#I need the ability to shut my brain off bc it’s always dead set on making me upset

[myname-isnia]

Suddenly got this really weird off-putting feeling in my chest that I usually get when I’m about to cry over something, but also with some general iffyness thrown into the mix, and for once instead of immediately giving in to it or getting pissed at my mind I tried to figure out where it came from

Turns out I would have been completely justified in getting pissed at my mind because turns out, the cause is that I thought about a fic concept I was really excited about a few months ago that I never ended up writing because I couldn’t get into the flow from the very first sentence. I thought about it for a whole five seconds and now we’re here. Fucking great

[loversandantiheroes]

Okay my whiskey fantasy. It’s a holiday, anniversary, I dunno. But he comes home. You’re in lingerie, teddy, the garter belt, the thigh high tights (I am having an absolute brain fart and can not remember the name), the high heels. you’re cooking him dinner in it. Somethin real texas for dinner. He wants to immediately fuck yiu, BUT NO he has to WAIT bc its dinner time and you worked hard. He’s waiting, and he’s watching you, you’re bending over at the stove, all that. Dinner is served, you —-

You lounge on the table to eat like a decadent and gorgeous pain in the ass, so he can see you’re whole body while he eats, forced to be patient. You’re being an absolute menace. He’s running his mouth the whole time OBVIOUSLY. Then he fucking wrecks you

No Candles Necessary

As I am a bonafide yeehonk foole (and I have the t-shirt to prove it), I could hardly resist this idea. Nonny, I hope like hell I did you proud.💗

Shameless Whiskey/F!Reader smut (18+ and yes that means you), 5.3k+ words (they just wouldn’t shut up), mildly beta’d and lightly edited.

Warnings: established relationship, unsafe food preparation practices, light foodplay (it only goes in appropriate places I swear), egregious dirty talk, improper use of a dining table, Switch!Whiskey returns, Switch!Reader by extension, fingering, oral sex (m receiving), deepthroating, PIV sex, unprotected sex (do as I say, not as I fictionalize), cream pie (bc I’m lazy quite frankly), actual pie (peach!), a little soft schmoop in between the smut just because I can.

Permatag: @missredherring​ @dovesnroses​ @astroboots​ @magpierhymes​ @alienprincesspoop​ @aasimarr​ @maythxthirstbxwithyou​ @recklesswit​

Pedro Permatag: @ithinkhesgaybutwesavedmufasa​ (sorry bab, more yeehonk) @corvueros​ @thirstworldproblemss​ @littleferal​ @krissology​ @frannyzooey​ @forallthstarsinthesky​ @princess76179​ @keeper0fthestars​ @venusandromedadjarin​

Cooking your boyfriend a birthday dinner in lingerie is probably not the best idea you've ever had. The man isn’t even home yet to witness the trouble you’ve gone to, still wrapping up a day’s work at HQ after closing out another mission. So you didn’t jump right into cooking in your frillies. No, you did the bulk of the work in sweats and a t-shirt, only stopping to change once you were down to the last stretch and the steaks had come off to rest. You've got sense enough at least to put on an apron, not wanting to risk getting hot grease on the delicate fabric or the vast amounts of bare skin the thing doesn't cover, and while you've already donned the garter belt and stockings you've left your heels up against the island counter so you can slip them on quickly when you hear the door. Still you can't quite help but feel less sexy and more silly as you stand there carving up a pair of garlic butter basted steaks while your forehead prickles with sweat and your ass, covered by neither the teddy or the apron, feels ice cold.

The things I do for love of a goddamn cowboy, you think with a shake of your head. Your whole plan is honestly on the high end of ridiculous. But then Jack is a ridiculous man, and he always seems to drag you headlong into absurdity with him. Some days it's his only saving grace - the boyish playfulness that tempers his arrogance into something charming rather than infuriating. It seems only right to be a little ridiculous for the occasion.

Once the carving’s done you give yourself a second to go over the spread and make sure everything's ready to go. It's early yet, but you're expecting to hear Jack's key in the front door any minute. He's made no mention of returning home early, of course, but he is every bit the sort that would try to surprise you on his birthday, and you’ve developed an uncanny ability to anticipate his moves ahead of time.

As it turns out, you have just enough time to slip on your heels before you hear the front door open and Jack calls out your name. You allow yourself a moment of satisfaction - you do love being right when it comes to this sort of thing - and slip into your heels.

“In here, baby,” you call back, stepping out to lean against the door frame.

“Somethin’ smells like heaven,” Jack says, rounding the corner into the dining room. He stops dead when he gets a look at you, mouth falling open in surprise. He’s hung his hat at the door, his hair already flopping over in a revolt against the slicked-back way he styles it in the morning, his suit jacket still on and buttoned. “Looks like it, too,” he finishes, the corner of his mouth curling into a grin. “I feel overdressed all of a sudden.”

You can’t help but answer that grin. “Happy birthday, cowboy,” you tell him, beckoning him over.

He all but rushes across the room to slide up against you, hands curling around your hips and playing with the tie to the apron. “Sure as hell is now,” he mutters. His palms slide down, cupping your ass to pull you in close. You bite back a hiss at the warmth, and he gives a low approving hum at the expanse of cool, bare skin. “Looks like I don’t even need to unwrap my present.”

“Patience,” you insist, pushing his shoulders back and grazing your lips over the tip of his nose as you evade the kiss he tries to pull you into. “No dessert until after dinner.”

“Dinner can wait-”

“No it cannot. I did not just spend the afternoon trying to keep hot butter off my tits so you could get impatient and let your supper get cold.” He traces a finger across your cleavage as you talk, tugging at the top of the apron to get a better look at the skin underneath. You feel the quip coming before he even opens his mouth, so you take the opportunity to give him a little push and show him just what he’s in for tonight. You bring up your hand, fingers curling under his wrist, turning his hand away and using it to pull him flush to you, the line of your thigh landing against the covered denim crotch of his jeans with just enough force to make him jolt.

“Be a good boy, Jack,” you say against his open, breathless mouth, “or you won’t get any dessert at all.”

Whiskey pouts, but his eyes have that dark glint that says he knows he’s in for trouble and he is just as pleased as punch about it. “You mean to torture a man on his birthday, honeybee?”

The smirk you give him makes his heartbeat kick up a little faster - you can feel the quickening of it in the pulse point against your fingertips. “Absolutely.” You stretch up enough for one brief, warm kiss and then step back, jerking your chin towards the dining table where there’s already two glasses of wine poured at the ready. “Sit. I’ll bring out dinner.”

He nods, tongue rolling slowly against his bottom lip. “Yes ma’am.”

His gaze is a heavy weight on your body as you walk away, raking down across so much exposed skin. You hear him groan at the sight, low and appreciative. He’s always been fond of seeing you wrapped up in lingerie, even more fond of tearing up the expensive scraps just to get you bare for him. You’d chided him about it the first time - the bodysuit he’d ripped clean in half from gusset to tit hadn’t been cheap, even though that little display had thrilled you far more than you’d ever want to admit - but he always replaced what he ruined without fail.

When you come back, divested of the apron with plates in hand, Whiskey is sitting just as instructed, elbow on the table, chin resting on his knuckles. He tracks every move you make, every sway of your hips, a playful smile hiding the effort of his restraint as you set his dinner in front of him. He barely spares the food a glance when you elect to forego your own chair and simply hop up onto the table, setting your plate near his and dragging over your glass of wine.

“You’ve outdone yourself, honeybee,” Whiskey rumbles, sliding a hand up your knee to your thigh, and he could not be talking less about the food.

You only smile, taking an unhurried sip. “Somehow I thought you’d prefer this to a new tie. How old are you now, anyway?” you tease.

“Sweet sixteen,” he says dryly, hiking an eyebrow while he squeezes your thigh for your cheek.

You chuckle. “Uh-huh, and I’m Mother Theresa.” You lean in, spearing a slice of steak on his plate with your fork and holding it out for him. “Now, I worked very hard on this, and I am going to be very disappointed if you try to skip dinner on me just ‘cause you can’t quit eyeballing your dessert. Open.”

He tips you a wink before dutifully opening his mouth, letting you feed him. The soft, indulgent moan that leaves him as his eyes slip closed is too subdued to be anything but real. “Honeybee that is gorgeous. My compliments to the chef.” 

“The chef is glad to hear it.” You swipe your thumb over his lip, collecting the sheen of juice and garlicky butter and bringing it to your own mouth, delicately sucking it off. “Could’ve used a bit more rosemary.”

Whiskey shakes his head. “Mm-mm. This is perfection on a plate, baby. I wouldn’t change a thing.”

The smile that earns him is genuine, and you bend to give him a quick kiss. He presses it, just a little, a swipe of his tongue that you open for just enough to nip at before pulling away. “Eat.” You gesture meaningfully at his plate.

All told, there isn’t actually much on it. Steak, roasted new potatoes, and asparagus with hollandaise sauce. You’ve only served up maybe half of what you’d usually set in front of him for dinner, opting for more reserved portions. It’s a favor to you both - his patience wouldn’t last through a full meal without the need for physical restraints. There’s more in the kitchen, of course, and an actual pie for dessert if you happen to get that far. You’re both bound to be hungry again after.

Whiskey tucks in, fork in his left hand while his right stays comfortably curled around your thigh, slowly creeping higher and higher until he’s playing with the lacy top of your stocking. You give him a warning tilt of your head, your own fork poised halfway to your mouth. All you get in return is those plaintive, innocent puppy dog eyes of his, but his hand doesn’t advance further.

All in all you’re rather proud of his restraint, at least until one spear of asparagus manages to drip hollandaise down onto your cleavage. Suddenly that quietly repressed hunger cracks and he’s surging up towards you, mouth half-open and tongue peaking out, ready to clean you up.

But that won’t do. Not yet. Your reflexes might not be as good as his, but they’re nothing to balk at, either. You brace yourself back on one hand, leaning away and planting one of your high heels against his shoulder to shove him back into his seat. The look on his face is priceless; mouth agape and pupils blown. 

Slowly you shake your head. “You know better, Jack.”

His eyes track up the inside of your thigh to the crotch of your bodysuit - or rather, the lack thereof - and the split strips of lace that don’t cover your mound, but frame it prettily for him. “Fuck, honeybee,” he mutters breathlessly. 

Dinner and a show was always the plan. So you take your time, dipping your finger and swiping up the stripe of creamy yellow and holding it out to him. Whiskey stares you down as he takes the tip of your finger into his mouth and sucks dutifully, his tongue plush and soft and working against the pad of your finger the same way he worries it over your clit. A rush of heat rockets through you, leaving your belly warm and a sweet tingle tripping down your spine in its wake.

Biting your lip hard to rein in the impulse to just slide into his lap, you drag your finger out of his mouth. It’s what he wants; to make you break first, to make you lose at your own game. And where’s the fun in that?

“It is your birthday, so I’m going to cut you a little bit of slack, but if you can’t mind your manners and do as you’re fucking told, you’re gonna get a lot worse than a birthday spanking, pretty boy. Now, I told you: no dessert until you finish your dinner.” There’s precious little left on his plate; a few scraps of steak, a couple potatoes, one lone spear of asparagus. You stab this last with your fork and hold it out to him. “Last chance, baby. You open your mouth for me and be a good boy, and you can have me any way you want.”

Whiskey looks dazed; seething and starved and love-struck all at once. You don’t even need to look down to know he’s hard. But he hesitates just for a moment, whether it’s deliberate or accidental you’re not really sure - sometimes the man just really wants to be punished - but in that space you see his body jerk, hunching slightly as his abdominal muscles contract involuntarily. You follow the movement with your eyes and sure enough, there he is. Full mast and straining hard against thick denim.

Smiling sweetly, you wave the fork at him. “Your choice, Jack.”

“You’re gonna be the death of me,” he says, and the roughshod timbre of his voice says it’d be a fine way to go.

Whiskey opens his mouth and takes what you give him.

You’re slow about it. Careful. Admonishing him when he tries to chew a little too quickly. Whiskey stares you down with eyes like coal seconds away from ignition. He holds your gaze while you slip another bite of food into his mouth, then lets his eyes slip down until they fix firmly on your half-exposed and already glistening cunt, and you know the moment you give him an inch he’s going to wreck the hell out of you for this.

When the last bite passes his lips he curls his hand around your ankle, squeezing. Always pushing his luck, this man of yours. You set his plate aside, glancing away like it’s no effort at all as he very methodically wipes his mouth with his napkin.

“Now can I have my dessert?” Impatience roughens the low gravel of his voice into something dangerously sharp.

You smile, leaning back on one hand. “There’s peach pie in the kitchen.”

He presses forward, left hand sliding big and warm up the inside of your thigh. The motion presses the leg you’ve used to pin him to his chair back until your knee is nearly flush with your chest, opening you up wider, the rush of air between your legs now shockingly cold against the wetness that had gathered there.

“Woman, the only pie I want a piece of is the one sitting right in front of me.”

The stretch along the back of your thigh burns, so you shift, hooking your leg over his shoulder instead. “I haven’t finished my dinner yet,” you protest cooly, reaching down to snag a strip of steak off your still half-full plate and popping it into your mouth.

Whiskey’s hands slip higher, and this time you don’t stop him, too busy sucking the buttery juices off your fingers. When the very very tips of his fingers brush the spread lace at the crux of your thighs he freezes, waiting for the rebuke, for fingers around his neck or your other heel to plant square in his chest. You consider it, sure; it’s certainly not a prospect without its merits. A man that enjoys being under your thumb is satisfying in a way that few things in life ever fully measure up to.

But honestly, you’ve worked hard enough tonight. Time to let him put in a little effort.

A tilt of your head and a curl of your foot against his shoulder is permission enough; slipping off the leash by way of a gesture, and the low smolder in his eyes blooms to a full burn. Whiskey stands to his full height, looming close enough for you to feel the heat bake off him as he shrugs off his jacket and unbuttons the cuffs on his dress shirt, rolling them up with a few quick turns of his wrists.

“Can’t let my girl go hungry now,” he hums in a voice like burnt molasses. “Lemme give you a hand there, honeybee.”

Smirking, Whiskey wraps an arm around you, brushing the tip of his nose against yours as you wriggle against solid heat of his body. His left hand wanders out of sight on the table as his lips meet yours, teasing your mouth open with the barest brush of his tongue, while his right hand trails warm and slow around your side and down and down to cup your mound.

It’s hard to believe you ever felt cold. You’re burning up now, skin flushed hot as his mouth grazes yours and breathes out: “Open up for me.”

And just like magic, you do. No input needed on your behalf; your mouth simply drops open and your legs shift wider in accommodation for him. There’s a clink of silverware and then he’s waving a fork at you, a strip of steak speared on the end. Whiskey’s eyes glitter as he pushes it into your waiting mouth. Each bite he feeds you is accompanied by a teasing dip of his fingers into your core, feeding you with his left hand while he touches you with his right. Your slickened folds part smooth and easy as he pushes his fingers inside you, a welcome but all too brief intrusion, before they trail up again to stroke at your clit. Again and again you rock your hips up, trying to encourage him to slip into you deeper, to give you a taste of the fullness and pressure of his cock, but every time his touch retreats.

You whine; a strange mix of frustration and pleasure. “Tease.”

“Takes one to know one,” he coos, the hand between your legs working faster. Heat builds quickly under his fingertips, a friction far more appetizing than anything else you’ve set on the table tonight. “You made the rules, honeybee. No dessert until after you finish supper. You do want your dessert, don’t you?”

He brings the next bite up, holds it tantalizingly close. You stretch out and he draws it back, and suddenly his fingers are rubbing a firm, determined circle on your clit. Your whole body jolts, gasping air with a pitiful little whine. There’s nothing but mischief on his face as he watches you, tongue sweeping against his bottom lip. He slows his fingers, brings the fork down again, closer this time. The food brushes your bottom lip before he pulls it away, fingers quickening again.

“Jesus,” you all but squeak. “Jack, don’t be mean.”

Whiskey gives you a considering hum, leaning forward to suck the sheen of butter off your bottom lip. “Oh darlin’ I would never,” he insists, punctuating the sentiment with a kiss that’s tender enough to be very nearly sincere if it weren’t for the fact that the motion of his hand never slows. A sweet, bright heat begins to build under his fingertips. “How could I be mean to my girl when she worked so hard for me, hm? I’m just paying that back in kind is all. You wanna come on my fingers, baby, you can do that all you like. I’ll make you come ‘til those pretty little legs can’t do much more than shimmy. You know I can. But you ain’t gettin’ nothin’ else until you clean your plate like a good girl.”

“H-ha-ah, fuck-how much more?”

He grins devilishly. “Just this last bite.”

“Oh you f-fucking jackass!”

Whiskey laughs. “Guilty as charged. Open up, baby, take what I got for you.”

He pushes the last bite past your lips and immediately delves his fingers into your warm and waiting cunt. The breath shudders out of you, fingers digging into the tablecloth as you try to hang onto enough composure to remember to chew and swallow. He’s slow for a moment, pumping and curling his fingers gently while he watches you eat. There’s a clink of silverware as he discards the fork and puts his arm around you, pressing his lips against your forehead.

“Good girl,” he murmurs sweetly.

Mouth empty now, you nudge your nose against his chin, wrapping your arms around his neck. “Jack-”

And then his grip becomes determined. The fingers inside you flex, the heel of his hand pressing hard against your clit and all you can do is cry out against the soft skin of his neck and hang on for dear life while he works you up and over the edge with shocking speed.

Trembling, you lock your legs around him as you come down, dragging his collar aside to bite lazily into the place where his neck and shoulder meet.

“Fuck,” he groans, hips rutting up against the back of his hand between your legs. “How do you want me, honeybee?”

That earns him a breathless laugh, goosebumps raising along his neck. “It’s your birthday, Jack. What do you want?”

Whiskey’s eyes drop to your mouth and he makes a considering sound, pulling back to suck you delicately off his fingers. “I think I want your mouth. And then I think I want to fuck you right here on this table until that divinely sweet little pussy wrings me fucking dry. Sound good to you, honeybee?”

“That can be arranged.” His eyelids flutter as you reach down to his zipper, not even bothering with his belt before you reach inside his jeans and the button fly of his boxers to tug his cock free, cupping your fingers to draw his balls out, too.

You move to stand and he shakes his head, caging you in. “No. Not on your knees, baby. On the table. I wanna see you all spread out for me. My pretty little present.”

He helps you. Sweeps your hair back as you lie flat on the dining table, scooting back to let your head hang just a bit. It’s not exactly comfortable. The edge of the table digs into your neck a bit, and the way the blood rushes to your head is not entirely pleasant either. But you watch Whiskey pace around you to take his place in front of your waiting mouth, cock bobbing and just barely beginning to leak for you, and you feel a gorgeous rush of heat at the sight.

Whiskey slides his palm up your stomach to cup one barely-covered breast. “Gorgeous,” he mutters, squeezing. “Absolutely beautiful.”

“Jack.”

“I know, darlin’, I know. But my God you’re a picture.” He cups your cheek, absently brushes the corner of your mouth with his thumb before sliding his hand back to give your head a little support. “Open up for me, angel.”

And once again, you open up for what he gives you. The angle makes it strange, the topography of Jack’s body less familiar as he slips into your mouth, your tongue dragging wet and slow over foreign terrain. The taste of him, hot skin and the tang of bitter salt, that you know well enough. You close your eyes at it, bring your hands up to his hips to tug him slowly forward and listen to the way he moans.

“That’s my girl,” he whispers, breathless and a little awe-struck. “Jesus fucking Christ. You spoil me, baby. Sweet as fucking honey, my god.”

A light touch against your breast makes you shiver, goosebumps raising as it draws lightly over your skin. A single fingertip, sliding the lace of the bodysuit aside to bare your breasts to the chill of the room and the warmth of Whiskey’s hands.

He mutters sweet things as he begins to move; sweet, tender, unconscionably filthy things. All the things you do to him. Do for him. The rocking of his hips is gentle at first, feeding you his cock inch by cautious inch. When he hits the back of your throat he pulls back on reflex, but the light scrape of your teeth and the sudden tightness of your grip on the plush meat of his ass sends him forward again. The angle eases the motion, and you relax into the pressure as he pushes in and in and...oh.

You feel the resistance at the back of your throat give gently; strange, but not uncomfortable. Above you, Whiskey lets out a pained groan.

“Shit. Oh shit yes, honeybee. Take it. Ohhh s-shit. Take all of it. Every goddamn inch. Fuck.”

And then his hips are flush with your mouth, the soft skin of his balls pressed up against your nose. Panting, he wraps a hand around the stretched column of your throat, swearing breathlessly. He moves, a small, careful thrust, and you can feel the tremor that ripples through him at the feeling.

“Just a little more baby,” he mumbles, pulling back until just the head of his cock rests within the warmth of your mouth. You suckle at it, working it eagerly with your lips and tongue while you breathe raggedly through your nose. Your hips jut up into thin air on their own accord, just as eager for him as your mouth is.

“I got you, honeybee.” The hand at your neck slips down, skimming over skin and lace until he finds your clit. The first touch jolts you, your cry stifled on his cock as you shudder up against him. “Good girl. I got you, baby. Jack’s got you. Keep going. Just a little more. Just a little more and then I’ll fill you right on up. Fuck my sweet girl’s brains right out of her head. Prettiest fuckin’ thing I ever fuckin seen, baby, holy fuck.”

You moan something against him - pleasure, acquiescence, god only knows - but the sound of it is lost as his cock slides steadily back into your mouth. The pressure in your head is distracting, tears prickling your eyes when he pushes in deep, but the stroking of his fingers and the feel of him in your mouth, sliding hard and slick and effortlessly down your throat is far more consuming than the discomfort.

He rocks into you. Fucks into you. Moans and gasping praises falling thick and fast from his lips as he moves. You don’t need to feel the way his balls draw up tight to know how close he is, how tight he’s riding the line between what he wants to do and what his body wants to do. You’re lost in it all the same; his pleasure and the fraying thread of his restraint. Your own pleasure, building quick and low and locking down the muscles in your thighs until they tremble. You float in it, overwhelmed and dizzy, until, very suddenly, you break.

Whiskey curses, pulling back to listen to you cry out, to let you curl up and clutch at him as he pants above you, muttering broken, desperate please of: “yes god yes honeybee all of it, gimme all of it, every last bit.”

You’re a wreck in the aftermath; pliant and limp, face teary and slick with spit and precome. He draws you up, wiping your face with a clean napkin before pulling you into a kiss that steals away whatever remained of your breath. He gathers you up, turns you until you can wrap your still-tingling limbs around him. Nudges his hips against yours, his wet cock dragging against slick skin and fragile lace.

“You okay, baby?” he asks, trailing soft kisses over your face.

You have to clear your throat before you can respond, the sound of it harsh and ragged like an engine turning over. “Y-yeah. Yeah I’m good. Dizzy, but good.”

“You ain’t the only one, honeybee. Almost didn’t make it in time. Wanted to fill up that pretty mouth so bad. You just about did me in.”

He laughs and you join him, breathing ragged joy into each other’s lungs.

“Still want me to fuck you?” The question should be coarse, but somehow isn’t. Not with his sweat-slick forehead pressed to yours and his lips ghosting kisses against your mouth with every breath.

“So sweet,” you mutter, combing your hands through his hair.

“LIke hell,” he scoffs, holding you tight to his chest. “I ain’t and you know it.”

“You are to me,” you insist, pressing a kiss against the tip of his nose. He smiles, softens everywhere but that place that throbs with impatient heat against you. “Now fuck me, pretty boy.”

A flash of a grin is the only warning you get before he’s hooking his arms under your knees and pulling you to the edge of the table. “Yes ma’am,” he says obligingly, planting a hand between your breasts to push you back against the table as he lines himself up, sliding into you with one smooth, achingly deep stroke. 

You moan, knees drawing up as his hips meet yours and he fills the space inside you that’s been aching for him all day. Whiskey lets out a groaning sigh, leaning into you like he wants to bury himself whole inside you. He hoists one of your legs up against his chest, nuzzles the inside of your knee while he tries to find his breath again. The length of him inside you is rigid as steel and blindingly hot, still so close to his own end that he has to wait, worrying his teeth over your skin, until the urge to just rut against you like an animal until he comes finally passes.

And when it does, when he opens his eyes at last, he looks down at you with a dazed, hungry smile. He presses a kiss to the tip of his finger and brings it down to your lips.

“Love you, honeybee.”

Heavy-lidded and so wonderfully full, you kiss his finger and arch your back. “Love you, too, cowboy.”

And that’s the last intelligent thing you manage to say. Finally - finally! - Whiskey fucks you, each pounding swing of his hips making the china rattle like nervous teeth. Your arms strike out, curling and flailing, trying to find something to grab onto as he fucks you. The heel of your hand strikes one of the wine glasses and sends it tumbling to the floor where it shatters. The breath leaves your body in tiny bursts with each impact; little monosyllabic cries punctuating each one.

“Fuck, that’s my girl,” Whiskey murmurs. He cups your breasts, thumbing the pebbled sharpness of your nipples before his hands slide lower, finding the deep notch of the bodysuit between them. “Wrapped up so pretty for me.”

The lace tears away like it’s nothing, a clean rip down the center. Oh well. He’ll buy you another.

Whiskey folds over you, pulling you down closer so he can get an arm under your back, his hand grasping the back of your neck and pulling you up to meet his mouth. He’s still wearing his tie, the drape of fabric laying cool against your chest. Blessedly he’s not wearing his usual belt buckle. Foresight or oversight you’re not quite sure, but you’re grateful all the same as he grinds into you, a press of cold metal and leather against your belly.

He’s not going to last long, but it hardly matters. You’re too worked up, two orgasms down already, cunt so swollen and sensitive it’s hardly an effort to get you there again. But the feeling of him inside you turns that bright burn into something lower, deeper. Something that makes your muscles lock and tremble, straining up against him and gasping into his mouth.

“Jaaaack,” you whine, arms locked around his neck.

“Yes, baby,” he groans, voice quivering with every thrust. “Fuck yes I’m right there too, c’mon. Come with me, honeybee, come with me.”

His rhythm falters, grinding deeper and deeper, and all that strained tension in your body snaps like a rubberband. You sob, grabbing fistfuls of his dress shirt, twisting and jerking as you come apart under him.

All Whiskey can do is growl as you bear down on him, gritting a litany of “yes, yes, fuck yes, god yes, that’s my girl that’s my girl that’s my fucking girl.” And then he’s gone, too, driving into you with a sudden jolt and crying out against the side of your neck as he comes.

You’re holding him too tight, clutching him to you as you both lie there, panting and shuddering, a spreading stain of red wine pooling next to your head.

“Jesus,” he whispers, tries to shift up to find your mouth, but even that amount of drag on his oversensitive cock is enough to make him hiss and jerk. “Fuck.”

“Mm-hm,” you agreed dumbly.

Whiskey lets out a growling hum, smoothing your hair. “You good, honeybee?”

You trail kisses up to his ear, still breathless. “What do you think?”

He wheezes a laugh. “I think I gotta replace a lot more than your frillies this time.” The laugh turns giddy, and Whiskey presses his forehead against your temple. “And I think I’m hungry.”

“Pie in the kitchen,” you mumble, too drowsy to do much more than nuzzle into the damp tangle of Whiskey’s hair.

“What kind?”

“Peach.”

He hums, smiling drowsily. “My favorite.”

You give a slow nod. “I know. Happy birthday, Jack.”

He kisses you, slow and sweet. “Best I ever had,” he murmurs.

[in-tua-deep]

idk if you still do au ideas but what if delores was a real person in the apocalypse? how it woul dbe done i have no idea but i love all your aus and thought it would be cool

okay okay I don't tend to go for real!Dolores aus admittedly because I find her much more compelling as what she is: a reflection of five himself and a symptom of his crushing loneliness

but i started thinking about it and you know what?? i think five deserves a little socialization, as a treat

so say like, 0.5% of the population is resistant to abilities. Allison would really struggle to rumor them, Five wouldn't be able to jump with them, and, most importantly, whatever the fuck Vanya's ability does has like, reduced damage or something

and the og apocalypse isn't the moon apocalypse, so let's say that it was pure waves of Vanya's powers that fucked over the earth

so 0.5% of the population survives the apocalypse. though, let's be honestly, the real number is a lot smaller than that. People who might have survived Vanya's initial power wave (miraculously) did not survive buildings crushing them or survive the car/plane/bus/train/other transportation crashes or survive being left alone when they are too young to reliably look after themselves, or the variety of other problems that come with 99.5% of the population dying at once

So, Five arrives in the apocalypse and is met with ruin and fire and a whole lot of dead people. He finds his siblings, but it doesn't matter. They're dead. He doesn't even recognize them at first, these strange grown-ups who he identifies not by their faces but by the umbrellas on their wrists that match his own

As he realizes the full impact of his situation, he hears a voice that says, very succinctly, "holy shit!"

It's a girl a few years older than Five himself, maybe 15 or 16, and she is very excited to see another survivor.

And here's where I u-turn this au around bc i'm not all that interested in real!Dolores, but I would be down to talk about Five meeting survivors in the apocalypse, because if Dolores is real I don't buy no one else survived.

So Dolores shows up and see a Literal Child crying over the corpses of his family and assumes that Five is a fellow survivor, and she immediately grabs him up. Five is incoherent with grief at this point anyway, so he doesn't even protest when she basically hauls him away from the bodies. She's babbling at him, but he doesn't really hear anything she's saying

And then she takes him to her dad

(Why not, let's have the 1% potentially be a heritable thing)

and her dad, let's call him just some dad name. like Rick. it has been a fucking WEEK for him, okay. he had his daughter with him, his ex-wife is on the other coast for her work, and by some miracle he survived the apocalypse and so did his child, and he's been wracking his brains trying to figure out what the fuck to do next

and then his daughter shows up with a traumatized thirteen-year-old in tow

now rick is a good dude. he's a dad. they get out of five that his name is five ("what the fuck" dolores mouths to him over five's shoulder and rick can't help but agree) and the bodies he found were his siblings ("Dad and Ben and Vanya weren't there though," this child cries desperately and rick feels his own heart clench in response, "They might still be alive!")

"We can look for them." Rick assures his new adopted child, because he is an adult in a fresh apocalypse and this kid has presumably lost everything he's ever known (more than rick even knows at the time)

and they do. They each get wagons and they go out and find supplies and look for other survivors. Five is... surprisingly helpful and also surprisingly docile as he is able to rely on Someone Else to give orders while he attempts to (dissociate) process what the fuck has happened

and here's the thing: Five prides himself on being independent, sort of. He's independent for a child soldier, but he's used to taking orders from a male authority figure and Rick happens to be just that

The first time that Five does something dangerous and Rick yells is a revelation

(Rick isn't sure if he hopes that Five's dad is alive or not, because if they find that man alive then Rick might just kill the jackass himself. Also like, Five is bizarrely knowledgeable out survival skills, like way too knowledgeable about it, which is helpful for them but also very concerning)

they find a newspaper and Five finds the article that mentions his father's recent death ("Huh. Heart attack." Five says, and there is no emotion in his voice)

(Years later, years later, Five and Rick talk. "I don't think I wanted to find him, either." Five admits, softly because Dolores is asleep, "I think I was more scared of finding him alive than I was of finding his body. He would've been so mad at me, I think.")

this newspaper is how Rick and Dolores find out about Five being Number Five, Umbrella Academy Missing Person

"Dude, what the fuck." Dolores says, wide eyes, "You're like, thirty?"

"I'm thirteen." Five says, and then checks the date on the newspaper again, "Also I think I would technically be 29 if I lived through all of it, 'cause it's April and my birthday is in October."

"You... time travelled?" Rick asks, which is honestly the more relevant question, "Can you go back?"

And Five just,,, crumples on himself. Because he tried, he tried really hard. It didn't work. "I'm gonna figure it out. I'm gonna go back, I'm going to save them."

That, Rick thinks, is a lot of weight to put on one person's shoulders, but especially the shoulders of a child.

"Alright." Rick says, because what else can he say after finding out his new child has superpowers and is from like, 2004? "What do you need?"

("Oh my god I have so many memes to teach you." Dolores says later, reverently. Five blinks in confusion and Rick mentally prepares himself for the recitation of so many vines)

And it's easier, somehow. Five sometimes feels like it's a betrayal, but he settles into apocalypse life with an ease that surprises him.

He lets Rick fuss over him and help tie his scarf securely around his head every morning before he sets off on supply runs with Dolores. And they're kids! Five has never had a friend before, and Dolores is funny and smart and she's struggling just as much as he is.

"I don't know if my mom's alive." She says to him, in solidarity when he checks the face of every corpse to see if they're Vanya.

Five is practical in the way only a child soldier can be. He's economical with the room in their wagons, carefully examining what might and what might not be useful.

Dolores, on the other hand, constantly takes up space with what Five sees as useless shit.

"Excuse you," Dolores says, shoving a game of monopoly, the entire discworld series, and a pack of glitter gel pens into her wagon, "These are absolutely vital apocalypse supplies."

She challenges him, plays with him in a way no one ever has. "I bet you I can find more batteries today than you can," She grins at him, "Winner gets to pick dinner first?"

"You're on." Five says, directly before Dolores pulls two packs of 24 AA batteries from behind her back, like a cheat.

Dolores makes him take a ten minute break when they find a playground that has been mostly not-destroyed. They rummage around kids backpacks and mother's handbags for some good loot, too numb to corpses to even be bothered all that badly about the corpses they belong to.

"I'm getting on the swings." Dolores says when Five starts making noises about moving on, "I haven't been on a swingset in ages."

"What's the point?" Five grumps.

"Don't be sour because you can't swing as high as I can!" Dolores laughs, getting higher and higher as the swings creak ominously.

Five grumpily gets into the other swing and grudgingly kicks himself back and forth until Dolores takes pity on him and teaches him how to properly move his legs and body to get higher and higher.

Dolores jumps from the swing seat and lands with a flourish and smile. Five jumps out of his seat and then jumps, warping right in front of Dolores and making her yell and hit at him in outrage. Five smiles the widest he has all week.

This is how Five grows up in the apocalypse, with Dolores teasing him into taking breaks and leaning over his shoulder to look at his math and scandalizing him by stating that she'd only just started on matrices in her own high school math class.

Every night they huddle around Rick while he picks up whatever book Dolores picked out that day because it is a travesty that Five has never read hunger games or whatever, and then they read together because it would be a genuine blood bath if they all took turns. The first time Five accidentally mentioned a spoiler and Dolores genuinely considered murder was the birthday of this tradition

Some days the air is too smoky or there are dust storms or it's just plain too dangerous to go out, and they all stay in. Dolores regales Five with stories about public school, and Five tells them about his siblings.

Then they all cry

"I shouldn't be crying." Five sobs.

"Shut the fuck up," Dolores sobs back, "You literally watched me lose my shit over remembering my shitty eighth grade dance and listened to me sob-sing toxic for like four hours."

"In fairness I also wished you would shut up then."

"Let me hug you or I will start singing songs that I only remember the chorus for again you absolute fucker."

"I could always sing some -"

"No, Rick/Dad."

And Five grows up. Rick shows him how to shave very carefully in front of cracked mirrors. Dolores teases him every time his voice cracks. Rick tells Five in no uncertain terms that he loves and cares for him, and that Reginald was a little bitch. There are a lot of heartfelt conversations around that, honestly. Rick telling Five that he and the siblings deserved better, that they were children and deserved to have a childhood.

And that he has faith in Five. Rick and Dolores both do, they bring him back paper and pens and pencils and chalk and anything Five can use to write equations. They poke around any libraries for books on theoretical mathematics and quantum physics. Rick and Dolores go out scouting for food while Five stays home and can work longer.

They also make him take breaks, make sure that he's looking after himself.

They're a little better off than OG!Five when it comes to food, because some animals survive. Enough that Rick figures out how to hunt. Five is the first one to each bugs, and even though Dolores makes faces they all start eating bugs as well.

"Pretty sure there's loads of cultures that eat bugs." Rick says grudgingly, wondering if he should try stirfry the cockroaches and if that would improve the taste. "There's even, uh, cricket flour or whatever, right?"

"Plus you eat like, five spiders a year when you're asleep." Dolores says cheerfully, just to watch her dad's face scrunch up in displeasure.

"That doesn't sound true, but I don't know enough about spiders to dispute it." Five mutters, and Dolores gives him such a proud look that it makes him roll his eyes.

They're in their thirties when Rick dies. He's out foraging and hunting, and the rubble he's standing on gives way and he ends up with a gash in his leg. He manages to stop the bleeding, but the world is filthy and they don't have any antibiotics.

He gets an infection.

"It's okay." He tells both of his kids, "It's okay. I'm just so glad that you guys have each other, y'hear? I'm so glad."

"It's not okay." Five says, voice thick and choked, "It's not."

"Yeah, well, you're going to figure out how to go back, right? Go back in time and save everyone. Then I'll have never died, right?" Rick smiles, "And even if you don't, I'll be waiting for you on the other side and we'll see each other again anyway."

"I'm going to fix it."

"I know. I have faith in you, Five." Ricks says honestly, and that's more than Reginald ever said.

They sit quietly together while Dolores is out scavenging. They've been taking turns sitting with Rick.

"I won't remember you, in the past, will I?" Rick says rhetorically, but Five answers anyway.

"I don't think so."

Rick hums, "Well, doesn't matter. If you need help in the past, you come to me, y'hear?"

"You won't remember me."

"Doesn't matter. You come find me, and you tell me your crazy story until I believe you, and then I'll help you." Rick says firmly, "You're family. You're my son. Timelines? Don't matter. If you need help, with anything, even if it's just with - with filling out a bowling team or something -"

"I have never been bowling in my life and you know it." Five interrupts, but it makes him laugh just a little bit which was clearly Rick's intention.

"Well who knows what you'll get up to in the past! You'll be able to go bowling, you know. Get to wear those uncomfortable shoes. Hey, you go far enough back maybe you can go to Dolores's tenth birthday party and put me out of my misery."

"Was she bad at bowling?"

"Oh, she was wiping the floor with me. No contest."

"Honestly, that sounds absolutely accurate."

"Shut up, bowling just wasn't my sport. Regardless, the point was that I'm giving you a free pass to come and get me. Because I know you, I know how you think." Rick brings up his hand to tap his finger against Five's forehead, "You get it into your head that you need to go it alone, take it all on your shoulders. I'm telling you that if you do that I'll somehow manifest my memories and come smack you over the head for being stupid, you hear?"

"I'm not dragging you into anything." Five says firmly, "I'll have my siblings."

"Who were also children." Rick points out. "And dragging? Dragging is such a strong word for a volunteer."

"A volunteer who won't remember volunteering." Five shoots back.

Rick just shrugs, and then winces when the movement jolts his bad leg. "Five, I'm going to be honest with you here. And sappy. Can you handle a bit of sappiness for a minute?"

"No."

"Well too bad. Can't leave a dying man, you'd feel too bad. So you're stuck with me. But you listen good, okay? Because you aren't dragging me into anything. Whatever life you have, I want to have a part of that. Because you're my son. Wherever you are, whatever you do, I want to help because you're family. What you'd be doing by leaving me out of it is depriving me of someone I love, depriving me of knowing one of the best kids I've ever known."

"Shut up." Five says, choked.

"Nope, it's sappy time." Rick states, "Maybe asking you to come find me is selfish, but I don't care. No matter what version of me exists, I want to be in your life."

"My life is a walking joke, why would you want any part of that?"

"It has been my privilege to watch you grow up. To help you. To be here for you. Of course I'd want to be there to watch you grow up the rest of the way."

"But -"

"Shut up, just let me tell you that I am so proud of you. You never give up, and your heart is so big. You love so much and so loudly, and it's been the highest honor of my life to be included in your family."

Five pauses for a moment to collect himself before simply saying - "You're the best dad I've ever had."

Rick snorts, "Considering my competition, I'd sure hope so. That bar was so low old Reggie was practically limbo dancing with the devil. Now get over here and give an old man a hug."

They don't bury Rick, when he dies. They don't have time and the ground is too hard and they don't have the heart to move him. Instead the pack everything up and seal him in the shelter they'd lived in.

Dolores pulls out a bottle of ancient nail polish and painstakingly writes Rick's name on the wall with his birth year and an approximate current year. They aren't 100% sure though, since time blends together out in the apocalypse, but it's something.

They continue by themselves. They get older.

Dolores jokingly calls him her husband because the way his face scrunches up makes her cackle. They see other people very occasionally, usually passing through. Usually groups. Dolores and Five get to flex their hosting skills, though more than one group declines their cockroach stirfry.

("It's a family recipe." Five says with amusement in his eyes that usually manages to drown out old grief.)

"Jeeze, that kid couldn't have been older'n twenty-three." Dolores complains, "Makes me feels positively ancient."

"They wouldn't have known any world 'cept for the apocalypse." Five muses, pouring some boiled water into wine glasses because they might be living in the apocalypse but they can be fancy.

"Do you ever think about that?" Dolores asks, turning to him with no judgement, just curiosity. "When you go back, you'll be like, erasing them from existence."

Five shrugs, "Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe this place will just split off into an alternate timeline."

"Maybe none of this is real." Dolores says, amusement coloring her voice. "Maybe you aren't talking to a real person at all. Maybe this is just a symbol of your insanity and cracked mind."

"Dolores, I literally have a scar where you stabbed me. Did I somehow manage to stab myself in the back?"

"Scraped you, I scraped you. By accident."

"So you maintain." Five says haughtily, swirling his water in his wine glass like a pretentious prick.

"I could totally be fake. You don't know my life."

"I know way too much about you, Dolores. Like, way way too much." Five scoffs, because Dolores and him have literally no secrets from one another at this point. Five even knows the truth behind what happened at Janet Scranton's thirteenth birthday party. Like, he said, way too much.

"Maybe you made it up. Maybe that's why you know so much."

"Dolores, I'm going to be honest with you right now." Five presses the tips of his fingers to his chin, "If you were a figment of my imagination, you would be so much better at math."

"Hey!" Dolores squawks indignantly, "I didn't even get to finish high school you pretentious prick!"

"Neither did I!"

"You didn't even go to high school, you brat."

"I'm fifty-two I think I've outgrown 'brat.'"

"Tell that to your attitude." Dolores says haughtily, "You're still younger than me."

"Won't be when I go back in time." Five says cheerfully, completely ignoring Dolores's venomous look.

"That's cheating."

"Sucks to suck." Five says loftily, taking another sip of his water.

Sometimes they talk about The Plan, with capital letters. What Five is going to do when he goes back in time, depending on when he pops out. Is he going to adopt his siblings? What about Reginald?

"You don't think I could kill Reginald?" Five says, holding a hand to his chest in mock offense.

"I think you should let me do it. I'll even give you control of tonight's music if you do."

"What are you doing to do? Bite his ankles? What if you're like, seven or something?"

"All the better to get away with it since I'll be too young to convict or whatever."

"Pretty sure that's not how the law works."

"How would you know? Just for that I'm playing Istanbul on repeat again."

"I don't know why you think that's a threat. That song slaps."

It takes a few more years before Five is close enough that the Commission comes to interfere. Because that's what I think happened - Five was getting too close and they stepped in because they might as well distract the man as much as they can with missions, right?

So the Handler shows up. And she offers Five a job, telling him that they have the ability to travel through time. And Five - hesitates.

"Give me some time?" Five asks, and the Handler graciously gives him 24 hours.

And he and Dolores talk it over, because now that his goal is more in sight than it has ever been and Five is scared.

"What are you waiting for? You have the chance to see your siblings again." Dolores says patiently.

"Yeah," Five says, and what he doesn't say is clear. But I won't see you.

"Five." Dolores says, and she cradles his face between her palms like he is something precious, "I have had so much time with you already. More than I would have ever. We have been so lucky, to have this time. How can I demand more than what we have already been given?"

"When have you ever not demanded the world, Dolores?" Five asks, his own hand coming up to cover Dolores's own.

"We've had decades together, Five. We're getting old. I was always going to lose you, one way or another. Nothing lasts forever."

"I don't want to lose you."

"I know. But if I had to choose a way, if I could decide where our story ends, this would be it. Letting you go, because this way you get to live. You get to see your family again. You get to save the world. I could ask for nothing more than for you to get your happy ending."

Five removes Dolores's hand from his cheek so that he can cradle it between them, "I'm happy here with you. I've never been happier. Isn't that silly? That I was happier in the apocalypse?"

"I bet killing Reggie would make you happy." Dolores laughs rustily.

"One day you're going to see the mysterious disappearance of a famous billionaire in the paper and feel a twinge of satisfaction and now have a clue why." Five laughs as well, shaking his head.

Dolores pats Five's hands, "Five, look at me. We've had our time. And you're going to give me even more of it. More time with my father. More time with my mother. I'll never know it, but you'll have saved me."

"What if this is - what if this is an alternate reality? What if I leave you here alone?"

"Then you'll be saving a 15-year-old girl from the same fate as me. Because as much as I love you, as much as I have loved this time we have had together, this is still an apocalypse. This should never have happened, and if you have a chance to go back and prevent it, then I want you to take that chance with both hands."

"Even if it means leaving you alone?"

Dolores smiles at him, "I'm not going to be alone. Far too many creepy crawlies in the apocalypse for that."

"Shut up, I'm being serious."

"Hmm." Dolores hums consideringly, "Maybe I'll head North, to that new settlement that last group said they'd heard word of. Sure they'd find some use for an old woman who's survived this long in the wilderness."

"You can have my half of the record collection." Five says, pulling her against him into a hug that she easily returns.

"As if I wouldn't have stolen them as soon as you left." She scoffs, but it's a little wet, and Five pretends his own eyes aren't leaking tears.

When The Handler comes back, Dolores gives him another hug. She also slips something into his pocket - some photos. They'd taken it a year into the apocalypse, when Dolores had found an ancient looking polaroid camera and towed it home despite Five's protests about practicality. The photos are worn and faded at the edges, but the smiles on Five's little apocalypse family's faces are undeniable.

"You'll have to see if they magically fade when you change the timeline." Dolores whispers to him with a grin, "Like in the movies."

"Okay." Five whispers back.

"You have the list of movies to watch, right?" Dolores says. Five rolls his eyes and nods because he wrote the list last night into his Vanya-book while Dolores hovered over his shoulder and critiqued his handwriting.

"And you promise to try a proper non-expired twinkie at some point?"

"That I do not promise. I think even looking at one would make me lose my lunch. I have twinkie-trauma."

"Shut up and get going." Dolores says, because the Handler is starting to tap her foot impatiently.

And off Five goes to become an assassin. Though - he's much more gentle this time. He's careful, he doesn't kill children and he usually takes jobs that don't require killing at all. He distracts and manipulates events as much as he can without killing.

He's actually much more well socialized, thanks to Rick and Dolores. Less feral child and more determined man on a mission.

Which is why he's so frustrated when he finally, finally manages to get the equations to work and falls through and falls - directly back into his stupid thirteen-year-old body.

"Shit." Five says, loudly, and revels in the surprised look on his siblings faces.

He strides into the kitchen, and they all follow him like ducklings. They look exactly the way they did when they died.

"Wow this is actually way harder than I thought it would be." Five muses, looking at their dead faces. But as Dolores would say, life is hard but you have to keep on trucking sometimes. "Whatever, what's the date?"

"Five, where have you been?" Diego demands, looking irritated. It makes Five snort in amusement.

"The future. The past. If you want like, an exact list of dates you'll have to hold your horses. I spent like, two weeks in Peru once. No souvenirs though, unfortunately."

They look taken aback, like they didn't expect Five to have quite this much sass. Oops. That is definitely Dolores's influence. Or maybe he was always a little asshole. In fairness, what teenagers aren't tiny assholes? He has an excuse.

"What the fuck does that mean?" Diego's eyebrows are furrowed in anger. It kind of takes Five aback for a second, because he remembers a Diego who stutters when he argued.

"When did you learn the fuck-word?" Five asks, raising an eyebrow before her can help it, "Grace ought to wash your mouth out with soap."

Diego immediately goes red, "Shut up!"

"Wow you're so easy to rile up. Aren't you like, twenty-something? Actually, I could figure out for myself how old you are if you gave me the date."

"I'm twenty-nine." Diego growls, like that was the point.

"Haunting!" Five says cheerfully, because that means there is way less time than he would like, narrowing his time down to a six month window.

It's extremely funny how his cheer makes all of them make faces.

It's Klaus who leans forward, "Why do you need to know?"

Klaus's face is open and curious and - (looks exactly like he did when Five found him all those years ago) - and Five can't help but answer him. "The world end on April 1st, 2019. No it isn't an April Fools joke, yes I have heard that joke like a million different times. I just want to know how close I landed so I can, you know, start working on how to fix that."

"Woah woah woah, roll it back." Allison says, holding a hand up, "What?"

"The apocalypse occurs on April 1st, 2019." Five says, slowly. "I have traveled from afar to prevent this from happening, because like, everyone dies."

"Everyone?" Vanya says weakly from the side.

She's clearly expecting to be ignored, so Five turns his head to address her directly by wiggling his hand back and forth a little. "Sort of. Like, not too many people survive at all. A handful of the human population, you know."

"But you survived?" Diego recovers admirably, if bitingly.

"Well, no." Five says rolling his eyes, "Wouldn't you just know it, Klaus here has managed to figure out a new ability!"

Everyone turns to look at Klaus, who immediately holds up his hands like he's being arrested or something, "I did not!"

"Wonderful! Now that we've established that I'm alive -"

"Why should we trust a word you say?" Luther says for the first time, looking pensive.

Five blinks, genuinely taken aback. "Because... I'm your brother? Because I can clearly and obviously time travel? Like, yeah, it would have been more convenient if I'd arrived in like, my old-body for proof-purposes, but like. I mean. Thirteen is still a pretty convincing age to be to prove time travel considering if I hadn't, I would be like, almost thirty."

"Roll it back again." Allison says firmly, "What do you mean by 'old body'?"

"Great question!" Five says pointing at Allison and smiling. Everyone looks at him weird again, and Five takes a moment to wonder if they've ever experienced positive reinforcement. Knowing Reginald, probably not. "Wait! Is Reggie alive? Wait, no, answer that in a second. Uh. When I time traveled I fucked up my body I guess, I was like, old. White hair and wrinkles-type old from spending decades in the apocalypse. But I fucked up the calculations and got booted back to my thirteen-year-old body, I guess. How, I have no idea."

"What?" Vanya says, still equally weakly.

"You have no idea how fucked up time travel is." Five whispers conspiratorially to Vanya, loud enough for the whole table to hear, "There are so many ways to die. Or permanently tear a hold in space time. But like, with life as we know if ending soon-ish, I figured I couldn't possibly fuck it up worse than it already was, y'know? Speaking of, anyone have the date again?"

"Wait, what was that about dad?" Luther asks, very focused.

"Oh, you still call him dad? Big oof." Five says automatically, because apparently his verbal filter is shot to hell after living with Dolores. It does make Klaus bark out a too-loud laugh.

"What does that mean?" Luther asks aggressively.

"It means Reginald sucks and doesn't deserve the title of 'dad,' what did you think I meant?" Five asks, and now both Diego and Vanya and both cracking smiles, though Vanya is covering hers with a hand.

"Have some respect for the dead." Luther growls, standing up and looking very large and threatening.

Five sways back, craning his head up, "Woah there big buy, sit down before I injure my poor growing spine looking up at you. Jeeze, did Reggie force feed you steroids or something? I wouldn't put it past him but like, I just want to know he at least went over the side effects of the drug with you. Also like, thanks for narrowing it down. Also terrifying! Seriously though, exact date please because if I have less than 24 hours I am going to break down crying and that is a threat."

"I love this Five." Klaus says reverently.

"March 21st." Vanya offers, finally.

"Wow! Terrifying!" Five says, clapping his hands together, "Hate that. Ten days, huh? Well, who wants to get on board the save-the-world express?"

Klaus immediately flings his hand in the air, Five points at his brother appreciatively. "Yes, excellent! I'll take the volunteer in the lovely skirt as my first team member. Any other volunteers?"

"Danke!" Klaus simpers, grinning widely like this is the vest entertainment he's had in weeks.

"I'm not just going to stand here and listen to you badmouth dad and boss us around." Luther slams his hands on the table.

"Well not with that attitude." Five snarks.

Diego raises his hand, "I would like to join team fuck dad as well."

"We can certainly debate team names later." Five says, nodding wisely as Luther gives some sort of scandalized gasp.

"Honestly, I just want to see where this is going." Klaus confesses.

Five shrugs, because he doesn't really care about the reason. "Don't you want to prove me wrong them? Prove what a well-adjusted young man Reginald Hargreeves raised?"

"Shut up." Luther grinds out, looking a moment away from throwing a punch.

"If this is all true, I have to get home." Allison cuts in, looking concerned, "I have - I have a daughter."

"I mean, if you want to give Claire a world to live in then I'd stick around, but that's just me." Five shrugs.

"You know her name?" Allison asks, obviously taken aback.

Five is almost offended, "Uh, yeah. I have her photo as well. Y'all get on like, a bizarre number of gossip magazine covers did you know that?"

Allison manages to outdo herself in terms of being taken aback once more.

There's a beat of silence, and then Five turns, "Vanya? You in?"

"Me?" Vanya blinks, looking shocked. "What can I do?"

"Yeah, what can she do?" Diego asks, crossing his arms and suddenly looking grumpy.

It baffles Five, who scrunches his nose, "Uh, like, a lot? I assume? I mean. I'm going to be honest here, just looking at y'all right now is a lot. In more ways than one! Hashtag trauma and all that, but like, name a single one of you that wouldn't be the most obvious person in the room as soon as you walked into it. Except Vanya, who somehow manages to look like a well adjusted adult, by some miracle."

"Did you just verbally say the word hashtag?" Allison asks, looking so deeply confused.

"More concerned about the trauma he tacked onto there, but y'know, to each their own." Klaus immediately cuts in.

"You think I'm well-adjusted?" Vanya asks, looking oddly touched.

"I would like to direct your attention to Diego's leather pants-scowl combo and Luther's general aura of daddy-issues." Five says pointedly, "I can practically smell the tragic comic book backstory in this room. If I'd jumped back a decade earlier this would have been Batman's wet dream of orphan selection."

"Alright! Game plan!" Five says, waving Diego's knife in his hand.

Diego's hands immediately go to his weird harness looking thing, "Hey!"

"Give me just one moment to get the tracker out." Five rolls his eyes, "Then I'll give it back, I promise. Also if someone could ask Grace for like, some antibiotics that would be good."

"What?" Allison asks, directly before Five stabs himself and there is suddenly panic at the table.

"Relax!" Five says, allowing Diego to remove the knife from his hands. He doesn't need it anyway and his hand immediately drops down to root in the wound.

"Five what the fuck!" Diego yells, but Five just pulls up bloody fingers and waves the tracker into Diego's stupefied face.

"What the fuck is that, Five?" Allison demands, looking very shaken.

"I literally just said it was a tracker." Five points out, "Now, I think our first team activity should be voting on whether we destroy it or take it out to bumfuck nowhere and ditch it to confuse the Commission."

"What the fuck is the Commission?" Diego barks.

"Man. Maybe I should just hit up Rick." Five muses, "This is going to take so much explaining."

"Who is Rick."

"So much explaining."

[goldafterglow]

my love is a dagger

Summary: Jack Daniels is hopelessly gone for you, and you’re starting to think it’s a two way street. Maybe.

Request: “May I please ask for Basorexia and Whiskey please? 🥺” - @scribbledghost (ma’am I’m SO sorry this took me so long and then after the long wait you got whatever this is); taken from this post

basorexia: the overwhelming desire to kiss

Pairing: Jack “Whiskey” Daniels x reader

Word Count: 4.8k+

Warnings: suicidal themes (just a little and not really but there’s definitely a line), sexual harassment, anGST!!, PINING omg SO much pining like folks get ready to y*arn, a little bit of fluff bc Jack is a sweet talking southerner and I couldn’t help it, more angst I rly hope you cry, there’s a cute little lesbian couple in one line so don’t read if ur homophobic! but that goes for all of my work :)))

Author’s Note: Thank the GODS for @catfishingmorales for being my first ever beta reader!!! maybe this one will make any fucking sense at all!!! also a special shoutout to my wife @pascalplease bc she stayed up all night vomiting headcanons with me about this and I didn’t even get to all of them.

Gif Cred: the lovely @coredrive​

Masterlist | Taglist Modifications

“Two single-bed rooms,” he says. No; he manages.

Jack has to pry the words out of his esophagus, the passageway so clogged with sleep that he thinks that if he clears his throat he might be able to clear it.

It doesn’t work.

He tends to add a little brightness and smile to his voice when he talks, always eager to please even strangers. He embellishes his sentences with pleasantries and a chipper shimmer that makes even the most overworked bartender smile and the most destitute rancher crack a grin because he has this uncanny ability to make everyone feel special. But right now, at eleven pm on a Saturday evening after what might’ve been the worst, most emotionally grueling mission Jack has ever completed, he is not pleasant. His words are simply a tool for him to get a message out, his voice choked and flat.

“I’m so sorry for the inconvenience, sir, but it looks like we only have one king-size room available,” the lady informs. She is looking intently at the screen, still typing and clicking like the words might miraculously change right before her eyes.

The powerful Agent Whiskey’s heart falls into his stomach.

He can’t tell if this is the best or worst thing that has ever happened to him. Is this finally the excuse he needs to sweep you off your feet, like the catalyst giving him the strength to overcome his intense paranoia? Or is this the last straw, the final stone before you step off the staircase of his heart and back out onto the run-down open streets without him? Panic floods his chest and he is so paralyzed that he doesn’t even know what to tell her; for once, Jack Daniels is speechless.

Thank god he doesn’t turn around; he’d’ve seen your wide frantic eyes and would’ve known immediately what you’re thinking.

“Oh, it looks like a vacancy just opened,” the hostess chirps, a hint of relief floating on her words. You and Jack turn your heads to your left, where a young couple is saying their “thank you”s as they rack up the handles of their suitcases, hand-in-hand. One girl leans over to kiss the other on the temple with a smile; they both seem so secure. You turn your head back to the hostess; the sight of two people being content was disturbing to you and frankly a little offensive. “Unfortunately they’re on separate floors. Is that-”

“We’ll take them,” Jack gruffs. He wants to sleep, wants to die, wants to be in any existence where your soft eyes aren’t glued to the back of his head because he can feel it and he thinks you might burn holes into his skull just to find that he’s hollow inside.

Empty.

The transaction is quick and a little forced. She hands you both your respective key cards wordlessly, and if your eyes had lingered on her just a little longer you would’ve caught her face falling into it’s default relaxed state of misery. Jack walks with you to the elevator in silence, but he’s still close. He’s always close to you. Often you’ll turn your head in an empty room and anticipate him being there just to be sorely disappointed, though you aren’t sure what you’re always so disappointed for. His spirit haunts your thoughts, floats around your body and does laps around your brain because he is always there when you need him, so much so that you expect him to be there when you don’t need him. You want him to always be there. To always be with you.

Strange thoughts to have so late at night.

Jack sets his bag down beside you, stepping forward to press the button for you; it’s such a small gesture, something that he probably didn’t even think to do since hospitality runs in his bones, and yet you noticed it.

Strange.

The door opens, and he wordlessly puts a hand on your back, guiding you towards the elevator in front of him. Letting you on first. You can’t help but smile a little at him; you can tell he’s so tired and yet he still finds it somewhere in his heart to make you feel so important.

“You know I don’t need that from you,” you tease lightly, turning to look at him as the doors drag shut. The elevator shudders around you, indicating that it’s ready to start it’s journey to the fifth floor.

Jack grins at you; it’s not something he’s doing with his voluntary muscles, something that he thinks is coming off muted because he just doesn’t have the energy. It’s something he doesn’t even think about doing, a visceral reaction to hearing your sweet voice like aloe vera on his scorched throat.

“Well then, darlin’, take it anyways just to indulge your favorite cowboy,” he almost begs, lip pouted and eyebrows raised like he’s a child asking for candy except he’s an addict crying for just one more dose before the night ends because the nights he goes home without the memory of your eyes, your smile, your scent in his system are the nights he can’t sleep through.

You giggle softly, nudging his side gently because you want to crush him in your embrace and lift him onto the barbs of feathers into the moonlight all at the same time. To Jack, it feels like you’ve just kneed him in the chest, hogging all his air and wrapping his head in plastic so he can’t breathe, not that he minds. He’d let you tear at the delicate skin of the inside of his wrists, bite into the gentle flesh of his cheeks until he’s on his knees, bleeding at the seams. He’d let you destroy him if you wanted to.

He sighs a little, so dead, as a flush of air enters the vacuum of the elevator; you’ve arrived. But he doesn’t want to leave yet, wants to wring every last drop of your attention out of your pliable bones, so he follows you out and walks you to your room.

“I don’t need this either,” you say, a yawn stretching and blurring the edges of your words.

“I know,” Jack concedes, rolling his eyes in a way that is so adoring that he might as well have kissed you full on the mouth.

Not that you wanted him to.

“I know you don’t need a lick of help from me, sugar. Maybe I just like giving.” He grins down at you again, his side brushing against yours as you place slow, careful steps down the carpeted floor.

Yeah, he likes giving.

He gives you his leftover coffee when he “doesn’t want it” - it’s a tall cup of his favorite brew. He definitely still wants it. He gives you his blazer when you call his desk landline just to tell him your office is cold because you know he’ll give it to you. What you don’t know is that it’s because he’s completely and utterly whipped for you - he’d strip naked in a snowstorm to keep you warm, hold you in an icehouse as the bite of the frost burrows into the cracks of his dried skin, because he doesn’t need clothes when you’re in his arms. That’s about as warm as he’s ever been.

He gives you his time of day - almost all of it. He’s the first person you see when you step into work, the last face you see when you’re ready to retire. He walks you to your office every morning - he had to beg Champ to switch offices with him so that he could be adjacent to you, but every ounce of dignity lost was paid back to him with royalties in the precious extra seconds he gets to spend rubbing his shoulder against yours. He saunters into your office unannounced daily at 12:35 pm sharp to eat lunch with you, flopping onto your couch with the audacity of a man wet with wealth and simultaneously listening to you rave about your day with the patience of a therapist. Your time is a sacred commodity to him, and he makes sure that he’s earned it.

He gives you his whole soul. Sometimes he wonders if you’ll one day open your purse and find his glass heart sitting there, beating hard and loud and only for you. He wonders if you’d pick it up and smash it against a wall. He wouldn’t mind it at all.

The silence hangs in the air, dancing on your breaths as you seem to be inhaling each other, soaking in each other. It’s strange, the moments you share alone with Jack. There are the ones you share late at night, croaking at each other over the phone about how shitty that one show ended or how beautiful blue things are. Blue like his suffocated lungs, like the ocean of tears that drown him when he looks at you, like the finger you’ve got him wrapped around real tight.

But then there’s the moments when you’re in a room full of people. The briefing room sitting at a table spanning the length of the room that’s completely full of people, a club chock full of sweat and neon energy, the lobby of the lavish estate of a target where the bourgeoisie can swarm and stalk each other. All he has to do is toss you a roll of the eyes, a grin, a subtle brush of his hand against yours, and you are instantly thrown into the web of his affection as you get lost and locked in the atmosphere of his presence. Like, even in a room full of people, he’s the only one around. You’re not breathing in oxygen but the hickory fumes of his skin, the only sound getting registered being his dark honey voice. You’re not quite sure how he does that, distorting reality so heavily that you feel like you’ve traversed to an alternate dimension every time he touches you, pays any mind to you. Every single time.

“This you?” Jack asks, his words like a rubber band to your pulse as you’re snapped out of your train of thought. You look up at the room number - room 513 - and then down at your keycard. It reads the same. There’s a dull ache of disappointment that erupts through your chest, beige and static like the chipped paint on the walls.

“Yeah,” you mutter, turning to face him with your back to the door. He smiles at you softly, gentle like his fragile soul that you always manage to make hurt so bad without doing a single thing, and he opens his arms to you. Nothing out of the ordinary; you’ve grown accustomed to his goodbye hugs. “You’re so needy,” you giggle, stepping forward to bury your face in his pillowy chest and letting yourself sink into the quicksand of his warmth. It’s so easy to get caught up in him like a butterfly to a flower, and yet it’s so hard to pull away. He’s always been difficult to separate from; every time it’s like you’re sewing a microfractal of your esse into the velvet of him. Not big enough for you to notice, but still missing, and it adds up every time until there’s a big gaping hole in your chest that Jack holds claim to and the only way you feel right is when he’s with you.

I know, he wants to say to you. I know I’m needy. I know that you’re the only one, the only person, the only fucking thing that I’ve ever wanted this bad. I know I steal your time and your space and your thoughts but I’m a greedy man. Please forgive me. But he doesn’t say that; he could never say that to you. So instead he buries his face into the top of your head, trying to get a big sleepy lungful of you before he parts with you for the night, and says “Can you blame me, baby?”

You look up at him, eyes bleary and red but still eager to be so close to him. “Always such a tease.” He smiles wide at you, like he’s looking at a whimsical sprite so colorful and magnificent, but it’s just you. What does he see when he looks at you?

“G’night, pretty girl,” he coos, arms still wrapped around you and eyes big and doe-y. Please don’t leave yet, my perfect thing. Except that’s the part that stings him the most; you’re not his. He doesn’t get to say that sacred “my.”

“Good night, Jack Daniels,” you whisper, words fanning on his cheeks like waves of heat from a bonfire. But you don’t move, and neither does he. Not yet. Please.

He’s looking down at you with a certain reverence, like you were sculpted by the angels and placed right here in front of him with intimate precision. And then, without a breath to spare, he leans down and presses a kiss on your forehead so light that you wonder if it even happened or if someone has just thrown a marshmallow at your face. A friendly kiss from a friend that you’re friends with.

It feels like the seams of your limbs are being ripped out as you slowly separate from him, flashing him a soft smile as you take your duffel bag and unlock the door in front of you. You step into your hotel room, the air conditioning immediately sticking to your damp skin. As you close the door you catch him still standing there, looking at you like you’re something so precious.

Platonically, of course.

You sigh as you look around the room, suddenly freezing. The tiny dress you’re wearing doesn’t add much insulation and the big diamond necklaces and chandelier earrings and silver cuffs adorning your body like ornaments become ice on your skin. Kicking your shoes off and into a forgotten pit of the room, you step into the bathroom. Flicking the light on, you stare straight at the bulbs, letting the light sear your pupils just so that you can focus on something other than Jack fucking Daniels. Your jewelry is the first to go, becoming a delicate display on the bathroom counter. Something so pretty, but they’ve left angry dents in your skin that are starting to inflame and you figured it was too good to be benign. Nothing so beautiful, nothing that makes you feel so beautiful, could do so without hurting the paper-thin barriers of your heart. You’d have to be a fool to not know that.

You open up your duffel bag, fishing around impatiently until you find your makeup remover and cotton pads. As you erase the paint on your skin, removing the rough mission from the memory of your face, you start beginning to look less disheveled and more exhausted. Now you can really see the dark circles under your eyes, the discomfort of Rolex’s touching the small of your back and Armani cologne grabbing at your hips while you let it happen. Your body had become free real estate and in just hours you had broken down to feeling like you were stained, a dirtier version of yourself that couldn’t ever be cleaned.

You hadn’t felt so filthy when you were in Jack’s arms.

Eager to try and scrape the mission from your lungs, you peel the tight fabric off your body, letting out a breath of something far redder than relief as it falls to a pool around your ankles. You turn around to reach for the shower handle and grip it hard, letting the cold steel fill your palm as you twist it mid-way. While you wait for the steam to seep into your pores you reach for a bar of packaged soap on the bathroom counter, sizing up the créme box. It’s about a centimeter thick, easily filling your palm, and you frown a little at realizing that most of it will be thrown away, unused. Such a waste.

Turning your attention to the water, you run your hand under the water pouring out of the shower nozzle. It’s warm enough. But you don’t want it to be enough. You want it to melt your skin, to burn through your used body and shed your cells to unleash the layers beneath, the layers that Jack had touched, because thinking that your body has been safe inside his embrace feels better than thinking that you put your head in the jaws of the alligators and hoped they wouldn’t snap.

Once the water is burning, sure to inflame your skin, you step in and close the shower curtain before beginning to let the soap glide along your arms. Except it’s not enough. You’re not clean enough. So you run the bar over yourself again and again, wearing it down as your skin turns hot to the touch until you’re using the tips of your fingers to salvage the last bits of product onto your chest. Shit. You don’t even realize that the bar is all used up until you feel the sensation of your fingers rubbing against your now irritated skin and yet you still feel soiled. So you elect to give up on your sorry attempt at washing away the strange eerie touches and predatory looks and turn off the water, drying yourself off.

The solitude in the air stings.

By the time you’re laying in your bed and looking up at the plain off-white ceiling so that you don’t have to look at the old collections of dirt in the crevices of the wall and carpeted floor, you haven’t thought about Jack for the past 30 minutes. Not since you were washing yourself and the ghost of his fingers scraped your scalp, making you long for the feeling of his chest pressed to your back and the sound of his voice floating into the vinyl of the curtain liner while his hands danced in your hair - 

Not since then.

But Jack Daniels is most certainly thinking about you, and he’s far too deep to bother pretending that he isn’t anymore.

He stands outside your door for just a little while longer after you close it, staring at the fool’s gold embellishment on the front as he basks in the faint warmth of your spirit that lingers in the space of the hall and inside of his bones. He’s not sure how he got so lucky so as to be able to touch you without abandon, kiss your forehead out of greed and hold you in his arms because he really is so needy. He replays the scent of your dainty floral perfume and rewinds the heat of your forehead under his used, chapped lips, trying to commit you to memory as if he hadn’t done this a million time already, as if he hasn’t tried to burn a million of your hugs into the plush cotton of his skin like a brand. Your fading ghost consumes his mind, and by the time it’s whispering farewell to him, he’s already at the bank of elevators waiting patiently for the doors to open for him. Jack does a lot of that; waiting.

The weight of his duffel bag starts to grow and he can’t tell if his tired left arm is getting weaker or if the bag is getting heavier, but he can tell that his nerves are aching because he already misses you.

He’s always missing you.

The trip to his room is quiet, lonely, and as the elevator doors close for him to make his way to the 6th floor he wonders if this is how it’ll always be. Having you so close, seeing you right in front of him, and yet never truly being with you the way he wants to be. Never belonging to anybody, just a wisp of air passing through your life without holding any true substance or having any real meaning to you; but what a privilege to be one of your wisps. To have been in your lungs and have seen what he imagines are wide open plains, vibrant with wildflowers and gentle beasts. He wishes he could stay.

The elevator door dings.

This time he is caught off guard and he inhales like a shudder, eyes darting around the cold yet damp walkway to see if anyone has caught him thinking, caught him yearning.

Hallucinating.

Deluded.

He steps inside of the compartment with his stupid heavy duffel bag, immediately letting it fall to the elevator floor. His eyes find the plastic, cloudy buttons making up the keypad of the elevator. His left arm lifts to press the “6” button but he immediately regrets it, feeling a searing agony shoot through his shoulder. He mutters a little “fuck” to himself like it’ll help balm the pain, and of course it doesn’t, but Jack is a stubborn man and the buttons are to his left, so he shakes his arm out the way you shake out your boots before stepping inside mama’s house and tries again. But his dry, chapped fingers struggle to reach for the buttons, shaking in his own seismic wake. It takes him a few seconds to steady himself, taking temporary control over his body so he can actually touch the button; the plastic is cracked, a small piece having fallen off to be lost, likely thrown away. A discarded fracture in the shell leaving the inner label forever open and exposed, never to be whole again.

The elevator door shuts.

Jack lets out a low sigh, leaving his arms to fall to his sides as he leans against one of the walls. The back wall of the elevator is reflective, muddled and stained but clear enough that Jack can see what has become of him. His stetson is barely on his head anymore, his tie crooked and his collar untucked. He almost feels like a suit monkey, walking around playing dress up with the caveat of poisoning a man’s fresh champagne. But you told him he looked so handsome all gussied up like a proper gentleman worthy of taking a dime like yourself out. So he leaves it at almost.

He does a lot of that too.

The elevator hiccups, and as expected the doors open, inviting him to leave. He looks down at his duffel bag and he can already feel the weight of it on his weeping muscles, but he’s so close to his room and he can’t give up now that’s he’s made it so far, so he uses the momentum of his swinging right arm to sweep the bag up off the floor and drags himself out of the elevator. Not the best thing he’s ever done, but certainly one of his proudest moments.

The sixth floor is less damp, less like a moldy underwater cave and more like he’s at the top of a breezy mountain where the strands of air are like spurs to his cold, tight skin. Crisp. It is different, and yet he feels the same. Like his joyful warmth has drained out of his system, flushed out of his body, and on the inside he is the 5th floor of a shitty decrepit hotel in the middle of fuck all Kentucky. 

He makes quick work of finding his room, the inertia from getting off the elevator being the driving force that gets him down the two hallways and standing before room 645. He pulls out the plastic keycard, adorned with scratches on its surface and stains on its edges, and shoves it into the card reader. With a subtle flash of green and a gentle click, the door gives way for Jack to practically fall inside. He flings the bag as far across the room as his arm will let him, letting gravity control his movements as he is drawn to the white mattress in the center of the room. He releases a groan a little louder than should be appropriate this late at night - he checks the alarm clock on the bedside table to confirm that it’s 11:08. He hasn’t been apart from you for longer than what, 4 minutes? No, he did stand outside your door for a little bit. He decides it’s been 5 minutes.

Oddly enough, the extra sixty seconds don’t make him feel any less fucked.

Now that he’s finally still, his body begins to focus on how sore his legs are as any pain grows from the ends of his limbs and seeps into his chest. He can feel the weight of the night press down heavy on his diaphragm, suffocating him in a way that travels to his eyes and sprays sand like mist onto the walls of his throat. He selfishly lets himself lay there for a second, thinking about that weight being you pressed up against him, face buried in his chest or his neck or in his own face. It’s sacrilegious the way Jack thinks about your touch, the flutter of your lashes like majestic butterfly wings against his cheek, so enticing. So pretty.

His shower is fast despite the way his muscles screech at him to let them rest, begging him to just fucking sit down. When he leans down, back made of creaky burnt red iron, to reach for his sleep clothes, he does a double take; there’s not much in the bag at all. A bunch of small, disguised weapons, communications devices, a pair of grey sweats, a white t-shirt. Nothing oppressively hefty to pull on his tendons; at least, not in a way that could practically drag his shoulder out of its socket. Then suddenly he remembers; he had been holding your bag until you’d both reached the lobby desk. It was a long walk from where you’d been instructed to dump the care and the hotel, so after watching you squirm a little in the freezing air, he offered to take your bag off your back. He’d walked with a bag in each arm for maybe a minute before he realized that his greedy fingers missed being wrapped around your side, missed your melted essence seeping into his stomach, so he’d held both bags in the one left hand for the rest of the thirty minute walk. He hadn’t even noticed how bad he was hurting; perhaps you were too distracting, smile too alluring as your words painted his eyes in lilac and blinded him from his own discomfort.

For being the one person Jack wanted, you sure did hurt him a lot.

Once he is dressed, he lets his sore body absorb into the linen sheets as his muscles finally find some form of permanent relief in the salve of stillness. But this is a dangerous state to be in; when Jack isn’t talking someone else’s ear off, he thinks. He fantasizes, ponders, mulls and muses himself into a state that is suspended between consciousness and sleep.

He thinks about your lips.

You’ve never been too shy to mouth him off, poking and prodding at him and his eccentric cowboy aesthetic. Seeing you walk in every morning and beeline it straight to greet him with a casual fifteen-second hug sends daggers flying into his heart every time, a pain that he’s learned to brace himself for and yet can never seem to be able to handle. And when he looks down at you, adoring eyes and all, he can never help but glance at your lips. It’s always short, a self-indulgent guilty pleasure that he could never admit to, and he thinks about the way they feel against his collarbone when you hold him tight. He thinks about the way they might feel on his own lips.

Sinful.

And then he is thinking about that wretched mission, flashes of luxury clothes and manicured hands trying to feel you up right in front of his eyes. The way you fake smiled at men with money and wrinkles as they leaned into your ear, trying to whisper enticing tales of exorbitant trips to islands that are garishly tropical and dresses so exclusive and designer that no one in the world would own a duplicate. Watching in utter silence because no matter agonizing his need for you is, you’ll never be his.

Suddenly that ache in his body has traveled to his face. It’s so painful to think about you, and yet he takes the jagged edges of his love for you and drags them through his wrists because he’d rather fucking bleed than ever forget you.

Outside his window he hears the clouds crash into each other as an icy downpour beats the pavement. And like a curse, at the expense of his own self-destruction, the image of you in his arms in front of room 513 slices through his brain. Your face right under his mouth, forehead right up against him, your lips right fucking there. And then the feeling of you pulling away. Of you leaving him to rot with the flies, because he’s never going to be strong enough to tell you how bad he needs you,  let you tear his heart into a million pieces for good.

From somewhere in his room the rain begins to fall on his face.

people who asked to be tagged: @gustavos @catfishingmorales @keeper0fthestars @1zashreena1 @blancatobarxoxo @honeyedspace @chaotic-noceur @opheliaelysia @adikaofmandalore @din-damn-djarin @ergotautology

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This is new so I’m putting it down here too, but I made a little form for those of you that want to be added/removed from my taglist (pls take it my tags are very disorganized rn).

[ectonurites]

for the character headcannons ask game, jason and cass?

ALRIGHT ALRIGHT im putting this one under a cut because it got SUPER long bc i cant shut up ever

lets start w jason

A (realistic headcanon): 

ok using the ‘realistic’ category here loosely but GOD i love the idea of Damian & Jason having interacted while Jason was staying with the League before getting dunked in the Lazarus Pit. like. this obviously would need to be set more in preboot and following the Lost Days & Batman Annual 25 version of Jason’s resurrection, but god the idea of it just makes me scream in a good way. Like... these are things Jason likely doesn’t remember very clearly once he’s brought back to life more fully by the pit because he was uh pretty catatonic, but Damian being a little kid and knowing about the boy that his mother keeps around the base, that she’s trying to help bring back to health. Damian not even knowing that’s his big brother, just that he’s a presence that shares his mother’s attention. Jason again being unresponsive but like, ok god you know that part of lost days where Talia shows the others observing him that he only fights back at those he perceives as genuine threats trying to hurt him, 

Because Jason can perceive that she’s safe, she’s not actually trying to hurt him, he trusts her because she saved him? thinking about lil child Damian who is ya know already being trained in fighting stuff and like the idea of him trying to provoke Jason just to see what happens but Jason not fighting back because on some level be it his connection to Talia or even little baby Damian visually reminding him of Bruce, he knows that Damian is safe too 🥺 

and then when Jason and Damian meet again in Gotham as Red Hood & Robin respectively, Jason not really remembering because there was so much going on back then for him, but Damian realizing that oh... that was Him

B (hilarious): 

alright so if we are looking at comics currently, in modern stuff jason is what, like 22? hes old enough to drink in the US but still definitely early 20s so around my around my age, thats what im using as a basis here. if we adjust timeline and still consider his death having happened when he was 15, that puts it around 2013. and then coming back to like interacting with people about three years later if we still kinda base things off of the preboot timeframe (since we never got a super solid retelling of the timeline of death -> resurrection -> training -> tries to get revenge aside from knowing he went to the all-caste instead of the lost days version of the story) making him reenter the regular world and stuff around age 18 in 2016. meaning a solid three years of pop culture that he was entirely missing, and like im sorry but he really doesn’t strike me as the type to bother looking into what he missed, he’s kinda busy focusing on other stuff. lets take a quick look at some major things from those years. 2013 gave us ‘what does the fox say’ and ‘the harlem shake’ . 2014 had that time U2 just put a fuckin album on everyone’s phones, The Fault In Our Stars movie came out. 2015 introduced the phrase ‘Netflix and Chill’ and the whole blue & black vs gold & white dress debate happened. imagine any of the other batkids (or even arguably roy during rhato stuff) bringing these things up and jason’s ensuing confusion. thank you for your time

C (heart-crushing): 

so. there are two specific instances from rebirth era Jason i want to bring up here and much like a lot of these it’s less a headcanon and more of an inference based on observations, but i wanna take a sec to discuss Jason’s relationship with other people’s death. early in rebirth, Tim ‘dies’ from that whole thing in detective comics. he didn’t actually die, we as readers know, but in-universe they all very much so thought he was dead. frustratingly a lot of the batfam wasn’t really shown mourning him aside from in the Detective Comics Rebirth title itself (which just. when a major character dies even if its temporary- that should have a ripple effect) BUT an exception to that is in RHATO 2016, where we get this offhanded comment in Jason’s internal monologuing

similarly later when Roy, who like, had an incredibly close relationship w Jason that had just gotten mended before Heroes in Crisis, gets fuckin murdered in that whole thing... Jason doesn’t go to his funeral either. He leaves a dramatic voice mail and then visits the grave on his own later, choosing to instead keep working on the mission they’d started rather than going and taking the time to mourn properly.

Jason’s relationship with death is incredibly complicated, obviously. He has died, he has come back, and he now is willing to cross the line most other bats won’t and will kill people when he deems it necessary. I think thats something important though- he doesn’t just like... go around killing for fun (usually, some writers preboot made him a little murder happy but even then usually this still was vaguely followed) he kills people he thinks deserved it. Like, even looking back at the mess of Morrison’s Jason during Batman & Robin 2009, Jason was still trying to bring a sense of justice with who he was killing (”punishment that fits the crime”), it wasn’t killing for the sake of killing. He sees things in this kind of almost black and white ‘people who deserve it’ and ‘people who don’t’ way, and he has no problem dealing with death when it’s with the people he thinks deserve it. 

but when someone who doesn’t in his mind ‘deserve it’ gets killed? i think he just goes into total avoidance mode. throws himself into other things he’s doing, tries not to dwell on it too much no matter how much he still thinks about it (this is especially evident in him consistently telling people “i’m fine!” after what happened to Roy, despite bringing Roy up literally like every few issues for a WHILE after he died and very clearly still struggling with it, Artemis is the only one who gets through to him on it a little bit) 

but yeah, I just think that from Jason’s relatively unique situation of having been murdered, he knows what it’s like and he is perfectly fine wishing that on people he thinks are bad and deserve it, but it crushes him to imagine the people he loves and cares about having to experience something as painful as what he went through. not to mention the whole “I came back, why do I get a second chance at all this when they, who are a much better person than I am, probably won’t” mindset we get some implications of him having 

D (canon is a coward and won’t) 

hello DC i am once again insisting a batfam member is bisexual

CASS TIME

A (realistic headcanon): 

ok so we know cass likes ballet. thats canon. however i think we also should in general explore cass experiencing other types of dance/performance as well, be it herself as a performer or even just watching. like... god imagine her & like my brain just automatically for group activities puts her with tim steph and duke but also for this in particular I feel would be a Jason embraced activity, but like them going to see a broadway show or some other professional theatre or something, and her just being enthralled by the reading of body language of the performers! like again by any point in current stuff cass does have like, the ability to speak fine (reading still hard tho) but even so I think like. okay im a theatre kid if that’s not obvious from the Everything About Me but one thing I always do after seeing a show is ya know spend dinner afterwards discussing it with whoever i saw it with.

I just think that like, bringing those people i just mentioned to the table to discuss seeing a show after would be so FASCINATING because cass would bring this whole perspective of critiquing their acting on a whole different level- not based on how well they delivered lines out loud, but by what their body language was saying as they moved on stage. like im very amused by the idea of cass getting a totally different picture in her mind about what a character’s motivations were because she was paying way more attention to what their physicality was saying vs the words that were written and how they were delivered. i think the debates her and the others would have would be EPIC there. jason defending the text as it was written adamantly and cass being like ‘ok yeah sure but thats not what they did’

B (hilarious): 

cass having no concept of money because why would she bother? is SO funny to me. like it’s not that she couldn’t be reasonable if she wanted to, but like, she knows that the Waynes are well off so it’s not something she actually needs to be concerned about, so she just goes hog wild. takes steph out to fancy dinners and makes steph order for them since cass ya know doesn’t really read the menus, and steph’s like ‘jesus christ this costs-” “don’t worry about it” “but cass-” and she just holds up one of bruce’s credit cards and steph’s still like “but you don’t even know the range-” “it is fine”

bruce does not have the heart to tell her to stop

C (heart-crushing): 

i mean this is pretty much canon but especially now after death metal where she’s remembering, not just being told by a guy using weird alternate timeline technology, that she used to be an adopted member of the Wayne family... like that hurts so bad. To look at these people who have ya know been kind to her, Bruce has still been a father-like figure to her (i mean literally from the moment they met in New 52 canon during the flashback in Batman & Robin Eternal, where he’s telling her that she’s not a monster just because of what people forced her to do.... that she’s a hero... that hug.... dad behavior), and they do to some extent treat her as family... But to then really know, to feel and remember that she was actually adopted! She was a part of their family. To look at how she’s been calling herself Orphan while working with them this whole time... that’s so heartbreaking! I have cried about this idea so much! I want so badly a conversation between her and Bruce now where he offers to officially adopt her again, I need it so bad and if it doesn’t happen at some point in the next year or two I will be so distraught.

D (canon is a coward and won’t) 

i want an in-depth exploration of cass’ relationship to her own gender. being raised without language and you know with so much of her life being independent (remember: CASS RAN AWAY AROUND THE WORLD WITHOUT REALLY KNOWING ANY SPOKEN LANGUAGE) and outside of an organized society impressing too much of gender expectations on her, i feel like the way she experiences it would be very unique! like sure she’s so far been fine with being assigned ‘girl’ (ya know that comes with batgirl, and how people just automatically treated her based on how she looks) but in terms of gender expression and like her actual relationship with ‘traditional femininity’ etc like... because of how she was raised I just think she’d have a really different perspective on it that could be cool to explore, and I think she’d fall outside of the binary after she really thinks about how she identifies.

tldr on that: she/they nb cass is what i’m getting at here

[rudysrings]

Twin Pogues of the OBX - 8

A/N: i forgot to queue this up because i fell into the wormhole of minecraft LMFAO pls forgive me...also this part is a lil all over the place and i realize i need to hurtty it up with the plot bc i’m only on episode 3 but it’s hard when writing more interactions with the characters is so much fun

Warnings: Underage smoking, mature/sexual themes, cursing, angst and fluff at the same time 

Word Count: 2.5k

Masterlist

The pogues had successfully obtained the drone from the salvage yard, which had been no easy task (you had heard the entire story from Kiara that morning, who insisted that the boys were incapable of carrying out even the simplest of plans). 

You took out the HMS Pogue that morning, just outside the dock so that Pope could work out how to use the drone.

Pope had arrived very early in the morning, having snuck out before Papa Heyward could rise, and he immediately threw an arm over JJ, who was helping you and John B get the boat out on the water.  

You saw them whisper quietly, Pope gesturing towards his clothes and JJ brushing him off, clearly trying to just make a joke to get a laugh out of him. Eventually, JJ pulled Pope’s cap over his head and walked away, joining you and your brother.

Once Kiara found her way to the Chateau, she and your brother dove in, so that Pope could search for them using the drone.

“What’s this?” JJ asked, his fingers extending towards one of the many dizzying buttons on the flight monitor for the drone. 

 Pope slapped his hand away instantly. “Don’t touch that.” He noticed your fingers approaching the monitor, too, your restless and curious hands unable to help themselves. Sighing, he turned to you, his face puckered so irritably you worried for his digestion. “What did I just say?” He turned back to the screen as you dropped your hands to your sides, giving JJ a look that said Sheesh. “I’m trying to work out this thing.”

John B and Kiara treaded water in front of the monitor and you smiled. “Hey Kie, flash us why don’tcha?”

JJ giggled and Pope rolled his eyes. “She’s underwater, genius. She can’t hear a damn thing you’re saying.”

“God bless geeks Pope, truly man,” said JJ, looking impressed.

You nodded. “Yeah, what would we do without you to control the drones?”

Pope pursed his lips. “It’s not a drone; it’s an ROV—”

“Shut up. Shut UP,” grumbled JJ, overlooking the water as Kiara and your brother resurfaced. “It’s too early for that right now.”

“Hey, once we get footage of the Wreck, we’ll bring it to a lawyer in town and file a formal claim,” John B said as Pope explained maritime salvage law. 

The words were familiar to you—things your dad had always repeated, convinced the information would come in handy at some point. Guess he was right, after all.

Kiara looked at your brother, her eyebrows pulled together in confusion; he was spouting information that would usually go way over his head, given he only had a brain cell or two (max) to work with. “How do you know all of that?”

“‘Cause our dad said it like a million times,” you answered for him, JJ turning to look at you as you kept your eyes forward.

As Pope began discussing how the length of the tether required dead calm weather to pull this off, you tuned out, lost in thought. You didn’t like being obvious; you didn’t like everyone knowing that even the slight mention of your dad had you spiraling, but you could feel JJ’s gaze on you and you knew you weren’t subtle.

You felt warmth in your hand, felt it instantly travel up your arm and thaw at your chest. You looked down to see JJ’s ring-clad hand interlaced with your own, a gesture of silent comfort. The action was soft, out of character for him, but you couldn’t deny that it helped...a lot. You gulped, refusing to meet his eyes, but giving his hand a silent squeeze, conveying that you didn’t want him to let go. And he didn’t. He held on silently, out of sight from the rest of the pogues. 

One look at the darkening clouds and clearly growing storm had you guys deciding to go at slack tide on a day when the weather was quieter.

Kiara mentioned that she had to get back to the Wreck and Pope said he had to go back to Heyward’s. 

“If I don’t split now, my ass is grass.” He gave you and JJ a group hug, somehow sensing the weird emotional vulnerability in the air. You kissed him on the cheek, whispering a quick thanks before pulling away. 

John B went with Pope without another word, presumably to gather more of the practical stuff for what you all had planned for later.

JJ turned to you, visibly awkward as he shuffled his feet. Unused to this novel tension between the two of you, you blurted out. “Want a quick smoke?”

JJ shook his head disapprovingly, walking back over to the dock. 

You followed him, his back turned to you as he stared out at the water. “You think it’s really out there?”

“The gold?”

“No, the loch ness monster.”

“JJ you should know that the loch ness is just an old sailor—”

“Of course the gold, Y/N!”

You paused, before walking forward, sidling up next to him and leaning your arms on the railings.

You played with JJ's ring on your thumb, which he noticed, an unmistakable smile in his eyes. “I didn’t believe it until yesterday.”

“But you believe now?”

“I’m not really big on faith, JJ.”

“Don’t I know it,” he grumbled.

You whipped your head towards him. “What? What’s that supposed to mean?”

Without another word, JJ’s hand pushed at your lower back, the other at the back of your neck to pull your face into his. He paused just centimeters away, clearly fighting for control. “Can I?”

You couldn’t help the word that blurted out of your mouth like a pathetic whimper. “Please.”

It didn’t seem to bother him. JJ closed the distance between your lips, and the now familiar sensation had you grasping at his hair, his shirt, his arm, anything, anything to try and ground yourself in this moment because the feeling of his mouth on yours had you worried you would float off into oblivion. 

It wasn’t like yesterday, because this time, JJ was prepared. He was aggressive, as if he was trying to get everything out of this right here, right now, because he feared there was no chance he would get to do it again.

He got you to open your mouth for him, deepening the kiss. When his hand slipped down to your ass, he pulled away, looking at you in question. “Do you wanna…?” He let the question hang in the air, his eyes not leaving yours.

You nodded immediately, pushing out any rational thought. How could you think rationally when he was touching you like that, kissing you like that?

Grabbing the backs of your thighs, JJ whispered, “Then jump, Trouble.”

You did, allowing him to secure your legs around his hips. You didn’t look at him, opting to brush your nose along his ear as he carried you into the Chateau. You felt him shiver and smiled against his neck, pressing a chaste kiss there.

JJ entered your room, closing the door and locking it with a flick of his wrist. He set you down, making sure to drag you down his front. 

You didn’t look at his face; you couldn’t. While you may have thrown rational thought out the window, you knew your hard limits. You let out a nervous laugh. “This, uh...this is a one time thing, Maybank.” You quickly flicked your eyes to his. “Doesn’t mean anything.”

JJ didn’t say anything, bringing a finger to lift your chin up to look at him head on. He was challenging you and you knew it. Even without you saying a word, he saw right through you. He could see you were scared. Fear was a look he thought he’d never see on the face of the most dauntless, intrepid person he’d ever met. But he was seeing it now, and he was taken aback by how much it affected him. JJ hated this look on you. It tugged at his severe and sometimes problematic protectiveness, but he didn’t know how to protect you from himself. He wanted nothing more than to give you the biggest hug, but instead he looked at you. Just looked. 

It was a moment or two before you got impatient and said. “What? You get it, right?” He nodded and you took that as affirmation, wrapping your arms around your neck and attempting to bring him towards you.

JJ stopped you, hands dropping from your body. You looked up at him while he looked at the ground. When his eyes met yours, they were rimmed with red and your heart sped up, both in confusion and concern. “Please don’t ask me for this.”

You grabbed his wrist. “JJ, what?”

“I know we’ve never really talk about it.” He swallowed hard and you watched his Adam's apple bob against his throat. “But I think you know.”

He was talking about his feelings for you. Yeah, you knew. But hearing him basically confirm it shocked you to your core. Still, you mustered up the ability to nod softly. 

 He continued. “I have given you everything I can, Trouble. Except…” he gestured at the space between you two. “Except this. If I give you that right now...and you get up and go, like I know you will. If it means nothing to you, then there will be nothing left in me.” You let go of JJ’s wrist. You could tell this was very difficult for him to admit, his hands shaking and his eyes restless as he kept looking around the room.

“J—” You started.

“—No, listen, Y/N. I’m begging you not to ask me for this. Because I think we both know that if you ask...I won’t say no.” 

You nodded, trying to ignore the way your heart cracked and fluttered at the same time, trying to keep any emotion off of your face. “Right, well,” you looked anywhere but at him, your eyes finally settling on the doorway behind him. “I..I should go..I think Kiara asked me to stop by the Wreck and help her with...something.” You had never been able to lie to JJ, and he had always called you out on it when you tried.

“Y/N—”

You shook your head. “I’ll see you later, JJ.”

You didn’t give him time to say anything else, running out of your room and out of the Chateau, only pausing briefly to grab the keys to the van, flinching at the sound of a fist hitting wood and JJ’s resounding. “FUCK!” 

~

You plastered a smile on your face as you entered the wreck, shooting the bartender your signature grin. That grin was always your bait. It usually got you anything you wanted.

The rather pretty bartender smiled shyly back, her cheeks flushing slightly under your blinding smile. “Is Kiara around?”

She stuttered. “Oh! Ah, y-yeah, I’ll uh, I’ll just go get h-her…”

Hook, line and sinker.

Kiara came out from the back, rolling her eyes once she saw it was you. Grabbing your hand, she brought you through a side exit, slapping your hand away when you tried to grab a fry from some touron customer.

“You gonna keep flirting with our employees, Y/N?”

You shrugged as she led you right outside the Wreck, leaning against the side of the building and facing you. “I mean if you keep hiring such attractive employees, then I can’t help it.” 

Kiara rolled her eyes...again. “If you keep doing that, they’re gonna get stuck like that and then we’re going to need an exorcist, which none of us can afford and Pope would scare away with some random forensics fact.”

Kiara shoved at your shoulder and then passed you a joint from her pocket.

You snatched it instantly and she smiled. “You looked like you needed that.”

“What do you mean?” You asked, pulling out your lighter from your bra. It instantly reminded you of JJ, the two of you having gotten matching ones engraved with your names. It reminded you of how you always felt bound by no law when you were with him and you were quick to light your joint and tuck the lighter away. 

Kiara raised her eyebrows, crossing her arms. “Are you kidding me? You haven’t looked straight at me for more than a second!”

You took a hit of the joint, letting the drug fill your lungs and hoping it would swiftly calm your running mind. “It’s a beautiful world, Kie. Just tryna take it all in.” you shrugged. “That’s not to say you’re not beautiful; I mean, you know how gorgeous I think you are, but you closed that door on me so this is on you.”

Kiara furrowed her brows at your nonsensical words, taking notice of your right foot, which was tapping incessantly. She plucked the joint from your hand and took an inhale herself, ignoring your protests and curses.

“Is it JJ?” She asked.

“What about JJ?”

Kiara groaned, dropping the joint to the ground and snuffing it out, hands on her hips. “Gosh, why do you have to be this difficult? You make girl talk feel like torture!”

Playing innocent, you said, “Girls? You wanna talk about girls? I can talk about them all day. Short girls, tall girls, girl’s with big eyes, girls with big—” 

Kiara slapped you over the head. “Shut your damn mouth.”

You opened your mouth to make a quip, but she put her hand over it, stopping you. You raised your eyebrows at her suggestively and she looked fearful. “No! Don’t you dare!”

Too late. Shrieking, Kiara took her hand back, yakking on air at the sensation of your tongue on her palm. 

Once she calmed down from her dramatics, she put a hand on your shoulder. “Look, if you’re reacting like this, it has to be JJ—”

“I—”

“—No, shut the fuck up and let me speak, god damn it!” Grumbling, you let her carry on. “Whatever happened, get it through that thick head of yours that it’s nothing that can’t be undone or at least, nothing the two of you can’t get over because y’all are stronger than some silly misunderstanding or argument or whatever. You’re family if I’ve ever seen it.”

You softened at her words, eyes finally settling on hers. You let yourself slip, giving in to her kind voice and maternal embrace. “I hope you’re right, Kie.”

Even Kiara looked surprised at your lack of a joke or brush off. “Oh, Y/N,” she cooed, pulling you into her arms. 

You stayed for a second, before shoving her off and making a joke about how she had rejected you only to string you along further and that she should stop with the mixed feelings. 

Kiara gave a soft smile at your behavior, which she could see right through, but didn’t comment, knowing you wouldn’t react well. She simply wrapped an arm around your waist and stayed with you. You began to think that’s all you needed—for someone to stay. 

Masterlist

Tag List (If there is a strike through your user it’s bc I couldn’t tag you bc tumblr is wack sometimes…)

@hurricane-abigail @omigodyall​ @timotaychalabae​ @kaelyn-lobrutto24​@caswinchester2000​ @meghanisdeadinside​ @harrysbbby​ @official-maddibrown @xdelicates@maybebanks@yourwonderbelle @treestarrrrrrrr @loco-latte@sspidermanss@theradvibes @eviction-notice-no666@screamingnewsies @the-fandom-life-forever @dolanfivsosxox@vibin-n-thrivin @em-aesthe  @the-real-jort @riverdaleserpent04@free-pool-trash @mileven-reddie @drewswannabegirl@queen1054 @eternalharry@alwayshopelesss @superqalifragilistik@smileyxdolans@fangirling-all-day @dianaillusion@catonthesideoftheroad @darling-im-not-okay-i-promise​ @thelovelydreamer17 @http-cherries​ @pit-zuh​ @kisssmefree​ @starryblueeyesandstarryblueskies​ @outerbankstings​ @oliviadrake1​ @pancakefancake​ @haharudy​ @truthdaze​

I’m also kind of new to tagging and rlly bad at it so if something is wrong, I’m sorry and pls let me know and I’ll try my best to fix it!

I also lost my updated tag list i’m so dumb so let me know if I told you i would tag you and i didn’t oop

Stay safe and stay healthy!

[yoongisbars]

quest of omission | myg (2)

summary: The war between kingdoms was starting and being Freywind’s highest ranking Captain, you would always be there to defend your people from the treachery of Woodwind. There’s just one problem: their best killer, The Silence, and his insufferable ability to make your heart race with both loathing and yearning. And now, on the verge of death after an ambush gone wrong, you both have no choice but to keep each other alive. 

pairing: myg x reader genre: enemies to lovers au | knight!yoongi au | future angst? fluff? | drabble series word count: 2.1k parts: 2/_ | 1 cw: prolly shitty yet cruel depictions of death and aggressive encounters(no smut tho chill) note: so we gonna get a bit more of The Silence in this one, but also some non bts chars bc of depth: my walnut brain needed it for its original purpose and im not changing it       

      A sharp burning pain crept up from within your lungs. The need to cough, gag and vomit was what brought you back. You spewed nothing but the murky water that was surrounding you. After gathering your senses, you try to stand up, trying to recollect how did you even get here, but the memory of the reservoir bursting quickly made its way to your mind. You were soaked head to toe, and covered in mud here and there, and surely you almost drowned, but whatever entity decided you were worthy of living certainly gave you a fighting chance. All in all, you were alive and in one piece. You couldn’t say the same for the few bodies you stumbled across as you wandered the forest. It was dark and endless, congested by spruce, willow, and sequoia trees. Roots curled the surface, accompanied by shallow waters and mud holes. You were thankful of the full moon illuminating the nearly impossible ground you walked. Whenever you came across a body, you prayed it wasn’t Taehyung, Mare, or anyone of closeness. But these were the consequences of battle. You found the bodies of Woodwind men, as well as your own. Looting what was necessary in order to make do. It was a crude sentiment, but they didn’t need whatever they carried anymore. They were long dead. You happened to find a decent knife, like your personal one, which you had managed to keep safely tucked against your thigh.

         You wandered and wandered and wandered and all you ever came across was the occasional body or a small woodland animal of any sort. No matter which direction you headed, it always seemed like you were going deeper into the woods. You hoped to find a riverbank so that maybe you could try to find your way back to the ambush location and from there head back to Freywind, but not even that.           Time passed but for you it stilled. All you could do was walk aimlessly around the woods in cold weather while soaking wet, trying to at least find shelter of any sort, until your eyes set on a pair of bodies you were all too familiar with… Your beloved underlings. They were at your side moments before the flooding, but now their bodies laid sprawled over roots and mud. From where you stood you could see Atlas’ open eyes, gaze facing nowhere but beyond… His mouth slightly agape, his lasts breaths must have been painful. Eyes that would look to you for guidance and a mouth that would cheer you on, are far gone from this plane of existence. You didn’t know if what was dripping down your face were tears, or remnants of the water you escaped, practically unscathed. Your steps were careful and slow as you got closer. Next to him, was Aeron… His ragged breathing barely a whisper, eyes shut, and face pained. You kneeled beside him, and his name was a whisper escaping your lips. “Aeron?” Your eyes couldn’t help but give him a once over, and it wasn’t until you were in such proximity that you noticed what had him in agony. He winced as he opened his eyes, slightly turning his head over to face you. All color was drained from him, his lips were already turning to an ungodly shade of blue that you had never imagined to be faced with. Even if you knew war eventually led to death, you didn’t imagine death ever touching them, or the gruesome way that it did. “Captain… You’re okay…” His voice cracked and faded, came and went. Whatever strength he still had; he was using it all to speak. “I’m so glad.” Tears started to stream from his eyes as he forced a gentle smile, and you couldn’t help but mimic him. You denied looking down once more, to what came out of his torso, but the source of his slow suffering was impossible to neglect. A large, sharp, twisted root was stained in scarlet as blood continued to pool beneath him.

“Aeron, I’m so sorry. Atlas…” His cold body laid across you, his hand tightly grasped by Aeron’s. It would have been a mercy had they died at once, but one had to suffer while the other was a corpse next to him.

“He passed not long ago. The water… It threw him against those rocks, and I got… stuck here.” Aeron struggled to speak, not raising his gaze from his comrade. “Still, he tried to crawl his way here. He died moments after reaching me.” Their bond was one of the purest, unmatched by any, until the end. “Captain, would you do me the favor of closing his eyes?” Your nod was small, but genuine. A trembling hand neared Atlas’ cold face, placing it over his lids. You let it rest there for a moment as you let out a tiny sob.

“Thank you, thank you…” The grip of Aeron’s hand on Atlas’ tightened. As if giving him a final goodbye.“Have you found any live ones?” You didn’t notice when Aeron was facing you again.

“No. Not yet.” You wiped away at the residue coming out of your nostrils. “Has anyone been nearby?” The young boy softly shook his head. His free hand slowly went to reach your face, thumb wiping away at the tears that were still streaming.

“Captain, it’s okay. These situations are inevitable in war, you taught us so.” You shook your head as you gently squeezed his hand. Not like this, never like this. “It has been my greatest honor to train under you and fight alongside you. I’m sure Atlas would say the same.” His words were slow and ragged, but genuine. In his eyes, embers were fading, but one spark remained.

“Take my necklace. Make sure when you get out of here and return home, please give it to Sian, give her my regards, tell her what I never could… Tell her I love her dearly...” Regret and numbness welled in his eyes, the pain of not returning to the love of his life was greater than that of being impaled. Your hands made their way towards his neck, slowly removing his necklace, avoiding him any more pain. You placed it around yours and safely tucked it under your mucky clothes.

“I will. I’ll let her know you thought of her until the end.” You went for his hand and gave him a squeeze of reassurance, not letting go.“Thank you.”

         You stayed by Aeron’s side in silence, refusing to let go of his hand, focused on his ragged breathing and the cold night surrounding you. You couldn’t bare seeing him like this, but neither putting him out of his misery. Not like he wanted you to anyways, all he wanted was for you to be by his side until nature took its course, just like he was for Atlas. You felt the grip he had on your hand slowly loosen up, as his head slowly rolled to the side and against your shoulder until you heard it. It was faint, but you heard it. You would continue to hear it for the rest of your existence. The final sign of life escaped him when his breath did, and he was gone. It took time to get there, but he was gone in an instant.

          Sobs escaped from your inner core. Your underlings were dead beside you, their bodies would not be put to rest in a proper burial where their loved ones can have their final goodbyes. They would be left in a forest in God knows where, together at the very least. Alone, but together.

          With shivery legs, you got up and gently repositioned Atlas’ body in a more comfortable manner, placing both his hands over his chest. A grim expression grew on your face as, through tears, you tried removing Aeron’s body from the root. More sobs got stuck on your throat as more blood poured from his chest, no wonder his light armor couldn’t withstand such mighty root. Once his body mimicked Atlas’, you scouted the nearby area for flowers. Carefully plucking some delicate blue ones; you placed them in their hands. You sat in front of their bodies silently, accepting that they were gone, and you were alone. Alone, but together. It was a small comfort, they were only lifeless bodies with you, but at least they were with you, and you gave them both a small, decent send off to the beyond. Your goodbyes you kept to yourself. Your regrets as well.

           As you mourned your losses, the sound of a snapping twig broke you away from your sorrows. Wiping your tears away with one arm and drawing your small blade with the other as you stood, you surveyed your surroundings with caution. Breathing was close to nonexistent as you tried to be as silent as you could, if only to listen more carefully. Wary footsteps got closer in sound, but you couldn’t see anything or anyone yet. Not until they peered themselves into view from behind some trees, less guarded than you were.

“You…” When your eyes deciphered who it was, the anger inside you soon started to boil again. It was his fault, it was his unit, it was he who led the ambush.

“You.” He slowly retired the blade he was ready to draw back to its sheath once he realized it was only you. Still wet, shivering, covered in mud, blood, and tears. His eyes travelled to the bodies behind you, peacefully laid out, and then travelled back to you. He had never seen someone that looked so distraught completely shift into rage and fury.

“Don’t look at them, lowlife scum.” Low, harsh tones met his ears. “It’s your fucking fault I lost them. I’m going to kill you.” The last sentence was drawn out so slowly, he was almost taken aback when you lunged for his throat with your blade, ready to return the scar he left you with and take his life while you were at it. But he was quicker. Before you could land a single hit, his hands clasped around your wrists with more force than necessary. In a second, he forced your body around, kicking you behind your knees. You dropped to the ground in pain. 

“You really think I’ll quit?” Attempting, but failing, to stab him while throwing your arms back at him, he twisted your wrists above you until nearly snapping them, with an aching yelp, the blade fell out of your hands. He quickly let you go and pushed you forwards. You winced and seethed as you brought your semi injured wrists up to your chest. Using the lesser pained hand, your reached for the blade, but were quickly halted by the weight of his boot, causing another agonized bawl to escape your lips. 

“I suggest not.” He lifted his foot off your hand and kicked away the knife beneath it. Wincing and scowling, you crawled your way to the sanctuary of your dead comrades. It wasn’t fair. You were supposed to get revenge, if not for yourself, for them. What kind of a sorry Captain were you? Couldn’t protect your unit from an ambush, couldn’t secure them from the currents, and couldn’t even avenge them at the very least by hurting the one man who caused all this. Instead, he stood above you and you were rendered to nothing in mere seconds. His bored gaze loomed over you like a curse, and you understood why they called him Silence. He drew out a long breath as he averted his gaze elsewhere, wiping mud off his brow. He was just as much of dirty mess as you were. Puddles sloshed as he marched away.

“I’m finding a way out. You’re more than welcome to come along, if you keep your hands and blades to yourself.” A barked laugh escaped your throat.

“Why would I search for a way out with the likes of you?” You were already on your feet, pain from your knees and wrists subsiding. His sudden turn caught you off guard, but you refused to show it.

“Then meet a fate no better than your companions’.” He jutted his chin over to where Aeron and Atlas’ bodies laid. The calm, cool tone for such a vile string of words made you uneasy. Being this near him, under the moonlight, without the rush of battle or alcohol in your veins, you were able to see him better. He was not that much taller than you, and yet? He always made you feel so small, so vulnerable and rendered you utterly and completely defenseless…

“I’d rather take my chances with the woodland night.” You took a few steps backwards and plopped down on the muddy ground.

His fingers brushed the muddy, brown locks out of his face. Shrugging, he went on his way. “Alright, alone then.”

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i had to repost sorry