's allowed to be a threat while still being funny. So much of the past two seasons have done nothing but portray Chloe as nothing but an incompetent joke, but here, near the end of the season, she's in a position of power and is taken seriously. The episode does a good job showing how tyrannical Chloe's rule as Mayor is while still making it funny and in-character for her. She uses her power on frivolous things because she's a teenage girl who doesn't understand the complicated issues that come with politics. It's also why her idea of punishment involves detention, because it's something she's more familiar with as someone in middle school. Of course, even the episode all about Chloe ruling Paris with an iron fist isn't stupid enough to actually let Chloe be a compelling antagonist. No, we need to constantly remind the audience that Chloe is being played, as if we're supposed to see her as nothing more than a pawn even though the show still wants us to see her as an irredeemable monster.

Putting aside that one speck of something interesting, this episode is still incredibly bad. So much of the story is dependent not on how smart the villains' plan is, but rather, how lazy the heroes are. Not only is there not a single moment where Ladybug and Cat Noir acknowledge that the whole reason why Chloe was able to take over as Mayor was their fault, they act as if Chloe abusing her power to make everyone's life a living hell isn't enough of a reason to stop her. What kind of Prime Directive bullshit is this? YOU JUST HELPED SOMEONE LEAD AN INSURRECTION AGAINST A POWERLESS CIVILIAN! HOW IS THIS ANY DIFFERENT?! If there was at least something involving Ladybug and Cat Noir taking responsibility for what happened or at least showing that they played a part in this (especially since they “grow up” in this episode), I'd get it. Instead, because this is Season 5, our heroes are perfection incarnate, and can't ever be wrong. Even when they finally decide to get off their asses and stop Chloe, they didn't know she was akumatized, and nobody seemed to care before Chloe blurted it out, so Ladybug and Cat Noir have no excuses for slacking off.

The final battle is just a joke. Not only is it another excuse to force the Resistance into the plot, it shows Ladybug and Cat Noir unlocking the full power of their Miraculous in the most anti-climactic way possible. Even though they spent most of the episode caring more about their personal lives than actually stopping the obvious threat, somehow, this means they “grew up”. There's no buildup, no explanation, and no catharsis gained from this achievement. All of a sudden, Ladybug and Cat Noir are adults now. There's one decent scene with Adrien, but that's far from an actual explanation. What, did you actually expect an explanation for something this huge? Too bad! We need to have Marinette tell Chloe she's not afraid of her anymore even though she was never afraid of her prior to this season. Of all the things that happened this season, this is the one that makes it clear that Season 5 was supposed to be the end. There is no way Season 6 can happen unless the writers come up with some crap that undoes this, because Ladybug and Cat Noir have essentially unlocked god mode.

But I saved the worst for last, and you all know what it is: Chloe's punishment. I still can't get over the fact that there's actually a scene heavily implying we're supposed to be happy Chloe is going to live with her emotionally abusive mother in the same season that's trying to tell a serious story about child abuse. There's already been so much said about all the horrible things this implies, so I'm going to try and bring up something else. Specifically, how everyone is just okay with this. I can buy Ladybug given all the things Chloe has done to her, but it's pretty odd that Cat Noir, Andre, and Zoe all decide to wash their hands of their association with Chloe as if they never knew her. They don't even feel bad that it had to come to this, and feel absolutely no sympathy for her. Remember in episodes like “Malediktator” and “Queen Banana” that showed Adrien and Zoe still cared for Chloe despite all the terrible things she's done, teaching kids a lesson about trying to show compassion to your enemies? The writers sure didn't, because Adrien and Zoe don't get to say a thing about Chloe after she's defeated. Way to establish connections between characters and do nothing with them, writers!

This episode had so many things wrong with it, and it only got worse the longer it went on, to the point where the ending is essentially condoning child abuse. It's disgusting, but at the very least, it means we're not going to have to deal with Chloe in Season 6.

.....

#22: Adoration

This is one of those episodes I honestly didn't think would hate as much as I did.

I think of all the episodes this season, this is the one that shows how frustratingly inconsistent the characterization is. Characters will either announce how much someone has changed or will take a complete 180 while the show makes it clear this is how things have always been. Not only does the show say Zoe has somehow changed and suddenly developed feelings for Marinette, but Chloe's view of Sabrina has gotten even lower, to the point where she calls her an underling to her face. Because actually showing character development and changing interpersonal relationships is too hard for these writers. It's like that rule everyone knows: Tell, don't show. That's how it goes, right?

Before anyone gets on my case about this, I'm not trying to say that Zoe having a crush on Marinette was a bad idea. The issue is more how it comes across like the show is trying to earn brownie points with LGBT+ audiences with the reveal. The issue is that this major revelation isn't about Zoe, but rather, Marinette. It's from a Marinette-focused episode all about her heterosexual feelings for Adrien while Zoe's coming out story is nothing more than a cautionary tale to get Marinette to finally try kissing Adrien. I'm not saying Marinette should have dumped Adrien to be with Zoe. The point I'm trying to make is if you want to show something as huge as a character coming out as sapphic, maybe put more focus on that character's struggles than the struggles the straight main character goes through. Maybe instead of being an afterthought in the story, make the episode about Marinette helping Zoe confess her feelings to a girl she likes.

This was also the episode that laid the groundwork for Andre and Sabrina's “redemption arcs”. Normally, I wouldn't mind something like them changing, but it's less to show a character becoming a better person and more to vilify a different character. Andre went from a corrupt politician who abuses his power to please his daughter to an honest politician who is forced to abuse his power to please his daughter. Sabrina went from Chloe's loyal friend who chooses to help her make people miserable to Chloe's underling who is being forced to help make people miserable. Both of them were perfectly willing to go along with Chloe's acts in the past, and as we saw in “Revolution”, being a pawn didn't excuse her from being punished, so by that logic, they shouldn't get a free pass either. It's also strange how this wasn't the episode where Andre and Sabrina officially cut ties with Chloe, considering they already had issues with them. There wasn't really a reason to wait if they already made their issues clear, especially Sabrina. Somehow framing Marinette here is okay but doing it a few episodes later is too much for her?

Also, Lila served no purpose in the episode. Just like in “Collusion” and “Revolution”, all she does is tell Chloe to do things she was perfectly capable of doing in earlier episodes. We're supposed to see her as a mastermind, but I don't get why she has to hold Chloe's hand here. Why can't Lila come up with her own plan or manipulate different people from behind the scenes? It only further highlights the double standards because while Sabrina being a lackey to Chloe earns her sympathy, Chloe being a lackey to Lila doesn't for some reason.

I am getting really tired of the whole “Nobody believes Marinette” formula that every Lila episode relies on (Chameleon, Ladybug, Risk, Revelation, Confrontation). It's the exact same story. Everyone who has known Marinette for the past four seasons suddenly loses all trust in her, only instead of instantly believing Lila, it's Chloe. CHLOE. This is worse than Lila, because she's at least in good graces with other people, but this is the same season that solidified the idea of nobody liking her at all. They seriously take her words at face value over Marinette, someone whose friends know has tormented her for a year at least (Derision)? Put aside how I feel about Chloe, this is a story that depends on trusting someone nobody has any reason to trust, and it makes no sense.

There are just so many minor issues in this episode that pile up enough to really piss me off. It's like a death by a thousand cuts.

#23: Collusion

I normally don't try to get political on this blog unless I absolutely have to, and talking about this episode is one of those occasions.

If you've been around since the early days of this blog, you'll remember that Astruc once compared Chloe to Donald Trump, and not too long after the January 6th attack on the Capitol Building at that.

Even before that thread, Astruc made a joke comparing Trump to Chloe less than a week after the attack.

Whether you agree with Astruc's views on Trump or not, the point is that he kept up with American politics and strongly opposes him. So anyway, let's get to the episode where the heroes let someone lead a small army to storm the mayor's office and force him to resign, which is totally different from what Trump did.

I cannot get over just how confusing this episode is. For a show created by someone who usually keeps up with American politics, this is such a tone-deaf episode. I get that the story is trying to lean into French history, and I'm not sure how far into production the crew was when the attack on the Capitol happened, but given how Astruc was aware of the drama, he and his team should have at least considered the implications this episode could raise. The problem with the discussion around January 6th is that the supporters see it in as righteous a light as Miss Sans-Culotte is. As far as they know, what happened wasn't a violent invasion of government property, but a peaceful demonstration. Sure, none of the talking balloons said “Hang Andre Bourgeois!”, but it still brings similar imagery to mind.

Something that also harms the French Revolution narrative is the fact that all of Miss Sans-Culotte's supporters are helping her against her will. Much like countless Akumas throughout the show's history (Darkblade, Kung Food, The Puppeteer, Princess Fragrance, Despair Bear, Befana, Zombizou, Malediktator, Gamer 2.0, Mr. Pigeon 72, Hack-San, Revelation, Confrontation), Miss Sans-Culotte brainwashes innocent civilians so they can help her cause. This goes against the idea that she's speaking for the people, because her victims don't have a say in this. She's not reenacting the French Revolution, she's reenacting Order 66!

Also, this is something I've neglected to discuss. Why make Miss Bustier pregnant at all, much less akumatize her while pregnant? Outside of her students telling Chloe not to make a scene because the stress caused from dealing that is bad for the baby, Ms. Bustier's pregnancy adds nothing to the story. Seriously, the story thinks Chloe annoying the class is more dangerous for Ms. Bustier's baby than Ms. Bustier herself running around and getting into fights with her baby inside. It could have made for some interesting drama where Ladybug and Cat Noir are hesitant to hurt a pregnant woman, even if she's been akumatized. While the writers do try to work around it by giving her minions to do the fighting (as much as it mucks up the themes of this episode), it still doesn't explain why she needed to be pregnant during this episode in the first place.

Putting aside how unlikable Miss Sans-Culotte is in this episode, you can't even enjoy seeing Andre getting kicked out of office because this is the same episode where the writers really want us to feel bad for him. Look at how sad the rich white politician is. Let's ignore the fact that he's a big part of the reason why Chloe is as bad as she is, has abused his power multiple times, and is all around the cause of his own problems. But even though this is a show that tries to take an anti-capitalist stance (which I'll get to more in “Emotion”), we're supposed to side with one of the biggest symbols of everything wrong with capitalism and political corruption. Even then, Andre is framed for corruption instead of the several instances he actually abused his power, as if they're trying to say he was never a corrupt man. He just loves his daughter. Is that too much to ask for? His daughter herself? Eh, who cares? You really need to support the rich white man. Are we sure this show was created by a liberal?

But the biggest issue is the moral. It's impossible to frame Miss Sans-Culotte storming the mayor's office as a peaceful protest because she's clearly inspired by one of the bloodiest and most violent revolutions in history. If she was supposed to be a violent warrior who needed to learn there was a better way, that would work, but instead, the show downplays how dangerous she is... when she has a guillotine blade for a weapon. You can't claim Miss Sans-Culotte is non-violently protesting Andre's administration when she brainwashes innocent civilians, storms into the building, and demands he resign without any question. Even taking all that into consideration, the moral ends up backfiring because forcing Andre out of office caused an even bigger problem with Chloe taking over, and the very next episode threw the non-violence message out the window.

Whether or not you want to consider the political implications here, this is still a terrible episode with a terrible moral.

#24: Pretension

I've always had issues with Felix, and after the trainwreck that was “Emotion”, let's just say this didn't exactly do anything to raise my opinion of him. Just like his other appearances for the last few seasons, he did absolutely nothing to help Ladybug, focused on only doing things that benefited him, and making everyone's lives worse due to his incompetence. And somehow, this idiot is the one who moves the plot along the most.

The entire conflict happened because Felix kidnapped Kagami without even coming up with a plan. Even when he believes that Kagami is a Sentimonster (I apologize for saying that word Felix hates, but once again, the show provides no alternative to it), he doesn't think of Tomoe being able to track her or command her to leave even at a far distance. He doesn't even try to explain himself to Ladybug and Cat Noir and spends more time running away from everyone who wants to kick his ass. But by the show's logic, he just needs friends, even though his entire deal is that he works alone to get what he wants.

It's bad enough that Felix has to screw up everything he touches, but now he's dragging Kagami to his level. Kagami has cemented her role as Felix's lackey/girlfriend and nothing more. People give Marinette crap for the way the behaves around Adrien in and out of universe, but Kagami knows nothing about Felix, yet a single conversation about his past is enough for her to fall head over heels in love with him. She went from someone not willing to take any bullcrap from Marinette and Adrien to believing Felix's story in a fraction of a heartbeat. This season really likes ruining the few likable characters the show has left.

I also have to roll my eyes at the conversation Marinette and Gabriel have about fashion. For one thing, it's one of the few times the entire season remembers that Marinette wants to be a fashion designer and doesn't really factor into her rivalry with Gabriel. This season made their conflict revolve around how to treat Adrien, not their views on fashion. It feels like they only brought it up to remind viewers that Marinette is still into fashion. Well, that, and also to take a stance on artistic integrity... supposedly.

And on that note, it's amazing how the writers display little to no self-awareness during this scene. The show that embraces sticking to the status quo and rejecting almost any attempt at keeping consistent continuity is now trying to teach children about the importance of being willing to take risks when creating something. This is like Hannibal Lecter trying to promote veganism. I get the message, but the messenger's history is keeping me from buying it. It doesn't help that for a scene trying to point out how outdated certain views are, the show ultimately chooses to take the side of the man with the “wrong” mindset by the end of the season.

The pancake metaphor really confuses me too. It's meant to be a running gag that the only thing Gabriel knows how to cook is pancakes, but A) Nothing is really indicated to show how terrible they are as a metaphor for how bad his outdated views are other than Marinette's verbal assessment of them, and B) We later learn Gabriel used to be poor, so either he never knew how to cook prior to earning his fortune or being rich somehow made him forget basic living skills. I'm just saying, when an episode of Sid the Science Kid manages to better convey someone doing a terrible job making pancakes, you might need to put in a little more effort to show how bad Gabriel's pancakes supposedly are.

Finally, Tomoe. This episode didn't really do much to show her as a compelling threat, given all she did was nag Gabriel and try to shoot her daughter when she didn't even try commanding her to fight back when she was kidnapped. She's nothing more than a female Gabriel and is another example of how overstuffed this show's cast is,

This episode is awful, plain and simple. It took aspects from previous episodes that were already questionable, and doubled down on them while acting like there weren't any problems at all.

#25: Derision

And now we're onto the really, REALLY bad episodes this season. One of the reasons why this post took so long to make was that I wasn't sure how to rank these last three episodes. Thankfully, I managed to find a way to rank them based on the morals are executed. With that being said, let's start scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Ah, “Derision”. You're the only episode that makes the backlash caused by “Chameleon” seem like a pleasant breeze. It's incredible to see just how much negative a reputation this episode has in the fandom. Virtually nobody likes it because it manages to upset everyone with its poor characterization. I'm talking Marinette fans, Adrien fans, Chloe fans, Kim fans, and pretty much every other character's fans. I've only seen a few die hard fans defend this episode, and they're the people on Tumblr who defend pretty much everything done this season.

I have just one question to ask about this episode: Why did it need to happen? We didn't learn anything new that we didn't know already. We know Chloe is mean, and we know Marinette used to be more timid and had no friends. We didn't even need that much of an explanation for why Marinette acts the way she does around Adrien, seeing how it was usually played for laughs

Speaking of which, let's talk about the fact that the episode tries to shame the audience for laughing at the jokes about Marinette's reactions to Adrien. You know, something that was the show's primary running gag ever since Season 1? A running gag the writers ran into the ground by the end of Season 3 but still chose to go with it? Now we're not supposed to have laughed at it, assuming we laughed at it all. Way to insult even the small portion of viewers who didn't get on your case about this, writers.

I only have about two positive things to say about this episode. For one thing, Chloe actually served as a pretty decent antagonist in the flashbacks. Much like in “Revolution”, when the writers actually let her be a villain on her own without being made a pawn, she can be somewhat entertaining. If this was the Chloe we got after Season 3, I don't I would have been as upset at the direction Astruc's team took with the character.

In addition, the thing that saves this episode from being at the bottom is that unlike the next two, it actually understands that what the antagonist did was wrong. They don't make up excuses for what Chloe did and she actually gets called out as a result. It doesn't lead to anything major, but it's something.

Like with “Queen Banana”, there's not much else I can say that hasn't already been said. There's plenty of retcons, the characterization for everyone is off, it attacks the audience, and the message about trauma got fumbled by the show's usual double standards. It's been said over and over again, and it's become a symbol of how much the show's quality has degraded.

#26: Emotion

I think if you've kept up with my reviews of this season, you should know by now that I don't exactly like Felix, and most of the problems I have with him can be attributed to this episode. In fact, for a while, this was going to be my choice for the bottom slot.

It's clear that the writers want to make Felix this wild card who's only in it for himself, but like most of the show's antagonists, they want to show Felix as this devious mastermind... but he's also not really evil, and you should feel bad for him. For most of the episode, Felix does nothing but make everyone's lives worse during his first outing as Argos. He smears his cousin's reputation yet again, tricks his girlfriend into dancing with him, condemns some rich kids for the crime of being rich when he's just as rich, and eventually wipes out all life on the face of the earth. But he's just doing it for his cousin, we swear!

While Felix has understandable motivations for what he does, wanting to free Adrien and Kagami, the way he tries to achieve his goal makes it hard to sympathize with him. If the whole point was that what he did was wrong and that he needs to find a different way, that could work. Instead, we're supposed to see him as this tragic figure who was forced to do terrible things when the episode shows him happily singing while causing chaos. It's the same problem with Gabriel, wanting a sympathetic character to do unapologetically evil things. The fact that he has to be told that genocide is bad doesn't make us want to sympathize with him when he breaks down crying. It paints a picture that he's crazy but the show wants to act like he isn't.

Even putting all the crap with Felix aside, the episode is still unbearable. The stuff with Marinette was poorly executed and was just done to get her involved in the plot, and later become the first one to excuse Felix for betraying her. Other than the dance scene, you could easily just have Marinette swing in as Ladybug when Argos starts his rampage and nothing would really change. The episode tries to make jokes about how unnecessary this is, but as usual, its attempts to be self-aware come across like its saying “What we're doing it wrong, we know it's wrong, but we're gonna do it anyway!”

Speaking of the dance scene, I can't stop rolling my eyes whenever Felix tries to be all “We live in a society” to Marinette. Forget the corrupt politicians, corporate moguls, human traffickers, and despotic rulers of foreign nations. The absolute worst section of humanity is composed of the teenage children of the 1%. Sure, you'd have to break my legs before I'd agree to supervise them at this party, but I don't get why these are the people we're supposed to see as irredeemable monsters. Do the writers think because these kids associate themselves with Chloe, we'll automatically hate them? Newsflash, but if I had to choose between hanging out with some annoying kids and a mass murderer, I'd stick with the annoying kids.

Rewatching this episode was what helped me finally realize just what my problem with the show's anti-capitalist message is. How the hell am I supposed to hate the villains on this show for being rich when several characters are rich or at the very least, are successful thanks to their connections to the rich? Think about it for a second. Putting aside Adrien and Kagami, you have Marinette, the daughter of two of the most popular bakers in Paris and earned the respect of multiple celebrities, Alya, the daughter of a chef who works at a five-star hotel, Nino, someone who got to DJ at a major fashion show, Rose, who is friends with a literal prince, Luka and Juleka, the children of a popular rock star, and Max, the son of an astronaut with access to cutting-edge technology. Somehow, these people are supposed to be poor? They make Monica from Friends look like Oscar the Grouch. It's why I can't take the message seriously. You can't write a story about a class struggle when both classes are shown to be pretty well-off.

The only thing that saves this episode from being at the bottom of the list is the fact that despite committing genocide while singing, Felix at least gets what he did was wrong and makes up for it. It doesn't fix everything else he did in this episode, but that's better than nothing. As for the villain featured in the episode that's at the bottom of this list? If you've been keeping track, I think you know who I mean.

#27: Re-Creation

I'll admit, I'm sort of cheating here. I'm judging this episode more as a finale than an individual episode, but I'm making an exception because the plot is tied to wrapping up all the loose ends this season.

I'm mentioning this because for a season finale, the stakes just feel so low. The fight between Bug Noire and Monarch doesn't have any weight to it because they've barely interacted at all for the last five seasons. These are supposed to be two mortal enemies, but you can't really buy the enmity between them. It ultimately cheapens the moment of Bug Noire triumphing over Monarch in the end... before Monarch triumphs over her not long afterwards, but we'll get to that.

The stuff with the Miraculized doesn't help either. We already know that the Ladybug and Cat Miraculous are in the Agreste manor, so the Miraculized's goal is impossible to achieve. It's never even explained why the Miraculized don't go back to the manor to help Monarch beat Bug Noire, since they should still be able to track the Miraculous. All of the fights with them just come across like filler, and there's no real sense of danger or hopelessness to be found. Whether the Miraculized win or lose is irrelevant. Nothing will happen either way because the important stuff is happening in the Agreste manor.

This extends to the part where all the heroes appear to help. It doesn't come across as an Avengers-esque moment for the climax, because it doesn't change anything. The episode never explains what any of these characters were doing prior to the events of this episode and why only now they're helping out. The United Heroes are the most egregious example because unlike Fei or Su-Han, they're a major organization whose members include the president, and they didn't do a damn thing when Monarch stole all of the other Miraculous. Speaking of, there is no way in hell that Su-Han taught Mirakung-Fu to three random people over Ladybug and Cat Noir, much less that those three people are actual masters after about two months at best. Maybe they got to train in Bunnix's Burrow? After all, she's not doing anything else to stop the end of the world other than sending four people over to Paris. This whole sequence really highlights how bland the other heroes of this universe are. If they're not slacking off when they're needed, they're criminally underdeveloped because there's a slim chance they'll get spin-offs to flesh them out.

But I think the biggest issue me and other people have with this finale is the resolution. In what is easily one of the most baffling decisions the show has made, Bug Noire doesn't defeat Monarch, and Monarch gets to make his wish. I don't care how many times the writers technically say she won because she beat him in a fight. Gabriel backstabbed her at the last minute and got her Miraculous to make his wish. Yeah, he died, but he succeed in achieving his goal, never faced any real consequences, didn't get any closure with his son (much less apologize for abusing him), told Marinette to lie about the monster he was to him, and was turned into a martyr with a statue made of the same things he used to control the world.

This ending infuriates me because it not only makes Marinette out to be a terrible hero for failing to do the one thing she was chosen to do (get the Butterfly Miraculous back), but it also ultimately makes Gabriel out to be a decent person even though he destroyed and recreated the world. All Marinette did was take credit for saving the world, and even then, Gabriel got more celebration in the end. Our hero, ladies and gentlemen! She got outsmarted by an abusive parent and didn't even get a new statue in her honor!

But the most damning thing of all this is the fact that this finale retroactively makes everything that's happened over the last five seasons completely pointless. If Gabriel making a wish wasn't as bad as it was supposed to be, why didn't Ladybug and Cat Noir let him borrow their Miraculous? Why make the stakes this high if you're going to downplay the impact of a madman recreating the world in his own image? Follow-up question: why make the stakes this high if the wish being made is ultimately shown to have huge benefits for society? In an attempt to wrap things up with a happy ending, the writers accidentally made the conflict completely meaningless.

That's why this resolution is the ultimate example of the writers refusing to allow any major changes to happen. If they're willing to treat the end of the universe as less important than Ms. Bustier becoming mayor, why should we assume they'll ever take their story seriously? For God's sake, every character you know and love is essentially dead, and we're supposed to act like that isn't a big deal? That's how you wanted to end the show originally? Then again, at least they tried to resolve something, unlike the Love Square. We still haven't gotten a reveal, and I don't think we ever will at this point. These writers will drag out the story until the show stops becoming profitable, which won't be for a long time.

And with that, I am officially done with Season 5. Honestly, after having to rewatch this season again, I'm not sure if it's even worth giving Season 6 a shot. There's nothing to look forward to, and Lila becoming the main villain isn't really appealing to me. At the very least, I have the movie review to look forward to, meaning I can watch something good for a change.

[soulfireblue]

i have so many thoughts about phil and sunny and tubbo and this is going under a read more because it got really long lol

disclaimer that i don't watch phil super often! i watch qsmp with a crow friend who keeps me updated on his streams, so he's probably one of the characters i'm most familiar with outside of tubbo, but that's obviously not quite the same as me directly watching his streams. also this is only my interpretation and understanding of the characters, of course!

Phil is a bit of a hermit and doesn't know the other eggs that well; Chayanne and Tallulah are actually more social than their dad is. There are very few people on this island that Phil is actually close to, and Tubbo is one of them. That's kind of a double-edged sword when it comes to Phil's relationship with Sunny.

Phil kind of tends to extrapolate his relationship with Tubbo onto Sunny, because he doesn't know her well enough to realize that what works for him and Tubbo is not going to work for him and Sunny. It becomes a cycle, because Phil unknowingly does or says something that hurts Sunny, and then Sunny avoids being alone with him, so he doesn't get to know her well enough to realize that the way he treats Tubbo is not how Sunny wants or needs to be treated.

This sets up a really interesting conflict and character dynamic here, especially because Tubbo is also extrapolating his own relationship with Phil onto Sunny. He doesn't really understand that Sunny has issues with Phil, because when he and Sunny are with Phil, he's usually focused more on his own interactions with Phil and the godkids' than Sunny's. Plus it's not like Tubbo and Sunny are often with Phil alone; usually Chayanne and Tallulah are there too, and there's not much reason for Sunny to be needing to interact with Phil one-on-one.

And while Sunny has told Tubbo a little bit about how they feel with Phil, he's also observed them having issues with Tallulah, Leo, and even Richas now, and he's also watched those issues clear up. There's no reason for Tubbo to assume that her issues with Phil are any different. The nature of Tubbo's role as a buffer between Sunny and Phil means that he hasn't been able to observe the interactions that caused the problem. If Tubbo's there, Tubbo's the one they're both interacting with more just due to the fact that he's more present in both of their lives.

But here's the thing with Phil being a hermit. The issue isn't just his relationship with Tubbo; it's also that his children always come first. We've seen that even before we met Sunny. He was completely convinced that he had to win Purgatory because no one would be looking out for his kids except himself, not realizing that the leader of Soulfire was trying to get back the exact same eggs. For Phil, it's extremely black and white.

And so when he's alone with Sunny, when he's looking at her as an egg rather than as Tubbo's daughter, he puts his kids first. He's happy to do whatever he can to help. He collected items for cookies for all of the eggs on the island for a reason! He cares a lot about the eggs, even from a distance. He's just not the type of person to wait to feed his kids until the other kids are fed too, because his first priority has to be Chayanne and Tallulah.

But his limit is anything that could put his own family at risk. Which is understandable! He has two kids to look out for. But Phil is extremely pragmatic, and so he tells Sunny exactly the truth. She can stay with him, but his kids come first. Tallulah has been hurt, so her feelings come first. He's very good at making sure his kids are taken care of, and he's very good at weighing the risks, and he's honest about it once he has.

Which would maybe be perfectly fine for some other eggs, but the thing is, Phil doesn't know Sunny. He's treating her the exact opposite of the way she needs to be treated, but he doesn't know her well enough to realize it. He's spent a lot of time around her without actually getting to know her, because there's always that Tubbo and Chayanne buffer. So he doesn't realize that they don't need to be treated the way he treats Tubbo. She needs to be treated the way he treats Tallulah. They need to be told that it's okay to feel scared and abandoned, and that they are loved, and that someone will always be there for them.

(Chayanne does realize that. He's a very good godbrother.)

I hope someday Phil will get to know Sunny better and realize better ways to communicate with her, though I do understand that there will always be the issue of his kids coming first, while Sunny desperately needs people who put her first. (And gosh, how awful must it have been for them to lose Creation, who called them rank one, and told them they were loved, and then left them just like everybody else.) They'll never have the relationship Tubbo has with Phil's kids, and that's okay. But I hope that Sunny can one day look at Phil and know that she is loved, even if it's not exactly the kind of love she's been searching for.

[sleepysnk]

there’s some things i really wanted to talk about especially regarding my account and tumblr as a whole, so i decided to finally make this post as a way to sort of vent out my feelings on some things.

i’m not gonna lie, tumblr has become a very different place from what it was. i started creating content 3 years ago and it’s gone through so many changes (much expected). however, i don’t think tumblr has really changed for the better, especially when it comes to content creators. this used to be a really safe space for me to come on and create works for fandoms that i enjoyed, but recently, that safe space hasn’t felt, well, safe anymore. there is constant discourse everywhere on this platform and i’ve found that many people here are just extremely bitter? it’s almost like it’s become a mean girl center and it makes it difficult to interact with others.

obviously, this doesn’t go for everyone. i’m not trying to come at people specifically or cause issues, but i have seen my fair share of problems with people on here and some of it is just completely ridiculous.

next, i’d like to discuss the elephant in the room and that’s the lack of interaction/support to writers. it is just mind blowing to me that we as creators have to BEG our followers to reblog or even send us asks. obviously, some people are new to tumblr and don’t understand it’s algorithm, but there are people on here who just simply chose not to reblog for some reason?? it’s not only discouraging, but it puts less confidence in writers and then we aren’t motivated to create content. i’ve said this before, but there is no reason why a 2k note fic should have only 100 or so reblogs. likes mean nothing on this platform. it’s not Twitter. i genuinely have gotten so tired of repeating myself that i don’t even say it anymore because i know it won’t be acknowledged.

i understand people have lives, i do too, but it isn’t hard to send an ask to a writer about literally anything. i think the last time i had an anon ask was weeks ago and i genuinely get disappointed when i ask for interactions just to receive nothing? no one is obligated to speak with me or send me asks by any means, but a little “hey! how are you?” goes a long way. i probably sound ridiculous, but it’s just how i feel about the matter.

another thing that bothers me is when a writer doesn’t write smut or suggestive content, they hardly get any interaction. i’ve seen it myself before and i’m not sure why people just ignore greatly written fics?? i understand that smut is the main appeal. trust me, i 100% get it, but fluff writers hardly get any attention and some of the best fics i’ve read weren’t even smut related. i’m not saying every person here has to read fluff or angst fics by any means, but it makes me sad that people write these fics to hardly get any interaction because it isn’t smut content. the least y’all can do is reblog it.

to discuss my account, i honestly don’t really feel the most happy here. i don’t have as much motivation as i used to and i have contemplated removing my account, but i have some great fics i’d rather not have be deleted. i might start a new account for a fresh start, but i’m still not 100% on it.

and if you read this till the end, thank you! i probably sound like a whiny baby but i just wanted to express some of my feelings because it’s been weighing on me a lot recently.

[kiwi-muses]

Part One Here

It was only a couple of days before his shadow zoomed into his room to alert him that Gwyn was speaking with Bryaxis. It was the middle of the night, and Azriel grumbled as he pulled on his leathers. One of the rare instances where he’d been dead asleep, and Gwyn had to inadvertently ruin it. He made his way into the library, and weaved through the stacks, Gwyn’s voice becoming louder and louder. Azriel silently hid in the shadows, wondering what was so important that it must be spoken of in the middle of the night. 

“Do you sleep at all?” he heard her ask. After a moment in which Bryaxis must have responded, he heard her say, “Well, I suppose in some ways that’s lucky. You get to avoid the issues I have.” She was silent for a moment. “What you said… about my… mate… how did you know?”

Azriel felt his eyebrows raise. Gwyn had a mate? Since when? If Bryaxis spoke of it, perhaps that’s what surprised her the last time. There was an uncomfortable feeling in Azriel’s chest as he thought of Gwyn having a mate, though he couldn’t explain why, exactly. 

“I think I knew when I first saw him, though there was… a lot happening,” she was saying. “But I’ve never told anyone before. I thought maybe I was mistaken.” Her voice was soft. “No, I don’t wish it weren’t so. He’s a good male. Strong and kind.” She paused, listening, and chuckled. “Well, maybe you don’t think so, and I could certainly see why.” The longer Azriel stood there, eavesdropping, the more bizarre the conversation became. And the longer he stood there, the more that uncomfortable feeling in his chest grew. And a piece of him was almost offended for the unknown male. A mating bond was sacred. Why wouldn’t Gwyn tell this male? He became more agitated before deciding he was done for the night. He stepped from the shadows, and saw Gwyn whirl around to see him. She turned back to the pit. “Looks like our visit is over tonight.” She softly laughed again. “I’ll make sure to sing louder for you next time.” She walked towards Azriel, eyes sparkling. He crossed his arms over his chest, cutting an imposing figure. 

“We talked about this, Gwyn.” His voice was low. 

“You mean you talked, Shadowsinger. No one said I agreed.” He let out his breath in a huff. “How long have you been here?”

“Long enough,” he said. 

She tilted her head at him. “You seem… vexed with me, Shadowsinger. Moreso than usual.” Azriel said nothing, turning to escort her back to the dormitories. “You can tell me, you know. Honesty is the best policy and all that.”

Damn him, Azriel couldn’t control it. The words were going to fly out of his mouth whether he wished them to or not. He stopped in the middle of the aisle and turned to her, seeing her waiting face. “You have a mate. Why won’t you tell him? Those bonds… those bonds are rare, and sacred. Don’t you think he deserves to know?”

He felt Gwyn’s eyes on him, studying him. He could almost feel her weighing her words carefully. “There are many reasons I haven’t chosen to divulge the information yet, Azriel.” The use of his given name struck him. She hadn’t used it before. It sounded less like a curse, and more like a caress coming from her. “Some reasons are mine, and mine alone, and maybe I will tell him one day. But I can say,” she took a deep breath, “I have it on good authority that he cares for another. I respect him enough to allow his choices, and I refuse to be chosen solely because of a bond. I’d rather be loved.” Her words struck him in the heart. It was everything he wanted, needed Elain to say and to practice. He needed Elain to want to choose to be loved, to choose him. Gwyn cracked a small smile. “Besides, I’ve met him and he is otherworldly. And I’m just me. He needs someone who he can be proud of.” Gwyn started walking past him, leaving him speechless. This female… he couldn’t figure her out. People were easy to unravel. They were easy to manipulate, to discover inner motives. But not Gwyn. She was a puzzle to him and with each new piece he handed her, he found something new to wonder over. 

“Gwyn,” he called, striding to catch up to her. She looked up at him. “Any male would be lucky to have you as his mate. And if they aren’t proud to have you, they’re not worth your time.” The dazzling smile Azriel received lit something in his heart. 

“Thank you, Shadowsinger.” She smiled, and something in him softened to know he put that smile on her face. 

“Now will you please stop talking to Bryaxis? I don’t trust that it won’t betray you and try to take you.” Gwyn laughed, though what was so funny he had no idea. 

“Bryaxis and I came to an agreement. If I sing while I work, Bryaxis will be content. I won’t have to go near the pit, Shadowsinger.” He felt a weight lift off his shoulders. He had wrestled Bryaxis back into the pit; he knew what Bryaxis could do, the harm it could cause, if provoked. And he wanted Gwyn nowhere near that sort of danger. “I can make my way from here, Shadowsinger. I need to shelve a few books anyways,” Gwyn said.

“Alright,” Azriel said softly. “Goodnight, Gwyneth.” 

“Goodnight, Shadowsinger,” she replied, making her way through the stacks to her books, leaving Azriel to make his way out of the library, pondering the strange feeling Gwyn left him with. A few words and she could coax a smile from him without his notice, or cause his heart to stop in his chest just by having a conversation with a creature. Azriel wasn’t an outwardly emotive male. Inwardly, he felt everything, but a childhood of torture had taught him to effectively wear a mask. One that, somehow, Gwyn made him feel was unnecessary.

[thetomorrowshow]

when to hold 'em

ur honor i love the flower husbands

~

The crown of antlers is in his hands.

He holds it, turns it, examines every angle.

Then places it on his head.

Scott looks up, across the silent plateau, to the darkness that gathers on the other side.

Sìín kuvi ndakuatura nu Ndíoxī.

-

"You've got this!" a little boy shouts, pumping one fist in the air.

Scott rolls his eyes over to Jimmy. "I thought you said this would be private?" he comments archly.

Jimmy shrugs, looking a little sheepish. "Word gets out. Especially to kids."

"Right. And since you and I were the only ones who knew about this, the children found out through. . . ?"

"I have no idea."

There are six or seven children sitting or standing in the long grass of the field, some tens of meters away. Jimmy waves to them. All but one wave back.

Scott pinches the bridge of his nose. "I don't want anyone getting hurt, Jimmy," he bites out.

"You won't hurt anyone," Jimmy insists. "They're far enough away that they aren't even an issue. They just want to see some magic!"

That's the problem.

Scott's curse isn't a party trick. It isn't something to be gawked at and applauded by children. It's a curse, barely controlled, and a very dangerous one at that.

And it isn't just that he doesn't want them getting hurt. That's most of it, of course, but. . . . 

Scott really doesn't want an audience. He doesn't want people to see him fail.

(Last time he failed, he was surrounded—by elves and enemies alike.)

Something of his thoughts must show on his face, because Jimmy just makes a sound kind of like a sigh and squeezes his hand.

"You're all right," he says quietly. "I'm not leaving. You can control it when I'm here, right?"

"Control is a strong word," mutters Scott. It implies that he can do a lot more than keep an imaginary door shut.

Not to mention, he hasn't been able to let go of Jimmy. They've learned over the past couple of days that when they separate, Scott loses whatever hold he has. It had been unpleasant that first morning, when Scott woke late to find that Jimmy had already gotten back to work, leaving him coated in frost and ice weighing down the tent.

He really has no control if the magic is untamed without the tamer's touch. In all fairness, Jimmy has more control over the magic than Scott does.

But Jimmy just smiles (so brightly that Scott can't help but reluctantly smile back) and points to a patch of wildflowers a good fifty feet away from them.

"Shoot ice at that," he instructs, and Scott, with another glance at the children and more than a bit of trepidation, raises his hand toward the flowers.

He pushes, releasing a little bit of his hold on the magic, letting it conduct out through his arm, pulsing and freezing and—

Frost and ice shoot from his fingertips in a barrage (and the force has him stumbling back a step), about half of it hitting the flowers and the other half falling around them, with some icicles stabbing into the ground a good several feet away.

Scott quickly reasserts his hold on the magic and pulls his arm close to himself, pressing his side into Jimmy.

It's terrifying, using this magic. This magic that, just a few days past, had been using him.

There's no way of knowing just how much damage he's capable of. Based on what he did at the town, Scott thinks he could practically level a village.

It isn't nice, having that much power.

"Whoa!" a young boy screams, and all the other children join in the excitement, chattering about the magic.

"Nice one!" Jimmy says, dragging Scott over to look, sword bouncing on his back.

The flowers are shredded, heads torn from stems and petals torn from heads. A bit of grass is pulled up in a streak, dirt stark against the yellow stalks of grass. Frost coats the area, shards of ice stabbing into the ground.

Scott feels a little sick, looking at it.

That could have hit a person.

If he hadn't figured out that touching Jimmy gave him a measure of control, he could have killed anyone in the camp.

Jimmy's already tugging him back, probably wanting to practice again. He wants Scott to get good at his aim, and Scott isn't sure if it's so he feels more safe with himself, or so he can be more useful in attacks.

"I'm just a weapon," he says offhandedly. Bit of a fall from king of the elves.

"Come on, now," Jimmy says consolingly. "You're a beautiful weapon."

Scott snorts. "Try that one again."

"My favorite weapon?"

"If I could let go of your hand, I would."

Jimmy grins. "What I'm hearing is I can be as obnoxious as I want, and you can't do anything."

"Oh, you—"

Their flirting is cut off as a child crosses the invisible boundary, skipping up toward them.

"Stay back there," Jimmy commands, voice ringing with sudden authority, stepping forward with an arm out.

Scott glances at him, more to make sure that it's still his Jimmy there than anything else. He forgets, sometimes, that Jimmy actually has power. Not just the power of a ruler, either—some sort of unknown, hidden power had to have played a part in his survival, and his ability to heal others. Scott's seen him heal so many of the survivors that they just rescued, just by pressing a hand to their wounds. Jimmy, somehow, is a living, walking, healing miracle.

As much as they're teasing each other today, Scott can't help but feel a little hollow inside. It's still so hard to be here, to hold the hand of his once-dead betrothed.

Not that he has any other option.

Not that he doesn't want to.

The child halts immediately, waits for Jimmy and Scott to come toward her.

She's a little older than the other children, and one that Scott recognizes—from when, he doesn't know—, her scales like freckles spattered across her cheeks and nose.

"Codfather!" she says, standing at attention. "We've found something."

-

"I'm honestly just surprised it made it all the way down here," Scott muses, turning the satchel over in his hands. Below it, on the table in Jimmy's planning tent, lies the crown of antlers and a thin grey book, instantly recognizable as the one he had forgotten to give Lizzie.

"That would be the enchantments," Jimmy says, leaning on Scott's shoulder. When Scott turns his head to raise an eyebrow at him, he elaborates.

"Well, look, see the way the stag kind of shimmers? That's a protection kind of enchantment, to keep the bag from tearing. And the cod is a homebound enchantment—wherever you are, it'll find you."

Scott blinks.

How on earth would he be able to tell that just by looking at it?

"Are you making things up?" he asks dubiously.

Jimmy frowns. "What? No. My people showed me every step of the process when they were making this. We had a promising young Cod—Everarda—she was going to Gem's Academy, and she enchanted the thread. And Theo attached the strap—I think Jesse did part of the bag itself, and—"

"And the crown," Scott murmurs, picking it up with more reverence than he's shown it in some time.

It still shines, despite traveling down river for weeks and ending up buried in the mud. Its glow, perhaps, is more due to its divinity than any amount of polish.

How had it found him here?

Aeor, no doubt.

Scott's been kind of ignoring his god, as of late. Sure, he's said a couple of prayers here and there—some of them sobbing, silent prayers in his frozen world, others rote repetition and dull words—but he hasn't exactly been the most faithful of chosen ones.

It isn't that he doesn't respect Aeor. He still worships his god. It's just . . . easier, he supposes, to pretend as if this is all there is. His story ends here, and he dwindles away.

Yet every night, he tosses and turns, struck by recurring dreams. Dreams that have an oddly golden quality, dreams in which he has the crown of antlers and is alone against Xornoth.

Dreams in which he thinks in a tongue that is unrecognizable to him.

He's been ignoring the dreams, hoping them to be nothing—and in so doing, he's been ignoring hints from his god.

The fact that the crown is here again, one of the artifacts necessary to defeat Xornoth—and he doesn't think he really needs the boots anymore—feels like a bit more than a hint.

His stomach swoops unpleasantly. If Aeor's sending him messages of this magnitude, he clearly wants Scott to get going.

It's not like Scott can take on Xornoth with nothing changing. Xornoth almost killed him last time. He still has no idea what he's doing. Not to mention, Xornoth is surely even more powerful by this point, surrounded by soldiers and Rivendell's magic and who knows what else. There's no chance of survival.

Yet Aeor is pushing him. Aeor is telling him to go up against his brother another time and fail. Aeor is sending him to his doom.

And Scott's going to do it.

He doesn't want to. He wants to stay here, with Jimmy, in this little temporary civilization forever. He wants to forget about the world outside, forget that everything will likely collapse in a matter of months.

He doesn't want to die.

He doesn't want to fail again.

But he has been feeling like he's living on borrowed time.

And he can rub his thumb along the light scars on Jimmy's knuckles and wonder if he feels the same.

"What's this?" Jimmy asks, drawing Scott from his morbid spiraling by picking up the grey book.

"I—I don't know," Scott says, still reeling from his moment of revelation. "Something Oceanic, I think. I meant to give it to Lizzie."

He's going to die. He's being sent to his death like a lamb to the slaughter.

The long hours spent in Gem's secret library seem like a lifetime ago—a time when devastation was fresh, when Jimmy was dead yet the world seemed more hopeful than it does now. He barely recalls how they found the book in the first place.

"And it stayed in your bag the whole time," Jimmy muses, turning it this way and that. "What's it about?"

"I don't know, I couldn't read it."

"Hm." Jimmy flips the book open to the first page, while Scott gently sets the crown back down and turns to the young teen who had found the items.

"And there was nothing else there?" he questions.

She shakes her head. "Nothing that I saw, Lord Smajor. I can show you the place, if you like."

It's unlikely that the boots would have made it there. It's not like they had some sort of tracking spell, after all. It's more likely Lizzie found them, washed up on one of her islands.

"That won't be necessary," he tells the girl. "If anyone finds magical boots that burn to the touch, however, find me."

She nods, takes a few cautious steps back. Scott waits expectantly for Jimmy to dismiss her, but when he doesn't, she just shrugs and bounds off.

Scott looks back to Jimmy, who has stepped uncomfortably far away, the fingers of his right hand just brushing Scott's waist. Scott steps more into reach, peeks over at the book that Jimmy is so intently studying.

It looks much the same as he remembers, if a bit more wet. Strange, faded blue letters, made large with thick strokes. Not much of a conceivable pattern to split up the words (unless it's a character based language?), or even a way to tell if it's written from right to left or not.

But Jimmy is scrutinizing this old little book, mouth moving slightly as his eyes slowly travel across the page.

"Can you read it?" Scott asks incredulously. Jimmy can barely read Common, how on Aeor's great earth is he reading whatever this is?

"I—I think so?" Jimmy says, looking up from the book. "I've never seen this language before. At least, not that I can remember."

Right. Amnesia.

"I think I used to be able to write in this," continues Jimmy, voice hushed as his eyes return to the book. "That's crazy. How old is this?"

"Very," Scott says. Then, still confused, "Can amnesia make it so that you forget an entire language?"

Jimmy doesn't answer. Instead, he points a shaking finger at a point on the page, letting go of Scott (who presses his arm to Jimmy's, maintaining their vital contact) to do so.

What's so exciting about that part? Jimmy's suddenly gone white as mountain's snow, eyes watering as if he's about to cry. What could possibly bring him to tears so quickly? Is this a book of prophecies? Is Jimmy reading about the doubtless end that awaits them?

But Jimmy, voice weak, doesn't say anything like that. Instead, he says, looking over at Scott, "This . . . this is about me."

-

"It's a journal, of some kind," Jimmy explains, later, sitting on the grass in his tent, a plate (which was really more of a carefully sanded piece of wood) of berries and two bowls of thin soup between them. "I think Lizzie wrote it."

Scott frowns. "Lizzie? Are you sure?"

That just can't be possible. Gem's library had been sealed for likely hundreds of years. Jimmy's only—well, he only showed up ten years ago, and Lizzie—Lizzie's been around for a while, but fish hybrids don't live for longer than the average human lifespan.

Right? Lizzie's been. . . . 

"Lizzie joined the House Blossom Alliance over twenty years ago," Scott says aloud. He was there when she showed up to her first meeting, he remembers that. She'd seemed young, small, hair falling into her face, clearly dressed in her nicest of clothing—which was almost meager compared to the glory of some of the other empires.

Still, she had commanded the respect of all of them, speaking boldly and making firm promises. Scott remembers being begrudgingly impressed, though not quite as much as the boy Mezelean Prince, who repeatedly urged his father (in a voice a bit too loud to be a whisper) to arrange an alliance.

If Lizzie had only inherited her kingdom at that age, then there was no way she had been able to write whatever that book was. Neither she nor Jimmy would even be born for centuries.

"Lizzie joined then . . . and none of us really knew much about the Ocean Kingdom, but we'd seen their buildings begin to rise above the water and she seemed legitimate. . . . And then you showed up about a decade later and started reaching out to empires, didn't you?"

"Why are you reciting history to me?"

Scott snorts. "This is barely history, more of a contemporary review," he tells Jimmy, adjusting so that Jimmy's heel isn't digging into his thigh. They've contorted themselves a bit oddly, perhaps, one of Jimmy's legs reaching around their dinner to keep physical contact with Scott, but there's only so long that they can hold hands in a day.

"I just don't understand how the books came to be in Gem's hidden library."

"Maybe it wasn't all that hidden?" Jimmy suggests. "Maybe Lizzie found it and put these books in."

"Are you sure Lizzie wrote it?"

"Yeah, it's her handwriting."

"That is definitely not her handwriting," Scott says, pointing to the open book beside Jimmy. "That isn't anyone's handwriting. That's an ancient Oceanic script that nobody remembers."

"I remember it," Jimmy says, popping a berry into his mouth.

"Yes, but you don't really, right? You can read it, and write it, but you don't know how you know it or where you learned it. How do you know it even talks about you?"

"Lizzie's writing to me in parts of it."

"How do you know it's you? And not someone else named Jimmy?"

Jimmy frowns. "It's not exactly my name, you know. It's a word that means me. Nobody else would have that."

It does not make sense.

None of this makes any sense.

"Sounds inefficient for a language," Scott murmurs absently, ignoring the pang in his chest as he remembers that Jimmy died and now is back so what does sense even matter?

"Right, it changed to use names as the Ocean Kingdom grew. Barely anybody even knew this form of it by the time. . . ."

Jimmy trails off, eyes unfocusing with a concerning suddenness. His lips move ever so slightly, forming unsaid words.

"Jimmy?" tries Scott, reaching over to tap on his knee. Jimmy blinks, eyes refocusing on Scott.

"Sorry, what was I saying?" he asks, brows furrowed.

And if that isn't strange, Scott doesn't know what is.

"Something about the language developing over time?" Scott prompts.

Jimmy bites his lip, looks askance. "I don't . . . I don't know. I don't remember. I don't. . . ."

He doesn't look like he's going to cry, exactly, but he certainly looks troubled, and his eyes catch on the book.

"None of it makes sense," he says quietly, and Scott could not agree more. "Lizzie wrote that. I know she wrote that. I don't know how. And it's . . . I need to talk to her."

"It's from before you lost your memory, isn't it?" Scott asks after a moment. He isn't sure how far he can push this, but he feels a sense of idle curiosity. What does the book say? Why does it worry Jimmy? How did it get in the Crystal Cliffs secret library, unrecorded and forgotten?

Jimmy nods. "It's gonna eat at me, Scott," he says, already sounding tired. "Lizzie's writing about all sorts of things that I don't remember. They just don't make sense. I need to talk to her, figure out if she remembers any of this."

"You're saying we need to go to the Ocean Kingdom."

Again, Jimmy nods. "Yep. At some point." He looks away, sighs, briefly looking far too old yet much too young to be leading a camp of refugees, let alone a kingdom.

Jimmy's always had moments like that, when his bearing makes it obvious to Scott that Jimmy stumbled into this role ten years ago and gave it his all, despite his lack of experience.

He doesn't deserve this—war, death, pain.

Jimmy doesn't deserve any of this.

But Jimmy doesn't dwell, even if Scott does. Instead, he looks back up to meet Scott's eyes, lips quirked in a smile. "What about you? What's with the crown?"

Right. The crown.

Scott swallows.

He and Jimmy have talked a little. Just enough to air out any pressing concerns, for Scott to realize that his conflicting feelings were not unwarranted but unneeded, and for Jimmy to accept that Scott is struggling and help him feel assured of his love as often as he can.

But they haven't talked much, despite literally never leaving one another's side. They've been so busy keeping the camp running and planning attacks and defenses and experimenting with Scott's curse that they haven't been able to sit down and talk, like they're doing now.

Does Scott tell him what it means?

Does Scott tell him that by sending the crown, Aeor intends for Scott to go up against Xornoth again, just to fail as he already has? Does he tell Jimmy that this little respite was nice, but it can't last forever?

Maybe he can put it off. Maybe he can stay with Jimmy just a little bit longer, in the relative peace of the camp.

It's selfish. Scott ought to at least try to fight Xornoth right now, if only for the elves in captivity.

But Scott's kind of tired of trying to save the world. Let someone else do it, for a change.

He forces a smile, fiddles with a berry between his fingers. "It's just a Rivendell treasure. You needn't worry about it."

He'll stay, Scott decides, as Jimmy gives him a soft, loving smile. He'll stay as long as he can.

-

Which isn't very long.

As it turns out, their little frozen-town trick from the week before didn't go over well with Mythland, and it's only the next morning that a woman comes running to the planning tent, declaring that she'd seen three unfamiliar men searching for the camp while she was on patrol. That means that Mythland knows roundabouts where the first camp is (the newly-formed second is off to the northeast, and as far as they know, hasn't been discovered), and the probability of attack is high.

It's time to move, then. Scott spends all morning running from place to place with Jimmy, helping children and disabled and those unwilling to fight pack up and prepare to move to the second camp, from whence a proper plan will be formed.

It isn't terribly easy to mobilize a camp of hundreds of people in only one day. Many of them, in the short month or so that they've been here, have settled in as if it were their home. Some of the families have collected possessions, strangely enough—Scott watches an elderly man argue with Jimmy for almost ten minutes in some strange Oceanic dialect over not wanting to part with his chair. Jimmy responds patiently, but Scott can feel his body tense more and more as he responds in the dolphin-like clicks and whistles of the dialect.

Finally, Jimmy pats the man on the shoulder and says something in a low voice to him, then moves on.

"What'd you say?" asks Scott, hanging on to Jimmy's arm as they walk away, surrounded by the hustle and bustle of hurried packing.

"I told him he can leave the chair or die in it, I don't care," Jimmy says breezily, and Scott almost laughs.

"One of these days you need to learn diplomacy."

"I said I'd go find his husband, he can be diplomatic."

It takes an hour to find him, however, because at every turn, Jimmy is pulled aside and asked a question, called over for help, or stopped to listen to some sort of plan or explanation. The camp is quickly emptying, guides hurrying back and forth between the camps to lead more people to the safer location.

"I hope we aren't being watched," Scott says offhandedly, watching a group of a dozen or so Cod head out, laden with makeshift packs. "Then they'd find the location of the other camp, too."

Jimmy doesn't reply, just points beyond the treeline, out toward the outskirts of their massive camp. There, past the chaos of destroying shelters and striking tents, Scott sees several people in light armor, each carrying a weapon, making circles around the camp.

"Patrol is doubled," Jimmy says shortly. "All the way down to Camp Two."

"How many people are in Camp Two?"

"We have . . . what, two hundred joining them?" Jimmy guesses, readjusting the sword strapped to his back. "So they'll be up to around five hundred. It'll drop, though, as they send us fighters tomorrow."

They're leaving tomorrow, too. Everyone who is left in the camp tomorrow at noon (the able fighters, that is) will be marching out. The plan is to head out toward the Ocean Kingdom, add their little force of four hundred to Lizzie's armies, and from there plan with Lizzie a way to try and defeat Xornoth.

Scott should feel better about it. He'd felt for so long that Jimmy's small goals were pointless, after all.

But he knows now that it's hopeless to try and sway this war. Scott feels like there's a rain cloud looming over their heads, ready to strike down with lightning and set the camp ablaze. Death surely lurks just beyond their line of sight.

There's no way to defeat Xornoth. His power will only grow, the God of Darkness fed by the fear and torture he brings to the land.

Maybe Aeor wants Scott to take a shot at it just so that he can go to the afterlife with full honor. Elvish history and religious lore is fairly vague on anything other than the separation of the afterlife, but it's always had a sense of peace and happiness. Maybe Aeor knows that Scott is bound to die, and wants to hurry it along so that he can get some peace for once.

For a god that sends him frustrating hints all the time, he's really outdone himself with this one.

He's going to die. Aeor is sending him to his death.

Jimmy notices something's wrong, somehow. Jimmy, who never notices anything, even when he's not busy with mobilizing an entire camp over the space of a day and a half, notices that something is wrong, which means that Scott isn't hiding his thoughts very well.

He used to be so much better at this. Back before he met Jimmy.

But Jimmy frowns at some point during the day, rubs his thumb over Scott's knuckles, and asks how he's doing.

And when Scott asks why Jimmy would even be concerned, Jimmy points out his wings and how stiff they are, and the way his fingers are repeatedly tapping against his side, and the anxious frown on his lips, and asks if he's having sensory overload.

No, he's just thinking about his own imminent death. Nothing to worry about there.

He wants Jimmy to live. He wants Jimmy to gather his little force and leave the land of the Empires, go somewhere without demons and death, somewhere his people can rebuild.

He doesn't want Jimmy to be captured and subjected to torture, or killed, or whatever evil is in mind for him.

He wants Jimmy to be happy.

If it comes to it, Scott decides right then and there, he'll split off from the group. He'll leave a note, telling Jimmy to get out when it all goes wrong, and fly to Rivendell alone, ready to confront his demon brother once and for all.

And then he'll die.

Right.

He's going to die.

-

They set out at noon the next day, Scott's satchel uncomfortably heavy with the weight of both the crown and general travel supplies—some food, first aid, and a bowl and spoon. Jimmy hikes beside him at the front of the pack, the mysterious runes carved into the old leather of the hilt of his sword sparkling in the sun.

If Scott had been in charge of this expedition to the Ocean Kingdom, he would have set out at dusk rather than noon, the hot sun beating down on their backs. He barely gets half an hour into the march before shrugging off his coat and draping it over his head, sweat dripping into his eyes.

Elves aren't made for heat, not noonday, marching-through-tall-prairie-grass, not-a-cloud-in-the-sky kind of heat. It's hot, but worse than that it's humid, so Scott has to deal with not only the burning sun but also the thick air that threatens to choke him. He stops frequently to take a sip from the waterskin bumping against his hip, to wipe the sweat from his brow, to pray for clouds, and he can only hope that his skin isn't burning beyond recognition.

At least last time he trekked through the plains, he was covered in ice. Now he's overheating, out of breath, and just generally exhausted.

And they haven't even been walking for a full day.

His wings itch to take flight, glide through the air and feel the wind on his face, make it to the Ocean Kingdom in under an hour instead of the several day journey that the force has embarked on.

They're walking the whole way, despite the fact that the nearby river would be a much faster way to travel for Cod. Jimmy says that the river is being watched intently, and that four hundred rebels is a little conspicuous. They'll be expected to take the river route, not go around.

And Scott also suspects that Jimmy doesn't want to leave anyone behind. Not all of the rebels are native Cod, and not all are capable of breathing underwater—like him, for example.

Not that Jimmy would change the plans and safety of his entire camp for just Scott.

They walk all afternoon in even warmer weather (and it can't really be that warm, because all of the Cod are doing fine, but Scott is really just not suited for this), and they're about to press onward after a blessed break for supper when one of the scouts sent on ahead comes running back, a little dot on the rolling yellow-green plains ahead that gradually becomes larger.

When they arrive, huffing and puffing, green in the face, they salute Jimmy and bow a little to Scott, accepting a drink of water.

"There's a small Mythland camp up ahead," they manage after a moment to catch their breath, sweeping their sweaty brown bangs out of their eyes. "An expedition or scouting group, probably. Fifty soldiers at most."

"We stop here to rest," Jimmy decides immediately, without waiting to consult the two Cod that he's chosen to be his seconds-in-command. "We'll continue in a couple of hours. Can you lead me to the camp?"

The young Cod nods, and before Scott knows it, they're guiding him and Jimmy away, a group of five of the stealthiest Cod accompanying them.

Scott doesn't really think it's a good idea to go spying—not when both he and Jimmy are rather high-profile, and letting go of Jimmy could have disastrous consequences making it impossible to split up—but who is he to make the rules around here?

And maybe he just doesn't want to go because his legs and back ache from the journey thus far, and his excessive clothing is all stuck to him with his own sweat.

Or maybe he doesn't want to go because he's going to die in a matter of days and he wants to spend as much time talking to Jimmy as possible instead of silent surveillance.

But as dusk falls and the world darkens, Scott finds himself lying on his belly at the peak of a small, ridge-like hill, peering down at a small camp of Mythland soldiers.

There's probably fifty men or so, most of whom are preparing or eating an evening meal between the six rows of tents. None of them are in armor, milling around the two campfires on either end of the camp, over each of which is a pot of something cooking (probably a stew).

"Fire is good," Jimmy murmurs. "It'll throw off their vision. We can probably get pretty close."

He points to a tent on the edge of the second row away from them, a bit bigger than the others, which two men are currently exiting. “I bet the man in charge is there. I want to know what his plans are.”

"Can we risk it?" Scott whispers back, tearing his eyes away from the camp to focus on Jimmy's shadowed face, two bright streaks across his vision from the light of the fires. "If we get caught, the whole operation is done for."

Jimmy clicks his tongue, reaffirms his grip on Scott's hand. "If we get caught, you fly us out of there, okay?"

"What? Jimmy, I haven't flown in weeks—my wings were broken, I don't even know if they'll support my weight, let alone—"

"Then we won't get caught," Jimmy says simply.

Right. Because that's the way that works.

Still, Scott only sighs and nods, and after a few long moments of silent communication with the other five rebels, Jimmy and Scott crawl back down the hill, sliding back on hands and knees until they're far enough back that they can stand fully.

They wait there, silent, until dark has fully fallen and the air cools, various nighttime critters hopping out of their hiding places to make their voices heard. Scott leaps back in surprise when a field mouse crawls across his foot, briefly losing contact with Jimmy and sending an icicle straight through the mouse, skewering it to the ground.

Jimmy sucks his breath in between his teeth. Scott cringes, gripping Jimmy's bicep and feeling his control acclimate again.

He hates this. He hates not being in control. He hates being cursed.

"Just . . . try not to do that again?" Jimmy says after a moment.

Scott nods wordlessly.

They don't say anything after that, and soon enough they can't really see anything beyond a foot ahead of them, and Jimmy begins to lead the way around the curve of the hill.

It isn't too difficult to move through the tall grass quietly, crouched over to hide in it, but Scott finds himself gritting his teeth every time Jimmy stumbles over a stalk or tramples some grass. Can't he just be silent? Scott has massive wings behind him and he isn't getting caught on anything, it can't be that hard.

He has to remind himself every couple of steps that different people have different skills. Elves have light feet and are better at sneaking than most, after all. It isn't Jimmy's fault that he's a flat-footed Cod.

"Left," Jimmy breathes in his ear, and Scott freezes. "There's someone on watch."

Scott looks around, trying to get his eyes to acclimate to the darkness. The firelight is throwing off his heightened vision (just as Jimmy had predicted it would for the enemy) , but he can maybe see a figure standing out in the grass to their right.

Now that he knows the man is there, if he pays attention he can hear him. He can hear the slight wheeze that accompanies each breath, the almost-silent rustle of clothing.

They shift left, Scott keeping an eye on the shadowy figure, making sure he doesn't head this way.

But as they move, Scott's still-alert ears pick up another sound, distant and almost indistinct.

Ba-thump. . . . Ba-thump. . . . Ba-thump. . . .

It might be his imagination, but it seems to be growing louder.

"Do you hear something?" Scott ventures to whisper, glancing around to make sure the guard doesn't hear him. Jimmy shrugs.

"No. What is it?"

He doesn't see anything. But he can still hear the rhythmic thudding, ever so slightly louder. Maybe it's his heartbeat?

Ba-thump. Ba-thump. Ba-thump.

Jimmy continues moving, bent over almost double, masked by the tall grass. Scott follows, their fingers linked and connecting them, swallowing back his bad feeling.

It sounds like a drum. A beating drum coming closer and closer.

Ba-thump, ba-thump, ba-thump, ba-thump—

"Are you—" Scott starts, before something clicks in his memory and he knows exactly what the sound is.

Uh-oh.

Ba-thump ba-thump ba-thump ba-thump ba-thump ba-thump—

Scott drags Jimmy back by his tunic, pulling him down on his back in the grass, the sword in its scabbard jostling against Scott's arm (flattened under Jimmy as they both lie supine on the ground). Scott presses his free hand to Jimmy's mouth, silencing the question about to burst from his lips.

Just in time, as a horse and rider come barreling through, barely two meters away from them, hooves thudding against the grass and saddlebags clanking. The horse gallops across the field to the camp, which is still far enough away that they can't hear anything more than the general bustle of a camp getting ready for bed.

Scott carefully sits back up once he's sure the danger has passed (and Jimmy does too, with considerably more noise), watches as the rider dismounts, tying the horse's reins to the post that's been set up at the edge of camp, next to the pack ponies that are lazily munching on the grass.

"He looks important," Jimmy whispers.

He does. The rider is wearing the official white surcoat of Mythland, a polished leather satchel strapped across his chest. He doesn't even unsaddle his horse, just continues on into the camp, stride slightly bowlegged.

Neither of them even have to say anything. Both Jimmy and Scott just move forward in sync, zigzagging from left to right, slower and slower the closer they get to the camp as the grass grows shorter, until they find themselves right behind the tent that the rider entered, the larger one that is luckily off to the side rather than in the center.

It's dangerous. There's a tent behind them a little ways, and others in their line of sight—made especially risky by the firelight emanating from one of the campfires, only a row away from them.

Still, nobody seems to be wandering about over here, and Scott trusts that either he'll hear them coming or Aeor will protect them.

Now, though, he needs to focus.

"Can you hear anything?" whispers Jimmy. Scott shushes him near silently, presses his ear up against the canvas. Jimmy does the same, his bad ear out toward the camp.

A couple of indistinguishable murmurings—pleasantries, if Scott had to guess—then the most obnoxious slurping Scott has ever heard—

"I don't believe I understand," a man's voice says, gruff and low, muffled through the tent wall. "The king wants us to abandon our course?"

"For the time being," a younger voice—the rider, Scott guesses—says.

"But we just sent our report. We've found the rebel camp. We need to attack before they move. I was expecting two thousand soldiers, not a messenger telling me to head to the coast."

"Everyone is being sent to the coast," the rider responds. "The rebel camp will still be here later."

"Or they'll all go hide in their little badger-holes. We could lose the Codlands if they get bold."

A chuckle. "It wouldn't take much to re-conquer them, I assure you. Especially without their ruler."

Scott squeezes Jimmy's hand. Jimmy squeezes back.

"I don't know," the first man says. "Something strange is going on with those rebels. Did you hear about Medokrill?"

"I don't bother myself with the names of their primitive villages."

"Froze. Overnight. Three men got frostbite."

"The weather of this place does not—"

"And in the morning, most of the Cod had vanished." The squeaking of a chair, another horrid slurp. "Now, I don't like that sort of coincidence. The town freezes—in August, mind—and that same night, the rebels strike and sneak everyone out of there. And only Medokrill froze. Even the prairie around it was untouched."

"What do you want me to do about it?" the rider asks after a moment. The other man chuckles.

"Keep it quiet, ideally. I don't know who or what has that kind of power, but I'm thinking the blame lies with those fairies. They might not be so neutral, after all.”

“I'm sure His Majesty would find that quite informative.”

“Remember that we don't want to scare our men, or give the Cod hope. Keep it quiet. But otherwise, you could get me my men so I can quash this rebellion."

The rider clicks his tongue. "The command is coming straight from His Majesty. Everyone is going to the coast for an attack."

"What could be so important—"

"The Ocean Queen is gone," the rider says.

Jimmy stiffens beside Scott. 

"She'll be arriving in Rivendell early tomorrow morning. The King intends to . . . delay her return, if you take my meaning. We attack while she's gone. By the time the day ends, we should have the upper hand and the fish will surrender within the week."

"Hm." The other man goes silent for a long moment. "I don't know how I feel about that. Tomorrow?"

"You're the last group to know, unfortunately. You should make it to the river in under an hour, and from there it will be several days' march to the coast itself. With any luck, the fighting will be done before you even arrive."

A long, drawn-out sigh. "And I don't suppose my little espionage group was small enough to escape the King's attention?"

"Every man, General. This could be the end of the war."

"Right. Well, it'll be morning before I can get my men moving. That wouldn't be too much of an issue, would it?"

"I suppose I might have stopped for the night before reaching your camp. Officially, I arrived tomorrow morning."

"Sure. And none of that stuff about the freeze leaves this tent, all right?"

"And you never heard a thing about the Ocean Queen's permanent little trip."

Another slurp that sets Scott's teeth on edge.

"Agreed. Have you been to the Capital lately?"

"Not in several weeks. Why?"

"Just wondering how the new market law is going."

"Ah. Well, I can tell you. . . ."

Jimmy tugs, lightly, on Scott's sleeve, and after a moment longer of listening to make sure they don't return to the earlier topic, Scott allows himself to be pulled.

They sneak back through the grass, not stopped by the sight of any sentry, off toward their vantage hill, around the side of it and to the back, where they find the other five rebels that they'd brought with them sitting cross-legged, conversing in whispers and pulling apart stalks of grass.

"Back to camp," Jimmy says shortly when they look up, and walks straight past them, pulling Scott with him.

Without a word, they follow him, stealing off in the direction of their resting soldiers, several hills away.

"What are we—" Scott whispers, but Jimmy shakes his head.

"Later."

Later.

How much later?

This is kind of important news, in Scott's opinion!

If Sausage is concentrating all his forces on the Ocean Kingdom because Lizzie's going to be in Rivendell for some reason, their whole mission is for nothing. They won't be able to strengthen her armies if they can't reach the ocean, but they can't go back—soon they'll be closed in, Mythland having conquered the Ocean Kingdom, so maybe they can flee to the Overgrown—but the general already suspects that the Overgrown is aiding them, and joining their ranks would only lead to an invasion—

"Who's there?" a guard calls, peering out into the darkness.

"It's us, Lanale," Jimmy says, and Scott stops to survey their rebel force.

It's too small. It's absolutely tiny. There's approximately four hundred of them, some as young as fourteen, ready to fight to try and free their country.

And that captain had just casually ordered two thousand soldiers to entirely wipe out their little force.

There's nothing they can do to help Lizzie against all of Mythland's armies. They won't even make a difference. They surely can't join the Overgrown, as it would lead to an attack. They can't stay here, not with Mythlanders combing the prairies for them.

He has no idea what Jimmy intends to do. He can't see any way out.

Yet Jimmy moves with purpose, and Scotr walks with him, picking through sleeping rebels, until Jimmy finds the woman he wants and shakes her awake.

She stretches, stands slowly, pushes her hair back. "Codfather," she yawns, clearly not-quite awake. "What do you need?"

"You're a good leader, Millie," Jimmy says, skipping pleasantries. "I need you to be in charge while I'm gone."

Millie blinks. "Gone? Gone where? What's happening?"

"I'm putting you and Emilio in charge," Jimmy explains, rather impatiently. "There's been a change in plans. You need to split up. You take most of the fighters over the river to the Overgrown, all right? Volunteer to join Katherine's army. Emilio needs to take fifty men and go back to Camp Two. Emilio will gather everyone who is able, and lead them to the Overgrown. Got it? Everyone is going to House Blossom."

"I—what?"

"Jimmy—" Scott starts—what is he talking about? That will only make things worse, and where will Jimmy be?—but Jimmy doesn't stop.

"Scott and I are leaving right now to Rivendell," he says firmly. "Can I trust you to lead these people to the Overgrown?"

Rivendell?

How?

Millie nods, all traces of sleepiness gone. "Of course, Codfather. And Emilio as well. They're a good fish."

Jimmy claps her on the shoulder once before turning away, pulling Scott back in the direction they came from.

"Wait!" Millie whisper-shouts, and Jimmy pauses, looks over his shoulder.

Millie gives him a grim nod. "Codspeed."

Jimmy nods back, once, then continues on.

"I'm sorry, what?" demands Scott, once they've retraced their path through the dozing force. "I—what are we—Rivendell, Jimmy? What—"

"We have to warn her," Jimmy says, and that may be true, but they can't just abandon the people here to go on a rescue mission miles and lifetimes away!

"Right, but it's logistically impossible—we ought to be headed to the Ocean Kingdom, warn her military commander, bef—"

"He literally told us where she was gonna be, we have to go out there—"

"He told us Rivendell! We don't know where in Rivendell, and more importantly—we can't get to Rivendell! How are we—"

"It's my sister, Scott," Jimmy says, and Scott falls silent at the desperate look on his face. He thinks he can see, by the moonlight, the sparkle of a tear on his cheek, somehow distinguishable from the shine of scales pushing through the scars on his face.

He got those scars, Scott remembers, when he fell through the Void and the nothing tore away pieces his skin, dissolving everything that was Jimmy.

Scott promised himself then, as his wings beat desperately and tears streamed down his face and he carried the unmoving body of his fiancé in his arms, that he would do anything for Jimmy, as long as he survived.

"It's my sister," Jimmy says again now, and Scott's eyes flick up from his scars to his beautiful, serious, brown eyes. "I'm not gonna leave her. I'm not gonna let Sausage murder her."

Scott glances away.

If they reveal themselves, Scott will have to face Xornoth.

If they save Lizzie, Scott will die.

And maybe that's dramatizing it a little bit, but it's true. If they go out into the public, if everyone knows that they're alive, then Xornoth will come after them.

Instead of, maybe, several more weeks with Jimmy, Scott's timeline has dropped down to a matter of days—hours, even.

He can't leave Jimmy so soon. He just found him again.

But one more look at Jimmy's pleading, teary eyes, and Scott knows that he can't leave Lizzie to die. She doesn't have a chance against the demon.

No one does, but he can at least hold Xornoth off while the others get to safety.

He'll never see Jimmy again.

"All right," he says, even as it breaks his heart. "We'll do it. But how do you intend on getting to Rivendell?"

Jimmy's eyes slowly slide up, up to the half moon, to the stars surrounding it. "Well, remember my escape plan from earlier?"

"Jimmy."

[astro-ellie]

can you imagine abby melting when reader whisper "home" while being held by her strong arms after a long stressful day 😞

a/n: my heart anon you don’t understand what putting this scenario in my head is doing to me, also this became so, so much longer than i thought it would. sorry not sorry

it never gets easy.

no amount of training and no amount of assignments you’ve completed will ever make it easy. you’ve been doing this for a while, and you’re still haunted by memories. you have the physical strength to fight, that’s not the issue, all those hours in the gym while training has paid off.

the feeling of nausea at the smell of blood, the shiver that runs down your spine every time you take someone out during a mission, just never goes away.

until now you had been holding onto the hope that one day you’d be too desensitised to be affected anymore. one day, killing people- scars, scavengers, hell, even infected, would be easy. you would no longer spend hours scrubbing away that dirty feeling all over your skin after a kill.

oh, how naive of me.

it hits you as you head towards your room. you’ve always been aware deep inside that this violence and the murder will never feel right, you’ll never be able to swallow the distaste down, but now you have accepted it. and accepting it is heavy, it hurts, burns, weighs you down.

maybe, it was the scar kid that made you realise it. she had been running towards you blind with rage, and you had shot an arrow right at her without hesitation. maybe, it was the fact that as she laid dead in front of you she reminded you of someone you lost. or maybe, it was the fact that she was so young.

killing a kid will never be easy.

at some point, you turn away from the corridor in which your room is in. you can’t be alone anymore. your entire body feels cold, and your hands are shaking. the past years it’s like you’ve numbed your discomfort at least to an extent, hiding behind the naive thinking that it would become easier at some point.

now you’ve faced the cold truth, and there’s nothing you can hide behind anymore.

when your fists hit the door and you wait for her to come open, the unsettling realisation has grown into a heavy and dark hole inside of you. you could swear it almost burns, and it completely overwhelms you.

it doesn’t feel like you’re here. or anywhere, really. it will never be easy. so you’re just supposed to do this shit till you’re dead, no matter how much it wears you down.

without even noticing it yourself, your heart is pounding in your chest and you’re hyperventilating. the black hole inside of you continues to grow bigger, until it feels like it will consume you.

when the door is slammed open you almost don’t notice. it’s abby’s voice that takes you out of it, that grounds you in reality again. the hole inside your chest is still there, but it stopped growing. her presence makes a warmth slowly spread throughout you, the cold feeling disappearing.

“hey, you okay?” she’s reaching out her arm, placing her hand on your shoulder. concern is written all over her face, but you can’t bring yourself to reply.

all you can do is wrap your arms around her, pressing your face against her collarbone. she’s unmoving for a second, before engulfing you in a hug as well. her warmth consumes you, forces the hole inside of you to shrink and shrink, until it’s almost unnoticeable. almost.

she tries to ask you again, tries to ask what happens. asks you if you need something, all you do is shake your head. you already have all you need right here in between your arms.

“home.” it’s whispered against abby’s shirt, said so casually and soft. home is safety, comfort. home is your safe space, home is where you’re protected. so how could any other place than her arms be called your home?

if you only could see abby’s face, her eyes filled with adoration. you swear she hugs you a little tighter, leans into your touch a little bit more and you feel the featherlight touch of her lips on the top of your head.

yeah, it doesn’t get easier. but you have abby, and maybe that’s all you need.

[anika-ann]

Back and Forth - part 3.2

Part 3 - Bounce Back - 2/2

Type: series; agent!reader, inhuman!reader

Pairing: Steve Rogers x reader    Word Count: 14000

Chapter summary:  In which you have to survive the charity auction and it's not easy... for several reasons.

Series masterlist

Warnings: overthinking, self-doubt and issues with self-image, A+ parenting and its consequences, mentions of (in)human experimentation, alcohol (briefly as a coping mechanism), SPOILER armed assault, language and charming Steve, because he is most definitely a warning

A/N: ALWAYS MIND THE WARNINGS; dividers by @firefly-graphics 💕; moodboard is for the vibes and does not necessarily reflect reader’s appearance

A/N2: Second 'half' of the 3rd chapter. As you might have noticed, this is a long one. But with hints of fluff. So…yay? 💕 If you wish/need to split the reading, I recommend to end a reading session at the second in-text divider 😊

Daisy Johnson, despite being the legendary Quake, did in fact have a moment – which was enough of a shock to stop your headache from getting worse, even if your hands seemed to get a little clammy as your phone lit up with her response.

You would have done just fine without anyone’s input, you considered yourself competent enough to choose an evening gown, thank you very much. But after the day you had had so far – you could hardly believe it wasn’t even noon yet – there was a small traitorous voice of hope in the back of your head. Despite the heavy feeling in your stomach weighing you down, a dull reminder of being alone in this world, it urged you to reach out to the one group of people that once made you believe that you could share more with someone than workload or more than lust that turned into ashes and smoke once the fire had been lit up too strong. Daisy had been in the centre of it – she and maybe Coulson.

It was a dangerous game you played, indulging in the one thing you knew would come back to slap you in the face; entertaining the idea that there was someone who genuinely cared for you regardless of your abilities was setting you up for disappointment. But there was something about Daisy, so honest and sincere, that had wormed its way through the walls you had sworn to keep up for support, several inches thick and vibranium-strong. And that didn’t change, even as you had been given, not for the first time, the evidence of how volatile a faith in friendship can turn just short of two hours ago.

Knowing that Daisy didn’t turn her back to people, not even to her father after all he had done wrong, knowing she chose to see the good in people and to put her heart into nurturing it in them despite the risk of getting hurt in more ways than one, left you defenceless against her powers that had nothing to do with her genetic code. She was, even if distantly, the closest thing to a sister to you, older, due to her experience with Inhuman powers and in Coulson’s team, and younger, due to her pure heart and excitement about new things; once she had managed her powers which she had got about a half a year before you did, she became your guide and confidant; though you hadn’t dared to taint her with the knowledge of your pain.

While you had started search for the dress without her, she texted you barely a half an hour in; fresh out of a meeting, apologizing she’d only have twenty minutes before they’d be in the drop-zone for their current mission. Twenty minutes. And yet, she had made the time for you. Somewhere, thousands of feet in the air, in between preparing her mission gear, she had decided to sneak in a few minutes for you.

The knowledge alone eased the pressure in your stomach and gave way to a wholly different feeling, equally dizzying. She cared. Yes, you could argue that since she had been tasked to lead the division of Inhuman agents of SHIELD, it was her duty to respond – and at times, you reminded yourself of that, that you really weren’t special – but the fact was that she was. And she truly did care. You hadn’t been wrong to call her a friend yesterday; and Daisy-the-teenager couldn’t have had picked a better role-model in life. For most part anyway.

It didn’t matter in the slightest that Daisy Johnson had barely squeezed you into her schedule; it still carried meaning. And it would be enough, because she could be very efficient, sorting through the dresses you had considered so far as easily as if she had been slicing through the security system of the Pentagon – for a person with her hacking experience anyway.

A set of easy questions you yourself had been asking was her effective tactics.

Mission or fun? she had asked first, no doubt already knowing the answer as she went through the early picks. There was a reason why no dress had bare back, while all of them had necklines designed high enough to hide at least a strapless bra.

Me: They call it a mission to have fun, but I’ll be damned if I go without being ready other kind of mission.

DJ: Fair

DJ: Charming or sexy?

Your lips twitched in a small smile, your mind conjuring the image of Daisy’s face when she was typing the question. She was one of very few people – probably the only one – who could make you feel the teenage-like excitement about challenging authority. There was always a reason to the madness of doing so, but there was something about her attitude that always whispered of poking the bear for the sake of fun only.

Charming, you replied, almost regretfully. As much fun as it would be to see brains of some of those pretentious jerks you were about to meet short-circuit just because they were seeing an extra silver of flesh on a young woman – a thing that would make for as much of an icky feeling as hilarity – your mission was to represent, not cause havoc or seduce.

Blah. Colour-coordinating with anyone? she asked then and you chuckled at her poorly hidden attempt to fish for gossip – and at the idea of actually trying to do what she was suggesting. No. You were not going to go and ask Rogers what colour he was about to wear. Less so since chances were high that he was about opt for a traditional black tuxedo suit with a white shirt.

Me: Nope.

DJ: Come on! At least tell me who you’re going with?!!

DJ: You know this is a much of a secure channel as it gets

DJ: And you said it wasn’t really a mission, so it can’t be classified

DJ: …and I can’t find it within the system.

I’ll tell you if we survive it, you replied simply, even as laughter already bubbled in your chest, cheeks beginning to hurt from disuse and the sudden exercise as to stop you from grinning.

You should have known that she’d hack the system and go straight for the mission database unless you told her the details. Tony, bless him, threw a tantrum whenever she did that – which wasn’t too often, but it had happened before. On days when you allowed yourself to ponder, you wondered why he never told anyone – as far as you knew, that was, because no one came down on you, raining holy fire of wrath, despite it being obvious you were the cause of Daisy’s hacks – and why he tolerated it. Some days, you thought he was amused by it and felt bad for you, seeing you missed your former team, granting you connection with Daisy even if the way she went about it drove him absolutely nuts. Other days, you were sure he simply enjoyed a challenge and this was as good one of those as any – and he’d be caught dead before he’d admit in front of anyone that someone was able to crack into his system. Most days, you were content not to look given horse in the mouth.

Like clockwork, FRIDAY’s mechanical voice interrupted your thoughts:

“Agent Spectre, Mr. Stark would like to know if, I quote, you know anything about some punk kid sneaking into the mission logs again, maybe Little Miss Richter Scale, end of quote,” she stated, causing a snort of laughter actually escape you at Tony’s new and dead-on nickname. You’d have to tell Daisy that later – she’d have a good laugh at that

Me: You’re getting better and better.

Me: He’s onto you now though.

DJ: He should, he’s slacking, took him forever to notice

Sometimes, you wondered what would happen if Tony Stark and Daisy Johnson found themselves in one room and she’d tell him that to his face; but that was a thought to entertain another day.

“Thanks, FRIDAY. Tell Mr. Stark to relax. We’re safe, it is just Daisy.”

“Very well. Apologies for interrupting your free time, Agent Spectre. However, I was also tasked to inform you that Sergeant Wilson prepared enough lunch for an army and extended the invitation to join him to everyone on the team. Even to those who are currently on a mission out of state, which I find odd and, frankly, despicable.”

Even though the corner of your lips twitched at FRIDAY’s comment, your heart skipped a startled beat, a fist of cold feeling squeezing your stomach. The invitation was a nice gesture, even if not meant for you. You could read between the lines: the family the Avengers team had built themselves into, even if the second strangest you had ever seen, did not involve you. You were barely a part of the team, a temporary loan, so to speak, even as you had signed a contract. Extending the invitation to the team meant extending it to friends, to that very family. As kind and welcoming as Sam seemed, you certainly did not belong to that category.

The vibration of your phone startled you; the message as amusing as bittersweet.

DJ: Fine, keep your secrets, Ms Avenger

Right. Ms. Avenger. Case on point. You might be one, technically, on paper, but in spirit… hardly. At best, you were determined to try and prove that the way you controlled your abilities could be at least Avengers-adjacent. The harsh truth however, was that if anyone from your old team would have had it in them to become a true Avenger, it was Daisy herself. Alas, she was too busy running and flying the world with another team, protecting, teaching, and recruiting Inhumans... and saving the world in the process.

DJ: Crap gotta run

DJ: Number four is the one I think

Whoever you’re going with is gonna lose their shit when they see you, she added, once again making you snort, this time without humour.

Yeah, right. Like that was going to happen. If chances of becoming a friend to an Avenger were astronomical, chances that Steve Rogers would be impressed by you dressing up to the nines were outside of all the realms known to Thor himself. But it was a nice sentiment, you supposed; the flicker of affection towards the optimist in Daisy was a testimony to that.

Me: Thank you for the help. Stay safe out there.

DJ: You too

DJ: But from what I saw about yesterday, you got it

DJ: …Ms Avenger

Shaking your head, this time unable to stop the smile taking over your lips, you set the phone down and ordered the dress to be delivered express, and moved onto shoes and a handbag; you ignored the growling of your hungry stomach and distantly couldn’t but wonder if maybe there’d be some leftovers of Sam’s pasta to have for lunch later.

Tony was not exaggerating when he was talking about the charity auction being a mission. A mission required preparation; having documents land in your inbox along with an alert of high-priority intel relevant to your mission lightning up your StarkWatch yesterday evening, you had never been more grateful for being obliged to read up on something.

As you were putting the last touches to your make-up in the quinjet bathroom, you sent another mental thank you to Tony, because the extensive files on all expected guests, besides having potential to be useful to you during the event, gave you the perfect excuse as to why leave last preparations to the flight.

Naturally, the intel itself was a message with a bitter aftertaste, because it highlighted your role and tasks. Represent. Make small-talk. Show interest. Compliment a healthy amount; meaning bootlick a bit, if necessary. You knew the dance and it had always made your head spin in the worst way. To show enough admiration and knowledge about the world’s finest to look professional and a bit of a fan, but not as a stalker, even as there were people among the attendees tonight who would have probably appreciated a stalker-level interest and considered it a compliment.

But despite the slight nausea hitting you when leafing through the files, you had appreciated the out Tony had given you, whether it was intentional or not; because with an excuse of mountains of intel to try to learn by heart, you didn’t have to sit opposite to Steve in the quinjet in awkward silence. Or worse, trying to make small talk with him, just as awkward. Or, in the worst-case scenario – which would be in the direct conflict with one of the mission’s laughable objectives, specifically trying not to kill each other – fight with him.

And you probably would have done exactly that because there was no way Captain America himself had been wrestled into this the same way you had. They might have had to twist his arm to make him go with you, but not to go. He had been given a choice and chose to attend, despite the concerns you had voiced. And you probably hadn’t been the only one, which meant Steve had to be hyperaware of the potential security issue and he deliberately ignored it. Of course. Why wouldn’t he? He was Mr. Captain America and nothing could ever happen to him; be it because he thought there was no danger and you were allegedly making it bigger deal than necessary or – which drove you all high up the wall and made you want to punch him into his damn perfect teeth or at least punch his stupidly firm pec – the threat was nothing he couldn’t handle.

Goddamn him.

You crumbled the fabric of your dress between your fingers in a firm grip as you breathed through the rush of pure indignation with him being a brave stubborn dismissive dumbass and breathed in slowly; you held your breath for a few seconds, and only then released it along with the grip on your dress. You blinked at yourself in the mirror and repeated the action, arranging your face into a neutral expression at least.

Tony might have as well come up with the idea to send the intel solely to prevent you from attempting to strangle Steven Grant Rogers before you even landed, so it would be polite to honour his efforts.

When you finally exited the bathroom and entered the main space, you found Steve in one of the seats with a tablet in his hand, the screen dimly illuminating his face. He looked up as you approached, rising to his feet almost as if on instinct, his lips slightly parted for a brief moment. His gaze glided over the dress from where it brushed your ankles, over the line of the skirt, the slit reaching mid-thigh opening and closing as you walked, revealing a silver of your leg tastefully and covering you again, then over the waist, V-shaped neckline ending mid-sternum, short sleeves with delicate frills. For a moment, the intensity of his gaze surprised you; but then you realized that he was committing the dress to memory to find you easily in the crowd in case any Avengers-related business came up.

Then, an obtrusively gentle thought nudged at your mind; he was an amateur artist. You had got a glimpse of him several times, a sketchbook and a pencil in his fingers, look distant or extremely focused on the paper in front of him. He could appreciate beauty – and the dress you chose was without doubt an embodiment of it. The glimmer of it was subtle and the sparkles sparce; in the rich dark blue blending into a purple just as dark, it resembled the sky just after dusk, with the first stars coming out. Whether he had a sense for fashion or not wouldn’t matter – the dress was, at least in your eyes, gorgeous. Not flashy, not too shiny to attract too much attention, but with an idea making up for the otherwise simple design.

When Steve met your eyes, the light of the quinjet made it appear as if there was a tinge of pink in his cheeks. And there actually might be, since his eyes lingered on the dress for a moment too long; which wouldn’t be a crime if you weren’t already wearing them, making it seem like he was staring.

“You look beautiful,” he said, the soft tone making it sound almost as if it escaped him unwittingly.

It was the most ordinary of compliments and yet, it surprised you that he had even paid it. Perhaps it shouldn’t have, as he was a product of his time – a time in which if men didn’t compliment a woman’s appearance, they were probably called louts. And yet. Even with that knowledge, something akin to warmth fluttered in your chest, a brief smile passing over your lips, the silent ‘thank you’ the least courtesy you could give in return.

If he had tried to commit your dress to memory, you’d allow yourself the same luxury. A quality black tuxedo with a faint navy-blue glint, pristine white shirt, a black bow-tie. His outfit would be but a drop in the sea, nothing that would stand out among those of other men; but you had the advantage of him being easily found in the crowd thanks to his physique alone. The broadness and strength he radiated could carry the weight of the world – and it felt like it did – narrowing beautifully into the trim waist in a ratio not even a loose jacket could hope to hide, let alone such well-fitting one which seemed to accentuate it a little more than was strictly necessary. With him towering over about ninety-five percent of people and having shoulders wider than about ninety-nine percent of the usual present company, he was truly hard to miss.

Unfortunately, it also made him an easy target who was truly hard to miss indeed.

And now you were staring and he was no doubt aware – it was impossible not to, less so with how much attention he paid to things. So you stood there in silence, awkward one, precisely the one you had wanted to avoid and yet managed to reach it in thirty seconds flat – but at least neither of you were yelling. Yet.

As glad as you were to see that Steve Rogers had clearly decided to leave whatever disagreements you had ever had back at the Tower for the sake of this mission, trying his best to be the exact opposite of antagonistic, you were not going to tell him he looked extremely good to make things even more awkward. You wouldn’t even think it, as right as the assessment was. It would be inappropriate, even as he had complimented you first.  You needed to be professional. There was a task at hand.

Right. The mission.

Steve was still watching you, something akin to curiosity in his gaze.

You cleared your throat, nodding towards the tablet in his hand.

“You were going through the files on the guests?”

Steve blinked, seemingly snapped from his thoughts.

“Yes. Have you?” he asked as he laid the tablet on the seat, straightening to his full height again; it was ridiculous how tall he seemed in the low-ceiling cabin of this type of quinjets. There was a faint smile on his lips, no tension in his jaw as he watched you; he already knew the answer and he wasn’t trying to provoke you.

Small talk it was.

“Yes, Captain,” you replied dutifully. You would swear a little twinkle of humour appeared in his eye – but it was probably just the lights reflecting in his cerulean blues. “Yesterday and today. Should be more than enough to represent properly.”

Alright, it must have been humour, because the corner of his lips twitched now at the lightest trace of defiance in your voice. Then he smiled fully, the spark burning brighter, your stomach somersaulting a bit.

Who were you kidding you had no idea; he looked more than just extremely good and handsome. In a different kind of suit than you were used to, bright eyes with their blue accentuated by the colour of his tuxedo, with uncharacteristically relaxed features and even a smile aimed at you, the beauty of him seemed so surreal you might have as well entered another dimension. Which, given your experience with Coulson’s team, was not unplausible. And yet, your heart fluttering had nothing to with fear as he went to sidestep you.

What was wrong with you today?

“Well… good. I’m sure you’ll have the two remaining objectives handled as well,” he said kindly.

You blinked, neurons firing in all directions, heart leaping to your throat. Surely, he didn’t just—the two remaining objectives. That wasn’t--- that didn’t mean anything. He probably didn’t receive the same documents, his mission package different from yours as he was one of the original Avengers, the strategist.

And yet, a worm of curiosity had already chewed its way through to your brain, an itch you needed to scratch otherwise you’d go crazy. Certainly, he couldn’t have implied-

He stepped out towards the bathroom, only to be stopped in his tracks by your impulsive words.

“Can I borrow your tablet for one more moment?” you blurted out, clearly taking him by surprise; but not unpleasantly. “I just… I just want to check on some of the guests again.”

“Sure.”

With the same faint smile adorning his absurdly handsome face, he took a few steps back to reach for the tablet, unlocking it for you and opening the file with individual documents for you to browse before taking his leave.

You weren’t sure why you needed to check – if you were a sucker for pain, needing to know your assumption he had only received three objectives was correct – but you opened the mission overview anyway.

A lump grew in your throat as you skimmed through the document, your stomach suddenly unbearably warm.

He didn’t mean it. He forgot there were four not three objectives, a sharp voice in your head argued, instantly opposed by another, even if less insistent, reminding you that Captain Rogers was believed to have eidetic memory and you had seen his impressive memory indeed in action before.

It didn’t matter. You were making a big deal out of nothing; and ocne you came back from this excuse of a mission, you needed to have your heart checked, because the irregularities in rhythm and the palpitations upon simply reading had to signal an underlying health issue.

But it was right there, in his device, in one of the documents he had just been reading through. The overview.

Location.

Time.

Two names.

Four objectives.

Four objectives which were no doubt written down by Tony, given the choice of words and their existence to begin with, because no one else would have treated an official document this way.

Make Avengers look good; Look good; Have fun (includes using Stark/Avengers card in the auction); Try not to kill each other.

You felt your cheeks heat up even though there was not a single reason to feel that way. You were a grown woman. You had been complimented countless times before, in much more flattering ways, though less playful ones. Steve was just being… polite. And a little teasing, trying to put you at ease, probably thinking you couldn’t handle yourself, having been informed about your… reluctance to attend the auction. His niceness was in overdrive since he had been literally given orders not to treat you as if he wanted to kill you. He didn’t mean it and even if he did, you had no business reacting this way.

But still. It seemed that Steve Rogers decided that for the sake of the mission, he would more than just leave your differences of opinions behind for the night; he decided to truly work hard on the one single objective that did not come easily to him. There was no other reason for that, but despite your better judgement, it brought a ghost of a smile to your face, one that felt a little stupid.

As you heard him open the door, you were quick to close the document and tap on a random one concerning the guests, just in case Steve would want to check. You pretended that you were too immersed in reading to address him as he walked to you, but there was no need.

The gentle swing of the quinjet slowing down made you forget about whatever he had been trying to imply alarmingly fast.

You were almost there; in the lion’s den. It was time to pull yourself together, be the picture perfect this mission required even if you were not. Just because your idea of a useful mission was different, you wouldn’t treat this one with any less focus or professionalism; even if you’d rather find yourself tied-up and gagged an abandoned warehouse in a middle of nowhere, with no back-up in sight, than kept a fake smile plastered to your face for hours.

Avenger or not, your task was to represent. And so you would, conveniently with the man who represented the goals and values of the team better than anyone else ever could. You’d do your best to support him in that, and you’d do so while fulfilling all the objectives of the mission indeed, even if you doubted that you’d be any better than an accessory the size of Steve’s cufflink. You doubted that Steve Rogers would need the slightest support in charming rich people and the staff alike.

Just for that, you mentally added a fifth objective, an objective anyone drawing up the document should have added themselves. For Steve, it would be not to be a dumbass and not to get himself hurt, hit by anti-serum, kidnapped or killed. For you, not to let any of these things happen to him.

It wouldn’t have been an issue in the first place if it was anyone else with you, but since Steve goddamn Rogers had decided to--- no. Not today. He truly was trying to be bearable. You’d meet him halfway; but you’d be damned if you didn’t keep your eyes open.

“I forgot to tell you earlier,” you murmured as the quinjet touched down on one of the rooftops on a nearby hotel, courtesy of Tony’s negotiating skills – his irresistible charm, as he would say – earning you Steve’s startled look. “You clean up well too.”

His shoulders sagged, eyebrow arching subtly, but his surprise melted into a slight smile again. “Thank you. Shall we?”

Like the gentleman he had been raised to be, he offered you an elbow as the ramp of the quinjet opened for you to step out. There was no need – you had walked on far worse surfaces than this in heels before, you had been forced to run and kick in them too – and you had to physically swallow the remark that would inform Steve about that. But you’d be an idiot to not see that he didn’t offer you an arm to be condescending; he did so to be nice. You could work with nice.

“Thanks.”

And with that, you stepped out, counting steps until you’d walk into the lion’s den indeed.

To say that functions, balls and auctions were not your scene would be a serious understatement. Not in the sense of you being unable to tackle them, no – you had plenty of experience – but in the sense of you absolutely despising them. Specifically, you couldn’t stand what people pretended to be when in that environment; and that included you.

It hadn’t always been like that; visiting events like this started off pleasant. People in luxury robes with wide smiles and subtle laughs echoing in glimmering halls were a thrilling environment before. Before you could fully understand what was happening, before you could read the room. It was only much later when you’d identify these events as necessary evil when working for SHIELD and the time between the two points was a long journey.

Your father would have sneaked into these, either in his own ways or through your mother’s alleged renown status; and you, naturally, went with them. She’d often leave you and your father to your own devices, charming guests into adoring her, speaking of her dedication to both her work and her family, particularly to her daughter, her tone speaking louder than her words in the case of the latter; contempt.

Meanwhile, your father was the complete opposite. He had you joined at his hip, a crutch for when his own tactics of pretending to be someone truly indispensable to SHIELD failed. If people roaming higher circles of society didn’t recognize him as the god’s gift to humanity he hoped to come across as, you’d come in; a charming young lady ready to take the world by storm, his beloved daughter, his pride and joy. Errors made that day, that week or past months didn’t matter – they didn’t exist at the moment, your performance always painted as perfect for the sake of the bragging.

It was a divine experience to receive so much praise, him sounding so earnest in front of all those people; it got sicker and more twisted the older you got, seeing the mask slipping on and off as it suited him, knowing that in the discomfort of home, you were none of what he described you as that to him. And yet. To be finally loved and seen as exceptional by your own father, the one person who had always believed in you and told you so; who wouldn’t want that? Just a taste; like melting hot chocolate on your tongue, thoroughly warming your very being, the softest of blankets that turned scratchy the moment you left the room, snatched away to leave you out in the cold reality of being born a hope and growing up a failure. But those moments, those moments you craved as much as you hated them. Because you knew they would never last.

It was one of the many contradictions of your childhood and adolescence, one of many topics of your therapy sessions that seemed to have no end. It reminded you of what Lincoln always said – that every Inhuman had a purpose and that every Inhuman’s power reflected, to a point, who they were. The way you felt you were often being pulled in two directions, loved and despised, dotted on and ignored, obedient and rebellious, to be exactly who your father had always intended for you to be and find your own path – or pretend you could, for a bit at least, to give him a glimpse of a real disappointment; all goals in direct opposition to each other. You were surprised your ability wasn’t the same as Alisha’s who could literally split herself into several images of herself. But you were hardly an overachiever, were you? You had learned long time ago that perfection was out of your reach, no matter how much you’d cry and bleed and clawed your way through to it, only to see the top of the mountain move when your fingers had almost touched it at last. And on top of that mountain; people like Steve Rogers. The man who could shove it into anyone’s face that it wasn’t that the summit was too high; it was just that they were too small of a person. That you weren’t enough.

It wasn’t fair to despise him for it. But it wasn’t fair that some of these people could insult you to your face and imply you were a lesser Avenger – while representing them nevertheless – and you had no chance to truly fight back without somewhat proving them right.

About a hundred and then some boring conversations later, encounters in which you felt your skin crawl because you hated rubbing elbows, facing fake smiles and carefully crafted politeness with veiled insults weaved between the words of those who could afford it, you were ready to take a break and you were afraid it was beginning to show too.

Captain Steve Rogers, of course, did not seem tired of pleasantries in the slightest; the golden boy still roamed among the crowds, more than willing to engage in any conversation, shaking hands and rubbing elbows indeed as if he had been born to do exactly that. Crowds loved him and that was a fact, whether what Tony had insinuated was correct or not and Steve couldn’t stand this kind environment either indeed.

You had to give it to Steve, however – and truly, you should have expected it, because this was Steve Rogers, originally a little man who could not stand people looking down at others, less so diminish someone’s worth, and he was the protector, the ultimate good guy, the perfection personified – the encounters you had handled side by side with him did not see you neglected. Quite the opposite. If someone didn’t recognize you, which applied to the majority, he was happy to introduce you, or, as it had been in most cases, he had you introduce yourself and only then he highlighted your importance to the team if anyone seemed less that impressed.

Contrary to what you would believe, his words and demeanour, however, pushed the icky sensation of the scene away rather than intensified it. Unlike your father, Steve didn’t have you trail after him. He didn’t belittle you to lift himself up. He didn’t boast about his brilliant decision to reassign you to the team since you were so useful When he spoke of you as the new addition to the team, he didn’t highlight your most recent accomplishment either, not with a condescending or patronizing tone or words that would make it sound as if he as saying oh she saved a few people just two days ago, including Natasha Romanoff, someone give her a candy.

Steve didn’t speak of you as if you were hisachievement, didn’t speak of letting you join the team, of the cooperation being his or their choice.

“We are honoured to have her join the team,” he’d say instead.

“With every mission she takes on, she proves how fortunate we are that she is one of us.”

“Her contributions to our common goal are invaluable.”

“She is an essential part of our team and we are thankful she continues to make this world a safer place with the rest of us.”

On one hand, it was almost sweet; on the other, it was irritating. You didn’t need him to earn you their respect and it should make you livid he was trying to do that, to play the hero who’d rush to your rescue. To a point, it did, because you could fight your own battles; but this battlefield tended to make you slip into a mindset you hated – made you slip into a skin you hated wearing. Still, Steve’s tendency to make it his personal mission that you were not overshadowed by him – a futile effort truly – should make your blood boil, because there he was, the world’s mightiest saviour in action again.

But the way his body language changed when someone eyed you as if you were an unwanted addition to the conversation seemed to whisper of other things than self-proclaimed white knight needing to sweep in; it expressed itself as a personal insult to him that your supposed brilliance was not acknowledged. It seemed almost as if he was gesturing to you wildly with his large palms, his voice as if demanding from the people he spoke to: do you really not see how amazing she is? Are you an idiot? Naturally, he was doing so in much distinguished manner, but that was how it felt.

You were certain someone must have got to you before Tony did back in the park, landing a hit to your head or two, causing a microtrauma that only now manifested in your entirely skewed perception and hallucinations. They must have, there was no other plausible explanation. Or maybe you had actually died; laying your life for Natasha’s would have certainly been a worthy cause. Or perhaps it wasn’t so dramatic and you had simply slipped into a coma and this was some weird manifestation of your brain recovering.

And yet, you had a feeling that if you pinched yourself, you would still feel as grounded in this strange reality as you did now, the intense surge of affection for the man still overwhelming, the satisfaction of seeing the swellheads meek and slightly embarrassed at Steve’s tone upon them dismissing you curling hot in your core. You needed to stop revel in it so much.

But be as it might, despite trying to carefully shield yourself from the effect of Steve’s very public words of appreciation due to knowing it wouldn’t last, you felt yourself grow taller than you ever had been in an event like this. You didn’t feel as obliged to smile politely just for the sake of pleasing others, even as you did smile. Despite the presence of Captain America, larger than life, you felt confident and powerful, even if this kind of feeling normally only came when you were on a mission with the target already in your pocket.

And yet, this surge of courage – and all the wondering about what an alternate reality you had entered – didn’t make the game of social chess less exhausting or brought it closer to your ideas of fun. After almost another hour of wandering on your own, tending to every conversation necessary and even those less necessary, you did find yourself in a need of a break and you liked to think you deserved one.

Naturally, fate – if there was such thing – did not grant you such courtesy.

When you finally did find yourself at the bar, it was one godawful encounter later – a single polite conversation that had sucked all life out of you, all of the little glow you felt you had gathered swept away with a single snap of fingers. It was unfair. It was unfair that your mother still had such hold on you after a lifetime of you being nothing but a bug on her windshield as she tried to drive into the sunset of her own glory, even months and months after her final abandonment.

The matter was only worse since it wasn’t even her. Just a distant colleague – her superior, no less. A few minutes, every second dragging since the moment Doctor Franklin had mentioned your mother, and you were ready to hit the bar for something far stronger than champagne.

“Ah, I knew I saw a resemblance. You must be so proud to wear your mother’s features and name. A strong woman, a survivor, truly dedicated to science, exploring the wonders of the nature of Inhuman transformation. Examining her own genetic code to be able to share fascinating facts of the uniqueness of her case. Even the draft of her study was most intriguing… pardon me, what was it that your abilities are after you, unlike her, simply acquired powers like everyone else?”

It shouldn’t have affected you; but it did. With what felt like chunks of metal in your stomach, the tickle of nausea in the back of your throat, you were almost proud you managed to hold somewhat of a smile, actually uncertain if the woman was clueless in the matter of politeness and tact or whether she was making a calculated insult.

“I’m afraid the exact nature of my abilities is classified, ma’am,” you replied. The words, even if they should feel full of vindication, tasted bitter on your tongue.

Trust your mother to finally find her exceptionality and built the pinnacle of her career on a flaw in her genetic code. Of fucking course. Making herself the centre of attention while being the primary source of that attention at the same time; what a brilliant move. Someone should give her a damn Nobel. You really were doing something wrong in your life.

So truly, you felt like were entitled to a breather as you walked away with a polite nod, trying not to throw up in your mouth as the world got slightly blurry at the edges for a moment, your heart pounding, knees feeling a little weak. You felt the sticky remnants of Doctor Franklin’s words linger on your skin, resisting the urge to rub it off.

You deserved a shot of something stronger. You weren’t sure anything weaker than absinth would do the trick and help you snap from the strange haze your body slipped into; but facing the man behind the improvised bar, you couldn’t make yourself ask for that however.

Well-aware that you needed to keep at least some face since the mission of the evening was to represent, you opted for vodka, small shot only. And despite the weary conversations, you didn’t forget: in addition to representing, you wanted to be ready to fight whoever could possibly go after Rogers. As much as you’d like to get wasted to feel actual nausea instead, something tangible and real like the burn of the strongest alcohol known to mankind, you couldn’t. Vodka it was.

You turned the shot bottoms-up, focusing fully on the hot trickle down your throat, the fire dampening all your other senses; and for a few second, it was bliss.

Until your nostrils were hit by an unfairly familiar cologne and aftershave, a deep timbre soaking into your bones whenever spoken despite how much you tried not to let it do exactly that.

“Having fun as we were ordered?”

You froze, shame, indignation and the alcohol lightning you up like a wildfire.

Great, Mr. Morality is here, you thought darkly, setting the glass down, turning to Steve with poorly masked annoyance. Annoyance which was quickly wiped out, the flames licking at your gut put out.

You expected his face to be full of judgement, anger and disappointment; but much like his voice had been, you realized, it was free of any bite or sting, simply showing light amusement and compassion, a slightly worried crinkle between his brows.

His voice had been quiet, purposely so, as not to attract lookers-on. It was a little naïve – to think he could walk in anywhere without at least ten pairs of eyes following him – but it was nice of him that he was trying not to embarrass you by publicly calling you an alcoholic.

But the gentle mix of emotion adorning his expression only made your stomach twist. It was a great paradox really; it would be so much easier to deal with tonight if he was being insufferable and judged you. But that bastard, the irritatingly handsome bastard, was being simply amazing. A much greater person you could ever be. And he didn’t mean to, probably – but he was just screaming exactly that to your face with every little action he had opted for tonight.

Not his fault, not his fault, you tried to remind yourself as he continued to watch you, curiosity sneaking into his gaze now.

Make Avengers look good.

Look good.

Have fun.

Do not kill each other.

Do not kill each other. Got it.

“Guilty as charged,” you said finally, the light tone you had hoped for not coming out quite right; but he didn’t hold it against you.

“Nothing to be guilty about,” he said, shrugging subtly. “I… might have gone for one of those myself had it had any effect on me.”

Right, you realized. Supersoldier. Accelerated healing, fast metabolism. You did happen to know he burned off most things even faster than other men built like mountains. Shorter and less broad mountains, that was.

You felt you head instinctively tilt to side a bit, contemplating what he said without spelling it out. He didn’t seemlike he needed a strong drink. In fact, he seemed perfectly like a fish in water among the sea of piranhas of people – and yes, you were aware that was a harsh judgement on some of them who were indeed rather pleasant to talk to – but Tony’s words echoed in your head.

He’s good at rubbing elbows, even if he hates it, he had said. Steve was exactly that; but apparently, he was also pretty great at hiding his distaste.

Of course that he was, you thought bitterly, even as a hint of compassion nudged at your mind; just because he was good at disguising it, it didn’t mean he didn’t feel just as sick filling the role of the most excellent companion.  

“You could do it just to feel the heat,” you suggested half-heartedly, regretting the words as soon as they left your mind.

You had to phrase it just like that, didn’t you.

Steve watched you with unnerving intensity for a moment, before he seemed to shake off whatever dark thought had occurred to him, a small smile appearing on his face.

“That is true, but somehow it’s even more disappointing if that’s the only consequence, you know?”

“…right.”

He cleared his throat, your gaze falling to his bowtie as he released you from the trap of his gaze.

“Either way. Would you like to dance?”

Your head snapped back up, shock no doubt painting your face, rendering you mute. He wasn’t--- oh he was.

Despite your expression – one painfully resembling of a deer in the headlights of an off-road SUV coming at it at hundred miles an hour – he seemed unfazed, a slight twinkle of amusement in his eye barely noticeable in the otherwise genuine demeanour. You frowned, suspicion dying out as fast as it had arisen.

Whatever motive he had to ask, it couldn’t hurt the mission, you supposed. And it would be impolite to decline. You had promised yourself to meet him halfway in his attempts to be civil; and he had gone far beyond that. For the past two weeks, not having confronted you about either the flash-drive situation nor the went-full-spectre-in-a-public-park incident, that had been him being civil. Tonight, he was courteous even. Pleasant. Kind. You had no idea why he hadn’t sought you out to get answers or scold you, nor why he went this far out of his way to treat you like this tonight, but you had enough common sense not to poke even as it had been eating away at the back of your mind.

You just needed to accept it and be thankful, and needed to aid the common goal; and maybe, just maybe, revel in it and store the memory for later, even if such luxuries only burned with emptiness once they were gone.

But how could you do any different?

“Sure,” you said simply. “Why not.”

How could you feel any different when his lips smiled half-heartedly, but his eyes showed true warmth? A startling warmth almost; but it was nothing in comparison to the heat of his body when he offered you his elbow and led you to the small dancefloor in the adjacent room with only a few high tables lining the walls; it was nothing in comparison to the soft jolt of electricity that ran through your nerves all the way down your spine when his hand took yours carefully, eyes fixed on your face, checking for any sign of discomfort when he pulled you close at the first notes of a waltz.

Up close, without either of you screaming into each other’s faces, he was painfully beautiful; you knew that. You knew that already, because you had played the forbidden game of imagining what it would be like to see his face from this distance; but the reality of it was startling, a tingle of a thrill and pain at once. Inches close and miles away from reach. To be at the receiving end of the look in his eyes, painted partly by delusion and the aforementioned hits in the head you had probably suffered, was the sweetest torture.

It was impossible to ignore his firm but gentle grip, his confident lead; a wall of perfectly controlled muscle, hard planes of his body and yet its surprising softness and warmth, leaving your head spinning and sending your thoughts to an indecent dangerous direction; what would it be to feel him even closer? What would it be like to—

You’d never know. For a large part, of your own doing; for another part, of his own, because you had never met a more irritating person in your life and you had met a quite a few. He was impossible in his very unique different way – even as you knew that was tainted by your own perception – he was impossible in a way you couldn’t but want anyway.

“You’re a wonderful dancer,” he whispered, just loud enough for you to hear, snapping you from your useless musings back to reality.

Yeah, thanks, I was signed up for ballet class about as soon as I could walk, because it should have helped my posture and body coordination in preparation for working for SHIELD before I could attend martial class lessons. Because a kid younger of six years getting punched would have been a bad image for my parents. Not that I knew any of that at that time. Anyway, I had to rediscover my love for dancing much later on-

You cut off your train of thought, swallowing the unnecessarily hostile and dark truth. Instead, you reciprocated his easy subtle smile, something inside your quivering at the casualness and sincerity of the compliment.

“Depends on the lead, right?” you murmured.

Mentally, you sighed, cursing yourself for your loose mouth.

You could have said something along the lines of you too, and it would be an understatement; Steve’s lead indeed was firm but not forceful, elegant ease without a shred of indecency, his sense of rhythm impeccable, which was much more than you could say about some of your companions on the dancefloor. But no; you chose to mention his leading skills, instantly circling back to what was bothering you – you having standing up to his lead as a Captain before and him not mentioning it. He had kept blissfully quiet and here you were, dangling the topic you should have been glad had been put to rest in front of him as if you wanted him to take the bait no matter the cost.

You really must have been hit in the head; or perhaps you were finally returning to normal yourself.

But Steve Rogers was a man of many faces and surprises up his sleeves, apparently. His smile only widened briefly at your note, eyes flashing with amusement, before a little frown creased his brow.

“Don’t sell yourself so short.”

You gulped. Again. He complimented you with such ease, as if it was the most natural thing in the world; and it seemed like he meant every bit. The way your heart fluttered at that ached pleasantly. Hadn’t it been for the sober voice in the back of your head, telling you were on a borrowed time of this kind of treatment, it wouldn’t ache at all. It almost, almost didn’t.

Because the one word you had left out when thinking about his lead on the dancefloor, having avoided it on purpose, was safe. You entered an uncharted territory tonight; you knew Captain America’s lead from your numerous missions you had been chosen for under his command. And even as you had challenged his leadership before, you trusted him on that front. But tonight was a very different thing; and still, he somehow emitted the same aura, in a considerably more intimate way.

It was terrifying.

But as much as you were taken aback, with no clue how to even respond to that, your instincts – probably all over the place, because had you been in sound mind, you would have run for the hills before accepting his offer in the first place – whispered you were safe indeed.

And if you’d turn it into a joke, you’d be even safer.

“If that was a reference to my height, I’d like to point out everyone is short compared to you. And that is with all the extra inches--- that my heels have.”

Oh for god’s-

Your fingers flexed reflexively on his arm; your hand in his would have twitched if he hadn’t held it so firmly. You did not just say that, did you? Closing your eyes briefly, you felt your face burn hot, the furnace of Steve’s body suddenly feeling like ice in comparison. Why on Earth did you talk about inches? First feeling the heat, then this, damn Freudian slips, damn his well-fitting suit and handsome face-

Bless him, his chuckle was good-natured and not in the slightest dirty – then again, you should have expected nothing less from the golden boy, shouldn’t you? He wouldn’t hold it against you and had it been anyone else, you would have been grateful, much like in any other situation. But this was him and tonight your mission was literally to avoid this kind of embarrassing phrasing.

“You know what I meant,” he said, not unkindly – much to your relief and irritation.

You hummed noncommittally, still processing this was somehow a reality you had found yourself in. A reality in which Steve Rogers was a pleasant company, kept you close and safe enough that you had spent several moments with your eyes closed while dancing without fearing you’d end up with a broken ankle, a reality where-

“I wanted to apologize.”

-he just said he was sorry.

Your eyes snapped open, your step, a second nature you barely needed to think about, faltering just a fraction. You found your footing with the very next step and perhaps not even Steve had noticed; but he for sure must have noticed the undiluted shock that overtook your features.

Yet, he held calm in the face of your awe and bewilderment, gaze fixed on yours whispering of nothing but sincerity and regret indeed.

He was apologizing.The sudden lump in your throat was the only thing in physical reality that felt real at all; the rest truly must have been but a fever dream. That and the frantic beats of your heart.

“For what?” you asked quietly.

You weren’t trying to be petty, if he truly was apologizing. You meant it.

Naturally, you had a good idea what he was referring to, but that was part of the reason why it was so puzzling; more so since he now knew what the intel was about, since he was aware who exactly you put in danger by failing. Then again, the fact you were both here despite it told you all over again that he didn’t let that bother him too much.

But even with him deliberately ignoring the threat…

Yes, he had not acted very thoughtfully, but whether you liked it or not, he wasyour superior, he had put together that mission and so you understood the frustration he had felt at the moment. Hell, you had felt it yourself – you would have yelled at yourself too. And looking back, you knew that some of your momentary view of his behaviour and attitude, of his actions, stemmed from the fact you had been disappointed in yourself too; and that most time, he did in fact realize he could do wrong and that he in fact did care for every single member of the team. He probably did give a damn about the fact that you – your spectre anyway – got shot. He probably cared about the fact that two days ago, you left a big damn opening when you projected in public without making sure you had someone in your corner.

You weren’t sure that there was any need to apologize, even with him yelling at you in front of everyone to the point where you hadn’t been able to stand it and a few tears had escaped you – because damn, did he touch a nerve – even if he had been a bit of an asshole.

Most people apologized because they felt the need to ease their conscience, to keep up appearances; but seeing Steve now, the soft and strict lines of his face, told you that he was apologizing for your benefit mainly. It would be sweet if it was so irritating.

Golden boy. Shoved straight to your face. You could never be as good as him, because he simply wasn’t human – and you were the Inhuman from the pair. God, he had his hands on you and he didn’t even try to cop a feel or anything for crying out loud. He was being kind and respectful and so damn beautiful and tall.

“I’m sorry for yelling at you,” he said slowly, gaze intent as if he wanted to make sure you absorbed every word. “I shouldn’t have done that to begin with, but the witnesses made it even worse. And all you did was making a quick decision in a difficult situation, according to your best conscience no doubt. I might not have agreed with it, but you still didn’t deserve such treatment.”

“And you’d do the same,” you added.

You almost slapped your hand over your mouth as soon as the words were out.

This was what happened when you felt safe. You talked back. Dammit.

You could see – and feel, because his chest was practically brushing yours, something you were hyperaware of even as you tried your best not to be– him breathe in to retort.

You really needed to have your head checked out. You should have just taken the apology and cherish it, like any normal person, even if it irked you that Steve Rogers was capable of self-reflection and had enough strength to admit his shortcomings. He was simply better than everyone else. It was easy to see that with no emergency in sight, but that didn’t make it easier to accept that and act accordingly every second of the day.

Yet, you tried at least now.

“Sorry! Sorry. Don’t push it, Spectre. Got it,” you blurted out, fixing a quick smile and you would have sworn you had seen a sparkle on mischief in his blue irises under the indignation. You cleared your throat. “Apology accepted, Captain.”

His relaxed his tense jaw, gaze softening further; painfully so.

“Thank you. And I thought you knew you could call me Steve.”

Golden boy – case on point. You swallowed, unable to keep the swirl of warmth in your chest from creeping into your voice even as you knew you were diving into dangerous waters with reckless abandon by following his request.

“Apology accepted, Steve.”

If your voice was warm, his smile was half the power of the sun, heating your very bones, your heart stumbling in your chest. You should run; you should run because you were never going to receive a gift like that again and the longer you basked in it, the worse it would be when it was gone. But you had already established that sometimes, you couldn’t help but throw caution out of the window despite knowing how much it would hurt later when you’d have to go and scramble to gather it again, hadn’t you?

And so when the song blended into another, the smallest squeeze to your fingers a wordless question, you nodded against your better judgement.

Steve’s smile grew a fraction, feet quick to adjust to the new rhythm, the air around you warmer another few degrees. It was hard to let his apology and kindness linger in the air and not react to it; even as you needed to breathe in and out a few times, eyes examining his face carefully as to predict whether what you were about to say would come back stabbing you in the back.

“I’m sorry for my outburst too. I… acted emotional.” As you recalled the traitorous tears that had escaped you, you thought that to say that was an understatement, but Steve didn’t seem to hold it against you. Instead, he listened with unnerving intent to all you had to say. “Which isn’t an excuse, but I’m still sorry. I… didn’t exactly watched my tongue. I mean, I didn’t-“

­-I didn’t mean what I said, you wanted to say, your voice dying in your throat at the startingly gentle blue of Steve’s eyes, your breath hitching at the sudden vice squeezing your chest. This moment, whatever it was, was becoming overwhelming fast; and you found yourself unable to force the words out.

Because they weren’t true; you had definitely meant a few things, your anger with Steve snapping you back when you had been this close to gathering intel on something that threatened, without exaggeration, his life, just because he had been outraged at… whatever, that was very real. Much like him, you had had a reason for your outburst; and for that itself, you couldn’t apologize. Not when you wouldn’t mean it. Not when he was looking at you like he’d trust anything you said. You couldn’t but reciprocate his honesty even if it should earn you an official demerit from Captain America himself.

“…I didn’t mean at least half of the things I said.”

Steve’s welcoming expression shifted in an instant, your heart already startling in reaction to the change, muscles tensing in an instinctual fight-or-flight response.

And then your brain caught up.

Steve was grinning. He was grinning with mischief lightning up his face bright, humour dancing in his eyes – good-natured humour without a single trace of offense, but maybe with a little speckle of surprise; and if you looked close enough and entertained the thought, pride.

And by god he was breath-taking, leaving you feel like you had flown too close to the sun for a moment unaware that the inevitable fall would kill you.

“Well, as long as it was only a half,” he hummed, his amusement audible in his voice too. There was a strange but not unpleasant tilt to it; almost as if he knew that if he simply accepted your apology right away, the situation would have had you run for the hills indeed. “Apology accepted, Spectre.”

You gulped, taking a wavering breath, flying just a little higher. “You know you can call me by my first name too, right?”

That was only fair, no? That was what you told yourself until Steve smiled softly and repeated himself slowly, this time with your name indeed. That was when you realized you really had caught yourself in a foolish indulgence, because the feeling washing over you was… nice. Very, very nice. His tone, his words were both indescribably nice, and so was the way he held you to lead your through the room without an ounce of indecency, and so was his proximity and his warmth. It was dangerously nice and you felt your chest, having briefly be filled with that tender fragile feeling, tighten instead.

And then Steve spoke up again.

“…and you’re probably right.”

Your eyebrows shot up, gasping; and had you any different company than a room full of important or at least self-important people dressed in black-tie attire, you wouldn’t have stopped your jaw from falling.

Did he just-

Stop the presses! you wanted to shout.

Did he just admit he himself was a hothead?

What peculiar kind of an alternate reality had you entered indeed to see Steve Rogers admit he had been a hypocrite?

This was simply too satisfying to be true.

“But that doesn’t mean I’m the best example,” he added.

You found yourself chuckling through your shock, earning a glare that might have no anger in it, but certainly emitted indignation and gravity. Except the corners of Steve’s lips were twitching.

Damn him. Damn him and his charming side. Since when did he have a charming side and engaged in self-reflection so deep?

Since always, an annoying voice whispered in your head, reminding you that at certain times, you were, in fact, very well aware that Steve Rogers was just as golden as people claimed – even if in way they couldn’t hope to fathom and neither could, not fully.

“Nah, I think it’s one of the very rare traits of yours that should definitely be copied,” you retorted cheekily, never having time to wonder if you went too far since Steve simply kept him mouth shut.

It was a good thing he did, because if he didn’t, you might get tangled in your lie; and might have to admit that you believed that while there were a few of those that shouldn’t be copied in order for the world to maintain some shreds of sanity, there were many more of those which, should they be replicated, would make the world a better place. He probably knew that anyway; he strived to be the example to all. He didn’t need to hear it from you, didn’t need to know that despite your disagreements, you felt everything but contempt for him, with respect on top of the list. And then there was the fact that you were not blind to him being literally meant to be built like the peak of man and looked precisely like it.

And still, his silence surprised you. Despite what you thought of him on better days, it was still a wonder he didn’t try to disprove you; he was full of surprises tonight.

Then again, that was probably the point.

“You know, Tony and Pepper would probably have had no problem coming here tonight,” you spoke lowly into to the silence that settled between you. “They just pushed us together to do something like this.”

Steve’s eyebrows jumped a bit, a brief smirk passing his lips.

“Well-aware. Does that bother you?” he asked, head tilted to side slightly.

You pondered his question for a bit, not sure why. You could have easily said anything, the first or the second or third lie popping up in your mind. But his genuinely curious gaze observing you as he waited for your response, his demeanour the whole evening, and his surprisingly open expression made you want to tell the truth again.

“Not that much. You’re not a bad dancer yourself,” you teased him lightly, feeling your lips permanently stuck in a smile now.

His own smirk melted into a smile again as well, soft crinkle in the corner of his eye.

“Thank you. I know I said it before, but you do look beautiful.”

You blinked.

There he went again, driving his point across; he wanted you to think, to believe perhaps, that his compliments were genuine, not a turn of speech. Why? And what could you even say to that when he kept looking at you like he meant it, the world around you blurring a bit, falling into but a background noise, years of training and his confident hold on you leading you through the dancefloor with ease still, even as the song must have changed again. Had it?

You wished conversation would come just as easy, even when emotions swirled in your chest wilder than your skirts around your calves.

“…thanks. Uhm, Tony said to buy something nice-“

“Mission accomplished, it suits you-“

“-I think he was probably sick of us clashing a lot lately,” you added quickly, almost speaking over him.

He was a lot smarter than people gave him credit for – after all, he had brought up the topic of your fight in an environment where it would have been rude of you to flee just in case you wanted to and he wasn’t called a master strategist for nothing – so he caught your attempt to deflect. And he graced it with brief silence, not pushing, letting your words hang in the air for a moment. Golden boy. Perfect. Too good.

“I suppose that’s fair,” he hummed, one corner of his lips rising higher, his smile almost boyish now. “Did I mention I was sorry?”

“Yeah... did I?”

“You did.”

“Good,” you muttered, blissfully lost in his gentle gaze, even as you had to crane you neck a bit.

The moment was sweet. Slightly electric. Surprisingly comfortable. Peaceful.

Peace.

That was a specific word. With a pang in your chest, it occurred to you that was precisely what it was that Tony intended to achieve when he assigned you to this. To begin to renew the peace that had been within the Avengers family before your presence disrupted it. And Steve had accepted the invitation with you attached to it because he saw the importance of the team holding together from the strategic point of view.

Tonight was a mission. Necessary networking, even as Steve had tried to make it feel like anything but, and necessary attempt at smoothening the relationships within the team. Yes, it was beautiful, but Tony himself had called you a Cinderella. This was but a fairy-tale. An illusion. A projection.

The very spectre of you and Steve, of you being a full Avenger.

Once tonight was over, you’d have to snap back, like you always did. And like always, the pain of what you had lost as a spectre, be it blood or a warm embrace, would linger too. Back in your cold aching reality.

But not in Steve’s; Steve would remain who he was, to the world, to his team, to his friends. To you. It had been a sweet sentiment, a good-natured attempt; and for the night, it lasted. Once again, you felt played by your own naivety, already feeling your waxed wings melting and slowly prepared yourself for the brutal landing.

You kept up your smile, even as you felt the pleasant hum in your ribcage fall silent, your eyes not burning, because there was no reason for it, was there?

“You have good friends, Steve,” you whispered, the blue of his gaze warming up with fondness as he no doubt agreed. “They might be nosy, but they mean well.”

“And they are your friends too,” he replied softly, the pang in your ribcage stronger this time. He believed that, he genuinely did. Maybe that was why it hurt so much; he had seen the worst of the world and believed in the best still; you could read it in his actions, in his expression right now.

But you couldn’t bear it anymore, your gaze falling to the smooth fabric of his bowtie, contrasting with the pristinely white shirt indeed, just as you had known from the start he would wear. Pure. The symbol of all goodness in your culture. Just like him.

You heard what he was saying and yes, it was a tempting thought you had fallen for before. That you could be friends with the team, that the others cared – but you could count the number of people who cared for you on one hand and still had fingers left. People cared for your abilities, admired them maybe, sure. But you were a realist. Even before the Natasha incident – which truly was just her doing her job – you knew and you kept repeating it to yourself, because entertaining any other possibility was dangerous: your abilities, your results or the lack of them, those were what truly mattered. To everyone. To your father, eventually your mother too, to your SHIELD team, to your fellow Avengers. To Steve too. Had those powers come in a different meatsuit than yours, it wouldn’t change a thing. You were just a casing for what they needed.

It wasn’t okay, but it was alright.

The thing was, you couldn’t make Steve admit that – not him. He was a good man – infuriating one, yes, not without fault, yes, but incredibly undeniably good in his core. All the Avengers cared for people too, you would be an idiot not to see it, but if there was one person who would try to look the furthest beyond the abilities you carried, it would be him. Perhaps that was the scariest part of tonight – of him being not only civil, but perfectly pleasant and meaning it. Because he was just that perfect.

And perfect was never in your reach.

“Sure,” you replied absently as you looked up again.

You could tell his own gaze never left your face; and he no doubt noticed the change. His eyes were roaming your features, searching, wondering and seeing; you found yourself slipping into a neutral mask, your way too relaxed stance straightening, muscles tensing.

You only tensed further when you recognized softness and understanding creeping into his gaze, his voice quiet.

“You know-“

You thanked your lucky stars when the song ended and you were allowed to step back from him with an awkward smile.

“I’m going to find the restroom, excuse me.”

You swallowed heavily upon seeing something akin to disappointment and exasperation on his face; but when you pulled away, he didn’t stop you, didn’t use his strength to keep you in place, leaving the choice – as much as he clearly not approved of it – to you. You tried to force your smile further, grateful for that if not for nothing else.

“Thank you for the dance, stranger.”

And with that, you disappeared to the crowd, well-aware that if he wanted, he could have followed, because even in the sea of robes, his eidetic memory told him exactly what yours looked like.

Getting a fifteen-minute break from people, one in particular, was more than generous and yet you granted it to yourself; because putting yourself back together took time. Not for the first time, you sent a silent thank you to Agent May for having taught you her ways of accepting your emotions as they were, locking them away for later and channel them in the right direction when needed.

If you counted your dances with Steve – even as you tried very hard not to think about them – it added up for almost half an hour of the breather you had planned when getting the drink. You needed to go back to work, back to networking, because it was getting late; you had no doubt there were still people to talk to, no matter how efficient your colleague had been.

As you walked the halls with a smile arranged on your face, nodding politely at people admiring the various pieces of art of all forms, from drawings and paintings to sculptures and installations, your gaze fell on one of auctioned objects.

You smile slipped, your steps faltering along with the steady beat of your heart; and then you forced the corners of your lips back up, nails digging into the back of your hand as you folded them in front of your abdomen, to stop yourself from running to the glass stand where what seemed like a very old artifact was laid proudly on display.

And by old, you meant thousands of years old. And you really, really prayed that you were wrong, that your mind was simply playing tricks on you to avoid the emotional turmoil of today, to-

“Son of a-”

Three more steps closer and the curse was on your lips before you could swallow it completely, heart thundering in your chest against the sudden tightness. You didn’t like to be wrong; but in this particular case, you really wished you had been.

But apparently not.

See, this is why we can’t have nice things, you thought to yourself as you released a wavering breath and took off in the search of Steve, as if you hadn’t run from what seemed to be particularly nice things yourself only a little over ten minutes ago.

You swallowed the panic rising in your throat as you caught a glimpse of him talking to an elderly couple, telling yourself that your discovery was the only reason for that. Because that would be plausible and completely valid; an appearance of what SHIELD called an 0-8-4, an object of unknown origin, was never good news.

Except you were rather certain of its origin and that only made it worse.

Steve spotted you now, a small smile lighting up his face as if you hadn’t just taken an escape from when he tried to convince you were a part of the team in the friendliest sense of the word, gesturing to you lightly so the couple turned to you as well.

You smiled wider, squeezed your hand stronger. Too bad – the Lewises – had seemed nice enough when you had read up on them, were one of the rare attendees who were here for their genuine interest in art.

“Good evening, I am so sorry to interrupt, Mrs. Lewis, Mr. Lewis,” you said sincerely, introducing yourself as the lady already extended her hand to you, followed by her husband’s. “It is a pleasure to meet you and I would be very happy to talk to you if you’d be willing, but I need to borrow Captain Rogers for a little bit-“  

“By all means, Agent, don’t let a couple of old folks keep you two,” Mrs. Lewis chuckled, gently touching Steve’s forearm as she smiled at him almost motherly. “Thank you, young man, it’s nice to see bright young minds interested in conversations about thought-provoking art. Do find us if you can spare another minute later.”

“I would personally use the words lovely couple, Mrs. Lewis,” you said warmly before turning to Mr. Lewis. “I promise to bring him back as soon as possible.”

“It’s been a pleasure,” Steve added as he covered her feebly hand on his, squeezing gently. “Agent?”

“Just a small issue, I’m sure it can be dealt with quickly,” you assured him in front of them, your face growing more serious the second you turned away, your voice falling so low only his enhanced hearing could hopefully catch it. “Thought-provoking art indeed. There’s an 0-8-4 on the items list.”

The way Steve’s back straightened, a sign of him turning mission-alert in an instant, would have been a treat to watch in any other circumstance, you supposed. But not in yours. And not in this case.

As you walked away, he followed your unhurried tempo, stopping by the displays briefly when you did, as if you were simply admiring the art. His face gave away nothing unusual happening beyond a minor inconvenience; you weren’t sure if he believed you were making a big deal out of nothing or if he was that good of an actor.

“Anything you encountered before? Potentially how dangerous are we talking?”

His voice had dropped too, but barely enough for you to hear. To an untrained eye, it probably looked like a normal hushed conversation, a couple – of friends – sharing opinions on the auction items indeed. Good. You didn’t need to spread panic on top of barely containing your own.

“Yes and no, I only recognize the symbols. And I can’t tell, but I wouldn’t underestimate it,” you uttered as you gradually moved closer, the artifact now in sight.

Steve stood diagonally beside you, barely a step behind your shoulder; he could keep his voice very low that way, practically whispering to your ear, while you could keep talking almost soundlessly.  

“Should I recognize this? I’m not familiar.”

You bit back a bitter smile, stepping in front of the display together at last. The item itself looked unassuming; a stabile built of plates of metal, interwoven and reaching out of the tangle like tentacles. Except the surface of the plates wasn’t smooth; an intricate pattern of lines and circles rose slightly above it, a geometrical masterpiece only a few people on Earth knew the meaning of. Outside of Earth, well; you wouldn’t dare to guess.

The good news, hopefully, was that the sculpture meant to be in one piece was broken into two; that meant that if the effect was, like with many others you had encountered, tied to breaking the casing of whatever weapon it could be hiding, it had been out for a while and thus might not pose danger anymore. But you weren’t willing to take that chance.

“I’m not sure,” you whispered, almost choking out the words, wary of one word in particular as not to alarm anyone in vicinity just in case. “It is mostly Coulson’s team that handles all the… Kree mess.”

Short silence followed, only for Steve to draw in a shaky breath.

“…are you positive?”

It probably wasn’t meant to be a challenge, but you took it as one anyway, a flare of anger rushing through your veins, because was he serious? That was genuinely insulting. You spent practically your whole post-academy service to SHIELD with Coulson’s team following the trail of artifacts left behind by the lovely alien race Kree were – in fact, artifacts uncomfortably resembling this one. So yes, you were pretty bloody positiveyou were right.

You turned to Steve and took a step back to throw to his face – in as calm manner as was socially acceptable despite wanting to just spit it out – that you were pretty damn certain, because one did simply not forget a single thing about the literally blue aliens that indirectly gave them powers. Except you never got to make a single sound, because Steve’s eyes widened all of sudden, gaze still fixed on the display you had just turned your back to and his fingers closed around your wrist and tugged you closer to him again with surprising force given how gentle he had held you when you-- so not the time.

“Alright, point proven,” he whispered hastily, stepping back and releasing you before you could question him just turning from a gentleman of the year to a lout who just… grabbed a woman and manhandled her.

Frowning, you glanced over your shoulder just in time to see a faint light of the symbols dying out, your panic skyrocketing and making you forget all about your exasperation.

Oh. Oh, that was not good at all.

It recognized you. It sensed the Inhuman in you as you had unwittingly moved closer to it. It was reacting even sooner than the Diviner had, the first Kree artifact your team had encountered, whose symbols only lit up upon being touched by an Inhuman, or a person carrying Inhuman markers in their DNA yet to be turned into one.

“Sorry for-“

“It’s fine,” you interrupted his apology, appreciating it nevertheless. Yet, your smile probably turned out to be more of a grimace, bitter sarcasm bleeding into your tone. “Well, Tony said we should bid on something anyway, right? I’ve got my pick”.

Steve’s eyebrow twitched without a hint of amusement, but he didn’t disprove you, moving to scan the room for any vendor to start bidding indeed; you automatically reached for your black-tie-attire-friendly StarkWatch, to alert the HQ.

You never got to finish the message.

Steve never got to even step out.

A tell-tale metallic sound, a clink of a grenade hitting the tiled floor had both of you snap your head to the source, losing two precious seconds by looking for where exactly it landed, startled intakes of breath taken before a scream could gather in your lungs to warn people to get down.

There was no time to react. The screams aligned with the eardrum-rupturing noise of an explosion, a blur of a movement to your right and a force to be reckon with slamming into you.

Even without his signature weapon, Steve automatically threw himself between you and the grenade, pushing you down and shielding you with his body at least. The heat licked at your skin just as the pressure wave slammed into you both, sending you flying and crashing hard into the glass cabinet, Steve’s arm taking large portion of the brunt of impact.

A jolt of electricity rushed through your nerves along with the pain, a dull crack in your head, the edges of your vision blurring. You barely registered the stream of agents in black gear cutting through the clouds of smoke and vapour tear gas. Smell of copper and iron hit your nostrils, strong enough to make you nauseous; blood and fire. Steve’s cologne; then more blood. Lights and shadows bleeding into one, the former too bright for your smoke-filled teary eyes. The noise was deafening too – shouts and shrieks of terror you knew you should respond to, because it was your duty as an agent and as a half-baked Avenger.

But you didn’t seem to control your body for long enough to as much as lift your hand to check if the sharp pain in the back of your head was an open wound or not, let alone to climb to your feet as Steve’s voice echoed in your ears, warm hands firm on your waist, prickling sensations like thousand needles piercing through your skin all over.

The pain tore through every single cell of your body without warning, but you didn’t have time to find the cause or wallow in it; darkness enveloped you completely and you sank into its thick waters without a chance to fight it, until it swallowed you whole.

Next chapter

Series masterlist // S.R. masterlist

Hope you don’t mind a little cliffhanger, hehe... as a treat for reading! I wanna say I was really excited about this chapter, sneaking in something soft and fluffy in between the angst, but I’m excited to share everything so... yeah.

I would like to take a moment or two to thank you, again, for your comments. They give me a rush of joy and I read every single one of them more than once; they give me strength to continue even when sudden feeling of ‘this is meh’ attacks me and the thoughts you share ground me back in the story when I feel like I’m slipping away from where I wanted to take it. I cherish your feedback, no matter the form, so much. Thank you 💕