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itwasntimethatdidit40 · 27 days

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On a razor's edge.

Gif credits

Pairing/Au: Joel Miller x F!reader, no outbreak.

Word counts: 3087

Rating: +18, MDNI, NSFW

Summary: Joel helps you shave. there.

Warnings: pov second person, no use of y/n, smut with very little plot, established relationship, soft Joel, Joel helps to shave your pussy (I also wrote it in the fic but I'll repeat it here, I don't mean to judge anyone's habits, I respect everyone's tastes and habits and everyone can do what they prefer with their body. Do you want to shave? Good. Don't you want it? Good too. For me it's enough that you are comfortable in your body and if you aren't I hope you can be soon), mention to reader's mom who is annoying about shaving, use of a razor, mention of a potential razor cut (it doesn't happen, there’s no blood), unprotected p in v (wrap it up IRL!), I didn't mention Joel or reader’s age but in my mind I imagine them both around 30/40, reader has hair, breasts and vagina, no other specific description of her is given, pussy pronouns, references to pussy as a flower, sex in the shower, oral (f receiving), cream pie, pet names (baby, honey), I think that's all, if by chance I realize I forgot something I'll add it right away.

English is not my first language, no beta, no proofreading, I already know I'm going to notice a lot of mistakes as soon as I post this and I will have to edit again and again because I'm like this, what can we do? 💀

Comments, reblogs and interactions are very much appreciated, please be kind.

Thanks to anyone who will read this!

You love Joel.

You really love him with all your heart and soul.

You also love your private time in the bathroom, that little time in your day that you spend alone doing skincare, face masks, tweezers your eyebrows, scrubbing your body and taking a nice shower with your favorite music playing in the background.

You just took off your favorites eye patches and you're ready to shave with your trusted razor when Joel knocks on the door.

“Honey, we’re going to be late, hurry up” His voice is muffled by the closed door but you can clearly hear a certain apprehension.

You hum as you take out your shaving cream and reply, “I’ll be right there”

Your neighbor invited you to his pool party the other day and of course you enthusiastically accepted.

It’s been so hot lately that being able to enjoy his pool for a while seemed like a dream.

Unfortunately, work kept you busy all week so you couldn't make an appointment with the beautician and you've arrived today with a few hairs on your legs and in your bikini area.

You're not particularly concerned when you can't wax and totally respect those who don't, hair removal is a personal choice and everyone should be able to do what they want with their own body.

Joel doesn't care if you have them or not, he's happy to have you either way and is feral with you regardless. In fact, you suspect he especially likes it when you have some down there but still he never stopped you from choosing for yourself and he never made inappropriate comments.

Anyway, today you planned to wear your favorite bikini and you wouldn't feel comfortable with hair sticking out from the sides of your bottoms.

The fact that a woman must necessarily be hairless down there is something that has been instilled in you since you were a teenager and as much as you manage not to care about it most of the time, when you wear a bikini you still have your mother's voice in your ears telling you to make those hairs disappear.

Ugh, your mother.

You shake your head, get in the shower and wash yourself, body and hair.

Then you spread the shaving foam well on your legs. You pass the razor carefully and rinse.

This neighbor is quite wealthy and Joel has heard that he would like to renovate his house so he is fully intent on offering him a quote with his construction company, which is why he is so worried about being late.

He needs some time to approach him until there are not too many people, have a casual chat and throw out the idea.

You also want to make a good impression since his wife is the head of the neighborhood committee and you want to ask her to convince the neighbor next door to cut down some branches that end up right in your yard filling it with annoying leaves. You tried to talk to him yourself but he is a cheap man and doesn’t want to spend money to have a gardener come and do the work. Joel tried too but to no avail.

Joel, on the other side of the door, is still impatient "baby, what are you doing?" you hear him ask after another 10 minutes have passed.

“I’m getting ready,” you say out loud from the shower as you check to make sure there’s no hair left on your ankles.

“You’ve been in there for an hour, what else do you have to do?”

You giggle, Joel will never understand how long it takes to be the way he always sees you. He’s in the bathroom for a maximum of 20 minutes when he decides to trim his beard, otherwise 10 minutes is more than enough for him to take a shower and come out with a towel around his waist looking as beautiful as a God. It’s so unfair.

“I'm making myself beautiful for you” you shout at him smiling at the thought of his answer which in fact comes exactly as you imagined “Love, you're gorgeous, you don't need to do anything, just get out of there”

“I'm almost done,” you reply as you begin to spread the foam on your bikini area.

“You said the same thing 10 minutes ago and yet you're still there,” he grumbles “and I don't hear water running so I don't understand why”

“You don't understand ‘cause you're a man darling, it's not your fault” you grin while you carefully run the razor to the right of your sex, at the point where your leg attaches to your pelvis.

You can clearly see him in your head rolling his eyes, hands on his hips, his weight resting on his right leg while his left leg is slightly jutted forward, his typical pose when he's annoyed.

“Cut me some slack, baby, you know how much I care about getting this job” he replies

“Yeah I know” you say sweetly “but I can’t come around like that, I need to be extra pretty next to you”

At this point he opens the door, just enough to enter and as he does so he replies "no one has a prettier girlfriend than me, I don't know how many more times I have to tell you"

You're all busy shaving so you don't even notice him until you hear his voice closer than before.

You look up and jump, almost cutting yourself with the razor. “Are you crazy?!” you yell at him. “Joel, I almost cut my thigh because of you!”

“And how was I supposed to know?!” his expression is halfway between embarrassed and horny, his eyes scan your body as if it were the first time he's seeing it, his pupils are dilated, his jaw muscles tense and his lips tight on the verge of curling into a smile, you can see it growing at the corners of his mouth.

Seeing you like this, leaning against the shower wall, completely naked and with nipples hardened from the fright he gave you, his nerves are going away.

“So, what? I have to finish, I certainly can’t go around with only a small part of my bikini area shaved, can I?” you rumble at him feigning irritation but oh, you like the way he's looking at you, hungry and feral. And you like that particular dark shade his eyes take on when they're lit up with desire.

He frowns and asks, “Can I help you?” rubbing his neck.

“Doing this?” you ask, raising an eyebrow, moving from the wall to the center of the shower, razor still clutched in your hand “Joel…”

“Let me try,” he murmurs hoarsely

“Joel, if you cut me…” you say feeling a shiver down your spine, your eyes fixed on his, sparkling in anticipation.

“I won’t. I promise” He is deadly serious.

“Okay” you say with a sigh and you immediately regret having said it.

Joel takes the razor from your hands brushing your fingers slightly and then drop to his knees fully dressed on the wet shower floor without even thinking about it, as if in some kind of lascivious trance. At least he’s barefoot.

The deal, the job, the money seem like a distant, faded memory and the neighbor’s tree? You’ll think about it another day.

His heavy breathing crackles on your skin as he brings the razor close to your skin with the most intent look you've ever seen him do.

He starts with small movements from the bottom up and shaves a small portion of the left side of your pubic area, his hand is firm and precise and he doesn't seem to have any hesitation, however he is proceeding with caution and you are grateful for it, you have been holding your breath since he started.

The razor seems so small in his hand, like a child's toy, yet it has sharp blades that could cut you at any moment if his movements were not precise.

He pulls it away from your skin to shake off excess shaving foam and rinse it under the flexible shower head and you catch your breath.

You flinch for a moment as he brings the razor closer again, “stay still” he tells you in a peremptory voice.

There is something deeply erotic in what he is doing, in his calm and dedication, in his deep knowledge of every curve of your body. It seems like he knows exactly how to move his hand so as not to hurt you.

He rinses the part, then proceeds to take more foam and spread it tickling your skin with his calloused fingers. You're even impressed that he didn't put too much on, just a thin layer, so he can see the part and have full control of what he's doing.

His jeans are now soaked and stuck to his legs and you can see a bulge growing in his crotch.

He stretches your skin with his fingers and runs the razor over you, still in small motions, shaking it, finishing the sides of the top of your pubic bone.

“I need you to lay down, baby, I have to do the bottom part” he says tilting his head to one side to look better at what he has just done.

Joel himself wanted this shower to be big enough for two people, it's his job and he knows how to be far-sighted in this.

It is wide enough for you to lie down and for him to sit between your legs without difficulty.

You bend down and lay your back on the floor “spread your legs” he tells you “keep them raised”

The floor is cool and wet against your skin but you still feel heated.

You crane your neck to look at him and his eyes are focused, deciding how to position you to do the job.

He takes your ankles and bends your legs slightly, if it was a moment when you wanted to laugh you would say that you look like a frog but now you feel like a rose of flesh. A bold, cheeky flower that has blossomed for him.

“Stay like this, can you?”

You nod because you can’t do anything else, you don’t know what to say, you’re hypnotized by his deep breathing and his eyes.

You feel a pulse between your legs.

A heat that starts to rise from below.

He smears a thin veil of foam on the inside of your thighs near your pubic area, he runs his fingers almost absentmindedly near your folds, you know that every movement is thought out, he's purposely ignoring your pussy so he doesn't lose his concentration but you can feel desire creeping through the air between you.

It's thick, heavy, and smells of your perfume that invades your nostrils now that you're playing the obscene dancer for him, with your legs bent as if you had to warm up your muscles before a show.

He draws your edges with the razor, rinsing continuously, you feel the blade glide over you, darting across your skin, only slightly resisting to your roughest hairs.

You feel a glimmer of clear drool dripping between your petals, all the way down to the crack of your butt, that gives away your eagerness.

A couple more gentle swipes and he's done.

You can hear him swallowing nervously, your throat is dry too.

“All done” he whispers, running his fingers over your smooth skin.

You sit up, legs at the sides of his body and tug at his shirt to give him a kiss. You suck his bottom lip between yours, tasting his minty flavor.

You dwell on that ecstatic feeling for a while before you let go of his lips and take a breath back into your lungs.

“Do you want me to shave it all off?” Sometimes you do, you like it when you feel just the soft, just that, that tingles every time he runs his tongue over it.

Shiny as egg white, voracious, naked luscious lips ready to salivate and swallow until they’re full.

But now you can't wait and you know he doesn't care, they're short hairs anyway, you keep them trimmed.

It's just a little line that surrounds your flower to browse.

“No baby, I need you”

The razor is lying on the shower floor, you pick it up and place it on the steel shelf that Joel installed for you to put your things on.

“Mmm tell me what you want” He asks, grinning from ear to ear, his eyes sparkling with lust.

He already knows the answer.

“Fuck me” you plead, voice trembling with excitement “fuck me with your tongue and fingers, please. Fuck me with your cock. Fuck me until I see white and I’m a mumbling mess underneath you”

You put your hand over his bulge, running slowly to his zipper strained and you fiddle your fingers on his button.

You feel him squirming, his eyes feral and mesmerized by your touch and your words.

You open his jeans as he takes off his water-spattered shirt and throws it on the floor outside the shower.

Sitting like this, you notice even more the softness of his belly, that little bit of flesh that you love to bite.

He gets up to get rid of his jeans, now soaked, annoying, heavy, he throws them on the floor and they land with a dull thud.

His boxers are damp and have a big stain on the front, but it's not water. It's his pleasure dripping.

He’s rock hard leaking profusely.

He leans down and gives you a long kiss, looking at you. His hands slide slowly over your arms, slipping onto your hips, squeezing your flesh and your body arches towards him, your tongue quivers on his, every fiber of you reacts and bends gently to him.

He brings a hand to your cheek, deepening the kiss, eagerly licking the inside of your mouth, tasting you.

You moan into his lips as you feel his other hand move up and rest on the side of your breast, his long fingers reach your nipple and trace its contours, they move circling it, he does it first with his thumb and then with his index finger. He passes them over your bud, titillating it, making it harden under his fingertip.

He makes space between your knees again, makes you lay down on the floor, caressing your torso, going down to your ribs, he touches the area just below and whispers “you look beautiful here”.

You like that he appreciates everything about your body, even those parts that others ignore, he sees the overall harmony and knows how to notice the details. He knows the map of your scars and every shade of your skin. He goes down, brushing your navel and then unexpectedly goes back up and takes your lips again.

He sucks.

He tastes.

He drinks.

He lowers himself and leans over your opening. He breathes hard as he gives the first lick, with his tongue flat, crawling from bottom to top, lingering on your clit. He spreads your folds a little with his thumbs and looks at you for a moment whispering “God, baby, you have the most beautiful pussy I’ve ever seen” he inhales your scent “and she’s so wet…” and he licks again “so sweet” another lick “and she tastes so good”

You throw your head back, squeezing your eyes shut, wrapping one hand around the back of his neck, pushing him against you.

He keeps his mouth glued to your slit, his tongue seems everywhere, meticulous and insatiable, it seems he can never get enough.

You listen to his movements with your whole body, as if he were speaking to you, using a language unique to yours.

You feel his hand resting on your hip, you grab his wrist and bring him back to your tit, you don't need to ask him to touch it, he silently takes your nipple between his fingers pinching and twisting.

Your ribcage expand for air, you gasp with your mouth wide open and a long moan leaves your lips rising from deep inside you.

You lift your head to see him, looking disheveled and grateful, his beard glisten with your fluids as two of his thick fingers slide into you.

He traces with his tongue that little stripe of hair he left you, which frames your lips, he caresses them, takes them in his mouth, sucking lightly.

His strong aquiline nose is hitting your clit now, fingers curl to find that perfect spot, the one that makes you see white, like you asked.

You moan in disarray “your cock – God – I want your cock, please Joel”

He gives a couple more licks and then moves, towering over you, kissing you with lips that taste of salt and lemon, of you. It’s your taste, all over his mouth.

He lower his boxers and the tip of his cock presses against your hole, slowly making its way in.

You throw your arms around his neck, giving him sloppy kisses on his sultry skin.

He grunts as he thrusts into you, you wrap your legs around his waist as he slides a hand behind your arched back, pushing you, anchoring himself to you so you don't slip on the wet floor, his knee braced on the floor.

You stammer senselessly yes yes yes, you're both close to your peak.

You feel disarmed, completely enveloped by him, by his body, by his scent.

You're sweaty, even though your skin is still wet, your body contracts against his, waves of pleasure modulating your breathing.

Your orgasm explodes in a long sigh, then it goes silent, you bite your lips, you are overwhelmed.

He takes your hands, intertwines them with his and brings them above your head, sinking relentlessly inside you, hitting again and again, deeper and deeper until you feel thick, sticky stems filling you, painting your walls, dripping from inside you onto your thighs.

His hair is plastered to his forehead, his eyes searching yours as he fills his hands with your ass cheeks, giving the last hard thrusts before he pulls out of you and lets himself go on the shower floor next to you.

You take deep breaths, trying to come back to your senses, your bodies completely exhausted.

“Well,” he says after a while, “we’re officially too late to go now.”

“Do you mind?” you ask, rolling onto your side, tracing his broad chest with your fingertips.

“No,” he replies without even thinking.

You burst out laughing together.

No, this is definitely more important.

#pedro pascal #joel miller #joel the last of us #the last of us #fanfic #joel tlou #joel miller x reader #joel miller fanfiction #one shot #joel miller fanfic #joel miller one shot #joel miller au #joel miller x female reader #joel miller x f!reader

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minniesmutt · 6 months

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⚠︎ ━━━ LUNCH

⚠︎ ━━━ SS + WC: 5 + 0.8K

⚠︎ ━━━ CONTENT: PREGNANCY, FOOD MENTIONS, KIND OF TOXIC EX

Y/n nervously sat in her car outside the restaurant— nothing super fancy as she had asked thankfully. He had already told her he was inside, she was just trying to calm down, finally gathering herself, grabbing her bag, and walking inside. Telling the host she was meeting someone before they led her to the table.

Jeongin had set his phone down on the table as she joined him. “Hey.”

“Hi,” Y/n offered a smile as she sat down across from him.

“How are you doing?” He asked

“Okay? Kind of nervous honestly.” Y/n grabbed the cup of water in front of her and took a sip.

“Let's order then we can talk about it. How does that sound?”

Y/n agreed and picked up her menu. Scanning over the items for a few minutes before the waiter came over. Both putting in their orders and giving their menu’s to the waiter before they walked off. Sitting in an awkward silence for another minute.

“I’m not getting rid of the baby.” Y/n finally stated after a moment.

“I wasn’t going to make you,” Jeongin confirmed, “I know it was a one night stand and we barely know each other but I do want to at the very least co-parent this kid.”

“I can work with that,” Y/n nodded

Jeongin nodded, silence taking over the table again, “What do you do for work?” He asked

“I’m an editor for a online news outlet.”

“You work with Seungmin, right?”

“Yeah. We were in a lot of the same classes in college but weren’t friends until after graduation and we ended up at the same company.”

“Same department?”

“No. He works more in reporting and journalism. I’ve edited a couple of the stories they’ve let him published.”

“He hasn’t published a lot?”

“No, (Astird)’s case was actually the first one they let him take on his own.”

“They didn’t think he was going to be bias on it?”

“I don’t think he told his boss she was his roommate. But even when I was editing it, you could barely tell he knew her. He’s very unbiased in reporting which is a good trait to have,” Y/n explained as her phone went off on the table next to her

Jihyun ❌: why aren’t you home? I know its your day off

“Everything okay?” Jeongin asked

“Yeah, just a friend texting me,” Y/n brushed it off

“Do any of your friends know about you being pregnant?”

“Just my friend Hana, the one who was with me at the club.”

Jihyun ❌: Y/n

“Do any of your friends know?” “I may have told all of them?”

“How many is all?”

“Five.”

Y/n nodded

Jihyun ❌: when the hell did you turn your location off? answer me

“Do you need to take that?” Jeongin asked, seeing the constant light up of her phone from the text.

“No. It’s just me ex. He can deal with it?”

“When did you guys break up?”

“Almost a month ago. Hana ended up dragging me to a club to just get my mind off it.”

“Ah. So I was a rebound fuck,” Jeongin joked and it definetly made her laugh a bit.

“If you wanna look at it like that,” Y/n said, “I was more so looking to get drunk till I forgot but drunk me also is horny.”

“Bad break up then?”

“Yeah. It’s over now though.”

“Good for you,” Jeongin smiled

“So, how are we gonna work out appointments and stuff?” Y/n asked, changing the subject

“I would like to be there for them but if you don’t want me there that’s fine. I also can already tell I might not be able to make it to all of them with work.”

“You own you’re company, right?”

“Yeah. There’s certain meetings I can’t get out of.”

“I can try and schedule them as best I can to avoid that but I can always update you afterwards if it doesn’t work out.”

“That works out for me.”

The waiter came back with their food and they both thanked them before eating. Other small talk continued throughout the meal, some regarding their lives, others regarding the baby. Jeongin paid at the end of the meal, walking out with her.

“Don’t be afraid the text me if you need anything, okay?” He told her, walking her over to her car

“I will, thank you,” Y/n said, unlocking her car.

Jeongin opened the door for her, “I mean anything. Even if it’s a weird pregnancy craving in the middle of the night.”

The two of them laughed as she set her bag down on the passenger seat. “I will.” Y/n assured him and took her seat.

Jeongin closed her door and waved her off as he walked to his own car. Y/n took out her phone, wanting to text her friend the good news till she remembered the messages— with new ones.

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thezombieprostitute · 2 months

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Tech Tuesday: Jonathan Pine

Summary: Jonathan Pine is very nice to work for but you've been fooled before.

Warnings: Mentions of age discrimination

A/N: Reader is 40+ years old and female. No physical descriptors used.

Tech Tuesdays Masterlist

Jonathan walks into his office after sending off the new hire with Steve and her laptop. He smiles at seeing you focused on your work. He thinks you look quite lovely. Of course, that's inappropriate for the workplace so he never tells you. He'll say “you look nice,” or something small like that but what he really wants is to say is, “you look ravishing.”

He really couldn't understand how he got so lucky as to have you for his assistant. You were far more capable than any other he'd had. You were polite without taking any crap from his employees. You were adaptable to his sometimes hectic schedule. Ever since he'd hired you he never once missed an appointment or forgot a deadline. You were amazingly good at your job.

Whenever he asked you about your previous employment you told him you'd been let go because of “personality conflicts”. He wasn't sure anyone could ever not enjoy your company but maybe he was biased. At one point he thought you'd been let go from previous employers so they could try to woo you but, from what little he saw of your personal life, you did not appear to be dating anyone.

“Oh, hello Mr. Pine,” you smile politely as your startled out of your focused state. “There are a few more meetings today so I went ahead and ordered some lunch for you. It's waiting in your office.”

“Thank you,” he nods. “And I do hope you got yourself something as well.”

“Mr. Pine,” you gently chide, “I have my own lunch. Gotta be careful with those company cards so that they don't think you're doing something wrong.”

“I'm allowed to provide for my staff.”

“As a whole, yes,” you agree. “But just buying lunch for yourself and your assistant is not an option.”

He smiles, nodding, “right as always. I thank you for your wisdom in these things.”

Your cheeks heat up a little. It's been a few years and you're still not used to the praise your boss gives you. You've been burned by praise before. They tell you you're a great worker, that they couldn't get anything done without you, and then find excuses to fire you or pressure you to quit when someone prettier and younger comes along.

Every day, every compliment, every smile from him, you remind yourself to just focus on your work. Don't get attached to the job. Don't let his words distract you into think you're anything more than a replaceable cog. Keep professional and hope you can get a good reference when he inevitably drops you.

Tech Tuesdays Masterlist

Tagging @alicedopey; @delicatebarness; @ellethespaceunicorn; @icefrozendeadlyqueen; @late-to-the-party-81; @lokislady82 ; @ronearoundblindly

#tech tuesday #tech tuesday: jonathan pine #jonathan pine #boss!jonathan pine x assistant!reader #jonathan pine x female!reader #jonathan pine x reader

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violetrainbow412-blog · 1 year

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Memories [S. R]

Spencer Reid x fem!reader

word count: 4k

summary: the case of the self-appointed Fisher King comes with too many sentimental implications and you discover that you and Spencer had more in common than you imagined.

warnings: mention of mental illness and some trauma

A/N: directly based on 2x01 of the series "The Fisher King" part 2

people who might be interested: @c-m-stuff @no-soy-fer @synthsescape @bella-fics @cynbx (if you want to be removed or added tell me!)

To say that you were worried about the case was an understatement, you were actually terrified of what might happen. An unsub holding a hostage, who was also her daughter, and who knew so much about each member of the team, was worrying in itself. But Elle being in a hospital dying, the case being so tied to Reid's life, and you being so stupidly far from knowing where Randall Garner was, was what made you want to throw up everything you'd eaten during your interrupted vacation.

The team, as always, had split up and throughout the investigation you had stayed with Spencer and Garcia to try to crack the riddle, using the man's brain, the woman's internet find-anything skills, and your vast knowledge of the world of codes and literature. During that period you never believed that the doctor's mother would be involved, much less did you think that she would find herself in the… condition she was in. Throughout the time she was there, he treated her sweetly and calmly, but you couldn't help noticing the discomfort that was palpable in the environment. Not that he was ashamed of her, of course, although you figured he didn't visit her very often and it was obviously not her intention for the entire BAU to find out that her mother was a schizophrenic who was in a sanatorium.

You remembered, hours ago, asking Garcia to let you tell the man that his mother was fine when he requested a plane to bring her to Virginia, and all day you had that conversation etched in your mind like a tattoo on your skin.

"Your mom it's ok" you had said, approaching her desk and leaning on it to look at it "Agents picked her up. She's flying here right now” you completed, although he seemed too amused with the piece of evidence that he had in his hand and then you felt the need to say something else “How are you?”

"I feel kind of dumb, to tell you the truth," he replied. Most of the time he avoided looking at you, but you had already gotten used to it “I forgot she used to always read me this poem. And I think that I should have realized sooner than that”

"Why?"

“Nobody knows things like the fact that JJ collects butterflies except for me,” he said, with a guilt-tinged shrug. “People tell me their secrets all the time. Think it's because they know I don't have anyone to betray them to… except… my mother. I... I tell her pretty much everything”

"It’s fine”

“Do you know that I write her a letter every day?”

"That's very nice," you said sincerely, for the idea of the man carefully writing a letter to tell his mother about the day was a sweet image to imagine.

“It depends on why I write her”

"What do you mean?"

“I write her letters so I won't feel so guilty about not visiting her,” Reid added. If it hadn't been for that case, probably you, or anyone, would have known that his mother was hospitalized and you thought it was completely logical that he didn't want others to find out about that part of his life about him, including that he didn’t visit her. Spencer was always available for everything, always working, always alone in his apartment and now that you knew about Diana you understood why. He waited a moment and then finally made eye contact with you, looking somewhat fearful “Did you know that schizophrenia is genetically passed?”

And when he mentioned that your world fell apart. You understood that this was the reason why he didn't go with her; because he was afraid. You didn't know how to react, at least not at that moment, and you just looked at him sadly, feeling your own heart tighten a little at unfortunate memories.

Although, for work reasons, the talk hadn't gone any further than that, you'd thought about it all along, even now that you were all gathered to put the last pieces together of what you hoped would be a successful puzzle.

"Nevada? So we don't even know what state he's in?” Hotch muttered, already quite frustrated at how fruitless the search was turning out. There was little time left and you all knew it.

“I'll search the tax records, see if he owns any property”

"Excuse me," Diana Reid intervened from the chair next to the blackboard and her son practically jumped to try and stop her.

"Mom, do you know we're..."

“Just before the agents got me from the hospital, a man delivered this to me” she continued, ignoring “It's a photo of a house with an address on the back”

After showing her direction she turned the image and you saw what was a house that looked just like a castle, with illuminated windows, trees around, and a night sky.

“Shiloh, Virginia?”

“That's only 10 miles from here”

"Well, there's no time to waste. Morgan and Reid are coming with me”

"I want to go too," you said immediately. Something about the whole thing gave you a very bad feeling and you wished you could help in any way you could, but you were surprised to see that Spencer was the first to oppose your request.

“We don't want anyone else to get hurt, Y/N,” Morgan added, his voice almost pleading for you to obey Hotch's orders. You were in no position to demand a ride and only agreed because you knew that an argument would only take away valuable time. “We have to get ready. Reid, let's go.”

"I'll be back soon, mom"

"I'll stay with her" you suggested, hastening to take a step towards him, in an attempt to continue your mission to help.

"Are you sure?"

"Of course," you said to reassure him. Diana already seemed quite satisfied with the fact that you were going to accompany her and you still didn't know why “Go. And be careful, please."

"I will" he nodded and immediately went after Morgan and Hotch, the three of them leaving the room to carry out the rescue mission. You had your heart in your hand for thinking about what could happen to them and only the woman's voice brought you back to reality.

"I'm glad you're the one who stays"

"Really?" you asked, somewhat flattered to think that she had liked you within a couple of hours of knowing you.

"Spencer talks to me about you all the time" she confessed and both you and the other two women present widened their eyes in surprise “He said you like literature"

"Yeah, I'd say so," you muttered, trying to smile at her to hide the nervous wreck you were, partly because of concern for your partners and partly because of what she had just told you.

"He's going to be fine, right?"

By God you hoped so. You didn't know what you would do if he got hurt or… he just didn't come back from there.

"Yes, I promise" you managed to say, as serenely as possible to try to keep your companion calm "And if you tell me about your favorite book? I imagine it will be a good one,” you said kindly, taking her arm and leading her to a couch where the two of you could sit. You knew that part of suggesting the talk was to distract yourself from the bleak outlook and thus kill time until the team returned.

Waiting was all you could do.

Diana had talked to you for a while until she ended up finding it more interesting to write in her notebook so you decided not to bother her, although she left you silent and ready for anxiety to grip you tight. After about an hour JJ herself had come to tell you that Elle was safe after surgery and you swore you could have cried with happiness when you found out. So, the pain that stayed in your chest was just from waiting for news from the three remaining agents and when what felt like an eternity passed without receiving any reports you couldn't take it anymore and apologized to Diana to leave the room. with the excuse that you needed to go to the bathroom. You were confident that she would not be a suicidal or aggressive patient, but you still wanted to hurry to get back to her as soon as possible, and when you had barely walked a section of the corridor you met a gangly figure who was already on his way to look for you.

"Rebeca?"

“She's safe” was the first thing you said, making the knot in your stomach finally dissolve “But Randall died. He blew himself up,” he continued, and you thought you wished you had heard a better outcome, even if the man was a criminal “And my mom?”

"Calm. Writing” you assured him, taking a few steps towards him to get a better look at him. He was dirty and what would later be a bruise could be seen on the left side of his face, but other than that he seemed to be safe and sound. "Is everyone there okay?"

"Yes," he breathed out. It was a relief to know that, it was a relief that things were finally over and that no one had been lost.

“I'm so grateful to hear that, Reid,” you said. You stretched your fingers up to his side and ran the tips over the mark that was beginning to form. "Does it hurt a lot?"

"No," he assured you, with a tight-lipped smile.

"Your mother. It will make her happy to know that you're back" you murmured immediately, and tried to go back the way you had come to go tell him, but he held out a hand to stop you "What's wrong?"

"Do you think I could take a moment before going with her?" he asked you and you retraced your steps to face him, still not letting go of his hand. You nodded and he sat on the floor with his legs drawn up and his back leaning against the wall in an attempt to calm down a bit from the adrenaline rush of all the previous events. You dropped down next to him in the same position and looked at his profile, thinking that if you had something to say, now was the time to talk.

“She told me you talk about me all the time,” you ventured, and he bit back an embarrassed smile.

"You weren't supposed to have found out about that"

"So you say bad things about me?"

"She didn't tell you?"

"No" you answered kindly.

"It's a relief"

“So these are definitely bad things, huh,” you teased, pushing your shoulder against his and seeing him shake his head slightly, too embarrassed to admit what he had written to his mother about you. You were silent for a moment as it didn’t seem that he had any intention of getting up to cross to the meeting room, you spoke again "Do you really not want to see her?"

“It's not that I don't want to see her, it's just that dealing with everything sometimes is so… so hard. You wouldn't understand,” he told you, his voice threatening to crack at any moment. You took a deep breath before opening your mouth to reply and the lonely hallway muffled your words, which were barely a whisper.

"What do you know about Alzheimer, Reid?" saying this, he turned a little to look at you, just in case he had misheard, but he realized that now it was you who wasn't looking at him.

"Excuse me?"

"Alzheimer" you repeated.

"Huh, it's a type of dementia that causes problems with memory, thinking, and behavior," he replied, still not quite sure why you were asking, “It is progressive, which means dementia symptoms gradually worsen over the years, and it is also the sixth leading cause of death in the United States. Live an average of eight years after symptoms become apparent, but survival can range from four to 20 years, depending on age and other health conditions. There is currently no cure."

“Have you ever lived with someone who has it?” you exclaimed and he shook his head. It was easier to look directly at you when you were the one who looked away “There are experimental treatments that reduce symptoms, but none are totally effective, appearing early in life in only about 5% to 6% of people. Although there is no defined cause, the genetic factor can affect you if you had a direct relative who suffered from early Alzheimer's” you exclaimed. He wanted to ask you why you were doing this exchange of information, but he thought it impolite to do so, so he just kept quiet "You said earlier that people tell you their secrets because you have no one to tell them to, but I'm sure it's not because that. We trust you because you are kind, understanding, but above all a good friend who we know will never judge us" you took a moment to take a deep breath again, feeling the nervousness running from the tip of your feet to your head and also to gather something of courage "I personally tell you because I am very afraid of starting to forget them"

It all clicked in Spencer's mind in a split second and he wished he was misreading things, searching your gaze so he could identify something that indicated you didn't mean what he was assuming.

"You…?” he started to say, but the question died on the tip of his tongue.

“It was my father. He was barely 35 years old when it all started, it was with the time he forgot to come to his birthday party. I remember it perfectly, he hadn't been feeling well for weeks due to the stress of work and the company decided to run all kinds of tests on him, without finding anything to worry about, so we just ignored it. But the symptoms recurred: he was disoriented, discouraged, sometimes he became aggressive with the family and forgot plans or things that we had told him. When he almost crushed one of his colleagues with a machine that he forgot that he was working, the company decided to give him a permanent break and we began to worry.

»By 36 it was already a fact that it was the beginnings of dementia. The doctors were surprised by the diagnosis because it is not very common to find the disease in patients of his age and for more explanations that we tried to find, we didn’t find any other. They prescribed a treatment that only kept him calm and it got to a point where it felt inhuman to drug him daily, and about two years after he got the diagnosis my mom decided it was better to put him in a mental hospital.

I was only fifteen years old at the time, but I already understood everything perfectly. I went to see him every day, after school, talked to him, read my homework to him, and we watched movies together, which to a certain extent made his illness feel tolerable. The worst thing at that point was that he asked me to watch the same movie as the day before or that he asked me if I was nervous about the exam I had done a week ago" you looked at the man just to make sure he was following the story, which that you verified with the way he was looking at you; fully attentive.

“Anyway, the years went by and it got more and more complicated. Sometimes a nurse had to remind her of my name and at some point my mother just gave up, probably when my father completely disowned her and started yelling all over the hospital that a woman was harassing him in her room. I continued to visit him, but when I grew up and entered the FBI academy my hours were cut down considerably, so in recent years I only went to see him once a week.

»At 42 my father no longer knew that I was his daughter, he thought that I was a nurse doing social service by keeping him company. He talked to me all the time about his family and sadly told me that neither his wife nor his daughter had been to see him for a long time, but I assured him that they had both asked me to tell him that they loved him very much and that they would go soon” silent for a moment, careful not to burst into tears, and prepared to finish the story “He died during my first year as a BAU agent. I saw his decline over the years and even at the end I think he left thinking that his family had abandoned him. I don't talk to my mother anymore, because I think she feels very guilty about me for having left me all the burden of taking care of my father. But every day I feel at peace with myself because despite how painful it was to see him, I never left him.

»Many times I cried before entering the hospital and when leaving, thinking that I had to pretend to be able to spend a moment with the person I loved the most and who was now only a ghost of what my father once was. And it was terrible to look at it and think that this was my future, even to this day. They say that reading is a good exercise to reduce risk and that's why I always carry a book wherever I go, that's why I always want to do new things and that's why I strive every day to solve our cases because I don't know when the last. I have gone to specialists who have told me that there is nothing to worry about and that, if I have it, Alzheimer's could last until I am an old woman, but even so I am afraid every day.

If I really get sick and manage to get old, the most likely thing is that I will end up in a sanatorium, but right now what is worth it are the things I do every day. I'm scared, yes, but it's worth fighting for if I can help people in this job and especially if I can live with people like you.

I know you said that I wouldn't understand, but the truth is that of all the people in this building I can assure you that I am the one who can do it best. I know that you can't bear to see her because you are afraid of ending up with her like her and that at the same time you are so worried that you take the time to write everything about your life to her. I'm probably boring you with all this stuff that you never asked me to tell you, but I just wanted to tell you how important it is that you be with your mom. And more than doing it for her, do it for you.

I would only give you one piece of advice, which you can decide to take or not: don't waste your time, Spencer. Your mother loves you very much, go and talk to her, accompany her, listen to everything she has to tell you and forgive her faults if there are any. Because you don't know about her when it may be the last time you see her, either for your health or for hers”

There was total silence. You hadn't noticed until that moment that your cheeks were already wet from crying and you still didn't dare to look at his face. No person knew that part of you, because after your father got worse you had decided not to talk about it with anyone, so you could say that you were practically giving your heart to that man bruised by the mission a few hours ago. Suddenly you thought that perhaps you had talked for too long or that for him it had no relevance and he had only stayed to listen to you because he was not rude enough to leave you talking to yourself. But while your head was drawing the wrong conclusions, something you never expected happened: Spencer extended his hands to you and wrapped you in a hug.

It only took a bit of effort to make their bodies fit perfectly and he clenched the fabric of your knitted sweater in his fists, tucking his head into the crook of your neck to allow you to lean yours against his golden hair. It was as if all the time you had been destined for that particular moment, fused in that embrace that communicated everything that words could no longer express.

He wasn't the person who loved physical contact the most, all of you had noticed that, so hugging him was totally new to you. The feeling of peace that this brought you had no comparison point and the softness of his body covered you completely.

“I had no idea,” he murmured, the sound of his voice muffled by your skin. And Spencer was being completely honest, because he didn't even imagine that you could fully understand him after having lived through such a tragic story. He had understood many things thanks to your story and he was eternally grateful that he had felt the confidence to tell him something like this, so he also thought that maybe it was his turn to be honest with you "What my mom said is true, I always talk to her about you. I tell her that you are the sweetest companion I have ever had, that you always pay attention to me, and that you make sure that I feel comfortable wherever we go. I tell her that you are strong, that I want to be half as brave as you, and I also tell her that I have never felt affection and gratitude for someone as I feel for you, because you have made these two years different from any other time in my life” his words, whispered so close to you and drenched in so much love, only intensified your tears "And as long as my conscience remains intact, I assure you that if I need to remind you of all the secrets you have told me, I will do it"

That, more than a proposal, was a declaration of pure love that promised to reach many years into the future.

"Maybe we'll even end up in the same sanitarium, you and me, huh?" you exclaimed, with a slightly joking tone "And so I will have the opportunity to know your wonders again every day"

You felt on your neck that you managed to get a smile out of him and that made you smile too. That's when he pulled away so he could look at you.

“I think that… I will go with my mother back to Nevada. I guess we both deserve it, don't you think?" he told you and you nodded with a small smile. He didn't want to leave your side, but you got up first and held out your hand to help him do the same.

“She still has enough lucidity to tell me what your favorite food is. Maybe you should eat with her on the plane” you suggested. You didn't want to rob him of any more time he could spend with his mother, so you just wished him luck and started walking in another direction.

"Y/N, before you go" he called out to you. You were already a fair distance away, but it was enough for you to still speak in a small voice. "You know you're not alone, right?"

You smiled as he looked at you with those eyes that only showed sincerity, and you wished you could encapsulate that moment for eternity.

"I know" you replied calmly "And I trust that now you know it too"

#spencer reid #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid x reader #criminal minds #criminal minds fanfic #dr spencer reid #matthew gray gubler #aaron hotchner #derek morgan #jason gideon #JJ #penelope garcía

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glassbxttless · 1 year

Text

L&D Baby

Nurse!Steve Harrington x f!Reader

Summary: Steve and his wife are having their first baby— and it happens to be at the hospital he works at.

Word Count: 2.3k+

Warnings: 18+ (editing to add: no sexual themes, but I am literally an adult and do not want minors interacting with my content whatsoever), marriage, pregnancy, childbirth, mentions of a stillbirth, dad!steve, labor and delivery nurse!steve, blood/blood loss, swearing— as always let me know if there’s any tags i missed!

Notes: This is posted over on my ST blog ( @hellfirestxnes ). Once all of my content is moved over here— that blog will be inactive as my main objective is to have one space for myself!

Steve is tired. His bones are aching and his eyes are sore, but it’s just another Friday really. He has about half of his shift left and he’s off again, thankfully, until Monday. Leaning on the counter at the nurses station, listening to the other nurses gossip and share stories about their kids. And he’s thinking about you at home, sitting pretty and waiting for him to come home— belly swollen with his child. Any other day, he might tuck himself away and use the phone to call and check in, but today… he couldn’t face it. The first delivery he was on that morning, he watched a new mother wish with every fiber of her being that what the doctor was telling her wasn’t true. He cleaned up that baby, took their weight and height, made out the card for the parents that would never get to hear a cry. He bundled up gray, cold skin and hoped that the couple would be able to find peace. Somewhere deep down, he wishes he wouldn’t have heard them ask how did this happen? Everything was just fine this morning. But, now here he sits. Thinking about that delivery, thinking about his wife at home. His very pregnant wife. Your pregnancy has gone by so quickly, been such a breeze. He’s been to as many appointments as he could, especially the ones you were so worried about. But there’s always a reassuring answer of your baby being strong and healthy. A perfect little Harrington. And now, Steve’s never found himself more terrified. If everything can be fine and perfect one second and terribly tragic the next, he doesn’t know where to find his peace. He hangs his head against his hands for a few moments— taking a deep breath. He’s gotta get himself straight, take a few moments. But there’s hellos being exchanged a few feet away and after what seems like a millisecond, a hand is settling on his lower back. He snaps around, prepared to give the whole I’m married spiel he’s done a thousand times, he’s met with the beautiful eyes of his adoring wife. And that softens his features, he’s visibly relaxing.

You smile at him, as he tugs you into his grip. The hug lasts longer than usual and Steve loves hugging you. You rub his back and kiss his shoulder, “you forgot your lunch.” You whisper to him quietly, the bag in your left hand adorning a beautiful band that Steve had so carefully picked out himself. At your words, Steve’s grip just tightens a bit and he kisses your head, sighing out. “Do you wanna eat together?”

“Yeah, angel. Just about to take my break. come on.” he says quietly, leading you down to the cafeteria. He pulls out your chair and you can tell something is distracting him as he sits. He’s busying himself by passing out the food, but he’s quiet and normally— he isn’t. He asks about your day, tells you about his, has told you he loves you a dozen times by now. And he knows you’ve noticed, by the way his eyes flick up to yours and back down again. “I’m okay.” he says after catching the look on your face.

“You’re not.” you reply, matter-of-factly. “What’s going on, Steve? Can talk to me.” you reach over for his hand, thumb brushing over his own gold wedding band. “You’re not acting like yourself.”

Steve sighs heavily, flipping his hand over to take yours gently. “The first birth I was on this morning was a stillbirth and I dunno… just had me thinking a lot.” He explains, his eyes dropping down to your belly across the table. You nod slightly, the hand that wasn’t entwined in his moves to your belly. You’re almost due and neither you nor Steve have ever had to worry about this. Never had it been a thought in your head.

“Just want you guys safe, is all.” Steve says softly and gives your hand a squeeze before he’s pulling it away to eat his lunch with you. And when it’s time for him to get back to work, you stand. There’s a dull ache that starts in your back and wraps around to your tummy, it lasts about 30 seconds as you clean up from lunch. You ignore it as he hugs you tightly, pressing a kiss against your forehead. “I’ll see you at home, okay? Take it easy, rest.” He reminds you, rubbing up and down your arms.

“Yeah, okay.” You acknowledge him with a nod, before you feel another aching pain. But this time it’s accompanied by a slow trickle of fluid down your thighs. And when Steve notices where your eyes are falling, all of the hair on the back of his neck stands up.

“Oh.” Is all he can manage. He’s done this a thousand and ten times over the past few years. He’s consoled laboring mothers, he’s held their hands and cleaned them up, he’s been their support system. It’s his job. But here he is, with his own wife, frozen in his tracks. Your water broke and he can tell with the uncomfortable face you’re making the contractions have started as well. “Okay, angel… let’s… let’s get you checked in.” he says softly and suddenly, you’re more than thankful for the pre-registry packet Steve made you fill out last week. He holds your hand the entire time they check you in and get you into a room. He can hear his pager going off and he’d check it, every now and again, hoping one of the other nurses could pick up his patients, since he still technically was on his shift. But when he can’t put it off any longer, he kisses your head. “Listen, I’ll be right back okay? I’m not leaving you alone for this. I’ll be really quick.” he says softly.

You just nod, munching on the ice chips he had brought you not too long ago. You still feel like you have time. The contractions aren’t that close together yet. But Steve would throw a fit if they even tried to send you home and you know it. Steve smiles nervously when he wheels a cart into another expectant parent’s room. He introduces himself and shakes her husband’s hand when he extends it to him introducing themselves as, “Caleb and Connie Bear.” He's trying to keep the small talk up and keep himself calm— and not to think of his wife four rooms down. “Is this your first?” he asks softly, administering her medication.

“Oh no.” Connie laughs softly and shakes her head, “It’s baby number seven.” She pats her belly gently. Steve nods, a little lost in his own head. A mix of thoughts of the young couple a floor up with no baby to show, his wife laboring without him, and these friendly people working on their seventh baby. “It’s not as bad as you think.” she laughs, catching Steve’s face.

Steve laughs nervously and shakes his head, “oh no. it’s not that.” He smiles softly, “my wife and I wanted around six.” He shrugs, giving her a glass of water.

“You’ve got kids?” She smiles at him and gives his forearm a gentle squeeze as he adjusts her monitors. “You’re so young.”

“Uh… not yet.” He laughs softly and pulls her blanket back up over her. “My wife’s in labor now, actually. Not very far along yet and It’s our first, might have a while to go.” He rambled off nervously.

She smiles at him, a warm and comforting smile, and so does her husband. They remember those days. And Steve does find comfort in that smile. “These things take time.” She says softly, nodding at Steve. “but she’ll know what to do and I know you’ve seen a lot of babies being born but the minute you see yours, everything’s gonna change.” And Steve knows she’s right.

“Thank you.” he says softly. “I’ll be back in to check on you in a little while.” he dims her lights a bit, sighing softly as he steps out of the room and walks over to his station to chart his notes quickly. When he looks up and sees his mother-in-law, that’s when his panic starts to set in. He’s hurrying around the counter, biting the inside of his cheek. “What are you doing here?”

“Y/N called asking me to come, Steve.” She laughs, a sound that reminds him of you. “She knows you’re busy.” She gives his arm a pat and smiles at him. “She’s getting close, from what they’ve told her.”

“And she didn’t say anything to me?” Steve frowns, leading her over to your room. His face is knotted up in confusion when he looks over you. Your feet are planted on the floor, leaning over your bed. He sighs softly, knowing he should have been in here. He walks over, standing behind you to rub circles into your lower back.

“This is how we got into this situation.” You joke, face pressed against your sheets.

The response makes Steve chuckle, rolling his eyes, “oh hush. your mother is here.” He mumbles softly, rubbing your hips gently. “Where did they say you’re at, angel?” he asks softly.

“Eight.” You mumble back, letting yourself melt into Steve’s hands. They slide around to your belly, lifting gently and trying to keep the pressure off of your back in between contractions. “What do you think it’s gonna be?” You ask him, turning your head to catch a glimpse of him. You can see the worry etched into his features. But once he sees the way your hair is sticking to your forehead and how flushed and clammy your skin is— he softens.

“A girl.” He says softly. “Gonna be just as pretty as you.” He whispers softly, helping you switch positions and lie back on the bed quietly. Steve’s head perks up as he sees one of his co-workers take a quick peek in. “What’s up?” he mouths over to her. He watches her point down to her belt, signaling to the pager Steve has forgotten.

He sighs and kisses your head once more, rubbing soothing circles onto your arm. “I’ll be right back again, okay sweetheart? Your mama’s here. gonna take care of you while I’m gone.” He says softly and squeezes your hand before he’s ducking out and heading down to the Bear’s room, pushing the cot along quietly.

Connie smiles tiredly, having opted for an epidural at the last stage of her labor. Steve’s ready at her thighs, ready to pop the baby up onto her chest. His own head is occupied with the thought of missing the birth of his own child while he welcomes another into the world. His shift would be over soon and then he’ll be sitting at your bedside, holding your hand and keeping you healthy and happy. Supporting you throughout the entire transition of your labor. Caleb rubs soothing circles on Connie’s arm as she pushes, and Steve takes note of the love in the room. How much the two of them lean on one another.

And Steve’s breath hitches in his throat when he’s reaching over her thighs, with their newborn boy laying on her stomach. He’s helping rub the baby dry, eyes flicking up to the delivering doctor when no one hears any cries for just a few more moments. And Steve whispers, panicked, but full of hope, “oh come on, kid.” No one hears him, but Connie— and her eyes are on him as Steve tries his fucking best to coax a cry out of the baby. Even after suctioning his nose and mouth. He remembers the heartbroken looks on that young couple this morning and he couldn’t take it again.

And finally there’s a sigh of relief when the little one lets out their first big wail. Steve smiles watching as Connie holds their baby to her chest, tears welling up in her eyes. She gives Steve’s hand a squeeze, her face silently thanking him. And then as he’s walking away to fill out a stats card for their baby, Steve hears his name followed by someone shouting time to push. And he’s running. He’ll check back in later, but he’s not missing his baby’s birth. You’ve got the rails of the bed in your hands, gripping tightly as you push— and he’s finding your side and brushing back your hair. “I'm here, angel.” He’s whispering through your tears. “I’m here. Look at you. You’re doing so good, mama.”

And it’s a whole new feeling when Steve hears a cry before he even sees the baby. He can see the blood on your thighs as they lift the baby up to place against your chest. The tears in your eyes are falling as you look up at Steve. And he just presses a kiss against your forehead, sniffling back his own years. “You did it, angel.” he mumbles softly.

“Congratulations.” You hear through your OB’s big smile. “It’s a boy.” And then Steve laughs, his smile pressed against your hair.

“It's a boy.” you repeat, fingers brushing against the back of your baby's fresh soft skin. The quiet grunts coming from him fill the room as he roots around trying to latch onto your breast quietly. “Joseph.” You whisper and turn to look up at Steve, remembering the perfect name the two of you had spent the last eight months curating. “Joseph Steven Harrington.” You announce to your mother quietly. And Steve feels himself tear up a bit.

Nothing has ever felt like this before in his life. And once you’re squared away, he makes sure to thank his coworkers quietly. Appreciating every second of them covering his ass tonight. They all congratulate him for the beautiful baby, passing out hugs and offering advice. And Steve soaks it in, every single word of it. Soaks it in like his life depends on it.

tags ;; @peachyproserpina @eeopxlt

#steve harrington x f!reader #steve harrington #steve x pregnant!reader #dad!steve harrington #nurse!steve #cw: pregnancy #cw: birth #cw: stillbirth mention

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morganbritton132 · 2 years

Note

I really love the EMTTS and every update is making my day, so thank you for being great!

I keep thinking about the shared calendar posts and have wanted to ask about it since the first post so long ago. I know it's been mentioned how annoying it is for Steve when it's not used in the way he hoped, but has there ever been a situation where it was really genuinely bad? Like, a lot of drama could've been avoided if it had been used properly? And did the kids and Eddie then feel bad about misusing it/start using it the way Steve intended? I know it drives me crazy when people intentionally ignore/misuse stuff like that that I set up. What's Steve's reaction? AHHH, so many questions!

Don't worry about answering, just do it whenever you have time and feel motivated :) Hope you have a lovely day/night!

It’s not that people don’t use the shared calendar. It’s just that they don’t use it in the way that Steve wants them to.

Like, for example, Lucas has no problem putting his work schedule into the calendar at the beginning of the month, but he never remembers to put when he picks up shifts. Robin will input her class schedule at the beginning of a semester but not her ever-changing office hours. Dustin uses the calendar frequently but he is always vague about what he’s doing (i.e. he puts ‘Moon’ instead of stargazing) and Mike blocks out time slows when he busy but never says what he’s doing.

Steve wants to know where everybody is at all times and what they’re doing. Is that a little unrealistic? Yes, and Steve can acknowledge that. But it’s still frustrating when he misses something because it was mentioned to him once and he forgot.

But also, Steve can’t drive.

He is very reliant on his friends and family. Especially because up to a couple years ago, Eddie still traveled quite a lot. Steve’s gotten better over the years at acknowledging that he needs help and asking for it, but it is a lot harder to inconvenience someone.

Steve doesn’t like Uber or any of the ride-sharing apps. It feels unsafe because he knows that there are moments where he loses time and he’s not quite in his head. There are times when he gets stuck in the fog or lost in a bad memory, and he knows that he can be reactionary. His friends know how to walk him out of that and he doesn’t want to accidentally hurt a stranger or get hurt, or get lost.

Steve carpools to school, but there have been times where that’s fallen through and he ends up feeling like he’s bothering someone because he didn’t know that they had plans already. Eddie was out of town once and Steve had a doctor’s appointment, but everybody he texted was busy so he just canceled it. He ran out of his migraine medication but turns out half their friends were at a concert so he dealt with the fallout alone.

It all kind of comes to a head one evening.

Steve is the person that plans most of their game nights and their get-togethers. They’re typically hosted at his and Eddie’s house and Steve puts a lot of effort into planning them. There’s a Saturday that no one has marked with anything, so he gets up that morning and plans a game night. He bakes and he cooks. He cleans the whole house and gets out their board games. He even sets the table for D&D even though he hardly ever plays with them.

Then Eddie tells him that he has a plane to catch. They talked about it the other day. Don’t you remember? And Dustin’s busy. He has a date. He literally told Steve about it. Mike and Will have had these plans for weeks and Max and El are at a spa. Lucas is visiting Erica in DC. He said he was going to last week, remember?

Robin is swamped with work and Nancy’s not even in town and apparently hasn’t been all week. She sent that text in the groupchat about it, remember?

And it’s frustrating.

Steve knows that it’s kinda dumb to plan a party and expect people to show up on the same day, but that’s how it’s always been, and it’s – it feels like he’s being called stupid when everybody keeps asking him if he remembers. He obviously didn’t.

All it takes is for Eddie to ask him what’s wrong for Steve to snap. He’s frustrated and he’s annoyed, and he’s a little mean about it because Eddie is the worst about using the calendar. He just says things and expects that Steve is going to remember them, and it feels like they’re making fun of him. It feels like he’s standing outside the room that they’re all in and they’re laughing at him because he doesn’t know how to get inside.

“And it’s going to get worse,” Steve says, blinking tears out of his eyes. “I’m just going to keep forgetting and everybody is going to move on, and it’s going to be like I’m not even a part of it anymore.”

“Baby, that’s never going to happen. I – We won’t let that happen. It’s just one mess up.”

“It’s already happening! You already do it.”

Eddie ends up missing his flight because he’s not going to leave Steve when he’s upset like this. He’s supposed to be working on the backing tracks for an album he’s producing, but there’s tomorrow or maybe the day after that. He does end up sending out a text to the other party members, letting them know that they’ve got to make an effort to use the calendar more.

#it takes a day or two to get everybody free but Eddie manages to surprise Steve with a game night #which wasn’t on the calendar but he’s trying to be better about that #eddie munson tiktok saga #steve harrington #eddie munson

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wildemaven · 1 year

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Sweet Creature: Chapter Three

Pairing: Dieter Bravo x F!Reader

WC: 3605

Summary: A washed up movie star with a failing career, fresh out of rehab and looking to turn his life around. He moves back to his small hometown to take a break from stardom and help his sister out with his niece- He's traded the high-life for school runs and crafting. What he doesn't except is to meet you, his niece's school teacher who couldn't care less about his extensive filmography or his dwindling fame.

Warnings: 18+ blog; swearing, mentioning of drugs, abandonment, arguing, food and alcohol, angst, feelings, mention of recovery/rehabilitating, absent parents, nail picking, Diem having to be a mother hen, one line from ‘The Bubble’— I think that’s it, as usual please let me know if I’ve forgotten anything.

A/N: This chapter totally became something I didn’t intend on, but in a good way. There’s a lot of feelings from everyone being thrown around and some hurt, but I think it was needed to be able to move forward— especially from that initial awareness in the kitchen. I’m excited to now get everyone in a somewhat good place with each other, so they can quit being knuckleheads. Thanks so much for all the love on the first two chapters, I am so excited to share more! Big thanks again to @gnpwdrnwhiskey for taking the time to beta for me— she’s been my wingwoman through this and I so appreciate her time and thoughts with each chapter!

Series Masterlist / Sweet Creature Playlist / Main Masterlist

Previous / Next

“Diem’s not home.”

“Oh fuck—”

This is literally one of those worst case scenario situations, and you’re not sure if you’ll ever come back from it.

You feel sick, the pit in your stomach heavy with regret. A destructive aftershock hits your chest, rolling tremors of guilt crashing through every inch of you.

“Dieter, I— I’m s-so sorry.” Your voice cracks as you force yourself to break the agonizing silence.

“Sorry you said it or sorry you got caught?”

You’re not even sure which one is a better option, either way it doesn’t resolve the hurt you’ve caused him.

His eyes lack that sparkle you saw earlier in the day, dimple no longer visible—his expression now reserved and opaque.

“I-I didn’t mean for you to hear any of that— I.”

“Oh, so you meant it then?”

“No, I-“

“Like when we first met, a year ago. What was it you said? Ah, I think it was something to the effect of ‘a fucking deadbeat, washed up douchebag’. The memory is a bit hazy, but those words stuck with me this whole time, just didn’t have a face to put with them until now.”

“Dieter, I’m so—“

“Yeah, sorry. You mentioned that.”

Tears well up in your eyes, stinging as they threaten to burn trails of remorse down your face. You blink them away, keeping them at bay for the now. Right now is not their time, it’s not your moment to center yourself in misery— this catastrophe of a situation is at the fault of your own actions.

The click of the front door grabs your attention— Diem’s home.

Both you and Dieter are still standing in the kitchen, eyes locked onto each other, neither making the first move as you wait for Diem’s arrival into this botched run in.

“Hey! Sorry I’m late, Wren’s appointment ran later than expected.” Diem’s arms full with take out boxes, completely oblivious to the gloom looming around in her kitchen. “Oh shit! I forgot we were getting together tonight.”

“Mama said a bad word!” Wren already settling herself on a barstool at the counter.

“Sorry, baby. I should have text you! Wren had a doctors appointment and her booster was in Dieter’s car from this morning— it was a hot fuc— hot mess! But I’m glad you are getting to know each other without me!”

So much is happening around you, your body frozen as you watch Diem arrange the white foam containers about on the kitchen island, a small hand grabbing at the mound of salty rosemary seasoned fries. Dieter settling back against the nearest counter watching as his sister moves about with ease, something he hasn’t been witness to in a while.

“I grabbed tacos from The Nest downtown. Since I screwed up our night, stay and eat with us.” She says to you as she’s putting plates and silverware out.

“It’s okay, I can go. I don’t want to intrude on your time together.” Your throat dry, pulse racing, you need to leave immediately.

“Oh stop! You’re not intruding on us, I insist— the more the merrier, right Dieter.”

His name slices through you like a jagged knife, each syllable a tiny knick, the slow drag of its blade adding to your own downfall.

“As long as she’s comfortable with it, the more the merrier.” His gaze bores intensely at you, his voice laced with bitterness.

“Yeah— okay.” Your own words betraying you.

“Perfect! I was hoping for all of us to have dinner together at some point anyways— no better time than now I guess. Everyone grab a plate and we can sit at the table. Wren, go wash your hands baby.”

“‘Kay, mama!”

“I also played on the swings— I showed my friends that trick Uncle Dude taught me!”

“What trick?!” Diem, unaware of any ‘swing tricks’, glances at Dieter with furrowed brows in a panic at the thought of Wren sharing something dangerous with her friends— he seems to be equally confused, shrugging as he waits for Wren to explain further.

“I swing as higher and higher as I can, then jump so I can fly!” Her little arms stretched out in a flying motion and she continues to munch away at her fries.

“Oh! Well, let’s save that for when we’re together and not at school where we can get hurt if we fly too high.”

“Okay mama!”

You’ve barely touched the tacos in front of you, let alone heard much of the conversations being shared around the table. Your brain is so busy running through a list of excuses to leave, you don’t hear your name being called.

“Hmm?” Refocusing back to the present moment.

“I asked how things have been at school? We didn’t get our usual catch-up chat at drop off this morning since Dieter took Wren.”

“Oh— good! Things are g-good!” You force a fake and hopefully believable smile, keeping your response minimal and to the point.

“Have you made any progress on your upcoming art exhibition at the gallery?”

“Umm, yeah— I mean kind of. Still trying to nail down a theme right now. Then paint everything before it’s time to prep for the install. Just haven’t found any inspiration just yet, typical artist procrastination.”

“Well, I’m sure you’ll figure something out and get it all done in time.” Diem ever the optimist. “And, if you need any ideas, Dieter is well knowledgeable in the field, I already told you he’s an artist. I’m sure he can help you with any questions you might have. Right, Dieter?”

“Yeah— sure.” His response is flat, not even making an attempt to look up from his plate.

“Thanks.” I think.

“You okay? You’ve barely eaten.” Diem’s motherly concern not reserved to only Wren tonight.

“Yeah— sorry, I’m good. Just been a long day, some— umm, things kind of came out of nowhere. A lot on my mind, that’s all.”

“Hmmph.” Dieter lets out a brief huff of annoyance at your response as he settles back into his chair, pursed lips and arms crossed on his chest— he wants this to be over just as much as you do.

“What was that Dieter?”

“Mama, I’m full.” Wren’s sweet little voice breaks through the awkward tension that made itself comfortable at the table for the evening.

“Wren, you barely ate your tacos— how can you be full?”

“I’m full of French fries mama! May I be excused?”

“Sure. Go wash up and brush your teeth. Then you can play for a bit before bath time.”

Wren doesn’t even wait for the end of Diem’s directions before she’s launching her body out of her chair and heading for the bathroom. Maybe you could borrow a page from her book, you’d rather be full of fries instead of the uneasiness that has settled in your gut.

Diem lets out a heavy sigh, face resting in her hands as her elbows support her on the table. “I swear, sometimes I feel like she’s testing me.”

“She’s a kid, it’s her job to keep you on your toes and not eat anything you want her to.” Dieter reaches over and gives Diem’s arm a light squeeze.

“Yeah, he’s right.” Sneaking a glance towards Dieter as you agree with him, there’s a quick flick of his eyes over to you then back to Diem. “It’s developmentally on track for her to be picky or hate something she once enjoyed. It’s nothing you’re doing wrong at all. And if it makes you feel better, she ate all her lunch today— said she loves when you make those special circle cut sandwiches.”

You catch the momentary smile on her face, hoping your words were enough to give her some relief. While you don’t know the weight that comes with being a parent, it’s your job to know the ins and outs of kid’s behaviors and how they react to a multitude of situations.

“Thank you. I’m so grateful— for both of you. This summer is going to be busy, but knowing I have the two of you in my life it seems less stressful. Speaking of which, I’m doing a re-grand opening for the Capri soon, it’s really a glorified pool party— music, drinks, hot guys, and a sweet little girl who might need some looking after while I make sure it all goes smoothly.”

“Of course! I wouldn’t miss it.” You agree immediately, you love helping Diem whenever she needs it.

“Yeah. I already told you, any way I can help with Birdie, I’m there.”

Even with the prospect of being around Dieter regularly, you would rather see your friend happy and endure the already strained relationship you and Dieter have.

It seems like the awkwardness has dissipated and you’re hoping to ease into a peaceful parting for the evening.

“You both are the best! Gosh, to think it was roughly a year ago you were screaming at Dieter—“

So much for the peaceful part.

You see Dieter’s shoulders tense as Diem starts to recount the incident you’ve already re-lived earlier this evening.

“Diem, no—“ Your attempt to get her to stop talking goes unheeded.

“Calling him a washed up actor, or whatever it was you said—“

“Diem, please don’t—“ Your heart-rate quickening, if you didn’t already feel like shit from your foot-in-mouth event earlier, you definitely do now.

Dieter’s jaw ticking to the side, as Diem continues the retelling of the story.

“And then you tried to convince me to not have him stay with me— to think we wouldn’t be able to hang out like this if that were the case!”

There’s that proverbial bomb you were waiting to explode, a nuclear wave that was bound to destroy everything in its path.

“You what?! You told my sister to not allow me here?”

“Dieter, I just— I thought you were the type of guy who—“ The tears have made their way back, this time there’s nothing you can do to stop them from falling.

“What type is that? The annoying movie star whose ego has to be stroked on the regular so he can continue playing the role of ‘look how glamorous I am’? Or is it the washed up-deadbeat-douchebag type that you think so little of?”

“I’m sorry…” Your lungs are filled with the weight of his words, drowning in the thick air of your own words being thrown back at you.

“Listen— I'm sorry. I'm trying to care, but it's hard— Fuck! I need some goddamn air!”

“Dieter?!”

Dieter stands hastily, his chair scooting back with the force of his movements, not saying another word as he makes his way out the back door.

There’s a beat of silence, save for the occasional sound of Wren playing as she was told to do.

“Okay, what the fuck just happened?!” Diem looking back in the direction of where he had gone, then back to you.

“I fucked up Diem— I-I fucked up really bad.”

“What do you mean you fucked up? What did you do?”

Diem looking at you with desperation, eyes pleading to clue her in on the reason for Dieter’s agitation.

You let out a heavy sigh before you begin to recount the events that had unfolded between you and Dieter.

“I was heading over for our usual weekly get together, saw your car in the driveway and figured it was just you home— “ You can’t bear to look at Diem, your nervous tick of picking at your nails keeping your focus. “I let myself in, like I always do— started talking about Dieter and how I thought he was attractive and healthy looking— But then I just kept going and started talking about what I said when I found him in the bathroom at Wren’s party— I thought I was talking to you, until I realized it wasn’t you, it was Dieter.”

Your gaze slowly lifts to meet Diem’s, her expression solemn as she takes in everything you’ve shared.

“I’m so sorry, Diem. I know we chat and share things openly with each other, but I didn’t— I didn’t mean for him to ever hear that.”

She takes a deep breath. You don’t get the sense that she’s upset, she’s always been able to keep herself pretty calm even when she’s angry.

“Look, Dieter will get over it— It might take a minute, but I promise it will blow over in time. But you gotta stop with your constant need to prejudge and criticize people based on their past. Was your first impression of Dieter the greatest? No, it wasn’t ideal— but you can’t keep bashing him forever. He’s put in the work, you’ve got to give him a chance to at least prove it.”

She’s right. Hearing her call you out on your flaws stings more than you thought, but you know she’s right and you accept her unyielding words.

“You’re my best friend, and I’ve already told you how much I appreciate your loyalty— but he’s also my brother and I can’t just assume he’s going to fail without reason. I’m going to support him and love him through this next chapter of his life, until he shows me otherwise.”

You wipe the last few tears that have started to dry, nodding in agreement.

“I mean— I love you, but you gotta quit doing this shit. I know your past has hurt you in so many ways, but you got to stop it from letting you move forward with the life you’re living now.”

“Yeah, you’re right— I’ve got to make peace with things. I’m sorry, for how I acted and for the way things went tonight. I’ll make a better effort moving forward.”

“It’s okay. I mean it’s not, but it is. Come on.” She stands and motions for you to follow her, grabbing your things, you both make your way to the front door. “I think we need to let things settle a bit, give everyone time to cool off. Go home, take a bath, relax— don’t let it eat you up though. I’ll talk to Dieter, smooth things over with him.”

“Mama!! I need you!” Wren’s timing always seems to be right on point.

“That’s my cue— mom mode engaged! I love you! We’ll chat more soon.”

“I love you too.” She pulls you into a tight embrace, it feels like a warm blanket of love. You hug her back, hoping she can feel just how much you love her too.

“Mama!”

“Coming! Night!”

“Night Diem!”

He doesn’t even know how long he’s been sitting, letting the irritation of the evening quiet down, enjoying the chilly air on the back patio.

The moon starts to crest the evening sky and the stars slowly appear, blinking from their respective peaks.

The sound of the sliding door opening catches Dieter’s attention from where he’s sitting at the outdoor dining table.

“Hey, you okay?” Diem placing a glass of ice water for him on the table, then taking a seat next to him.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Although, a heads up that you and Wren’s teacher were besties would have been nice.”

“If I’d known you’d both be at each other's throats after your first meeting, I would have.”

He doesn’t really know what any warning would have done, but he wasn’t expecting to be front row to a vent session he wasn’t meant to hear.

“Her and I talked— I let her know that what she said was not the nicest way of expressing her opinion—“

“Ya think?!”

“Dieter let me finish. I told her she can’t let her past dictate her life or how she meets certain people.”

“Certain people? You mean people like me, you can say it— a former drug addicted, an actor. What kind of history is so bad that she’s put off by the idea of you letting your own brother live with you?”

“It’s not my place to share that with you. If and when she does decide to, that’s her choice.”

“But it was her place to talk freely about me with you? I’m assuming regularly too, being that you two have these little gossip nights every week.”

“That’s not fair, Dieter.”

“How so?”

“Look, I already told her that she was out of line with her comments. She needs to give you a chance and I’m going to ask you to do the same for her.”

He can feel his frustration bubbling up in his chest.

“Fuck that! If she’s allowed to voice her opinion about me not coming around, then I’m going to have to do the same— I don’t want her here while I’m staying with you.”

“Well, that’s not an option Dieter, so you can just forget that!”

“Why? Because her friendship is more important than your own brother?”

“First of all, I never said that. Secondly, she’s all I had for a long time— she was here when I needed someone to talk to late at night when I couldn’t sleep, helped me with Wren when I needed it. She stepped up when I didn’t even ask her to.”

He hears the tremble in Diem’s voice, her usual level headed tone shifting towards anger the more she talks.

“You could have just called and said you needed help, I would have been here.” The moment it leaves his mouth he knows how ridiculous it sounds, and knows whatever Diem is about to unleash on him is more than justified.

“Are you fucking serious right now?! Called you? When could I have called you for your help?? Hmm?? When you were across the country shooting your big time movies for months on end?? How about when you and what’s his face were off gallivanting across Europe for a year? I should have called you then, right? Oh! I know— I should have called you every time you were strung out from doing fuck knows how many lines of Coke or whatever drug of the week it was.”

He feels gutted, every bit of him fileted open as Diem pours salt into every crevice of his undeserving body.

This is all part of it though— the healing process. While there is bound to be plenty of excitement and joy around his recovery, there is an equal amount of uncertainty and ugliness that comes along with it. Raw, heavy emotions and animosity all have just as much of a place as the elated ones.

“I didn’t have mom and dad— and I didn’t have you either.” She uses the sleeve of her shirt to wipe her tears as she brings her feet up onto the edge of the chair, arms pulling her legs close to her chest as she rests her head on her knees.

“Diem, I’m sorry. I-I’m sorry I wasn’t available and I’m sorry for not being the brother you needed.”

Reaching over he grabs the arm of her chair pulling it closer to his own, the metal of the legs scraping against the ground.

He leans against Diem, head resting on hers

as he wraps an arm around her shoulders.

“I’m not asking you to be best friends, just to give her a chance, for me. Heck, you can even fake that you like her if you want to.” He laughs, but knows an actual effort is what Diem deserves. “I need you both more than you know. Can you promise that you’ll do that for me, Dieter?”

Her body shifts a bit, he leans back to allow her to bring her arm out from where it was tucked away.

It’s as if they were transported back to their childhood, her pinky awaiting his to fully seal the agreement.

“Promise.”

The rest of your evening went as Diem suggested— a warm bath with your favorite bath bomb and a small glass of wine to help relax even more.

You hated how much you were the cause of the evening’s chaos, replaying every word of it on your walk home, as you soaked and now as you situate yourself in bed.

The only remedy for your lackluster mood was a phone call away. Grabbing for your cellphone and scrolling through the recent call log until your thumb finds the contact you’re seeking.

It’s ringing, the silence between each ring feels like minutes, but by the fifth ring you can hear the click of the call being accepted.

“Hello?”

“Hi mom, it’s me.”

“Well hello there, this is a surprise!”

The way her voice is always soothing and warm, it feels as if she’s snuggled in bed next to you.

“Sorry it’s so late, I just— needed to hear your voice.”

“Okay, what’s bothering you?” Her motherly senses already firing off.

“How did you move on?”

“What do you mean?”

“With how dad was, is— how did you move on and feel okay to trust again?”

“Well, that’s a loaded question.”

Propping a few of your pillows behind you, nestling into them as you prepare to listen to what she has to say.

“Time was a big factor. You were my main focus too. But eventually I had to realize that I can’t automatically assume that every guy I meet is going to be like your father, unless they show me otherwise. Once I figured that out, the fear of being let down was no longer keeping me from moving on. I hope that answers your question.”

“It does. Thank you mom.”

“So, who’s the guy?”

“I-I didn’t mention any guy.”

“You didn’t have to. But, he must be worth it though if you’re humble enough to seek out the opinion of your little ole mother.”

“Yeah— we’ll see.”

#sweet creature series #dieter bravo x f!reader #dieter bravo x you #dieter bravo x female reader #dieter bravo x fem!reader #dieter bravo x reader #dieter bravo #pedro pascal #wildemaven writes

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braxiatel · 9 months

Text

You know that “if it were a drawing I would call it a doodle or a sketch” incomplete fic I posted a while back?

Well here’s another from a few months ago.

Mumscarian (shocking, I know) hunger games au except instead of being told from the POV of someone in the hunger games it’s told by someone they left behind.

Content warnings are all similar in style and detail to the hunger games books, anx include injury (with specific mention of broken bones, spinal injuries, eye injuries, burns), references to genocide, displacement, and loss of a parental figure. Child- and animal endangerment, dissociation, non consensual body modifications, and possibly more that I cannot recall at this moment. Proceed with caution.

———

Cats have healing powers.

Scar was the one who told him that, on a cold winter’s day in front of the fire. Had it really only been months? It felt so much longer…

Something about their purring, Scar had said. He had been more specific than that, but Mumbo’s head was somewhat hazy at the moment.

But the purring healed you, Mumbo could remember as much.

Still, he was pretty sure Jellie alone wasn’t going to get him out of this one, not for lack of trying.

It was her fault he was here anyway.

… No, that wasn’t true. He would have said as much to himself if not for the fact that even moving his lips to take in gasping breaths was agony.

They had been warned before the bombs started to drop. There has been time to run, Pearl’s hand in his so they did not lose each other in the crowd.

Until he saw a woman carrying a goat in her arms and remembered-

“I have to go back,” he panted through strained breaths - he was nowhere near as fit as Pearl, who had been washing the coal-smeared clothes of half the Seam since age eleven to make ends meet.

“What?!” Pearl asked, continuing to pull him towards the hovercraft that was waiting on the green. “Mumbo if we stay we’re going to die. Whatever you forgot it isn’t more important than your life, if can be replaced, I promise. Just-”

“Jellie,” he interrupted her. “We forgot Jellie.”

Pearl’s grip slackened. The crowd kept moving around them, indistinct bodies pushing them forward and together.

“It will break Scar if he comes home and finds out she’s gone. I’ll just… two minutes, okay? I’ll be two minutes. I’ll go to his house and if she isn’t home I’m leaving without her. I just have to try.”

Pearl had looked as though she wanted to argue. She was practical though, in the same way Grian was, in the same way every child that grew up in the Seam was

“No sense in wasting time then. Go. Two minutes, Mumbo, and no more.”

Jellie continued to purr in his arms, unaware of the danger they were still in.

Suppose he had fancied himself a romantic, running back into a doomed town to save his sort-of-boyfriend’s cat.

Grian would laugh and call him an idiot… or he would have once. Grian didn’t do a great deal of laughing these days.

Mumbo could taste blood on his tongue. He wondered if any of the animals that lived in the forests beyond District 12 could smell it, if at any moment a mountain lion might finish him off, defenceless as he was.

He wondered if any of the animals were even still alive.

There had been blood on his tongue the day it started too.

His father - his adopted father that was - always chided him for the habit of biting on his cheek when he was nervous. But not today. Xisuma may have been smiling under his breather, but the Mayor of 12 was anything but calm. Wishing that another boy - any other than Mumbo - would be the one whose name was drawn today, did not sit well with Mayor Xisuma, who had been appointed to keep the citizens of 12 in line and dedicated himself to keeping them safe instead.

Today Mumbo bit his cheek, lined up with every other boy age twelve to eighteen in the district.

Well, almost. Scar had offered him a wink from the line of girls, standing out like a sore thumb in his trousers and the white shirt that had long ago been tainted a greyish brown by wear.

Although Scar was only a little more than a year older than Mumbo, he had been towards the back with the other seventeen-year-olds, while Mumbo was perfectly in the middle, still two weeks shy of sixteen.

“You look as if you’re about to implode from sheer stress,” a familiar voice has said from behind him.

Mumbo couldn’t remember what he had replied anymore, but he did recall how the hints of blonde in Grian’s hair had stood out in the sun that day. Pearl, he knew, always insisted on both of them having a proper bath before the reaping.

They would have shared the same banter they always did. Grian would tease him for being nervous when his name was barely in the draw at all, and Mumbo would mentally assure himself that Grian was right, he was safe.

That had been the day he learned what he should actually have been fearing all along.

The world had stopped turning when Scar’s given name was called out.

It had taken a moment before anyone had recognised it, it had been years since he used it last after all.

“I prefer Scar, actually,” he had corrected, stepping out of the lineup with a smile on his face.

Scar’s nose wrinkled when he smiled and meant it. Mumbo had admired it a thousand times in breaks between lessons and walking home through the Merchant’s section of the district, had tasted it on his lips far too few times for Scar to go off to his death now.

Grian’s hand was a steadying presence on Mumbo’s back for only a moment before the next name was called.

“Grian Xelqua.”

This time the world had stopped spinning altogether. In Mumbo’s memory it did anyway.

His next real memory was sitting opposite Grian, in a room adjacent to his father’s office, babbling about making sure Pearl wouldn’t be left alone through sobs.

He had felt so awful about those tears. There he was, crying about the prospect of losing Grian and Scar, when his best friend and his boyfriend were both about to leave to die horribly in the Hunger Games.

He had only been given a moment with Grian before Pearl arrived. Even thinking about the look on her face as she went to tell her twin goodbye still chilled Mumbo to the bone.

Next, he had guided to see Scar, the seat still warm from Cub having sat there only moments ago.

Most people would have put Cub’s quick departure down to the fact that he and Scar were cousins so many times removed they were only barely more related than anyone else in the Merchant’s section.

Mumbo knew the truth to be something else entirely. Cub was a man of few words and a practical one at that. In the coming weeks, many would look sideways at his apothecary as it continued to be open even as Scar fought for his life in the games. Mumbo understood, though, and so did Scar.

“I love you,” it had been the first time either of them had said it, their romance still new. Now Scar spoke the words carefully, stroking Mumbo’s tear-stained cheek before he continued to add: “But when I leave this building I am going to have to forget that, and I want you to do the same. I love you, Mumbo, and that’s why I’m going to make sure you don’t lose both of us.”

At the time he hadn’t thought he would ever know greater pain than having to hide his feelings away, watching Scar use his golden tongue to charm the masses of the Capitol, convincing them of his undying devotion towards Grian, never once mentioning Mumbo in all of his interviews.

He was certainly in more pain now... Mumbo had always been a bit of a spoon, though, so it was no wonder he was wrong about that too.

Jellie crooned in his arms and Mumbo forced his right eye open - the left remaining stuck shut just as it had since the fire had licked across his skin.

Jellie’s fur may be a little singed, but Mumbo’s blood had put any fires that had touched her out. He almost wanted to laugh at that, but his lungs were stinging from the smoke and the ash in the air and it was all he could do not to choke on it.

Above the chasm he was lying in the wind blew harshly, stoking the fires consuming the forest around him.

It was definitely ironic that he should die this way. For months now he had had nightmares of flames, ever since that fateful day when the 74th Hunger Games had ended.

Grian had all but dragged Scar through the forests, Scar’s left leg trailing after him like deadweight and his right barely able to support him, fire chasing them ever forward.

Mumbo had been sick three times that day. When the fire started, again when a dagger was wedged into Grian’s right eye, and finally when the game makers had announced that Grian and Scar could not win together after all.

He had missed the part where they took each other’s hands and walked to the edge of a cliff, ready to throw themselves off together instead of either of them winning alone.

The fire crackled above the chasm again.

“Go,” he hissed through uneasy breaths, nudging Jellie with his shoulders. “Please.”

Scar would be devastated if she were to die this way, and he had only just started smiling again…

Hollow. That was the only word Mumbo had known that might describe Grian and Scar when they returned from the games. Facades, stitched together and polished by the best the Capitol had to offer, the very picture of Capitol beauty with none of what mattered left.

Scar had smiled and joked that hey, at least they had taken the tits while they were rearranging his skin to cover the fact that his leg had been mangled beyond recognition by a trap once meant to hold a fully grown bear. Mumbo had laughed. It hadn’t been funny in the least.

And while the things Scar said rarely failed to make Mumbo feel sick to his stomach, it was Grian’s silence that disturbed him.

That had come to a head one evening when Grian had torn the prosthetic eye from its socket, hurtling it so hard against the marble walls of his house in the victor’s village that the plastic had cracked. A new had arrived within the week.

Mumbo coughed and hacked, pain wracking his body as the smoke clawed on the inside of his throat and his lungs.

Stupid, stupid Mumbo. He had known the chasm was here, he had seen it on his adoptive father’s maps of the district enough time that he should have known to run the other way.

Granted, it had been more than half a year since he had last stepped foot in the mayoral office, when his father had disappeared overnight and his uncle had been put in charge of District 12 in his stead.

Xisuma’s brother had never been fond of either of them, and he paid little mind when Mumbo simply moved into one of the many spare bedrooms in Grian’s house in the Victor’s Village after they returned from their victory tour of Panem.

Officially he had become Cub’s apprentice, the district still needing medicine even though their one apothecary was now living with his cousin-nth-removed in luxury.

Unofficially he and Scar had finally talked again, combing out the tangled knots of their relationship and what it could even be now that Grian and Scar were only alive because of their status as the star-crossed lovers in the eyes of the citizens of the Capitol.

Mumbo loved Scar enough that he did not mind only holding Scar’s hand in private, did not mind how Scar looked at Grian in public view and in quiet moments at home when he thought no one would notice, did not begrudge Scar a single bit of the patience and space he needed before he was ready for Mumbo to kiss him again.

Scar, in turn, had not minded how Grian latched himself to Mumbo, how Mumbo and Grian would share a bed when nightmares kept them awake, and how Mumbo could not help but blush whenever Scar spoke of Grian.

In another world, they might have spent years dancing around the issue before they developed the emotional maturity to recognise that there was love enough between them for all three of them to share.

In this world, however, they were not afforded the luxury of time. It had felt as though Mumbo had only just gotten his two favourite people back, only for it to be announced that in a few months time, he would have to see at least one of them leave again, off to compete in the 75th Hunger Games as the only two living tributes in District 12 apart from Impulse, whose experience as a mentor was the only thing standing between Mumbo and the very real possibility that both of the boys - the men - he loved would return to him in a coffin.

Mumbo sobbed at the thought, then sobbed again when he continued to shake, muscles tensing and untensing around broken bones and ruptured organs as the morning sun rose to greet him, crimson red through the not-so-distant fires consuming his home.

Surely Grian and Scar were dead by now. The games… Mumbo was not politically savvy the way his two partners were, but he knew well enough that they had been supposed to die in the arena.

“Go,” he begged Jellie again, the burns on his face stinging as salty tears ate away at them.

Scar wouldn’t want her dead. Scar wouldn’t want anything, because he was no doubt dead in a box somewhere far, far away in the Capitol, but he wouldn’t have wanted her dead had he been alive.

The fires were close now, the air so thick even Mumbo’s desperate attempts for air seemed to yield none.

No one would miss him.

It hit him just then.

He was going to die, a broken body left to rot or burn in a chasm by a broken District. Grian and Scar would die too, his father had been dead for months. No one would even know that he was gone, just one name on a dizzyingly long list.

Silly, silly Mumbo, running back into a town doomed to burn to save a dead man from a broken heart. Pearl had been right, he shouldn’t have gone back.

Oh, Pearl! She would know he was gone. How had he managed to forget her? He felt he ought to know but his mind was providing nothign but static.

Another pang of guilt. He had promised Grian she wouldn’t be alone once, and now she would, all because he had been too sentimental. Because he had been too slow, clinging tight to Jellie as he watched the hovercrafts take off. Because he had taken a wrong turn, getting himself thrown into this stupid chasm by one of the countless bombs that had devastated the only home he had ever known.

“Go away,” he hissed at Jellie while he still had air left in his lungs to do so. “Shoo.”

Jelliw finally rose from her position at his side, earning herself a wet sob when her fur rubbed against one of Mumbo’s burns.

She yowled back at him, a familiar tone of complaint that most often harbingered-

Mumbo cringed when the first drop of rain hit his ruined skin, but instantly felt a wave of relief as water cooled his burns.

Soon the air was clearing too, his breaths less ragged but just as wet as it travelled through his ruined chest.

His one good eye fixed on Jellie as she sought shelter under an outcropping of rocks, looking expectantly at him, unaware that he couldn’t move to join her.

For now he was enjoying the relief of the rain anyway. His burns cooling, fat drops of rain slipping between his cracked lips to wet his tongue. He was certain he was far too calm when he congratulated himself on the fact he would likely bleed out rather than die of thirst.

Above him the fires hissed and sputtered, and for the first time since the alarms had sounded, he allowed himself to disengage from the situation.

His mind floated to the town he had grown up in. Would any of the Merchant’s Sector still be standing? He very much doubted it, given how long the bombs had continued to shake him to his bones and make his teeth clatter even after his tumble to the bottom of the chasm.

If any parts of the Seam were still standing it would only be because it covered a far larger part of the town than the Merchant’s Sector ever did, most of the houses barely able to withstand normal wind and weather.

Mumbo had called the Victor’s Village home for the past several months, but he found himself hoping it had been destroyed as well. There was nothing left for him there, even if he had held any hope of surviving.

Mumbo opened his eye with a start realisation: he very much did not want to die.

Silly thing to forget, really, but as had been established Mumbo could be rather silly.

He must have been drifting in and out of consciousness, because by now the crackle of the fire had grown distant, leaving a deadly quiet in its wake. The rain had stopped, and the clouds cleared enough to allow him to see the last rays of the setting sun painting the sky bruise purple.

He heaved in fresh air, his whole being shivering and shaking with the cold rain soaking his broken body.

His eye drifted to the side, to where Jellie was lying on her paws, watching him intently. She had a cut on her ear he had not seen through the haze of the smoke, but seemed otherwise unharmed.

Here were his choices:

He could stay where he was, dying of exposure or to his wounds.

Or he could try to move, and at least die somewhere slightly more dry and comfortable.

The choice would have been easy to Grian and Scar, he thought. Grian would have clawed his way out of the chasm by now, and not even death could have stopped Scar from holding Jellie in his arms.

To Mumbo it was far from simple.

See, Mumbo didn’t want to die, but he very much didn’t want to be in pain either and he had a feeling moving would hurt a great deal.

His mind was hazy, something that had been vivid earlier unclear to him now. Why did the thought of Grian and Scar make his eyes sting with sticky tears?

He didn’t want to leave them…

With a sob Mumbo realised he really had no choice at all.

“Jellie?” he asked. “Get Scar, won’t you? I need you to get him… I need you to get Scar so that he’s here when this is over.”

Jellie for her part stood and stretched, and that was enough to convince him that somehow the cat had understood his pleas.

Okay. This was it…

He flexed his toes but otherwise had no luck kicking against the ground.

No other thing for it, then…

If pain had weight the one that hit him must be hundreds of tons.

His lungs screamed for air, seizing as he dragged himself one little bit forward. The bone clicked in his arm, but far worse was the white-hot burning radiating through his spine and into his legs.

He wouldn’t have made it much further than half a metre when he collapsed against the wall of the chasm, his ears ringing… or perhaps that was simply the screams echoing through the chasm?

With each thundering beat of his heart panic spread further through his body, seaping into every muscle and every fibre.

“Help,” he called, voice hoarse and throat dry. “It hurts.”

A noise from above his head. A flicker of hope.

The rain had washed the blood from his face, at least enough that he could force his other eye open and locate the source of the sound. Jellie, despite her age, was quite athletic and had made it almost all the way to the top of the chasm.

Well, it wasn’t help, but it was a start, right? Jellie would run home and get Scar, or Grian, or maybe even Xisuma. Someone would find him…

The sun rose and at some point in the night Mumbo had stopped feeling the bite of the cold - in fact the chill dew on his skin was quite refreshing, as was the trickle off water next to his head.

He couldn’t move to drink it all, but with a tilt of his head he was able to gulp some of it down, soothing the dryness in his throat.

The forest was so quiet today. Mumbo had only ventured beyond the fence with Grian and Scar twice in his life, but what he recalled most clearly was how alive it had been compared to the stifling settlement they called home.

There were no birds now, no rustle of the wind in the leaves, not even the distant sound of hares and other small animals skittering through the forest floor.

Mumbo’s stomach churned. Was that roast meat he could smell on the wind? When had he even last had something to eat…?

He wished his clothes were not so heavy. If only they were lighter, he might be able to move and remove his shirt. When had the sun become so warm?

He tilted his head to drink more water, mud and ash sticking to the sides of his mouth.

The moon, too, was warm tonight. Mumbo had never known it to be as much before, but nonetheless, it was even warmer than the sun had been. He felt as though he was burning up.

The stars were so bright, as bright as Mumbo had only ever seen them through his father’s telescope. It had been the nicest thing they owned, the lense scratched but still functional enough that he had been able to look through it and dream himself far away.

They moved oddly, reflecting in the helmet of the person standing at the top of the chasm.

Their language was garbled too. Mumbo never knew there were animals that looked like people in the forest…

He blinked, tilting his head a little for a better look.

The person-animal recoiled and Mumbo wanted to shush it, tell it he grew up sheltered in the Merchant’s Section and had no idea how to harm it even if he wanted to.

It made another garbled sound. Except…

Except…

“-Nd a survivor. I repeat I have found a survivor. Requesting urgent medical attention.”

The person-animal - who may in fact just be a person, come to think of it - climbed down the side of the cave.

First they removed a glove, revealing pale skin, and then their helmet. A cascade of red curls fell out, framing a young woman’s face.

“My name is Gem, Scout for District 13. Can you hear me? Can you tell me your name?”

He blinked, certain he ought to know how to respond to that. His tongue, however, remained unyielding.

“Mumbo! MUMBO! Let me go! I need to see him!”

Mumbo wished he had the energy to turn his head and look up and see the owner of the voice, but he was simply too tired.

“Get him out of here and start working on getting a stretcher down here, I think his spine might be broken,” Gem said over their shoulder. Their tone was far softer when they turned around and spoke to him. “Mumbo? Is that your name? Mumbo, listen to me, you need to hang in there. Whatever you saw during the bombing of 12 could be very valuable to the resistance, so you have to hold on a little bit longer so we can get you to a doctor.”

The bombing of 12…

Mumbo knew he should feel something. Panic, grief, anger, anything at all.

In reality, he just felt tired.

“Grr… ggi,” he tried.

“You want Grian?” Gem asked. “Sure, sure. He’s on his way to the hovercraft and in a moment you will be too. I’m just going to give you something for the pain and the fever, okay?”

Fever? Since when did he have a fever?

A weight on his chest lessened a little, relief flooding through him as the dull throbbing of pain he had been feeling from his everywhere began to subside.

“Don’t fall asleep,” Gem instructed. “You might get a little tired but it’s very important that you don’t fall asleep.”

Mumbo wanted to open his mouth to tell them that of course, he wasn’t going to fall asleep. Instead he blinked and a moment later he was somewhere new. It looked like home, looking like the Market Square, only not at all. The Market Square should be bustling with late afternoon activity, judging by the sun being in the west. The market Square was surrounded by buildings on all sides, whereas this place barely had any rubble worthy of being called ‘walls’.

There was a mask over his face, one that reminded him of his father’s breather, its edges digging into his flesh.

“Let me go this instance or I swear I walk - and don’t think Scar won’t do the same. We both care about him and- Mumbo!”

Grian’s face entered his view. The Capitol liked to style him in a way that made him look older than a mere seventeen, but that was not the reason Mumbo could see no trace of the boy that had once sat next to him in school barely more than a year ago.

His one remaining eye was dark, clouded by unbridled fury.

His gaze softened a little when he sat next to Mumbo.

“Can I touch him?”

Yes, Mumbo wanted to say. His body felt so wrong, cold and hot and numb and aching, all of it all at once. He wanted Grian to hold him, wanted Scar to join in as well. Come to think of it, where was Scar?

“If you’re careful.”

Hold on, that voice was familiar. Cub? Why was Cub here? And where was ‘here’ anyway?

That train of thought died as cold lips pressed against Mumbo’s temple. Odd, Grian normally ran hot.

“Hey.” Another kiss, this time on his forearm of all places. Then again, it was one of the few places that didn’t tingle with pain… “Thought I’d lost you for a moment,” Grian whispered, one of his fingers trailing over the part of Mumbo’s arm he had just kissed.

The world shook, and Mumbo’s body went slack with pain.

“Gently,” Grian hissed over his shoulder. He looked at Mumbo again, and he looked so very human. “Be gentle… Mumbo? Mumbo?! Mumbo, you have to-”

If Grian actually told Mumbo what he wanted him to do, it was lost somewhere between the humming of the world around them and the static in Mumbo’s ears. His eyes had slipped close, and for the first time in days he felt safe to rest.

—

Mumbo was aching.

That was the first thought that crossed his mind. Next was this: he was not at home in the Victor’s Village, nor was he in the small apartment in the Justice Building that had been his childhood home.

The bed was too short for him, the linen too coarse, and most offensive of all there was an incessant beeping next to his right ear.

Heavy footsteps - familiar ones at that - approached and a door swung closed with a whir.

Right. The door opening had woken him in the first place.

He opened his eyes and had to blink when he saw the familiar face of his dead father.

“Xisuma?” he tried to ask, the name muffled by the mask sitting on his face.

“Oh, Mumbo, thank goodness,” his adoptive father said in the same tone as he would normally use when Mumbo came home half an hour late after taking the long way home from school with Grian and Scar. “Grian, he’s awake.”

Mumbo strained his eyes, only barely able to make out the bright red colour of a familiar sweater.

“What?” Grian, too, seemed to just have woken up. “Oh! Mumbo!”

A chair scraped across the floor and a moment later Grian came into view too.

“You’re alive,” Mumbo tried to say, trying to enunciate the words as much as he could with his mouth being as dry as it was.

“We could say the same to you,” Xisuma told him, pushing a lock of hair out of Mumbo’s face just as he had done when Mumbo first came to him at age seven. “I don’t know if you have the worst or the best luck in the world. Falling down a ravine like that, and staying safe from the fires and the bombs. Do you know the scouts only found you because Jellie found them and insisted they follow her? She’s getting a well-deserved rest now, but you’d better thank her when you’re up and about again… or well… Well, yes, when you see her.”

Though his father’s rambling was a comforting background noise Mumbo had missed dearly, one thing stuck out to Mumbo.

The bombs. The fires.

“12 is gone,” he shuddered.

“Some of the people made it out,” Xisuma told him. “The ones smart enough not to go running back after lost pets.”

Oh, had he really done that? Mumbo was certain he must be blushing with sheer embarrassment.

He couldn’t bring himself to regret it, though. Scar would have been devastated if anything had happened to Jellie.

Scar.

The thought struck him and the beeping sound increased.

“Gri?” He asked. “Where’s S…”

Mumbo choked on the words, his throat aching from the smoke he had inhaled and the dry air flowing through the breather covering the lower half of his face.

Grian waited for him to finish coughing, his hand resting on Mumbo’s right arm as a steady presence.

“He’s okay,” Grian told him, though the waver in his voice told Mumbo otherwise. Grian had always been a terrible liar, and Mumbo knew him far too well to believe him.

Judging by Grian’s expression he realised this too.

“He’s alive,” Grian corrected. “The Capitol have him. But we’re already looking into saving him. We’re going to get him back, Mumbo, I swear. You came back and he will too…”

Grian rose to his feet, kissing the same part of Mubmo’s forehead he had earlier.

“I’ll fix it all,” Grian promised him. “The two of us, we’ll find a way to bring him back, even if it means burning the Capitol to the ground.”

#hermitcraft #hermitshipping #mumscarian #mumbo jumbo #GoodTimesWithScar #gtws #Grian #Pearlescentmoon #geminitay #XisumaVoid

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kairi101 · 1 year

Text

The Father and Father Figures (pt 2)

Pairings: Rafe Cameron x mom!reader, (platonic!topper x reader, platonic!kelce x reader in next part i promise)

Warnings: mentions of abuse, angst, fluff, brief smut so 18+ only, pregnancy, swearing

Summary: After your soon to be babydaddy left you, you returned to your childhood friend. But soon the past comes back to haunt you.

A/n: got a little carried away with this one it was supposed to be fluffy 😅 lmk if you wanna be added to the taglist. next part in a few days

Part 1

"Good morning sunshine" Rafe says as you sleepily open your eyes. "Did you sleep alright?"

"mhm" you responded groggily. It's been 2 months since you first moved in with Rafe, and him and his family have treated you like royalty. Partially because you and Rafe told them it was "our child," and they have no reason to believe otherwise.

Rafe kisses your forehead and says "I made you cinnamon rolls" as he pulls a strand of hair off your face.

"Since when did Rafe Cameron learn to cook?" you tease as you sit up slowly. The last time he tried to cook what was supposed to be scrambled eggs, he managed to light the frying pan on fire.

he smiles and responds "Sarah might have helped a tiny bit." By a tiny bit he means she did everything except stir the batter. "Anyways get dressed, we don't want to be late for your appointment" You groan in response because you totally forgot about your ultrasound appointment despite Rafe talking about it everyday for the past few weeks. At least one of you is super excited for it. You on the other hand are dreading the appointment. Today you most likely find out the gender, but you also find out if the fetus has any anomalies. Even though Rafe assures you your baby is perfectly fine and healthy, you can't help thinking about the worst scenarios possible, and your mindless scrolling through social media posts has certainly not helped.

You get out of bed, and Rafe leaves the room, letting you change out of your pajamas in private. Once you're dressed, you head downstairs for breakfast.

"Good morning Y/n!" Wheezie ran up to you and gave you a giant hug, Rafe watching closely to make sure she isn't squeezing too hard.

"Good morning Wheez," you say. She does this every morning, and every time Rafe is eyeing you down and sarah just sits, trying to hold in her laughter. "What time is the appointment again?" you ask, prying wheezie's arms from around your waist.

"10:15" Rafe responds.

"Shit I only have 30 minutes" You say, mostly to yourself. you grab a cinnamon roll, stuffing half of it in your mouth heading for the door, Rafe following behind you.

You arrive 15 minutes early for your appointment so you could fill out the necessary paperwork, but Rafe ended up doing it anyways as you were too nervous to even think straight. "Y/n" a girl slightly older than you who you assumed was the nurse called. Rafe stands up first, holding your hand as you stand up, being led to the room you'll have the ultrasound in. "Alright Ms. Y/l/n, as I understand from the paperwork, Mr. Cameron is not the father, what is his relationship to you?" She says as you sit down in the examination chair.

"Uh..." you hesitate, making eye contact with Rafe, giving him a sign to help.

"She's my girlfriend" You relax a little at his response but you also blush because that's the first time he's ever referred to you as his girlfriend. Sure you two were close, but you guys were so focused on the pregnancy (mostly just you) to even focus on the relationship forming between the two of you.

"Alright" she says jotting words down on her clipboard. "Im going to have you lift your shirt up for me" you do as told, lifting your shirt over your stomach. She puts cold clear gel on your stomach, and you shift a little at the strange feeling. "okay the doctor should be right in." She informs the two of you as she exits the room and Rafe squeezes your hand a bit.

"Everything is okay" he reassures you as a balding middle aged man comes through the door in the typical doctor attire.

"Good morning you guys!" he says cheerfully, making you feel slightly more comfortable. "Lets have a look shall we?" he says as he plops down in a rolling chair and grabs the ultrasound wand. He moves the wand around a bit to get different angles of the fetus. "Alright you guys ready to see her?"

"It's a girl?" you say rhetorically, tears of happiness in your eyes, looking up towards Rafe, who has a big grin on his face. He's quick to wipe the tears off your cheeks and kiss your forehead once he sees how joyful you are. Meanwhile the doctor shows you your little girl on the monitor, and it's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen.

"She looks good and healthy, I'll get you guys photos of her to show your family, and then I'll have y'all out of here"

"Thank you, sir" Rafe responds for you, as you were still a sobbing mess. Rafe picks up the pictures and grabs you around the shoulder to take you back out to the truck.

As soon as you get back to Tanney Hill, you jump up in Rafes arms, and he carries you inside. You can't tell if it's the pregnancy hormones or if it's permanent, but as he walks upstairs towards your shared bedroom you whisper into his chest "I'm in love with Rafe fucking Cameron" and he stops for a moment and smiles to himself. He sets you down on the bed and you pull him in by the neck, kissing him, but this time you felt butterflies in your stomach. He kisses you back and your kiss gets sloppier and your breaths heavier until he pushes his tongue into your mouth. You groan into his mouth and his hands begin to wander over your clothed body, removing your shirt. he leaves a trail of marks down your neck and you unfasten your bra and he pulls it off of you. "Rafe I need you" you say between moans, grinding against him.

He stops and looks at the mess he made of you but his lustful eyes quickly turned into something much softer. "I know baby, but I don't want it to ruin things between us" he looks towards your stomach "or for the baby"

Your half undressed self relaxes against the mattress at his words, no longer aroused. "I hate it so much that you're right" Rafe plops down on the mattress beside you and turns to face you, and you do the same.

He presses his forehead against yours "I love you so much y/n."

"And I love you Rafey" you respond, getting closer to him.

"I've waited years to hear those words come from you" he sighs and you giggle "What?"

You continue giggling for way longer than you intended just to respond "nothing" But rafe gives you the look that says he knows you're not telling the whole truth and you cant help but say "its just the kook prince fell in love with his childhood best friend and never bothered to tell her" He rolls his eyes at you.

"Hey! you were always talking to me about boys you liked, so i just assumed i wasn't in the picture"

"Maybe i did that to make you feel jealous"

"Jesus y/n I thought i was the toxic one in the relationship" he teases.

"That was four years ago in highschool!" you whine

"And before you know who" rafe adds

"yeah." you remember every horrible thing that man ever did to you, and you also remember your giant argument with Rafe when you started dating your ex. Again, Rafe was right. you lay in silence with rafe for several minutes before he finally asks "so you wanna call everyone over for a gender reveal tomorrow?"

"yeah that sounds great"

taglist: @mutual-mendes @i-love-rafe @dilvcv

#rafe cameron x reader #rafe cameron #rafe x reader #rafe fanfiction #outerbanks rafe #rafe smut #rafe x y/n #rafe cameron imagine #rafe imagine #rafe obx #rafe cameron x female reader #rafe cameron x y/n #soft!rafe cameron

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robininthelabyrinth · 1 year

Text

The Other Mountain - ao3 - Chapter 24

Pairing: Lan Qiren/Wen Ruohan

Warning Tags on Ao3

———————————————————————-

Not even having to explain to Yu Ziyuan why they had ruined the Jiang sect’s event for a second time running could put a dent in Wen Ruohan’s good mood.

“You can’t really blame us for it,” he told her, wondering with amusement if he should mention that the sound of her teeth grinding in irritation was becoming almost audible. “We came here at your invitation to enjoy your sect’s little party and then were unexpectedly set upon by murderous assassins…assassins, let me remind you, that somehow managed to defy your sect’s security precautions, borrow your disciples’ clothing, and then attack your guests, when by all the rules of hospitality we ought to be under your protection. If the party also happened to be ruined as a result, well, that’s really nothing to do with us. In fact, we’re quite upset by it all.”

“Really,” Yu Ziyuan growled. “If that’s the case, then why – are – you – smiling?!”

That was mostly because Wen Ruohan couldn’t help it.

Lan Qiren was in love with him. Lan Qiren loved him. Lan Qiren was willing to trust him. Lan Qiren loved him!

That wasn’t anyone else’s business, though.

“Just trying to put a good face on it for the sake of your sect,” Wen Ruohan said, voice almost syrupy with how condescending he was being. “After messing up not one but two gatherings in front of the whole cultivation world, you practically have no face left at all…really, a smile or two is the least we can do for the sake of our good friends in Yunmeng Jiang.”

Yu Ziyuan’s eye was twitching. So was the finger upon which she wore Zidian, which hadn’t quite started crackling but had started emitting an almost subsonic hum of spiritual energy as if it was considering it.

Hmm. Perhaps he was overdoing it a little.

Not that Wen Ruohan cared.

Still, in the interest of not starting yet another fight that he was presently in no condition to win…

“At any rate, as you can see,” he added smugly, unable to feel any genuine caution when his heart was full of repeated refrains of I am loved, I am loved, “my husband has taken today’s events to heart.”

He nodded over at where Lan Qiren was sitting, still cleaning his sword and glaring balefully at everyone around him as if he suspected them of wrongdoing, having apparently decided to appoint himself as the paranoid one for the day.

If Lan Qiren were anyone else, Wen Ruohan would say that it was a beautiful display of subtle intimidation. The almost pristine glow of Lan Qiren’s almost entirely white outfit, marred only by the almost artful flecks of drying blood that highlighted the subtle red suns at the hems, acted as vivid contrast to the gory imagery of the bloody and at times incomplete bodies the Jiang sect disciples were still carrying out on mats from the room behind him, while the steady and sure motion of his hands drew the eye to focus on his sword, the one that had slain most of those people – an unspoken but extremely clear threat.

Of course, since this was Lan Qiren, he probably hadn’t thought about that at all.

Lan Qiren was a very good politician, when he put his mind to it – but he often forgot to put his mind to it. In fact, if Wen Ruohan had to bet, he’d say that Lan Qiren was probably currently thinking about some obscure Lan sect rule about cleaning your sword as soon as possible to avoid rust, about how it was valuable and taught all sorts of larger lessons and so on and so forth. Also, he’d probably want a bath as soon as possible, quite understandably, and certainly at a minimum by the time they got back to the Nightless City. He could just change clothing to get rid of the bloodstains, of course, but there was that general rule on changing clothing after bathing, and Wen Ruohan knew that Lan Qiren, with his fondness for routine, would prefer to do things in the proper order whenever possible.

(Lan Qiren, who loved him. Who was in love with him. Who would probably make that part of his routine as well, an everyday reminder that he belonged, body and soul, to Wen Ruohan…)

Lan Qiren was insisting on their leaving at once, which was quite reasonable under the circumstances. Wen Ruohan certainly wasn’t objecting. His sect’s disciples, who had rushed over as soon as he’d been able to properly signal them, had managed to keep a few of the assassins alive, including the one Lan Qiren had purposefully preserved. They had all been taken away to be interrogated – with the Fire Palace for once serving in its traditional capacity as a prison rather than Wen Ruohan’s personal playground – and answers would be forthcoming. Wen Ruohan had made that extremely clear to all of the assembled sect leaders.

Wen Ruohan had also made a number of very ominous statements about the vengeance he was imminently going to undertake as soon as he found out who was responsible for sending the assassins. Moreover, he had made clear that, as the victim of a dishonorable attack, he fully expected the cultivation world to back him in seeking reprisals, no matter what penalty he demanded – or else.

His announcement had spread a great deal of consternation throughout the crowd, all of whom were already somewhat keyed up due to the last near-war they’d been drawn into. It had caused any number of people to consider departing early as well, each to go back home to think over what to do next in peace rather than stay any longer in the Lotus Pier. Presumably it was those impending departures that had caused Yu Ziyuan to march up and pull Wen Ruohan aside for a quiet confrontation, with all of the seething, barely-concealed rage that had made her old Purple Spider moniker quite so famous visible on her face.

Again: not that Wen Ruohan cared.

Oddly enough, though, it seemed that something he’d said had soothed Yu Ziyuan’s fiery temper, or at least distracted her from it. Zidian was no longer making that irritating humming noise and her fingers no longer shook as if they were on the verge of being clenched into a fist; she was practically verging on normal.

Well, normal rage.

“Sect Leader Wen is very open-minded,” she said, very begrudgingly.

Wen Ruohan looked at Yu Ziyuan with some suspicion. Was she referring to the fact that he wasn’t blaming the Jiang sect for the assassination attempt? He’d wanted to, even though he was fairly certain they had nothing to do with it. Even if they hadn’t hired the assassins, it had been their negligence that had allowed the attack to occur at all, which meant that they ought to carry some share of the blame, and therefore some of the responsibility of making it up to him…but Lan Qiren had objected.

He’d said something about not sowing discord, or maybe about being easy on others. Wen Ruohan thought it was more likely that he just felt belatedly bad about having accidentally incited Cangse Sanren into stealing away the Jiang sect children at the same time she’d taken his nephews.

(They hadn’t told anyone that Cangse Sanren had brought them to the Nightless City, or indeed that Cangse Sanren and her family were currently residing with them rather than traveling the cultivation world. It seemed unwise to officially confirm it, lest they attract unwanted attention.)

“I will still be expecting Yunmeng Jiang’s support against the perpetrators, of course,” he clarified, but unexpectedly Yu Ziyuan waved her hand dismissively.

“Naturally you will have it,” she said coolly. “Whoever planned the attempt on your life, Sect Leader Wen, deliberately chose to use our Jiang sect as its scapegoat. In order to restore our good name, we must of course take every measure necessary to seek vengeance. That was not what I meant.”

“What, then?”

Very uncharacteristically, Yu Ziyuan hesitated for a while before answering. Just as Wen Ruohan was about to lose patience, she finally spoke, saying, “I meant…in the matter of your marriage.”

Wen Ruohan arched his eyebrows. What about his marriage? He’d made an excellent marriage. He’d known it from the start, and now the rest of the cultivation world was starting to realize it, too. And they hadn’t even figured out the bit about the classes yet!

None of that seemed to him to fit the criteria of rendering him “open-minded,” though. So what was Yu Ziyuan talking about?

Yu Ziyuan seemed to realize that she’d lost him, a frown appearing on her face as she watched the confusion on his.

“Do you really not mind?” she asked. “You are the stronger party, politically and personally, and you’re both men, not restrained by convention – shouldn’t Lan Qiren be the one calling you husband, rather than the other way around?”

Oh, so it was that again.

Ridiculous. Hadn’t they already covered that?

“My husband,” Wen Ruohan said, emphasizing the word mostly for the amusement it gave him to see the way it made her frown deepen, “is an innate conservative. He’s very fixed in his habits, and averse to change. Having been raised with the expectation that he would one day become a husband, it pleases him to be one, and it pleases me to see him pleased. What more does there need to be than that?”

“It cannot be that simple.”

“Why not? As you said, we’re not restrained by convention.” He smirked, deciding to needle her further. “Isn’t that part of your Jiang sect’s motto? Isn’t it ‘Make it work’?”

Her eye twitched again. “Attempt the impossible.”

“Isn’t that what I said? Make it work despite it being impossible.”

Yu Ziyuan scowled at him. “A mountain cannot contain two tigers,” she said testily. “A household cannot have two husbands. If he is the husband, then you are the wife, Sect Leader Wen. You cannot possibly be satisfied with the expectation that you are to submit to him, to abide by etiquette and decorum for him, to restrict your own activities for his sake…!”

“Does the sun care for the expectations of the earth?” Wen Ruohan asked carelessly. Lan Qiren had never demanded his submission in anything, except in bed – and even there, it was only ever something that added to Wen Ruohan’s pleasure, never something that had turned into an expectation or an insult. Lan Qiren had never once thought that what they did in bed meant anything about how they conducted their life outside it, as some men might have. On the contrary, when they were in public, it was Lan Qiren who sought wherever possible to abide strictly by etiquette, and part of that etiquette was supporting Wen Ruohan’s sect as the sect he’d married into, which in turn by default meant supporting Wen Ruohan himself as sect leader. “I have never restricted myself for the sake of others. I hardly plan to start now.”

“Really. Then does that mean, Sect Leader Wen, that you plan to take on the duties of a wife as well?” she asked scathingly.

“Actually, Qiren seems to have gotten it into his head that it is the duty of a husband to do the satisfying,” Wen Ruohan said dryly. “A Gusu Lan peculiarity, I expect. I wasn’t planning on disabusing him of the notion.”

Yu Ziyuan turned red. “That’s not what I meant!”

Wen Ruohan scoffed. “Then what do you mean? Do you expect me to manage my household like some commoner? I manage my sect, that’s close enough.”

“It is exceptionally different.”

“Perhaps for you,” Wen Ruohan said condescendingly. “Allow me to remind you that I am sect leader. I am free to implement my will as I wish – however I wish – and you have not identified one good reason why I cannot deviate from tradition.”

“At least you know you are deviating from tradition,” she snapped.

Wen Ruohan just barely restrained himself from saying something sarcastic like And of course your marriage is such a model of happy compliance with tradition, mostly since he was pretty sure she really would try to kill him if he did.

From the look on her face, he’d managed to convey the message anyway.

“If it matters to you, then it matters to you,” he said indifferently instead. “It certainly doesn’t to me.”

Yu Ziyuan’s expression somehow worsened, which he hadn’t thought was possible.

“We’ll be leaving now,” he said smoothly, deciding that it would be impolitic to drive his hostess into apoplexy. Not to mention that it would be such a shame to rob himself of the moral high ground right after a perfectly good assassination attempt had given it to him. “Qiren wants to fly back to the Nightless City to avoid any threat of ambush, and we must leave early if we are to arrive before the end of xu shi, which of course we must. You know how Gusu Lan is.”

Everyone knew how Gusu Lan was.

(If Wen Ruohan was ever to seek to invade the Cloud Recesses, he would be wise to launch his attack in the evening, right when their internal clocks would be urging them to rest instead of fight. Not that he would, of course – he couldn’t even imagine Lan Qiren’s reaction if he did, not even if it was forced upon him by Qingheng-jun’s actions. It was only something he’d considered before, in the abstract hypothetical…)

“Have a good journey,” Yu Ziyuan said. She was gritting her teeth again.

Wen Ruohan smirked and took his leave.

And then he took Lan Qiren, who was very relieved to hear that they were finally departing, and went home.

Wen Ruohan spent the entire flight back to the Nightless City, painfully long and boring as it was, feeling lighter than air.

Sure, there were still problems to be dealt with, not least of which was figuring out who had tried to have him killed – not just killed, but drowned, and at a party surrounded by the rest of the cultivation world, no less. Whoever it was had figured out that Wen Ruohan had used up all of his spiritual energy, that he was temporarily vulnerable, and they were undoubtedly already thinking through the next step in their plan, knowing that they only had a brief window in which to act before Wen Ruohan regained his invincibility.

Really, his paranoia ought to be going completely haywire, questioning everyone and everything, trying to figure out who was behind it – given that it couldn’t be Qingheng-jun, who was too newly out of seclusion to have the resources necessary to train up assassins unless there was something very significant Lan Qiren had left out of his descriptions of the Lan sect – and his political instincts ought to be focused on how all of these developments would impact the balance of power in the cultivation world and how to turn them in his sect’s favor. Even considering it purely from the standpoint of cultivation, he ought to be worrying about how weak he still was, how tired he was, how much the fight and even this journey home was taking out of him.

Instead, Wen Ruohan couldn’t stop smiling.

(Interestingly enough, it turned out that genuine smiles while issuing threats only made people even more inclined to worry – exceeding even their reaction to an intimidating smirk or ominous scowl. Who knew?)

But in his defense: Lan Qiren was in love with him.

There was always that.

There was always going to be that, because Lan Qiren was a Lan, a good Lan, in the classic model of his sect. When he gave his heart away, he did so irrevocably. Even if things were to shatter between them, the way things had gone somehow wrong between Wen Ruohan and Lao Nie, or the way they had with his first wife, with his brother, with his family – even if Wen Ruohan did something utterly beyond the pale, utterly unforgivable, the fact that Lan Qiren loved him wouldn’t change.

Of course, if he did something like that, Lan Qiren would make his life absolutely miserable, up to and including leaving him in the dirt, and that probably after yelling at him until he went deaf. Lan Qiren had been quite emphatically clear about his intentions in that regard, repeating himself several times, though Wen Ruohan privately thought that it was all a little unnecessary.

It wasn’t as if he didn’t already know.

He’d figured it out after the fiasco with the Fire Palace: the price of Lan Qiren’s continued good regard was nothing more or less than his own good conduct, persistent and maintained.

Once, that would have been infuriating.

Wen Ruohan had always been his own person. He had always gone his own way, done things in his own style, bowed to no one – his Wen sect’s symbol was the sun, and he as their sect leader was the sun in splendor, directly overhead and shining in full midday glory. Even among his brothers he had always been the most stubborn, the most bull-headed, whether in his insistence on learning the sneered-upon “support skill” of arrays to the point of mastery instead of focusing on the sword or his slow but persistent approach to becoming sect leader, which had been successful in the end. He had never yielded to anyone, whether through force or coaxing. He had never adjusted his behavior for someone else’s sake.

But now…

Well.

After a lifetime of betrayals, his own or others’, Wen Ruohan was willing to consider it an equal trade.

Love for love, that was easy. Trust for trust would be more difficult, but he was the best of the best: he was Wen Ruohan. He wasn’t afraid of a challenge.

And it wasn’t as if he was going to find someone else he wanted more. Who could be more fascinating or full of ridiculous contradictions than Lan Qiren – a rigid moralist who had nevertheless demonstrated his sincerity through slaughter? That had always been a surefire way to Wen Ruohan’s heart, though not a route he’d previously believed Lan Qiren likely to take. It had always been more along the lines of what he’d gotten out of his relationship with Lao Nie, both of them vigorous and blood-thirsty and suiting each other perfectly – or at least, they had before the other man had grown distant and disdainful…

Well, never mind about that.

Wen Ruohan had Lan Qiren now, and if he played his cards right, he would have him forever.

That was surely something worth smiling about.

He continued smiling even when they arrived, frightening his servants. Lan Qiren didn’t notice, but then he was practically falling asleep standing up. Whether that was because of the energy expenditure of having to fly such a distance immediately after a vicious fight and emotional upheaval or simply that it had gotten late enough for all good proper Lan disciples to go to bed, it was impossible to tell.

“Do you require my services tonight?” Lan Qiren blearily asked Wen Ruohan, who snorted involuntarily in amusement at his serious expression.

“I think not,” he said dryly. “Look at you, you’re already yawning. I doubt you’d be able to, ah, rise to the occasion.”

Lan Qiren frowned censoriously at him. “Even if I cannot, I can still do my duty, if that’s what you desire.”

Wen Ruohan did desire, as it happened – he had a great deal of appreciation for Lan Qiren’s hands and tongue, both of which had become exceptionally skilled through the application of consistent practice – but he still said, “No need. You can make it up to me with interest tomorrow.”

It was an interesting novelty to deny himself for another’s sake. He’d observed that Lan Qiren, lacking as he did an internal instinct towards desire, at times also lacked a good sense of judgment as to when it was appropriate to offer to have sex, although tragically he’d picked up enough etiquette to be resistant to frolicking in public where people could see. It therefore fell to Wen Ruohan to bear the responsibility of being the final arbiter of such things, to ensure that Lan Qiren would be in a position to enjoy himself as well as providing enjoyment for his partner.

With a final yawn, Lan Qiren nodded and went off to find his bed, not bothering to wait for Wen Ruohan to join him. Presumably he’d figured out that Wen Ruohan was too full of nervous energy to rest, meaning that tonight was going to be one of his occasional bouts of insomnia.

Normally, on nights like these, Wen Ruohan would stalk through the halls of the Nightless City like a wandering ghost before eventually finding himself drawn to the Fire Palace and its screams, its reminder that he was alive, but that was unnecessary tonight. Tonight he already felt wholly alive, completely vibrant. In fact, that was the issue: he felt full of energy, like he wanted to do something. And not just anything, but something productive – to set up an experiment in arrays, perhaps, or practice sparring with the sword against some worthy opponent, or even…

Even…

Wen Ruohan smiled.

Cangse Sanren found him the next day.

“It’s already noon, you know,” she announced, having entered the room without knocking. “Also, my husband was the one who actually found you here, but he decided to nominate me to be the one to interrupt you. I’m less killable than he is.”

“Is that the case?” Wen Ruohan asked, not looking up from what he was doing. “And here I thought all you celestial mountain disciples were doomed.”

“We are. There’s some big scary beast marching towards my future, coming to tear me limb from limb; it’s inevitable, as sure as the dawn, but that also means there’s no point in worrying about it now. But putting that aside, people are more used to me being annoying, so they put up with it more.” She paused. “Are you painting? I didn’t know you knew how to paint.”

Wen Ruohan ignored her. He was almost done, so he wasn’t going to stop now just to talk.

“You’re a good painter,” she commented, peeking around his shoulder. “I had no idea. And I mean…you’re really good. Exceptionally good – ”

“You can stop sounding surprised about it at any point.”

“I’m just saying, I didn’t know you had hobbies other than torturing people.”

“This is not a hobby,” he clarified, finishing the final few strokes and putting down his brush. “This is an aberration. It’s a gift. For Qiren.”

“As if you would pick up a brush for anyone else,” she snorted, and inelegantly tried to shove him to the side so that she could get a better look at what he’d created. It didn’t work, of course, since he was stronger than she was, but he stepped aside anyway. “…huh. That’s…not what I expected. This is the first painting you’re going to give to him?”

Wen Ruohan shrugged. Other than his brief flirtation with portraiture, which had been an exclusively financial decision during a period of time when his backing within the Wen sect had been especially shaky, he’d always treated painting the way he did his cultivation: something to develop and nurture and even perfect, but not to force.

Back when he’d been alive, his favorite brother, Wen Ruoyu, had been Wen Ruohan’s primary target for these sorts of painting gifts. He’d had a fondness for collecting things, so he always accepted the gifts, but he’d found them confusing. You say this is meant for me? As in, you painted it specifically for me? he’d often asked, squinting at whatever the latest one was. What in the world do you mean by giving me this in particular? What’s the symbolism here stand for? What does it mean?

If I could have told you what it meant, I wouldn’t have needed to paint it, now would I? Wen Ruohan had always retorted. Tell me if you like it or not. If you don’t, I’ll take it back and give you another.

I like it, I like it! Don’t you dare take away things that are mine!

“Well, it’s not like I didn’t know you were several kinds of fucked up in the head,” Cangse Sanren remarked, interrupting Wen Ruohan’s wandering thoughts. “If there’s anyone who’d think that painting a war scene is a good gift for their lover, it would certainly be you. But lucky for you, Qiren’s taste in art runs towards the complicated, so I think he might like it anyway.”

Wen Ruohan had indeed painted a war scene, though he was mildly impressed that Cangse Sanren had been able to identify it as such. There were no people in it – it was mostly trees, and rocks, and blood, the occasional glint of broken steel and furrows dug deep. Hidden in the painting were the signs of cultivators at battle: splintered bark with smoldering anchor points, smeared ash and cinnabar left behind by burnt talismans, sharp and unnatural angles revealing cuts by sword or string.

Color had been used only sparingly, as an accent, and his brushwork was as brutal and ruthless as it had ever been, leaving the whole image with a gloomy and morbid air, grey, hopeless, and depressing.

He’d even painted it from the angle he’d once seen it from, with the trees reaching up into the heavens, tangled limbs suffocating the sky.

It was probably not an appropriate gift to give to one’s lover.

Wen Ruohan was going to give it to him anyway. Maybe he really would get lucky, and it would suit Lan Qiren’s tastes. Even if it didn’t, though, that would be fine – the point had always been in the making and the giving.

“Where is Qiren, anyway?” he asked.

“Meditating in your yard. He did sect business for a shichen in the morning, earlier on, once he realized you were busy, but as soon as he finished the urgent business, he told them all to come back tomorrow with the rest.”

“Good.” Wen Ruohan hadn’t been planning to do any business at all. Lazy days were what secretaries were for. “Next question: where are the children?”

Cangse Sanren arched her eyebrows. “Yours, mine, the Lan or the Jiang?”

“I meant Qiren’s nephews, as it happens. But you referred to mine – did you just mean Chao-er, or is Xu-er back?”

“Yes, he arrived yesterday morning, so there’s both of them here. He’s in his room, as are all the others. Do you want to see him?”

Oddly enough, even though he had no specific purpose in mind, Wen Ruohan found that he did.

“Father!” Wen Xu stood up quickly when Wen Ruohan strode into his rooms. So quickly, in fact, that he accidentally knocked all the papers off his desk and all over the floor. “I didn’t – I wasn’t expecting you.”

“I wanted to confirm that you were in one piece after what happened with the army in Jiujiang, Xu-er,” Wen Ruohan said mildly, doing his best not to smirk. Unfortunately for his son, Wen Ruoyu had also been a master of the “knock everything off the table so that they don’t see what I was looking at” dodge, and it hadn’t worked when he’d done it, either. “I am pleased to see that you are.”

“Uh, yeah,” Wen Xu said. He was blinking rapidly. “I…Teacher Lan said the same thing.”

Wen Ruohan arched his eyebrows. Lan Qiren moved quickly when he wanted to, it appeared – Wen Xu was already calling him “Teacher Lan” despite having undoubtedly met him all of maybe once. “Did he?”

Wen Xu looked embarrassed for whatever reason, so Wen Ruohan put his hands behind his back and gave his son an expectant look.

“He said you were proud of me for how I handled myself. Even though all I did was get sent away!” Wen Xu blurted out, then looked horrified at himself. Presumably at the gross sentimentality of what Lan Qiren had said, which was more than a little ridiculous – Wen Xu really hadn’t done anything of note, not unless one counted not complaining about being sent away and listening to the generals’ advice to avoid making the situation worse. And, well, not getting kidnapped and used as blackmail at any point while retreating.

Which Wen Ruohan supposed had been rather helpful.

Well, be your spouse’s partner and all that. If he wanted Lan Qiren to have a genuine shot at improving Wen Xu, it wouldn’t do to undercut his authority as a teacher before he’d even had a chance to get started.

“I am,” he said, and reasoned virtuously to himself that it wasn’t a lie even if he hadn’t given the subject a single thought before this exact moment – after all, he was always proud of his sons, who were his bloodline and therefore superior to all others. Anyway, even if it was, it wasn’t like the Wen sect abided by Do not tell lies. “You did well.”

Wen Xu looked stunned to the point of breathlessness.

Actually, he looked like he’d stopped breathing entirely.

Wen Ruohan decided that that was probably enough torment for a teenager for one day.

“You should write to your master in the army and advise him that I will be keeping you by my side for the near future,” he said, moving to practical matters instead. “If he wishes to continue your training, he should send someone here.”

Wen Xu recovered with admirable speed, straightening his spine and looking as dependable as he could at fifteen. “Yes, Father. I’ll do that at once!”

Wen Ruohan nodded. And then, because he could, he added, nodding at the pile of paper on the floor: “I’ll leave you to your romance novels, then.”

The horrified sound Wen Xu made was appalling.

Wen Ruohan walked off, chuckling to himself.

Continuing his inexplicable impulse from earlier, he decided to check in briefly on Wen Chao as well.

“Go away,” Wen Chao said, not looking up from where he was lying on his stomach reading something with a great deal of pictures and absolutely no substance. He wasn’t even trying to hide it.

“You do not command me, Chao-er.”

“Father!” Wen Chao jumped up at once. He didn’t make any effort to hide his picture-book – a heavily illustrated adventure, rather than a romance – and scurried over, looking delighted to see him, as usual. “Father, you’re here, you’re here!”

“Mm. Tell me what you have been up to.”

“I’ve been spending time with the other sect heirs, just like you told me to,” Wen Chao said proudly. “They’re very annoying, lots of trouble, but I can handle them. They’re no match for me!”

Wen Ruohan had no difficulty in discerning that this was extremely high praise for Wen Chao’s new friend group, potentially even gratitude and joy that they’d willingly included Wen Chao in their antics, and also that Wen Chao desperately wanted the present state to keep going forever.

“Good,” Wen Ruohan said. “Continue as you are. Become close to them and learn more about them, learn from their virtues and vices both. And listen when Teacher Lan tells you things meant to improve you. Make me proud.”

“Yes, Father! I will!”

That done, Wen Ruohan finally made his way down the hall to where his original targets, Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji, were being housed. He needed the two of them to do something for him.

After all, he owed Lan Qiren a debt, and it was time to deliver.

“Qiren,” he said, walking into their rooms later that afternoon. “I have something for you.”

He’d picked a good time: Lan Qiren was neither meditating nor playing his guqin, and neither was he composing – an activity that also involved a guqin, but a great deal more angry plucking, grumbling, and furious scribbling. Instead, he was only writing something down on scrap paper, though whatever the content of the note was, it was making him frown deeply, with a furrow between his brows that suggested that the subject was genuinely concerning to him.

“There you are,” Lan Qiren said, looking up. “I have something to say to you as well – ”

He paused, his expression suddenly clearing, discomfort making way for an expression of surprise, as well as something that seemed torn between pleasure and apprehension. “Did you say that you had something for me?”

“I did,” Wen Ruohan said agreeably. “Several things, in fact. Is what you have to say urgent?”

“Not at all,” Lan Qiren said bemusedly, rising to his feet and coming over. “It can wait, and indeed I would insist that it do so, given the alternative. What have you gotten me?”

Wen Ruohan produced two small booklets from inside his robes and handed them over.

Still looking somewhat wary, Lan Qiren accepted them, then opened the first one.

A moment later, he let out a surprised bark of laughter.

Wen Ruohan smirked triumphantly, watching the tension in Lan Qiren’s shoulders disappear. The man was too used to bad surprises, to everything that was unknown or a change being a bad thing – it was about time that he learned that some changes were good.

“I realize that my behavior was inappropriate, both in the specific situation and in general,” Lan Qiren read out loud. “When I am angry, I should withdraw from the situation and do what it takes to master my emotions, to better maintain my own discipline, before making any bad decisions. Under no circumstance should I take my mood out on other people, and especially not family. Additionally, I particularly recognize that I should always take the time to listen to you before making a final judgment. I have learned a valuable lesson from what I did, and I will not do it again – Wen Ruohan, did you get Xichen to write you an apology essay for me?”

“I got both your nephews to write me apology essays to give to you,” Wen Ruohan corrected him. “The second one is from Wangji.”

“Of course it is.” Lan Qiren’s shoulders were shaking with suppressed laughter again. “That’s - this is terrible. Your apologies keep getting worse and worse – and this one is unnecessary! I have already forgiven you.”

“This one isn’t an apology. It’s punishment.”

Lan Qiren’s eyebrows went up. “Oh?”

“You said the purpose of punishment is deterrence and remediation – that I need to take some loss in order to show my sincerity, to pay for the past and to make a deposit as assurance for good conduct in the future. A loss that means something to me, the way pain and time don’t.” Wen Ruohan reached out and cupped Lan Qiren’s cheek with his hand. “Something that can show you that I really have…how did he put it? That I ‘learned a valuable lesson from what I did, and will not do it again’.”

Lan Qiren leaned into his touch, smiling faintly. “And you think you have done that with this? What is your logic?”

Wen Ruohan found himself returning the smile. There it was, there was what he’d been looking for.

Lan Qiren was giving him the benefit of the doubt.

On the surface, it was patently ridiculous to think that convincing two boys to write essays could be a sufficient punishment, something that it could constitute a loss for someone of Wen Ruohan’s stature and power. Lao Nie would have thought he was joking, would have laughed along with a jest he wasn’t making, while his wives would have thought he was being sarcastic, that he was mocking them; they would have stormed out, maybe after throwing something at his head.

Lan Qiren just waited, certain that an explanation (of whatever quality) would be forthcoming.

“In our first visit to the Lotus Pier, I offered to help your nephews find you,” Wen Ruohan said, withdrawing his hand. “But not for free. I asked each of them to promise me a favor: one each.”

Lan Qiren frowned. “Unrestricted?”

“Your Xichen tried his best – he insisted on it being ‘nothing bad.’ But he’s young. He put no other restrictions on it, neither time, nor goal, nor extent…”

Lan Qiren winced. An open-ended favor like that, from a future sect leader, from a sect that did not make promises lightly, that did not break promises lightly, not even when they were extracted under duress…he knew exactly the sort of mischief Wen Ruohan could get up to with something like that. He’d seen it, even. In the ten years that the Lan sect was under his leadership, Lan Qiren would have been well aware that Wen Ruohan had twice utilized far more limited favors he was owed to devastating effect.

No, Lan Qiren well knew to be wary of such favors. He understood the gravity of such a thing – and just as he recalled it, that was when the understanding hit.

Wen Ruohan had the pleasure of seeing Lan Qiren genuinely shocked.

“You used those favors to get them to write these essays?” he exclaimed. “Surely not!”

Wen Ruohan smirked. “Is that sufficient loss for you?”

“More than sufficient! I would not have asked you to give up an advantage like that,” Lan Qiren said, frowning at him. “I might have sought to blunt the effects of the favors they had given, particularly in light of their age and immaturity, but a promise made is a promise made. Surely you know that – you are sect leader, and this is not a personal matter between us. Favors between sects is a matter of your sect, which is your first priority. I would not wish to abuse my position as your husband to interfere.”

“You might not wish to, but you might regardless,” Wen Ruohan said dryly, having figured out a little more of Lan sect cleverness with words by now. “And you might not, though I wish that you would.”

“What do you mean?”

“You are my husband,” Wen Ruohan said, as much for the pleasure of seeing Lan Qiren automatically smile at the reminder as to make the point. “That makes youhalf-master of my Wen sect in your own right…of our Wen sect. Our Wen sect is known for its arrogance, our superiority, our certainty that we deserve everything good in the world, and I would be very happy to see the same in you, Qiren.”

He shook his head.

“It is not abusing your position to want things, even things that are not necessarily to our Wen sect’s immediate benefit,” he said. “I want you to want things. I want you to ask for…no, I want you to demand everything that you want. I want you to learn to expect to receive what you ask for, rather than expecting to have to struggle to obtain it.”

Lan Qiren didn’t understand, Wen Ruohan could see that.

He found his voice softening. “You deserve the best, Qiren. You deserve to have the best given to you: without pain, without struggle, without effort, just for the asking. The world is your rightful due, and if you only ask for it, I would give it to you.”

“You are not using me as an excuse to take over the world,” Lan Qiren informed him primly, but there was something in his eyes that suggested that he had understood a little of what Wen Ruohan meant, even if he didn’t comprehend the fullness of it. At minimum, he’d understood that Wen Ruohan meant that he was family now – Wen Ruohan, who had always put his family over everyone, for good or for evil, with reason or without, following faithfully in the path laid out by Wen Mao in prizing their Wen clan over the whole world. Perhaps he even understood what Wen Ruohan was really saying: that he would now put him first, first before anything.

It might take some time before Lan Qiren could really bring himself to believe what Wen Ruohan told him, and even longer before he was willing to act with that glorious arrogance that Wen Ruohan so longed to see in him, that carelessness and freedom that accompanied true power. But at least he understood that that was something Wen Ruohan wanted to give to him.

A good change, rather than bad.

“This is my promise to you,” Wen Ruohan told him, nodding at the essays. “My loss, yes, my sect’s loss, also yes, but it is the loss I should take. It is my payment for not trusting you, as I should have, because not trusting you is a loss.”

Wen Ruohan was known for many things. He was blood-thirsty, a tyrant, a madman who delighted in torture; he was brilliant, a master of cultivation, ancient and terrifying. He was paranoid and cruel and selfish, and he put his ambitions above everything else.

He might be all those things, but Lan Qiren had chosen him anyway. The least he could do was choose him in return – to let Lan Qiren change him the way he wanted to change Lan Qiren. To trust him, yes, but also…to be worthy of his trust in return.

To be anything less –

Now that would be the real loss.

And, of course, Wen Ruohan did not lose.

Lan Qiren was staring at him open-mouthed.

“Do you understand?”

“…yes. I understand.”

Wen Ruohan kissed him. After a moment, he released him.

Lan Qiren still looked dazed. It was a good look on him.

“Now tell me,” Wen Ruohan teased. “Was that a good enough punishment?”

“If I were grading you, I would pass you with honors,” Lan Qiren said fervently.

Wen Ruohan laughed.

“Now, it is your turn to tell me,” Lan Qiren added, recovering a little. “Do I dare read what Wangji wrote…?”

“I genuinely have no idea,” Wen Ruohan said cheerfully. “He did it all in musical notation.”

“Oh no.”

“I like your second nephew. He’s clever.”

“Please refrain from getting any bright ideas. I am already working diligently on helping him recover his equilibrium; he does not need any further assistance in growing any more feral, and still less does he need to grow any more tyrannical than he already is.” Lan Qiren shook his head. “I will review the essays in full later, and I expect to be greatly amused by them, both immediately and for a great deal of time into the future. Thank you.”

“Of course. Would you like to see what else I have for you?”

Lan Qiren glanced at him sharply. “There’s more?”

“No need to sound so plaintive,” Wen Ruohan chuckled. “Do not do things in excess, or however the rule goes.That was all for the punishment. This one is an out-and-out gift – I painted something for you.”

“You painted…? Is that where you were all morning?”

“All night and all morning,” Wen Ruohan corrected. “It’s in my secondary study, if you’d like to come see it now. Or would you prefer to first discuss the subject that you mentioned earlier?”

Oddly enough, that caused the worried furrow to return to Lan Qiren’s brow, and he hesitated for a long moment before eventually saying, “Do not harbor doubts or jealousy, do not fail to carry out your promise. I think we had better discuss it now.”

That didn’t sound promising. Wen Ruohan tilted his head to the side. “Very well. What is it that you wanted to discuss, then?”

“It is about Lao Nie,” Lan Qiren said slowly. “I promised to myself that I would speak with you on the subject at the first instant I could. And yet, as time goes on, I find myself searching for further reasons to refrain for a little longer – which is misconduct on my part, although understandable. I have only just had you confirm that you returned my feelings, which has brought me tremendous joy. When one feels great joy, one seeks to preserve it…I suppose I wished to have you to myself for a little longer.”

“You do have me to yourself,” Wen Ruohan said, a little confused. “Lao Nie and I are not on the best of terms, as you yourself have seen. While it is true that we have never officially broken off our relationship, his recent actions and behavior make it clear enough that that will be the inevitable result, and sooner rather than later. He suspects me at every turn, disdains me, becomes angry at anything and everything I do – ”

“He had a qi deviation.”

Wen Ruohan stopped.

For a moment his mind rebelled, refusing to accept what his ears told him they had heard. “What?”

“He had a qi deviation, not long ago,” Lan Qiren said. His voice was solemn, serious, and Do not tell lies. He was telling the truth. “His son, Nie Mingjue, told me about it. You know what fate awaits the sect leaders of Qinghe Nie. You know how it looks, when it starts. You know what it does to them. How it makes them feel – ”

“Rage,” Wen Ruohan said, finding that his lips had started tingling, even if the rest of his face felt strangely numb. He did know. He’d seen Lao Nie’s father and grandfather suffer from the very same thing. “Disdain. Irrationality. Suspicion, paranoia…are you saying that you think his qi deviation is the genesis of his recent behavior?”

“I believe it is likely. You know how subtle qi deviations can be, particularly the small ones that the Nie sect initially suffer from – even if it was only discovered recently, it is likely that the deviation has been affecting him for months, perhaps even a year or two. From what I have observed of your disintegrating relationship, and based on your description of past events, his seeming distrust and your reaction to it…yes, it seems likely.”

Wen Ruohan…

Wen Ruohan didn’t know what to do with that information.

He didn’t want to believe Lan Qiren. He wanted to accuse him of lying, even though he knew he didn’t. He wanted to throw something, hit something, hurt something – he wanted to claim that this was all some sort of sick scheme, designed to strike him right when he was most vulnerable. But he’d promised to trust Lan Qiren, and he did trust him, and if there was one thing he knew, it was that Lan Qiren did not lie.

Lao Nie had had a qi deviation.

Lao Nie was dying.

Lao Nie – Lao Nie had come to Wen Ruohan when he’d been at his lowest point, when he’d been sick and tired of living, entertained by pain and nothing more. At that time, Wen Ruohan had been on the verge of considering entering the way of clarity, a path that cut off his feelings entirely as a means of avoiding the endless misery of having them mostly cut off already. He’d been searching for some method, any method, to stop the way he felt dead inside most of the time, dead and bored. Dead, and bored, and…and alone.

Lao Nie hadn’t let him be alone.

Lao Nie had brought to bear all the good cheer his considerable force of personality gave him, and he had aimed it at him. Lao Nie had laughed at him, had teased him, had all but demanded a place in his bed, and Wen Ruohan had found him amusing. It hadn’t been anything more than that at the start of it. He’d been glad that it’d been nothing more than that – he’d thought at the time that he didn’t want any more connections to the world to tie him down, to hold him back. What Lao Nie had offered him had seemed perfect.

A friend, an occasional lover, someone willing to slaughter his way into Wen Ruohan’s good graces, but without any serious commitment…it’d been easy. Casual. Light-hearted, the way Lao Nie always was, no matter the circumstances.

Even when their sects had been at odds, it hadn’t ever gotten any more difficult. Lao Nie was a Nie after all; he was straightforward and blunt, even when he was being clever or tricky. He held no fear of lying, did not refrain from it like Lan Qiren, but his actions, at least towards Wen Ruohan, were so lacking in malice that it was impossible to take offense from them. He’d always saved his malice for other people, and let Wen Ruohan share in the fun with him…

Yes, that was it. Lao Nie had always been fun.

And then he’d disappeared for a while, and returned with Nie Mingjue.

That had been the first break between them. A small one, but still a break – it wasn’t that Wen Ruohan hadn’t expected the man to marry eventually, since as sect leader he had a duty to continue his family line, but for whatever reason he’d expected to be involved in the process. Helping pick out some likely girl, debating her merits, that sort of thing, the same way they amiably argued over the pick of prostitutes during parties they attended. He hadn’t expected to be taken by surprise.

He hadn’t expected to care.

It had been only a little consolation that everyone else had been taken by surprise, too.

And of course it had helped that the First Madam Nie, Lao Nie’s much talked-of goddess, never actually made an appearance herself, even if she did get full honors in the Nie sect’s family record. It had been awkward, yes, and had made Wen Ruohan realize that he felt more things for Lao Nie than he really ought to – he’d reacted by ignoring said feelings for nearly a decade – but it hadn’t really felt like a betrayal.

The second wife felt like a betrayal.

They’d argued over that one. Lao Nie hadn’t understood why Wen Ruohan would care, and Wen Ruohan was too arrogant, and too embarrassed, to admit the truth that he did. After all, hadn’t he been the one to insist on them being nothing more than casual friends who occasionally indulged in more than that? And that was all he wanted, too, or thought he’d wanted, only he’d also wanted to be the most important part of Lao Nie’s life, and it came as a nasty shock to discover that he wasn’t. To discover that Lao Nie was actively pursuing others, and that he would pick them over Wen Ruohan if it came to it.

Things had never quite gotten better after that.

Oh, once Lao Nie’s second wife had died – or disappeared, whichever – they had fallen back into each other’s orbit, being almost too familiar with each other not to. They were the leaders of Great Sects, who knew virtually no peer; of that smaller group, they were the only two who were genuinely powerful in their personal capacities, or at least so Wen Ruohan had thought at the time. He’d known that Lao Nie was exceptionally fond of Lan Qiren, fond enough to almost drive Wen Ruohan into jealousy, but luckily he’d heard enough of Lan Qiren’s lectures to know that the two of them would never be compatible in any real sense. Even if Lao Nie had managed to get Lan Qiren into bed, the way Wen Ruohan had semi-seriously suggested to the man a few times that he try to do and which Lao Nie had laughed off as impossible, he’d been confident that Lan Qiren would never eclipse his own position in Lao Nie’s regard.

It certainly hadn’t occurred to him that he might be the one to fall for Lan Qiren in the end.

Wen Ruohan felt confident that he would have acted in the same way, fallen in the same way, even if his relationship with Lao Nie had not deteriorated to such an extent before he’d married Lan Qiren, but that didn’t change the fact that it had. It didn’t change the fact that Wen Ruohan had been growing steadily more offended by the way Lao Nie never seemed to trust him anymore, the way he always ascribed the worst possible motives to him, the way he seemed to think so little of him. Lao Nie had always had a suspicious side to him, which Wen Ruohan had once liked, a point of similarity between them, but he hadn’t liked it when it was aimed at him. Especially when he actually hadn’t done anything to deserve it!

Suspicion – anger – disdain –

It had never occurred to Wen Ruohan that it could have been caused by a qi deviation.

Perhaps it should have, given Lao Nie’s poisonous heritage, but it never had. Lao Nie was Lao Nie: he laughed where his ancestors would have shouted, let his anger carry him forward without letting it master him. He’d looked for solutions to his familial issue, of course, the way all of his ancestors had, but he’d done so idly, not serious, never serious. He always took things so easily. How could he die of rage?

How could he die?

“How long?” Wen Ruohan asked. The Nie sect doctors knew their business by now, after as many generations as it had been. “What do they say?”

“Ten years,” Lan Qiren said, and Wen Ruohan actually took a step back, staggering, horrified: that was so short. “Nie Mingjue said they’d expressed hope for fifteen, maybe even twenty, but that may have been meant only as comfort. As you know, Nie sect leaders die faster the more powerful they are, and Lao Nie’s cultivation is very strong.”

Wen Ruohan shook his head in denial, but he knew even as he did that it wasn’t something that he could deny.

Lao Nie was strong. And now that very strength was going to take him to the end of his life – too young, too soon, even for a Nie. It was all well and good to speak of trading your future for your present, but one day the future would come calling to collect the debt that had been incurred…

“I told Nie Mingjue that we would help however we could, do whatever we could about it,” Lan Qiren said. “Both of us. I assume you do not object?”

“There isn’t anything to be done about it.” Wen Ruohan pressed his fingers to his temples, which throbbed with a sudden headache, his body already starting to express the grief his mind could not yet accept. “Do you think the Qinghe Nie hate their children? They know what inheritance they are passing to them, they know what it costs, what it will take. They all look for a way out, every one of them…if it was easy, if there was a solution, don’t you think they would have found it by now? Every generation has its geniuses. Medicine, cultivation, esoteric arts; they’ve tried them all.”

“I know. There is no guarantee of success. We can only continue to try.” Lan Qiren hesitated, his face twisting into some strange expression that Wen Ruohan couldn’t quite parse. “If you wish…I had already told you that – that I would not object, if you wished to – with Lao Nie – ”

It was unusually garbled for the typically eloquent Lan Qiren, but Wen Ruohan still got the gist.

He shook his head.

“His mood at the party was foul,” he said. “He’s not taking it well, I assume? He’s still processing the revelation himself. Right now he wouldn’t accept a kind word, much less anything else.”

Lan Qiren nodded.

“And…” Wen Ruohan grimaced. “And I don’t know if I want to, anyway.”

That took Lan Qiren by surprise, Wen Ruohan could tell. He hadn’t been expecting that.

In fairness, before he’d said it, Wen Ruohan hadn’t been expecting to say it. If a few months ago someone had come to him and told him that they could prove that Lao Nie hadn’t really meant all the ways he’d been cruel or distrusting – and even if they’d warned him that there was no way to fix it, no way to have the old Lao Nie back, back as he’d been when things had been good – then Wen Ruohan wouldn’t have hesitated to jump right back into his bed.

But that was then. That was before he’d had Lan Qiren – Lan Qiren, who wasn’t light-hearted, who didn’t take everything easily, who was serious and sober and sincere. Who’d given Wen Ruohan his heart, whole and entire; who trusted him, and had faith in him, and forgave him, even against his better instincts. Who loved him, and wasn’t afraid to tell him. Who had let Wen Ruohan change him, who hadn’t been afraid to seek to change Wen Ruohan in turn.

Lan Qiren, who’d told him with all seriousness that he had lost his mind over him.

Wen Ruohan wasn’t alone anymore. He didn’t need to be content with the scraps of Lao Nie’s inconstant heart, which in truth belonged to no one and likely would never, could never. He didn’t need to be constantly hurting himself by wanting more than he could get, and never getting even what he deserved as the man’s friend.

“The qi deviation might have been the cause of his changed behavior,” Wen Ruohan said slowly, feeling it out for himself even as he spoke. “But it still happened. He still did it. Isn’t it the same for you, what happened with the Fire Palace? Just because there was a valid explanation doesn’t change the reality of it – what happened, still happened.”

He’d been hurt by Lao Nie’s seeming disregard of him. He’d been angry, yes, his vanity offended, but…it had been another betrayal, in a lifetime full of them.

Wen Ruohan was so very tired of betrayals.

He could admit, if only to himself, that some of the incompatibility between him and Lao Nie had preceded the qi deviation. Wen Ruohan was ambitious and greedy, he couldn’t be content with only a part of a person’s heart rather than the totality of it, and Lao Nie wasn’t capable of giving him what he wanted. And Wen Ruohan wasn’t able to give Lao Nie what he wanted, which was a connection that didn’t come with jealousy or unhappiness, something to enjoy without concern, without any strings attached.

“I forgave you for the Fire Palace,” Lan Qiren protested.

“Not everyone is you,” Wen Ruohan said, and omitted to mention you’re also in love with me, so your judgment is skewed in my favor – I’ll never complain about having an unfair advantage, but I prefer to recognize when they exist. “Anyway, like I said, it’s not the time. Lao Nie has ten years, and we will help him, just as you promised Nie Mingjue. Maybe we’ll figure out some way to give him a little longer – ”

Alternatively, they could try to find a way to make him immortal.

Wen Ruohan knew that most people thought he was joking when he said that becoming a god would solve a lot of his problems, but it really would. He was already so powerful, surely he just needed a little bit more…

Anyway, that was a later problem. As was the fact that Lan Qiren was also not yet immortal, though Wen Ruohan felt very confident that he’d be able to solve that problem before it became a pressing issue.

(And once they solved the problem of Lao Nie dying, they could perhaps once again discuss the other question. Lao Nie had always been very good in bed, and Wen Ruohan would be delighted to have the chance to introduce Lan Qiren to that fact, if he were willing. But he would only invite him in as a guest, the way Lao Nie preferred, and this time he would leave his heart out of it.)

“For the moment, we need to figure out who is trying to kill us. That’s the immediate issue,” he concluded, deciding not to think further on the subject of those he loved dying when there was a more pressing practical concern, denial and postponement having always served him very well in the past. Anyway, it was relevant. After all, immortality, in the sense of not dying of old age, was all well and good, but it wouldn’t help you if someone assassinated you.

In fact, even knowing that it had happened, even having lived through it, the whole thing still seemed somehow fake to Wen Ruohan. Who would dare try to assassinate him? With actual assassins, no less. Even if he was personally weakened, he still had all his influence, all his army, all his sect behind him. Surely whoever had ordered it would know that he would take vicious reprisals against them? Why would anyone risk such a thing…?

“There should be an answer to that by now,” he added. “Should we go see what it is?”

Lan Qiren blinked owlishly at him, as if surprised. “Have you not already figured it out? It took me a little time, thinking about it, but in retrospect it seems obvious.”

Now it was Wen Ruohan’s turn to be startled. He most certainly had not figured it out.

“What,” he said, a little disbelievingly, “surely not your brother again?”

“No,” Lan Qiren said. “It was Jin Guangshan. We are going to have to go to war.”

#mdzs #wen ruohan #lan qiren #yu ziyuan #wen xu #wen chao #my fic #my fics #Megafic #just so you all know it's a (mostly) valid translation of the phrase :D

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stargazer-sims · 5 months

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Heart-to-Heart

Victor: I caught a wild Caroline, the most beautiful and elusive creature on the beach!

Caroline: *snorting*

Victor: Are you trying not to laugh?

Caroline: Yeah.

Victor: Why? You should laugh at funny things.

Caroline: You're the funniest thing I know, Victor.

Victor: Thanks for the compliment. I'll take it.

Caroline: *giggling* Why can't all grownups be as silly as you?

Victor: Oh, you know... some other grownup probably told them a long time ago that it's not okay for grownups to be silly. Luckily, Nanna Grace forgot to mention that to me, so what you see is what you get. World's silliest grownup.

Caroline: Are you ever going to say that to me?

Victor: What do you think? Do you think a grownup as silly as me would ever tell you it's not okay to be silly when you grow up?

Caroline: No.

Victor: That's right. What I am going to tell you is that it's important to learn when you can be silly and when you have to take things seriously. You know how Yuri and I are teaching you about responsibility?

Caroline: Yeah, like how I have to feed Pirate Cookie every day and work on her obedience, and make my bed and brush my teeth every day?

Victor: Exactly. When you're training Pirate Cookie, is that a time to be silly?

Caroline: No, because she might get confused. She might think it's play time instead of learning time.

Victor: Right. But after training, then the two of you can be silly, can't you?

Caroline: Yeah.

Victor: That's what It's like for me, too. I have to take it seriously when I'm looking after my patients or driving or making dentist and eye doctor appointments for you, but there's still plenty of room for silly time.

Caroline: I like silly time.

Victor: Me too. Now, what do you say to washing some of the sand off and then getting something to eat?

Caroline: Can you carry me up to the house on your back?

Victor: Sure, if you want.

Caroline: Yes, please.

Victor: After we wash off, you can check on Yuri. If he's still working you can tell him that I said to stop. I'm going to look in on the patients really quickly and make sure they're okay before Miss Poet leaves and Miss Leilani gets here to stay the night with them. Then we'll grill some burgers, okay?

Caroline: Okay!

Victor: How's this?

Caroline: This is one of my favourite things.

Victor: I'm glad, 'cause it's one of my favourite things too.

Caroline: You know what's my favouritest favourite thing of all?

Victor: What is it?

Caroline: That you adopted me and I get to be your kid forever and ever. That I got to pick my own name, and you let me keep 'Caroline' even though it was the name of somebody you already loved a lot.

Victor: I love you a lot, and one of my favouritest favourite things is that you thought 'Caroline' was a good enough name to want to keep. I think your Auntie Caroline would've been proud to share it with you.

Caroline: Really?

Victor: Yeah. She didn't get a chance to grow up, but I think if she did, she would've loved to see how well you're growing up too, and I think she'd be very pleased.

Caroline: I wish I could've met her.

Victor: I wish I could've met your biological dad.

Caroline: Maybe... maybe wherever they are, they're together. Maybe he's looking after her just like you're looking after me. Sometimes it's sad to think about Papa because he went away forever, but... but I kinda feel better when I imagine that's what he's doing.

Victor: You know what? I like that. It makes me feel better too.

Caroline: I think they're up in the stars. That's why I'm not scared of the dark, 'cause when it's dark, the stars come out and I can look for Papa's.

Victor: Which one is his?

Caroline: I don't know what it's called, but it's the brightest one I can see. He had to make it really bright for me so I can find him, because he knows I can't see like everyone else.

Victor: I think he must love you very much, to have thought of that.

Caroline: I love him very much. Sometimes I tell that to the star. Do you think that's okay?

Victor: I think it's more than okay. I think it's the most wonderful thing I've heard in a long time, and I hope you'll never stop wanting to tell his star how you feel, so he never forgets how much you love him.

Caroline: I love you and Yuri too.

Victor: You're allowed to love as many people as you want. That's the great thing about hearts, you know. They grow to whatever size they need to grow, so you can fit in as much love as you want, and they don't shrink back when somebody you love goes away. You can keep that space for them in your heart forever.

Caroline: I like that. Do you keep space in your heart for the other Caroline?

Victor: Yes, and for Dad and Grandma Lydia.

Caroline: I'm gonna keep a space for Papa.

Victor: I know you will. He's a very special person, and he deserves to be remembered, and there's absolutely no one better than you to remember him and keep a space for him in your heart.

#ts4 #sims 4 #sulani #victor nelson #caroline okamoto-nelson #stargazersims

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ejzah · 4 months

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A/N: A random little Kensi and Rosa fic.

***

I’d Prefer the Truth

“Kensi, can you a question?”

“Of course,” Kensi told her, then immediately amended. “Unless it’s something that Mama Deeks said. It’s probably best if you ignore any of her stories.”

Rosa laughed softly. “No, it’s nothing like that.” She folded her hands on her lap, something about the position telling Kensi this was more than the usual school or friend related talk. “Um, so the other day, you and Marty were talking about making some doctors appointments.”

Kensi nodded slowly, remembering the conversation, but not certain where Rosa was headed.

“I’m sorry, do we need to reschedule something? We tried to work around all of your classes and after school activities,” Kensi apologized.

“The times are fine,” Rosa insisted. “No. When you started talking about the dentist, you mentioned both of you taking the day off and something about Deeks needing medication.” She picked at her nails, her brows furrowing with worry. “Is he ok?”

Kensi closed her eyes briefly, internally cursing herself. Of course Rosa would think the worst and be concerned about Deeks. With both of her birth parents gone, she had to be horrified at the thought of losing another father.

Taking both of Rosa’s hands between her own, Kensi shook them lightly until she looked up. “Hey, listen to me. Deeks is alright. He’s not sick or hurt,” Kensi assured her. “I won’t tell you specifics because it’s Deeks’ story to share. What I can tell you is that several years ago, Deeks was involved in a really awful case where he did get hurt. Since then, dentist appointments of any kind have been difficult.”

“Oh my god,” Rosa whispered, freeing one hand to cover her mouth.

“It’s much, much better now. Deeks uses medication just in case.”

“Well, is there anything I should do to help?”

Kensi pressed her lips together to combat the sudden urge to cry. They really did have the greatest kid.

“Oh sweetie, you don’t have to worry about that. Deeks might just be a little out of it or on edge. Honestly, he’ll probably come home and sleep the rest of the day,” Kensi told her.

Over the years, she’d gotten used to the unfortunately necessary routine as had the rest of the team. She forgot that Rosa was new to all of this and would likely have questions. Rosa was so observant and empathetic too, so she picked up on the things they thought were being discreet about.

Rosa nodded, her expression just as serious as earlier. “Thank you for telling me,” she said. “I’d rather know than to worry. I know you and Deeks want to protect me, but I’d much rather know these things than to be kept sheltered.”

“I’ll remember that,” Kensi said. She held out her arms, and Rosa immediately sank against her chest.

When Deeks came home, they would need to talk about this. They would need to figure out a plan to share some of the hard parts of their lives. For now though, she’d comfort their daughter.

#ncis la fanfiction #marty deeks #Rosa #mentions of Deeks #angst #ejzah fanfiction

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whereianonymouslypostfics · 2 years

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Silver Springs Part 10

Pairing: Wanda Maximoff x reader

Word count: ~10.5k

Summary: Wanda tries to leave her mob life behind to start a family with you

A/N: I’m very impatient and need to post this before I fall asleep. If y’all noticed me post the wrong thing, no you didn’t. Enjoy the angst!

Chapter Warnings: Graphic depictions of violence, death, and heavy angst.

When you hang up a while later, you look to the appointment that’s been added to get a little more information. There’s not much there, but you assume people are working on getting it for you, so you don’t worry about it for now. You have another half hour until your appointment starts so you decide to try to eat something. You grab your water bottle and open it right as your phone rings again. You sigh but answer it to find out you have a walk in. A large dog who was attacked by another dog. When you hang up after saying you’ll be right there you go to stand up forgetting about your water and you spill it all over your desk. You curse as you pick up your keyboard to stop it from reaching the computer as you grab a nearby towel. You start to clean it up before you realize that you’ve soaked your com and you curse again.

“Bucky? Can you hear me?”

You don’t hear anything and you quickly text the brunette that you might have fried your coms before heading downstairs to see this dog. You arrive to near chaos and you curse the fact that you hadn’t taken a little longer to figure things out.

Sometimes you forget how scared some dogs can be. You are reminded of this as soon as you realize that the large dog that an assistant is holding is snapping and trying to lunge at anyone who comes near him. This isn’t something that’s acceptable and you honestly need to talk to your boss a little more about dealing with aggressive pets, but for now you just hurry to grab a big enough e collar that you can throw over this dog to hopefully stop him from biting someone.

You’re also reminded of how scary terrified dogs are when they’re lunging and growling at you. You hold the e collar up towards him and he clearly recognizes them and tries to avoid it, but eventually you slip it over his head and you do it without getting bit.

“Okay, can someone tell me what’s going on?”

Apparently, this dog was in a fight, and despite being the instigator, his victim got in a couple of good bites. The other, smaller dog was dead and that not only depressed you, but concerned you. You're not sure you can send this dog off on his merry way without knowing his situation. So after sedating the dog to get a good exam in you go and talk to his owner to find out as much as you can.

It sounds like a classic dog fighting scenario from what you can gleam from the man’s vague answers and reassurances that it’s ‘no big deal, doc’. Not to mention, his dog is covered in scars on his face, front legs, and hips that are both bite wounds and scratches. Again, you’re at a loss for what to do and you consult another doctor to figure out what the best course of action would be. You both agree to call animal control and have them handle the situation as soon as the dog is treated for his injuries.

You end up running late for most of your appointments in the afternoon due to how involved this case ends up being. You had almost forgotten about the euthanasia at the end of the day when it comes in right before closing. You curse under your breath before running upstairs and grabbing your phone to let Bucky know that you were going to be a little late leaving today.

“Hey.”

“Hey sorry it’s so late, but I forgot to tell you I have a euthanasia coming in now and I won’t be able to leave for a while.”

Bucky insists that it’s fine and that he’ll wait outside for you. You apologize again for breaking the coms, but you promise to have your phone on you at all times.

Mark is the assistant who is with you on this appointment, and you’ve already promised him that this shouldn’t take too long. You feel bad for keeping him here, especially since this is only his third week or so, but he insists it’s fine as you go to get the drugs for the dog. You walk into the room alone first to talk to the owner and examine the moribund dog. You honestly aren’t sure that he won’t just die on his own here, but you’re not going to find out and you bring a technician in to help place a catheter as you go over the process with the owner who just nods silently throughout.

“What questions can I answer?”

When he says he doesn’t have any, but that he’ll want to take his dog home with him, you insist that you can help him take him back to the car. The technician leaves and you and Mark are left alone with the owner. You’d placed the drugs down next to you as you knelt by the dog who had stopped breathing at this point. You’d gotten permission to start and you are about the grab the sedative when the owner speaks up for only the second time since getting here.

“Thank you for making this so easy, Dr. Maximoff.”

You don’t realize he’s said your married name immediately, and you frown in confusion before turning to see him smiling at you. You open your mouth to say something but you don’t get the chance as something pokes you in the neck and you're grabbed from behind.

Bucky sighs as he looks at his watch once again. It’s almost 7 o’clock and he’s starting to get antsy. A few minutes ago, he’d seen the last car leave other than yours from the parking lot. He was certain that you were done at this point and he was getting worried. About 20 minutes ago, two men had come out hauling the euthanized dog to the client’s car. He’d watched them stick it in the trunk and he frowned at both the idea and the visual of that, but he’d just looked away before watching the assistant head back inside.

The client left, and then the assistant left a little later, but you had yet to come out. He knew you were on that appointment, so he decided to give you until 7 before calling you. He knew you were eager to get home and you would let him know if the plans had changed.

He sighs again before reaching into his pocket to grab his phone. He calls you and settles back in his seat as he listens to the phone ring. By the fifth ring it goes to voicemail and Bucky’s frown deepens. He hangs up and calls again, only to get your voicemail a second time. He decides to go find you himself because if everyone else is gone, no one will care.

He gets out of his car and locks it before heading to the yard. The fence around it is always open, and the door into the clinic behind it isn’t locked up until later at night. He walks into the clinic and waits and listens to confirm no one else is here. He looks to the dog runs and pokes his head in to look for you. You’re not there, but Boone is and he barks and jumps up when he sees Bucky. The brunette lets him out and gestures for him to follow.

“Let’s go find your mom, Boone.”

Boone whines as he hurries through the empty building to the stairs. He’s been in here exactly once before and there hadn’t been anyone here at that time either. It was eerily quiet as they walk up the stairs. All of the doctors’ offices are empty, and when he gets to yours and sees your things are still there, he becomes more confused. He takes them with him as he walks back down the stairs and looks in the empty exam rooms before coming to a room that’s still shut. He knocks, but when no one answers he opens it carefully. When Bucky sees what he assumes is a dead dog lying on the floor he runs back out to his car. Boone follows him and he jumps into the passenger seat as Bucky dials Wanda’s number.

“Hey Bucky.”

“Wanda, I think someone took Y/n, I need you to track her. “

Wanda drops the drink she was holding and the glass shatters in the sink. She doesn’t pay it any mind as she scrambles to open the app in her phone.

“You think?? What happened, Buck?”

While Wanda’s checking for your location Bucky quickly explains what happened today. First you spilling water on your coms and then you having to stay late for a euthanasia.

“She told me about that. How do you know it was him?”

Bucky tells her about how he saw the dog in the clinic just now, but that the client had definitely been carrying something to his car in a body bag. Wanda’s panicking by the time Bucky says this, and it only becomes worse as she realizes where your trackers are. Your phone is at work as is your car. The one in your shoulder, however is somewhere downtown. Only about 30 minutes away from the clinic. She gets the address and gives it to Bucky before she claims that she’ll be there too.

“I need to talk to Steve and Nat but I’ll meet you there.”

Bucky’s nodding as he starts his car before peeling out of the parking lot.

“Okay, I have Boone with me. I’ll let you know when I get there.”

Wanda thanks him before she’s running out her door. She just manages to grab a jacket, an extra gun and her keys before she’s calling Steve and letting him know what’s going on. He says that he’ll call Nat and they’ll all meet Bucky at your location.

Wanda is freaking out and hates that she considers going to see Vision before leaving to find you. She has no idea what happened today, but it’s all part of his plan. She makes a detour to the basement and storms down the hall to the room where Vision’s being kept. She throws the door open and starts speaking before she even knows if he’s awake.

“Where did you tell him to take her!?”

Vision looks up lazily and frowns as he’s just returning to consciousness. He’s exhausted and he’s lost a lot of blood in the hours that he’s been down here. He jolts awake when Wanda slaps him across the face to get his attention, but she only glares at him expectantly.

“What?”

She’s losing patience with him and she pulls her gun out before holding it to his forehead with a growl.

“You either tell me where Rumlow took Y/n in two seconds, or I’m putting a hole in your head.”

Vision just stares at her for a moment then he shakes his head before he speaks. He realizes that his time is up and he’s not going to get another chance to have Wanda as his own. He’s lost her already and he’s not sure what else he could do at this point. He sighs in defeat before he shoots Wanda one last smile.

“He’s going to do worse than kill her.”

Wanda shoots him and is out the door in nearly the same second, and she doesn’t look back as she races to her car. She’s already going through all of the scenarios in her head. You’re not going to get out of this scot-free and she may not get there in time to stop Rumlow from killing you. As she gets in her car and it roars to life, she just prays that Bucky gets there before her.

You’re still very sedate when you are handcuffed to a chair. You don’t know where you are, and your eyes refuse to focus as your head rolls back and forth between your shoulders. You realize eventually that you’re in a chair and being held in place by something cold, but beyond that you can’t identify it. You open your eyes and groan in pain before you realize you’re not alone.

“Nice to officially meet you Dr. Maximoff. I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced.”

You focus on a figure in front of you. It takes you a minute as you see three of him at once before your brain finally settles enough to recognize that the person in front of you is not the last person you saw. You can’t remember how you got here from work. You’d been doing something, but somehow, now you’re here.

You take a moment to stare at the brunette who’s practically leering at you. He’s older than you, maybe 5 years or so, and he’s got a mustache, short hair and a few scars. You don’t recognize him and even if you weren’t drugged, you’re convinced you wouldn’t know who this man is. You try to sit up more or even stand up but you realize that’s not going to happen as soon as you try. You look down at your arms and you scowl before looking back to the still grinning brunette.

He takes a couple of steps towards you and it’s then that you notice the large knife in his hand. You try not to flinch as he raises it to your eye level but you’re still a little groggy so you can’t help but jump slightly.

“I’m Brock Rumlow. I’m sure your wife’s mentioned me. We’re really good friends.”

Even without looking at him you pick up on the sarcasm, it’s practically dripping from his voice at the last statement. You recognize the name immediately and try to see this guy as the one who trespassed on your property and shot up your house in the middle of the night.

“Y-you shot my dog.”

He just laughs at this before nodding and scowling at the thought. He wasn’t sure why Vision had gone about things the way he did. He honestly had just wasted a lot of time and pissed Wanda off instead of won her attention. Hell, she had probably killed him at this point and Rumlow was just glad that Vision paid him up front.

“Yeah, that was pretty stupid. He told me not to kill him, but to hurt him just enough to make you suspicious. A waste of time if you ask me.”

He’s close to you now and you don’t realize why until he circles the chair you’re stuck to and stands behind you. You flinch again when he touches your back and you’re about to ask what he’s doing when he speaks up. You try to get away from him but realize it’s just silly to try. You’re handcuffed and there’s no way you’re getting out of here without some help.

“Speaking of wasting time. I need to get this out of you.”

You have no idea what he’s talking about, and you continue to struggle as he starts to rub your shoulders.

“What the fuck are you doing??”

You don’t get an answer from him but he stops for a moment and you briefly think that he’s not going to do anything bad. You see him reach into his pocket for something but you don’t realize what until he’s holding it in front of your face. You’re still waking up from the sedative and you’re slow to respond to the familiar voice.

“Say hello, doc.”

You don’t realize he’s talking to you and you just frown in confusion before you hear your wife’s voice. You stiffen and try to open your mouth to respond but you’re too shocked to.

“Y/n? Are you there? Talk to me please.”

You squeeze your eyes shut before shaking your head with a groan. Your vision is only slightly clearer as a result.

“Wanda?”

Wanda feels her heart start to race when she hears your voice confirming that you’re with Rumlow. She starts to drive faster, but she’s still too far away to stop whatever is about to happen. She’s about ten minutes away and she just hopes that Bucky’s closing in on your location.

“I’m on the way, Y/n. I’m only ten minutes away.”

When Rumlow laughs Wanda’s knuckles turn white from her tight grip on the steering wheel. Wanda’s considering getting out of the car and just running, but she knows that won’t be any faster. She’s in the city now and can only go so quickly. She takes a second to text Bucky ‘ETA’ as Rumlow speaks up. Wanda almost drops the phone and considers running the red light she’s at when his words register.

“Oh, don’t bother, Wanda. We’ll be done by then.”

You stiffen further as Rumlow’s words hit you like a cold shower. You get a better look at the knife that he’s holding and you gasp as he grabs your shirt and pulls on it before he starts to cut it. You go stock still afraid that he’s going to take it off completely, but he stops once he exposed your shoulder and you’re confused once again. You hiss at the feeling of the cold metal against your skin and then you quickly curse when you feel it cut into you.

“Fuck.”

You clench your teeth at the same time that Wanda does as she looks to the text that Bucky just sent. He’s three minutes out. You can’t stop yourself from groaning as Rumlow cuts deeper into your shoulder against your shoulder blade and you can’t hold back your pained screams when he doesn’t stop. You have no idea what he’s doing and neither does Wanda as she just listens to you scream in agony. She’s running another red light and is only a few minutes away when she hears from Bucky again.

“Rumlow! Stop now and I may not torture you before killing you!”

You can’t hear Wanda over your screaming and tears start running down your face as Rumlow carves up your back. He doesn’t stop until he hits what he was looking for. He peels your skin back, ignoring the curses you let out as he digs out the small metal chip that Wanda’s used to track you for years. He smiles as he walks away from you and tosses it on the floor with a smile.

“Got it. Now how will you keep track of your wife?”

You’re breathing heavily and still crying when Rumlow says this so you’re not really able to register his words immediately. You take a deep breath before you hear your wife threaten Rumlow again. You hear something slam on the other end of the phone and Rumlow must realize he’s running out of time because he grabs his gun from his hip quickly.

“Any last words, doctor?”

You can think of a dozen things you’d like to say, but you’re in too much pain to form words. You just glare at him before you brace yourself. You try to block out the sound of Wanda shouting and pleading with the brunette, but it’s difficult. When Rumlow raises his gun and aims, you close your eyes and take a deep breath.

It hurts a lot more than you thought it would. You’ve never gotten shot before, and you’re eternally grateful for this as the bullet tears through you and hits the wall behind you. You start to feel dizzy and everything sounds muffled as you grow limp in the chair.

“Y/n, no!”

Wanda’s running as fast as she can at this point, and she doesn’t stop despite feeling her breath leave her lungs at the sound of you getting shot. She needs to get to you and get to Rumlow before he escapes. He needs to die for this and she wants to be the one to do it.

Rumlow just smiles as he looks at you slumped over and bleeding out. He heads for the door behind him to leave. He’s done his job and now he can disappear again until Wanda gives up or he has time to slip away from her reach. He goes to open the door but he’s stopped short when it slams open in front of him. He stumbles back slightly and in the same instant he’s shot dead by Bucky who’d run all the way here after hearing him shoot you.

“Y/n!”

The first thing he notices is all of the blood. It’s covering the floor around you and leading toward the door in bloody boot prints. It’s still dripping down the chair you’re sitting in motionless and Bucky feels his breath catch at the sight of you. It’s not until he hears footsteps behind him that he snaps out of his trance. He runs towards you and tries to take stock of the damage. Your head is against your chest and he doesn’t see an exit wound which he’s grateful for, but the amount of blood tells him that he still has to worry.

“Holy shit.”

Bucky turns when he hears Nat’s voice but he quickly turns back to their friend in front of him. Bucky’s phone is ringing, but he doesn’t notice as he looks at the wound on your shoulder before managing to lift your head and feel for your pulse. Nat grabs his phone since he’s too distracted and answers it before practically throwing it on the ground. She grabs her bag that’s got basic first aid, but looking at how much you’ve bled, she’s not sure it will be enough.

“Bucky, please tell me you’re there.”

Nat nods as she looks to you and has to hold back a gasp at what she sees. Bucky’s confirmed that you’ve been shot in the abdomen and at that same moment it hits the both of them that you’re still breathing. Blood falls from your lips and Bucky’s quick to shoot through your handcuffs to lift you out of the chair.

“We’re here, Wands. She’s alive, but it’s bad. We’re bringing her out now.”

Wanda stops in her tracks on the stairs before trying to figure out what to do. She wants to see you, but she’ll be more helpful once they get you outside. She asks what floor they’re on and Nat says they’re on the third floor but they’re headed down the stairs now. Wanda’s about to turn around and head to her car, but something occurs to her and she stops short.

“Where’s Rumlow?”

She waits for what feels like an eternity before she hears hurried footsteps on the stairs and Nat’s voice comes in through the phone as well as above her.

“He’s dead, we’ll get Steve to take care of him.”

When Wanda sees Bucky and Nat come running down the stairs with you, she feels her breath leave her lungs once again. You’re bloody and unconscious in Bucky’s arms and Wanda’s already hanging up on Bucky to dial another number.

“I’ll call Dr. Palmer.”

Bucky looks a little uncertain and Nat’s already shaking her head as she follows Wanda down the stairs. They’re trying to figure out where to take you and since they’re over half an hour from the compound they might have to go to the hospital. Wanda doesn’t realize this until Nat says it but she curses before pushing the door to the parking lot open.

“I think we need to go to the hospital, Wanda.”

Wanda opens the back door to Bucky’s car knowing he’ll drive faster before getting in to help him lay you down. Boone jumps out of the car with a series of high-pitched whines, but Wanda ignores him. Nat’s wrapped your wound to stop the bleeding, but the bandages are already starting to turn red. Wanda takes off her jacket to cover you when she realizes how cold your skin feels. She reaches in her pocket to grab her keys to give to Nat as she asks for them before she shuts the door. The other redhead’s grabbed Boone at this point and started to drag him back to Wanda’s car. He’s near hysterical as he tries to break free to get to you, but Nat mutters a command to him that only gets him partially calm but it’s enough to get him loaded into the car for the ride to the hospital. Bucky’s already in the front seat and starting the car as he shouts over his shoulder to Nat.

“We’ll meet you there!”

She just waves at him as she gets into Wanda’s car, but Wanda doesn’t notice as she looks down at you worriedly. She takes a moment to breathe and look at your injuries carefully. She can tell you’re bleeding all over her jacket and the seat from a wound on your back that she realizes is from Rumlow removing your tracking device. She knows she’ll have to find a way to explain that to you, but for now she’s more concerned about the larger injury.

Even without being in the room, Wanda knows that Rumlow was close to you when he shot you. She’d expect nothing less from a man who in the past had always tried to do the most damage possible. The wound has bled profusely and you’ve turned sickly pale and it’s making Wanda nervous. She feels your pulse and is only worried further by how weak it is. Wanda doesn’t realize she’s crying until one of her hands finds yours and she squeezes it tightly.

“Please be okay. Please, please, Y/n I need you to be okay.”

The ride to the hospital seems too long, and she just watches you breathe for the entire time that is in reality only about ten minutes. When the car comes to a stop, Wanda jolts slightly before she gets ready to help move you. Bucky stops her short though telling her that someone will be out to grab you in a minute. She doesn’t get a chance to tell him that she’s not waiting when a door opens nearby and four people come running out of it. One’s pushing a gurney while the other two have various medical supplies in hand and the one in the front has something on a clipboard.

Wanda helps Bucky lift you out and you’re quickly deposited on the gurney and taken inside. Bucky and Wanda follow as the one nurse starts taking notes.

Wanda barely hears what she says, but later as she’s watching you get stabilized and then wheeled off to surgery, she’ll remember the words. Female, early 30s, gunshot wound to the abdomen with stab wounds to the back.

What really sticks with Wanda though when she’s standing next to Bucky in your room with the nurse, is the question she asks last.

“Any other health concerns we should know about?”

Wanda can’t think of any to save her life, and it’s after a prolonged pause that Bucky says two words that shoot through Wanda like lightning.

“She’s pregnant.”

Steve was just returning from making sure Vision’s body was taken care of when he gets a call from Nat. Apparently Rumlow had been working with someone who posed as a client from at your work to kidnap you. You disappeared and Bucky, Nat and Wanda were all going to look for you. He’d been put in charge of calling the police and filing a report against the vet assistant at your work who had helped him. You weren’t conscious to tell them the name, so he’d given the name of the clinic and then the lead doctor’s phone number for them to investigate further.

It wasn’t until he heard that you had been shot and Rumlow was dead, that Steve left the compound. It was getting late and he knew that he had to get someone to take care of Rumlow, but he left that be for a few minutes as he called Bucky.

“Steve hey.”

Steve can tell that his friend is tired and stressed just from those two words and he fears the worst as he listens to what Bucky has to say.

“How is she doing?”

Apparently, you were in surgery and it wasn’t going well at all. You had lost a lot of blood and you were at risk of kidney and brain damage if your blood transfusion didn’t work fast enough. They hadn’t heard word on anything else yet and Wanda was appropriately beside herself at the uncertainty of the entire situation. The doctors hadn’t committed to an answer on your prognosis at this point and the only thing they had told Wanda was that you’re likely to lose the baby, if you haven’t already.

Steve falls back against the driver’s seat with a curse at this news. He feels horrible about the possibility that you and Wanda, all of them really, were so excited about this only to have it ripped away so soon after. He can’t imagine how Wanda’s feeling and he tries to think of what their options are.

“Has anyone contacted Pietro?”

He and Bucky were usually on the same page and he claims to have already called him and he’s on his way.

“I’m worried about her, Steve. She’s just been sitting in silence and staring off into space. She’s not even crying.”

Steve frowns at this because he’s seen Wanda get emotional before. He’s seen the entire spectrum of positive and negative emotion from the redhead. When she was distraught, she could behave similarly to how she did when they confronted Vision. She would scream in anger and resort to violence if necessary. Steve had only seen Wanda like she is now a couple of times. The first was when the Maximoff parents had died and Wanda and Pietro became orphans. The second time was when Pietro had gotten into a horrible car accident and almost died.

This had been while you and Wanda were married and luckily, you’d been there to help her through it. Steve hopes that Pietro will be enough to get her through this. Luckily Bucky says he’s not too far away that he should get there before him. Steve decides that since you’re still in surgery, and most of the family is flocking to the hospital, he’s going to grab dinner to bring to them. Despite appreciating his presence, Wanda really needs her brother, or you. Honestly, she needs both of you right now and Steve just prays that by tomorrow she’ll still have the two of you.

Wanda’s sitting in a private waiting room staring at the wall across from her. She’s been doing this for close to two hours since you went to surgery, and the only interruptions have been from nurses that have stopped by periodically when there are updates. There has only been one real update and it was not a good one, and Wanda’s been silent ever since. She was told that you may not make it. That your body is struggling to deal with the amount of blood you’d lost. The term the doctor used was vaguely familiar to her, you’d know it for sure, but the important part of it is that you’re in trouble. They were doing everything they could, but it was up to you at this point.

The kicker was that not only was she at risk of losing you, but she’s almost certain you’re going to lose their baby. It wasn’t your fault and she wasn’t mad, at least not at you. She was angry at Rumlow and Vision, and if she could kill them again, she would, slowly. However, right now she’s just deeply depressed by the idea of losing you and your unborn child. As horrible as it feels, and Wanda’s been struggling with this for a while, she’d gladly pick you over your baby. She wants kids so badly, but not at such a high price. She wants you more than anything, including kids, and she’ll go the rest of her life just being a cat mom if you make it through this.

Pietro arrives to find an odd sight that starts with his sister. She’s staring at the ceiling now contemplating her life without you and kids, and she’s oblivious to her concerned friends that surround her. They’re equally worried about you and Wanda at this point, as they sit in uncomfortable chairs waiting impatiently for good news that may not come. Bucky’s going between staring at the floor or checking on Wanda. Nat’s looking less worried, but she’s clearly concerned as she watches both Bucky and Wanda and the door restlessly. She’s petting Boone who is just lying down on the floor whining occasionally. He doesn’t know what’s happened, but he knows that everyone seems tense, and you’re not here, so he’s upset.

Nat spots Pietro first and she sighs in relief before glancing to his sister who’s still spacing out. Bucky jumps to his feet and hugs the blonde before filling him in.

“How’s she doing?”

“They’re both hanging in there, but we could use your help.”

Pietro nods as he moves over to his sister after shooting Nat a smile. He sits down beside her, but its not until he reaches out for her that she realizes he’s there. She jumps slightly before looking to her brother with a frown.

“Sestra.”

He says a few things in their native language, and Wanda responds in a way that tells her friends what she’s saying even if they don’t understand it. She’s still frowning until Pietro says something with a smirk and a suggestive tone. She smacks his arm before rolling her eyes and leaning into the older Maximoff’s shoulder with a sigh.

“I’m tired, Piet. Tired and worried. I feel like I failed.”

Pietro knows this without her even saying it because he knows his sister well. She’s blaming herself because she let you go back to work, and someone somehow slipped by Bucky and took you. There’s a lot to be upset about, but it’s no one’s fault but Rumlow’s and Vision’s. He’s glad that they’re both dead, but he would have liked to participate in that. Still, he focuses his attention on his exhausted sister who’s only minutes away from falling asleep on him.

“You know what Y/n would say about this, don’t you?”

There’s no response despite having heard what Pietro says. Wanda just doesn’t have the energy to argue with him right now. She’s convinced that she should have done more and by not doing so, by letting you go back to work, she let this happen. As if Pietro can hear her thoughts, he shakes his shoulder to get her attention. Wanda scowls in annoyance and sits up to glare at her brother, but he beats her to it with a pointed look.

“Wh-?”

“She’d look at you like this, and tell you to shut up and you know it.”

Wanda sighs as she starts to cry at the thought of you saying this exact thing to her. You do it occasionally, when Wanda’s really stressed for no reason and you’re trying to convince her to calm down. It’s reserved for special cases, and this would certainly be one of them. Despite how it initially annoyed her that you did this, she would love to hear this from you right now. Even if she doesn’t believe it.

Wanda nods as she wipes her eyes and rests her head back on her brother’s shoulder. She sighs heavily as she looks to her brother and then her friends who are watching the exchange between siblings.

“I know. You’re not wrong.”

Pietro laughs at this before he just shakes his head and leans against Wanda with a smile.

“That’s the closest you’ll get to saying I’m right, isn’t it?”

Wanda rolls her eyes but doesn’t deny it as she closes her eyes and takes another deep breath. She smiles slightly before looking around the room at her friends. She sighs again before offering them a grateful look. She feels bad that she’s ignored them for so long while she’s been stuck in her head. She’s sure they are worried about you as well.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t thank you guys for finding her. I really appreciate it.”

They both just nodded and were about to speak up when there’s a knock on the door. Wanda immediately sits up and Bucky straightens up as well when the door opens to reveal someone in a white coat.

“Mrs. Maximoff, your wife’s out of surgery.”

Wanda stands up to meet the doctor in the middle of the room with a concerned look. She needs to know how you are doing. She assumes that he would have led with the bad news if you hadn’t made it. That said, she’s been hard-pressed in the past to find medical doctors that she’s liked. Maybe she was just picky, and she held everyone to higher standards than was typical. For this reason, she wishes she could have gotten you to the compound and Dr. Palmer.

“How is she?”

The brunette in front of her frowns slightly and Wanda feels her heart rate pick up. Pietro gets up and comes to stand next to her, but she barely notices as she’s waiting anxiously for the doctor to speak up.

“She’s still not in the clear yet, but let’s give her time before we talk any further about prognosis.”

Pietro cringes and Nat shoots the doctor a glare as Wanda stares at him in shock. Bucky crosses his arms and shoots the brunette a disapproving look, but he says nothing as Pietro speaks up. Wanda’s still trying to figure out how someone told her that you’re still not guaranteed to make it, but that he doesn’t care to discuss it at the moment.

“She’s not in the clear. Can you elaborate on that?”

Wanda’s already trying to figure out how to get you out of here and to the compound by the time the doctor dares to sigh. He might be tired, he might be annoyed, but it’s not appreciated by anyone in the room. Wanda tilts her head to listen to the doctor’s explanation and her faith in him continues to drop with each passing second.

“At the end of surgery, she wasn’t doing well, so she was put into a medical coma to give her time to recover.”

Pietro stares at him incredulously while Wanda contemplates how to kill this brunette in the most painful way possible. She wonders where this guy came from and why they weren’t seeing their regular doctor. She’ll have to ask about this soon. Nat stands up and Wanda realizes that she needs to speak up or else someone’s going to get punched.

“Is she stable right now?”

This question seemed to be more complicated than Wanda intended and the brunette just frowns as he thinks about it for a moment. Wanda’s lost patience at this point however and she’s speaking again before he can respond.

“Assuming that she’s able to stay on the same medications/treatments, would she be at risk if she went for a 30-minute drive?”

The uncertainty on his face was enough to cement Wanda’s decision and Bucky seems to know where she’s going with this as well, and he grabs his phone in preparation. Pietro is also understanding what Wanda’s getting at and he prepares to follow his sister as she storms out of the room.

“I suppose. I wouldn’t advise it, but I doubt she’d decompensate.”

That’s all Wanda needs to hear and she nods before shooting the doctor a displeased smile.

“Thank you doctor, we’ll take it from here.”

Pietro and Wanda head for the door, the former on the phone to call Dr. Palmer, while Nat and Bucky stay back to organize a pick-up team. Wanda’s going to get you out of here and under the care of someone that she trusts as soon as possible. She ignores the doctor’s protests and follows the hall to the first person she finds.

She asks where you are and she’s shown to your room immediately. She stops in the doorway when she spots you and it takes her a moment to move again. You’re hooked up to a lot of different machines and you’re still too pale for comfort as she walks further into the room to see you. Your breathing is slow and deep like you’re asleep, and she takes a deep breath before reaching out for you with a small smile.

“Hi detka, we’re going to get you out of here, okay? I’ll get you taken care of.”

Wanda squeezes your hand and just kneels at your bedside not bothering to get a chair. She sighs as she listens to your monitors and closes her eyes to try and take a breather. She vaguely hears her brother get off the phone and walk towards her, but she doesn’t pay him any mind until he starts talking. She looks up when she feels a hand on her shoulder, and she sees Pietro smiling at her.

“Christine will be waiting for us when we get there. She’ll be safe and away from that ass.”

Wanda can’t help but smile at this and she nods before standing up to hug her brother. She always gives him shit for being obnoxious and egotistical, but she knew it was really a front and that the blonde wasn’t like that. He was protective, caring and dedicated to his family above all. She loved him an embarrassing amount and she was glad that he was here with her.

“Thank you, Piet.”

By the time they all get to the compound, Dr. Palmer is already there waiting with Dr. Hale, and a few others who have been briefed on what happened to you. The team had already been in touch with the doctor you’d been treated by and they had everything they needed to know. Wanda walks in and watches you get hooked up to everything, but she’s distracted by a hand on her shoulder.

“Wanda, I’m so sorry. “

Wanda turns into the touch and sees Christine shooting her a sympathetic look. She’s pulled into a hug by the other redhead and she sighs as she allows herself to relax. You’re going to be well taken care of now, and she trusts her expertise more than anyone else’s in the field.

“Thank you, Christine, and thank you for helping.”

She nearly rolls her eyes at the younger redhead but she ends up just scoffing before waving her off. She can tell how rattled Wanda is and instead of addressing this and making her more nervous, she focuses on you and your care. She’d called your doctor and asked for all of the information he had, and after going through his surgery step by step, she determined that you were treated appropriately.

“Of course. I want you to know, that despite being an ass, Dr. Frick did all the right things.”

Wanda begrudgingly accepted this with a frown and she turned back to see that you were all set up. You were still undisturbed by the hustle and bustle around you, and Wanda was at least grateful that you didn’t seem to be in pain.

“That’s good to hear at least.”

Christine nods before looking over to you and then turning back to Wanda with an apologetic look.

“He’s smart, but unfortunately his bedside manner leaves a lot of be desired.”

Wanda actually laughs at this because it’s certainly true, and she thinks about how you’d feel about all of this. You didn’t like a good number of medical doctors that have treated you and you certainly wouldn’t have liked this one. This thought makes Wanda think of the last time you both were at the doctor and how disappointed you’d been to find out you weren’t pregnant. Felling this familiar disappointment again causes Wanda’s frown to deepen.

Realizing she’s distracted, Christine turns to Pietro before doing her best to make the redhead relax.

“We’re going to take good care of, Y/n, okay? I’ll let you know as soon as we know more.”

Despite insisting that she wasn’t going to leave your side, and that she was going to spend the night next to you in the hospital, Wanda finds herself back in her rooms. She’s since reunited with Boone who was confused and upset about his mother’s absence. He didn’t understand what was going on, and Wanda wasn’t in the mood to coddle him. She lies down on the bed before thinking about how fucked up things had gotten in the past week.

Vision was dead.

Rumlow was dead.

You were fighting for your life in a hospital bed.

All of this because Vision was a jealous, vindictive person who couldn’t let go of the idea of winning her over.

She becomes furious at the thought of everything he’d put you through this week and over the years. She thinks back to what you said about Vision harassing you without her knowing, and she wants to kick herself for not mentioning it to him. She’d been so distracted by everything else going on that she’d forgotten to address it, and now it was too late. Sure she supposed he was dead, and he wouldn’t be able to lie to you anymore. However, as far as Wanda was concerned, he hadn’t been punished nearly enough for what he did to you, but she was just going to have to live with that. She sighs heavily before she looks around the room and sees Boone staring at her from where he’s lying down on the ground. She shoots him an equally sad look before she pats the bed next to her.

“Come here, boy.”

She waits as he rounds the bed before jumping into your spot quickly. Wanda usually doesn’t let him in bed, but tonight she’ll make an exception. She doesn’t want to sleep alone right now, and Boone is the closest she’ll get to being with you at the moment. She waves him closer and he ventures across the bed to lie down next to her. He places his head on her shoulder and licks her face which makes her smile despite how gross it is.

“Thanks, Boone.”

She’s thinking about when Boone will be able to see you again when she falls asleep a few minutes later. Wanda wakes up the next morning despite being exhausted because her phone is ringing. She didn’t hear it at first. It was Boone who sat up and started to nudge her before she realized someone wanted her attention. She reached out blindly for her phone and checked the caller ID. It’s her brother and she almost considers not answering it, but then the sound of knocking motivates her enough to press the call button.

“Piet?”

“Hey, let me in. I brought you something!”

Wanda sighs in defeat and watches as Boone runs to the front door to greet the other Maximoff. She doesn’t bother with a change of clothes and heads to the door in whatever she put on yesterday with a sigh. Boone’s pawing at the door and she just nudges him out of the way so she can let her brother in.

She’s not expecting to see him there with a cake and a bottle of booze, and she just stares at him as he walks through the doorway.

“Piet, what are you doing here?”

He just smiles at her as he turns around and gestures to the items in his hand. Wanda can’t read what the cake says, but it has blue icing that spells something. She decides to worry about that later and watches as Boone greets her brother while sniffing the cake in his hand.

“I brought you breakfast.”

Wanda follows her brother to the kitchen where he sets down the cake before handing her the alcohol. It’s her favorite drink that she doesn’t have much because not only is it crazy expensive, close to $10k for a bottle, but it makes her very drunk, very quickly. The few times she had it with you had been predictably wild. She eyes the bottle with longing because she’d love to have some now, but it is only 8 in the morning, and you’re still sleeping in a hospital bed.

“Thanks, Piet, but isn’t it a little early? I should probably check on Y/n first.”

He knew that Wanda was going to say that, but he’d already checked on you and you were the same. He mentions this before deciding that he needs to tell her the truth. He suspects that Wanda already knows, but telling her now that it’s certain is something that she needs to hear so she can start to process it.

“I just came by from checking up on her. Christine told me a couple of things to pass to you.”

Wanda frowns as she looks away from the bottle that she’d taken from her brother. She sets it down on the counter and waits for Pietro to get to the point.

“What did she say?”

Pietro pulls out two of the stools at the counter and sits down before gesturing for his sister to sit. She does and she tries not to get too nervous when Pietro sighs again.

“She told me that Y/n probably needs to be asleep for a week before waking her up. She wants to make sure that she’s healthy enough.”

Wanda sighs in defeat at the thought of this. She hates that you’re so hurt and that you are in a coma. Mostly she hates that she couldn’t stop it from happening. She just wants to have you with her again, to hold you close, but she knows you need to get better. She needs to give you this time to get better despite how much she wants you awake right now. She nods in agreement because she’s not going to do anything to compromise your recovery. She’ll make do.

“Okay, what else?”

Pietro hesitates and that’s all Wanda needs to realize this isn’t good news. Not that the last bit was exactly good, but she could at least live with that. She waits as her brother finds the words to confirm her second worst fear.

“She also confirmed that Y/n is no longer pregnant.”

Wanda doesn’t respond immediately and Pietro watches as her face falls and he sees a blip of sadness before the mask is up. Wanda just shakes her head before she looks away and tries to find a distraction. It works about as well as she thought it would, and by the time she spots Boone nearby she already has tears in her eyes. She hates this. She hates it so much, and she wants to scream and hit someone, but there’s no one here but her brother.

She also knows that it won’t make anything better in the end. She might feel good for a few seconds, but the end result will be the same. She’ll feel defeated, cheated and angry for the two of you. She wipes her eyes, watching as Boone comes up to put his head on her leg with a whine. She pets him, not noticing as Pietro stands up and grabs a glass for his sister.

“I’m sorry, sestra. I know you and Y/n were excited.”

Wanda can only nod with a sad look as she takes the offered glass with a very large shot poured into it. She doesn’t drink it immediately. She looks to Boone who’s practically in her lap now before she takes a sip, not the whole thing because she doesn’t want to get drunk quite yet.

“I had a feeling. I hate to say this and make it all about me, but I--.”

Wanda trails off as she shakes her head with a heavy sigh. She doesn’t want to say this out loud. Even though she’d decided in the hospital yesterday, she still felt bad about admitting that she was more worried about you than your baby. She could live without a kid, but she wasn’t sure if she could live without you.

Pietro frowns as he reaches out for his sister’s glass to take it from her. She doesn’t seem to notice, but her hand’s shaking so badly, Pietro’s worried she’ll drop it. He sets it down before looking back to her sister who’s lost in thought.

“What is it?”

Wanda considers shaking her head and taking it back. She doesn’t want everyone to know this, and her brother is a bit of a loud mouth. That said, with something this important, he might actually be able to keep a secret.

“It’s horrible, and I hate that she lost the baby, but I care about her first and foremost. I need her to be okay. I don’t need a baby.”

Pietro nods at this and is about to tell his sister that he understands when she speaks up again. She’s starting to really worry about how you’ll react when you wake up. Will you remember everything? Will you get angry at her? She has no way of knowing and that’s stressing her out, and she hates that it’s overshadowing her fear of you not waking up at all.

Wanda doesn’t realize she’s crying again until Boone jumps up on her as she’s wiping her eyes. She pushes him back down before she turns to face Pietro. He’s already standing up and Wanda meets him for a hug as she starts to cry harder.

“I just –I don’t want her to be mad at me.”

Pietro sighs as he holds his sister tightly. He’d considered this briefly as well when he’d thought about what had happened to you. He’d known about the tracker because he’d actually suggested it when you’d first gotten hurt by Wanda’s enemies. You’d been unconscious and he’d joked about putting one in you to be able to find you if this happened again. He hadn’t realized his sister took him seriously until he asked about it a little later.

“I know you don’t, but honestly Wanda she’s not going to be happy. She might be annoyed for a while, but you know how much she loves you. She’ll get over it. You honestly just wanted to help her, and you did. You found her a lot faster than last time.”

Wanda thinks about this and despite her brother’s sound logic, she knows that she won’t be able to stop worrying about it until she talks to you. She just hopes that you feel the way that Pietro says you will.

It’s a very weird feeling being conscious of your unconsciousness. Your entire body aches and you’re glad you’re lying down because you doubt you could even hold yourself up. You’re sore and you can’t remember what happened to you immediately. You’re going in and out of consciousness when you hear people around you start talking. Their voices are muffled and you definitely don’t recognize them as you try to fight your fatigue. Sometimes you want to wake up, and other times you wish you were in a deeper sleep. You feel pangs of pain every now and then in your abdomen, and that’s how you remember what happened to you.

You remember getting shot and then it’s all a blur after that. You don’t remember anyone coming to rescue you, and you don’t remember how you ended up here. Still, you hope that Vision and Rumlow are dead, and that Wanda’s okay. You hope that she’s not too worried or too mad at you.

You miss her. A lot. You wish you could be with her and Boone and the rest of your family instead of stuck in this bed. You wonder why she hasn’t visited you yet. How long have you been here?

You don’t realize that when you dream of Wanda visiting you a little later, it’s not a dream at all.

Wanda and Boone head down to medical to visit you later that afternoon. She’d gotten drunk with her brother before sleeping it off and deciding that she’d avoided you for long enough. It wasn’t right to ignore you when you were bedridden because of her own fears. She just had to believe that if you did get mad at her, you would forgive her.

Boone’s sniffing frantically as he follows Wanda down the hall to your room. She can tell he’s looking for you, and it makes her heart break a little at the idea of him not understanding what’s going on, or why you’re down here yet again. She ignores the looks she and Boone get as she comes up on your room. She grabs Boone’s harness before telling him to sit, and despite realizing he’s found you he does as he’s told before looking to the rest of the people in the room.

She steps into the room to greet the nurses and the one doctor she recognizes. She’s still a little drunk she thinks because it takes her a solid three seconds to come up with her name, but she uses her time to think watching you sleep.

“Dr. Hale, how are you?”

Wanda looks away from you because she knows you’re about the same as last time. If not, she’s sure your doctor will tell her otherwise. She watches as the blonde smiles slightly before claiming that she’s been busy but she doesn’t mind it. She then looks to you before telling Wanda how you’ve done overnight.

“She’s been stable overnight. Nothing really new to report luckily.”

Wanda supposes this is good news and she’s about to nod in agreement when she hears Boone whine from the doorway. Dr. Hale turns first and Wanda sighs before she shoots the doctor an apologetic look.

“Sorry, he’s just been restless without Y/n. I just wanted him to see where she was.”

She nods in understanding because she knows how upset her cat gets when she leaves for too long, and she imagines it must be worse for a dog. She turns to Boone before waving to him and patting her leg in a ‘come here’ motion.

“I understand. Hi Boone. Do you want to come in?”

Boone practically runs into the room and Wanda smiles as he nudges Taylor’s offered hand with his nose before running over to you. He’s tall enough to see you but he tries to jump up on your bed. However, Wanda sees it coming, and she stops him with a frown.

“No buddy. No jumping.”

Boone whines but he doesn’t try to jump again as he licks your hand before nudging it with another whine. He moves your hand so it’s on his nose before he just sits next to you and leans into the bed. He looks very uncomfortable, but Wanda just lets him be for a moment before she takes a closer look at you. As she moves towards your bed, Dr. Hale shoots a pointed look to the nurses and they just nod before heading for the door. The blonde follows behind them with one last look as she leaves the trio alone.

“I’ll give you privacy. Let me know if you need anything.”

Wanda thanks her before she looks around the room for a chair. She sighs as she spots one on the other side of the room. She grabs it and sits next to Boone by your side with a groan. She really shouldn’t have drunk all of that this morning, but she’s honestly just wanting to sleep. She holds your hand before kissing it with a smile.

“Hi Y/n. I should apologize to you. For a lot of things.”

She stops as she looks to Boone who’s putting his paw up on the bed next to you, but not attempting to jump up. He’s watching Wanda though because he knows he’ll get in trouble if he does it, but he can’t help but want to.

“I shouldn’t have put all the pressure on you when we decided we wanted to have kids. I know you volunteered, but it put a lot of unnecessary stress on you and I’m sorry I didn’t realize it. I want you to know that I’d rather have you over kids any day. So, I need you to wake up soon, detka.”

Wanda wipes away her tears before she takes a deep breath and squeezes your hand. She touches your cheek glad to at least feel that you’re warmer than the last time she saw you.

“I know I should have told you about the tracker. It wasn’t right to do it without your consent. I apologize, and I’ll do whatever I have to, to make it up to you.”

She sits next to you in silence for a while before she decides that she needs to leave you soon. If she’s doesn’t, she’ll stay here for the rest of the day just watching you sleep and quickly getting more anxious. She knows this is just day one for you, and that you have a lot of time to go before you’ll feel better, let alone wake up. She needs to give you time to recover, and she knows hanging out here all day will be bad for everyone. She’ll be in the way, and she’ll become more depressed with each passing hour. So after about an hour of sitting with you and talking to you about what’s transpired since you were awake, she decided to leave. She thought about it a lot last night, and after drinking with her brother this morning she’s decided to pay Strucker a visit. She wants to see if he knows about or played a part in Rumlow’s involvement in Vision’s plot. She kisses your forehead before standing and returning her chair to its original place. She turns to Boone who’s still resting next to you before waving him along.

“Come on Boone. We can visit again later. We’re going for a drive.”

It takes a little more than that and a tug or two to get Boone to follow her. He whines a lot, but he eventually leaves you and follows Wanda to the elevator. She can already tell he’s moping but she’s hoping a ride in the car will make him feel better. She checks in with Bucky and then Steve to tell them of her plan, and she’s not surprised that they’re both a little caught off guard by her sudden interest in Strucker.

Nevertheless, Bucky agrees to hang out here and keep an eye on you while Steve gets ready to accompany Wanda. She’s not going to bother calling. She’s hoping that he’ll be exactly where he usually is, and after getting changed and loading Boone into the car, she sets off to find Strucker.

Taglist: @whitewidowsbite, @exclusivitymajor, @natswifeysblog15, @the-mute1

Part 11

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