#I was informed that we were no longer dating without any prior discussion to it and then I had to ask and be like do we need to-

[polyamorouspunk]

I love it, but would also probably start it with “as per our prior agreement” or something.

Will do.

[spencerreidsconverse]

When Evil Doesn't Sleep

summary: Spencer has been gone far too long on a case and when he finally returns home, reader shows him just how much she missed him.

word count: 3.4k

warnings: smut, implied dom/sub undertones, pet names

Pairing: Spencer Reid/Female Reader

A/N: My first fic!!! I hope you all enjoy! <3

“Y/n I’m really sorry but it looks like the case is going to take a lot longer than we thought. We had a recent development and the profile is now pointing to a partnership so now we’re hunting down two unsubs”. You sighed as Spencer rattled off his apologies through the phone before putting him out of his misery “Spencer honey, you don’t have to apologize. Quit worrying about me and focus on catching the bad guys.”

To say you missed Spencer would be the understatement of the century. He had been in Utah for six days already and now with a pair of psychos your odds of finding him in your bed by the end of the week were growing increasingly slim. It didn’t help that you had been swamped prepping for an extra class you’d agreed to take on at Georgetown where you worked as a Criminal Psychology professor. Between both of your hectic work schedules you hadn’t had a real weekend to yourselves in a few months, and while you knew when you first started dating Spencer that it was an inevitable of his job, it had never been this crazy before. They say evil never sleeps but lately it hasn't even taken a catnap.

“I love you Y/N. I promise I’ll come home to you soon and take you out on a real date. I’m sorry darling, I have to go. I’ll text you when I get to the hotel tonight and if you’re still up we can talk for a bit okay?”. “Alright Spence, I love you too. Stay safe okay?”. “I promise, goodbye love.”

Your farewell barely made it past your lips when the dial tone cut you off and once again your boyfriend of three years vanished from your side of the country. You let out an exasperated sigh before reminding yourself that there were other people who needed his help and that you could wait for his attention - at least until that night. Continuing the trek up the stairs of your and spencer’s shared apartment, you managed to haphazardly balance your grocery bags in one hand while unlocking the door and disabling the security alarm, internally cringing at the high shriek that rattled through your brain.

Walking through the living room, you sat the bags on your kitchen counter and began reorganizing the small fridge space to fit all the perishables you had brought home, absentmindedly hoping they wouldn't spoil now that it would be just you for several more days. Moving to the cupboard you replaced the few grab and go snack boxes you had made up to try and encourage Spencer to eat more throughout the day and refilled the paper plate stash that quickly became a requirement after you realized neither one of you could tolerate doing dishes every night. You ripped open the cardboard packaging of yet another microwave dinner and set the timer before leaving to change into more comfortable attire.

Opening the door of your shared bedroom, the smell of vanilla wax melts and dryer sheets hit you like a brick and immediately sent a pang of loneliness through your chest. Spencer was usually around by the time the chores needed done, and you rarely had to do them yourself. Unfortunately, the laundry was piling up and you needed something to distract you so you spent the day running errands and cleaning the apartment more thoroughly than necessary. You walked over to the stack of black dresser drawers and pulled out the first pair of pajama pants you touched, Spencer’s old caltech sweats that now fit you far better than him considering he had received them when he was 14. They looked more like capris on him now and it was embarrassingly difficult to convince him to buy a new pair that fit him properly. You slipped on a tank top and pulled your hair back before making your way lazily to the bathroom to take off the remnants of your simple makeup.

After scrubbing your face clean and pulling your dinner out, you moved to ready the couch for yet another night of binge watching cheesy 90s movies. You selected Clueless and watched the vibrant colors pop across the screen while you dived into your meal, making a poor attempt to ignore the slight freezer burnt taste that lingered after every bite. You finished your dinner and set the bowl aside before covering yourself with a blanket and allowing yourself to sink into the cushions, desperately awaiting Spencer's text.

You were jolted out of your doze by the loud buzzing of your phone against the wooden coffee table. Clumsily you reached for it and managed to swipe the answer pad before it sent your genius to voicemail. “Hello?” you managed before a yawn ripped its way through you suddenly. “Hey Y/N, I’m sorry it’s so late. I didn't mean to wake you, I figured you’d still be up. You should go back to bed love.” For the first time, you noticed the neon green numbers on the microwave. 12:30. You stifled another yawn and shook your head in an effort to wake yourself further “No way, I just dozed off while watching a movie. I was waiting to talk to you. Besides, I’m up now anyways so you might as well stay on with me for a bit. Did you get any further today?” “Well, JJ had the idea that the partners were originally a typical dominant/submissive partnership but that something in the dynamic must have changed because the MO began to deteriorate. We think the partners must have split up now, because we’re finding similar pieces of the previous MO at separate crime scenes.”.

You processed the information he fed you slowly due to your semiconscious state but eventually you put your words in order well enough to respond. “That should be helpful though yeah? I mean, they’re used to working in a partnership so being suddenly separated from your other half so to speak would throw you off track quite a bit right?”. You could practically hear him smiling through the phone as you drew the conclusions the team had come to only a few hours prior. “Yes. We’re hoping to be able to draw them out and trap them. Play them against each other.”.”Does that mean I can stop sleeping on the couch soon?”. You heard him let out a dejected sigh - you knew he hated that you would force yourself onto the cramped couch when you had a king sized bed a few hundred feet away but he understood.

When he had come home in the early hours of the morning after an abrupt end to a case a few weeks after you had moved into his place, he had caught you curled up on the sofa with a throw pillow stuffed under your head. When he questioned you about it the next morning, you simply answered that the bed felt too big without him and that you couldn’t stand the empty feeling. “Sooner than later I hope my love. Y/N I really wish you wouldn’t do that to yourself. It’s horrible for your body. It can put you at a much higher risk for chronic back and neck pain as well as-”. “Spence. I’m not a giant like you are. I fit on the couch much better than you do, and I barely notice the difference.”. You both cringed, hearing the lie clear in your voice. Still, Spencer must have felt bad because he humored you. “If you're sure. What did you do today my love?”. You smiled sadly hearing in his voice just how desperate he was to escape from his reality and come home to you.

”Well, I straightened the house. In fact, it’s so clean i think we could use it as a sterilization room.”. He let out a soft chuckle and you could hear him begin to relax as you recounted the rest of your day, excluding the part about the microwave dinner. Spencer loved to tell you how many of the ingredients were one step away from processed garbage and you decided to opt out of the lecture for the evening. He had more than enough to worry about without having to focus on your diet while he was away. After a half hour of light conversation, a loud yawn betrayed you as you were excitedly discussing the cute puppy you had met on the way to the market. Spencer immediately requested that you hang up and get some more sleep but you refused. After a few minutes of bickering, you relented on the condition that he would read to you until you had fallen asleep. You curled up under the fluffy blanket as Spencer’s even voice recited the collection of Grimm’s fairy tales quickly lured you to sleep.

You woke up the next morning as sunlight peered through the curtains, stretching your body out to ease the aches from the previous night. You smiled softly as your screen lit up with a text from Spencer wishing you a good morning and an update that they had a solid plan for boxing in the two unsubs that afternoon. “If all goes to plan I should be carrying you to our bed before midnight tonight.”. Your smile widened and you sent back “Can’t wait to truly see you - and love you- tonight. I’ll be waiting.” You plugged your phone into the charger and straightened up from the night before when your phone went off again. The one word message glared at you from the screen and you let out an involuntary giggle. “Tease.”. You hoped it gave him something to look forward to until he was back in your arms. You sent back a simple “XO” before deciding to reread one of your favorite books for a few hours to kill some time. You made yourself a sandwich for lunch and had a few glasses of water as the clock slowly ticked by. You were over halfway through the lengthy novel when you received another message.

“We apprehended both unsubs. Hotch is postponing the paperwork until Monday so we can go straight home. I’ll see you in a few hours baby.”.  You jumped slightly in celebration before finishing your current chapter, marking your place, and all but skipping to the shower to shave and exfoliate your skin. You knew Spencer would still be heavily worked up once he arrived home and luckily, his favorite release included intertwining your bodies as close as possible and loving you sweetly and slowly.

You took your time in the shower careful not to nick yourself with your razor. You scrubbed your scalp with your nails, letting your stress and soreness melt away under the steam. You waited until the water ran cold before turning the knob and stepping out, wrapping yourself in a fluffy towel and blow drying your hair until it layed perfectly even. You applied lotion all over your skin and stepped out of the bathroom to slip on your black silk robe, knowing it wouldn’t be worth it to dress up further. Spencer would be desperate to feel your skin against his and any fabric in his way didn't stand much of a chance.

You made an actual meal for dinner, a pasta dish with chicken that could be easily reheated for Spencer when he grew hungry later in the night. You helped yourself to a serving and after quickly cleaning up the kitchen and storing the leftovers, you retreated to the bedroom to wait for his return.

You were half paying attention to the feed you opted to scroll through on your phone when you heard the door creak open and bags drop to the floor. You set your phone on the bedside table and ran towards the foyer, all but throwing yourself at the exhausted man in front of you. He took a step back from the impact but still enveloped you in his arms and pulled you impossibly tight into his chest. “Hi baby.” you whispered against the scruffy skin of his jawline, peppering kisses up towards his earlobe. He let out a long sigh of relief and picked you up off the hardwood floor, wrapping your thighs around his waist resulting in a high pitched giggle to erupt from your throat. He kissed you then, slowly at first but quickly building more passionate. Your lungs were burning when he finally allowed you to pull away, opting to kiss down your neck to your collarbones and the skin of your chest that was newly exposed as your robe slipped open.

He carefully made his way back to your room, continuing his kisses back up to your shoulder, stopping only to leave marks you knew would only grow darker as time passed. At the very least he was sure to only mark you in places you could cover with little difficulty. “I missed you so much Y/N. The entire ride home all I could think about was you waiting for me in our bed. My gorgeous girl.”. You felt your chest heat up at his words of admiration, wrapping your fingers into his curls and pulling his lips towards your own once more.

You felt him groan against you and moved to quickly unbutton his shirt, slipping it down his arms and tossing it in the general direction of the hamper. He pulled you up with him then, so you were both on your knees, chest to chest as he pulled your robe fully down your back to the swell of your ass where he grasped at you through the slick fabric. You let out a whine and you pulled his belt off, undoing his jeans desperate to continue. He grinned against your neck and pushed you down so you laid flat on your back, completely exposed to him. He kissed at your stomach, making his way down to your inner thighs. He licked a slow wet trail from your pelvic bone to the top of your clit as you whimpered desperately. “Spence, please… I need more”. He humored you, creating slow small circles with his tongue moaning at the taste. You cried out as he created the perfect amount of pressure on your clit, legs threatening to close around his head when he moved to slip one of his fingers easily inside you as the mix of your own wetness and his saliva aided him. He smirked as he felt your thighs flex before using his left hand to throw one of your legs over his shoulders at a time. He pushed a second finger in, curling them up to perfectly reach your g-spot with every thrust. Soon though, you grew impatient with just his fingers. You needed more and you knew just how to get it.

“I want you so bad Spence. I’ve waited for so long and I just can’t anymore. I need to feel you deep inside of me.”. You were positive those words would leave him just as needy as you were and he proved you right when he kicked his pants the rest of the way off and went to line himself up against you. “Wait.”. He stopped immediately, examining your face for any indication of what was wrong. “What’s the matter baby? Are you okay?”. You shook your head and smiled at his concern before switching your positions so his back was resting against the pillows as you straddle his thighs. He smirked at you as he caught on, trailing his hands up the front of your legs to rest at your hips. “You gonna ride me angel?”. You responded with an eager nod and he squeezed your hips, pulling you up further so you were hovering above him. “Sit pretty like my good girl then.”. You whined softly at his words before slowly sinking yourself down around his length, sucking in a harsh breath at the stretch. Even with how wet you were, the adjustment took longer than usual due to the dry spell you were both suffering from as of late.

When you finally felt stretched out enough to move, you slowly ground your hips forward flush against his. He groaned out, lifting you back up so you were almost completely off of him before pulling you back down. You moaned both at the sensation and the idea of being manhandled by the genius below you. You realized what he was asking though, and began bouncing yourself up and down his cock, stopping every few thrusts to grind your clit down on him. You let out soft moans, and after a few more minutes you felt his fingers dig deeper into your hips and his breaths quicken. You knew he was close and as if on cue you started rubbing fast circles against your clit as he spoke again.

“Baby girl I’m getting close. You gonna cum with me angel?” You nodded furiously in response and you felt him start thrusting up to meet you. You panted as you hurried towards the edge of your orgasm, holding on until his thrusts grew sloppier. “You ready to cum with me baby? You gonna cum on my cock?” “Yeah.. gonna cum all over your cock Doc.” You fought to keep the grin off your face when he moaned at the title. He thrusted deep into you twice, before he ordered your release. “I want you to cum now baby. Cum all over my cock.” You felt your orgasm rip through you, electricity shooting through your limbs. Spencer groaned loudly as you tightened around him before pulling you down deep and releasing inside you.

You both fought to catch your breath as you rode out your highs before you found yourself slumping against his chest, suddenly drained from your activities. You felt him chuckle at your drastic change in energy as he wrapped his arms around you again. “I know you just washed the bed sheets and we’re both sweaty but do you think a washcloth will suffice for tonight?”. You nodded against his chest before slowly lifting yourself up and off of him, rolling onto your back on the other side of the bed. Spencer swiftly made his way across the hall, returning to wipe you down gently with the warm fabric. You shivered as the cool air dried your skin, watching him move throughout your room.

He slipped on a fresh pair of boxers before tossing the washcloth in the hamper along with his previously discarded clothes. He hung your robe on the back of your bedroom door then flipped the light switch off before rejoining you in bed to slip under the blankets with you. You immediately curled up into his chest, sighing contently as the sound of his heartbeat filled your ears. You kissed his chest and whispered goodnight, drifting into your first real sleep since before he left.

The next morning you and Spencer went shopping after you successfully convinced him to upgrade to a smart phone with video call abilities. He had begun to shut down the idea as he always had before but after the mere suggestion of what it could do to better your late night hotel room chats he was the one pulling you towards the nearest phone shop. You smiled politely while Spencer took his sweet time weighing the pros and cons of each model, letting your mind drift to the first time it would come in handy. As you finally neared the checkout counter, you took Spencer's hand in your own and gave it a gentle squeeze. After running his card through the machine, the salesgirl gave him the small plastic bag and wished you both a good afternoon.

As you exited the shop, you looked up at him, nudging him to get his attention “What do you think of an app controlled vibrator?”. He stared at you incredulously for a few moments, almost stopping dead in his tracks. After recovering from the initial shock at the vulgarity of your suggestion, he shook his head with a soft smirk and nudged back against you. “Tease.” he called you once more. “That’s the reason you love me right?”. He pulled you into his side, kissing you softly. “One of many Y/N. One of many.”

[queenshelby]

A New Life

Part Three: Art, Bets & Dates

Pairing: Cillian Murphy x Reader

Words: 1,404

Warning: None

When you arrived at the exhibition, you were greeted by one of Cian’s and Cillian’s friend who, surprisingly, was accompanied by Robert.

‘You must be Y/N. My son has spoken very highly of you’ the man said to you and you were somewhat perplexed when you realised that he was Robert’s father.

Being a friend of Cian, you expected him to have attended Cian’s birthday party but you were soon to find out that he had a prior engagement related to his work that evening.

He was a well-known artist in Ireland and his artwork was, according to what Cillian had told you, rather interesting and controversial.

‘I had no idea that you would be here Y/N’ Robert said, much more confident than the night before.

‘You told your father about me. Why?’ you asked somewhat confused.

‘He is over exaggerating. I told him about having met you last night and that we would be going out for dinner sometime soon’ Robert explained, causing you to look sharply towards Cillian who simply shrug his shoulders.

‘How about the theatre instead?’ Cillian then suddenly suggested and you immediately shook your head.

‘I think dinner sounds fine’ you huffed out quickly, not realising that Cillian had, in fact, planned to save you after having accidently gotten you into this mess in the first place.

‘Well, I was just thinking…I’ve got four tickets to the new play at the Abbey and you could both go together with Cian and Evelyn’ Cillian suggested.

‘A double date?’ Robert said almost excitedly, causing Cillian to smile and nod.

Cillian had known Robert since he was a young boy and had gotten him his first acting job in an Irish TV show. He was a good young man but Cillian could see that you clearly were not compatible and hoped that Robert would realise that as well.

Being a young mum, you were at different stages of your lives and Cillian was surprised by your level of maturity after he had found out how young you actually were when he googled your name.

‘Well, I am not one for the theatre Cilly. Unless you are in the play, I don’t think I’ll force myself to sit through it’ Cian then said, causing you to roll your eyes. ‘But, Laura loves the theatre and you should go with her and take my sister and Robert along with you’ Cian then suggested while giving Cillian a wink.

Cian’s comment caused Cillian to chuckle but, when you looked at him with big puppy dog eyes, he couldn’t help but sigh.

‘You owe me’ you whispered towards Cillian quietly without anybody noticing and he nodded reluctantly in response.

‘Yeah, sounds good. Let’s go together. Are you in, Laura?’ Cillian asked and, of course, she gladly accepted his invitation.

***

The exhibition itself was as interesting as Cillian had promised and you were quite impressed with Robert’s father’s artwork.

Laura, on the other hand, seemed a little lost and couldn’t make much sense of some of the pieces. Her plan was to follow Cillian around and agree with everything he had to say which made you realise how much she actually liked him.

She had no interest in art whatsoever nor did she seem to enjoy literature much which was all Cillian had been talking about for the past two hours.

‘I think you are wrong Cilly. Clearly, this work refers to Ulysses by James Joyce’ you teased him as he tried to make sense of one of the works. He was determined that the work was inspired by a less a famous book and an argument evolved.

‘If I am right, you owe me a pint’ Cillian chuckled while Laura stood by and watched you both laugh and argue at the same time as you were analysing one of Ireland’s most famous pieces of literature.

‘Let’s make it dinner and we have a deal’ you chuckled, causing Cillian to nod.

‘Fine! If you are right, I will buy you dinner and if I am right, you buy me dinner instead’ Cillian confirmed, causing Laura to sigh while you continued to engage in the conversation without her and, just as you were about to seek out Robert’s father to get your answer, Cian arrived with a brochure about the exhibition while Laura excused herself in order to visit the bathroom.

‘Apparently, this painting was inspired by Ulysses. Interesting’ Cian said, causing you to grin while Cillian snatched the brochure from Cian’s hands.

‘Damn’ he huffed out before informing Cian that he lost a bet against you and now needed to take you out for dinner.

‘Is that alright with you? Me having dinner with your sister?’ Cillian chuckled, clearly seeing the humour in this not so serious bet.

‘So long as you don’t sleep with her, I have no objections’ Cian then laughed, causing Cillian to roll his eyes.

‘The fact that you are concerned about that is flattering man, but I am sure your sister would prefer a younger model for this kind of stuff’ Cillian then joked, shaking his head in disbelieve about your brother’s comment.

‘Topic change, please. My sex life isn’t up for discussion’ you laughed and, just as you did, Laura returned from the lavatory and joined you to see the remainder of the exhibition.

It was obvious to you that she no longer liked to be around you and, whilst she appeared nice when you met her, she was now rather frustrating to deal with. It was clear to you that she wanted to mark her territory and didn’t appreciate your interactions with Cillian.

She looked at you sideways for the remainder of the day, ignoring your presence and trying to pull Cillian aside wherever she could. Yet, you didn’t even try to interfere with her as all of your interactions with Cillian came naturally to you. You simply were you and he was comfortable being around you. It was as simple as that.

‘What are you trying to achieve?’ Laura eventually asked you when no one else was around and just before you were about to leave the exhibition.

‘What are you talking about?’ you asked rather curiously.

‘Don’t play dumb Y/N. It’s obvious. You are putting on act and it’s almost embarrassing, really. But, I guess, at your age, you don’t know any better. You are just young and in it for the game’ Laura then said and, whilst you were getting angry with her, you still weren’t sure what she was talking about.

‘You have to realise that he is a grown man Y/N and clearly won’t be interested in someone your age’ she then said which is when it hit you. She was talking about Cillian, thinking that you are hitting on him.

‘Oh Jesus. Laura, I am just trying to make friends, alright? Cillian is nice but I am not even interested in dating anyone. That includes him’ you pointed out, shaking your head, before walking away from the conversation.

***

At around 5 o’clock that evening you arrived back at Cian’s house which is where Max was spending the day.

‘Mum, can we go to the Zoo? Pretty please?’ Max asked pretty much as soon as you walked through the door with Cian and Cillian. He had been reading a book about tigers and was really keen to see one in real life.

‘The Zoo? Honey, the Zoo is like an hour’s drive and we don’t have a car. Maybe we can go to the Zoo in Perth when we get back home, hmm?’ you suggested, which is when Cillian jumped in and suggested that he would drive you.

‘You will drive us to the Zoo? It’s an hour’s drive Cillian’ you said somewhat surprised.

‘Well, I do owe you’ Cillian chuckled, feeling terrible about the situation with Robert. ‘Despite, I wasn’t going to just sit in the car. I’ll check out the cool tigers and elephants with you and then I’ll take you both for dinner’ he then said, remembering the bet he had lost, while Max was showing him the book with the tigers.

‘You will be so bored’ you giggled quietly before gladly accepting his offer.

‘I doubt that. I haven’t been to the Zoo in a decade and some of the animals are pretty fascinating’ Cillian said with a warm smile which almost made your heart melt then and there.

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[itsclydebitches]

RWBY Recaps: Volume 8 “The Final Word”

Well, we made it to the finale, everyone, and if you're reading this it seems you've survived the watching of it too. Barely. To say that some questionable choices were made across these 20 minutes is... an understatement.

But before we delve into the episode, I want you to cast your mind back to November 7th, 2020. A horrible year that heralded a horrible RWBY volume. There, coming off the shaky writing of Volume 7, I posed a number of questions and concerns that the show needed to tackle, with the promise that we would return to these expectations in four months time. Now, here we are! Let's refresh everyone's memory, yeah?

Taken directly from that recap, what RWBY promised us, through various teasers and Q&As, included:

Emphasis on Ruby’s leadership and how Summer’s death has impacted her

Insight into Ren and Nora’s flaws

May Merigold will supposedly have a larger part

More information about The Long Memory (Ozpin’s cane)

Theme of the volume is that you can respect someone but that doesn’t necessarily mean you agree with them

Very short timeline (supposedly just two days)

Yang in particular is very suspicious and distrustful

And you know what? They did all this. In the spirit of being fair and honest to this show, RWBY succeeded in delivering on everything they promised... it was just our foolishness that expected that these ideas would be delivered well. Ruby's leadership took center stage in the form of her hiding for multiple episodes and then others telling her she's still The Best before the plot dropped a solution into her lap... one she could have used at any point prior to this. Summer's death certainly has an impact, though it's an impact born of a crazy reveal that Summer likely isn't dead, but turned into a horrifying grimm monster. Ren and Nora both delve into their flaws, but heaven forbid either grow from that reflection. Ren learns that if he pushes past his primary flaw of keeping his emotions buried and actually expresses his doubts for once, he'll be yelled at and ignored until he admits how wrong he was. The "real" flaw is being a bad friend, with "bad friend" equaling "Not agreeing with Ruby 100%." Meanwhile, Nora considers that maybe she shouldn't rush in recklessly and hit things with her hammer... which is why she rushes in recklessly, hits something with her hammer, gets grievously injured, and is told that this is just who she truly is. No growth there, not unless we count her sudden desire to figure out who she is without Ren... but that exploration hasn't started yet. Too bad she wasn't the teammate separated at the end of the volume!

Meanwhile, May did indeed have a larger role to play, one I quite liked, it's just that this role — like all the others — inevitably circled back to realizing how wonderful Ruby is. May challenges Ruby to make a decision, but instead of being the catalyst for Ruby's growth, May becomes another forgotten side character who does a sudden about-turn regarding her perspective, leaving the group with the contradictory message that Ruby is actually doing her best, she's just a kid, no need to try any harder... everyone who claimed otherwise up until now was mistaken. May is another Cordovin. She's another Qrow. She's another Maria.

Fun fact: we don't even know if Maria is alive right now. That's how little she means to the show!

Actually, wait... anyone remember this nonsense from Volume 7? 

I was too lazy to change the date.

Moving on, Ozpin's cane turned out to be a stakes obliterating bomb that came out of nowhere, makes no sense logistically — how do battles store energy that only hurts grimm? — yet nevertheless seems to have killed Hazel? It's a disaster of unanswered questions. Similar to the disaster of our two day timeline when, I'm fairly sure, we've had an unnatural number of sunrises and sunsets. I'll have to take a look back at the volume as a whole now that it's complete to be sure of that though. As for our themes... did we really explore the idea of respecting someone even if you disagree with them? Because Ironwood wasn't shown any respect. Ren wasn't shown respect. I think the closest we got was Oscar calmly validating Yang's worry about getting buddy-buddy with Emerald, but the whole point there was that Yang was wrong. She wasn't wrong, but that's what the text would have you believe. She is indeed "very suspicious and distrustful," but that's hardly unjustified in these circumstances. I'm still boggling at the fact that it took the group three volumes for forgive Ozpin, even while he was actively working to assist them, yet I-helped-destroy-Beacon-and-tried-to-kill-everyone-you-love Emerald is the group's new BFF after she... ran away with Oscar? She didn't save him, she just went along for the ride. At the very least we might have gotten a scene where Penny was like, "Hey, why are you all laughing with the woman who just tried to kill my dad?"

But oh yeah, the story doesn't remember Pietro exists either. His daughter is DEAD and he hasn't been on screen since Episode Five, let alone there when she passes.

I had my own list going in, including such expectations as "Ozpin bb you got done dirty please acknowledge this" and "Queer baiting, queer baiting… you’re on thin ice at this point, RWBY. Just skate on over to the queer snack bar before you fall straight into the lake." Obviously these needs were not met.

So what, given this mess of expectations, did we end up with?

Our finale — for some reason — breaks the one word title trend with "The Final Word." It's an expression that refers to the final word in an argument or a discussion, the idea of winning by making a last, devastating point. It can also refer to making the final decision on something, which is the best way I'm able to apply the title to this episode (outside of any “final” comparisons). Penny's death is certainly all about choice and making some kind of decision... but on the whole, this title doesn't feel like it fits well. Not like "Worthy" or "Creation" or "Risk." The two latter titles had obvious connections to the episode in question through dialogue and plot, while the former was a deliberate callback to Watts' speech. "The Final Word" feels... less obvious in what it’s trying to say.

That's a minor nitpick though. Let's get into the meat of the episode.

We open on the grimm whale still disappearing, which is weird. I get that it's massively bigger than any other grimm we've seen, but they all turned to dust near instantaneously and it's been, what? At least an hour since Oscar blew it up? Likely longer when we factor in their walk back to the manor, the fight with Ironwood, fixing Penny, and this entire evacuation. It certainly makes for a nice visual, but like so many details in RWBY, it raises unnecessary questions along the way.

The important bit though is that amidst the whale carcass a blob of evil is swirling about. Salem, obviously. 

She’s not reforming in time to actually do anything though, don't worry.

Instead, we cut to the Ironwood vs. Winter fight and there's at least some dialogue this time. Ironwood yells that he's sacrificed everything to keep Remnant safe. Winter yells back that he actually sacrificed everyone else. Obviously, Ironwood should be called out for things like, you know, his unprompted murders, but instead they have Winter listing stuff that she was never shown to have a problem with before. The embargo? "Squeezed Mantle until it broke?" She, as Ironwood's second hand, understood and supported both the decision to close the border and the need to collect resources for a plan designed to take out Salem. I hate that no only did she turn without an ounce of hesitation or grief, but now they're having her act as if Ironwood forced these decisions on everyone, rather than everyone supporting him through them. We all remember Volume 7 when Ruby pressured him to finish Amity, right? And in trust RWBY fashion, most of these words are meaningless. Mantle "broke"? What does that mean? The class disparity did not come about through Ironwood: that's been in the works for generations. The lack of resources made things harder, yes, but when they were reclaimed by Robyn nothing improved. Watts is the one who turned off the heat and Salem attacked Atlas, leaving Mantle alone. Now, all the citizens have escaped through magical portals. So how is Mantle "broken" exactly? More importantly, why is Winter upset over this vague, nonsensical dilemma when she could be yelling about Ironwood wanting to bomb Mantle?

Again: this woman watched Ironwood shoot the councilman, shrugged, and continued to believe in him up until she realized his bomb threat was real. That was one of the main reasons why I thought the councilman might be alive, with Ironwood only shooting a warning shot past him. Because this is how you react to a good person unexpectedly killing someone else

whereas this is what we got from Winter and Harriet.

Hell, Weiss has more of a reaction to Yang telling Ruby things aren't super great right now.

So either Ironwood didn't do something that bad, thereby justifying these tame reactions (unlikely, given where his character ended up), or we should believe based on the animation that everyone was super chill with him killing an unarmed civilian. Which is then directly contradicted when they're like, "You're going to shoot Marrow? Bomb a city?? How could you do such horrible things??? 😲" Friends, buddies, fictional pals... you already watched him murder a dude.

The point is, there's a lot for Winter to be upset about, but she's not upset about that. There's a lot that Winter herself believed in, but the writing has forgotten that. This entire arc went off the rails a volume ago.

Also, why is Ironwood fighting with that giant gun? This is his final battle, presumably ever, and he's wielding this awkward, sluggish weapon we saw him randomly pick up two episodes ago? Let him use his regular guns! Give us a fantastic battle like he had with Watts! Instead, RWBY's final showdown consists of him using this no-name weapon as a unwieldy club in some of the most boring choreography we've seen to date. It doesn't help that this fight needs to share time with three others. Instead of an epic showdown, we're given glimpses of the battle before continually cutting away from it. 

During that first cut we return to the Team RWBY battle where Penny, doing her best to stay out of Cinder's reach, is whisked away on Weiss' wasp.

Too bad she didn't do that for Yang...

Jaune and Nora watch this horror unfold until Jaune says, "Priority one!" and they split. Except... what is priority one exactly? Helping the civilians? I guess, because they don't enter the fight until the very end of it, when everyone else seems to have made it to Vacuo. And you know what, I like that. For once it feels like the group — or at least the B Team — is acting like huntsmen, putting the needs of the people over their own, personal desires. I'm sure Nora wants to help the group after Yang's (presumed) demise and that Jaune would like nothing more than to get his hands on Cinder, but they put those grievances aside to do the work they signed up for. Good job!

My only real gripe is that we don't really see this struggling in the animation, I'm just assuming it's there. In particular, there's a moment when Jaune sends Nora through the portal for reinforcements — not knowing they can't return — and they seem a little too jovial when, by this point, three friends have died.

There's letting your cast be supportive, and then there's having them ignore that three teammates have perished in an abyss. It really doesn't help to sell the idea that Yang, Ruby, and Blake are in any danger here.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Penny tells Weiss that since Cinder is really just after the Maiden powers, she can buy the rest of the group time to escape. Weiss, obviously, isn't fond of this idea... and then the both of them are blasted off the wasp by Cinder's fire. Which they deserve, frankly. They're just having this casual conversation about sacrifice while in the middle of a battle. Did they somehow forget that Cinder can fly too?

Note that multiple attacks from Cinder, another blast, and a hard landing on the pathway gives their auras a knock, but doesn't break them. The primary defense for Yang's aura shattering in a single, simple hit was that everyone is exhausted and running on little to no power... yet here the rest of the cast is, tanking multiple hits as we've come to expect. There is no explanation for Yang's defeat except that the writers chose to ignore the rules of their world for a dramatic death scene... even though that drama was erased a week later as half our team falls into the void too.

We'll get to that though. For now, Cinder corrects Penny's belief with "I want it all" and proceeds to try to finish them off, only for Blake to arrive, having made her choice from last episode about who to help. It's a legitimately nice attack, but I happened to pause at the bEST MOMENT

Anyway.

We leave that fight to return to Qrow and Harriet who have, off screen, started an entirely different battle. What I mean is, last we saw Qrow had broken through the windshield of the airship, roughly pinned Harriet, and was taunting her about getting the fight she wanted. Now, suddenly, he's going “You’re making a mistake, Harriet, what happened to Clover—” as if he's been trying to talk her down this whole time. It's jarring, especially when we consider that Qrow had a volume long "kill Ironwood" arc that was dropped because... Robyn reminded him that murder is bad? RWBY feels like a storytelling pinball machine. Characters bounce from one personality to the next, one perspective and another, round and round until you don't know where they'll end up.

Harriet screams for Qrow to just shut up already and honestly? Same. I love Qrow, he's one of my favorites, but I can't deny that he's been done dirty like so many others since Volume 6. I love who Qrow was, not the mess RWBY has created the last few years.

Time to delve back into fic after recapping!

Sadly though, this strange dialogue wasn't the only "wtf" moment. Harriet is still trying to drop the bomb — which is its own mess of confusing motivations — when Vine and Elm show up on Harriet's ship. Elm begs Harriet not to do this "because you’re our friend!”

Am I glad that they finally acknowledged that the Ace Ops have always been friends? Sure, but why did we spend two volumes claiming otherwise? They were friends, a fantastic team, then Harriet announces that's a lie and we get a bunch of "Team RWBY is superior because they're actually friends" messages. Except this entire time we're still watching the Ace Ops be kind and playful with one another. But they're not friends, the story says. Not friends as they fight these battles. Not friends as they grieve for Clover. Definitely not friends as they react in horror at Ironwood nearly shooting Marrow. No, there's nothing there... until Elm claims there is! Then Harriet reacts in shock. I have friends?

Except Elm was labeled the one "just following orders" by Yang. Elm is the one who shook off Vine after the whale exploded. This isn't the story of one character, Harriet, thinking she was alone and then realizing that people do care for her, this is a story that, seemingly at random, had this group being BFFs or acting like they hated each other — and at each point the visuals are contradicted by the story's message. When they act like friends, we're told they're not friends. When they don't act like friends, we're told they really have been this whole time. I mean, do any of them even care that Marrow teamed up with Qrow and Robyn to take them out five minutes ago? All three were going along with Ironwood's scheme until they were physically stopped, but now Elm is convinced this is a bad decision she needs to talk Harriet down from with the power of friendship?

None of these characters are characters, they're just slapped together reactions based on whatever the plot needs. Who is Elm? I've got no clue. Her personality changes every episode.

Also, love that Qrow moves to stop the bomb from dropping and Harriet screams at him to "Get out of the way!" rather than just... attacking him? She even throws her hands out like she's having a temper tantrum. This feels like schoolyard bickering, not a life or death struggle.

Even though, you know, the audience is aware that the people of Mantle have already been evacuated and Qrow's group is aware that Atlas is falling on top of Mantle as they speak, so... why does the bomb matter? It's going to, what? Destroy the city thirty seconds before Atlas does? Oh no, the horror.

Things then, if you can believe it, get even worse. The bomb is still about to drop, so instead of doing anything to stop it — I mean seriously, we know it takes four people to shoulder the bomb's weight, but you're telling me Qrow and a reformed Harriet can't snag it in a pinch? — Qrow sits there, looks at Clover's pin... and the bomb careens towards the side of the airship instead, stopping.

Because I guess Qrow has good luck now? Or always did and somehow never noticed it? Or his semblance evolved?? Again, we don't know, but it's a bad moment any way you slice it, imo. Qrow has always been defined as the guy with a bad luck semblance and, much like Penny's android struggles, the allure was in watching him overcome those challenges, not having the show erase the challenge entirely. Especially when we don't even understand how it was erased. Qrow just... stops drinking, stops caring for Ironwood, stops wanting to kill Ironwood, stops causing bad luck, I guess. RWBY takes major character traits and flips them off like a light switch, leaving the audience with no emotional tether. We didn't watch Qrow overcome his drinking, or realize he can't bear to kill Ironwood, or discover a way to live life with the horrible hand he was dealt, he just blinks one day and those things are gone. Why? No one is sure. Not even the writers, I'd wager, because otherwise they would have written explanations into the text.

Many in the fandom insist that any basic information provided by the story amounts to "hand holding" when in fact there is a massive difference between the sort of unnecessary exposition that bogs down a tale, and having facts enough for the audience in its entirety to be on the same page about what is actually happening. For example, recently someone argued strongly that the "Penny is human" take is incorrect because Penny isn't human, she has an inhuman body made entirely of aura... yet where in the world does this exist in the story? Ambrosius may have been unsure about what Penny would be prior to removing her robotic parts, but that ambiguity is gone once her body forms, the equivalent of worrying about that gun only for a flag with 'BANG' to appear instead of a bullet. Worrying about something doesn't mean that something actually occurred. Penny appears human, expresses human sentiments, and then, this episode, dies as a human. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck and succumbs to the mortal peril that all ducks face... it's probably a duck. As I said in a recent ask, I implore the fandom to stop writing RWBY's scripts for them. Or rather, do so in some amazing fanfics. Don't do it on critical posts as a means of insisting that your revision is canon.

So Qrow has good luck now, maybe, but this character change doesn't amount to anything because Watts remotely starts the bomb's countdown.

At least he’s entertaining and competent. We had that for a time. 

Back to the main battle, Neo is kicking Ruby's ass. Why? Because there's no consistency in power levels in this show. The ancient woman who hasn't fought in decades dances circles around Neo, highlighting how weak she supposedly is, yet now Neo dances circles around our main character. None of us should expect fights to follow the logic of the world, only what drama the plot wants to stir up. Ruby is eventually knocked down from a hard hit — yet her aura's intact! — and is saved at the last second by Weiss tossing Neo into one of the portals. 

Far more of a problem than the power leveling is that Ruby gives no indication here that Neo just murdered her sister. Again, that's what the characters are meant to believe, yet Ruby is as stoic as she would be fighting a bunch of White Fang grunts. If you showed this scene to a RWBY fan on its own and asked, "What do you think happened prior to this?" the answer would be, "Uh... nothing? Ruby is just fighting Neo like she did on the airship in Volume 3." Nothing about this scene — from dialogue to animation — sells the idea that Ruby just lost the person most important to her in the world.

When we do finally mention Yang, it's Weiss who goes, “Come on, we have to do this for Yang” and the delivery is... meh. Honestly, I normally don't pay much attention to the voice acting, but I had a problem with most of Weiss' lines this episode. The "Leave her alone!" during this fight and later a "Get back!" as she attacks Cinder both fell really flat for me. Given the devastation and charged emotion that's supposed to be here, we can't give her anything better than generic cries that, again, she’d throw at any grunt? In that later scene the animation absolutely helps sell Weiss' distress, but the dialogue is common and the delivery has no emotional punch, leaving it feeling like Yang is just hanging out in Vacuo and they promised they'd beat the baddies before catching up with her. No one but Blake is acting like Yang died.

In fact, we see more emotion from Ruby when Weiss shoves her back, taking the brunt of Cinder's blast.

Weiss' aura breaks, not that that's a danger or anything. Everyone falls before they're injured, Winter gets the Maiden powers, Ren barely has to fight. Losing aura in this show used to be a moment of peril, where just last volume Winter was bruised, bleeding, and now needs an assistive device because she had to continue a battle with no aura. Now it's a joke. Aura breaks left and right across the volume with no repercussions attached to that.

We see a bit of the Blake and Penny vs. Cinder fight where Cinder blasts Blake off the edge. Penny rushes after her because at least one character remembered that they can fly.

Ruby, meanwhile, remembers that she can fly when it benefits her. After getting hit down onto a lower level and watching Crescent Rose plummet, she taunts Neo into an attack with a move that's actually quite good. I like the confidence with which Ruby riles her up and I like the strategy of darting behind Neo to knock her off the path instead. “Whatever you wanted, I hope it was worth it."

The only thing I don't like is that this speed and ingenuity had to disappear to justify Yang falling.

Cinder breaks Ruby's aura from behind though, sending her over too and grabbing onto Neo's leg. In an obvious moment born of the trope, it looks as if Cinder is reaching to help Neo, only for her to snag the Relic instead. “You should have never threatened me," she tells Neo and to Ruby: "you should have never been born.” 

Love that they erased all that cool growth from last episode! And by "love" I mean "hate." As I said last recap, I'm not going to pretend that Cinder's character isn't riddled with problems, but realizing she was stronger by teaming up with Neo and Watts was one of the best things they've ever done for her. It made Cinder dangerous again and showed Watts' speech having a clear impact. It also made her more entertaining, creating a new dynamic among the three villains. Now though, Cinder is just... Cinder. The same boring, stupid Cinder we've had since Volume 4. She betrays Neo and then later betrays Watts.

So Cinder kicks Neo and Ruby both over the edge because why would we want to make her interesting? Neo falls, but Ruby has friends there to catch her! Unlike Yang. Jk. Weiss’ aura is gone and Blake actually tried both times, so major kudos for her. Using momentum supplied by Penny, she snags Ruby and hooks her weapon into one of the pathways... only for Cinder to cut the ribbon. Both plummet and once again Penny has a more believable reaction to all this, just like she did last week

Speaking of reactions, does anyone else find it weird that Cinder finally succeeded in killing Ruby and... doesn’t seem to care? 

No? Just me? 

At least we get that good animation with Weiss I was talking about before, even if the dialogue is lacking. I love that she snagged Blake's weapon and uses it to try and take out Cinder, shaking the whole time. Those are some great details. 

Back to the bomb, Qrow is trying to escape, but Harriet says there isn't enough time to get out of the blast range. "I've killed us all." Vine has the solution though, using his semblance to wrap up the airship, thus containing the blast when it goes off. His final words are to reassure Elm that he can give his life, "if it means saving all of my friends." Just in case you missed the part about the Ace Ops being super close this whole time. Even though they also weren’t. Trying to eat your cake too, RWBY? 

Frankly, I didn't feel much of anything during this scene, not when Vine made the sacrifice, nor when Elm and Harriet look on sadly while Robyn pilots them away (that's her contribution this episode). 

All I can say is, good on RWBY for not killing one of the three dark skinned characters, or just murdering the Ace Ops as a whole. What the story is going to do with them though, who knows.

Jaune and Nora have that ‘You can do it!’ moment after three of their friends have presumably been killed. I swear, about 80% of Jaune's scenes do not work tonally and oh boy, things only get worse from here.

First though, I like his entrance. He slams into the fight against Cinder and lines up with Penny and Weiss, who is still dual-wielding her and Blake's weapons. That's an epic shot.  

It looks as if they stand a decent chance against Cinder — Weiss' lost aura notwithstanding — except then Cinder's arm starts going crazy and she gleefully announces that Salem has returned.

Working on a time limit now, Cinder unleashes a volley of attacks that Penny steps in to protect the other two from. It's here that Cinder grabs hold with her grimm arm.

It's here that Penny dies. Again.

For the third time.

Friends, I am tired. This moment honestly deserves the most epic of rants, but that, in turn, requires energy. Energy? In this economy? Ha! That's hilarious. Taking this seriously though, the problem here can — as usual — be boiled down to a single question: What was the point?

Penny died in a horrible attack that shook the cast and audience both to their core.

That emotional impact was erased through her resurrection.

The resurrection did not create a new emotional impact for our heroes to grapple with.

Penny is given the Maiden powers, solidifying the fact that she's always been a "real girl."

That lesson was erased when the story decided to make her human for unexplained reasons (because no, she never needed to be human to survive the virus).

Penny then dies, passing the power to Winter... who was set to get the power in the first place.

We have, once again, come full circle. You can take Penny out of the story and nothing changes. Does Ruby lose any lessons or emotional growth? No. Does anyone survive who would have otherwise died? No. Does her getting the powers lead to someone unexpected snagging them upon her death? No. Penny's existence was filler. She was put in the story to take up time and, that done, was removed from the story once again. It's a choice that wouldn't be half as horrible if that filler hadn't done so much damage along the way.

First is the obvious: that Penny didn't deserve this. As a character, she didn't deserve to be brought back just to be killed off again, seemingly without narrative purpose, serving only to draw in viewers who RT knew loved the character. Second, keeping her in the story led to her entire arc unraveling. Initially, Penny died as an android in the world's eyes, but those who actually knew her — Ruby and Pietro — mourned the girl she really was. Now we have this horrible message that being a machine isn't real enough, so she has to die as a human being. It's a disservice to her character and, as an allegory for many minorities, downright insulting to the audience. Third, this offensive 'better to die as a human than live as a robot' message is wrapped up in the claim that Penny finally gets to choose something — “Let me choose this one thing. Trust me” — but she already did that when she chose to take the Maiden powers. We already had the better written version of this last volume!

And the fourth issue...well.  

Fourth and fifth are the real kickers. Fourth is that Penny's death was an assisted suicide. She explicitly asks Jaune to kill her so she can ensure she's thinking of the right person when she passes (never mind that her thoughts would probably be on Jaune while this is happening) and that's... pretty horrible. Look, I'm no purist. I like a great deal of dark, gritty stories whose plot exists to make us uncomfortable. That's a valuable emotion that fiction can generate. The problem is not that RWBY is tackling a sensitive topic, but that they aren’t tackling it well. Yes, they put in a content warning and (from what I've heard) a suicide helpline as well, but providing the already necessary resources is not the same thing as writing that kind of scene with respect and care. All of the above tells us that, no matter what RT may have intended, that respect and care weren't communicated to the audience. Like Yang, they didn't even bother to keep Penny's death within the rules of their world. Jaune is right there ready to heal her and Penny says no, there's supposedly not time.

Um... since when?

Jaune's aura boost is instantaneous. The second he amplifies aura is the same second the healing starts and their talk could have been spent saving Penny. There was certainly time to save Weiss in Volume 5. To have a character go, 'Nah, it's too late' when the solution is right there is the ultimate cop-out. Suddenly announcing that the solution will no longer work For Reasons is not a legitimate limitation and it's made doubly insulting that RT didn't simply use the limitations already available to them. Jaune has been running low on aura since the whale. He then expended a great deal of aura boosting Penny to keep the virus in check. Every other ally has had their aura broken in this fight so, there. That's your solution. Have Jaune take a few hard hits from Cinder, his aura breaks, and then when Penny is mortally wounded he no longer has a semblance to heal her. It's that easy! Yet instead they had Penny reject help so that she could ask to die. That's what's offensive here.

Finally, reason number five... why is this moment given to Jaune? That's another easy solution: Jaune has gone through the portal and can't get back to heal Penny. There. Done. But logistics aside, this scene should have gone to any other character. Who is Jaune to Penny? Or Penny to Jaune? No one! They don't have a relationship. I get that the writers didn't want any of the girls at her side because then it would be hard to justify Penny not passing the power to them (which I get: making one team member a Maiden changes the show drastically), but you know who should be there instead of Jaune?

Pietro.

Pietro, who built Penny as a weapon and who was never given the chance to apologize for that. Pietro, who told Ruby he could only rebuild her once more, setting up an expectation that he'd sacrifice himself for his daughter (despite the complicated racial issues that would bring up). Pietro, who watched Penny plummet and has no idea what happened to her, let alone that she's been made into a human girl. Pietro should have been at her side, saying goodbye to his child and helping her complete her last wish.

And it would be so very easy to pull off. All it takes is a single line where Penny remembers that her father exists, asking Ruby to ensure a portal opens up in Amity. There's a quick reunion along the pathways before Cinder attacks. We hear a cry of despair as Penny falls and she looks, seeing her father racing towards her, though she thought he'd already made it out. There, you’re done. We open ourselves up to a lot of attacks whenever we say, "Why didn't RWBY just do ____?" because those who vehemently defend the writing like to go, "Oh, you think you could write RWBY better?" and no, I don't. I struggle with long-form storytelling and massive casts. I don't think I could do justice to the sort of show RWBY wants to be, but I do think I'm a decent enough writer to spot when there are major problems like this. The question of "Why doesn't Penny remember that her beloved dad exists?" and "Why, out of that massive cast, is Jaune the one to do this deed?" are both things that a newbie writer can spot, and a sometimes okay writer can figure out how to fix them both simultaneously. A good writer will start thinking about themes — what might it mean for Pietro to kill the creation he made? — and a great writer will find a way to pull that off without having that insulting, discomforting feeling pop up. At this point, our RWBY crew feels less like new writers making mistakes (because they're not new, not at all), but rather just writers who haven't bothered to learn from their mistakes after eight years. That's a lot harder to watch.

Because putting Jaune here doesn't just mess with RWBY's internal rules (not using his semblance) and it's not just useless in terms of Penny's development (she doesn't know him outside of "dude who boosted my aura for an hour"), but it also falls back into a pattern I thought RWBY had finally broken from: making Jaune the story's emotional center. This is not the JAUNE show. It's the RWBY show. Yet here, once again, we have Jaune in the spotlight. Why, after a whole volume of Ruby avoiding making decisions, does Jaune finally make the hard call? Why, after a scene where Penny asked Ruby to kill her, does Jaune do that deed? Why, after a divisive arc where all the grief for Pyrrha went to Jaune, is Jaune now set to shoulder the grief of Penny? At least Jaune had a relationship with Pyrrha, even if Nora and Ren did too. Yet with Penny he seems to be there solely because the writers can't bear to keep him out of that center spot for long. All of Team JNOR make it through to Vacuo... except Jaune. Jaune falls into the abyss too because, if the show goes this route, we apparently can’t have a volume just about Team RWBY, the main characters. The main characters are separated from the rest of the team and it's Jaune, not Oscar and Ozpin with a connection to the lore, not Nora or Ren whose development now hinges on them learning who they are without the other, it's Jaune who follows the title characters into a new dimension. 

The issue is not whether Jaune deserves to grieve over the truly traumatic thing he just did now that he’s done it. He obviously does. The issue is the writers setting up a scenario where Jaune is situated to do that emotional work in the first place. 

I like Jaune as a character. I don't like how the writing uses him as a character. RWBY is built on the idea that these four girls are the heroes of this tale, not the expected blond, blue-eyed, sword wielding guy we’ve seen in so many other stories. So why does that guy get the most important scene of the finale? Yes, Jaune had much less screen time this volume than he did in the past, that’s a good thing given the number of important characters RWBY has to balance, but that hasn't erased the problem of him being given significant moments that should be going to title characters. Does Ruby’s team rescue Oscar and take on Salem? No, Jaune's team does. Does Ruby's team save Penny? No, Jaune's semblance keeps her grounded and then holds the virus off. Not everything is a problem — we've also got good choices like having Ruby defeat the Hound and Ruby's team take on Cinder for the majority of the fight — but that doesn't erase that Penny’s death wasn’t something Jaune should have been a part of. Not unless he was going to heal her. Doing better than they have in the past doesn't mean that RT isn't still slipping when it comes to giving him undeserved focus.

They took one of the most controversial characters, controversial because of how much emotional focus he's gotten in the past, and had him help a fan favorite commit suicide while he cried about it, showing more emotion for a near stranger than our title character showed for her sister. This is a character who, up until two or three episodes ago, had no connection to the victim and still has no reason to thematically be the one committing this act. That is why the fandom goes, “The crew loves Jaune and does everything they can to put him in the center of the action.” Ruby, as main character and Penny’s first friend, is the obvious choice here. Pietro, as Penny's father, would be a good choice too. Hell, Nora is a better option given their moment in the Schnee manor this volume. Or Winter given their moments in Volume 7! Have her escape Ironwood, find Penny, receive the powers, and then finish him off. Literally anyone would be better than Jaune, not because Jaune is a bad character, but because Jaune has no emotional stakes here and putting him in a position where he could heal Penny but doesn’t is massively stupid. No one should be surprised that a lot of the fandom is upset about this. It was one hell of a reach to give him this moment and, since Jaune's problem has always been getting too much screen time and emotional nuance compared to our main cast, it's no wonder this act brought up a lot of bad memories. RT fell back into an old pattern after two volumes of improvement and they did so at the worst possible time. 

The tl;dr is that Penny's third death is a writing travesty, just like her second. I shouldn't be surprised, given that this is the same volume that tortured a kid and the only thing they did with it was have him blindly trust his torturer... yet I find myself surprised nonetheless. Because Penny had such potential as an android Maiden and, as much as I personally hated it, potential as a former android learning to be human too. But why explore any of that when you can kill her off instead? Again.

As a final, far smaller note about this scene, we have the continuing problem of what purpose Cinder's arm is serving. If everyone recalls, its threat comes primarily from the fact that she can "siphon off" power from other Maidens.

She did it to Penny during the Amity battle and now she does it again, a great deal of green energy absorbed into Cinder. So what's left to give to Winter? Why doesn't Cinder become noticeably stronger with each successful theft? Like so much else in RWBY, we're told it exists without actually seeing the impact of that. Winter isn't a weaker Maiden for having lost power and Cinder isn't a stronger Maiden for having snagged it. It's just.. there, hanging out and looking vaguely menacing, I guess.

Outside of this unnatural not-transfer, we get to see how the power normally passes as Penny meets with Winter in some in-between place. It's a soft, heartfelt scene... with the exception that Winter says, “You were always the real Maiden at heart. I was just the machine. Just following orders."

I don't know how any viewer can doubt that RT now believes machinery = evil. Penny's machine body is magicked away so she can be a real-real girl. Yang announces that the arm she worked hard to make a part of herself is just "extra." The man with half a metal body is made this volume's villain and losing his second arm is, by the authors' own admission, a symbol of his lost humanity. Mercury with two metal legs remains a bad guy while Emerald and Hazel are hastily redeemed. Tyrian with his cybernetic tail is the most devoted crazy of the bunch. Maria, blind and in need of assistive lenses, is so forgotten by the story she was left in the tundra nine episode ago and won't be mentioned again until next volume (if then). Pietro, the guy in the wheelchair, is forgotten too, despite it being his daughter who dies on screen.

Now Winter, also bearing an assistive device, says that she's the real "machine" here and tells Penny, now human, that she was always the "real Maiden." I don't know what happened to make RT do a 180 lately, but the disability rep is no longer what it was.

Penny reassures Winter that she'll always be a part of her and then passes on, for good this time.

The rest of the episode feels lackluster, if I'm being honest. Images of Cinder beating Weiss are intercut with Ironwood beating Winter, getting her to a point where her aura breaks. 

But then the powers appear and, as we'd expect, she easily turns the tide. 

Gorgeous animation there. 

But RT once again rewrites earlier scenes by having Ironwood claim that the "destiny" he chose for Winter has finally arrived — isn't that Cinder's MO? — and Winter shoots back that he chose nothing, this was a "gift." Except, it was never about destiny or orders? This was why Weiss' anger in Volume 7 was ridiculous. She acted like Ironwood forced Winter to accept the powers and Winter told her point blank she chose this. Ironwood didn't decide anything, he offered and Winter chose... kind of like how Penny is choosing now. I hate how nearly all of Ironwood's character has been ignored or, during times like this, outright lied about to make him seem super duper evil. He tried to bomb a city! You don't need to make him seem evil anymore, that job is done! Like their sudden change regarding disability, RT now seems to be allergic to nuance. Heaven forbid Ironwood be allowed to have valid points like he did in Volume 3. No, if you've got an antagonist every single thing they've ever said must be twisted into a display of their evilness.

Unless you're Hazel, who Oscar trusts for #reasons. Unless you're Emerald, who the group immediately embraces. Unless you're Cinder, who gets to cry on a rooftop and secures the trust of her allies long enough to betray them again.

But Ironwood? Nah, screw that guy.

Salt aside, the fight is pretty boring. Winter literally just throws up a wall of ice and Ironwood's blast rebounds, taking him out.

Winter flies through the portal and we return to Jaune. His sword is broken by Cinder, so weapons should be quite the problem in Volume 9. 

There's a bit of sword vs. sword Maiden battling — this episode really pulled heavily from both Volume 3 and 5's finales — before Cinder gets smart again and attacks Weiss, currently trying to escape with Jaune. Weiss goes right off the edge and Winter isn't able to reach her in time. That's the entirety of Team RWBY, lost to the magical void.

Kudos to Winter's VA and the writing here though. This feels like an appropriate reaction to losing a sister. Screaming, sobbing, falling to her knees and beating the floor... Ruby, take notes.

A roar sounds through all the portals though, the sort of roar a pissed off witch might give. Jaune convinces Winter they need to leave Cinder behind, but before they can escape Cinder... makes a new wish?

Look, it works on all the major fronts. Cinder has the staff, check. We've basically established that Ambrosius can make an unlimited number of things per era, check. We know the previous thing disappears when a new wish is made, check. My only question is the timing. In all honesty, I'll have to re-watch the scene to be sure, but at the time it felt like the portals began disappearing almost the second Cinder left. Did she really have time to summon Ambrosius, deal with his explanatory nonsense, and get him to make a new wish without any fiddly concerns? Sure, fire is just fire, but it still felt like way too much happening too fast off screen.

Either way, the portals are gone and Winter makes it through in time, but Jaune does not. He falls through the void along with Team RWBY. And Neo.

Neo is the only addition I'm looking forward to here.

We get a few shots of our other characters as Winter arrives, saving the day by taking her grief out on the grimm. So glad something came of Ren breaking his aura again! Maybe they'll be more fighting at the beginning of Volume 9? If we see any of this group outside of 9's finale. My worst fear right now is that we'll spend an entire season away from the main action — remember how I said it would be stupid for Team RWBY to go on a side adventure while Salem is attacking the world? — and when they return there will have been some major time skip. Salem has destroyed most of Remnant, only pockets of survivors remain, it's all dark and dystopian... and oh look, every bit of character development happened off screen. How did Nora discover who she is without Ren? She did it while Team RWBY was gone. That merge we've been teasing for five years? That happened while you were gone too and, btw, Ozpin has ceased to exist. So sad, right? Not that anyone will actually mourn. Just take comfort in the fact that his last line was an "Oh no" about Ambrosius and his last major scene was apologizing for how the group treated him. Emerald's redemption? Off screen. Winter's grief? Off screen. Any and every one of these challenging beats to tackle can be waved away with, "We went through that arc while you were lost in the magical realm. Just get to know our new, improved selves now!"

Please, oh writing gods, don't let that happen.

Though I do worry because my last prediction came true.

But we all knew we’d end up here. My current theory? The portal should still be open at the vault. Winter will fight Ironwood, escape through it, and it will close right before he escapes too. He’ll fall with Atlas and everyone will act as if it’s some beautiful, poetic justice for him to perish with the city. 

Ironwood didn't make a break for the portal — too busy being unconscious — but we got everything else. Winter left him, he falls with Atlas, and this is some poetic justice, I guess. Really, it's just an undignified death. I'd hoped for a sympathetic kill, something that showed the characters still cared about him even if they knew Ironwood had to be stopped. Baring that, I'd hoped for an epic battle that took him out with style. Instead, no one even bothers to kill him. Ironwood is now beneath the entire cast, not even worth finishing off. Winter casually tosses his blast back at him and leaves. Cinder throws out a "that's checkmate" and leaves. I don't think Salem even looks at him. Ironwood (presumably) dies with no one and nothing, just a casualty of the city Team RWBY made fall. And I say "presumably" because the audience isn't even given the satisfaction of being sure he's passed on. Like Hazel, Ironwood's death is this weird, ambiguous moment that, based on the other character reactions, isn’t meant to be ambiguous. Is he dead? Most likely. Is it possible, based on what we've seen, that he'll pop up two volumes later like

Yes and, memes aside, that sucks. I don't want to be wondering for the next couple years if Ironwood survived and if they'll bring him back just to drag his character through the mud again. Move on.

But no, we don't even get that.

I've spoken at great deal about Ironwood both in these recaps and on my blog more generally. Last week, I said I'd covered it all and there was no need to rehash it all again. I stand by that, so let me just conclude this travesty with a final note: if your bad guy's final moment is using the last of his strength to point a gun at the actual villain of this story, and you don't realize the problem of how this image contrasts everything else the story has insisted about his character? … I just don't know what to do with that.

Oh, actually, final-final note: Ironwood’s semblance is officially a Schrodinger's semblance. It is both canonical and noncanonical simultaneously. Wooo. 

Cinder tells Salem she used her wish to "add more flames to the first of Atlas" and we cut to Watts, trapped in a roaring fire, unsuccessfully trying to break his way out. Wow, I hate that too! Next to Tyrian, Watts was our last remaining, entertaining villain. He carried a lot of the last two volumes and, I had hoped, was going to add some bright spots to the coming volumes as well. Apparently not.

Just another waste.

In addition to this casual, second murder of her ally, Cinder successfully convinces Salem that Neo killed Ruby and Ruby used the Lamp's last question, but she's back in her good graces since she snagged the Relics anyway. “You’ve done well, Cinder. Our work here is done" and they leave, blasting off like a less cool Team Rocket as Atlas plummets into Mantle.

Let's spend a second to tally things up then, shall we? What happens if Ruby, instead of throwing a moral fit, says, "You're right and we never should have lied to you, or betrayed you. But we want to help now. You get the Relics and the Maiden to safety in Atlas, if you can, we'll defend the people of Mantle"?

Well, they can still tell the world about Salem and call for help, much more easily now since Ironwood would likely just give them the code rather than them needing to spend an episode stealing it.

The Staff at least may not have ended up in Salem's hands and the group could have actually focused on getting the Lamp back (also solved if they'd been smart and just put it in the vault to begin with).

Mantle would still have been safe because Salem was never interested in Mantle to begin with.

Atlas wouldn't have fallen.

Ironwood wouldn't have died.

Penny wouldn't have died.

Even Vine wouldn't have died!

Our heroes unambiguously made the situation worse. Rather than banding together with their allies to fight the real enemy, Salem, they pushed until they made enemies of Ironwood and the Ace Ops both. Then they asked for help — which a pinch of logic said would never arrive — and twiddled their thumbs waiting for it. When it was clear none would come they...did nothing. They sat around, upset that the people were in danger, but not willing to do anything about it. It's only when one of their own, Penny, is threatened that they kick into high gear, hitting on a solution that they could have posed to Ironwood from the very start if no one liked the fly away plan. Yet instead of taking a few minutes to brainstorm other ideas — doing anything other than denouncing Ironwood to the rest of the group and attacking the Ace Ops — they spent two days sitting around, fixing minor messes they’d helped to create, then rushed through the portal plan, messing up the wish and stranding an entire kingdom in a sandstorm, with only Winter now to protect them from grimm.

Fantastically done, team. 

The villains won, yes, but not because the villains were smart and compelling. Watts' hack on Penny and the heat petered out to nothing and Salem... well, she sat around for the whole volume, expending energy only to torture Oscar and try to (unsuccessfully) stop some escapees. Neo and, miraculously, Cinder did the most damage, but only in the final hour, with this "damage" being that our characters fall into a void that we now know looks remarkably like a paradise! Everything bad that happened was a result of our heroes being stupid and stubborn. That's a compelling story to tell... but RT isn't trying to tell it. Our heroes caused so much damage, yet that damage goes unacknowledged — or worse, ignored into silence like with Ren — and everything else is waved away with the magic wand the series claims isn't there. The cold doesn't kill anyone. Oscar has no problems walking off the torture. Nora hops back out of bed. Ruby one-shots the Hound. The civilians lost to the void must have survived too. The entire kingdom successfully makes it to Vacuo... unless you count the massive army we never saw making use of the portals, but who cares about them, right?

The villains won, there was indeed something resembling consequences, but none of it was emotionally satisfying. Not even when the series tries so hard to insist that emotion is there.

Qrow watches Atlas fall, mouthing Ruby and Yang's names, but it's too little, too late. Where was this care for his nieces when he was obsessed with killing Ironwood? When did they care about him? Was it when Ruby shrugged at his arrest, when neither cared that he was missing, or when they were designing an escape plan that didn't include putting a portal where Qrow could reach? RWBY markets itself around the found family-ness of its cast, but they're done a poor job in recent volumes (not others) of convincing me that most of these characters care for one another. We went from Ruby denouncing all adults, to Ruby pulling an Ozpin with Ironwood, to Ruby watching blandly as her sister falls to her presumed death. This is my hero? This is the simple soul we're supposed to rally behind? Ruby doesn't feel like a character who cares about other people anymore and, given that she leads the charge, neither do most of her friends. Or, when that emotion appears, it's jarring and undeserved. Jaune cries over Penny's death? That's tonally and characteristically backwards.

This volume was the culmination of so many mistakes over the past two years. No, Covid couldn't have made things any easier for the crew — the fact that they got a volume out at all is amazing — but the pandemic isn't to blame for the problems in the story. These seeds have existed since Volume 5, with some (like Jaune) going back even farther. I don't think we're ever going to get that flawed, but emotionally fulfilling RWBY back. The show has dug too deep and unless it somehow manages to create a clean slate — those time travel ideas get more and more alluring! — there's nothing they can do but keep on digging. At this point, I can only hope that the series does wrap up within the next two volumes, rather than dragging RWBY to a Supernatural-esque length.

Our final shot of the episode proper feels fitting for what this volume has been. Atlas and Mantle flood rather than exploding, something that makes a certain amount of sense, sure, but definitely wasn't what I was expecting. And after all these shocking images — Penny dying, the grimm attacking, our main characters disappearing in a puff of gold dust — we end it all with bits of random debris. It's strange and underwhelming. Out of everything you could have done with the options you had, you choose to do this?

Of course, RWBY always has an after-credits scene (RIP Raven's, still amounting to nothing). Here, the sounds of water return to show us a beach. Crescent Rose imbedded in the sand, mirroring its classic pose in the snow.  

There's a tree. It's a very different kind of tree from what we saw in Volume 6, but the height and shape is nevertheless reminiscent of Light's domain.

A tree of life, anyone? After all, the group has fallen into a dimension created by a Relic, the gift of Light himself. It certainly seems as if RWBY is heading towards another encounter with the Gods, though what that will look like and how narratively satisfying it will be remains to be seen.

As for our bingo board, RWBY certainly pulled its weight! Only three squares got gold stars: Watts and Jacques didn't manage another team up because both are dead, Oscar didn't apologize for getting shot because he was too busy being tortured, and Qrow didn't drink likely because he didn't have access to any alcohol across the whole volume. Can't say that's a stellar result. The final image is something to behold though lol.

What a mess.

And on that less than exciting note... we’re done. This has been the volume of desertion, with a large number of fans telling me that they will no longer watch RWBY, but baring something entirely unexpected in my future, I'll be back next volume, for whatever that's worth. It never ceases to amaze me that even one person would give these nonsense recaps the time of day, so in all seriousness: thank you for reading. You rock.

Now go forth and fill the hiatus with great RWBY content!

✌️

[feverdreamfantasies]

The Birthday Gift

Pairing: Human!Hoseok x Human!Yoongi x Human!Reader, Snow Leopard Shifter!Jimin x Human!Reader

Featuring: German Shepherd Hybrid!Taehyung, Doberman Hybrid!Namjoon, Neighbor!Jungkook, (Jin to make an appearance later)

Genre: Hybrid AU, Fluff, Angst, Poly AU, eventual Smut, Producer!Yoongi, Scientist!Hoseok

Warnings: Brief mention of blood, Mention of Hybrid abuse, Some adult language, Mentions of a poly relationship between M x M x F

Summary:  “Hobi! What is he?” Yoongi repeats himself looking from me in the corner over to his boyfriend.

“He’s a shifter.” Hoseok mumbles, hand rising to scratch the back of his neck.

“I’m sorry. What?”

“He’s a shifter! Okay.  I adopted our girlfriend a shifter for her birthday.”

Author’s Notes:   This was an idea I’ve had in my head for a little while and I thought I would go ahead and start writing it. Also since this is the first chapter there’s a lot of background information in this one but moving forward there will be less filler and hopefully more story line progression. Hope you enjoy!

Next

Chapter One:  The ultimate Birthday gift             

Sometimes I wonder how I got here in my life. 

After nearly 5 years of being with Yoongi, I thought I was prepared for anything, but standing here in our neighbor Jungkook’s living room watching his sweet arctic fox hybrid, Sooyun, turn into the vicious predator she truly is; I began to question the choices I’d made that lead me here.

Let me backup a little bit to how I came to witness the scene before me. I was quietly having breakfast earlier this morning when Hoseok made his way loudly down the staircase that led into the kitchen. 

“Have you seen your boyfriend?” He asked with an emphasis on “your”, clearly perturbed with the man in question.

“What’s he done now that makes him ‘my’ boyfriend?” I say while taking a bite of my toast. 

For all the time I have been in a relationship with Yoongi, Hoseok has been with him longer.  The two met in their first year at university and began dating shortly there after.  I came along about four years later, back when I was a shy, young intern for the music company Yoongi was—and is still— a big time producer for.  

I had heard rumors when I first started there that he had a bit of a different romantic life than most. Everyone loved to whisper about the open relationship he and his boyfriend supposedly had. I tried not to listen to the rumors, but I couldn’t deny the big fat crush I had developed on Yoongi either.  I thought my heart was going to beat out of my chest every time he walked into the same room as me.  And when he asked me out for drinks one day, all I could do was nod in response because I didn’t have the courage to give a verbal yes. 

I was nervous and apprehensive about possibly going on a date with an already taken man.  But my curiosity got the best of me and I showed up to the bar he had suggested.  He was sweet and kind to me. Being patient with my quietness until I warmed up enough to be able to contribute to our conversation.  

He was also very straightforward and honest with me.  

“I know there are rumors about my personal life in the office.” He stated matter-of-factly, taking a sip of his jack and coke before continuing. “So I’ll admit that I’m kind of surprised you agreed to come out with me tonight.”

I brushed a piece of my hair behind my ear, a nervous habit of mine that brings me an artificial level of comfort.  “To be honest” I swallow “I’m not really sure I was even going to show up.”

“Well I’m glad you did.” He said with his adorable gummy smile.

“And to be upfront about everything, the rumors are true. I do have a boyfriend, and we are in a serious, committed relationship.”

I raise my eyebrows at this. 

“I know what you're thinking.  So then why would I ask a beautiful woman like you out on a date if I’m already spoken for?” 

My heart speeds up when I hear him use the word beautiful.  He leans across the high top table we are sat at, so he can speak lower and not have the other customers at the bar listen in.  

“Hobi and I have always been open to the concept of a polymorphic relationship. We’ve tried in the past with potential romantic partners; but they usually ended up ghosting on one of us, once they figured out what we were looking for.”

“So why do you think I’ll be different?” I question finding some confidence in my voice.  Afterall, it isn’t like Yoongi is talking about some small, trivial thing.  He’s openly discussing with me the potential of starting a romantic journey with him and his boyfriend.  Journey being the only way I can truly describe it because honestly what if this actually became something, what do I say to my parents then? “Mom. Dad.  Meet my boyfriend Yoongi and his boyfriend--slash my other boyfriend--Hoseok.” 

Yeah...this was most certainly going to be a journey.

“Honestly, I’m not sure you will be.  But I like you, Y/N. And from what I’ve told Hoseok so far, he’s interested too.”

I snort at this response.  What possibly could I have done to get Yoongi’s attention that he’d like me, let alone know anything about me enough to want to tell his boyfriend.

“Up until tonight, I’ve barely said anything to you.” I state to the dark haired man across from me.

Yoongi shrugs at this like it doesn’t matter.  “People speak louder with their actions than with their words.”

“Yeah?  And what do my actions say about me?” I ask genuinely.

He doesn’t miss a beat with his response.

 “You’re smart without being pretentious.  You have confidence without arrogance.  And most importantly you’re kind.”

“I’m kind?”

Yoongi nods. 

“A couple of weekends ago I saw you inside the hybrid rescue downtown.  I was going to go in and say hi, but thought that might intimidate you a little bit.” 

He says this last part with a laugh, as my cheeks turn red from the fact I know that would have been true.

“I asked one of your fellow interns, Ilsung, about it.  He said you volunteer there whenever you can.  That you have a real soft spot for hybrids and their rights. Not many people are as compassionate to their causes.  And as someone who has had the honor to adopt two myself, I’m really drawn to others who want to make a difference for them.”

“I wouldn’t say I’m making a difference.” I say sheepishly. “But when I was a kid we had a family cat hybrid named Wendy.  She and I did everything together until they came and took her away when we were both 12.  And let’s just say that made an impact on me.”

When my parents were kids, hybrids were just starting to be introduced to society.  But years prior to that, governments and militaries had been creating and breeding hybrids for years as an experiment to get a defensive edge when it came to warfare. It proved not to be as promising as they had hoped and what ended up happening is they sold their hybrids and hybrid secrets to the highest bidder, which turned out to be a large corporatation.  This corporation in turn introduced cat and dog hybrids to the rest of the world.  Claiming that they were a step above your average household pet and could provide a more fulfilling companion experience.  Hybrids quickly became a hot commodity.  And the black market was soon taking off with their own hybrid creations of more exotic and “dangerous” hybrid breeds.  Soon the hybrids were beginning to outnumber humans 2 to 1 and fear of who they are and what they can do began to take over.

Laws were passed as a means to protect humans. Rather than create laws that stopped the unethical treatment and breeding of hybrids, they were created to limit their rights.  Not completely human but also not completely an animal either, hybrids fell in a category with many blurbed lines.  The laws state all hybrids must have an owner and must either be accompanied by that owner at all times or have a microchip implanted within the back of their necks that can be scanned to indicate they belong to someone.  Any strays were in extreme cases euthanized and in less extreme cases placed in overcrowded shelters and rescue centers, where they would more than likely spend the rest of their lives.  

For those who did get adopted or were bought by breeders, their lives may not be as lucky as those who did not.  It isn’t uncommon for those hybrids adopted to end up in underground hybrid clubs.  These clubs offer humans all sorts of sick fantasies to play out with hybrids.  This can be anything from deadly hybrid fight rings to hybrid brothels where they can use and abuse any female and male hybrids of their choosing. In my time volunteering at the rescue center, I have listened to stories I wouldn’t even wish for my worst enemies to have to endure. 

“Wendy came into my life when on my 5th birthday.  My Mom and Dad had decided I needed a companion.  As an only child with parents who weren't able to have any more kids, my parents thought adopting a hybrid could be the next best thing.  But the year we both turned 12, is the year Wendy started to go through her changes.”

Yoongi listened to my story with great intensity.  

“Of course as humans we all go through puberty between the ages of 11 and 18.  This isn’t uncommon for hybrids either except their changes aren’t typically of the reproductive kind until later in their late teens and early twenties, but what they do change in is behavior.  Their animal instincts can have the potential to become more dominant, leading to aggressiveness and in some cases violence.

When Wendy and I were playing outside one day, a neighbor's hybrid wandered into our backyard where we were.  He looked to be some small wild cat hybrid, probably bought in some shady back room of an outdoor market.  He was around our age if not a little bit older.  He’s name was Yongho and he could hear our laughs from inside his house.  He asked if he could play with us, saying he was lonely being cooped up inside all day.  I was glad to have another person to play with so I said yes immediately without noticing that Wendy was apprehensive.  Her tail was flicking side to side and ears were slightly pinned back, but I thought that was only because she may be jealous of having some of my attention shared with another hybrid.  I chose to ignore her warning signs and suggested a game of tag.

It all seemed to be going fine.  At first I was ‘it’ and although they were both faster than me, Yongho decided to slow down so I could catch him.  But once he was ‘it’ that’s when everything would change to become one of the worst days of my life.”

I paused so I could take a sip of my drink to try and calm myself down.  I hadn’t thought of this day in a really long time and I was struck by the fact that I was so easily sharing it with Yoongi when not even most of my close friends knew what had happened.  Yoongi reached across the table and gently rubbed his thumb over my hand to encourage me to keep going.  

I cleared my throat.

“Because Yongho was a predator hybrid, a game of tag can quickly turn into a dangerous game of cat and mouse.  When Wendy and I ran off in opposite directions after getting a 10-second head start that’s when Yongho’s animal instincts kicked in.  As a slow and small human girl, I became easy prey to the hunter and Yongho began to come after me.  Naive to noticing that anything had changed, I giggled as I tried to dodge around the trees in our backyard to create obstacles between us.  And when I turned around to see how close he was that’s when I saw the predatory look in his eyes.  I gave a small but effective scream which in turn caught the attention of Wendy.  She halted in the direction she was going before quickly turning around.  I in the meantime froze out of fear.  Yongho slowed but didn’t stop moving toward me.  He staked his way closer in the same way you would see a lioness do through the brush on a nature show before she pounced on an antelope.  And unfortunately for me, I was that antelope.  Just as Yongho pounced with claws out, Wendy intercepted him and they both tumbled to the ground, rolling around and making animalistic noises I had never heard before.  

This got the attention of my mother.  Who once she came outside to see what was happening began yelling for my dad.  He ran out and grabbed me.  Easily picking me up and throwing me inside the house ordering me to lock the door and telling my mother to call HES (hybrid emergency services).  My dad tried to get Yongho off of Wendy when he had managed to pin her to the ground while I burst into tears once the adrenaline started to wear off.  HES showed up quickly, but not fast enough to stop Wendy from accidentally scratching my dad.  She was aiming for Yongho when my father’s arm got in the way and left a deep wound along his forearm which instantly began to bleed.  Because hybrid laws take all cases of violence toward a human seriously, HES not only took Yongho away but they also took Wendy.  My father spent the next several weeks in court trying to get her back saying she had scratched him with no ill intention but they wouldn’t listen.  The only thing they could offer was for us to send her off to a reform facility, where she would spend the next three years, in hopes that maybe once she had gone through the proper reform training then she would be able to come home.  My parents agreed to send her off, but 6 months after she arrived they claimed she had ran away, only to find out in the news a few years later that this reform facility was secretly selling desirable hybrids off to private sellers and the black market.  I haven’t seen her since.”

Things between us got really quiet after I told my story.  Yoongi continued to rub my hand before noticing that my eyes were watery.  Tears threatening to come cascading down.  He sprung into action and leapt off his stool scooping me up into a hug. 

“I’m so sorry” he whispered.  

I could hear the sincerity in his voice and felt overwhelmingly comforted within his embrace.  I thought right then and there that I never wanted him to let me go.  And I didn’t care if that meant I had to share him with someone else because at that moment it felt like I was always supposed to be his.

Shortly thereafter I met Hoseok face to face.  The three of us went on a date to a nice restaurant to see how we would all get along.  The date went exceptionally well, as did the next one, and the one after that.  After a couple months, the three of us went away for the weekend and discussed the next steps for our future.  It was decided that we would all move in together and start a relationship that would define my next five years. 

Looking over at Hobi now with his brows crossed and a mild look of exhaustion on his face.  I couldn’t help but smile slightly.

“He promised me he would come home last night so he could be here for your birthday this morning.”

“Yoongi is here.” I say. “Also nice of you to wish me a Happy Birthday.”

He rolled his eyes before walking over to me and kissing me on the forehead. “He didn’t come to bed last night.” He responds as he releases me.

“That’s because he came to my bed,” I say with a teasing grin.

Once we moved into this house, it was decided that Yoongi and Hoseok would share a room while I had my own.  I didn’t mind it much because Yoongi would often sneak into my bed once Hobi fell asleep.  Or if Yoongi was at the studio all night then one of our hybrids would cuddle up with me, especially Taehyung.

Speaking of which, the German Shepherd hybrid came bounding through the backdoor.  A smile on his face and a bouquet of wildflowers clutched in his hand.

“Happy Birthday Y/N!”

“I got you these!” He thrust the wildflowers toward me.  Tail wagging rapidly behind him.

“Thank you Tae.” I take the flowers from him smelling them in the process. “These are beautiful.”

He’s smile grows wider.  Taehyung was one of the two hybrids Hoseok and Yoongi had adopted before I joined their family. Well adopted was not really the correct term to use.  Hoseok worked as a scientist for the government.  And though they had supposedly moved on from the hybrid world, the three of us knew that wasn’t true.  Hoseok started working there right out of college.  Initially he was told he was there for human medical purposes, specifically in terms of medicine and vaccine studies.  However, while that was mostly true, Hoseok discovered one day by accident that there were also medical experiments being done on hybrids in ways that they would never imagine doing to humans.

From that moment on, Hoseok took it upon himself to make changes but he’d have to climb his way to the top in order to make any real change.  Now being the second in command to the head of the medical research team, Hobi had more privileges to know what happened in the hybrid labs but still didn’t have full command of what went on in there.  But that didn’t stop him from managing to rescue a couple in the process.

I didn’t really know all that had happened to Taehyung and Namjoon--our Doberman hybrid--while they were in that lab, but I knew that it made them respond to things in opposite ways.  Taehyung was clingy and loveable.  Namjoon was a little standoffish at first but if I played my cards right he could be putty in my hands.

“Where do you want to eat tonight?” Hobi asked.

“You guys aren’t going to make me a homemade meal.” I whine.

“If you want food poisoning then I would be more than happy to make you whatever you would like.  Or if you don’t mind eating until almost 2 in the morning then I’ll ask Yoongi what he wants to make tonight.”

I stick my tongue out at him.  I hate his reasoning sometimes.

“In that case, I’ll have to get back to you on that.”

“We all know that you’ll choose the same place you always do.” A sleepy Yoongi says with a yawn.  His hair slightly sticking up in the back indicating he had just climbed out of bed. 

He walks over to me, sliding into the booth of our breakfast nook and kisses me gently. 

“Happy Birthday Princess.” He says in his deep groggy voice.

“I’m surprised you're up already.” I state as I fed him some of my breakfast.  He takes a bite and swallows before responding.  

“Someone made a pretty severe threat of laundry duty if I didn’t show up this morning. And we all know if I’m on laundry duty for a full month, we will all be deeply sorry.”

We enjoy the rest of our morning with happy banter and cuddles on the couch.  With a momentary appearance from Namjoon with a quick Birthday greeting before he went on his jog.

As I flipped through the options on Netflix with Tae asleep with his head in my lap, Hoseok’s phone rang which he picked up and answered in his office down the hall.  Yoongi and I gave a brief glance at each other figuring it was probably from work before Hoseok quickly ran out of his office and out the front door as though the house was on fire.  

We look at each other again before quickly getting off the couch to follow him.  Taehyung whines in protest as he loses the warmth of my lap before climbing back onto the couch and quickly falling back asleep.  

Hoseok goes over to our neighbor’s house, lifting his arm up to knock on the door when Jungkook opens it with a “Thank God!”

“I thought you said he’d be fine here.” Hoseok says as he follows Jungkook into his living space noticing the low growls of Sooyun coming from within.  He hesitates a moment before seeing why Sooyun is making that noise.

He quickly gets his answer as he sees Sooyun with teeth bared at a cowering figure in the corner.  He realizes her aggression is toward his Birthday gift for Y/N.  While he knew that Y/N was easily loved by Taehyung and Namjoon, they weren’t necessarily her hybrids.  Tae belonged to Yoongi and Namjoon was Hoseok’s, who he adopted at the first chance after that fateful day he walked into the hybrid lab by accident.  So he figured Y/N needed her own companion and it gave him an excuse to bring home another rescue.

“Well aren’t you going to do something.” He says to Jungkook, calmer than he felt. 

“Me?  He’s your hybrid.” Jungkook says incredulously.

“Technically he isn’t a hybrid.” 

“Then what is he?”  Yoongi says behind Hobi, scaring his younger boyfriend in the process.  I stand beyond them watching Jungkook’s normally sweet hybrid looking like the true predator she is before moving my eyes to the other hybrid--or rather not hybrid--sitting in the corner with his knees up to his chest.  My heart instantly breaks at the sight in front of me and I feel the need to protect him.

“Hey! Enough.” 

My voice is loud and clear.  Commanding but not violent, just enough to get Sooyun’s attention.  A skill I learned at all my years volunteering at the rescue. She backs away and hides behind Jungkook as though she hadn’t done anything wrong to be treated this way.  Jungkook pats the hand she rests on his arm, clutching onto his shirt sleeve. White ears pinned back to her equally pure white hair.

I take that time to move to her victim. Taking slow movements making sure not to scare him even more. “Hello.” I say getting him to look up at me with his light grey eyes.  He has soft features but an intense gaze.  I reach my hand out to help him off the floor.  He hesitates before deciding to trust me and stands up into his full height.  He isn’t large but he is taller than me, about the same size as Yoongi. 

“Hobi! What is he?” Yoongi repeats himself looking from me in the corner over to his boyfriend.

“He’s a shifter.” Hoseok mumbles, hand rising to scratch the back of his neck.

“I’m sorry. What?”

“He’s a shifter! Okay.  I adopted our girlfriend a shifter for her birthday.”

It gets suddenly very quiet. I look back over at the shifter in question, his hand still in mine.  Yoongi is visibly getting angry, but still trying to remain somewhat calm.

“What the fuck is a shifter, Hobi?  Like a werewolf.  Did you bring home a werewolf?”

“Don’t be ridiculous! Werewolves aren’t real.  He’s a snow leopard shifter.”

For the genius Hoseok actually was he could really do some dumb things, I think as Yoongi comes towards us and pulls me away but not with some resistance from the other person holding my hand. Yoongi drags me aways while also grabbing Hoseok by the shoulder to guide us outside.

Once we step into the front yard, Yoongi turns Hobi around to look at him but doesn’t let me go.

“You know you’ve done some stupid shit in the 9 years we’ve been together, but this might easily top the list.  I mean what the hell were you thinking!  Where do you even get a snow leopard shifter?”

“The same place I got Taehyung and Namjoon.  Just there was more paperwork involved and lots of background checks.  And possibly some surveillance on the house for a week or two.”  He throws the last part in quickly as though we won’t notice that he agreed to have us be watched by a government entity without getting our consent first.

“He’s going back.” 

“What?! No!”  This protest comes from me this time.  I don’t know what a shifter is, but I do know some of what happens in the labs and he isn’t going back if I have anything to say about it.

“Yes. He. Is.” Yoongi states, as though the decision is final and begins to walk back toward the house only to stop halfway when he realizes none of us are following.

“We can’t keep him.” He states again.

“But why not?” Hobi and I pout at the same time.

Usually if one of us goes against Yoongi we don’t stand a chance at winning, but if we team up together then things inevitably go our way.

“He’s probably dangerous. I mean I still don’t know what he really is.” He stares at Hoseok on this last point.

“Shifters are what the military attempted after the hybrid experiment failed.  Essentially, through their research they found that though hybrids are stronger than humans they still aren’t as strong as a real true animal.  But you can’t fully control or command an animal, especially not a predatory animal like a tiger or lion…”

“Or a snow leopard.” Yoongi offered.

“Right.  Anyways, there was a researcher about thirty years ago who thought what if you could create a breed of human that could, when needed, shift into full animal form.  Lots of people laughed at him for this, but that didn’t stop him from running experiments on his own before a top personnel in the government decided to back him on his research.  It didn’t take him long, about five years before he got his first successful generation of shifters. Listen, I know you don’t like it Yoongi and you probably think he’s dangerous.  But he’s been kept in that lab his whole life.  And I promise you that we have nothing to fear with him.  In fact, shifters are much safer than hybrids.”  Hoseok added as a last minute plea.

Yoongi  slowly let out a sigh.  “Fine. But…” he quickly adds before Hobi and I get too excited. “If anything happens to a member of our household because of him, then he has to go somewhere else.”

“You have my word that nothing will happen.”

I grab Yoongi and Hobi into a hug in my excitement.  “So what’s his name?”

“Jimin.”

[nurseofren]

Keeping Your Promise - Chapter 24

Read on AO3

Read chapter twenty-three

Title: Prove it

Words: 6800

Warnings: Talks of pregnancy, mentions of vomit

Summary: A friend. A foe?

ST Rambles: I look pretty good for a dead bitch.

Okay. In all seriousness. In the five weeks that I have not updated, it has been chaos. School is absolutely kicking my ass this semester and I am not afraid to say it. Maternal-Newborn is a hell I would not wish on my worst enemy. With this said, I know any further updates will be sporadic, BUT - and I say this to snuff out any doubt on the matter - I will never, EVER, abandon this story. However it ends, rest assured that it will, in fact, do just that.

I thank you all for your patience and encouragement. This story is something I care deeply about and it just floors me that others do as well. I love interacting with you all, either on here or tumblr or TikTok (if you've made one and I haven't seen it, please tag me! My fyp does not work in my favor lol).

Be kind. Don't forget to be a person. All you can do is try your best.

[MASTERLIST] | BANNER/@elmidol

Good afternoon,

I can only hope this correspondence finds you safe and well.

The Board of Physicians sympathizes during this time of displacement and potential grieving. There are countless variables to be considered during uncertain times like these, but those of your safety and well-being are of the utmost importance. In an effort to convey the depth of our understanding, a unanimous vote has approved the decision to extend the dates of the trial by seven days. Upon receiving this official communication, you should plan to arrive on Canto Bight a minimum of two days prior to the morning of the initial hearing. An updated outline has been attached at the end of this e-mail for reference and sent to all pertinent parties.

Per the initial correspondence, Commander Ren is to receive a new provider prior to the trial’s start date. This objective has been met with the solemn barrier of the diminished population of approved nurses and physicians which resulted from the recent tragedy of Starkiller Base. There have been additional unforeseen circumstances also working to lengthen and altogether halt this approval process. Rest assured that we are doing everything in our power to ensure the trial proceedings occur in an organized and professional manner.

The emergent provider shortage, along with the unknown – and likely diminished – amount of surveillance retained from Starkiller Base prior to its destruction, has laid the foundation for the discussion of potential and probable employment during your time on Canto Bight. The discussions surrounding this issue are in their infancies. Should it be that you are to assume a care position during your trial, you will receive a further updated and in-depth itinerary. This would include the dates, times, and location you would be expected to work; this information would be accompanied by any specific limitations regarding your scope of practice while on trial.

Though you are encouraged to reach out to discuss any questions or concerns you may have pertaining to these new developments, the current agenda is to be followed with strict compliance. Should there be any changes, as stated previously, I will communicate these to you in a timely and conscious manner.

Respectfully,

Karmen Zag, Esq.,

Head of Communications,

The Board of Physicians

“Yeah, well, you can go fuck yourself Karmen Zag. Stupid ass name anyway.”

Not that anyone could hear you, nor that anyone would care, you could not help the petty jab. Karmen Zag, the faceless mouthpiece of the institution actively seeking your death, had little to do with anything. Karmen Zag was not the one who had carved initials into your body; that person was elusive to you now. Karmen Zag was not the one who kept you from sleep; that person was dead, killed by the trembling hands of the very survivor they’d created. Karmen Zag was not the one you were currently hiding from; that person, achingly kind and too ignorant to know different, still came to pick you up from shift every night.

Cramped in the corner of a supply room, you sat with your knees tucked to your chest and your datapad resting on your thighs, eyeing the vent at the bottom of the door to spy Mason’s tapping foot. In the seven days since waking up in the medbay, six days since returning to work to help with the increased patient population – or, at least that’s what you were telling yourself – you had found yourself with a desperate need to distance yourself from Mason. He was unaware of all that was haunting you, nescient to the fact he was at the epicenter of the majority of it. To see him was to remember the choice you’d made, to hate yourself for regretting it, to be morally ripped in half by the unwavering war in the back of your mind.

The first three days he would always sneak up on you, flurries of white lies leaving while you fumbled away from him and into the nearest room. I’m on call tonight was your favorite. No, you weren’t, though you had been staying in the on-call rooms to hide the fact that you no longer held a residence on this ship. No matter if you had not received official word on your employment status, you felt an unease when thinking of returning to Kylo Ren’s quarters. It felt too broken, like you’d be a stranger somewhere you’d once considered a home.

Eventually, Mason being an inherent creature of habit, you’d picked up on his timing. On the fourth day you’d decided to stake him out, finding he would spend exactly ten minutes waiting, send a message to your commlink, spend another five toying with his own as he waited for a response, eventually asking whoever was nearest to tell you to call him. You never did. It was despicable, watching his hope falter as the days passed and you were never there to leave with him; wretched, but that did not make it any less necessary.

So long as you were away from Mason, you couldn’t hurt him. If you could create a rift between the two of you so great as to discourage any further interaction, you could save him from all the suffering that came along with being associated with you. On the other hand, you couldn’t deny the comfort you felt in deferring any conversation with him. Avoidance may not be a healthy coping mechanism, but all the ones you’d learned of in school were useless to your set of circumstances; there was no talking this through, no way to speak of Snoke or Kylo or Robbie without getting someone else hurt. You were trapped in your own, sole company; whoever you had become recently, you were barely tolerant of them, let alone fond. It was growing increasingly difficult to recognize your own reflection. At some point you figured you might stop looking altogether.

Zag’s update had been present in your inbox ever since returning to work; with each read through – which, now, you’d have read a hundred times – you felt time pass by. Each night you spent time tucked away here, the cold tile permeating the scrub pants you now wore; the uniform you’d had on when you arrived back on the Finalizer had been too tattered to reuse. Not that you wanted to wear it; in those tattered, bloodied threads lay the obvious truth of how entirely you had failed at the only assignment you had ever been trusted with.

Trusted. The thought made you shiver. Yes. Trusted. Past tense. In every sense it could be. Thus, folded into yourself, away from prying eyes or well-meaning friends, you scrolled aimlessly up and down the message. Though its existence annoyed you, knowing full well that there was no empathy or genuine concern behind the decision to delay the trial, it also brought you ease to know this portion of your life was almost over. Again you were embracing the possibility of your death, only this time rooted in hatred for yourself, not Kylo Ren.

“Alright, well, can you tell her-,”

“Tell her to call you. Got it. Do every night.” One of your coworkers had grown exasperated with Mason – or was it with you? Either way, peeking through the vent slats, you spied Mason’s legs drag out of view. It made your heart fall, feeling more disgusted with yourself each day; it was this confusing combination of feeling a pull to run after him, to apologize to him with every breath you had left, only for that initial urgency to be swallowed by the knowledge that the action would be futile.

With tired eyes, not having gotten more than two hours of unbroken sleep since the sixteen you’d woken from, you looked to your left wrist. It was a routine gesture, pointless in the fact you had not worn the watch since finding it on your bedside table. Much like your uniform, only agonizingly amplified, the sight of the gadget inspired a hollowness in your chest. It remained in a pillowcase, hidden atop the bed you’d claimed. Each night you toyed with it, thumbed at the lifeless screen and wondered if it would ever offer another flicker; each night you caught the hazy reflection of two unfamiliar eyes, finding only the remnants of shattered promises staring back at you.

A sigh crept into your lungs when you stood, arms stretching and hands smoothing back your hair before going to activate the door. It hissed open without your indication; before you could question how, two hands pushed you out of the way and sent you flying face first into the storage shelves. Nose first, actually; the collision rang through your ears, pain throbbing in prominence as you stumbled for stability, arms widespread and eyes pinched shut.

“Oh! You have to be kidding!” Copper crept down your upper lip, cascading over your sharp tongue, foggy eyes opening to blood-stained fingers. “Watch where you’re going, jeez!”

Away from you sounded the door as it shut, but that wasn’t the sound that alarmed you. Across the room, near the sink – at least you hoped it was near the sink – came the horrendous retching that could only indicate vomit. The longer you listened, though, all the while blindly searching for a package of gauze, you found it wasn’t vomit, but an attempt towards it; echoes of dry heaves wracked the room, vomit absent even as the stranger continued in their effort toward expulsion.

A spill of winces left you, a grimace following suit when you tipped your head back, blood draining down your throat. You found a box of gauze squares and tore it open, peeling away a layer and rolling it into a cone before pushing it into one nostril. Vessels pounded against the material, injury soaking into it as you caught your breath.

“I’m so sorry,” a familiar voice said, groggy and breathless. “The refresher was occupied, and the occupancy indicator wasn’t on.” She took another breath, gasping back spit. “I figured the sink in here would do.”

Another person you’d been avoiding. Talia. Sick. As she would be, of course. It was something you’d fought thoughts on; it was too confusing, too unnerving to put the pieces you’d been offered together. Hux had left her room, had been so distraught. Talia had seized and ended up in the medbay. Armitage. Stars, how that word haunted you in the way it left her paling lips. She’d been so disoriented, so scared. Glassy eyes and green pallor. And the person she’d asked for was Armitage.

With these thoughts, dizzying as they had become, came the image of the very thing that tied them all together: that square-cut, printed, glossy ultrasound picture. Between nightmares of Robbie and desperately trying to find any amount of sleep, you saw it clear in your head, remembered how you’d lost your ability to stand when you first considered the reality of it. It all made sense clinically; the symptoms, the tangible evidence showing a yolk sac, the patient identifiers framing the monochrome image.

But, when you remembered running into Hux, remembered the ghost in his eyes and felt the rather unsettling demeanor – one not marked with errant hatred – he’d met you with, it all started to blur. Jumble. Your mind rejecting the thought that Talia and Hux-

Talia mewled, your eyes opening to find white knuckles outfitting a vise grip over the sink’s metal edge. The fluorescent lights lining the ceiling made it all too easy to see how sick she really was. Tears glinted down her cheeks, her hair dull in its tousled bun, a string of spit straying from her bottom lip; there was a suggestion of green just below the surface of her skin, exhaustion evident in the lavender drapes below her eyes.

A shaky breath left her before she rested against the sink, elbows bent and fingers rolling over her temples. For a moment there was a deafening silence, one that strangled you and emphasized the throbbing in your nose when you stopped breathing. It dissipated when Talia groaned, her head drooping and stance shifting.

“At least shift is done, right?” She sounded like she was talking to anyone. She didn’t know it was you. She didn’t know you knew.

Swallowing, dropping your hand from your face, you tried to think of anything to say. But nothing would come. And, considering how little time you had left to know her – execution or not – you saw no point in frivolous small talk.

“How far along are you?” It was a low rasp; frail in its existence yet bludgeoning the quiet that had preceded it.

She didn’t look up, but you knew she recognized your voice; her every muscle stalled, hair even stilling as your words sank into her. It was the first thing you’d said to her since she’d seized. In her silent shock it dawned on you that it had not been long since you’d been in a situation similar to this; the two of you, a pitting silence, a mess – obvious and blaring – surrounding you.

Only this mess was not something that could be cleaned. This mess existed outside all you had once thought to consider. Though this room was less gruesome in appearance, it held that same suffocated dread, carried with it the reminder that everything could change without a moment’s notice. Watching the color return to her cheeks, absentmindedly brushing your fingertips across the raised marks atop your thigh, it hit you how true that fact was.

A small sound – a swallow – filled the room, a sigh to accompany it. “Six weeks. I think, at least. Maybe more.” She stood then, crossing her arms and leaning against the sink. A wall stood between you and her, invisible yet so entirely present. “No one knows.” Her jaw fluttered at its hinge. The wall was for her; a façade, a crutch. She was scared.

The door lit cool shivers down your back, hands digging into your pockets, a weak attempt at a smile pulling at your face. “Congratulations,” you offered first, forgetting the circumstances before seeing her eyes fall to the floor. “Or not, I guess.”

She kept her eyes down. “I’m not showing, and I’ve been good about sneaking away to throw up, so…”

“Last week,” you said, her stare coming back to you, “after Starkiller. I fainted after arriving back here, and after I woke up,” I washed the Commander of the First Order’s hair and cried to his comatose body about how my life is falling apart, “I just had to know you were okay, so I visited you.”

“I don’t remember seeing you. I actually… How did you even know I had been admitted to the medbay?”

“You were asleep. I didn’t want to wake you.” You chewed your cheek, recounting any of those 48 hours made your pulse jump. “You weren’t well off when I found you, before they took you to the medbay, so I wouldn’t expect you to remember me being there.”

Her brow dipped for half a second, a crack creeping into that wall. “I didn’t know you found me. It’s difficult for me to even recall most of that day.” Her shoulders dropped, stature less rigid now. “Thank you, though.”

You nodded, not entirely sure why she felt it necessary to thank you. “Yeah. So, you were sleeping and I saw the tests ordered on your board. And then I found your ultrasound on the floor.”

Her eyes were so distant, pupils housing a familiar ghost. “It must have fallen when I was sleeping.” Her lips parted with the whisper, egregious loneliness overwhelming the thought.

It felt like the floor would fall out at any second, the interaction so fragile. Watching her with intent, measuring her reactions, you charged ahead into territory you’d been afraid to enter for so long.

“Talia,” you started, buying more time to think on your phrasing. Her focus startled back from wherever her mind had taken her. “I mean, maybe this is ridiculous, and maybe I’m so far off base in even suggesting it…”

Her arms dropped when a hand reached to tuck a collection of stray hair behind her ear, nose sniffing, teeth pulling at her bottom lip. She took her eyes from yours, breath picking up. That wall she stood behind was wearing.

You couldn’t stand beating around the bush any longer, sick of theorizing about it all. It fled out, no breath to separate any of it. “I’ll just say it: Hux was leaving your room when I came around. And he was being weird. So weird. I mean, he was being… would I say nice? Maybe just, less awful? He complimented me. And it was so weird, but I thought I would give him the benefit of the doubt because, you know, he’d just lost a lot of men. But then it was you in the room and I.. he was so distraught? That is barely the right word, but I mean? He just wasn’t General Hux. And then I found the ultrasound and remembered how you’d asked for ‘Armitage’ earlier when I’d found you, and-,”

A weep signaled the destruction of the wall she’d thrown up, hands clawing into her eyes and lungs heaving full of ragged, desperate air. “Oh, please tell me you didn’t tell him! He can’t- I don’t!” Sobs rolled off of her between each exclamation. “I haven’t told him. I don’t know how. I- he’s so evil! I can’t believe I ever slept with him!”

Seeing her come apart, feeling the guilt she did in every word she cried, you could only think to take her into your arms. In your hold you felt her shaking and the pain roll off of her in thick, grating waves. It was familiar, like she, too, had been existing alone; you had not noticed, so buried in your own avoidance that you had not thought to consider hers.

“I’m so sorry! I’m so- I’m so sorry! It makes me so mad that- ugh!”

“Hey, stop. Slow down,” you soothed, hugging her tighter. “You have nothing to apologize to me for. You’ve done nothing wrong, okay?”

“No, I have! I slept with my Master! And got pregnant! And he’s such a fucking jerk! He’s the whole reason you’re losing your career, you know? And I had sex with him! And I feel- felt real things for him!” A breath stuttered into her lungs. “I never meant for it to go any further than that first night, and then… fuck.”

It burned down to your marrow that you had the power to comfort her, knew everything she was feeling even if it wasn’t hatred that left you crying at night. She would be embraced in knowing you had also slept with your Master; it would minimize the guilt she now felt. To tell her you had fallen for Kylo Ren could help her know that she wasn’t alone.

Instead, feeling her tears accumulate on your sleeve, struggling to keep in your own, you kept quiet. She would not learn how you had burned so bright for your commander. It was selfish, but it was necessary. Self-preservation. She would be testifying against you, taking the stand right after Hux. Her not knowing would do no harm; it would keep her from having to consider or commit perjury. Talia now joined Mason, another soul to protect, another person you would lie to.

Several minutes passed before she stopped trembling, another few before the tears stopped staining your uniform. Humanity existed in these moments, and though you would hide how you knew the advice you would offer her, you knew she needed to hear it. A part of you did, too.

Moving your arms from her back and grasping both her shoulders, you locked eyes with her and forced her to see that you somehow understood her pain. “There is nothing to feel guilty about. Not that you slept with him, or that you got pregnant. Not that you felt things for him or that you still do.” Her eyes shut at that, a fresh streamlet dragging into her mouth. “You can still love him even if he has done awful things.”

“Gosh, how can you say that? He’s ruined your life,” she shuddered, grimacing before looking back up to you.

“I made the choice to take that blood. I had a choice,” your throat tightened, not knowing if you were reciting the words from their origin or from your dream, “I made the one I thought was the best at the time. Hux may be an ass in the way he has gone about the issue, but it’s not like he wouldn’t have reported me.”

She sobbed your name, confusion and hurt wrought in her features. “That blood saved that patient. You saved that patient. We both know that. You saved him and you’re suffering for it and I’m the one who wrote the incident report. He made me write it. Such a fucking bastard.”

Just like that, whatever weird internal truce you’d made with Hux disappeared. “Yeah, that is a dick thing to do, I will say that.”

She wiped at her cheeks, shaking her head. “I should have lied on that report.”

“And gotten both of us in trouble? That isn’t a solution.”

“If I had, you would be less alone in this. And I wouldn’t have to testify against you.” Talia’s eyes shot to the ceiling and back, frustration hot on her breath. “It’s just so-,”

“Unfair. I know. I have… I’ve beaten myself up about it too much not to know that.” This conversation was too similar to those you’ve held inwardly. It was becoming repetitive to keep sulking over something you could not change. But Talia, if she wanted, could change her situation. “We went through the same program, got the same schooling, I know you know your options here.”

She chewed her cheek, shaking her head. A long drag of breath found its way into her chest, releasing when your hands fell to your sides. “This is where you find out how stupid I am.”

It pulled at your heart to hear how hard she was being on herself. “You aren’t stupid. And if you are? Could’ve fooled me with your class rank and just general existence.”

A laugh, weak but not acrid. “Academics were easy. Career is easy. This life stuff? Messy. Complicated. I feel like no matter what I do, it will blow up in my face.” That earlier distance glazed over her stare, a glimmer of yearning present in the way her eyebrows pinched. “And what I want…think I want? I’m not sure it’s even possible.”

“What do you want?”

Talia shut her eyes, capitulation and indignance set in her features, jaw flexed. “I haven’t spoken to him since that night,” she whispered. “He watched me fill out that report. I was sobbing in front of him and he said nothing.” A hand smoothed over her hair and clutched into her bun, lips quivering for a moment. “I didn’t even know until last week. I woke up for a few minutes and they started talking about all that had happened – fainting and seizures and blood tests – and they immediately wheeled me down to have an ultrasound to confirm the hCG results and urinalysis.”

She paused, growing in distance the more she shared. “Was it just your electrolytes that caused the seizure?”

“Yeah. Yes.” She blinked back to the present. “Belkar actually said I was severely dehydrated and that my metabolic panel reflected that.” Talia was dancing between two timeframes; gentleness framed her face when revisiting that of the past. Something so delicate in her stare; adoration cusping on hope. “I always told myself I would never have children. It scared me seeing how sick they could become when we had our unit on pediatrics. I’d never wanted to feel so helpless as the parents I saw during clinical.”

It almost winded you to watch a single tear slip down her cheek, allowing her silence during her pause before she looked up at you, desperation drowning her eyes. She couldn’t find – or, maybe, did not want to believe – the words that overwhelmed her. “What changed?” You knew, but she needed to hear it for herself.

Her lips had become puffy, teeth pulling at the bottom one. She reached into the front pocket of her scrub dress, pulling from it that square print, only now with rolled, worn corners. “I know it’s early and there are so many things that can go wrong and I know I had been drinking before I knew, but…” A swallow bobbed her throat, a fond smile forming when she toyed with the scan. “When they handed this to me? Something just, I don’t know, came into view.”

A surge of immense pain coiled into you. In her reverie you saw yourself, realized how fortunate her situation was; she had something she wanted and even though it was complicated, she had a choice in the matter.

Again, her mind had wandered, distraction framing her tone; her brows pinched together for a second, a question sparking from her memories. “Have you ever wanted something so much, and maybe you didn’t fully understand it, but you just knew? For whatever reason, this was the thing you would do everything in your power to make possible? To have what you want, no matter how daunting or nonsensical it seemed?”

“Yeah,” you choked out, coughing against the new strain on your throat, “I think so.” Talia had that ability, though, and it cracked against your skull how helpless you were to go after what you wanted.

“You said that I could still love him if he’s done awful things,” she quoted, her attention returning to you. “I don’t love him. I don’t think I really know him that well. But…” She shook her head, shoulders shrugging and a puff of breath leaving her nose. “I miss him. It’s so dumb, but the bastard is nice to be around when he isn’t buried in politics. When he’s just a person. When he isn’t the General. When he’s just—” another smile, similar to her earlier one “—Armitage.”

“That has to be the strangest part of this whole thing.” A small laugh bubbled past your lips. It had been so long since the last one. “Armitage.”

“It was very odd at first. But I’m not going to cry out General, oh please General! when I’m cumming, so I got over it.”

Dumbfounded, all you could do was gawk at her candor. It warmed you, though, feeling like that first night you’d hung out with her. A good memory. Her cheeks pinked in your silence and the sight pulled you straight into a ruckus of laughter, tears – born in pain, falling from humor – and lightheartedness. It was short lived, but Talia joined in your fit; abashed giggles leaving her smile-tight face.

“I mean, I feel like it would be weirder if you were sleeping with Commander Ren.” Talia jabbed at your shoulder. “Calling him… Kylo? That just feels downright wrong.”

Instantaneously, your high fizzling into nothing before her, you found yourself right where you were when you’d said your first goodbye. Ky. It wilted your heart, shrouded whatever glimpse of happiness you’d just caught. Talia was too lost in the joke to notice you’d backed away from her, face turned so she couldn’t see the suffering rise to the surface.

“Ha, yeah. Wrong. So, so wrong.” You cleared your throat, brushing past the weak attempt at nonchalance, ready to be off this subject. “So you miss him? You miss… Armitage? Yeah, no. I’m gonna stick to Hux, if that’s alright?”

A final laugh lit from her chest, Talia waving you off. “That’s fine, of course. And yeah. I miss him.” Her brow furrowed. “Do you think it could work? Me and him, and—” she gestured down to her abdomen, placing the scan back in her pocket “—this?”

This was none of your business, and you doubted anything you could say would help her, but there was genuine curiosity in her voice. There was respect in how she wanted your insight into something so intimate and personal.

A sigh preceded your reply, unsure if you were speaking to her or yourself. “I think… Just as you said earlier: no matter if its daunting or nonsensical or even completely impossible – if you want it and you are willing to do everything in your power to get it?”

Hope lit behind her eyes, bloomed in her chest at the suggestion. “It could work.”

Struggle hid behind a mask of hope. Of course she did not know how it pained you to offer words that would never exist for yourself, and it wasn’t fair to ruin her moment of clarity with the bitter bite of ill-placed jealousy. There was no part of you that envied her condition, but instead what it entailed; you coveted her ability to choose the life she wanted.

Talia shook her head free, a giggle warm on her breath. “We should get out of here. Night shift is gonna run us off soon. You have the time?”

“Uh, not readily available. But I’m sure it’s way past shift change.” You started toward the door.

“Hey, I noticed you’ve been staying in the on-call rooms?”

“Oh.” It surprised you that she’d noticed. The knowledge warmed you to your core, both from embarrassment and appreciation. “Yeah, I know you guys have been swamped down here with all the fallout from Starkiller, so I just thought I’d stay near to help out.”

She tsked, your name a mocked plead. “You are Starkiller fallout. You need to rest. Especially now that you can. I got an update from Zag about the trial. You’ve got, what? Three or four days before Canto Bight? Seven until the initial hearing?”

She’d done the same math you’d gone over at length. Hearing it from someone else’s mouth made it that much more real. Frightening. “I know. I do, I know. But what’s wrong with spending them here?”

“You know as much as I do that working constantly drains the absolute soul from you. Even just working these past three days I have been dying for my time off.”

“Yeah, but you have a reason to be tired.”

“I’m pregnant. You survived a planet exploding all the while keeping the Commander of the First Order alive. Are you forgetting that?”

Talia, I wish I could forget all of it. “No, I’m just-,”

“And I know you’ve been blowing off that McCarty guy. He’s a physician, right?”

Maybe you’d been less discreet in your efforts toward avoidance than you thought. It felt like being caught; this web of lies was becoming a strain, less of a benefit, a hinderance rather than protection. “He’s… Mason doesn’t know what he’s asking for, you know?”

“No, I don’t know.” Talia strode to your side, stern eyes on your own. “Look,” a breath softened her demeanor, “whatever happened on Starkiller, whatever you saw or felt – it’s affecting you. I don’t know what it is, and I’m not asking you to tell me – though, you can tell me anything – but at some point it becomes a choice to remain stagnant in grief.”

“Hey!” Talia had always been blunt, but her audacity now clawed at your patience.

“Okay, sorry, yes that was very harsh,” she placed a firm hand on your shoulder, “but you are the one who made me realize that. Here. Now.”

Tears threatened but remained stuck in your throat. “Like you said, I’m alone in this. I have to be.”

“The way I see it, you aren’t-,”

“Talia, I am.”

“You aren’t. Me being here and that physician coming here every night is proof of that.” You met her with silence. She shrugged. “You could have left me to deal with my issues alone, but you saw me and knew I couldn’t.” More silence on your part, her stare flicking between your eyes. “I see you. You can’t deal with this alone. I won’t let you.”

You fought to hide them, but one by one fell the tears you had not permitted before. For so long it seemed you had been shielding others from hurt, ensuring a safety they were not aware they needed. Talia was offering that to you, now. Rejection was the first instinct to kick in, feelings of doubt and thoughts of I do not deserve this blaring in urgency.

But then she spoke, naming what you had been too scared to confront. “Choose to not be alone. It doesn’t make you a bad person,” her hand left you, overwhelming assurance in her smile, “You’ve been strong for long enough, for so many others. Let someone be strong for you for once.”

The next breath you took was a million times lighter than any you’d had since seeing Kylo those days ago. She really did see you, more than she could ever know. It was imperfect, of course; you weren’t sure anyone would ever be fully aware of how much pain you were in, there was so much you could never share. It was her offer that brought you solace; it may be superficial for you, but Talia was in your corner, and she believed, knew, that it meant something. In her eyes, pooled with intensity, you heard her loud and clear: that oath, born in blood, was renewed here and now, its strength indelible even in silence.

“Now,” she activated the door, its hiss shivering down your spine, “I think Mason would love it if you caught up with him.” The two of you stepped into the hall, already beginning to part paths. “I’d invite you to stay with me but I, uh…”

“You’ll be otherwise predisposed?”

“…We’ll see,” rose bloomed in her cheeks, “I don’t think I’ll tell him. Not tonight. Not yet.”

“Ah,” you sighed, a yawn slipping past.

“Get some sleep! And maybe just… get some, you know?”

The joke registered too late, her paces halfway down the hall before you called out, “Oh. Oh. No, I’m not with- we aren’t anything more than friends.” Not sure if she even heard you, she waved behind her before turning a corner. Well. That’ll need clarifying.

Heat flared in your cheeks, several pairs of eyes weighing on your shoulders at the outburst. Would there ever be a day when you were not embarrassing yourself on this unit? Given this would be the last shift before going to Canto Bight, probably not. Eyes tracking your steps, deciding to surprise Mason instead of call him, you found your way to the on-call room where your entire world was set up; remnants of a past one, at least.

In it you gathered your belongings – a pair of back up scrubs, a toiletries bag, and the lifeless watch. There was a hesitance before placing the device with the other items. Six nights you had spent staring at its blank face, resenting the stranger you’d come to see. Glancing your face before placing it in the bag, you did a double-take. In the most minute details, barely there, you found a familiarity in the eyes you met; they were less dull, something like life or light peeking through the surface.

You dropped the gadget into your pocket, gathered your uniform into the bag, and took a final glance at the shelter you’d sought amidst a storm that had nearly consumed you. Even though nothing had truly mended, there was comfort in the absence of solitude; in the face of probable death, the explicit knowledge that you were not alone made it less daunting. Less impossible.

A final breath brought the door to a close, footsteps leading you into the vast expanse of the Finalizer. The change in air was nice, lungs welcoming the difference and cluing you into the fact you still had a gauze square shoved up your nose. It took a tug to pull it from its place, a sting pinching at the sudden release of pressure.

“Shit,” you hissed, feeling a new stream of warmth trickle past your lips. Two fingers pressed to your mouth, testing for a mirage but coming back with the real thing, red creaks splintering into the ridges of your fingerprint. Without thinking you wiped it down your scrub top, forgetting you were no longer clothed in camouflaging black, but instead unforgiving grey. “Fuck!”

“Wasn’t this how I left you here the last time?”

The airlock must have snapped, lungs solid, muscles frozen. Tension seized your ribcage, pulse plummeting, blood bounding against tuned ears. Every bit of moisture abandoned your mouth. Every bodily process you could think of stopped.

There was no modulation, each word raw, bare, and clear as the last time you had heard their founder. At least, the last time you’d heard it while awake. It was less haunted now, filled not with insidious rage but rather bone-chilling earnest.

“I suppose not, given it’s your blood tonight.”

He drew nearer, boots heavy and steps paced to perfection, the rhythm of his stride an echo of your heart. Kylo Ren was less than three paces from you and all you could do was endure the sensation of a singular ruby droplet following the line of your artery, dragging past your clavicle, and ghosting the skin over your sternum. The crimson trail began to dry, steps no longer sounding when you forced yourself to look up.

Chaos tore into the base of your spine, every nerve ending firing at the sight of his bare face, no helmet to veil the visage you had memorized. The black strip rested in prominence, striking through his features; in it you found a curious attraction, finding it fit him. The wound was less severe now, healing with time. He wore no helmet, but that by no means meant there was no mask keeping him at a distance only he knew the measure of.

“Where have you been, officer?” Cyanosis was a likely reality, breath still evading you as each word fell in baritone; petrified pupils not knowing where to focus. “Your services finally required, and yet you were nowhere to be found.”

Nothing. No words. No sound. No thoughts. Barren in every aspect of cognizance, you remained silent and still, only knowing to perceive him for what he was: superior.

A twitch at his brow, a narrowing of his eyes. Studying. Testing. “How unfortunate; starved for words when they would actually count.” His injury moved fluidly against his words, a beauty in the way it ebbed with each syllable.

A ping sounded at your waist, commlink buzzing in your pocket.

Languid, Kylo’s eyes dipped toward the sound. “You should get that,” he drawled, eyes twitching before conquering yours once more, “could be important.”

His tone haunted you, demeanor too suggestive. You swallowed against a dry throat, locked in his stare, knuckles brushing your watch when you took out your commlink. It trembled in your grip, shocked muscles heavy with weakness. His concentration had become adamant, palpable, an eyebrow prompting your attention to whatever message had triggered the alarm.

Concerning the defendant,

In the week since the previous correspondence, it has come to be that the defendant is to partake in nursing practice during her time on Canto Bight. This allows the Board of Physicians ease in collecting surveillance imperative to their final judgement.

Commander Ren’s decision to bar the defendant from external practice has been nullified as to not contradict this process.

In permitting the defendant’s practice while on trial, the objective to obtain a new provider has been benched. Due to this, the defendant shall remain assigned to her current Master while residing on Canto Bight…

At last, breath flourished your lungs, an inadvertent gasp thrusting a glutton of oxygen into your airway. Crazed eyes darted over the message for any sign of a mistake that would prove it to be falsified; the only thing you could find was finality, a document containing the proposed schedule attached at the end of the message.

A buzz washed through your brain, overstimulated by the information, everything around you suddenly all too close and bright. Jaw bound shut but still trembling, eyes low and unfocused, a familiar pressure flicked just under your chin. The Force tipped your face upward, pupils strict in their position, passing first over a tense jaw and landing at last on the challenge that lay behind Kylo Ren’s glare.

“I’ll see you on Canto Bight, officer.” A serpentine smirk slithered along his lips, one stride bringing him so his face was hidden, shoulder linked with yours, and fingers jut out to graze at the hidden permanence atop your left thigh. His voice, an onslaught of emptiness, a cold threat, suffocated all that surrounded you. “You wanted to give me more? Prove it.”

[sierraraeck]

Staying Hidden

BAU x OC Aundreya

Masterlist | Series Masterlist

Summary: Aundreya reveals everything that has been going on, and visits some of the team members in the hospital while trying to evade notice. Story eighteen.

Category: Angst.

Warnings: Cussing. Brief mention of sexual assault, drug use, and death.

Word Count: 4.8k

A/N: I still know nothing about how gangs work, this is all for entertainment purposes.

I have some explaining to do.

My given name from birth was Clara Spade. If you recall, I grew up with divorced parents and a sorry excuse for a father. When I was 14, I witnessed a mass killing by one of the most infamous serial killers of all time, the Storefront Slaughterer. Somehow, I was spared, but my identity was soon leaked to the media, and my mom, sister, and I were put in witness protection. At this point, my identity was changed along with my name, which was now Cassy Sae. I don’t know how, and I never figured out when the Slaughterer caught wind of my whereabouts, but he did, and he followed me home one night. He burnt my entire home down, taking the remaining two members of my family with it. I jumped out of the back window, barely surviving until Agent Gideon found me and took me back to his isolated cabin house in practically the middle of nowhere. As the news reported, Cassy Sae died in that fire as well, the same day Aundreya Chambers came into existence already at the age of 15. I attempted to go back to school, live as close to a healthy and normal life as I could, but I let my rage get the best of me. I decided that I wanted to hunt down the man that took everything from me, dropping out of high school. I left Gideon, telling him that I couldn’t burden him anymore and had to do whatever came next for me on my own. He reluctantly let me leave, and I found myself on the streets of Chicago. There, in a small self defense gym I’d started frequenting after hours, I met a girl only a few years my senior named Xena. She befriended me and admired how quickly I was picking up on all of the concepts being taught, despite the fact that I never officially took a class, only watched thinking I was going unseen. Xena told me about a group of people who could help and protect me, and before I knew it, I was meeting a man in his early 50s who went by the name of Rafael. Little did I know that I had just been coaxed into joining one of the most feared and revered gangs in the northeast.

One of the first things I learned was how to make money in the form of dancing. It was also when I created the Alionth persona. I was one of the youngest members to have ever joined the Cloaks (I was almost 16 at the time but it was an unspoken agreement that I was now 18), and I picked up on most everything very quickly. I started out low in the ranks, mainly just dancing and drawing new members in or being a distraction while another operation was going on behind the scenes. At one point, I remember that an operation wasn’t going as planned and they needed information from a patron at the club. I wanted to help out and be a part of the ‘more important things’ so badly, that I took initiative without permission. I started performing for the patron, and pick-pocketed him in the midst of it. I returned to Xena, and another boy, with the information I’d gathered from his phone and wallet. It helped them complete their operation, and they were impressed with my skills, even though they were irritated I did it without permission. After that night, I started moving up the ranks. It was also that night that the boy I’d met earlier with Xena started using me. His name is Jamar, but most people know him by his last name, DeLeon. He was the 19 year old son of another revered gang leader. Rafael happened to be close friends with his father, and agreed to look after DeLeon after he died. Rafael also took in the members of that gang, which helped spike the power and ‘popularity’ (for lack of a better word) of the Cloaks. DeLeon and his rowdy friends were hard to control, so in order to appease them, Rafael essentially let them do whatever they wanted, as long as it didn’t hurt the Cloak name. The ‘Cloak name’ did not explicitly include Cloak members.

I was fresh, and had skills that apparently made me ‘special,’ so DeLeon and his boys decided I would be a great way to celebrate the success of that night. And ‘come on, you’re half the reason it went so well. Don’t you want to celebrate with us?’ This was also my first exposure to hard drugs. I was on and off them from here on out.

But beyond that, once I started to be recognized for my pick-pocketing abilities, and being able to track people down for information, I got moved to be a private informant for the gang, and I was damn good at it too. I spent the most time communicating my findings with Xena and DeLeon, so they became the closest people to me. In all of my free time, I looked for the Slaughterer. When I finally found him and asked Xena and DeLeon to help me set up a trap for him, they helped me without hesitation. It was my idea to tip off the FBI, which they were obviously hesitant about at first. But I convinced them that if we caught one of the FBI’s most wanted, and instead of hurting him turned him over to the FBI, it would make us look better to them and hopefully keep them off our asses. We discussed it with Rafael himself, and he thought that it was a good idea. I was surprised and relieved, and once the FBI had the Slaughterer in custody and everything went according to plan, it was enough to get me moved up to the rank of ‘Head of the PI unit.’ That’s when I started being known as The Figure. I was 18 at the time, and for a while I seemed untouchable. I was training other members, three of which were Sydney, Deen, and Corbyn, my three closest friends going into the ring, and we were finding people left and right. I scoped out traitors and infiltrators as a part of my lead job (that’s when I met Christina who was working with Derek at the time), and the gang seemed to be as strong as ever.

Then, one day, I found out that Xena Adaland is the granddaughter of Rafael Adaland, the gang’s leader. She, like DeLeon, was three years older than me, and was pissed that I was now higher in the ranks than she was. She challenged me for my PI spot, and the rules were simple. Whoever lost, would leave.

The day before the challenge, which would be a series of fighting, investigating, and persuasive tactics, Rafael came to me and told me that I had to win, no matter what it took. I was stunned, and even though I pushed for more information, he wouldn’t tell me why. Regardless, I did win, and Xena was forced to leave, and her grandfather let her. No, not just let her, he encouraged her. Once she left, I essentially became the replacement daughter to Rafael, which meant I was in even closer contact with DeLeon. Our relationship had always been very twisted, but once I was under more direct protection by Rafael, he almost completely stopped how he’d been treating me. Almost. I didn’t understand how fucked up it was at the time, but we even started dating once he started treating me better. However, there were bigger problems. The FBI was closing in on us, which I later found out was the reason why Rafael was okay letting Xena leave. He wanted her safe and away from this mess when it imploded. Rafael and I had been working closely side by side for a year now, and I could tell he was feeling like he had nothing left. Xena was gone, his life’s work of building a foolproof gang was collapsing, and DeLeon was slowly pulling away. He and I both knew that the FBI and police were looking for someone to blame, someone to go down for this, and only one of us was going to get out of this whole thing. He all but told me I had his blessing to screw him over and take the gang for myself. I was 19 and he was almost 60, so he knew that the one thing he might be able to leave was a legacy, one that I might be strong enough and smart enough to carry on. What he did tell me, was that what he was about to do was for me and for the rest of the gang, and that it would take the heat off of us, long enough for us to preserve what was left of the gang. For a while, I thought that he would be turning it over to Xena or DeLeon, but when it came down to it, it was me that he chose. I took it in stride and with honor.

That night, when Rafael ended up dead in his office, I fully understood what he was talking about before. If the FBI found the gang’s leader dead, they would have someone to blame, and the spotlight would no longer be on me or really any of the rest of the members. The gang would essentially collapse.

DeLeon had different ideas, though. He thought that I had killed Rafael, the closest thing to a dad he could remember, and was out for revenge. He returned to his old ways of treating me, and left me with a scar to prove it. I fought through all of that shit, knowing I still had a responsibility to protect and salvage the gang. I had to tell them to disperse and find me in a month or so when things had cooled down. I pushed the gang underground, and that was the start of the ring. Whoever could find me again would have passed the first test to see if they were worthy or not to be in my new ring.

Deen found me first, then Sydney, then Corbyn. Others came to me as well, either from the gang or outside of it with other skills that were desirable. I started going by the name Alionth, and the former gang got turned into my ring of elite criminals. I ran a tight ship underground until I was 21.

Xena had been marinating in anger since she lost to me, and decided to get back at me by hurting one of my best friends. She kidnapped Sydney while on a job, and threatened to hurt her if I didn’t show up. It had only been days prior that I met Sydney’s husband Todd and her newborn daughter, Jayana, who I ran into again on my second case with the team. I should have known it was a trap from the beginning, but I’d been getting cocky and wasn’t exactly thinking straight, due to the amount of drugs pumping through my system.

I showed up and was ambushed by both Xena and DeLeon, who explained to me that they’d found each other again after the Cloaks crashed. They bonded over their mutual hate for me, and decided to fuck me over together. They killed Sydney right in front of me, and then left just in time for the FBI to capture me and throw me in prison. If you remember, I was in there for four years from 21 to 24, and then I escaped. I ran right back to my ring, which accepted me with open arms. I was laying low for a while, and decided I’d let things cool off before taking the lead again. Before I could do that, though, I received an interesting visitor.

Agent Howard Archer came to visit me, and he wasn’t there to arrest me. He was there to hire me. He told me about the BAU and a certain unit chief he was not a fan of. He was just a step higher than Aaron Hotchner, and did not like the way he was running the BAU. Not to mention, Hotch was a threat to Archer’s position, and there was a potential competition between the two for the vice-presidency if something were to happen to the vice president. Archer wanted to ensure his future spot, and needed Hotch, and the VP, out of the way. He later informed me that another reason he had such a strong distaste for Aaron was because he failed to solve a case involving the murder of Archer’s son. I asked if he had a preferred way to get two FBI agents out of his way, and he told me he was familiar with my work and was prepared for whatever consequences followed. In other words, he would be satisfied with me killing the vice-president, and pinning it on Hotch.

He had me from the moment he introduced himself as an agent.

I went in to meet the team, which did not go as well as planned. Either way, I agreed to help Archer, and privately investigated each member after that first day. I knew Hotch from my past when I was still in contact with Gideon, but I didn’t think it would be as hard as it was. I thought that I could just come in, get the job done, and then move out. The problem was that there was an odd sense of loyalty to this man I’d met only a few times. It was odd, how he seemed to respect me, and he was even the first person (outside of Gideon and the people I worked with on the streets) that actually accepted my skills. I was one of the ‘bad guys’ from prison, but he always seemed to have some sort of appreciation for my information and willingness to work with him. There was just something about him that was calming, and each day I spent with the team, the harder it became for me to follow through. Aaron Hotchner was a natural born leader, and he was phenomenal at his job. Not to mention that the rest of the team, the rest of his family, really did care about him. I started questioning if I’d be able to tear apart this family, especially when I didn’t agree with Archer at all. Archer claimed that Hotch didn’t run the BAU well, but after spending time under his leadership, I totally disagreed. I also started building connections with people who weren’t obligated or pressured to like me like basically everyone else in my life. They made me feel better about myself, about my abilities, and I realized there was a constructive way in which I could use them. They unknowingly convinced me that I didn’t have to stay on the path of destruction I’d been on for my whole life, and that I could actually make something of myself, something that I didn’t hate. Something I could wake up every morning to and look in the mirror and not hate who was looking back at me or what she was doing everyday.

So I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to follow through with what I had agreed to do. Archer was persistent, though. He checked in on my progress, and at first I told him it would take time, which it would. But by the end of the three years I’d spent with the team, my excuses were just becoming lame. Not to say that the events that followed were lucky, because the whole Spencer and me going to prison thing was not lucky, but it gave me a legitimate excuse as to why I wasn’t working towards ‘the goal.’ It also gave him an excuse to come and threaten me while in prison. I didn’t know how I was going to get out of my deal with Archer, all I knew was that I had to. I was not going to tear that family apart, despite the fact that I already seemed to be doing that all on my own. But if they could survive the tornado that was me and my past, they deserved to be left alone after that.

Yet, I could tell that Archer had become restless, and the moment he mentioned going to someone else to get the job done if I couldn’t, I knew. He was the first one that really cemented my theory of Xena and DeLeon being back, but it was worse than I thought. He was working with them. Probably to do my job and kill me in the process, considering I knew his plans and could easily expose him, effectively wrecking everything. Unfortunately, he had no idea who he’d just gotten involved with, especially now that they were working as a team, and Archer was way too cocky and way too stupid to heed any of my warnings and assurances.

I had bigger problems at the moment, though. I always seem to.

Xena and DeLeon were back, and they were back with a vengeance. I knew that they had to be behind everything that had gone wrong. Some runner finding Maeve even before Spencer could, my father finding me and making weird comments like he knew what I had been up to, Spencer’s frame job and going to prison, and then of course, the detectives finding Spencer and I at my motel. I knew Xena had cameras in that room, and I saw her outside of the building as I was being shoved into the police car. I even wondered if they were behind the kidnapping of Derek’s cousin and Maeve. The three of us learned from the same person, and I was worried I wouldn’t be able to match, hell overcome, the two of their minds working together. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to work both angles at the same time: stopping Xena and DeLeon from afar and Agent Archer from all too close. But honestly, it didn’t really matter, because I had to find and stop them before they could wreck anything else, no matter what it cost me.

So I left the hospital leaving only that simple note behind; my unofficial resignation from the BAU. If I went off the grid, Xena and DeLeon would have to spend all of their time chasing me, and would have no time to spare for messing with the team. At least, that’s what I hoped.

# # # # # # # # # # # # #

I was successful at staying hidden for about four months. While Xena and DeLeon hopefully didn’t have enough time or energy to keep tabs on the team, that didn’t mean I didn’t. I kept up with every case of theirs, and even left their main suspect tied to a chair in his living room one time as a sort of gift since he kept evading them. You know, since I was conveniently in the area at the time.

When I heard about the explosion, I rushed back to DC from some small town in Georgia. I’d been spending time in all different states and towns, hoping it would be enough to keep those urchins on my tail while I figured out a way to trap them. But this seemed more important, especially because there was a chance that whatever explosion hurt them could have been planted by Xena and DeLeon. I couldn’t be sure of anything regarding their involvement anymore.

I showed up to the hospital after hours, and stood outside the three adjacent rooms housing Derek, Aaron, and JJ. All three were hooked up to a plethora of machines, and were out cold. I just stood there watching them, convincing myself that this wasn’t somehow my fault with each steady beep of their monitors. The hospital was almost peaceful like this, which was odd for me to admit considering how much I hated them.

I don’t know how long I’d been standing there when I heard faint footsteps approaching from behind me. I whipped my head around to face the noise, but when I scanned the hallway behind me, there was no one there. You are getting really paranoid.

But I figured that’s what was keeping me alive, so I just rolled my eyes and moved on. I allowed myself only a few more minutes for now, making sure that the three of them were still alive before heading out.

I came back a couple days later to check on them again. I again did it in the middle of the night, so all three were in essentially the same state, but a bit more color had returned to their faces. I moved a couple paces over and leaned against the wall behind me. I shut my eyes for only a little bit, and when I opened them, I spotted her. Emily was sitting down in the chair in JJ’s room, her full focus and attention on the woman in front of her. I was in a corner of the mini lobby outside of their rooms, and by the looks of it, she hadn’t noticed I was there. My heart was racing as I attempted to slip by her room and out of the hospital. I had almost completely cleared the room when Emily made eye contact with me. It was for a split second, but it was enough for her to recognize me. I didn’t wait to see what happened, because I started a full on sprint out of the hospital.

I decided that I couldn’t go back there; it made me too careless. I was absolutely defenseless and in a weakened state of mind. It was too risky, for me and them alike. Staying hidden until I could figure a way out of this was my only option.

# # # # # # # # # # # # #

The whole team had been shook by three of their members getting hurt in an explosion. They were all relieved that Derek, Hotch, and JJ were alive and that no serious damage had come to them. After closing the case Rossi and Preniss decided to be the ones that stayed with them, especially overnight. Penelope had stayed with them for four days straight while the rest of the team finished the case, so she deserved to be relieved of duty for a while, Tara got called to do more inmate interviews for research, and Reid just overall needed sleep. He’d been trying to figure out what Aundreya had meant by her note, where she was now, and what she was doing in all of his free time, including the midnight hours. Of course, everyone wanted to know more about these Xena and DeLeon characters, but even Garcia couldn’t find anything on them. Whatever was going on, there wasn’t really anything they could do about it. Reid knew this, but refused to give up. He finally agreed to go home, get some rest, and spend time with Maeve after some heavy convincing from Rossi and Prentiss. Which just left the two of them to be there together, or take shifts. A few days into it, Prenitss called Rossi in a minorly confused state.

“Sorry, I hope I didn’t wake you,” Emily started.

“I’m actually only a few minutes from the hospital, so that’s not a problem. What’s going on?” Rossi for the most part sounded calm, but Emily’s profiler ears could hear the slight concern behind them.

“Don’t worry, nothing’s wrong they’re all doing fine,” Emily started, and she heard a small sigh on the other end of the phone, “It’s just that, um…” Now that she was thinking about it, she wasn’t sure if she should tell anyone about Aundreya or not. Emily knew that whatever she was going through was very personal, and she probably didn’t intend on being seen, let alone having word get to the entire team. Plus, it probably wouldn’t benefit every member to know that she was around, but wouldn’t tell them what’s going on…

“What is it Emily?” Rossi questioned.

“I think… I think I just saw Aundreya. Here, in the hospital,” Emily answered. She wasn’t completely sure what to do with the information, and her and Rossi had always had a good relationship. He had this soothing, sturdy, knowledgeable vibe about him, and figured if she should tell anyone about this, it would be him. She also knew that Aundreya had trusted him, opening up about things she really hadn’t told anyone else, so it felt less violating to tell him.

“Hold on, I’m almost there,” was all Rossi offered before hanging up. It wasn’t exactly the reaction she’d been expecting.

When Rossi met her in the small lobby on that floor, he jumped right in with, “Yeah, I’ve seen her too.”

Emily’s eyes widened just slightly, but it didn’t really shock her either that he’d spotted her first. It just sort of made sense that he would. He always was better at keeping things a bit more compartmentalized and aware of his surroundings. Granted, Emily was pretty good at that herself, but when it came to her other team members, she could get a little clouded. “What should we do? Do we do anything?”

“I don’t think so. I’m not sure it would do any good, and she seems like she wants to handle this on her own,” Rossi replied.

“Whatever this is,” Emily pointed out. Rossi nodded, and after a few minutes, she added, “Is this what it was like when I was gone?”

Rossi turned to face her head on, “If you really want to know, yes. Except, we thought you were dead.” Not like we know for sure Aundreya isn’t, he thought, at least not yet.

“I’m so sorry for putting you all through that. It really sucks being on the other end of this. Not like the alternative is better…” Emily trailed off.

“You did what you had to do, and I’m sure Chambers is doing the same,” Rossi said with a small smile, “even if that means spending a few nights at my place.”

Emily looked over at him, mouth agape, “What? Are you serious?”

Rossi nodded. “I didn’t put it together until I saw her here a few days ago. I went home and just had this feeling that I wasn’t alone, and had heard a sound during the nights prior. I looked around my house and saw that one of the beds wasn’t made exactly like it had been for all the years I’ve lived there, and the window made the same squeaking sound I’d been hearing. I’ve tried to pay attention to when she’s there, but it’s very infrequent.”

“Probably random if she’s trying to fall off the radar,” Emily added.

A few more moments of silence passed before Rossi asked, “What would you do?”

“What do you mean?”

“Her situation is somewhat similar to yours. If you were her, what would you be doing right now?”

It wasn’t a bad thought. They put themselves in the shoes of the unsubs all the time, why not use the same technique here? “Uh, well, I’d be trying to go underground right about now. She’s clearly running from someone, or multiple someones, which are probably those other two names on her list.” Emily thought a bit more and continued, “When it was me, I wasn’t only running from Doyle, but I was also running to Declyn. If she’s running from those two people, what or who is she running to?”

“That is a very good question,” Rossi agreed. They both pondered this for a little while longer before taking a break, realizing they weren’t going to come with the answer tonight, and definitely not at a hospital where three of their friends were staying.

“Are we sure we aren’t going to tell anyone?” Emily sounded concerned.

“I don’t think that will help. And there are people who I don’t think need to know this,” Rossi said with a knowing look, “But, if we get any more information, or just happen upon evidence that points towards her needing our help, along with something we can actually do about it, then maybe we will. But until then, I think you and I should keep this to ourselves.” Emily nodded and the pair remained in silence for the rest of the night, mulling over the next moves they’d make and next questions they’d ask tomorrow, hoping they’d be enough to make a difference.

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[ronninoir]

Can I Steal You for a Second CH28

Summary: Adrien is forced to participate in a new dating show, but becomes more excited when Ladybug says she’ll participate as her civilian self.

AKA: AU where Adrien doesn’t know Marinette, the superheroes are 22 and Gabriel is mean and ruthless but not Hawkmoth.

Read on AO3

Start from the beginning Chp 1 on AO3

Chapter 28

The van ride back to the mansion was blissful. Marinette was giddy about how well her conversation went with Adrien. The whole night was wonderful, and the icing on the cake was that she didn’t even have to pretend to like Lila since the two never spent any alone time together.

 As she walked in the front doors, Marinette heard a scream and was tackled with a hug. “Thank God you came back! I don’t know if I could have handled it if you went home and left me with Lila alone!” the voice of Juliette moaned as she squeezed the life out of Marinette. When Juliette finally let her go, she was greeted by Lucie as well, who hugged her enthusiastically.

The two girls dragged Marinette to the couch and asked her for every detail about the three-on-one date. She told them all of the awkward details, all except her declaration of love for the cameras. That she wanted to keep to herself a little longer. Right as she finished explaining that she didn’t know who had gone home because she left before she could find out, the door opened. All three girls held their breath, only to let out a small sigh as Lila entered the room.

Lila paused on her way towards the stairs and gave a curt, “What are you three staring at?” before disappearing out of sight.

Juliette just rolled her eyes and carried on like there had been no interruption. “Oh well, we can’t have everything in life.” Marinette and Lucie both began laughing as Lila huffily reentered the room.

She sat down on the couch and crossed her arms, quickly followed by Victoria, who was armed with her signature clipboard. 

“Great, now that we’re all here, we can discuss what next week is going to look like.” She conferred with her clipboard for a moment before continuing. “As you know, the next stop on your journey is Hometowns, where Adrien gets to meet your parents. The dates have already been planned for you as well as the locations, which will be in your town but not your house, for safety reasons, except for Miss Dupain-Cheng.” The other three girls turned and looked at Marinette, but she just shrugged, not understanding what made her different from the rest.

Victoria moved on as if nothing had happened. “That means you will get to see your family for the first time as well. You are not permitted to stay the night with them. You will wake up the morning of your Hometown in your assigned hotel room in your hometown, and you will come back the night of to that same room, are we clear?” 

Every girl gave a mumbled, “Yes ma’am,” before Lila spoke up, “What about my parents? Are we going to Italy and for how long?” Her voice was strained and she didn’t seem very excited about seeing her parents again.

“They are already notified of what is to come and they will be arriving in France a day prior to your Hometown and the leaving the day after shooting.” Victoria said, matter-of-factly. Victoria finally looked up from her clipboard and made eye contact with all of the girls, “Any other questions?” Marinette had a couple of questions, but she didn’t want to ask in front of the other girls and embarrass herself. Victoria gave a satisfied smile and seemed to relax a little. “Anyway, I wanted to congratulate you four for making it this far. We appreciate your dedication to Adrien and to the journey and I hope you’ll be patient with us, as these next few weeks are very critical to the success of the show and everything that happens from here on out will be closely monitored.” With that, she turned on her heel and left the room.

The girls sat quietly for a moment, allowing what was just said to soak in. Lila was the first one out of the room, and the other girls soon followed, wishing the others goodnight.

Marinette laid in her bed, with Tikki on the pillow next to her, thinking about Victoria’s final words. “Do you think they’ll notice when you disappear as Ladybug?” Tikki asked, voicing the question Marinette was pondering.

“Honest, Tik, I don’t know. I’m just going to have to be more careful, I guess, and hope that no one finds out.”

                     ----------------------------------------------------

The next three days felt longer than normal. Without the cocktail party to stress about Friday and Saturday, the days stretched on and on. By Sunday afternoon Marinette was itching to transform. Right before she could escape, she was cornered by a random producer who wanted to officially inform her that her Hometown date would occur Monday, since she was the only local girl and Lila’s parents couldn’t fly in until Thursday.

Realizing that she only had mere hours before truly seeing her parents again made her want to jump and scream with excitement. She had miss them so much, even though they were minutes away from where she was now, it was still exciting to think that soon she would see them with Adrien in tow.

The thought of Adrien meeting her parents gave her butterflies. She knew that she was in it for the long haul, but it was still weird to think that she’d been in a relationship with Adrien long enough for parents to be involved.

As she rounded the corner to her room and walked inside, a horrible thought struck. “What if they don’t like him?” Marinette asked the room at large. 

Thankfully, only Tikki answered, “What if who doesn’t like whom?”

Marinette met Tikki’s eyes, and she must have looked truly worried, because Tikki immediately flew next to Marinette, offering up one of her precious cookies. “What if my parents don’t like Adrien? Like how are they to know that he’s my soulmate who I’ve been in love with for seven years? What do I do if they decide he’s not good enough for me or if there’s something completely wrong with him?” Marinette gasped as an even worse thought came, “What if they decide that I’m not good enough for him and they adopt Adrien and disown me and then I’ll be homeless and living on the street and I’ll have to beg for money and sleep in a cardboard box and my only friends will be the mice that live in my alley and the toothless hobo they call Smelly Todd.”

Tikki grabbed Marinette’s cheek and forced her to make eye contact with the god. Her blue eyes bore into Marinette’s and she felt her breathing relax and her heart rate go down. “Be sensible, Marinette. None of that is going to happen. Your parents are going to love Adrien because they will see how much of a gentleman he is and how much he loves you. Once they see how much you two care for each other, there won’t be any objections.”

Marinette felt herself nodding, Tikki’s words flowing over her and calming her down significantly. “You’re right Tikki,” she sighed, slumping down onto her bed. “Thank you for not letting me become a hobo and being friends with Smelly Todd.”

Tikki gently patted her cheek, “I’ll always be here for you, Marinette.”

Almost an hour later, Marinette was still thinking about all of the possible ways this meeting tomorrow could go, just without the hyperventilating, when she transformed and disappeared out of her window.

                      ----------------------------------------------------

Chat had actually beat Ladybug to their meeting spot, and, as if it was some unspoken agreement, as soon as Ladybug’s feet hit the roof, both of them dropped their transformations. 

Plagg just glanced between the two of them as Tikki flew to join him. “Why does this feel like an ambush?”

Marinette gave a nervous giggle and moved to sit next to Adrien, who suddenly looked very stressed and worried. She gently grabbed his hand and he quickly entwined their fingers together as he took a deep breath and addressed the kwamis. “We need to talk about our new powers.”

Tikki let out a small sigh, “We figured you would eventually.”

“We just need a better understanding of how they work, so we know how to better control them.” Marinette said calmly, giving Adrien’s hand a small squeeze.

Plagg let out an exasperated sigh that caused Adrien to roll his eyes. “What do you want to know? They’re new and better and that’s about it.”

Adrien opened his mouth to say something, but Marinette beat him to it. “Please, Plagg, we need more information. We’re trying to figure out what happened during the last akuma attack, and how we can try not to destroy all of Paris while we’re saving it.”

“The thing is, Marinette, we can’t give out too much information. You have to figure out the new powers for yourself.” Tikki floated over and gently put her hands on Adrien’s other hand. She was looking at him so sadly that it made Marinette’s heart hurt.

Adrien stared down at his lap and whispered, “I just need to understand how I cataclysmed Montparnasse Tower.” Tikki and Plagg shared a look, and Marinette had a feeling that a mini argument was going on between them. After a few beats, Tikki huffed a “Fine!” and Plagg sped over towards Adrien, forcing him to met his eyes.

“Hey, kid, I know how much this has bothered you this week. But you need to know it wasn’t fully your fault. These enhanced powers allow for your cataclysm to last longer than it did before, which you couldn’t have known.” 

“You mean like more than five minutes?” Marinette asked, genuinely curious.

“Kind of. It’s hard to explain without demonstrating it, but you can use your power more than one time. You have more control over it.”

Adrien’s jaw dropped, and he stuttered, “M-more than one time?”

“Yeah, aren’t you listening?” Plagg asked, giving Adrien a teasing look before continuing. “Let’s look at what happened with Revengapop.” Adrien physically flinched at the name, but didn’t stop Plagg. “You summoned the cataclysm to destroy his popcorn-making machine. But, as you landed from your jump, you touched the roof with your right hand to balance yourself. Your cataclysm was still active when you touched the roof, therefore it cataclysmed the building. You could have done more damage, except once you realized what you had done, you willed the cataclysm away.”

As he was talking, Marinette replayed the event in her mind. She could see Chat jumping towards the machine, and then landing in a lunge with his right hand on the roof. That was when the building started to collapse, and she went into overdrive and grabbed the akuma while using her Miraculous fix.

“So, you’re saying that he can cataclysm more than one thing with a charge? Like it’ll just keep going until he’s done using it, and then he can just turn it off?”

“You got it, LB.”

“But wait, how does the countdown work, if he can cataclysm a number of things?” 

“The timer is the tricky part,” Tikki cut in. “Your timers last longer than 5 minutes now, but it will only gradually increase over time. So now you may have 5 and a half minutes before you detransform, but it’ll eventually become longer and more permanent as you continue to get older.”

“But when do the timers start counting down?” Adrien asked, his gaze dancing between the two kwamis.

“Yours, kid, starts once you turn the cataclysm off.”

“And yours, starts once you are done using your Lucky Charm, usually by throwing it for the Miraculous cure.”

“So, you’re saying I can fight an entire fight with a cataclysm charge on my right hand and my ‘kind of, sort of’ five-minute timer won’t start until I turn off the power?” Marinette noticed that the light was slowly coming back in Adrien’s eyes, and he actually seemed to be getting excited about all of this rather than worried like he was before.

“Yes, but that’s honestly all we can tell you. The rest of it you have to discover for yourself.” Tikki was calm, but it was clear that she was done talking about this topic with the Miraculous holders. Adrien, however, was not.

“So, the bigger jumps and connected thoughts and being able to walk around quieter are all part of the enhanced powers package too?”

Plagg nodded excitedly. “My favorite is the enhanced strength. With it, you can lift the largest piece of camembert ever made!” Marinette laughed at the thought of Chat just casually holding a piece of camembert the size of a car.

As Adrien and Plagg continued to get excited about all of the new powers he has, Marinette’s mind went into overdrive. There was something that Tikki had said after the Task when they learned about all of this that she needed to ask about. 

“I have a question.” She announced, which shut the boys up pretty quickly. “Tikki, when you told us about our new powers, you said more danger could come with it, and that we needed to be more careful. What exactly did you mean by that.”

Tikki paused, as if contemplating the best way to phrase her next statement. Do you remember the akuma Timebreaker?” Marinette nodded, thinking of that akuma from long ago. That was an akuma she would never forget, as she ended up working with another Ladybug as well as a Chat Noir, one Ladybug from the present and one from the past (of like 5 minutes, but still). “Do you remember how Chat got hit by Timebreaker and he dissolved?” Both Marinette and Adrien nodded grimly. They didn’t like to talk about all of the times something horrible had happened to Chat during a battle, but that particular instance was one of the worst. “If that were to happen now, your enhanced powers as Ladybug would go away until you saved Chat.” 

Marinette tried to comprehend what that would look like. Her timer would go back to 5 minutes exactly, her lucky charm wouldn’t be as strong, and she would be without her partner, which is always her greatest weakness. The idea upset her more than she thought it would. 

Tikki let her words hang there before speaking again. “That’s why I warned you to be careful. If something happens to either of you, even if it’s something that the Miraculous cure can fix, the other will suffer greatly.”

Marinette and Adrien exchanged a look. She could tell that he still thought she was the reckless one out of the two of them, but arguing about it won’t fix the problem. “I promise to be more aware of my actions, if you are.” 

Adrien smiled that beautiful smile of his and answered, “We both know I’m not the reckless one, but I promise the same. I’ll be safer if you’ll be safer.” 

Marinette rolled her eyes, but leaned into him and rested her head on his shoulder. “I meant what I said at the date last week. I only want you to be safe.”

Adrien turned his head and kissed her forehead, “I just want us to be safe together.”

Marinette closed her eyes and smiled, enjoying this moment with Adrien. Of course, that’s when Plagg decided to clear his throat causing Marinette to open her eyes.

“I hate to break up this moment, but I want cheese before we go patrol.” Adrien rolled his eyes and pulled away from Marinette gently, digging in his pocket for some cheese. He tossed it to his kwami as Marinette stood up, looking for cookies for Tikki.

“Don’t worry, Marinette, I don’t need cookies to transform.” Tikki said with a laugh as Adrien whipped towards her appalled. “Plagg’s just needy.” Marinette laughed as Adrien murmured, “I knew that,” before calling his transformation. Marinette watched as he was bathed in green light and then suddenly, Chat stood before her. She let out a small sigh, which caught Chat’s attention. 

“What was that, princess?” He asked with a smirk.

“Oh nothing. I just don’t think I’ll ever get tired of watching you do that.” Chat let out a small growl-like sound before stepping forward and kissing Marinette aggressively. She got lost in the kiss as his claws ran through her hair and she was finally able to appreciate how skin tight his leather suit really was. Before either of them took it too far though, they broke apart and Chat rested his forehead on Marinette’s.

“We have a city to patrol,” he said rather breathlessly, the sound of which sent shivers down her spine.

“You’re right,” she sighed, wishing for once that she didn’t have to be responsible for the entire city of Paris. “Plus, we’ll have plenty of time for that kind of stuff in the fantasy suite.” She watched Chat gulp and grow slightly pale under the mask, which caused her to laugh. It was nice to know she could still get to him.

She quickly called her transformation, and the two of them flew off into the night.

~~~

Soooooo sorry friends for the long wait! My sister was having trouble finding the inspiration to write, BUT she FINALLY got her act together AND mapped out the rest of the story, so we have almost reached the end of this journey together! Thank you all so much for the support and the constant notes and shares. You guys are the best and this story wouldn't continue to exist without you!

Aaaanyway, we hope you all enjoy the new chapter!

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[give-baek-my-love]

Keep It A Secret (II)

Characters: Jimin X Reader X Jungkook

Genre: Angst/Fluff

Series: Intro, One, Two

Description: Without even a simple goodbye, Jimin, your childhood best friend , left to Seoul to pursue his dream as an idol. Ten years later just when you thought that you were finally ready to let it all go and start your own career as an idol, you’re left in a situation where it seems your past isn’t ready to let Jimin go just yet.

[BREAKING] Dispatch reports BTS’ Jimin and Purple’s Chaejin are dating.

You stared the article title countless times, too afraid to read any further. Although both their faces were mostly covered up with hats and face masks, you could immediately tell them apart. You remembered Chaejin wearing that exact jacket just hours ago before she headed out. You also could tell that the male who was holding the car door for Chaejin was Jimin just from the slight view of his eyes that were peaking through from beneath his lowered cap. 

What the fuck.

There were millions of questions running through your head. How did they even get to knowing each other? With BTS and the group’s busy schedules how did they have to the time to start dating? Sure your group would sometimes bump into BTS, but it was also just a brief glance or greeting.

‘How do you think they met?’ April asked, diverting your attention away from your own thoughts. 

‘I don’t know.’ you mumbled. You felt nothing. You wanted to at least feel some sort of feeling but all you just felt numb. You just couldn’t process the fact that your best friend and ex-best friend were dating.

Perhaps April sensed that something was wrong because you suddenly felt her warm hands gripping your arm,

‘Are you okay?’

Once again peeling your eyes away from the screen, you handed her back the phone without reading beyond the title. Giving April a slight nod, you dashed into the washroom to hide the tears that were quickly streaming down your face.

In hopes of hiding your sobs, you turned the tap on full blast and sunk to the floor allowing yourself for the first time to embrace the emotions that were running through your body.

No. No I’m not okay. -

You don’t know how long you stayed in the washroom, but eventually Manager Kim knocked on the door and told you to finish up whatever you were doing and meet him along with the rest of the members in the living room.

After washing your face and glancing into the mirror, your puffy red eyes were all you could see. Your reflection in the mirror no longer looked like your old self. She had hollowed cheeks and eyes that seemed much too big in contrast to her slimmer face, all highlighting just how much pain and hardship you had to go through in order to become an idol. But all that blood, sweet and tears that you went through was nothing compared to this heartbreak. A heartbreak whose cause was simply self-induced, all because you fell in love with your childhood best friend ten years ago, someone who could never imagine would ever feel the same way.

Eventually you walked out of the bathroom and saw that everyone including Chaejin was back. She was smiling. She was practically swimming in joy. Perhaps if she wasn’t your best friend and perhaps if your career wasn’t partially because of her doing, you would have yelled at her by now, asking why she would jeopardize the group’s future like this.  Everyone knew how much a dating rumour could negatively affect the group, so you wondered why she as the leader would do this when the group’s popularity was just starting to rise. Instead of taking the avaliable space next to Chaejin, you decided to squeeze yourself next to April who was seated the furtherest away from the leader. The whole group knew that you and Chaejin were very close, so close that the two of you basically never left each other’s side, so when you decided choose a seat that wasn’t next to her, you earned a couple of confused glances from the members. 

Clearing his throat, Manager Kim began,

‘I’m sure that you are all aware of the article about Chaejin that dispatch uploaded early this morning. The article has been confirmed to be true. Whether you all knew about it prior to the article or not, the company and BigHit both confirmed the article to being true. Also whether or not you like or dislike their relationship, the company and I just hope that you will all not let your emotions and feelings ruin the group’s atmosphere and schedules especially when in front of the media and fans. That being said, the company has decided that the group will go on a short break just so the public and fans can have some time to digest the information and won’t bombard you guys with questions about their relationship. During this time, you are allowed to stay in Seoul if you wish so, if not, you can go back home and visit your family, or take a small vacation if you like, but you must let us know ahead of time. Lastly, just as a reminder the dating ban is still in full effect for everyone else. If you have any questions you can come to me or Manager Lee to discuss.’ 

You were angry not only because  the entire group’s schedule had to be canceled all because of Chaejin’s relationship, but also the fact that she was the only exception to the dating ban. You wondered if perhaps it was because her father owned the company that she was allowed to do as she pleased, but regardless you found her actions childish and selfish, which seemed very unlike her. Chaejin was always known to be rational and well planned, so she must have known that the media always had eyes on BTS whenever they were up and about, but why did she so openly go on a date with Jimin? It almost seemed like they were purposely showcasing their relationship. 

With no further questions, the members all started discussing their vacation plans and ideas. You determined that distance and space was what you needed right now so you were going to take the first train home tomorrow morning and visit your parents for the first time in a year. 

Just as you were about to get up and start packing, Chaejin sat down next you and asked,

‘Are you mad at me?’ 

You debated on lying and tell her that you’re okay and that you’re happy for her relationship, but the betrayal that you felt was impossible to ignore. 

‘Yes. I am. Why did you do it?’ 

‘I... I’m sorry. I should have told you first, but if I knew that if I told you before I saw him last night you would have stopped me.’

Stopped her? Does she seriously think that I would have stopped her from going on a date? 

‘Stop you? Chaejin why would I stop you from dating? I just wanted a heads up. I don’t care that you want to date, but I wish that you would have at least considered the consequences and had been more careful. We all worked so hard to debut and publicly dating right now could really ruin our reputation.’ 

‘Y/N... I’m sorry. It’s just...’ She started but then quietly trailed off. 

Something was off. Chaejin seemed like she was holding something back. Although most days you wouldn’t pester her, today you simply just was not in the mood for anyone’s bullshit. You assumed that no matter what she said the day truly couldn’t get any worse. 

‘Okay. You’re hiding something. Tell me. I’m done with these secrets that you’re keeping from me.’ 

Suggesting that the two of you needed to talk in private, you moved towards the bedroom. 

‘Tell me.’ you said the moment Chaejin closed the door behind her, wasting no time at all. 

Watching Chaejin take a deep breath, she quietly said, 

‘It’s a publicity stunt Y/N.’ 

‘WHAT?’ you couldn’t help just blurt out loud. 

Taking another long deep breath, Chaejin seemed like she was trying to collect her words before finally continuing, 

‘The whole date was planned Y/N. Dad said that although the group was doing well, he thought that we would have done better by now. So... he suggested that the we create some sort of commotion or event for the public to learn about. And I suggested that maybe a dating scandal would be ideal-‘

‘You’re fucking with me right? You came up with the dating scandal? Do you know how badly this “stunt” of yours could go? What if this backfires? What are you doing to do then?’ You angrily cut off. 

You were furious but also stupidly glad that she wasn’t actually dating Jimin. You were angry that your best friend was willing to put the group’s future at risk all because the group’s popularity wasn’t as high as the company wanted it to be. You knew that rising to the ‘top’ was not something that would be easily be done. Simple the act of performing in front of an audience was always something that you dreamed of and you thought that Chaejin believed in the same idea, but clearly that wasn’t it for her. 

‘Y/N… my dad was so upset and worried about the group. And… with my dad and Bang PD being cousins, the scandal was easily organized. I know that you don’t agree with me doing this, but I didn’t want to upset or disappoint my dad. And I’m sorry that I couldn’t tell you earlier. I knew that if I told you about this you would have tried to talk me out of it, but I couldn’t let this chance slip.’ 

Wait. CEO is related to Bang PD? 

You had so many questions, yet you didn’t know where to begin. Perhaps Chaejin noticed how taken back you were because before you could even construct a question, she explained,

‘I didn’t know that my dad was related with Bang PD either. At least not until recently when my entire family celebrated my grandma’s 80th birthday. You know how big my family is, right? Half the aunts and uncles that I saw that night I’ve never even met before, and don’t get me started on how many cousins I just discovered I have.’

You were starting to understand and digest the current situation, but you wondered,

‘But why Park Jimin?’ 

You thought that perhaps her dad or Bang PD randomly chose a member from BTS for the scandal, but immediately froze at the sight of Chaejin suddenly looking flustered. 

Oh no. 

‘Y/N…. I like him.’ 

What? 

You broke into a cold sweat with those three simple words. 

Chaejin likes Jimin? 

You remembered all the times when the group was interviewed about their ideal types and how Chaejin always answered saying that Jimin was her ideal type, but you always thought that it was just a simple celebrity crush. Never something like this. Your mouth opened and closed over and over again without a single spoken word. Shocked at the sudden confession, you were too shaken up to even speak. If you could dig a hole in the ground at this very single second, you would have done it, anything to just escape this uncomfortable feeling in the pit of your stomach. 

The room had gotten awkwardly quiet, and it was Chaejin who was the first to speak up as you were staring into nowhere specific with your mind racing at a mile per minute,

‘Y/N why didn’t you tell me that you knew Jimin?’

Snapping your gaze to Chaejin, she seemed uncomfortable and somewhat hurt. 

‘How did you know that I knew him?’ you asked. 

You had spent the last eleven years keeping the knowledge of Jimin away from Chaejin mainly because just the mention of his name could almost bring you to tears. You couldn’t deal with the fact that a part of you still wasn’t over him. For the past years no matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t bring yourself to fall in love with another person. You had always found yourself comparing every single man to Jimin and none of them could even compete with him in your eyes. Park Jimin was meant to be the one and only secret that you kept away from Chaejin, but now that she knew about your secret, you suddenly felt more naked and bare. 

‘When I first saw Jimin last night it was awkward and we didn’t say much, but once I brought up that you and I were close friends he told me that the two of you grew up together and were best friends before he had to leave to Seoul and pursue his career as am idol.’ 

Close friends.

Although he was your best friend growing up, you had always wished that perhaps even once he would have thought of you as more than a close friend, but he had made it clear to Chaejin last night that the two of you were simply just friends. The two words left a bitterness in your mouth that you wished would just go away. 

When you left Chaejin without a single comment, she asked again, 

‘Why didn’t you tell me about him? Did you… like him Y/N?’ 

‘Chaejin… stop that’s ridiculous. I didn’t tell you then because it’s all in the past. We were close once but like he said he moved away and we just broke around that’s it.’ 

You tried your best to stay composed, but unfortunately with her as your best friend, Chaejin saw right through you. 

‘You like him.’ She simply stated without an ounce of uncertainty. 

‘I liked him.’ 

‘Y/N don’t bullshit with m-‘

‘I’m not doing this right now with you okay? You can choose not to believe me if you want to. That’s your decision. Whatever I feel for him doesn’t matter because I’m not the one that might screw our group over.’ 

Perhaps if the conversation wasn’t about Jimin you would have reacted differently, but because he was still such a sensitive topic, you couldn’t control the feelings that were racings in your head. Without giving her another chance to continue on, you grabbed your bag and headed out of the room towards Manager Kim asking him to take you to the train station immediately. 

- 

The train ride back home went by quickly as you stared blankly through the window and into the outside world. Your mind kept racing though everything that had happened in the last 24 hours and kept worrying about the future of your group. You couldn’t help but worry how this scandal would change your group’s future, how it would affect the atmosphere between the members, but most importantly you couldn’t help but worry about how the fans were going to react. It’s only been a year since the group had debuted, but you had already grown attached to them. They were the ones who cheered you all on, and they were your main source of happiness so they meant the world to you. Lastly, you hated to admit it but you were worried about Jimin. You worried about how he would handle this scandal. Sure the date was planned, but the reactions to the scandal are something that no one can predict, and you were worried about how the public would react. 

You had spent the last years trying your hardest to move on from Jimin, and even though you knew that becoming an idol meant that it was no longer possible to ignore his existence and even mentally prepared for what you thought to be every single possible situation, never would you have thought that Chaejin, your best friend and leader of the group, would be dating Jimin, your first love. 

*Ding* *Ding*

Throughout the entire train ride your phone had been constantly alerting you of new messages, but knowing that it was probably going to be Chaejin, you decided to ignore them. 

- 

Your parents were surprised to see that you were home without any prior notice, but once you briefly explained to them what had happened, they quickly empathized with your current situation and decided to spend the day simply relaxing at home. 

Simple. And relaxing was exactly how the first few days of your vacation went. For the most part you spent the days just sleeping, or at least trying to sleep, eating all your favourite foods, and spending quality time with your parents and close friends. Ever since Jimin’s parents had found out that you came back home, they asked your parents for the two families to plan a dinner party, but you constantly declined their invites. Of course you knew that his parents meant well, but after what had recently happened, you didn’t want to be reminded of Jimin. 

- 

It had been a week since the company had announced the group’s indefinite break before your mom finally started asking questions. Although you had explained that you were just disappointed of Chaejin’s decisions, she saw right through you. 

One morning after your dad left for work, your mom joined you on the couch adn asked, 

‘How’s Chaejin and the other members doing?’ 

‘Most of the members went home. I’m not sure about Chaejin.’ You shrugged. 

While you had kept in contact with the other members, you purposely ignored all of Chaejin’s phone calls and text messages. The truth was you didn’t know how you felt about the entire situation. Of course you wanted the group to do well, and the scandal would become a source of advertisement for the group, but the fact that the scandal could also end badly for the group made it very worrisome, and it didn’t help that Chaejin was ‘dating’ Jimin. If you were being completely honest with yourself, what made this the most uncomfortable was that you were still so attached to Jimin, even if it was one-sided, you couldn’t stand the idea of someone as important as Jimin being dragged into such circumstances that could cause harm on his end. And of course it goes without saying that you were jealous and worried that Chaejin and Jimin would become close and actually end up dating. You knew that Chaejin had always had a crush on Jimin but you didn’t think that her celebrity crush could turn into anything more, however knowing that now she has a chance to go on dates with Jimin and spend time with him, you couldn’t help but feel jealousy boiling from within. 

Although you had said few words about the situation since you came home, Chaejin’s mother had called your mother the day you went back home to explain the entire situation and when your mom called Jimin’s mother to confirm the dating rumour, it turned out his mother was just as surprised as everyone else. Your mom had hoped that you would eventually open up and talk about the situation, but when she saw that you were getting increasingly upset every day, she knew that she couldn’t keep quiet anymore. 

‘Y/N it’s okay to be hurt.’ She suddenly said. 

Turning to her, you were so shocked with her comment that it took you a couple of seconds before you recollected your thoughts and said, 

‘I’m not hurt.’ 

Right? 

To be fair, you weren’t entirely sure if you were actually hurt. Uncomfortable. Yes. Jealous. Yes. But hurt? 

Grabbing your hands into hers, she simply said, 

‘I don’t need you to prove anything to me. I just want you to be happy and be honest with yourself. Okay?’ 

The two of you sat hand in hand for minutes, both not saying a word while you were slowly processing everything that your mom said. Were you happy? No. Were you being honest with yourself? I don’t know more. 

‘Mom… I feel like I’m losing.’ You finally spoke up. 

Instead of a response, she gave your hand a squeeze as a sign of encouragement to continue. 

‘He had left town years ago and all these years I’ve been telling myself that I’m over it, and the stupid thing is that I thought that I was actually over it. But when I saw him on the day we debuted, I felt it. I had spent so many years suppressing the emotions and feelings that I had for him that the moment I saw him again I became overwhelmed. I was in love with him mom, and I think that I still am, which is so stupid of me. How can I be in love with someone who I’ve lost contact with for over ten years? And what’s even worse is that now my best friend is dating him. I feel like I’ve lost him all over again… but the ridiculous thing is that he wasn’t even mine to begin with, so why do I feel like I’m losing him?’ 

- 

The next few days felt more relaxing, that was until you received a phone call from Manager Kim,

‘Chaejin told me that you haven’t answered her phone calls so I’m calling to tell you that Chaejin has a photoshoot with Jimin tomorrow and you need to be there.’ 

‘I thought our schedules were on hold.’ 

‘Yes, but there’s a clothing brand that wanted to use the two as models for their new clothing line.’ 

Great. They’re going to wear matching clothes and I have to watch? 

‘But why do I have to be there?’

‘I’m only here to relay a message. If you have any questions, ask Chaejin herself or the CEO. I wouldn’t even have to be doing this if you would have just answered her phone calls. I’m going to pick you up tomorrow morning at 8 so be ready.’ 

Without giving you a chance to refuse, he quickly ended the call. You were once again left feeling defeated, and honestly pissed off. In most cases if you were told that you had an upcoming schedule, no matter how tired you were, you would have been happy, but this schedule was different, you were basically asked to watch Chaejin and Jimin together. 

Are you fucking with me right now?

Needless to say, you had spent the entire night restlessly tossing and turning while dreading over the thought of having to see Jimin, and especially with the fact that having to see Chaejin meant that she would want to know why you were ignoring her phone calls. 

Morning came much sooner than you wanted it to, and before you knew it, Manager Kim was knocking at the door. The manager had explained that Chaejin left early to get ready for the shoot, which for your part was good news since you weren’t quite ready to talk to her. By this point you weren’t mad at her anymore, but you still couldn’t shake this jealous feeling away.

The small talks during the initial car ride had died down, and you sat in silence while Manager Kim drove. Eventually you fell asleep while staring out the window and woke up to the manager nudging you awake. Just after he opened the passenger door to let you out of the car, Manager Kim said,

‘I know that you may feel uncomfortable with this situation but don’t forget that we warned you about letting your feelings ruin the group’s atmosphere. Okay?’

‘Okay.’ You agreed. 

Manager Kim had always felt like a father figure to you, especially when being so far away from home. Although he was a man with few words, he always quietly took care of the group and never once had you heard him complain about of taking care of all the member’s needs. You knew that his best intentions were for the group to do well, so you made a mental promise to talk to Chaejin. 

Once Chaejin saw you entering her dressing room, she ran up to you and wrapped you in a warm hug. 

‘I’m so sorry Y/N. I knew that this was the only way that I could get you to see me.’ She mumbled into the hug.

Getting a whiff of Chaejin’s scent, you softened into the hug and suddenly realized just how much you missed your best friend. Although her dating scandal had caused some trouble for the group, Chaejin is indeed your best friend and you understood that just like how you needed to spend time back home, Chaejin probably needed her best friend during this time. 

Finally letting go, you apologized, 

‘I’m sorry that I didn’t answer you calls. I should have been there for you.’

Even though the company suggested everyone to not check the group’s social accounts, throughout the break you had signed onto the group’s Instagram and saw that though there were positive and supportive comments, there were also some negative and even offensive comments towards Chaejin that you hoped she didn’t notice. However, the sad smile that she gave you suggested that she probably already knew about the public’s criticism. After giving her hands a squeeze for support, Chaejin got changed into her first set of clothing while the make-up artist told you to sit down to get your makeup down. 

When Chaejin was finally ready, the two of you walked out of the room hand in hand towards the studio where the photographer would explain the shoot’s concept to her. To your surprise, Jimin was already there and talking to the photographer. When he noticed you, he looked surprised but then quickly maintained an emotionless façade. 

After Chaejin greeted the photographer, he happily explained the theme of the shoot, while you tried to your best to look at anyone and anything besides Jimin.  Even after a year as an idol, you still found controlling your emotions and facial expressions to be a challenge.

Let the torture begin.

- 

An hour into the shoot the photographer had announced that it was time for individual shoots with Chaejin going first. Knowing that Jimin would now have some free time, you quickly hurried out of the studio just in case he would try to engage in any kind of conversation because you were anything but ready for that. During the past hour Jimin had locked eyes with yours multiple times and you literally had to tear your eyes away from him just so your flushed cheeks could cool down. However, your plan clearly backfired when you noticed that Jimin was following you out of the studio. Shit. 

‘Stop following me.’ You warned him while walking forward without much of a thought in mind. 

Your brain was foggy. You couldn’t think straight. You had no idea where you were talking to, but the only thing that was for sure was the fact that you needed to get away from Jimin, because with him so close by, you couldn’t think straight. 

But that was impossible. Every time you turned around, he was there. The faster you walked, the more quickly he sped until eventually he caught up and pushed you past the staircase doors. 

‘Let go!’ You yelled as his grip tightened. 

Sensing that he was hurting you, he immediately released his grip and apologized.

‘Y/N. I… I’m sorry. Let me explai-’

Vigorously shaking your head while blinking the sudden tears away, 

‘No. NO. I don’t need this right now. I don’t need your apology. Not now. Not ever.’

*Click* *Click*

What?

You could have sworn that you heard the sounds of a camera taking a picture but when you looked around, there was no one.

Just as Jimin was about to speak up again, the staircase door suddenly opened. The two of you were greeted by Chaejin who looked just as surprise if not even more than you and Jimin.

‘Oh. Jimin. What are you doing here?’

Just seeing Jimin try to explain this current situation to Chaejin was souring your mood even more, so much to the point that it felt almost impossible to keep hide the anger that was fuming from within.

‘Fuck this.’ You mumbled before walking out of the door leaving the two alone.

I’m not dealing with this right now.

-  

For the rest of the shoot you hid in the dressing room and didn’t say more than half a word to Chaejinor Jimin. Once it was all over, you quickly thanked and shook hands with the photographer before speeding to the company’s car hoping that you wouldn’t bump into anyone.

Thankfully Chaejin’s schedule was done for the day and you were headed back to the dorm because you needed nothing more than to just sleep off the bitterness feeling that’s been lingering since your encounter with Jimin and Chaejin.

-

You weren’t sure how long you ended up sleeping for but eventually you were shaken awake by someone, and with just a glance outside the window the dark skies hinted that it was perhaps still early in the morning.

‘What’s going on?’ You groaned rubbing your eyes that stung from tiredness.

‘What the fuck is this?’ Chaejin furiously asked while shoving her phone in your face.

It took your eyes a few seconds to adjust before you saw this article and gasped in horror.

[BREAKING] Dispatch reports a possible love triangle between BTS’ Jimin with Purple’s Chaejin and Y/N??

The article was filled with pictures of you and Jimin on the staircase was yesterday. Although the pictures couldn’t capture much, there were a few pictures that showed a tearful picture of you, and even a picture of the three of you.  Suddenly you remembered the clicking sounds of a camera from yesterday. Someone must have been lingering around listening to your conversation with Jimin.

Holy shit. What have I done?

-

(Jungkook’s POV) 

Jungkook froze when he was scrolling through the group’s twitter and found articles tagging their account.

Jimin and Y/N? What’s going on?

It was past midnight and he was sure that most of the members were asleep, but he couldn’t find the patience to wait until morning to ask Jimin. Instead, he quietly headed towards the elder’s room but quickly stopped with he saw that the lights in the kitchen were still on. With a few long strides, he saw that Jimin was sitting by himself at the dining table with a blank look on his face. Jimin must have been fixated in his own thoughts that he didn’t notice Jungkook’s appearance until the younger took the vacant seat next to him.

‘What’s wrong?’ Jungkook warily asked.

‘I…. I shouldn’t have talk to her. I shouldn’t have said anything. This wouldn’t have happened if I had just followed and done as I was told. I made a mistake.’

Jimin had spoken so quietly that if Jungkook sat any further, he wouldn’t have heard a single word. Just the sight of Jimin looking so disappoint and upset made Jungkook tear up. 

What can I do to help? - (The Next Day)

Today was BTS’ last scheduled day before their long-awaited two-month holiday. After finishing the recording of their last BTS RUN episode for the current season, most of the members headed back to their assigned rooms to start packing for their own assorted vacation plans.  Jungkook watched as Jimin silently walked back into his room without saying a single word. The latter had been staying in the same state the entire day, without saying much of a word, causing everyone around to worry.

Earlier in the morning Jimin was told to see Bang PD leaving the rest of the members to discuss the explosion on twitter about Jimin’s relationship with Chaejin and Y/N. While the members all knew that Jimin would never be the type of person to cheat on someone and that the scandal was simply a made up story, they knew that there had to be something that Jimin was hiding, however seeing how down he was feeling no one dared to speak up about it just yet.

Without another word, Jungkook quietly snuck into his room and scrolled into his phone until he found your number, a number that he stole from Jimin’s phone today while the elder went to the washroom.

The text message was brief, but not much words were needed.

‘Hi. It’s BTS’ Jungkook. I need you to open up my V-live in exactly 5 minutes. See you then.’

Not giving himself anytime for second thoughts, he quickly started his live on the app. He watched as the number of audience grew along with the amounts of hearts that were given, and did his best to answer and read the messages that many of the fans were posting. ARMYs meant the world to him, they were his light, they were his life, they were his everything, so he was unsure if what he was about to do next was correct or not.

‘Before I end this live, there is one thing that I want to ask here today. You have all greatly supported us throughout all these years and I’m hoping that nothing will change the bond that we share, so please be understanding with what I am about to say.’

After taking a deep breath to calm his shaking heart, he blurted out,

‘Y/N. Will you be my girlfriend?’

[dcubang]

2020 Rough Draft Submission Guidelines

Hello! I hope everyone is doing well, and your writing and creating is coming along! These are the Rough Draft Submission Guidelines, and I will be accepting rough drafts between July 1st-July 8th, Wednesday-Wednesday. Please make sure to read everything!

Rough draft submission is only for the Traditional Author track. If you have chosen Solo Author or Tandem Author, do not submit a rough draft! This is only for the authors wishing to be paired with a fanworker, and are not already working with a fanworker. =D

If you signed up as an undecided author, now is the time to choose if you will continue as a Solo author, Traditional author, or if you have paired up with an already, Tandem author. I will only be sending emails out to those that signed up as undecided and have yet to let me know which path they've chosen, however, if you need to switch please get in contact with me, either on Discord or email dcubang@gmail.com. Now is also the time to switch down from the 10k Big Bang to the 5k Mini-Bang if you need to!

Here's a helpful post for writing summaries!

Beta readers are not required this year, but if you are wanting a beta reader, here is a resource post for finding one: Beta Reader Resource Post. Please note that these might be outdated!

Summaries will be posted for preview on Friday, July 10th. Please look your summary over when it is posted for preview to check for any errors and contact me ASAP to make corrections. Author information will be removed as claims are done blind. It’s okay if you’ve talked about your project already, just refrain from telling people which number your summary is once it is live!

Story Requirements

I am only looking for rough drafts, so it is okay if your story is still very rough at this point. I'm just checking for length and completion, which means your story does not need to be completely finished or polished, but around 60% of it needs to be done. This means that an author signed up for the 10k Traditional Bang must submit at least 6,000 words, and a 5k Mini-Bang author must submit at least 3,000 words.

If you are writing a story that will be significantly longer than the 5k/10k minimum, try to get as close to 60% finished as you can before submitting your rough draft, but I do understand that it may not be possible for a really long story! Please use your best judgement and decide for yourself if you can get your story finished by October, should you choose to work with a fanworker.

If you are submitting an incomplete draft, please be aware that it needs to have all the scenes at least outlined, including the ending. Your fanworker needs at least a few scenes to choose from so they can create their fanwork, after all! It will also be really important to communicate with your fanworker, in the case of a major story change!!!

Please read this carefully, as this is about the consequences of not being able to finish on time.

In previous years, once an author submitted a rough draft, they were required to finish or were subject to being banned from the Bang for the next year, and fanworkers, once they claimed a story had to create an accompanying fanwork, or they would be banned. This year, Traditional Path authors and artists will have a grace period to drop out, without consequence, after claims have passed. The final drop out date for Traditional groups is Saturday, August 1st. Participants that drop out after this date are subject to being banned. (If something major comes up in your life, just get in contact with me so we can discuss things together!)

If an artist drops out, I will arrange for a pinch hit artist for the author, should they wish to continue with an artist, or they can choose to go Solo. If an author drops out, artists are welcome to continue on as Solo, or they can claim a different story, if they so choose.

The final posting date is Sunday, November 30th, and any Traditional author/artist pair that does not post is subject to being banned from DCU Bang 2021. There is no penalty for dropping out before rough draft submissions or during the grace period, nor is there a penalty for switching to Solo Author prior to claims and being unable to finish. Tandem teams can drop out together at any time with no consequence. Once you are paired with an artist, please make sure that you can finish, as it is unfair to the artist if you cannot finish. This works the other way too! It's not fair to an author if the artist cannot finish!

If you are worried you cannot finish, or do not already have around 60% complete, but still want to continue writing, consider switching to the Solo Author track! Even if you don't complete your story by November 30th, there are no consequences. =D This way, you still get to share your story with the communities and have your story listed on the masterlists.

How to Submit Your Rough Draft:

-- Email your fic files to dcubang@gmail.com. -- I can accept the following file types: .doc, .docx, .rtf, and Google Docs. If submitting a Google Doc, share with dcubang@gmail.com with editing capabilities, otherwise I cannot verify the word count. If none of these file types work for you, contact me ASAP on Discord, or send an email to dcubang@gmail.com! Do not send a different file type without first contacting me! -- The subject line should say: Username ROUGH DRAFT - and include the username you used to sign up! -- In the body of the email, copy and paste the information below and fill it out, keeping the HTML tags. This is so I can quickly post summaries without having to format everyone's submission! Also, if submitting via Google Docs, you still have to email me with the following information filled out. If you need help with the HTML, please contact me. If it's not done correctly, I will ask you to redo it.

<b>Username:</b> (your username here) <b>Completed Percentage:</b> <b>Title:</b> <b>Word Count:</b> (At least 3k or 6k) <b>Genre:</b> (Action/Adventure, PWP, Fluff, etc) <b>Fandom/Universe:</b> <b>Characters/Pairings:</b> (Major characters/pairings only) <b>Warnings:</b> (e.g.: non con, mpreg, etc) <b>Rating:</b> (PG, NC-17, etc) <b>Summary:</b> (3-5 paragraphs)

-- Take your time with your summary! This is what artists are going to use to make a determination in their claims. Make sure to give enough information for potential artists to make decisions, but don't write so much that it is overwhelming. Here's a helpful post for writing artist summaries! Also keep in mind that this is a summary for attracting an artist, so the information you give might be very different from what you would want to give to a potential reader. The artist summary does not need to be the same one you use for your story later on! -- Make sure to be clear and thorough about trigger warnings so that artists will know what they are signing up for! You must put any and all warnings in this version of your summary, even if you decide to use an "author chooses not to warn" label later. Artists need to know what they are signing up for, after all, and we don't want artists, nor authors, unhappy with the match. Please warn for: noncon, dubcon, excessive or graphic violence, underage sex, incest, character death, and anything else that might be potentially problematic for a reader! Do not warn for slash, femslash, or het.

Once I receive your submission, I will be sending a confirmation email in return. If you do not get a confirmation email within 24 hours, please get in contact with me at either the DCU Discord server, emailing me at dcubang@gmail.com. If you have any other concerns or questions, please be sure to get in contact with me through any of those means as well!

The deadline to submit a rough draft is 23:59 MDT, Wednesday, July 8th!

[theboywiththenotebooks]

**TRIGGER WARNINGS::-SEXUAL ASSAULT-ABUSE (PRIMARILY MENTAL ABUSE)-SUICDE-SELF HARM-MENTION OF BDSM/CGL I met a man 20 years older than me in Nov 2019. I had known him through mutual friends for a few months and he had known of me for over a year. We got to chatting. I became infatuated with him. He absolutely swept me off my feet.  Looking back on it, there were quite a few red flags that I ignored::~He always called people below him a peasant.~He always referred to himself as an alpha male and the leader of his pack.~He VERY quickly always said I was his and belonged to him.~He had very similar interests as my abusive father. ~He pushed me for more information than I was ready to give in the beginning. He wanted to know every single detail of all of my secrets. In the beginning I was so attracted to his power because of my submissive side. I wanted to be owned and claimed and be with someone who emits power. He came across as such a strong and dominant man who would always keep me safe and he always swore to me that he never tells a lie. He would rather hurt your feelings than lie to you. We spent Christmas together and the new year (2020). His birthday was right after Valentine's Day and everything was perfect. I moved in with him and his extended family shortly after. I was so excited that the night I told the people I had been staying with, and they were crying over losing me, I packed half my room and went to his house, not caring about these people who took me in. Every single aspect of my life had become him, making him smile, and serving him. My birthday is in the beginning of March and he had already planned on going to visit his mother on my birthday and invited me to go with him. I took off work and did. I didn't expect a big todo for my birthday but it was my 25th and I was so proud of myself for making it to that age. He didn't do anything for my birthday (it was never acknowledged nor did I get a card) even after we came home. Selfishly my feelings were hurt....but I got over it. I never wanted to ruffle feathers with him and this was the first time I kept my mouth shut about something hurting me. By the end of March I had found messages in his phone from a girl. We will call her E. Now he had told me that E was his friend for years, but she was about 28, while he was 45. (I am 25). He had known her for about 15 years and helped her through many hard times and apparently she had invited him and I to dinner one day. In the beginning I had no reason to feel wary of her so I said sure but we never went. He then tells me that about once a week she asks him for some money because she's in a hard place. I did think it was a tad odd but he was just being a good friend. Then she began to call very late at night (10 and 11PM). I didn't like it at all and I did voice my concerns but his response was "Do you want me to just leave her high and dry?" He told me they had never been intimate or romantic and she was just a friend. So I dropped it. Then I found the messages. Now I am not normally one to dig through a partner's phone and I will admit it was wrong.  But I wanted to know what these two spoke about because I was having a very bad feeling. Turns out they had had a relationship prior to me coming along. In fact, a relationship that only ended on the date of our first ever date together. (He had told me that he was single for three years prior to me) There were explicit pictures between the two. He told her he wanted to buy her a house and take care of her and her children. I was hurt he had lied about having a relationship with someone that he is still talking to daily, and late at night. But within the messages I also saw that while the sexual behavior between the two had stopped once we got together, the romantic had not. This was the second time I didn't tell him how I felt, but this time it stemmed from being scared of him being upset with me. By this point I had been put down so frequently that I had no more confidence left to stand up for myself.  I didn't say anything but instead cried for days. I also found later on that he was still emailing his ex he had dated for ten years and they were still romantic with each other as well. He stopped being physical with me (hand holding, kisses, cuddling, and sex completely stopped between the two of us by May 2020) I asked him why and he said he just didn't want to do any of that with me anymore and then we finally discussed the messages with the other girls. He said he was just being nice to the girls that may be his ex's but they're his friends too. It still made me uncomfortable and he did not stop. The trust I had felt in this man who swore to me that he never told a lie was gone and the physical side of our relationship was gone. I kept trying to find ways to fix us. I bought him presents and served him drinks and meals and if I was exhausted but he asked for something I would get up and retrieve it. I complimented him and told him that I love him so much and he would just reply by telling me I was being too much or too needy. I tried to cuddle close to him while we watched his favorite shows and he pushed me away. He said I was clingy, jealous, and insecure. He made a comment that he knew he could do anything to me because I was too scared to be alone.  Our relationship continued to crumble and through everything I was still being told that I belong to him. His mental and emotional possessiveness never stopped despite him having no attraction toward me. I was not allowed to see my friends. I was not allowed to take lunch at work without him. If I was on my phone when we were home he wanted to know what I was doing. The only social media I was allowed was IG. I was told to stop dying my hair and to wear certain clothes that were certain colors, brands, and fit. I was told that I had gained weight and if I wanted to eat a sweet he made sure I knew I was already fat prior to eating it. He made fun of my teeth (color and the chips in them). He made sure to hit every single insecurity I had ever told him I had and control every second of my life. If I ever cried or got sad I was told I'm too sensitive and 'Being such a millennial' He mocked me for wanting to rewrite my book and anytime I wanted to read in bed he told me it was stupid and to just watch TV. When I wanted to start going on hikes to get back in shape I was told that it was pointless, I should just stay fat so no one else would want me. Any time I put on makeup I was told that it was either a waste of time and I wouldn't look any better or that I was doing it for my 'other boyfriend' (which I did not have).  By the end of June I was accused of cheating on him when I wanted to go get brunch with my best friend of 11 years and he attacked me for smiling bigger in a picture with her than with him. He had begun to touch me in areas of my body that either make me uncomfortable or just tickle and I do not like being tickled, even in a playful way. (Which may sound minor in this situation, but it was still me being touched when I did NOT want to be touched) I began to push him off of me and he would get angry, slap a part of my body and tell me that I belonged to him.There was one time in particular that I cannot forget. I was on my stomach and he laid his entire body weight on my back to hold me down and went between my legs with his hand while I kicked and screamed for him to stop. My face was in a pillow so I was unable to breathe while he touched me and kept asking why I did not want it. He said I was a slut before him and I should be accepting of this. By August I was over the way he treated me and began to desperately look for a place to go but it seemed impossible. I don't make much money and living with him seemed safer but his attacks on my breasts and between my legs were getting more aggressive. I always fought him off and got the same proclamation of belonging to him.  Our relationship had no love between it, he was bored of me. He just wanted to lay his claim on me. I wanted to leave but I never thought I could ask for help because he wasn't beating me. In my head, the logic was that I wasn't hiding bruises behind makeup, I was just hiding my tears in my car. He groped me but he has an idea in his head that we are together and our relationship was fine, so to him it's okay even if by November, his hand between my legs had me sobbing and hyperventilating. I had nowhere to go. By Nov 12 I had asked six different people if I could stay with them and all were unable to help me.  I finally told an older friend what was going on and she told me the truth::This is abuse. Get out. It has gotten worse and will continue to get worse.  I could not believe her. I never thought it WOULD get worse but as the weeks progressed he went from just squeezing my thigh to shoving his hands under my pajamas and touching me between my legs. I begged him to stop and he said that I belong to him. It was not a sign of love it was a sign of control and there is a difference.  I had begun to contemplate killing myself, and had relapsed with my self harm. I wanted to find ANYWAY to get away from him.  By Nov. 18 anytime I was home with him I was scared. Every night now he was holding me down and touching me between my legs. He grabbed my breasts and pinched my nipples and when I begged him to stop, it was always the same respone, "Just because we are not having sex, does not mean I can't touch you when and how I please."  One night he got really mad that I no longer let him see me naked and he opened his phone to pictures I had shared with him or taken with him in the beginning of our relationship. He scrolled through the naked and sexual pictures and videos of me in front of me and I left the room. I felt like I was being used as a show and exploited. He followed me and in front of all his family he told me to get back in the room, while the videos were still playing.  On Nov 23 he had surgery and the guilt that was eating at me for leaving a man who just had surgery was very strong. I looked at myself and saw a heartless bitch. How could I leave someone who couldn't even get out of bed? How could I let him lay in bed and watch me pack and he couldn't get up to leave the room? I decided to stay another few weeks. In my mind, I figured that I had lasted this long, what's another few weeks. I did not realize that I was becoming more numb to him touching me. He would shove his hand down my pants and I didn't even flinch. I could barely feel anything other than the tears in my eyes. He had just had surgery and two days later was assaulting me. I still said no, to stop, and he said that he owned me. That I was his and this was his right.  He told me that I was spoiled because he paid my $200 rent to stay with him, meanwhile, I was paying for our groceries, dinners, and his $120 phone bill every month. He told me and our friend that I had it good with him. I was safe and had a roof over my head. I had someone who loved me. I had it 'easy'. And my only payment for having these things was feeling his fingers between my legs or pinching my nipples every night against my will. I was told by many, many friends that I was stronger than this. I had survived being left as a child, being raped at 17, two suicide attemtps and dying once. I had survived so much, I had the strength to leave this guy. And what hurts the most is I KNEW they were right. I felt the strength in me. But the fear was stronger. I kept making up excuses. I kept upsetting the friends who had always had my back. I was too scared to leave the man who had truly made me grow to believe that without him I could never survive. It took months and months to finally get the strength. 

I want everyone to understand that even if you are in a relationship, even a BDSM relationship, your partner has no right to go against your consent. No matter the dynamic, if they do something you do not consent to you have a right to say no or stop. If you have had sex with them for ten years, and one night you say no, they have NO right to convince you otherwise or to guilt trip you to take part. If they continue, even if you have been together for years, or have done the scene/act hundreds of times prior, they are abusing you. I did not write this for sympathy or attention. I wrote this to A, document this time in my life and B, to let others know that these actions are wrong. I remember in June when I lost my job, I felt more love for this man than ever because he never yelled at me for going a month unemployed. He offered to pay my car insurance. But that did not change that as the sun went down, he was grabbing and touching me in ways that made my skin crawl. It didn't change that after three weeks of crying and eating in bed, I gained ten pounds and he would squeeze the rolls on my stomach and tell me how fat I looked, but I should keep it that way so no one else looked at me.  Abusers will be kind at times to keep you believing they love you, and then when it's quiet and you're alone they will attack. Mental, Emotional, and Physical abuse are all wrong. If you are in this situation, or if you even THINK you are in this situation please find help. During this I learned how hard it is to find resources and/or shelters, but you can DM me on any platform and I will help you. I promise you that. 

I will end on this, no matter how strong the fear is, your confidence is still there. It never goes away. 

<3, Raine

[robinskalechip]

ultimately - chapter two

masterlist

robin buckley fan fic

a/n: how we liking this so far?

warnings: smoking, language

not my gif!

chapter two - it’s a date

robin felt nervous for the second day of school as she thought of her schedule and each of her individual classes. she felt herself get more nervous when her mind got to her english class as she thought of the school’s newest mystery

robin was suddenly missing the old way the classes were set up. they had a days and b days but the district made it to where they classes were shorter and you went to all of them in a day. she liked the change at first but now all she could think about how she was going to see this new presence every day.

all day she anticipated that period and when it finally came she felt like she was going to throw up but thinks she did a pretty good job at masking it

when she entered the classroom, she greeted mrs. olsen before seeing emily already sat at her desk. she was reading the scarlet letter, the book they were told would be their first one of the semester. the distaste she was feeling towards the book was so apparent and robin took notice.

robin walked towards the desk she sat at the day before and began putting her things down “not good?”

emily angrily put her bookmark into the book and aggressively dropped it onto her desk “it’s the god damn puritans they ruin everything”

robin laughed to herself as she looked through her backpack

the class period went by pretty quickly, they were discussing the background information for the scarlet letter as emily continued reading said book and hating every second of it hi i’m kale, the author of the fic and scarlet letter anti

once mrs. olsen finished with her lecture, she allowed the remaining class time to be free time for the class to which emily, unlike almost every other person in the class, got excited and moved to a different seat to be close to a friend, kept her head burried in the book, showing no signs of emotions to the words being said around her

robin started to pack her things before she was startled by the familiar sound of a book being angrily thrown onto a desk “have you started this shit yet?”

robin looked to her right to see emily looking at her, anticipating a response

“yeah i started it during lunch today”

“how the hell can you read in that chaos of a cafeteria?” as emily spoke, robin became lost in her details. she got lost in her uneven part in her hair, most likely from her running her hand through it. she got lost in her jewelry that she had seen the day prior; the leather bracelets and small silver bands on her fingers and the necklace she wore tucked into her shirt that robin could catch a glimpse of here and there. she was lost in her but snapped out right in time to answer her.

“i go outside during lunch”

“interesting”

the bell rang and emily packed her things as robin walked past her

robin turned around briefly as she was allowing people to go before her in exiting the doorway and was met with emily’s eyes staring right back at her. this time there was no smile, but robin wasnt scared like she had been in every other interaction with her.

after a few seconds robin exited and made her way to calculus. the entire period consisted of her inability to concentrate without her mind wondering to those last few moments of english.

now all she could think of was the clock ticking and how soon she would be in her presence again in their advanced european history class

she hurried downstairs immediately once the bell rang and tried her best to get there before anyone could take her seat next to her

but once she got there, emily was no where to be seen and didn’t come to class at all during that period. robin felt somewhat worried but let it pass as she tried to focus on the course at hand, at least while she had the mental stability to do so since the one who had been distracting her so much was no longer there

the next day, robin let the endless possibilities as to where emily could have gone wander through her mind until those thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a granola bar landing in her lap as she sat underneath her beloved lunchtime tree

robin looked up to see emily, smiling so faintly it could hardly be seen

“what’s this?” robin didn’t eat lunch every day and it was a rare occurrence for someone she barely knew to just give her food like this. regardless she started to open the packaged good and break it in half, holding one half up to emily in an offering

emily grabbed the half bar and popped it into her mouth as she began to sit next to robin “you weren’t eating anything, the granola bar was at my disposal, 2 + 2 robin”

“i didn’t know you had this lunch” robin hadn’t seen her at all in the last couple of days

“yeah because it’s still summertime technically and its hot so i choose to be a normal person and stay inside” robin laughed at this statement

“it isnt even that hot”

emily mockingly laughed at her “easy for you to say, i’m from further north where cold is cold and it stays comfortable any other time of the year” as she spoke she took the cigarette that was carefully placed behind her ear and lit it. she began to take off the maroon jacket she was wearing

the girl began to lay down in the grass, still taking in her cigarette every five seconds or so

robin looked at the girl as the sun shines onto her face that now was home to her closed eyes “what”

the girl sat up and grabbed her bottled water and took a drink from it

“nothing” robin felt flustered by the girl and it was taking everything she had not to show it

robin remembered the day before “where were you yesterday in last period”

emily was looking around at the other students surrounding her a robin. it seemed as if she was trying to find someone “family emergency”

“what kind of emergency”

emily redirected her attention to robin “a family one”

the bell rang, signaling they now had to make their way to english

emily got up first so she could help robin up before throwing her cigarette onto the sidewalk and extending a hand to robin who was holding her chemistry and physics textbooks and was indeed struggling

“what”

“give me one”

“why”

emily rolled her eyes before grabbing one of the books from robin, despite her protest

robin tried to argue but emily just started to walk off as she flipped through the pages of the advanced chemistry book

“oo atomic theory” emily seems intreged by the contents of the book, paying little to no attention to her surrounds

robin smiled to herself as she saw the girl’s fascination

once they got to the classroom, emily rolled her eyes once again as chase began to approach her. she looked at robin, handing her the textbook to then give chase her attention once more

“what”

“so”

emily looked at robin who was sitting at her desk now, watching the situation unfold as a small grin appeared upon both of their lips

“basically i thought i’d give you these last couple of days to settle in and what not. i know a new school could be tough so now i’m here to officially ask you on a date this saturday at the drive in...”

emily looked at the boy who seemed desperate. but not for her acceptance but his friends’.

“sorry chase, i’ve already got plans”

a boy named tyler approached the scene from behind chase, “you literally just got here what could you possibly have to do on your first saturday night”

emily looked to robin “i have plans with robin”

robin furred her eyebrows in confusion before unfurring them when she saw the heads of the two boys turn to look at her as she gave them a sarcastic smile in agreement

the bell rung for class to begin and emily watched as the two boys went back to their desks before going to hers

for most of the class period, no one spoke except mrs. olsen until she announced that partners were to be made to discuss the scarlet letter

robin was about to turn to emily before she felt someone pulling her hand towards the back corner of the room, right by the window where emily then hopped onto the countertop

“its a shit book, there we discussed it” robin found emily’s hatred for the book amusing

she jokingly tried to object “i don’t know i think it’s pretty good”

emily’s head immediately shot to robin’s face, away from the window she had been looking out of “now i’m definitely canceling our plans for saturday”

she saw chase turn around at these words before she shot him down once again “i’m kidding chase”

robin and emily used the ten minutes they had to discuss their favorite books without going into excruciating detail. emily liked books that made her feel at ease but excited at the same time. “i like books that make me feel like i’m in love again”

robin was growing the love her mind, and emily was growing to love robin’s

once the bell rung, robin helped emily down from the countertop and walked with her until she arrived at the enterance of her classroom. it took her a few seconds to lose the smile she was sporting because of emily, which kind of bugged her. it was killing her vibe.

robin had realized that calculus was just going to have to be difficult if this was how she was going to show up to class everyday; struck and counting down until the class was over

once robin got to european history she saw emily once again, reading the scarlet letter and looking like she wanted to end herself and that book

“still not any good?”

emily put the book down as robin began to take her seat and ran both of her hands through her hair “i am constantly annoyed by every single one of the characters”

robin felt nervous as she asked her next question “were you serious about the saturday thing?”

emily started to laugh as she mocked robin “aww does freckles want to go on a date with me?”

robin rolled her eyes as she laughed with her “no its just a question”

the girl next to her briefly paused her laughter to raise her eyebrows in a “really” sort of format

“for clarification”

emily caught her breathe before looking robin in the eyes “freckles”

“yes?”

“would you do me the honor of fulfilling my lie that i said to avoid the biggest idiot in this school?”

robin was smiling, even though she wished she wasn’t “sure”

“great it’s a date”

next chapter

[turkleader]

[ooc]

Going through the Before Crisis scripts, I came across a fact that I hadn’t recalled from when I last dabbled in the game, and it struck me as such an incredible thing that I needed to bring it up.

...because apparently Reeve and Veld... “go way back.”

Now. Let me take a moment to elaborate the interest I have in this casually dropped fact during Episode 20 of BC.

At the beginning of Before Crisis, six years prior to the start of Final Fantasy VII, Reeve is not yet the Executive of the Department of Urban Development. According to information garnered from the sadly lost site, Gunshot Romance, Reeve--at the beginning of Before Crisis (around 0001/2/30 in the timeline)--is considered a “Representative of the Dept. of Urban Development”. By the time we move forward to the events in Episode 20, almost six full years have passed (Episode 20 is dated around 0007/2/10) and Reeve is now considered an executive of the company, having moved up to the highest position in his department as seen in the below excerpt from Episode 20:

Tseng Rosalind. The man we were discussing has left for the contact point.

Player The Head of Urban Development's Reeve, right? I wonder if he'll really cooperate with us.

Tseng That's what Veld said. We'll have to trust him.

We have further proof of Reeve’s promotion and climb through the ranks with this fascinating conversation between Tseng, the Player Turk (in this case, Gun), and Reeve as they discuss the Turks’ next move. Of particular interest are the translation notes provided by Gunshot Romance’s creator, Dark_Angel, excerpted here along with the part of the script:

Tseng We'll have to get there without being spotted by the army. How are we…

Reeve If you go by submarine from Junon, you shouldn't have too many problems.

Tseng But the submarines are overseen by the army.

Player We want to go without them noticing us.

Reeve You don't have to worry about that. If you sneak on board, by the time you're out of the harbour it'll be too late for them to do a thing. Say you're acting on my orders. I'll take responsibility for everything. (*)

Episode 20 Translation Note (*) This takes a bit of thinking. Currently the Turks' position stands thus: As long as Rufus remains in the possession of the Turks, President Shinra can't do anything to them, although he, through Scarlet, is doing everything in his power to find the Turks' base and wrest the young Vice President from their grasp. The Turks' position is ambiguous. They aren't the outright enemies of the company, but they are no longer part of the company ranks. Of course, not everybody in the company knows about Tseng and company's "betrayal". Shin-Ra is a huge company. While some of the army will know about the hunt for the Turks, others won't. Reeve is implying that the army stationed in Junon won't know anything about the Turks' defection and if someone catches them in the act of appropriating a sub, they can just say that they're working on Reeve's orders. In addition, making a company-wide general announcement about the Turks defection is something President Shinra probably wants to avoid as far as possible, as the news would hardly reflect well on him and creates a possible security breach as well. As for the question of Reeve getting found out, he's hedging his bets on his position. He's a Shin-Ra executive. If the Turks, supposedly acting in his name, tell the soldiers not to say a word, they won't. If you were a lowly grunt whose livelihood depended on keeping the upper brass happy, would you go and flout an order given to you, even by proxy, by a top company executive? No, I didn't think so.

Dark_Angel’s thoughts on the matter are not only an interesting look into the perspective of what’s going on in the events of the game itself, but into Reeve’s dynamic personality. The Characters section of the late Gunshot Romance site hosted a similarly themed description for Reeve with much the same complex insight into his personality and what drives him:

Reeve Tuesti (リーブ・トゥエスティ) The future head of Shin-Ra's Urban Development Department, Reeve is a serious young man with a reputation for being perhaps the most level-headed and down to earth member of the company's executives. Passionate and dedicated to his job, he has invested a lot in the building and design of Midgar; from what we can see in the original game, he continues to be actively involved in the maintenance of the city. Reeve also has an interest in robotics, and has spent some time on the design and programming of Cait Sith. In Episode 20, we see the initial fruits of his efforts when he uses Cait to guide your player Turk on a mission in the Gongaga woods. The question of his allegiance to the company – more specifically, to President Shinra, has come into question. He assists the Turks with their mission, despite the fact that they are being hunted by the Shin-Ra Company. Not only does he give them valuable information, he also provides them with a cover so they can get to Junon to look for the special summon materia. What becomes evident through these actions is that Reeve's is not a question of weak allegiance, but a strong commitment to what he believes is right; where that justice can be found is irrelevant in the larger picture. This trait is no less diminished when he founds and heads the World Regenesis Organization in DC.

While this has been an intriguing look into Reeve’s personality, it brings to light--at least in my eyes-- the possible origins of why Reeve and Veld are in allegiance in any regard. This is a man whom the Turks could trust, perhaps specifically who Veld and Tseng could trust as the leaders of the Turks, because the paths they had chosen were in alignment with Reeve’s own moral compass. The Turks were fighting to save the lives of Veld and his daughter, Elfe, the leader of Avalanche, as well as fighting to save the planet from destruction, all while never once threatening to betray the Shinra Company’s secrets, even as the company they protected sought their extermination.

My question originally began as “How did Veld and Reeve meet?”, especially since Reeve was nothing more than a man climbing the ranks at the beginning of Before Crisis. If he and Veld had implied history before that point (which seems to be the implication), then where did their paths first cross? How did these two men figure out their paths in some way aligned? To the point where now we have Reeve making decisions from his position of power to help a group of people a hair’s breadth away from execution, running between two opposing forces with massive resources, all hell bent on their destruction?

It’s a question I hadn’t seen answered in any part of the Compilation yet, but it’s an aspect of Reeve’s character that I had forgotten over the long years, and that I wanted to bring to the surface once more. Especially with our Turks looking so stunning in the Remake’s trailers, and with Reeve being one of the men that will be betrayed so soon into the events of Final Fantasy VII’s Remake, if everything goes according to the original game. Because President Shinra cares about end goals and not the lives and materials lost in obtaining them... and it is incredibly obvious that Reeve is cut from a different bolt of cloth than that. I only wonder how they’ll have the Turks’ side play out alongside all of the grand schemes of the executives. ...it’ll be a thing I’ll be awaiting with much anticipation, and a fool’s hope, always.

I’ll leave you with the scene in question from Before Crisis Episode 20, so you can think over this connection the way that I have, and hopefully beyond it. Enjoy, my friends.

Player Thanks for showing me the way. You don't have to go this far for us, you know.

Cait Sith Ah, don't you worry none about it. Veld and I go back a ways.

Player ?! You knew we were working under Veld's orders?!

Cait Sith It said so in the fortune, it did.

Player (Thought) This is bad. That means everybody knows about our betrayal. What am I going to…?

Cait Sith Don't you worry none. I won't be telling any of this to the President.

Player Huh?!

Cait Sith I told you, we go back a ways. How is Veld? I thought you could only leave the Turks when you're dead.

Player I'm sorry. That's… classified information…

Cait Sith Is that so… I guess you're right.

Player I'm really sorry…

Cait Sith Ah, nothing to be sorry for! Just tell him I'm rootin' for him! Now, let's get a move on, shall we?

[artificialqueens]

as the stars align 5/? (branjie) - rujubees

A/N: hollywood enemies to lovers au; 3.5k - also on ao3

Vanessa hadn’t talked to Matt in weeks — not since the night they’d fought over Brooke. She’d been staying at Silky’s place, Riley too, making trips back to her apartment every now and then to pick up extra stuff, planning her visits carefully to make sure that they coincided with Matt’s working hours.

She had no idea where they stood anymore.

They hadn’t officially broken up, but Vanessa didn’t how they could come back from that argument. More importantly, she didn’t want to come back from it.

She was almost grateful that Matt had said the things he’d said, as shitty as they had been. The couple had been growing distant for months, maybe even years. It was becoming harder for Vanessa pretend she was okay with things staying the same the more her feelings for Brooke blossomed. But Matt showing his true colours had been the final straw; her heart had been unhappy for a while, at least now her head also saw reason to leave.

Vanessa still felt bad about it, and was dreading the apology tour that she would have to embark on as a result of her decision.

She didn’t know how Matt would take it. She had thought she knew who he was, but the Matt she had known would never sink to derogatory slurs in moments of anger.

Matt’s parents were sweethearts, and she felt she owed them an explanation too.

Vanessa’s own parents, and entire extended family, would be disappointed. They loved Matt, loved that their daughter had found herself in a serious, long-term relationship at such a young age — prior to Vanessa’s career taking off a year ago, they had even started talking to her about marriage. Of course, they were proud of Vanessa’s success since then, but Vanessa couldn’t shake the idea that they were more excited about their daughter settling down.

There was also the issue of making their breakup public knowledge. Vanessa’s relationship status had always been Matt, and it had never been a secret — she hadn’t yet discussed with anyone how she was supposed to go about revealing their separation. Should she try editing him out of her wikipedia page? Compose a relatable, humorous tweet that made it clear she was single without addressing Matt directly? Should she call in as an anonymous tip to TMZ?

There was other stuff to sort out too, like moving out. It was Vanessa’s apartment, a new place she’d bought after her first major pay check, so Matt would have to move back in with his parents, at first at least.

Vanessa just wanted it all over with already; she felt like she was stuck in some kind of relationship limbo. She wanted Matt gone from her life for good. And she wanted Brooke.

Not that that was going to happen.

Ever since Brooke had phoned her to apologise, they had both been making an effort to get along at work, and it had gone surprisingly well. They’d finally managed to snap out of the cycle of going back to feuding and Brooke seemed truly remorseful about how she’d acted. She was always polite, often kind, and the times when she would crack a joke or laugh at something Vanessa said were the best part of her day. Brooke was witty and funny and the big, bright smile that Vanessa was now getting to see didn’t do anything to help the fluttering in her chest.

If she was being honest, she thought that Brooke had been on her best behaviour a little too much — not that she was being insincere, but that she was trying too hard to be a perfect version of herself that would be impossible for Vanessa to fault. Vanessa wished she would open up to her more.

But then again, why would she? They weren’t friends, they hadn’t even texted. Vanessa wanted to, but she didn’t feel it was her place — she’d pretty much forced Brooke to have her number, but she didn’t want to assume that Brooke was okay with Vanessa having hers.

So, they weren’t really friends, and Vanessa had zero information to suggest that Brooke would want to be more than that, or that she was even into women. It had felt like she was a little too into their first kiss, but maybe it had just been a way for Brooke to let off a little steam in such a busy, stressful period. Maybe she’d hated it, and that was why was so moody afterwards. Even on the off chance that Brooke was attracted to her, that didn’t mean that she would want a relationship, have any romantic interest.

They had filmed other kisses and make-out scenes since then, as they worked towards the movie’s final act, and as much as Vanessa tried to disconnect herself from them, it still felt like bliss each time Brooke’s lips touched hers. They took it slow in all of their kisses, always fearing another fuck up like the first and preferring when Michelle instead would encourage them to put more passion into it.

It was an unspoken rule that they never rehearsed those scenes, and never discussed them after.

—

A couple of days later, Vanessa still hadn’t dealt with Matt. She loved Silky and was eternally grateful for the favour she was doing her, but she missed home. They had also been filming for a few months now without a break, and Vanessa was exhausted, the current day also proving to be a long and tiring one having been on set for over twelve hours.

And the scene they were filming that night was hitting a nerve. It featured an argument between Vanessa and Brooke’s characters before Brooke’s embarks on a second mission — her most dangerous yet — and all it was doing was serving as a reminder of what a clusterfuck her relationship was right now. And having Brooke yell at her, even though she didn’t mean it, wasn’t helping.

“You’re a coward!” Vanessa shouted. “You can’t just put your space suit on and get in the rocket and fly away from all your problems! That’s not how it works!”

“Oh yeah? Try me. You’re just jealous because you wish you were given this opportunity,” Brooke yelled back.

“That’s not what I want and it’s not what you want either. This is a fucking suicide mission, Jade, and you’re only doing it because I know you love me too and you’re scared.” Vanessa’s character was supposed to be at her boiling point, angry yet confident in her knowledge that her love was reciprocated, and beyond the point of sadness. But Vanessa couldn’t stop her voice from breaking, or a lump from forming in her throat.

“I’m doing this. If you’re not gonna be supportive then why the fuck are you still here? You know what, just get the hell out Emilia. I’m done,” Brooke said coldly.

“So am I,” Vanessa retaliated, but she just couldn’t invoke the harshness that the line needed, and her eyes began to water. She quickly wiped her tears, hoping that no-one had caught it, but a quick glance at Brooke’s worried face confirmed that she hadn’t been so lucky.

“Cut!” Michelle hawked. “Brooke, that was spot on. Vanessa, I want just a little more venom from you, got it? Emilia’s being driven by anger in this moment; she’s furious that Jade would risk her life, and that she can throw herself into deadly situations, but won’t face up to her feelings for Emilia.”

“Okay,” Vanessa replied meekly.

“Let’s take five, alright?” Michelle stated before leaving the set.

Vanessa turned in search of Aquaria, desiring a makeup retouch, but Brooke quickly caught her arm.

“Vanessa? What’s wrong?” Brooke asked softly, looking pained at the sight before her. Her concern at seeing Vanessa sad was enough to set Vanessa off even more, and she shook her head, her lip starting to quiver.

“I’ll be right back, okay?” Brooke caressed her arm before disappearing, though her touch lingered.

Vanessa checked her phone. She’d sent Matt a message over twelve hours ago, requesting they meet up, and he’d read it but still hadn’t replied.

Brooke was back a moment later.

“We’re done for the day,” she announced.

“Wait, you did that for me?” Vanessa asked, no longer resisting the tears that streamed down her face now that she wouldn’t have to film anymore.

“I’m surprised they haven’t fired the both of us, the amount of times we’ve shut this set down early,” Brooke replied, her hand back on Vanessa’s arm.

“Thank you,” Vanessa whispered shakily.

“Want me to drive you home?” Brooke suggested.

“No, I… I ain’t really staying at home at the moment.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you, uh, wanna talk about it?” Brooke offered cooly, almost like she was afraid of rejection or perhaps as coming across as too nice.

“What the hell, might be helpful to have a fresh pair of ears listen to me whine.” Vanessa tried to laugh, but it came out as a sort of hiccup and Brooke was still looking at her with those big, sympathetic eyes.

“Not here,” Brooke decided, “there’s a quiet little place across the street. It’ll be closing now, but I know the owner, she’ll let us stay late.”

Brooke took Vanessa’s hand, leading her out of the studios to their destination. Vanessa thought about how she should have emotional breakdowns more often if it meant Brooke would treat her like this.

“A chicken restaurant?” Vanessa questioned.

“It’s good, trust me.”

They went in and were greeted by a small, lively Asian woman about Brooke’s age.

“Hey Juju! Vanessa, this Jujubee,” Brooke said, giving her a quick hug.

“How are you?!” Jujubee asked excitedly, before turning to Vanessa and giving her a hug too as they all exchanged pleasantries.

“I know you’re about to shut for the night, but is there any chance we could hang here for a while?” Brooke enquired.

“Sure, girl, anything for you and this gorgeous date of yours,” Jujubee agreed with a wink. Brooke blushed, muttering a quick apology to Vanessa, and Vanessa thought it was the most endearing thing she’d ever seen.

Juju led them through to a booth, her walk almost as bouncy as the shiny curls in her hair. Vanessa thought she had more energy than anyone had the right to have at eleven pm.

Moments after they had taken their seats, Jujubee brought them drinks and went off to cook them some food, on her.

“So,” Brooke began. “Tell me everything. Or, you know, as much as your comfortable sharing.”

Vanessa had one hand on her hot beverage and reached out, entwining the other with Brooke’s, hoping she would interpret it as the intimate gesture it was intended as, but at least having the excuse of her distress if Brooke wasn’t interested.

“A few weeks ago, I had a fight with my boyfriend, Matt,” Vanessa began, Brooke listening and nodding attentively. “We’ve been growin’ apart for a while, but we just blew up that night over — over — y’know, it was kinda ‘bout you, but that don’t matter,” Vanessa insisted. She would have to be more careful not to give too much away.

“About me?” Brooke asked, eyes wide, eyebrows raised. “God, I’m still ruining your life even when I’m not trying to.”

“No — it’s not like that,” Vanessa shook her head dismissively. “He thinks we’re fuckin’ or some shit, look, the bitch is crazy, okay? Don’t take no notice.”

Vanessa felt Brooke seize up under her touch, regretting running that mouth of hers and making her uncomfortable.

“Yeah, so crazy,” said Brooke, eyes flittering around the room, probably wishing for Jujubee to hurry the fuck up with the damn fried chicken already.

“Anyway, it’s irrelevant, ‘cause it was a long time comin’. He ended up sayin’ some shit, really showin’ his ass, and then I walked out.”

Brooke stayed silent for a minute, and Vanessa could see the cogs turning in her mind, putting two and two together.

“So — you left your boyfriend two weeks ago, and you haven’t been back home since?” Brooke reiterated.

“Exactly. Well, I’ve been back and forth to pick shit up. And I didn’t leave him, like, for real, we didn’t say the words or nothin’.”

“It’s not my place to tell you what to do, but… you are going to dump him, right?”

“Yeah, I will do. Soon as he remembers how to pick up his stupid phone,” Vanessa growled, making Brooke laugh, Vanessa quickly joining in despite herself.

“I hated seeing your face back there,” Brooke confessed quietly.

“I don’t know what came over me, girl. Like, I’ve been through so much with that douchebag, but I ain’t even sad about it. It’s just… it’s a big step, you know? Breaking up with someone you been with your whole ass adult life. Don’t even remember how it feels to be single.”

“You’ll be okay, ‘Ness,” — the nickname fell from Brooke’s lips as naturally as rain in a storm — “and I don’t wanna overstep, but uh, you can always stay with me if you need to. I have a big house. Lots of rooms. Not to brag or anything, but, we wouldn’t even have to see each other if you didn’t want to —” she rambled on, and Vanessa smiled softly, knowing that they were both beyond that.

She couldn’t accept Brooke’s offer, though. The temptation of being just a corridor or a wall away from her every night, even if only for a short period — it would be too much.

“We get it, you’re rich,” Vanessa cut her off teasingly. “but I can’t. I need my crib back, bitch.”

“Well. The offer stands.”

Jujubee came by with their chicken at last, and the two thanked her, Brooke insisting that she go home and allow them to wash and lock up.

They ate in a peaceful silence for a while, Vanessa reflecting on how little she knew Brooke and how this was the perfect opportunity to try and change that.

“So, what about you?” Vanessa enquired.

“What about me?” Brooke smirked.

“You got any, uh, boy problems of your own?”

Brooke held her gaze pensively, before letting out a low chuckle.

“I mean, having a boyfriend would be the problem.”

Vanessa’s mouth simply formed a small ‘o’ shape.

“You’re— ”

“I’m gay, ‘Ness.”

“Right. Well. That’s… compelling information,” Vanessa stammered.

“Is that… cool?” Brooke was frowning and why the fuck did Vanessa have to go and make her reaction so fucking weird?

“Yes, oh my god, it’s the coolest. I mean, I’m bi, so,” Vanessa responded, “I mean, I’m not hitting on you — I didn’t— ”

“Vanessa, chill,” Brooke ordered, her face having twisted into something illegible. “So you’re really bi?”

“Yeah. Like, only my friends and family know at the moment, and I’ve never really done much with a woman, but — I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.”

“Hey,” Brooke said “for what it’s worth, I’m glad you did.”

“You too,” Vanessa replied, smiling slightly. A lock of Brooke’s wavy bob had fallen in front of her eyes slightly, and Vanessa poured herself another drink to stop herself from tucking it away.

“So, back to the original line of questioning,” Vanessa remarked, trying to stay composed. “Any girl problems?”

“Uh, nope. No girl problems. No girlfriend. Ever, actually,” Brooke answered.

“Is that a preference or…?” Vanessa trailed off, doing her best to not sound like she was prying, or judging.

“Mostly.”

“Okay. Nice.”

The conversation coming to a natural end, and their food all eaten up, the two women made their way to the kitchen, Brooke tidying up as Vanessa began filling the sink, staring into the water mindlessly.

The woman she liked didn’t do relationships. She was disappointed, but she hadn’t exactly been living with expectations of anything happening between the two of them — they were already at a zero so they couldn’t exactly get any lower. This was fine, she would cope.

“You know what I never told you?” Brooke wondered after a moment. “Remember the first day on set?”

“Not my best memory of you,” Vanessa affirmed with a fond smile anyway.

“Oh yeah? What is your best memory of me?” Brooke asked curiously, maybe even flirtatiously, and she was suddenly pressed between Brooke Lynn and the sink in a way that was decidedly not platonic. Brooke had a hand attached to the kitchen surface either side of Vanessa, was looking down at her intensely, waiting for her to make a move, and it would be so easy —

but getting over Brooke after a quick fuck would not be. She wouldn’t be satisfied with a one off fling, getting it out of each other’s systems.

So instead—

“My best memory of you?” Vanessa repeated sweetly, brushing her fingers through Brooke’s hair —

“Your face after I do this, bitch,” Vanessa said before grabbing a handful of bubbles from behind her and splashing them in Brooke’s face.

“Oh my god, you whore!” Brooke screamed, doubling over in laughter and probably drunk on tiredness.

They continued having a semi-water fight for a few minutes, until they both realised just how late it had gotten, so they finished cleaning the dishes, finally left and walked to Brooke’s car. Brooke offered to drive her back to Silky’s, and Vanessa couldn’t find the energy to refuse her.

“What were you gonna tell me? ‘Bout the first day on set?” Vanessa spoke up part way through the journey.

“Oh, that,” Brooke quickly remembered. “The truth is, I was late because my cat Apollo was sick. I had to take him to the vet’s and, well. Be there for him.”

Vanessa was dumbfounded. She couldn’t believe that all along, she had been mad at Brooke for that. For taking care of her kitty.

“I feel so evil,” Vanessa muttered.

“Don’t girl. I could’ve told you or made some vague ‘personal emergency’ explanation, I just chose not to. Just to be petty.”

Brooke pulled up at Silky’s house and turned the engine off.

“God, we’re dumb. I’m so done with our shit,” Vanessa quipped.

“I’m so done with being awake,” Brooke responded with a yawn. Vanessa faced her with a tired smile.

“Thank you for everything tonight, Brooke. I mean that.”

“Goodnight, ‘Ness,” Brooke whispered as Vanessa got out of her car, headed inside.

Vanessa didn’t think she’d ever tire of hearing Brooke call her that, even if the woman never said a different word to her again.

—

That night had been a game changer for Brooke.

Sure, she already knew by then that she was attracted to Vanessa, and that she desired a little more than friendship between them. But that night had been a whirlwind of events; from seeing Vanessa so sad, she wanted to make hurting her a crime, to finding out Vanessa was bi and allowing herself to entertain the notion that maybe this connection Brooke swore she was feeling wasn’t just in her head.

And then there’d been that moment in the kitchen, where Brooke had been unable to think of anything but the image of Vanessa sitting on the counter, Brooke’s head between her thighs.

She’d wanted to kiss her so badly, maybe would’ve done if the tension hadn’t dissolved along with the bubbles in Vanessa’s hands.

It was for the best, though. Vanessa was vulnerable, and Brooke would feel like she was taking advantage. Besides, she didn’t want to be her rebound.

Because the more time she spent with Vanessa, the more attached she got.

It only got worse as the final few weeks of filming came to pass, when they became close enough for Brooke to believe that she honestly felt she had made a friend in Vanessa. It was an unfamiliar feeling — Brooke had never really wanted to be someone’s girlfriend before. She’d had crushes, even caught feelings, but none of it ever seemed worth it in the end. Worth the effort, or the compromise, or the heartache.

It was an unfamiliar feeling, but it wasn’t scary, and maybe that was what scared Brooke the most.

Brooke, who poured everything she had into the final kiss she filmed with Vanessa — held her waist a little bit tighter, caressed her cheek a little softer. Kissed her hard so that maybe she would understand.

“That’s a wrap on As The Stars Align, everyone!” Michelle announced to thunderous applause, before speeches were delivered and tears were shed, temporary goodbyes exchanged.

Brooke caught up with Vanessa after.

They didn’t speak about the kiss, as usual; Brooke just pulled Vanessa into a hug and held her close.

“I broke up with Matt, by the way,” Vanessa revealed, a huge grin on her face, and Brooke knew it wasn’t the most appropriate news to smile at, but for some reason she didn’t think Vanessa would be mad. “I hear they’re renaming the wrap party to the Vanessa-is-single-celebration.”

“Doesn’t really have the same ring to it,” Brooke smirked.

Still, she wouldn’t miss it for the world. 

[kumkaniudaku]

Planez

WORD COUNT: 3,205

WARNINGS: SMUT (18 + CONTENT)

ANYWHERE MASTERPOST

Recommended Listening: Planez x Jeremih (ft. J.Cole)

Blindfolded and fitted with noise-canceling headphones, Tasha felt like she had been forced into a hostage situation. The events of the morning felt like another installment of Liam Neeson losing someone in his family from the moment her eyes opened to register her surroundings.

A week prior, she was notified by her secretive husband that she should prepare for four days without the kids for a “celebration.” Chadwick provided no further explanation besides a departure and return date. A bit of prying led her to a list of items she should pack and the revelation that there was a planned stop in Atlanta for a night, but she couldn’t uncover anything else. Everyone from her mother to her trusted best friends refused to cough up information that they knew.

The time spent with her parents was bittersweet, only becoming bitter when she was enthusiastically shaken from her sleep by Chadwick with a loud ‘Happy Birthday’ and a strict time limit to be dressed and waiting downstairs. Moments after kissing Micah and Noah goodbye and promising to return before their Spring Break was over, she was lightly forced into a blindfold and into the back of what she assumed to be a large vehicle. The earphones were a punishment for pressing her ear against the window to listen for clues. The subtle bumps and dips in the road failed to give away an accurate location because every road in her hometown was decorated with endless obstructions. Her only hope was to annoy her husband for answers.

“Devin said we’re going to Toronto,” she lied, not realizing that she was hollering.

“One, that’s a lie. Two, stop yelling.”

“What? I can’t hear you!” Chadwick considered his options while he laughed at CoCo’s perplexed expression. He could continue to troll her by not responding the way she wanted or allow her to hear the first big clue. Her hands roamed around the backseat before she found his leg to pinch his inner thigh.

“Are you talking? Take this shit off me so I can hear!”

Pulling one side away from her ear, Chadwick placed a quick kiss against the shell before answering. “I said stop yelling. People can hear you outside.”

“If I could see these people outside, what would they be wearing?”

“Clothes.”

Tasha turned in the direction of Chadwick’s voice and frowned, “Haha, Mr. Smartass. I bet you’re a riot at parties.”

“I like to think so.”

“Yeah, well, that’s why we don’t pay you for thinking.” Chadwick smiled in preparation to annoy her further but decided to let Tasha listen to the sounds around her.

The roar of engines grew louder as they approached their destination ahead of schedule. Chadwick watched Tasha's right hand frantically search for his to intertwine their fingers, indicating that she was more afraid than her expression let on.

“What is that sound? Are those...planes? How are we so close to the planes? Are you trying to kill me?”

“Does that make sense to you, baby? To bring you to see your parents and let them see my face before I killed you?”

“So, you do plan to kill me but not this time?”

“Co!” Tasha’s laughter lit up the backseat of the SUV as she basked in the glow of frustrating her husband the way he’d done her.

“Okay, so planes. We’re going to a place that we reach by car. Is this first-class concierge? I just made that up by the way.”

“I think you’ll consider this better than first class.”

As he removed the blindfold, CoCo’s eyes fought to adjust to the Spring sunshine before they bugged out of her head for the shock of her life.

In front of her, a mid-sized passenger jet sat waiting and ready for departure. It’s sleek black, and gold design looked like it was ripped from a page of a magazine. Four crew members, all Black women, lined the steps leading to the entryway, waving and smiling like they were expecting her all along.

“Woah...wait...hold up. Is that for us?”

“It’s supposed to be, but they’ll leave if you keep sitting here and asking me questions.”  

Tasha’s eyes and mouth remained wide open as Chadwick kindly removed her seatbelt before ushering her out of the vehicle. A chorus of morning greetings followed the couple until they were at the bottom of the steps leading to the inside of the jet’s cabin.

“Hello, Mrs. Boseman, this is for you,” a young crew member announced before handing over a glass of Rosé. “We hope that you enjoy flying with us. Do not hesitate to make your needs known. We aim to please.”

“Thank you, so much. Hey, Charmaine,” CoCo smiled, using the young woman’s name from her badge for an extra touch. “You wouldn’t happen to know where my husband is taking me, do you?”

“I do.” CoCo danced in place at the news, earning a laugh from the women around her. “But, unfortunately, I can’t tell you. He requested our silence.”

“What! Girl, it’s okay. My name is on the bank account too!”

“Not the one I used. Now, come in here and sit down so we can get going.”

A gentle pull to her elbow moved Tasha up the short flight of stairs into what could only be described as a dream. Black and gold seats on top of the cleanest floor she’d seen since their children were born were just the tip of the iceberg. Wood grain surfaces added a masculine touch to the aircraft to juxtapose the feminine energy and smell. From what she could see, there was a small bedroom and bathroom in the furthest section while an assortment of snacks and finger foods rested on a counter nearby.

“I hope you like it. And just in case you don’t, there’s Krispy Kreme in the bedroom because I know you like those.”

CoCo tore her eyes away from the luxury surrounding her to watch Chadwick slide into a nearby seat and pull out his phone. As always, he sat relaxed with quiet dominance radiating from his lean frame. She couldn’t bite back her smile at the way his grey Nike Tech suit matched her Nike hoodie dress, a request that seemed corny at the moment, but currently felt like a sweet memento.

“You, sir, are something else,” she laughed as she took the short walk to his seat to make room for her body in his lap. “Can I know where we’re going now?”

“Nope.” His grin pulled an irritated eye roll from CoCo, prompting him to pepper kisses along her face and jawline. Her pout resembled his first-born’s which tugged at his heartstrings. “I’ll say this. It’s a place we’ve discussed visiting before.”

“Have we talked about it recently, because that doesn’t narrow it down.”

“I’m not saying anymore. Just know that you’ve mentioned it on more than one occasion. Consider your outfits and use your brain. As a matter of fact, you should sleep on it. We got a long flight.”

The wheels in her mind began to turn as she prepared for the question that she knew would catch him off guard. “How long is the flight?”

“It is long enough for you to think about why you thought that weak information probe was gon’ work on me. You ain’t slick.”

“Oh, whatever!”

Between the excitement of being able to enjoy each other without any distractions and the warm feeling of Chadwick’s fingertips rubbing slow circles into the meat of her thighs as the flight attendant powered through her preflight instructions, CoCo felt a surge of energy that was difficult to put into words. Her brain became hazy with thoughts far too sensual for her current situation. Or were they? The four days away from the hustle and bustle of packed lunches, teething rings and homework help provided the perfect opportunity to roam around an unfamiliar territory free of inhibitions. New places were open for exploration, both physically and intimately.

Their intention to stay awake and spend time together quickly turned into an impromptu nap that didn’t include the loud wails of children. The peace in the jet’s “master” bedroom kept Chadwick and Tasha in an uninterrupted slumber until their bodies could no longer remain stationary. Chadwick was the first to stroll into the main area, leaving CoCo behind to entertain himself with whatever basketball game he could find. An hour later, Tasha emerged well rested with a more accurate idea of the destination.

“You know, I have to watch you from now on,” she smiled from the bedroom’s entryway, earning a raised eyebrow from her husband.

“Watch me do what? I’ve just been sitting here.” Chadwick’s eyes followed Tasha’s frame as she slowly approached him.

He could feel the aura of seduction radiating from her being as she moved toward him with a feline’s grace. The rhythmic switch of her hips kept him hypnotized until she straddled his lap and laced her fingers at the nape of his neck, using the tip of her stiletto nails to scratch the spot that would grab his attention.

“We’ve been on this plane for seven hours. When we did the fuel stop, I overheard the pilot say we had a little over 10 hours to go.”

“You were supposed to be asleep. I see where Noah gets it from.”

CoCo laughed into a kiss that lasted long enough to show her husband that she was well beyond the innocent peck phase of their routine interactions.

“I can’t believe you remembered me wanting to go to the Maldives after all this time. We were literal kids when we talked about that.”

Using the pad of his thumb, Chadwick brushed CoCo’s bottom lip and smiled. “It’s important that I make good on all my promises. And what better way to celebrate your half a century?”

“I am not that old yet!”

“My bad. As much as you lie about your age, I get confused.” Chadwick laughed while Tasha’s halfhearted attempt to swat at his chest ended in her giggling into the crook of his neck.

“I hate you. But I love you.”

“I’ll take that. I love you more.”

“I sincerely doubt that,” CoCo added before pressing her forehead against Chadwick’s.

Intimacy settled in as they took in the small things that amounted to two beautiful packages. Chadwick allowed his hands to roam his wife’s back and legs, feeling his body heat up at her little sighs of content each time he would grip and release the thickest part of her thighs. Chadwick would be lying if he said he didn’t pack the shortest of her “travel dresses” he could find to have access to the smooth, golden skin underneath.

Tasha would be lying if she said that the press of her bare breast against the soft fabric of her dress combined with the roughness of her husband’s hands drifting up her legs until they landed on her butt didn’t start the churn of desire in her belly.

Simultaneously their eyes connected, covered with the same fires smoldering behind them. Tasha made the first move, capturing Chadwick’s bottom lip between her teeth before soothing the tinge of pain with her tongue. She led the charge, and he gladly followed. Any time she took the reins and initiated sex, it ended in the type of bliss that only existed on TV screens.

As the moment began to escalate past an innocent make-out session, Chadwick was the one to pull away for air.

“I think we should finish this in there,” he chuckled while using his head to gesture toward the jet’s bedroom.

“I don’t like that idea. Is it my birthday or not?”

With his lips no longer part of the equation, CoCo continued her journey to Chadwick’s jawline and neck, taking pride in the feeling of his stomach tensing beneath her palms. Every graze of her teeth across the juncture of his shoulder and neck combined with the tips of her acrylics dragging across his skin as her hand descended into his sweatpants was working overtime to diminish Chadwick’s resolve.

“Baby, there are four women on the other side of that door that can hear everything we do.”

“Then let ‘em hear.”

A simple sentence sparked a section of both their brains that had been dormant in the routine that had become family life. This was the adventure they indulged in at the beginning of the relationship, and a trip halfway across the world could unlock that fire that kept them locked in the house in the heat of passion for days after making the relationship official.

As quickly as pure, unfiltered lust flashed in her eyes, CoCo was granted permission to tug her husband’s pants and briefs to the middle of his thighs. His dick emerged proud and beautiful in the way that one would describe renaissance art. Tasha moved to position herself on the couch beside him, settling on her knees with her ass in the air.  

The fear of being caught became the driving force behind CoCo’s desire to get Chadwick off in the filthiest way possible. Starting at the base, she flattened her tongue against the underside of his member to follow her favorite vein to the tip and back more times than she could count. Chadwick watched with intense focus as she closed her lips around him and took him as far as her throat would allow.

She began slow, preferring to keep a steady rhythm and use her entire mouth to massage the dick she’d grown to know and crave. Chadwick whispered his wife’s praises while his fingers danced to the hem of her dress to lift it to her hips. The force of her movements below his waist made the meat of her ass jiggle against his palm.

While the sight and sensation of her mouth bobbing up and down in his lap were what his fever dreams were made of, he needed the sounds that came with it. He needed the sloppy, lewd harmonies of her moans and saliva to perform his favorite song.

Stealthily slipping his middle and index finger into her panties to add firm pressure to her sensitive nub drew one of the sounds he was hoping to hear.

“Oh fuck!” The surprise and jolt of energy forced her mouth to release the head of his dick in a short gasp.

“Let me hear you, girl. Let them hear you.”

A honied “yes sir” set off a chain reaction that had Chadwick drawing labored breaths to form some type of thought. All he could muster were expletives and broken praises as his thighs, and her mouth became a mess of fluids.

Tasha maintained eye contact as she moved to divide her attention between his sack and perineum until her eyes clamped shut to get the full experience of Chadwick’s fingers massaging along her walls.

They made a competition of who could get the other off the fastest, trading moans for loud and harsh curses. Filling his wife as far as his fingers would allow caused her hips to stutter as she bit into his thigh to choke back a near scream.

“Come here,” he demanded in a husky growl that stirred CoCo into action. Her shift gave him time to pull his digits from her slit glistening and covered in her wetness. His free hand took a firm yet gentle hold of his wife’s chin to bring her mouth to his in a hungry kiss.

The taste of her unique flavor never failed to push him to this animalistic corner of his being that he was often forced to suppress. Chadwick felt the need to dominate CoCo’s mouth, and she happily submitted to the takeover, feeling like a goddess that possessed the power to bring the strongest man to his knees.

Remembering his honey-soaked fingers, Tasha pulled her husband’s wrist between them to bring his fingers to her mouth. He watched for a moment, half smiling at how uninhibited CoCo was becoming the closer they got their final destination. Her magnetic sensuality pulled him as he joined her in the task.

Tasha’s hand snuck back to his hot, massive erection after licking her palm to contribute the already slick surface. Her wrist twisted with skillful precision, drawing her husband’s attention while she moved from his mouth to his neck. He’d forgotten his work inside her panties as the pace and pressure of her stroking increased.

“Fuck,” Chadwick gritted out amid loud smack to CoCo’s ass.  

Sensing the direction he was moving, Tasha allowed her man to guide her head to his lap before looking up at him with a smile, “I want you to fuck my throat, Daddy.”

Chadwick moved with trepidation at first as he watched CoCo lower her lips until they met his pelvis and worked up and down until she was satisfied with the amount of lubrication she’d created. His hips moved slowly, rocking up into her mouth in one fluid motion.

CoCo extended her tongue while anchoring her hands to his thighs. The sights, sensation, and sounds worked in tandem to speed him up, turning the languid thrusts into short, powerful strokes. The gurgle and gawk from CoCo as he held her head steady encouraged him to move faster and feel the ridges of her throat against the head of his dick. Bringing her hands to his tight balls to add a gentle roll was the trick to push Chadwick over the edge in a loud cry that was sure to alert at least one of the crew members to action beyond the partition.

CoCo pulled away after the first sputter of his seed to replace her mouth with her hand and kiss him through the remainder of his orgasm. Both of his hands became full, one reaching to knead her ass while the other wrapped around her chin to hold her mouth in place.

A light sheen of sweat coated his forehead as he let go of euphoric sighs and moans of pleasure until he felt an erotic tingle from his head to his toes. Pressing his forehead to Tasha’s, Chadwick looked down to watch her hand motions slow down until he was semi-flaccid in her palm.

Bringing her hand to her mouth, CoCo licked the space between her thumb and index finger clean with a smile. “We made a mess, baby. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

Zapped of his energy, Chadwick watched with hooded eyes as CoCo situated him inside of his briefs and sweats before standing and reaching for his hands. He accepted her help to rise, allowing her to lead him into the small bathroom compartment.

As they passed the crew’s cabin, light shuffling away from the door indicated that someone had been listening and was attempting to move away to remain undetected. The newest members of the Mile-High Club looked at each other with cheeky grins on the way inside the bathroom, unsure of what would happen next. There were at least 10 hours left on their flight to paradise and four days to drink in the entirety of each other in whatever manner they saw fit.

Anything between now and then was a possibility.

                                          __________

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