#I'm gonna be gone for a long time so might as well do something good for once

[melverie]

Aaaaaaahhhhhhhh today I've been constantly experiencing the urge to un-private today-in-the-devildom & start writing for it again

[ckret2]

who wants a prism break?

So, the Theraprism! The Theraprism sucks, right?

This is like, a good day.

The Theraprism clearly sucks.

Have a one shot of Bill escaping Theraprism with the most desperate escape plan imaginable: reincarnation.

(Warning for, as you might expect, psychiatric hospital abuse.)

####

There are fates worse than death. Like boredom, for instance!

####

Everything was black and numb and silent and cold so so cold but no he could only call it cold if he felt cold and Bill didn't feel coldness there was just the absence of a feeling the absence of heat the absence of light the absence of sound the absence of touch the absence of air.

The absence of everything.

Bill had loved a void once—a micro black hole. Every time they touched it slowly killed him, spaghettified his limbs, drained his energy. His energy was so vast that she never claimed a drop of a drop of a drop of his reserves—but it still hurt like nothing else to be crushed and stretched and ripped and consumed by her event horizon. The pain was wonderful. Being shredded was ecstasy.

This void was the opposite of her. 

He couldn't even feel anything when he tried to scream—without air, he couldn't feel his vocal plates vibrate. He couldn't feel his hands, his face, his eye; he tried to bite himself just to feel something and he couldn't feel his mouth, he tried to rip open his wounds and couldn't find them; why couldn't he see his own light, why couldn't he see his blood, where had he gone, was he gone—

Reality returned like a light bulb being switched on.

The first thing he registered was a shrill sound on the verge of inaudibility; and then the pain in his eye, his sides, his wounds; and then the dull gray light, the hard floor under his knees, the antiseptic stench in the air conditioning.

He stopped screaming. The shrill sound stopped.

"Energetic as always, are we?"

Bill blinked blearily at the Orb of Healing Light hovering before him. He croaked, "I'll regurgitate you."

"I'll pretend I didn't hear that." A glowing translucent clipboard manifested in front of the Orb. "Well, you've gone through this enough times to know the drill! Do you need a moment to recover, or—?"

"No no, I'm fine, I'm fine." Bill slumped forward, trembling hands on the floor, waiting for the vertigo to pass. "I'm fine. Do your thing." He'd rather get the post-Solitary Wellness Void reorientation interview over with.

"Perfect. What's your name?"

"I'm ol' Vinegar Pete."

"No clowning, please."

He sighed loudly. "Bill Cipher."

"Good. Where are you?"

He considered saying hell, but decided he'd used up all the clowning he could risk for one day. He didn't want to go back in. "The Theraprism. Ward 333."

"Very good. When are you?"

"I was gonna ask you," Bill groaned. "How long was I in the hole this time? A million years? Ten million?"

The Orb checked its notes. "Eight minutes."

"Wh—no, no I know that time moves slower out in reality than in the prism. I'm not asking how much time passed in reality, I'm asking how much time passed here."

"Eight minutes," the Orb repeated. "Outside the Theraprism, one third of one second passed."

Bill groaned again and flopped flat on the floor.

"Do you know why you're here?"

"Why are any of us here?" Bill asked the gray linoleum tiles. "Usually because some dumb beast tripped into the booby trap that sets off its reproductive process. How's your species work, you pop outta nebulas, right—?"

"I meant, coming out of the Solitary Wellness Void."

"Oh." Bill tried to remember what his infraction had been this time. "Because I failed to escape."

"Because you tried to escape."

If he'd succeeded, they never could have punished him. "Sure."

"Good, you seem oriented to your surroundings. Let's get you to the nurse and then back to your cell." The nurse? What did he need a nurse for?

He only realized then that he must have succeeded in reopening his wounds in the SWV: the never-quite-healed crack across his exoskeleton was wider, the edges chipped and bent. It hurt. His eye socket hurt too; he tasted blood. With the way his whole body usually ached after leaving the void, he hadn't even noticed.

Through the crack in his exoskeleton, his edges had frayed into fine golden threads. The sight of silvery blood on his hands made him nauseous; he hastily looked away and reminded himself it was only his own. 

####

As Bill wearily followed behind the Orb and two security guards followed behind him, he had to periodically turn to hover sideways to streamline himself. These days he was so weak that he could feel the air resistance pushing back against him when he floated; with his wound reopened, he felt like the air pressure could snap his exoskeleton along the crack and break him in half.

"You're not Emmy," Bill said. "You're, uh..."

"A-AOX4."

"Oxyyy," Bill said weakly. "Heyyy. S'been a while. Usually I get a personal welcome back from the void, why didn't Emmy show? Don't tell me it doesn't see me as a threat anymore!" He'd be offended if it didn't. D-SM5 was the closest thing he had to a nemesis these days. Even if he couldn't beat it, he wanted to think he still irritated the daylights out of it.

"Director SM5 couldn't make it. It's overseeing the preparations for Paingoreous's reincarnation."

"That's today? Good riddance." Paingoreous had started getting sanctimonious the past few hundred group therapy sessions—don't you have any compassion for your victims and it's possible to live a happy life without slaughtering all your enemies first and maybe I should ask for permission before I vivisect my friends' faces—passive, self-defeatist crap like that. Vivisecting your friends and seeing who complained was how you found out who your lame friends were! Now that the wet blanket was leaving, the rest of them could get back to spending their sessions reminiscing about the glory days and trying to set the donuts on fire when the therapist was distracted.

"Yes," A-AOX4 said pointedly, "it is good he gets to leave to go become a productive member of reality. We're all so happy that he's rehabilitated enough to earn a new chance at life." (Bill rolled his eye. A-AOX4 ignored it.) "Wouldn't you like a chance to rejoin reality, Bill?"

More than anything. He'd been in this crystallized brain's perpetual dreamscape for what felt like both a thousand years and a single day—time never passing, an eternal inescapable moment. He'd tried to break out, sneak out, or bargain his way out more times than he could count; sometimes he was locked in the SWV as punishment; and sometimes the staff gently stopped him, confiscated his supplies, and chastised him for the effort—and the reminder that he was as powerless as a child was worse than the void. He'd gone delirious from the boredom, hallucinating screams and burning faces as his mind struggled to stimulate itself (and he'd been medicated for it). He'd so despaired of escaping that he'd looked for a way to burn up the remains of his energy and vanish for good (and he'd been medicated for it). He ached with the need to see the stars again.

But not enough to sell his soul for it. If he took the staff's route—let them break him down, sandblast off his rough edges, erase everything that made him him, and finally physically transform him into some alien creature—then whatever left the Theraprism would no longer be Bill Cipher.

"What, and force you guys to find a new 'unique case'? I wouldn't do that to you! I know how much you love me," Bill said. "Besides, why would I go through all that just so I can reincarnate as a sentient snowflake, or Mi-Go antennae lice, or..."

"A butterfly," A-AOX4 cut in, an edge of impatience creeping into its tone. "Paingoreous has chosen to reincarnate as a butterfly. We all think that's a very productive way to channel his desire to digest his own skin."

"Unless it's one of those blood-drinking butterflies, lame." Bill scoffed. "Wait—hold on, you said butterfly? Like an Earth butterfly?"

They were, of course, not actually speaking an Earth language, but an interdimensional pidgin that borrowed words and grammar from dozens of worlds. When around the Orbs of Healing Light that held half the staff positions, Bill tended to speak a dialect of the pidgin that used flashes of light for 40% of its vocabulary. It was perfectly possible that the word Bill knew as "butterfly" was also used for some alien creature, but—

"Yes, an Earth butterfly. A Vanessa atalanta, to be precise."

Aw, boo. Not even a cool butterfly. "He's reincarnating on Earth?"

"Yes. Many of our patients reincarnate on Earth. As long as you're careful about which region and century you reincarnate into, it's at the top of our recommended list of Goldilocks zones."

There was another phrase that Bill recognized, but this time he was sure his definition was not A-AOX4's definition. "Whaaat do Goldilocks zones have to do with reincarnation."

"You didn't pay attention to the orientation session on our outpatient reincarnation program, did you."

"What! I didn't get an orientation session!" said Bill, who probably didn't remember any such session because he didn't pay attention to it.

"Well—we rank millions of planets and their dimensional parallels based on their potential to help patients reintegrate into reality. We do try to set our patients up for success," A-AOX4 said. "To qualify as a Goldilocks zone, a planet has to meet the Theraprism's rigorous list of criteria: its lifeforms, cultures, laws of physics, and position in interdimensional society must all be conducive to a patient's continued recovery. We want to ensure that our patients' new lives are neither so difficult as to retraumatize them, nor so easy as to let them coast by avoiding continued personal growth, but right in the middle, so that they're emotionally and spiritually challenged without being overwhelmed. The Goldilocks zone: a perfect compromise between two extremes."

"Yeah, sure, sounds great." Bill could feel his eye glazing over in disinterest. Fight it, Cipher.

"Do you miss Earth?"

Bill tilted to glance askance at A-AOX4, and was surprised to see it had turned to focus a spotlight on him. Oh—it thought it had finally found a carrot to dangle in front of him. That was a popular strategy here: they figured out what a patient wanted most, and then used it to coax them into good behavior and "rehabilitation"—better still if they could attach a sense of urgency to it. Don't you want to see your descendants again before the last of them dies out? Don't you want to see your homeworld before its sun swallows it? Don't you want to reconcile with your god before the heat death of your universe?

But Bill had no universe, no homeworld, no family; no lovers or friends or gods that hadn't betrayed him and left him to rot here; and he'd remained smugly steadfast in refusing to give D-SM5 and its minions anything else it could use to get under his chitin. He was proud that he was too broken for even the famed Theraprism to fix him.

A-AOX4 probably thought it had finally found an opening. It might be useful to let it keep thinking that.

"You kidding me? Earth? Pfff! I don't miss that overgrown asteroid one bit!" He waved off the suggestion, and winced when the gesture tugged wrong at his reopened wound. "But hey, you don't study a world for millions of years without finding a few things about it to like. The music's pretty good. And the movies and literature, though if you ask me, they peaked between the first two World Wars. I like trees, evolution did a great job with trees. And humans really went off with the architecture. The pyramids? 10 out of 10. And some of the locals aren't bad, I've got a few exes from Earth."

"Do you? How many exes?"

"Living? Just a hundred forty or fifty," Bill said dismissively. "Earthlings just have those pretty eyes, you know? I'm a sucker for a pretty eye! But outside of that, no, there's nothing on Earth for me."

"I see," A-AOX4 said lightly, and dropped the conversation.

Hook, line, and sinker.

####

The original definition of a "Goldilocks zone" came from astrobiology. The Goldilocks zone was the ring of space around a star in which an orbiting planet could support liquid water and thus water-based life: not too close to the star and too hot, not too far and too cold, but just right. Earth, for instance, orbited Sol in its Goldilocks zone.

It was from this definition that other, more metaphorical definitions of Goldilocks zones emerged. Such as the Theraprism's: a world that was neither too stressful nor too boring for a newly brainwashed—sorry, "cured"—patient. And apparently Earth was in that Goldilocks zone, too.

Which was very interesting to Bill—because in their search for a new home, the Henchmaniacs had come up with their own definition of a Goldilocks zone. For them, it was a dimension close enough to the Nightmare Realm with a thin enough barrier that they could easily punch through it, but not so close and so thin that puncturing the barrier would pop it like a balloon and cause the dimension to immediately prolapse into the Nightmare Realm—which was a problem they'd had before. More than once. They needed a dimension they could easily cut a hole into, but control it, so they could slowly pump the Nightmare Realm's contents in. A barrier neither too vulnerable nor too strong, but just right.

And wouldn't you know it—but Earth happened to be in that Goldilocks zone too. Right next to a point in the dimensional membrane so thin, the Nightmare Realm could almost stretch through and kiss it.

####

Since Bill Cipher was infamously known as the last survivor of a trillion-years-extinct species, and had until recently been capable of instantly repairing himself, there were no medical records on how his anatomy worked. It didn't help that at some point eons ago he'd somehow managed to graft a 3D exoskeleton to his 2D anatomy without breaking his own physics, meaning no one had seen his true body in recorded history. Bill knew how he worked, but refused to offer any hints. So the Theraprism staff had to guess at Bill's medical treatment.

But Bill was still made of energy, and even weakened he could eventually self-repair. So whenever his injury was exacerbated, the nurse tended to just patch up his exoskeleton to keep it stable enough to send him back to his room.

On top of his mysterious anatomy, the staff had no idea how to medicate his physiology. They knew he could be medicated—Bill's personal substance (ab)use experiments were notorious far outside the Nightmare Realm—but they had to treat him like a newly-discovered form of life in figuring out what affected him, how it affected him, and how much it took. He'd been on and off hundreds of drugs as they tried to chemically stabilize a mind for which they had no idea what baseline stability looked like. D-SM5 had told him that between the enormous doses needed to impact his energy-based physiology and the vast variety of drugs he'd been through, Bill's medication regimen was the most expensive in the Theraprism. He took some pride in that.

He had very few things to take pride in anymore. He clung to what meager victories he could.

If Bill got his way, he wouldn't be medicated at all. None of the substances they wanted him on were what he'd call recreational. (Although for a while he had gotten away with not telling the docs that one of his antipsychotics had given him a side-effect of kaleidoscopic hallucinations.) Plus there was the fact that he'd heard rumors that quite a few pharmaceutical execs were good pals with a certain director—not that Bill would name names, of course!—that's his motto, Don't Slander Maliciou5ly!

But when he resisted taking his meds, they could send in the guards to pin him down so a nurse could inject a sedative so strong he wouldn't remember anything that happened for the next few hours to months (hard to tell) until they started tapering it off... and although he'd rather die than admit it, after losing that fight five or six times, even he had to admit to himself it was a lot less scary to just take their rotten drugs. Better to go through his days with his mind dulled and hazy than blacked out altogether.

To retain what little pride he had left, he'd reached a compromise with his jailers.

When the nurse had finished attaching the reinforcing splints around Bill's injury, they grabbed a medication measurement cup, filled it halfway with syrupy eye drops, and double-checked Bill's chart as they dropped thirteen different pills (plus a fourteenth pill for a painkiller) in the cup.

As Bill redressed, he eyed the unappetizing cocktail of antidepressants, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, and things he'd forgotten the purpose of but that probably weren't doing whatever the doctors hoped and definitely weren't doing anything Bill liked. "My straw?"

"Right, right." The nurse handed over one of the wide-diameter disposable white straws they kept on hand for patients who struggled to drink (or, in Bill's case, patients they struggled to get to drink).

Only a tiny fragment of Bill was actually locked up in the Theraprism—like pinching the glowing lure of an anglerfish in a trap while the rest of the fish thrashed outside—and because most of Bill's vast energy was elsewhere, he was nearly powerless. But he still had enough energy to heat up a finger, twist the straw around it, and hold it there until it had melted into a new shape.

The nurse sighed. "Do you have to do that every time? You ruin more straws than you get right."

Imperiously, Bill said, "Leave me to my whimsy." He tugged off the straw when it had cooled down to examine the corkscrew shape he'd made. The wall was a little flattened in one place, but he could pinch it back open. "See? It's perfect!" Cheerfully ignoring the nurse, he stuck the straw in his cup and slurped down his pills like tapioca balls. He tried not to remember what was in them.

A-AOX4 had left Bill with the nurse, but the two mall cops with medical kinks known as Bill's personal guards were still waiting nearby. The nurse's office was next door to the cafeteria—for ease of patients picking up their medications at meal times—in an anteroom that was connected to the rest of the ward by a set of locked double doors. A couple of guards were stationed near those doors at all times, and generally the guards assigned to Bill hung around with them while Bill was in the cafeteria or nurse's office. Bill floated up to them, regarding them with the disinterest of a king ignoring the servants he expected to open doors for him, and continued to ignore them as they escorted him back to his cell, one in front and one behind, while he sipped on his drugged cocktail.

The Dimensional Tyrant Ward was already one of the most heavily-guarded wards in the Theraprism; but to reach the maximum security cells, a patient had to pass several increasingly heavy security checkpoints with increasingly impenetrable security doors. The final door was warded against all magic, unhackable, unbreakable, and so airtight that even without his exoskeleton there was no gap Bill's 2D form could slide through. The doors to each cell—outfitted with tiny one-way mirror portholes, no latches or hinges on the inside—were a little less heavy duty, but packed with just as many failsafes. The Dimensional Tyrant Ward's max security hall had the most advanced security architecture of any psychiatric facility in the multiverse.

Bill had made a trillion year career of trying to break his way through a door nobody wanted him to go through. He could think of seven different ways to get through the doors. Sooner or later he'd find a way out of this place altogether.

A few of the doors had modifications: this one with a metal slab over the porthole to protect passersby from the occupant's petrifying gaze, that one with extra soundproofed padding coating the door. Bill was almost insulted his own door didn't warrant any special modifications.

His favorite door was The Beast's. A comfortingly yellow triangular sign on the door displayed a black symbol of a steak. Red signs above and below read "CAUTION! FEED UNSEASONED MEAT ONLY." "NO SUGAR ALLOWED." The Beast's heavy snuffing was audible through the door; his hot, sickly sweet breath seeped through the slot in the door that had been installed to deliver his food.

Bill's escorts automatically drifted to the far side of the hall to avoid The Beast. Bill, whose first medication was already starting to kick in, zigzagged lazily back and forth across the hall, heedless of how close he came to The Beast's cell.

Bill had never seen this door opened once in all his time incarcerated, and the dust settled on the additional chains and padlocks stretched across the door showed just how long it had been since the last incident. But some of the patients who'd been here longer than Bill still couldn't bring themselves to speak of the last time he'd escaped. Elder eldritch gods shuddered and gibbered nervously at the mention of his name. 

Bill tilted over to try to peer through the food slot at The Beast. A quivering, sickly blue eye stared back at him. Honestly, Bill thought The Beast was adorable.

Outside Bill's door, the guards waited for Bill to finish his medicine, hand over his cup and straw, and open his mouth and lift his eye out of the way so they could check and make sure he'd swallowed them.

And then he was left in his cell.

####

A perfect cube of uniform dull grey tiles supernaturally lit by a uniform dull grey glow, no light source, no shadows; in a max security room in the Maximum Security Wellness Center, patients weren't even trusted around light fixtures. The staff had removed everything Bill had used thus far to commit violence or attempt escape, plus a few more things as punishments for various infractions: journal, paint, pens, books, magazines, puppets (he missed those the most), even the furniture. He'd never earned the privilege of a TV or radio. By now, all he was permitted were black, red, yellow, and blue dry erase markers to draw on his walls—and the red and blue had gone dry; the "Be a TRY-angle!" poster they'd replaced whenever Bill left the room until he gave up and stopped tearing it down; and the clothes on his back. He'd gradually gotten himself banned from every extracurricular and recreational activity the Dimensional Tyrant Ward offered. Whenever he was fresh out of the SWV, when his restrictions were highest, his schedule consisted of mandatory individual therapy, mandatory group therapy, med checks, and the cafeteria.

He spent the vast majority of his time in his cell, sitting curled up alone, day after night after day, barely moving, barely talking, barely eating, waiting for nothing at all.

####

The seamless door swung open and admitted an Orb of Healing Light.

Bill blinked blearily up at the Orb. It was hard to tell how slowly time passed here, but he was sure it couldn't have been more than a couple hours since he'd been returned to his cell: that was when his medications made his mind the foggiest. "Emmyyy. Where ya been? Didn't see you when I came out of the Solitary Dullness Void. Nice of you to, uh..." A second ago he'd had a clever quip about how D-SM5 had clearly dropped by because it missed Bill, but he'd forgotten how to word it.

"Well, I'm here now. I'm flattered you missed me, Mr. Cipher."

Bill blinked heavily. "You turned that around on me," he griped. "Not fair." Ugh, the room was spinning. He flopped on his back.

"A-AOX4 tells me you showed an interest earlier in our outpatient reincarnation program," D-SM5 said. "Since it looks like your schedule is light these days, I thought you might be interested in attending Paingoreous's reincarnation?"

It took him a moment to process the offer. "Really? That's something people can attend?" What was the catch?

"We usually only extend the offer to the departing patient's friends, and—exemplary patients. But... I thought you might benefit from watching the process for yourself. It may encourage you to take a little more interest in your future."

For it to push a possible lead so fast, it really was desperate to find some leverage they could use on Bill. It probably thought of this as a rare opportunity—a patient from Ward 333 wasn't ready for reincarnation every day.

"Wow. I sure am encouraged," Bill said. "You have no idea just how encouraged I am."

####

If an unambitious office building and a utilitarian hospital reluctantly got married out of a vague sense of heteronormative social obligation, had a depressed child, and the fae spirited it away to replace it with an even more depressed changeling child, the child's small intestines would look a lot like the Theraprism's interior hallways: it was windowless, it was labyrinthine, it was beige, and it was grey, and it didn't even care anymore. Monotonous commercial high-traffic carpet alternated with monotonous commercial high-traffic linoleum. The fluorescent lights buzzed just enough to be annoying, but not quite enough that you'd feel justified in snapping and screaming "I've had it!" as you swung a pleather-seated metal chair at the light fixture.

Even though Bill had been languishing in the Theraprism for hours and/or millennia (Bill couldn't tell; he couldn't feel the passage of time), he hardly knew his way around the Dimensional Tyrant Ward, much less the rest of the facility. As D-SM5 led Bill (and six guards) out of Ward 333 and into a lower security zone, he looked for any scant identifiable landmarks and tried to memorize which turns they took by coding the lefts and rights and ups and downs into a mnemonic word. The walk helped wake him from his medication stupor; but his mind never quite felt fully on.

Bill had only briefly glimpsed the Theraprism's reincarnation unit during intake, just one of many rooms he'd been whisked past as he was dragged to Ward 333 screaming and cursing the Axolotl's name. Entering the unit now, it looked like an occult sacrificial altar carved from marble that had been modeled after a 23rd century starship's teleportation platform, contained in a room that looked like a magic planetarium: glowing stars hovered around the dome of the ceiling. Against the back wall in pale pink marble was carved an impossibly long axolotl, swimming in a figure 8 so its vapid smile almost caught the tip of its ribbonlike tail. Bill glowered at it. Backstabber.

He, D-SM5, and the other observers who'd already arrived were in a connected observation room with an enormous, thick window and a sealed door. Next to the window was a large computer console encased in the same marble as the reincarnation altar. That probably controlled the process.

The audience consisted of three aliens who looked a little like Paingoreous might have with his face unpeeled, a few patients and staff Bill recognized, more he didn't, and Jessica with the shining spherical head and the thirteen fingers. Oh boy. If he'd known Jessica would be here he would have tried to polish. Bill straightened his bow tie and smoothed his rumpled orange jumpsuit.

Paingoreous himself was already in the next room, standing on the altar. At the sight of Bill, his exposed facial muscles twitched, as though trying to widen his eyes even though their eyelids were already long gone. "Bill? What are you doing here?"

D-SM5 answered before Bill could blurt out a witty retort. "I invited Mr. Cipher. I thought he would benefit from seeing what he can look forward to once he's improved. I hope you don't mind."

Paingoreous's face immediately smoothed out. "Yes—of course, director, if you say so. I remember how difficult it was in the early days. I'm happy to help my fellow patients in any way I can." Suck up. A dry note entered his voice, "Especially a more troubled patient."

Bill took one of the folding chairs lined up in front of the window and shot back, "I'm about to have one less trouble! Byyye!" (Did Jessica think that was funny? Sometimes she did. He snuck a sideways glance to see if she was laughing. Oh, right—she didn't have a face.)

Paingoreous didn't dignify him with a response. Too good for the likes of Bill, no doubt. Paingoreous wasn't obligated to answer anybody—except the staff, of course.

Bill had never met the real Paingoreous. By the time Bill was committed, the monotony, medication, and mandatory therapy were already well on their way to killing whoever Paing had once been. No way the offensively bland sap leaving now was the same one who'd come in with his face skinned and muscles pinned open.

A technician was already turning on the computer console, running through a whole list of checks as the machine booted up. A hum filled the room as the altar began to softly glow. To all appearances Bill was facing forward, slitted pupil aimed straight at Paingoreous; but his anatomy was built for watching things out of the corner of his eye and his real attention was focused on the reincarnation technician. "So how's reincarnation work in this dump?" Bill asked D-SM5. "I didn't get the orientation."

"Yes you did," D-SM5 said. "I was there."

"Oh yeah? Well, I don't remember seeing you."

D-SM5 sighed. "First, Paingoreous's memories of his current life must be erased, to give him the best fresh start possible and to comply with Earth's soul sanitization regulations."

"Seems like a big waste of time. His head's already empty enough."

One of the Paing-ish aliens a couple seats over shot Bill a dirty look. "That's my son in there."

"Not for much longer, he isn't."

"Be respectful," D-SM5 said warningly.

Bill ignored it. "So once you've scrubbed his brain clean, what then?"

"Then, we reincarnate him. We've already carefully selected his destination and species; except for special circumstances, we generally don't customize the patient's body further, as the program is already set up to divinely design the body most well-suited to the soul about to inhabit it."

"If these bodies are so perfect, why customize them at all?"

"We wouldn't want, say, a recovering pyromaniac to be reborn with pyrokinesis." (Bill felt unfairly targeted.) "Once his species and destination are entered into the program, off he'll go to start his new life as an egg."

"An egg?! Sheesh, wasn't going through childhood once bad enough? I assume his childhood was bad, anyway! Nobody with competent parents ends up like him."

The Paing-ish alien beside Bill bolted out of their seat and lurched aggressively toward Bill. (Ha. Too easy.) The next alien over tugged them back by the arm. Bill was sure he heard a whispered, "Careful, do you know who that..." 

D-SM5 said, "One more crack like that and you're going back to your cell."

"Fiiine. Why can't he skip straight to being a butterfly, though?" What he really wanted to find out was how to skip straight to adulthood.

"For starters, because spontaneous generation has been heavily restricted on Earth since the 15th century, and banned completely outside of special circumstances since the 19th century."

Spontaneous generation. The creation of fully formed life from unliving matter: maggots that emerged from flesh, geese that emerged from barnacles, snakes and crocodiles that wriggled out of the mud of the Nile. He'd always planned to legalize it again when he took over. So if the only reason the Theraprism couldn't do it was because it was banned, then they must have the technology for it, right?

Bill tuned D-SM5 out as it prattled on about the mental health benefits of restarting life and beginner's mind and boring therapeutic psychobabble, and ignored the flashing lights and divine music as Paingoreous's memory, personality, and identity were all wiped clean. He was only interested in what the reincarnation technician was doing. (Although when Bill briefly glanced at Paingoreous, his shape seemed somehow uncertain, as though his molecules had only just walked into the room and promptly forgotten what they'd come in for or who they were supposed to be. Ready to be reshaped into something else.)

The technician opened up the primary reincarnation program, checked a box confirming that the patient's previous incarnation had been erased, and began setting up the specifications for his next incarnation. Choosing the reincarnation world was easy enough: under the drop down menu, the "Goldilocks zone" worlds were sorted first. Earth was sixth on the list. Choosing a dimension was just as easy.

However, choosing the location and time period looked more complicated; rather than searching through a handy list of continents or geological epochs, the technician checked Paingoreous's patient file and typed a couple of long strings of numbers into the blanks for the coordinates and time. They didn't look like any date system or coordinate system Bill was familiar with. How the heck would he work with that?

And selecting the species, to Bill's horror, meant scrolling down a menu ordered by how frequently a species had been selected for reincarnation at this facility. That was insane! The Theraprism always discharged patients as unambitious species where one member was nearly incapable of making a meaningful impact on the local biosphere—anything useful like an octopus or a goat would be buried amongst the literal billions of species that had received zero reincarnations. Couldn't you just start typing the species's name to jump down to—? But no, the Theraprism's keyboard didn't have characters to type human loan words. The technician seemed to be scrolling manually.

That was fine! That was fine. Whatever Bill left as, he wouldn't be it for very long. He wasn't shopping for a makeover; just for an escape pod.

The technician located Vanessa atalanta (147 prior reincarnations) and kept moving, tabbing past a dizzying array of options—sex, size, coloration, visual clarity, caterpillar spine distribution, a whole list of health conditions and mutations the technician skipped—and every box she tabbed past automatically filled in with the word "DEFAULT". How many boxes could be filled in with defaults?

Bill leaned toward D-SM5. "So do you chuck these suckers out anywhere random on the planet or what?"

"Of course not," it said promptly. "What a thought! We take a deep interest in our discharged patients' well-being. We never leave where they spend their next lives at the whim of the computer's randomized decision." 

But they could leave it up to the computer. Still watching sideways as the technician scrolled past an "advanced settings" button without touching it (was that where the spontaneous generation option was hidden?), Bill asked, "Do youalways choose for the patient, or can the patient make requests?"

Dryly, D-SM5 said, "Unless you make some enormous progress, I doubt you'd get clearance to reincarnate anywhere near that town you terrorized, if that's what you're wondering."

"What! Who said I want to visit that crummy valley! All those mountains and trees? Ugh! No, do you know what kind of place I like? The Greater Cairo metropolitan area. Dry! Sandy! Flat!" said Bill, who detested flat landscapes with all his heart. "Covered in pyramids! Sometimes with my face on them! Plus there's the Nile! I love the Nile! I love being in the Nile! I'd spend all my time in the Nile if I could! I've had some loser ex-friends say that living your whole life in the Nile is an unhealthy coping mechanism to avoid addressing problems in your life, but if you ask me they're just jealous of how amazing my life is—"

"Ready for reincarnation," the technician said. "Proceed?"

D-SM5 left its seat, hovering closer to the glass to catch Paingoreous's attention. "Are you ready?"

"Sure," said Paingoreous, who clearly wasn't certain what he was claiming to be ready for.

"Proceed," D-SM5 said. Bill fell silent, paying close attention to how the technician began the reincarnation process.

She clicked a button that said "EXECUTE" (gruesome), clicked through a couple more confirmation screens, and then the faint background hum grew to a rumble and the magical stars glowed brighter. "Ten seconds," she said. "Nine... eight... seven..."

"Hey!" Bill shouted through the glass. "Friendly tip for Earth! Humans love when you fly into their eyeballs! You should do that!"

D-SM5 rounded on Bill, glowing furiously at him. (Maybe it was Bill's imagination, but he thought Jessica looked amused. Worth it.)

The soon-to-be caterpillar formerly known as Paingoreous stared in confusion at Bill. "Okay," he said—and then there was a bright flash of light.

He let out an awful wail of pure soul-rending agony.

When the light faded, he was gone.

The observation room had fallen perfectly silent.

"That's fine," D-SM5 said. "That's—that's normal."

####

Every once in a while, the Theraprism got something right. It was one of the few big government-sponsored "respectable" institutions that didn't make a fuss about how Bill ate. They just let him go to the cafeteria, strip down, unpeel his exoskeleton, and hang out with the photosynthesizers for half an hour or so in the corner under the grow lights. No gasps of horror or screams of outrage—not from the staff anyway; some of the patients took a bit to get used to it when they were new. It was a refreshing change.

On the other hand, even though they were willing to turn a couple lights high enough to melt most mortals' eyeballs when Bill was feeding, he never left feeling truly energized. The grow lights were designed for species with leaves and solar panels; they weren't designed to fuel up a god made of energy. A few bright lightbulbs didn't measure up to raw starlight.

He figured there wasn't any point in complaining. As much as he hated feeling like a gas tank trying to burn a dust mote for fuel, he knew that they knew that long before he even reached 1% of his usual power, he'd be strong enough to vaporize the Theraprism with the snap of a finger.

When he'd had his daily dose of light, he folded shut, redressed, and drifted over to the actual food for dessert. He grabbed a bottle of an allegedly "lemon" nigh-flavorless clear soda—this would do—and hovered toward the exit.

The cafeteria monitor stationed in the door elbowed her way in front of Bill. "Ahem."

"What?"

"You know the rules. No food outside the cafeteria."

"What! This isn't food, it's a soda. Beverages aren't food, everyone knows that." The monitor didn't budge. Bill tried whining. "C'mooon, I got injured in the void today. Look at this!" He gestured demonstratively at his splints. "Look how much pain I'm in!"

The Solitary Wellness Void made this cafeteria monitor uncomfortable. She'd never said so directly, but she tended to turn a blind eye when patients who'd just come out of the SWV were more aggressive than usual or tried to sneak extra desserts. One time when Bill had come out of a week in the SWV, she'd wordlessly slipped him a couple of packets of low-sodium fear sauce, a condiment usually distributed exclusively to the obligate phobophages in the ward. "Besides, it's my birthday! I'm a birthday triangle! You wouldn't deny a birthday triangle a soda, right?"

"Is it really your birthday?"

"Heck if I know. It could be. I don't know it isn't."

She was trying not to smile. "Fine. Just one time. Don't let anyone catch you with it and finish it before you're back in your cell."

"You got it, toots." Bill glided past her.

He slipped from the cafeteria into the nurse's office before his guards could catch sight of his illicit drink. "Hey, bartender! I'm here for my nightcap."

The nurse prepared Bill's evening battery of drugs. He bent his straw into a fun zigzag—honestly it was really more of a sad N shape—slurped down half the eyedrops, and opened his soda to refill his cup.

The nurse looked over at the hiss of the cap opening. "Hey! Hey—"

"It's just soda!" Bill protested. "The cafeteria monitor said it was fine! Besides, what's a little soda gonna do? Nullify all seven of my antipsychotics before I reach my cell?" (Bill had overheard the nurse grumbling to a colleague about the amount of antipsychotics he was on. They thought it was utterly excessive, considering that they'd had no evidence the drugs were doing anything but making him more erratic—which was something, because Bill had seen patients near drooling catatonia from their meds without any of the nurses questioning their current dosage. Conversely, the docs thought Bill's odd biology meant they needed to give him more if they wanted any hope of impacting him.) "Come on. It's not even caffeinated!"

The nurse took the soda bottle to check the ingredient list, then relented. "Fine. I suppose it won't do any harm."

"You're a peach." Bill topped off his cup, poured the rest of the soda over his eye, crushed the bottle, and consumed it too.

"The plastic probably isn't good for you, though."

"I like the way it melts in the back of my throat."

As he drank his medicated soda and got escorted back to his cell, he lazily drifted back and forth in the hall as far as the guards would let him go, dawdling more than usual—he knew they hated it when he dawdled, but they knew he hated spending one second more in his cell than necessary and grudgingly put up with a little lollygagging to keep the peace. But their tolerance ran out in the max security hall as Bill slowed down even further near The Beast's cell. The guard behind Bill pushed him. "Hurry up." 

"Hey!" Bill wobbled off path and stumbled into the wall, spilling some of his drink. "What's your problem!"

"You stopped moving."

"I did not! I'm just taking my time! Enjoying the weather out here."

"Well, take less time."

"Ugh, fine. Didn't realize you had plans I'm keeping you from." Bill rolled his eye and kept moving.

"Hold it!"

Bill froze. He turned around. The guard was pointing at a streak of clear fluid that had spilled from Bill's cup and rolled down the door. His bones frosted over.

"You dropped a pill," the guard said.

Bill's gaze focused on the circular soap-green tablet on the floor. "Are you kidding?! Aren't the other twelve enough?"

"No exceptions, Cipher."

"You don't expect me to eat it off the floor!"

"Do you want to go all the way back to the nurse's office for another?"

Bill groaned in frustration. "Fine!" He snatched it up, wiped it off on the guard's sleeve, and popped it in his mouth. The guard raised a fist; Bill bared his fangs; and after a tense moment, the guard backed down first. The Theraprism had taken nearly every other power from Bill, but it couldn't take his teeth—and though he knew the guards would win any fight, Bill could make it hurt.

They returned him to his room; Bill handed over his cup; they checked to make sure his cup was empty, inspected his mouth, and locked him in.

He hoped they wouldn't notice that half his pills had stuck in the zig-zag bend of the opaque white straw.

He hoped they wouldn't notice The Beast's tongue thrusting through his food slot to lap up the spilled soda that was running down his door and over the bright red "NO SUGAR ALLOWED" sign.

His entire plan hinged on it.

####

Bill was drawing on the wall with his scant art supplies when he felt reality ripple around him, like the wave in a still pool when someone new quietly slides into the water. He looked up from his work. It was happening.

There were several thuds; then a crash; and then the peal of a prison alarm piercing the air. The alarm melted into shrill dolphin-like laughter, and then the frenetic staccato of a hyper speed dance song that threatened to fracture Bill's internal organs. He shuddered as the sound tore at his wound like freezing ice crystals expanding a crack in a boulder.

But he rose into the air and turned to face the door, ready.

Just in time for the door to vanish. The Theraprism melted away like mist in the sunlight—and oh, the sunlight was glorious. The wide open sky pulsed maddening colors so vivid that the faraway rainbows looked monotone in comparison; the land consisted of rolling hills of candy-coated tongues and stomachs and muscles, the paws of enormous buried corpses thrusting up into the sky, the crevasses between burial mounds running with artificially-flavored saliva. It was Bill's kind of place. He wished he had time to hang around.

Before him, orange fur matted with a fine dust of powdery sugar, wild eyes contracted to pinpricks, stood The Beast.

"You did it, you beautiful monster!" Bill shrieked with laughter. "I knew you'd come through!"

The Beast rumbled, "Em deerf evah uoy."

"You're welcome! You can return the favor later! Me, I have somewhere to be." While The Beast was asserting his personal reality on top of the Theraprism's idea of reality, none of the Theraprism's walls or doors existed. Bill wasn't sure exactly how far The Beast's radius of influence extended, except that it was at least far enough to get him out of the maximum security hall—but he had to move now, before the guards rallied to sedate The Beast. Bill slipped a finger into the band of his ankle bracelet and found that under the influence of The Beast's physics, the stiff plastic stretched like a warm rubber band. He tugged it off and tossed it aside. "Seeya, pal!"

But The Beast held up a paw, blocking Bill before he could zip off. "Noob ym tpecca," The Beast said. "Hself ym emusnoc."

"Oooh. Woww." Bill looked at The Beast's candy paw. "Oh, man. Generous offer! You have no idea how tempting it is to take a taste, but I've really gotta get somewhere, and I've gotta be at least sober enough to pull that off..."

"Emusnoc," The Beast insisted. "Hsur ragus eht fo ssendam gnilims citatsce eht ni em nioj. Rehtegot srorroh letsap dna serusaelp kcis hcus wonk lliw ew. Evarg lufituaeb ym ni em htiw tor."

Bill stared again at the paw. The tip of his tongue slipped out beneath his eye to lick hungrily at his waterline. When was the last time he'd been on something that felt good? "Oh, what the heck!" He took The Beast's paw. "I can do this buzzed! How much damage can one little lick do, anyway?"

####

The guard heaved open the maximum security hall's door. The floor was covered in tacky pools of neon candy and removed ankle monitors. "It's just like we feared," the guard shouted into a walkie-talkie, glancing quickly through each cell door's window. "Every single max security patient escaped under The Beast's reality-altering field."

The guard stopped at the sight of neon yellow and orange, peering through the window at the triangle flopped flat on the ground and surrounded by powdery pink sugar.

"Well," the guard said, "all of them except Cipher."

Through the walkie-talkie, D-SM5 tiredly said, "He licked the paw, didn't he."

"Looks like it, boss."

D-SM5 groaned. "All right! Positive thinking! That's the second biggest threat in the ward already accounted for! Silver lining to Mr. Cipher's substance use issues. Assist in securing the others."

####

The good news was that The Beast seemed happy to frolic randomly around the Theraprism rather than head toward the exit, forcing the other escapees to follow along to remain under his reality-altering protection rather than get stranded in small rooms and locked-down halls. The bad news was that his meandering route let him pick up more and more revelers. After an hour, only a third of the max security patients had been re-captured and dragged back to their cells, and twice as many medium security patients had joined the riot. 

A-AOX4 was on hand in the maximum security hall to supervise as the guards brought in super-powered escapees. Most of them came back loopy on either The Beast's toxins or on the sedative that had been injected to keep them calm. A-AOX4 was checking them for awareness of their surroundings—name, where are you, when are you, why are you here—as each one was locked back in their cell.

And each time it passed by Bill's cell, it glanced in, concerned.

Bill had been almost pleasant when he'd come out of the Solitary Wellness Void—maybe after all those sessions in isolation he was finally ready to be more of a team player. And D-SM5 had said that he'd been unusually well-behaved and attentive during the reincarnation. A-AOX4 had hoped their most surly patient was finally opening up. It would be a shame if this incident with The Beast resulted in his new progress backsliding.

Plus, it took a heavy dose of anything to impact Bill at all, much less knock him out cold. He'd already had to go to the nurse earlier today; what if he needed medical attention?

So after locking up the latest subdued prisoner, A-AOX4 said to one of the guards, "Take over monitoring incoming patients. I'm checking on Cipher."

It unlocked the door and hovered into the room. "Cipher?"

No response. He was plastered flat to the floor.

"Bill?" It floated lower to check his condition. 

He was paper.

Paper meticulously colored in with yellow marker and folded into a triangle; scraps of paper colored black, carefully torn into hand and feet shapes, and shoved in the sleeves and pants of his prison uniform.

A-AOX4 lifted up the paper. On the other side was Bill's "Be a TRY-angle!" poster. He'd written across it, "IS THIS TRYING HARD ENOUGH FOR YOU?"

It turned toward the door—and discovered Bill had filled the wall with a drawing of himself making an obscene gesture, with a word bubble that read, "GIVE MY REGARDS TO THE AX! And tell Jessica I said bye xoxo"

It zoomed out into the hallway and grabbed its walkie-talkie. "Director SM5! Cipher's escaped his cell! He left a decoy! He's not with The Beast, we don't know where he is!"

There was a moment of dead air. And then the director growled, "I think I have an idea."

####

Trying to keep his giggles as quiet as possible, Bill looped through the Theraprism's halls, drifting between The Beast's rolling fields of hard candy corpses and the Theraprism's rigid monotone halls. What had he been worried about! Getting hopped up on astralplanar sugar before escaping his cell had been a great idea! It gave him instant shortcuts through half the walls! And he could handle a little buzz like this! He was totally in control of his actions and knew exactly what he—

How long had he been flying the wrong direction? He turned around. Wow was he high, he could barely focus on anything but all the colors. He wondered if The Beast's toxins had any weird interactions with his meds.

He was lucky The Beast had decided to dawdle around the Dimensional Tyrants Ward: here at the far end of the Theraprism, there were no signs of crisis beyond the sealed doors indicating the facility was under lockdown—and once he was outside a high security ward, there were plenty of cracks, gaps, and vents that Bill was thin enough to slide through. He hadn't even seen a guard since he'd left his cell. By the time he reached the reincarnation room, The Beast's landscape was fading out and the sugar crash headache was fading in, but the facility was still on lockdown and no one seemed to be looking for Bill. He slipped beneath the locked door and powered up the console to the reincarnation machine.

He skipped straight to the reincarnation program and checked the box that said, yes, the patient's brain had been washed. He paused when a warning pop-up blocked the screen. The technician hadn't gotten a pop-up. He had to read over the two-sentence warning three times before he understood what he was looking at. The soul sanitization routine hadn't been run recently, was he sure the patient's memory was erased—ugh, yes. He irritably clicked the confirmation and hoped that would be the last of it.

Bill quickly selected Earth and dimension 46'\; he tabbed past the coordinates and date, and they both automatically filled in "DEFAULT." D-SM5 had said the computer would make a "random" decision if you didn't plug in a time and place, but the staff didn't know Earth like Bill did. If he left the time and place up to the whims of fate, then something as weird as a trillion-year-old alien chaos god escaping a criminal insane asylum to spontaneously generate as a fully grown mortal would be sucked straight into the weirdest place and time on Earth. Gravity Falls: August, 2012. Weirdmageddon. He was willing to bet his life on it.

He was betting his life on it.

After that, with any luck, he'd be able to shed his new body like any other puppet and return to his castle in the sky. If for some reason he couldn't get out of it, he'd only need to pull a couple of magic tricks outside a normal mortal's capabilities to catch his past self's attention, find a way to prove his identity—heck, with any luck, they'd be seeing through each other's eyes and that would instantly confirm it—warn his past self about the Pines' treachery, prevent his own death, save Weirdmageddon, restructure the universe in his image, and rule his new party paradise as god-king for all eternity. Easy.

He scrolled down the list of available creatures, looking for something that would be easy to reach the Fearamid and prove his intelligence with—something with vocal cords that could speak eye-bat would be useful, it'd save him a lot of trouble if he could just shout at his sentinels in their own language and startle them into listening—but, to his surprise, the first useful species he found was humans, down amongst the species that had received a single-digit number of reincarnations from the Theraprism. Really, humans? They allowed that?

Over the blaring alarm, a voice made an announcement. He completely tuned it out—and only realized a moment after it ended that he'd heard his own name. They knew he'd escaped.

Bill didn't have time to search for anything better. He selected humanity.

He tabbed past dozens of features he could choose from for his body—default default default default—who cared what the body peed out of, he wasn't keeping the thing long enough to fill its bladder! He clicked open the advanced settings—there, spontaneous generation! He hoped this thing wouldn't drop him on the sidewalk as a baby, but usually when a human suddenly popped into existence, it was an adult sculpted from clay or something, right? He'd be fine! He checked the box for spontaneous generation.

He got another error message. He groaned. He wasn't sober enough for this.

Something about spontaneous generation being banned on Earth after 1859, is he willing to assume the liability if the patient generates after—yeah sure whatever, he clicked yes. Another pop-up prompted him for the digital signature of the person assuming liability. He typed in D-SM5's name.

As soon as he clicked enter, another error message popped up. "What!!"

He flinched at the sound of a muffled pneumatic hiss. Outside, somebody had unlocked the doors to this hallway. The alarm was still blaring; the Theraprism wasn't coming off lockdown. That meant whoever had unlocked the hall was coming for him.

"Focusss." He skimmed the new warning. Something about humans being on a list of species for which spontaneous generation was restricted—what loser had written a law about that! Who cared if a fully-formed, brand-new human popped out of thin air in the middle of town! What about Bill's wants?! He checked another box YES HE'S SURE HE WANTS TO SPONTANEOUSLY GENERATE A HUMAN YOU MONSTER and pounded enter.

Another pop-up. It wanted to know on which god's authority the spontaneous generation had been authorized.

Bill froze. Why did it need to know. Would it check? A machine that could reincarnate a soul was probably also a machine that could shoot off a prayer. Or was Bill supposed to have some kind of divine authorization code? Which gods were even allowed to authorize that kind of thing? He didn't know which stupid legislative body had made this stupid law or what their stupid definition of a god was! Gods weren't even real, they were just stupid, arrogant, stuck-up jerks who were powerful enough to trick people into thinking they were important! Like Bill! What name were they looking for?!

He heard voices in the hallway. He darted over to the door, slid his fingers through the seams around the doorframe to crush the latching mechanism so it couldn't be opened, and darted back. That wouldn't hold them long; he knew from experience that the guards could bust down the doors in these low security wings without much difficulty.

"Bill Cipher!" That was D-SM5. It had come personally? In any other circumstance, he'd be flattered. "Open up immediately!"

"Has that ever worked?" A god, a god, a god... his eye caught on the bas relief at the back of the next room. If there was any god this place would accept orders from... The guards were ramming the door; the bending metal groaned. He typed "THE AXOLOTL" and hit enter.

The button grayed out but the pop-up didn't go away. The screen froze. "What." Bill tried clicking again. The cursor turned into one of those little spinning balls that meant the computer was quietly having a stroke. "No no no no—"

D-SM5 hollered, "You know what the consequences will be if you don't—"

"I'm not listeniiing to yooou!"

"You're only going to hurt yourse—"

Dropping his voice to a demonic boom to drown out the director, Bill recited, "'I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby's house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited! People were not—" There was a shriek of tearing metal, and then a bright glow behind Bill as D-SM5 peered through the gap in the door. Bill started talking faster, "'Were not invited they went there they got into automobiles which bore them out to Long Island and somehow—'"

The pop-up disappeared. The cursor returned to normal. The box next to spontaneous generation was checked. Bill stared for a split second, then quickly closed out the advanced settings, scrolled to the bottom of the page, and hit "EXECUTE."

Someone blasted the door out of its frame; based on the blinding glow that accompanied the blast, Bill suspected that wasn't one of the guards, but D-SM5 itself. He frantically clicked through the next two confirmations, flung a couple of folding chairs toward D-SM5 and its thugs, and dove beneath the door to the next room. Ten seconds.

"Cancel the reincarnation!" D-SM5 snapped.

A guard ran to the console. (What if they saw where Bill had gone? They could probably guess the planet, but would the computer keep records of his destination, what his new body looked like—) "I don't see a cancel! I don't think—"

"Then get him off the altar!"

Five seconds. Please spawn as an adult and not a baby, please spawn as an adult and not a baby, please— Bill hadn't broken the door between the observation room and the altar; the guards easily unlocked it. "No no no—!"

"Don't let him esc—!"

Three seconds. An impossibly bright light shone down on Bill. He reflexively peeled open his exoskeleton to accept it. LIGHT—oh, he felt even more alive than the time he'd stolen a bottle of stimulants from the nurse station, ground them up, and snorted them off Mrs. Mirrorcube's back. His eye widened, taking in as much free energy as he could—and then he focused his gaze through the window on the console, focusing the infinite light into a laser powerful enough to instantly melt through the window and explode the computer. The guards fell back, trying to shield their tender mortal flesh from the fury of Bill's fire. Enjoy the blisters.

D-SM5 bellowed, "Bill Cipher, you mo—!"

"CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, SUCKA!" He could feel his body ripping apart, cracking open at the wound. It hurt, but not the hurt of dying; it was the euphoric hurt of spaghettification, of being infinitely sucked beyond a beautiful event horizon. Bill's triumphant cackle filled the air—

—and then the room was silent and dark, and Bill was gone.

####

(If you're new here: I posted this as a one shot because I think we could all use a little Bill escaping from Theraprism, yeah? However it's ALSO part of my ongoing Bill-stuck-in-a-human-body fic I'm currently editing for TBOB compatibility. So, if you enjoyed this and want to see where post-reincarnation Bill goes, check out the fic!! And if you DON'T want to read the rest of the fic, I hope you enjoyed the one shot and I'd love to hear your thoughts.

If you do check out the main fic be forewarned it's only 100% TBOB compatible up to chapter 6. After that it is, bizarrely, 98% TBOB compatible, because somehow I accidentally wrote a fic that lines up with the book so well that I'm legit worried people could use TBOB to work out fic spoilers. But I still need to edit the remaining 2%.

If you're NOT new here: hey gang this is the new chapter 6!!! I finished editing this chapter about fifteen minutes before post time so it's not as polished as my usual chapters, but I hope it didn't read that way. Anyway, I look forward to hearing what y'all think!)

[pomefioredove]

now I'm actually invested in this idea. maybe I'll write a full length fic someday idk... for now I have short hcs

parts 1 | 2 | 3 | kalim | bad ending

summary: crowley decides to "give away" yuu to the highest "donation" for financial reasons type of post: headcanons characters: all nrc students additional info: can be read as platonic or romantic, except malleus is pretty romantic, second person pov, yuu is gender neutral, maybe a little ooc I wrote this as soon as I got up

crowley has had his fair share of "what the fuck" moments from you but this was really taking the cake

he acts so... casual about it?

swaggers into ramshackle one morning and says times are tough and your personal expenses are straining the budget so he's decided to "put you in someone else's care"

"The screening process will be vigorous to make sure you end up in good hands!" like you're a cat or something "Your expenses will be covered and you'll have somewhere to go during break!"

okay great. pretty obvious you have no say in this, so you don't even argue. what's the worst that could happen?

*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Ace, Deuce, Jack, and Epel find you the next day to say they're pooling their money to buy you

"To what?"

Epel shrugs. "Oh, well Crowley said we need to offer a donation to prove we're capable of supporting you..."

(you think that if not for the laws of this land you would have slaughtered that old fart)

Jack goes on a really long tirade about how shady and underhanded this is, making sure to reaffirm that he believes you should be free to make your own choices

"So you'll let me go once you get me?"

"Uhhh..."

Ace thinks once they buy you you'll have no choice but to do all of his homework for him

Deuce says that's not really how it works- and even if he tried, Riddle would kill him

(they've already gone over this twice before finding you)

Epel happily volunteers to take you home with him over breaks, probably the only positive in this mess

even if he thinks the whole thing is kind of funny

*ੈ✩‧₊˚

incapable of keeping his mouth shut, Ace accidentally spills the plan to Riddle, who is understandably aghast

you can't just give away a person under your care like a toy!

of all the irresponsible things...

of course, he'll have to put up his offer, too

purely for your sake! with a nicer room and a brand new copy of the dorm rules, maybe you'll stop getting yourself into trouble

he's got some family money (doctors, naturally) and considers this a worthwhile purchase, for his sanity and yours

of course, Trey and Cater overhear and may or may not be pooling their own cash for a chance, too

going behind Riddle's back on this is a risky venture, but hey, someone's gotta be on your side, here, right?

I mean, between a bunch of sixteen year old boys, the housewarden, and them, who would you choose?

actually don't answer that

...not that it's much of a secret, anyway. Cater's already got their gofundme equivalent link in bio

*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Leona initially plans to have you become a live-in lackey like Ruggie

but then he really starts thinking- and, hey, the possibilities are endless, right?

for one, you'd make a really good pillow

he might have to kick Grim out for your full attention, but you could learn to live with that

and malleus would hate it

...that's reason enough for him

plus, he's got money to burn, so why not?

either way, he sets his bid at a reasonable (maybe too confident) price and sits back to watch the chaos unfold as everyone scrambles for a piece of the pie

news travels fast around school, after all

then Ruggie finds out that you could dethrone him as Leona's #2 and is understandably a little annoyed

that's his cushy post-grad job gig, thank you! he's worked hard for that!

besides, why should Leona get to hoard you? the guy can barely take care of himself!

so, Ruggie ends up outsourcing to a few dozen classmates for the necessary funds at a steep I-owe-you price

he's gonna be eating nothing but dandelions for a while...

*ੈ✩‧₊˚

now, Azul is annoyed

once the news goes school-wide, it's all anyone can talk about

talk about good marketing...

why didn't he think of such a brilliant scam? he could have negotiated with Crowley to have a café brand deal tie-in!

of course, he's already set his bid, with Jade and Floyd offering to pitch in as necessary

it's a risky investment, sure, but a worthwhile one

Azul tells everyone that with the prefect's "obvious" popularity, having them at the café a few nights a week would drive sales through the roof

though that's really just what he says to shirk suspicion

a likely excuse coming from him, though, really, it would just be nice having you around

and if not for his own affections, Floyd's incessant begging and Jade's subtly manipulative comments about "how nice" it would be having a new face around would be enough for him to cave eventually

*ੈ✩‧₊˚

"Kalim, no," is the first thing that Jamil says

"I strongly advise against this. It's another one of Crowley's silly scams and you could end up a target bec- are you even listening?"

hint: he is not

the second Kalim found out that he could get to take in his favorite magicless student like one of his treasures, he was all over it

(AKA infinite sleepovers)

and for what? a little optional donation to prove he's got the funds? he's got cash to spare!

he's already got your new room in Scarabia set up before he even puts his bid in

right next to his of course :)

and despite what Jamil insists, he himself might be working behind the curtain just a little to ensure he's the one who ends up with you

after all, why should Kalim get everything? this might be a valuable learning opportunity for him

You don't always get what you want

*ੈ✩‧₊˚

as much as Epel tries to keep the rest of his dorm from finding out, it's inevitable

he's actually a little surprised that the news didn't get to Vil sooner

with Rook around campus, surely he must have said something...

when Vil does find out, though, he just sighs

oh, of course. what next, will everyone meet each other in the arena and fight to the death over the prefect?

of all the silly, immature things...

oh? what's that? he's bidding anyway? of course he is, silly potato. he can't have some unwashed miscreant making you sleep on polyester bedding

(really, he's the only person on campus worthy of your time)

Rook has also been mysteriously absent from the dorm lately, though his initials on a poem and a strangely large sum of money end up in the donation pile

but really, that could be anyone... Rook would never dare betray Vil again, right?

*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Ortho finds out directly from the other first years and sends Idia the details immediately

with a little note of encouragement, of course: "could be excellent for improving your social skills!"

Idia understandably freaks out

"WTF!!!! nooo way! this is a person, not a chatbot we're talking about here! I can barely keep virtual pets alive!!!!"

(liar)

(...but this is still different)

the conversation ends there, but semi-anonymous bid from someone named "gloomurai" gets cashapp'd directly to crowley

*ੈ✩‧₊˚

everyone in the room immediately turns to Malleus

"For the record, I think it's wrong to be bargaining over a human being," Silver says first. "But if anyone could handle it with grace, it's you."

Lilia laughs. "Oh, you're just saying that because you like the prefect so much!"

"Father, you're the one who likes the prefect so much,"

"Oh, right! carry on then. After all, I'm sure we could share,"

Sebek is the only one relatively against the idea, though Lilia luckily manages to get him to lower his voice after his third speech about how you aren't good enough for his liege

Malleus is rather quiet through the whole evening, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with any of the points made

he disappears for a short while, and when he comes back he seems a little more confident

though, of course, he goes to you first

seeing him at Ramshackle in the middle of the night is a familiar and welcoming sight after all of the chaos of your week

and he's in a great mood!

"Child of man! I've come with news," he says. "I have heard of your predicament and have come up with a solution!"

you immediately sulk. "Oh, no. You know I think this whole thing is terrible, right?"

"Yes, Silver mentioned you might not like the idea of being bought and sold like a trinket. But worry not, I do not plan on paying for you in money,"

you pause, at a loss for words, and then tentatively continue. "You're not...?"

"Of course not. What a primitive idea, I was baffled to hear it myself. My proposal will be more traditional: a modest sum of treasure, and a generous amount of livestock and the finest crop Briar Valley can offer,"

certainly he's not this naive, you think

"You really think Crowley is going to accept that over money? I'm pretty sure Kalim just bid away an entire country's worth,"

he laughs. "You speak as if this is some kind of business deal! I'm quite confident that my dowry will be best,"

huh. that was a strange way of putting it

but then again, you still didn't really understand how things work here, so you go along with it

and you allow yourself to relax. he seems confident in his offer, and he doesn't even see you as some kind of prize to win!

"Oh, well, alright. Thanks! I'm glad you're on it,"

he smiles. "Rest assured, child of man, you're in good hands. My dowry will far outshine the others, and the wedding will be even better,"

"I was honestly getting a little nervous for a momen- wait- wedding!?"

[toxicanonymity]

omg the way every inch makes me drool idk what u did to me i haven’t been the same since 😃 ur so talented i owe u my kidney for that fic alone ! would ever consider part two?? no pressure !!!

EVERY INCH 2

2200 words, m!ghostface x f!reader

follows Every Inch. NEXT: Every inch 3

SERIES MASTERLIST

A/N: He's never unmasked. He is night walks coded. Thank you for all the love on my first Ghostface fic. This was a "one shot fail" because of your engagement & enthusiasm. WARNINGS: I8+ piv, noncon, he calls himself daddy, voyeurism, dirty talk, masturbation, knifeplay, hair pulling, manhandling, choking kinda, degradation, pet names. NO USE OF Y/N. 

SUMMARY: Last time you saw ghostface, he was unconscious from the car wreck and you had your way with him. Now, he's coming to take what's his.

You've put Ghostface behind you, at least in terms of fearing for your life. He's finally left you alone. He must be too humiliated to face you after you restrained him and had your way with him in the car while he was passed out. You still look at the picture you took every day.  You'd like to get it printed and stick it on your bathroom mirror.  He looks so pathetic with his own mess all over his robe. But it's not just the humiliation you love to see. It's his cock. . .

Yeah, his cock.  You've thought about it more than a few times. He would've given you every inch. All you had to do was ask. And the video of him whimpering? You save that for special occasions. Like when you need to cum in a hurry. 

It's Friday night and you're lying in bed after getting home from seeing a movie.  You make sure your vibrator is charged before you start reading, but soon enough you get distracted.  You're looking at your video of Ghostface coming all over himself when a call pops up on the screen. No ringtone.  Your phone is still on silent from the theater.  

The restricted number still makes your heart jump even after such an empowering victory. But you rip the bandaid off and answer it on the first ring. "Hello?"

"So... how'd you like the movie?" the voice changer asks you. 

You panic and hang up, but when he calls right back, you answer again. "This isn't funny, whoever you are."

"You know it's me, baby. You feel it in your. . . pants."

"What do you want?"

"I asked how you liked the movie." 

Friday night. Lucky guess. You know he’s not going to let it go, so you might as well answer. You’re not going to give him the satisfaction of acting aghast that he knows what you did tonight.  "Fine, I liked it. It was fun,” you say dismissively. 

"Picked a bad time to refill your drink. . .  Missed a great kill."

Your heart jumps. ". . .you were there?" The theater wasn't even that crowded. How could he go undetected? Surely you would have recognized something about a man you rode into oblivion. 

He's bemused. "What, you thought I was gone? Nowhere?”

"wishful thinking," you reply. 

Ghostface says, “Oh, we both know what you really wish for. . .”

You’re not even going to argue. 

“How was your date?" 

"How was yours with your hand?" You retort.

"You didn't look interested.” 

"What, are you gonna ask me out?" Your face heats up as you hear your own words.

"Not tonight. 'Cause you've got a date with that toy and my picture, don't ya?”

You freeze. 

He taunts, "Want a third wheel?"

You ask, "How long have you been watching me?"

"Never stopped, sugar." You feel like a fool for thinking he had. “I’ve just been a little. . . distracted.” 

You scoff. 

". . . Okay, did you call just to talk?"

"Wanted some audio with my visual this time."

"Pervert."

“oh I'm the pervert," he chides. Your face is burning up.

"You know, you’ve still got something of mine.”  His knife. You’ve hid it somewhere special.  “Keep comin’ for it. . .but don’t wanna interrupt you.”  

You look out your window, which faces the woods.  "Cause you put on a good show, baby." There’s never been a reason to close the curtains.  You preferred to see danger coming. Danger like him. A lot of good that’s done you. 

“You’re a creature of habit, aren’t you?” 

Are you that predictable?  

“Lucky for me,” he adds darkly.  His breathing becomes audible.  “Oh, you like this, don't you . . . knew ya would. . .  .  .Dripping already.” His voice is steady through the equalizer, but his speech pattern tells you his dick is hard. And god damn if he isn’t turning you on. 

“Dip a finger and show daddy how wet you are.” 

Before you know it, you're doing it. You don’t show him, but you curiously dip you fingers and pull apart the clear string of of your arousal

“Two fingers . . let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”  You lie there clenching your thighs together. 

“Ah, fuck it. Go ahead, turn it on,” he says but you don’t move. You clench your thighs together.  “Turn it on,” he repeats firmer, and something possesses you to turn your vibrator on. 

“Yeah, that’s it . . .”

You don’t even need the picture now, or the video, or your reading. But you don’t exactly want to let him make you come this fast. 

He sighs and says, “You’ve got a nice, juicy pussy." He spits, which the voice changer doesn’t process.

You close your eyes and recall what it felt like impaling yourself on his cock. 

"You don't have to say it," he reassures you menacingly. "I know I’ve got a nice cock.” 

He’s right about that.  You close your eyes as you touch yourself.  You’re too horny to think straight, but in the back of your mind, you try to tell yourself he killed your friends. He killed your friends. It doesn’t make you any less turned on. You sigh in shame at yourself. How does Ghostface have you wrapped around his finger?

“Oh, it’s only natural, baby. This cock’ll fuck you right up.” God, why does that turn you on? “In the guts and the head.” 

"Real shame I wasn’t awake.” He breathes heavily for a few seconds. "Coulda been even better for you.” 

You fail to suppress a moan as heat is bubbling in your core. 

“Yeah. . .Can’t stop thinkin' about this cock, can ya?” 

You turn up the intensity of your vibe. 

“Not everyday someone takes every inch of this.” He moans weakly then spits again. “Filthy girl.  Swallowed it right up.” 

“So tell me, sugar," his breathing is even heavier now. "How do you want it?”

“What if i don’t” you lie, then gasp at the tension in your core.

“Then why’d you take it,” he says with a bite and the heavy breathing stops. 

“Because,” you pant. “It was there.”

You’re getting close.  “How do you want me,” you self-loathingly ask. He doesn’t answer. You look at your phone and he’s gone. Shit. You open the video you took of him and as soon as you hear him whimper, your body jerks as the tension bursts inside you. As soon as you finish pulsing, the regret hits you like a tidal wave. So fucked up. Soooo disgusting.  You need a shower. 

—---

You take a long, hot shower, listening to music. You sigh, feeling a little better already. You turn off the water.

“Soaking wet. That’s how I want you.” You freeze and the only sound is the dripping water for a few seconds while the song changes.  

“Come on, you’re smarter than this.” The voice changer echoes through your bathroom and you almost fall over. “What’s next? Going down to the basement?”

You stand silently in the shower with your heartbeat echoing in your ears.  There’s nothing you can do.  You squat down, hugging your knees.  There’s no good option.   

The shower curtain slowly draws open and he looms above you.

“My turn, baby."  The glint of a knife–your own kitchen knife–catches your eye. He tilts his head slightly and observes you for a moment.  Then he pulls your hair and violently forces you to your feet. You begin to slip and he catches you, then manhandles you out of the tub and you whimper. You’re thrashing around wet and naked.  He drags you to the bathroom sink and puts you between him and the sink, both of you facing the mirror. He reaches out and wipes the mirror with his robe to make sure you can see. 

The sight is surreal. You’re completely nude with Ghostface up against you.  One gloved hand cups your breast while the other raises the knife.  He stays behind you and holds your own kitchen knife to your throat.  

He inhales audibly. “So clean and so filthy.”  

You elbow him in the gut. “Let go of me.” 

“Afraid not, baby. . .” The hand leaves your breast and slides lower.  He presses on your hip, bringing you tight against him. “Too late now.” His hips push forward and the massive shape of his hard cock makes you weak. 

He holds you still with just one of his big arms as you struggle.  “Coulda had it how ya wanted.” 

The unwelcome throb between your legs is spreading through your abdomen. 

“Now you’re gonna take it right here.”  He keeps you pinned to the counter, the arm with the knife holding you still while he lifts his robe and tugs his PJ pants down.  “You’ve put me behind you after all.”  He jerks you back against him, pulling you off the counter and holding you tight against his hard dick.  He lightly trails the tip of the knife down your cleavage and your stomach, dipping into your belly button on its way down to your mound. Then he holds it handle-up and teases your cunt with the flat of the knife as you watch in the mirror. The cold metal sends a shiver down your spine and you watch your nipples harden.

“Who are you?”

“Your favorite bad guy. Ask me a. . . harder one.” He grinds himself against you.

“What do you want?”

“To know what your insides feel like.” You suck in a deep breath and register the smell of weed as his cock twitches against your bare skin. “When I’m awake,” he adds. 

He pries your legs apart with his knee, then his glove brushes your inner thighs as he aligns his cock at your entrance. “Oh you’re ready ready,” he says. He notches himself with the thick head of his cock resting snug against your wet little hole, then he holds you tight and shoves himself into you with a sigh.  You have to try not to moan with the most welcome stretch. “Hell yeah,” the mask says into your ear. Thank God you’re so wet, because there is a lot of him. He pulls back, then slams into you, bottoming out with a grunt then another sigh. You watch your face in the mirror and try to wipe the enjoyment off it. 

The hand with the knife rests against your chest as he pounds you. “You’re lucky you’re so hot.” You want to memorize the feeling of his cock inside you so you can come to it later instead of giving him the satisfaction right now.  He pants as he thrusts into you harder.  “So. . .damn. . . hot.” You look down watching your breasts jiggle as he rails you. “I don’t think so. . . baby.” He grabs your chin and makes you look back up at the mirror. Your drooping eyelids give away how good you feel. 

“Take it like a bad girl.” He grunts and brutally fucks you in the way you’re afraid only he can. No, no, you shouldn’t be thinking thoughts like this. “A real bad girl.” A climax is gathering in your lower belly.  “Cock hungry little slut,” he bites and it makes you twitch. “This pussy’s mine now, you know.” 

He buries himself inside you for another minute and makes it rough. “Now or never baby," he pants. “Know you wanna come on this cock.” God, you do. “Do it now.”  He slams into you harder than ever and groans as he begins to pulse inside you.  You can’t stop it. The feeling of his climax trips you into your own.  Your needy cunt chokes his cock, milking him of an unfathomable load.  He fucks you through it and your body jerks into his imposing, robed form. His cum is in every crevice of your core.  You can’t help but moan and sigh.

“Good girl,” he says.

His cock slides out of you, leaving a void that slowly caves in on itself. He tucks it back into his pants. 

------

Ghostface forcibly positions your chin to take one last look in the mirror. Then he picks up your phone from the counter and forces you to swipe the camera on.  He points it at the mirror and says, “say cheese.” He tosses your phone back on the counter, then slams you chest-first into the back of the door with an impact. He holds the knife to the side of your neck and says, “you’re welcome.” He really smells like weed.

“Now where’s my knife.”

“I don’t have it,” you claim. 

“I don’t believe you.” 

“What’s so special about it?”

“It’s mine.” 

“The cops have it.” 

“No they don’t. Why are you lying?”

You’re not really sure. He presses the flat of the knife so hard against your throat you start to choke. “Okay,” you manage hoarsely. He lets you breathe.  You look behind him toward the toilet. 

He drags you by the elbow to the toilet. He opens the back of it and the knife is wrapped up in a grocery bag. “You watch too many movies,” he says. He pushes you out of the way, opens the door, and leaves. The song turns to Call Me by Blondie.

NEXT: PART 3

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

Please engage (reblog/comment)  if you want more of this <333 It might go a long way in motivation.

Yes this is my night walks coded ghostface but I think most people reading this don't know what night walks is lol.

Call Me:This Blog::Red Right Hand:Canon. But in this case it especially makes sense 🥹

@hearteyed-shawty had a song rec last time: I'm Yours by Isabel Derosa.

Slasher master list

@ghostslittlegf @sunflowerleii @igotmajordaddyissues @rileyquinn07

[steddieonbigboy]

Sleepwalkin'

written for @steddiemicrofic april prompt ‘fool’ wc: 454 | rated: T | cw: implied sexual content | read on ao3

🛌🛌🛌

Eddie stirs at the sound of shuffling footsteps and gets jolted awake as Steve drops face-first onto the bed.

"Mhmph. Where've you been?"

"Sleepwalkin'."

"Do anything fun?"

"I got into bed with Wayne." He mumbles into the pillow.

"Wait. What?!" Eddie sits up with a crazed grin, suddenly wide awake, "Steve, sweetheart, that's fucking hilarious."

"Yeah, Wayne thought so too," He rolls onto his side to face Eddie," I, on the other hand, am slightly mortified."

"Baby, I'm sorry but that is actually so funny. What did he say when he woke you up?"

"That's the thing! He didn't! So I obviously woke him up when I, y'know crawled into his bed and cuddled up to him-"

"You cuddled him?! Stevie, be careful, that's the most action he's gotten in years, he's gonna fall in love with you!"

"Fuck off," He reaches across to slap Eddie's shoulder, "Anyway, he just left me to sleep! I woke up to him snoring with his arm around me, and I was so fucking confused."

"How long were you there? I woke up earlier and you were gone but I just thought you were in the bathroom or something. Didn’t realise you’d deserted me."

"Probably like half the fucking night. I went back to sleep after I’d woken up because his bed’s comfier than yours. I only came back in because he went to work and I got cold."

"Is a bed warmer all I am to you, Stevie?" Eddie pouted, "I thought you loved me for my wit and charm and dashingly good looks, not because I keep you toasty."

"I love you for many reasons, including how warm you run, but if you don't like it," Steve shrugged, "I guess I'll have to go to Wayne next time I'm cold. I'm sure he'll warm me up."

"Please don't leave me for my Uncle."

"Well, you better give me a good reason to stay then."

"Nobody can go down on you as well as I can."

"Oh really? Might have to let you prove that you’re the best then."

Eddie just smirks as he slides down the bed.

—

Wayne’s just gotten home from work when Eddie clears his throat and nudges Steve in the ribs.

"Stevie. Don’t you have something to say to Wayne?"

"Huh? Oh, right," Steve looks at Wayne as sincerely as he can possibly manage right now, "I’m so sorry, Wayne, but we were fools to think it’d work out between us. I’ll never forget our wonderful night together though."

"Well shucks, son, you’re breakin’ my dang heart here but I guess I just gotta move on," Wayne gives Steve a wink, "You know where to find me if you change ya mind."

[harmonic-intervention]

Got a little inspired by Tim saying Buck wasn't spending as much time with Eddie because of his new relationship. Wouldn't leave me alone so enjoy my word vomit.

When Buck woke up, he did so gradually, slowly gaining awareness of the mattress and the frankly unholy amount of pillows under him, of the warmth settled right next to him, of the gentle stroke of a thumb over his lower arm.

Sighing, he moved, stretched like a cat in a sunbeam, and turned over onto his side, rolling right into the source of that pleasant warmth.

He didn't even open his eyes. Instead, he blindly found his way to his destination, burying his nose in the space right under a very nice jaw. He felt the vibration of the resulting chuckle right against his skin.

"Good morning," Tommy mumbled. "Sleep well?"

Buck nodded, but it ended up being more of a nuzzle. "The best."

A large hand found its way into the curls at the back of Buck's head and began gently scratching at his scalp, twirling a curl around a finger, the usual.

Buck finally found the will to move his face away from Tommy's throat and actually open his eyes. The light of the room was dim, the dark curtains keeping most of the sunlight out.

Tommy looked beautiful lying there with his hair all soft and fluffy. To be fair, Buck thought he always looked beautiful, and every time he looked at him, it was as if he became more and more so.

"Morning," Buck finally returned the greeting. He leaned in to steal a chaste kiss, but quickly found he wasn't satisfied with just one.

The same way that Tommy apparently wasn't satisfied with just a couple short ones, as a hand along Buck's jaw kept him close, and when his thumb found its place on the bolt of Buck's jaw, he opened up easily.

They hadn't been dating for all that long, but most of their mornings off were spent like this - in bed, luxuriating in the cozy, intimate atmosphere.

They both had come off of a long shift of not seeing each other, and now had the next 48 hours off together, so Buck had gone to Tommy's place after the end of his shift. He was going to spend the next two days glued to Tommy's side. A crowbar would not be able to pry him off.

Things were heating up steadily, the space between them being reduced down to nothing. Buck's hand started to make its way beneath the sheets to slide down Tommy's torso when he was interrupted by his phone vibrating on the nightstand.

Buck was determined to ignore it - whoever it was could just send him a message and he would get back to them - and sighed his relief right into Tommy's mouth when the call ended. His fingers skirted along the waistline of Tommy's boxers when the vibrating picked back up.

Still on his path of disregarding the existence of the outside world, Buck moved closer to Tommy, slotting a leg between his, and just when he was finally about to stop teasing them both and actually put his hand on Tommy's dick, his phone started acting up again.

Much to his dismay, Tommy moved his mouth away from his. "I think it's important."

Buck grumbled as he turned over to grab his phone, one hand still firmly in place on Tommy's body, "Whoever it is better have life insurance."

He ignored the soft snort that came from his boyfriend in favor of taking a look at his phone screen.

"It's Eddie."

"Better pick up."

Buck might have been ready to just turn his phone off, but Tommy's suggestion was much more reasonable. He nodded and turned back on his other side.

Tommy's eyes flitted down between them. "You gonna take your hand off my dick?"

"No," Buck replied with a wink and accepted the call. "Hey, Eddie."

Tommy shrugged and leaned in, finding something for his mouth to do. Namely go to town on Buck's throat.

"Buck, where are you? I'm at your place and it's empty."

It took a moment for Eddie's words to register, mostly because Buck was distracted by the hint of teeth against his adam's apple. "What- my place? We have a 48 off."

"Yeah, I thought we could hang out. You didn't mention any plans, did you have something?"

He didn't mention any plans because going over to Tommy's place had become the rule, not the exception.

"I'm at Tommy's." Syllables were getting harder to form when most of his brainpower was used to concentrate on hands sliding up and down his back, stopping just shy of his ass every time.

"Oh! Are both of you up, I could come by there, then."

Eddie started talking about something - probably what he had wanted to convince Buck to do with him, something about something, Buck would full-heartedly admit that he was not listening to a single word. Not when his super hot boyfriend was being a tease.

"Listen, man, that sound's great," probably, "but I'm kinda busy at the moment."

"What?"

Tommy chuckled against Buck's jugular, clearly having heard Eddie's confusion through the phone.

Buck was about to say something that would probably traumatize his best friend forever, when seemingly, he connected the dots by himself.

"Oh, ew, Buck! What the fuck?"

"Don't 'what the fuck' me, you wouldn't stop calling!" Buck exclaimed.

This time, Tommy let out an actual laugh, definitely loud enough to be picked up by the phone. Eddie groaned on the other side, sounding very much like he was regretting all of his life choices.

"Listen, we'd love to hang out, but maybe a bit later, yeah? Give us ..." Buck looked down at Tommy and raised an eyebrow, "like, an hour?"

Tommy's reply of, "Two hours," was muffled against Buck's collarbone. He had quickly gone back to ignoring the phone call in favor of biting at the edges of Buck's body.

"Two hours. Then you can come over."

Hands free and mind not pulled in two different directions, Buck immediately buried a hand in Tommy's hair and pulled him off. He narrowed his eyes at the spark of mischief in Tommy's own ones.

After getting Eddie's confirmation and the beginning of him lamenting his life, Buck simply hung up and tossed his phone onto the nightstand, uncaring whether it actually landed there or not.

"Having fun?" he asked with a put upon frown.

Tommy didn't even have the decency to look bothered by the grip that Buck had on his curls. "So far, yes."

Buck hauled him back in into a biting kiss, using the momentum of his own body to turn them over into the pillows.

He ignored the smug grin pressed against his mouth for now. He'd take care of that soon enough.

[teabringer-fics]

ocean of tears | aegon x f!reader

summary: modern au. alicent hightower calls you in the middle of the night to inform of you two things: viserys targaryen, her husband and the ceo of your company, is dead... and your employment is now contingent upon tracking down her oldest son, aegon, and dragging him back to hq before daybreak. later, a conversation in the dark turns into a possible lifeline for westeros's reluctant heir.

word count: 11k | read on ao3 (honestly recommended bc of the insane word count but you do you boo)

tags: corporate setting, angst, extended treasure hunt, grief, a bit of viserys bashing, oral (f receiving), fingering, unprotected p in v, a lot of plot, depiction of anxiety, boss/employee relationship, it's very long (i feel like i'm rattling off prescription medication side-effects when i do these)

a/n: i'm back on tumblr bitches! do all that good commenting jazz if you even make it to the end of this whopper pls 🫠🫶

This is gonna be torture/before it’s sublime…

You wake to the sound of a distant and yet insistent melody, distorted at first by the confusion of interrupted sleep. It takes your eyes a few moments to adjust to the pitch-dark, and by the time you’ve successfully fished your phone out from amongst the tangle of sheets the din has died, leaving you in a cold sweat, startled, imagining your parents in a fatal car crash, your sister, studying at Oldtown, gone missing in one of those bizarre, yet commonplace turns that lands her at the center of a true-crime podcast.

You tap the screen just to be blinded—”motherfuck” or something along those lines escaping your mouth—and are still squinting through the glare when it comes alive in your hand.

Alicent Hightower

Mobile

You slide to answer and raise the phone to your ear.

“M-Ms. Hightower?” Shaky and stupid even to your own ears. You glance briefly at the time display on the upper-left corner: 2:56 AM. At the other end, Ms. Hightower’s voice is posing a question which you fail to understand and, still reeling from the relief of knowing that this late-night, early-morning phone call has nothing to do with your family, you plug your other ear and ask, “Sorry, what?”

“Aegon! Where is Aegon?” Ms. Hightower demands. You tamp down the urge to repeat “what?”, although on the inside your thoughts are written in large capitals: WHAT??? The hour is ungodly, she’s scared you half to death, and how in seven hells are you supposed to know where her son is—you hold the phone in front of your face again, as if this will elucidate matters or else trigger your body into waking from its bizarre dream—at 2:58 on a random Tuesday?

Digging deep for whatever scraps of professionalism exist inside you at this time of night, you clear your throat and say, “Aegon? I’m sorry, Ms. Hightower, I have no idea. Has something happened?” The thought of Aegon Targaryen, uncontrollable playboy partier and heir to the largest fortune in Westeros, meeting a tragic end in a nightclub restroom, or wrapped around a traffic pole after five drinks too many, doesn't elicit the same panic response as thoughts of your sister’s hypothetical kidnapping. But you do register a sensation like a stone falling in the pit of your gut. It lingers at Ms. Hightower’s continued silence.

Is she crying? You strain your ears. There are no sniffles, no choked sobs that would indicate a mother’s frantic grief. Only a maddening stillness that makes your skin prickle and your heart beat, pounding, at the center of your throat.

Then it ends.

“Viserys is dead.”

You would think this three-word, straight-forward pronouncement would illuminate the perplexing state of affairs that led to Alicent Hightower calling you almost at the witching hour to ask about her son, but instead the silence widens in your head, an emptiness like a sudden fall replacing the weight of suspense, and it takes all your faculties to say, “Ma’am, I am so, so sorry for your loss. When did it happen?”

You might as well have not spoken at all.

“You are to tell no one, do you understand? Consider yourself bound by the NDA you signed upon your employment. No one is to know about this, not before we have a plan in place and certainly not before the markets open. This could be catastrophic if we don’t manage to get ahead of it.”

“I understand.”

“I am counting on your discretion.”

“Yes, ma’am,” you repeat.

You are buzzing with adrenaline, still sweat-damp and nervous but locked into Work Mode. Viserys is dead. So it finally happened. The man has been threatening to kick the bucket for years now—mostly in private, but of late hiding it had proven nigh on impossible. The papers speculated, blogs ran the gamut of gossip, and now the day has come, under cover of darkness, with his shrewd widow at the helm.

Her voice comes clear, urgent, utterly in command. “I know it’s late, but I need you to track down Aegon. He’s not answering any of our calls. I thought you might have better luck, being his personal assistant. I've sent Aemond and the Cargylls out to look, but so far no luck. This is important—probably the most important thing you have ever been asked to do. Aegon needs to show his face here before Rhaenyra does. His grandfather and I are doing our best to keep things afloat, but once news of this reaches—”

“Rhaenyra doesn’t know that her father has died?” you ask without thinking, your tone openly aghast.

Again, the silence.

“Rhaenyra,” Alicent replies, her accent sharp enough to cut glass, “will be informed in due course but this is about more than just her. The company cannot fall to ruin. I will not let my husband’s legacy be destroyed in a single night. For better or for worse, Aegon must claim his inheritance or we run the risk of hemorrhaging shareholders. Rhaenyra made her choice—she made it the moment she threw her lot in with Daemon. The time to act is now, before they make their return from Dragonstone.”

In the background, you hear the sound of a door being opened and closed, letting in muffled voices from a different room. Whoever the newcomer is, Ms. Hightower orders them to wait. “Listen,” she goes on, “I know it’s ugly, it’s bloody and it feels underhanded. But she’s left us no choice. Tell me now if you don’t have the stomach for it. If you refuse I’ll consider it your resignation effective immediately.”

Well, that’s no choice at all, is it? You like having a roof over your head, food on the table (not that you make it to your own table very often these days). Rent prices in King’s Landing are exorbitant. You need this job. You don't want to fail.

“I’ll find him, ma’am. I promise.”

“Good girl. I knew we could count on you. Bring him here when it’s done.”

The line goes dead, your phone dark.

Shit. Why did you promise? If Aegon’s own bodyguard can't find him, his own brother, there’s no telling where he might be. And to stake your whole livelihood on it? Seven hells…

“Shit, shit, shit,” you say aloud, taking five seconds for self-pity before flinging yourself out of bed and putting on the first thing you can find, probably your discarded work clothes from the day before. You yank your hair into a disheveled knot, propping your phone on the dresser so you can call Aegon on speaker, vibrating with anxiety as the dial tone rings once, twice, six times, before going straight to voicemail. Of course… of course it couldn’t be that simple. You try again, hunting for your car keys—damn the mess—and when he doesn’t answer, you yell at your phone, “Siri, call Aemond Targaryen!”

The call connects. Surely, Alicent’s most responsible, Type-A progeny will have the courtesy to make himself available to you in your hour of need.

“Come on, come on…” you mutter, letting out a triumphant “aha!” as your fingers close behind a keychain fallen between the cushions of your ratty old loveseat.

No dice. Once more, you are met with a canned voicemail prompt.

Beeeeep.

“Aemond, for fuck’s sake, answer my fucking call! I’ve spoken to your mother… Call me back as soon as you get this. Bye.” With that you swipe your purse from the minuscule kitchen counter and race out the door, pushing impatiently at the lift buttons, tapping your foot all the way down to garage level, racing to your car so fast that you knock the wind out of you when the door fails to unlock on the first try. You take a breath—pull it together—, point the fob at the driver’s side door, and wait as patiently as you can until the telltale double-beep of the mechanism letting you in.

The engine starts. You tear out of the underground car park and emerge onto a King’s Landing lit by artificial lights, active and just a little bit seedy. You pass shuttered coffee shops, bougie restaurants, convenience stores, residential buildings with spotless terraces and “For Lease” banners hanging out front, all as you white-knuckle the steering wheel. Viserys is dead… Viserys is dead… shareholders… market opens… Rhaenyra…

What a mess.

Your nerves are already frayed, which is why (understandably, you think) when the center console lights up and a ringtone blares from the too-loud car speakers, your foot slams down so hard on the brakes that it makes your head whip before a yellow light. “Mother save!” you curse—and then, seeing that Aemond has deigned to call you back: “Thank the Seven!”

“I can’t talk for long.” His smooth, chilling voice makes you shudder as it envelops you, and you reach to turn down the dial so that, at a more reasonable volume, he can ask, “Have you found him yet?”

What am I, a magician? You roll your eyes, trying very hard, and perhaps failing, to rein in the sarcasm when you say, “Um, no. I just wanted to touch base with you. Where have you looked?”

“His city flat. All his usual Flea Bottom haunts. The Street of Silk. I even talked to those worthless idiot-goons he calls friends.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“Okay, well… that’s strange.”

“No shit.”

The light changes. You drive forward, headlights pointed towards Flea Bottom anyway, because never in a million years would you think to find Aegon anywhere else.

You sigh. “Never mind, I guess I’ll figure something out. Where are you?”

“On my way back to HQ. If Aegon doesn't wish to be found, then Stranger take him. Someone has to steer the ship and be there for Mother.”

“Right. Well, d’you know if—”

“I have to go. Call me when you’ve found him.”

Call Ended

You blink at the screen. Did Aemond Targaryen just hang up on you? Seriously?

Cold bastard…

In the three years you’ve spent working for the company, your feelings for Aemond have never coalesced. Some days, you prefer his company to that of his elder brother, especially when deadlines are tight and Aegon is, predictably, nowhere to be found. But there’s no denying that he sets you on edge, his brilliance and ambition matched only by his ruthlessness. If anything, he reminds you of a pristine besuited robot you could never hope to understand. For all that he holds you in something like regard, puts up with you because of your usefulness and because Alicent, in her own strange, imperious way, likes you, and you suppose that not up-and-quitting when faced with Aegon’s shenanigans affords you a few points in his esteem, at the end of the day, you’re one of the staff. Ceremony is for family. Hence, the abrupt hangup.

Annoyed, you try calling your errant charge again. “Please leave a message after the…” “Aegon, you little shit, I am not getting fired because you decided to get shit-faced in some seedy hole in the wall as a toxic grief response—answer your fucking phone!” Never mind. Too strong. Wrong tone. You press the command to re-record, putting on your best phone voice, aiming for gentle, kindly, reassuring. “Aegon, it’s me again… It’s fine if you don't want to talk but at least shoot me a text so I know that you’re still, you know, alive. Your mother is worried sick and Aemond—” Basically told you to go to hell and fuck yourself sideways. “—has been trying to get in touch. Please, just… send me a smoke signal… telegram… note-via-carrier-pigeon?” You blow out a breath, press End on the steering wheel, and note the time: 3:37 AM.

The thought that Aegon may have done something irremediably stupid returns. It’s not like you’re friends, exactly—not even remotely. You’re his assistant, a job which, shortly after you acquired it, you realized nobody else wanted. It’s thankless, literally; irregular, at times demeaning, at others boring to the point of tears, chaotic, unpredictable… But you’ve gotten used to the routine. You know Aegon’s moods. You’re used to him, and you’d like to think that, by now, he’s used to you. It’s not an ideal job by any means, but you get by and if, say, he got hit by a taxi cab after stumbling drunkenly into the street, you think you might actually feel kind of awful about it.

You call him again.

Still nothing.

Up ahead a familiar building looms, brick-lined, discreet. You feel ridiculous sidling up to the door and knocking in a pattern of tap - taptap - tap - tap. The door opens a smidge and a voluptuous, curly-haired redhead peeks out, her big green eyes blinking out into the dark. “I need to speak to Sylvi,” you say without preamble. Her face folds into a scowl.

“Well, I need a million quid and a stud with half a brain and a massive cock, luv. Patrons only.”

“I’ve been sent by the Hightowers,” you quickly say, shoving your foot in the door to stop it closing. “Just tell her that I’m looking for Aegon.”

She rolls her eyes, clicks her tongue at your request. Though she shuts the door in your face and you hear her footsteps receding, you hope that the overt name-drop will make her cooperate. Impatiently, you tap your foot in the street, watching a few people pass you by on the footpath. Nothing to see here, folks… I’m standing in front of a brothel but not of my own free will.

The door opens. “He isn’t here,” Ruby declares, crossing her arms in front of her—quite frankly—perfect breasts. Whenever you’ve had to pick up Aegon from his latest bender with the ladies of the night, you’ve moved through the vestibule feeling like an absolute troll. Sylvi must be paying her girls their weight in gold if looks are anything to go by. Perhaps it’s time to consider a change in profession…

“Really? Did she tell you that?” you ask, crossing your arms skeptically in front of your own less endowed chest.

“I’m telling you he isn’t here,” Ruby huffs. Fleetingly, you wonder whether Aegon’s ever slept with her, if he likes them bold and Botticelli-like, or if his tastes run elsewhere.

Nope. You throw the mental image of Aegon fucking anyone out of your mind. You are a modern woman, damn it—you don’t get flustered at the thought of good honest sex work… or sex… or your random, uncontrollable boss having it with Venus-looking women with perfect tits.

You clear your throat. “You wouldn't by any chance be lying to me about that, would you?”

“His brother was already here—tall one… delicious… lot more intimidating than you.”

“Cheers, but also, how dare?” (Upon further reflection, Ruby might be exactly the kind of girl Aegon would favor. They’re both equally annoying.)

“Listen, I’ll tell you the same thing I told ‘im: your guy isn’t here. Maybe he’s at some other cathouse in the neighborhood but I hardly doubt it. The madam doesn’t like being stepped out on, if you know what I mean. She’d have the arse-hair off any establishment that tried poachin’ her clientele.” She leans back, seemingly proud of having strung this rebuttal together.

You sigh. Back to square one.

“Thanks for the help anyway.”

“Nuh-uh!” Ruby holds out her hand, the sash of her elegant robe loosening, revealing an expanse of gleaming rosy-pink skin and the curve of her left breast. You wish you’d bothered to at least run a brush through your hair. “What, d’you I work for charity? I’m paid for my time, luv.”

“Clearly, I’m not having a good one!” you protest.

Ruby just stands there, wagging her palm in your direction until you reach inside your jacket and pull out your purse. This had better count as a business expense, you think, pulling out a fifty- and then a hundred-stag note.

“Is that all?” Ruby asks.

“Gods, are you serious?”

“I get paid twenty-five moons for a basic experience.”

“What experience?” you demand. “Freezing your arse off in the cold for no reason? I don’t recall getting off!”

Her eyes narrow. “Want to make it a full dragon?”

You zip your mouth shut and part with the notes.

“Ta!” Ruby sings, waving at you with a girlish grin and once again shutting the door in your face.

Aegon, when I find you… Grumbling, you reenter your car and call him again, but you know better than to expect a reply. Making a U-turn, you take a side road and drive parallel to the Street of Silk, looking for the favored watering hole of Aegon’s “worthless idiot-goons,” as Aemond so colorfully put it. His cronies may have helped him hide from his brother until the danger of discovery had passed; if that’s the case, you think you might strangle them all on sight.

“Well, if it isn't my Girl Friday!” The Honourable Leon Estermont crows when he sees you coming. “Fancy a line?” Next to him, Martyn Reyne is wiping his nose and throwing back what’s left of a dangerously pink drink. All around you, the club is a flashing hub of darkness interrupted by neon lights, the music thumping.

You knew enough to head straight for the VIP section located on the upper floor, and from this platform—if you even bothered to look—you could see a mass of bodies writhing down below. The air smells of smoke, alcohol… sweat, even sex. The idiot-goons are reclined on a tufted leather sofa, which disturbs you—you don't want to know what kinds of activities have gone on up here. You’ve never been invited. The most you’ve experienced is hauling a stumbling Aegon into a waiting car driven by one of the Cargyll twins.

Once, but only once, he almost threw up on you.

You prefer the brothel, if you're being honest. At least there, transactions are straightforward, the workers plain. You don't know if these two would bother pissing on Aegon if he were on fire. The thought makes you angry. You shoot Leon the fakest of smiles.

“Not for me, thanks, I like my neurons just the way they are. Also, I am not remotely your anything. When was the last time you saw Aegon?”

“Aegs?” Leon pipes up, nearly shouting to be heard over the noise. “What, is he missing or something? Those freaky bearded twins came ‘round earlier, asking the same thing. Bores, the pair of them.”

The song shifts from a techno beat to something raunchy, with a lower bass. It makes your bones vibrate, your head pound. Leon bends over the chrome table to snort more of Father-knows-what, then leans his head back, moaning, eyeing you up and down in a way that makes you want to hose yourself down with disinfectant. “Come on, Friday, take a load off! You’re off the clock.”

“Actually, I’m not.”

He laughs. “Aren’t you? That’s the problem with you lot—you don't know how to loosen up. And instead of figuring it out, you like blaming the rest of us for knowing the right way to live.”

The rest of us. You lot. The haves and have-nots.

Incredulous, you blow out a breath. “There is so much wrong with that sentence, but something tells me it would be pointless to even start. Last—time—you saw—Aegon—when?” You snap your fingers in front of his face, all pretense at civility abandoned. You want to hit him over the head with an ashtray.

“Sheesh! I don’t know! Two days ago, maybe? A day ago? Yesterday?” On his left, Martyn’s legs are splayed, mouth half-open. He’s drooling onto his own chest, probably snoring beneath the sound of obnoxious music. Leon doesn't notice at all.

“Fucking useless…”

“Hey!”

You stomp down the spiral staircase, feeling like you've wasted—you take out your phone: 4:50 AM—more than an hour of your life in a pointless search. Your eyes prickle with frustration. Now is not the time to give in to the panic-driven water works.

Brusquely, you go to your recent calls and tap Aegon Targaryen (14). Fourteen… the number is insanity. The man’s father is dead, what could he possibly be doing?

“Aegon, seriously…” you grouse into the phone, wiping your nose, too tired to hide the edge in your voice, the exhaustion, the anger, the—fine, you’ll admit it—worry. “Now I'm starting to think you might actually be lying in a ditch somewhere. I’ve looked everywhere, no one has heard from you… listen, forget about your mum, forget about everything just… pick up my call, you absolute fucking twat—”

“I could have you fired for that.”

“Aegon!” His name is a gasp. You don’t know whether to laugh or get on your hands and knees, kiss the floor and thank the Seven. “Aegon—where… what’ve you—wait.” Your eyes narrow into resentful slits. “Were you screening my calls the entire time, you blockheaded douchebag! Tell me where you are!”

“Phone died.”

“Well, clearly it’s made a miraculous recovery!” you scoff. “Tell me where you are, I’ll come get you.”

“’m at yours.”

“Come again?”

“Yours.” Either his voice is slurred or the reception in the area is shit. “‘m at your flat.”

“You’re out in the hallway?”

“No, I’m inside your flat,” he responds, and has the audacity to sound impatient at being made to repeat himself. “Fucking tiny, by the way.”

You stop in your tracks, having handed the valet a tip you can’t afford after your stand-off with Ruby. “And how, pray tell, did you manage to get inside my fucking flat?”

Aegon either fails to notice or doesn’t care that your voice is pitched menacingly low. “You keep a spare under the mat. Fucking mental of you, by the way. Is getting potentially kidnapped a secret kink of yours?”

“YOU USED MY KEY?”

“No.” You picture the exact movement of his shoulders, that little uncaring shrug that has, on more than one occasion, made you picture him getting pecked at by an army of ravening birds. “I had a copy made ages ago.”

“You Targaryens have no sense of personal property! Gods!” you exclaim, ignoring the side-eye you got from the valet, reentering your car and buckling your seat belt. You start the engine, feeling like you’re going out of your mind. The phone is pressed between your ear and shoulder as you sputter, “That is so… so incredibly wrong! You do know that, right? You do know that’s what’s fucking mental? You can't just make a copy of my keys and keep them to use whenever you fucking please! Just—ugh! Just stay there, you weirdo, and don’t go anywhere! I’m five minutes away.” Lies. You’re more like twenty, but you don’t want him to think he has a wide enough window to make an escape.

After violating what probably amounts to a half-dozen traffic laws and speeding all the way back to your building, you feel marginally calmer, except for the residual stress and the thought that maybe, just maybe, you’ll enter your flat to find Aegon vanished once more into thin air, your job gone along with him. You retrace your steps, taking the lift to the sixth floor, holding your breath as you try the latch and find it unlocked—so much for the judgments he made about your inadequate sense of safety.

In your absence, he parted the drapes just enough to see by, and in the meager light coming in from public street lamps posted across the way, you make out a shape bent over the dining table, unnaturally hunched, its head almost hanging over the edge.

Though the door shuts with a metallic clang that sounds like a gunshot in the deep quiet, not even this makes him stir, and but for the steady rise and fall of his back you would think him unresponsive, passed out like his feckless friend Martyn back at that infernal club. You round the table. Aegon shifts just enough to look at you and you can tell that his eyes are heavy-lidded, bleary. But alert. Conscious.

You let out a breath and feel your shoulders sag in relief.

“You look like shit,” you say to him. “Are you wasted?”

“Unfortunately, not anymore.” He makes a rolling gesture with his free hand, one of his eyebrows quirking in typical Aegon fashion. “Stone-cold sober me… well, maybe not that first bit.”

“Mhm. I’ll make you a coffee.”

At the machine, you take a moment to close your eyes and listen to the water steam and bubble before it begins to drip into a generic white mug, one you hardly ever use, being rarely at home. You had thought that once you’d seen Aegon in person—made sure he was all right, your job not halfway over a cliff as Alicent had implied—you might feel better, like everything was resolved, or at the very least no longer your problem. But all you do is feel confronted with a wreckage you’re not sure you’re equipped to handle.

You’ve seen Aegon drunk out of his mind before, bloodshot-eyed, raving-mad, slurring his words, stumbling, laughing maniacally, starting brawls that one or both of the Cargylls had to finish. But this… Dejected, broken. How do you deal with this? And then, even though you’re trying to be understanding, you can’t help the surge of anger that makes you turn around and stomp over to his side of the table. How could he be so selfish? To leave his family in the lurch, add to their troubles, add to yours?

You brace your hands on your hips. “What on earth possessed you, by the way? You disappeared! Do you have any idea—? No… Where have you—? Wait. You do know your father is—?”

“Defunct? Departed? Without ghost?”

Had he reacted more violently, you might've been inclined to pick a fight. Instead, Aegon’s droll resignation makes you feel like a world-class prick who just picked on an orphan.

You deflate, arms falling immediately down to your sides. “I’m sorry.”

Aegon snorts. “I’m not. Just wish he'd had the fucking decency to leave a will.”

“There’s no will?”

“Why do you think everyone’s going out of their fucking minds? It’s Mum’s word against Nyra’s. I say let her have it. Whole thing’s cursed anyway.” He sits up with a groan, puts his elbows on the table, rubs his hands from his eyes all the way to the pale tangle of his hair—Viserys’s eyes, Viserys’s hair.

What sort of a billionaire doesn’t leave a written will? The man had two wives, a conniving brother, five adult children, not to mention an international conglomerate with hundreds of employees and scores of attorneys looking out for its wellbeing—he had to know that being ill-prepared would've caused this kind of clusterfuck.

Carefully, you lower yourself into the other chair, watching your boss like a skittish animal you’re afraid of scaring off. “Aegon… where were you tonight? Not even your friends seemed to know about your father or where you had run off to.” He keeps silent. The machine lets out three ill-timed beeps and you rush to the counter to take the mug by its handle and set it down in front of him. “Here, drink this. You need to sober up.”

“What for?”

“Your mum wants you back at HQ.”

He shakes his head, crosses his arms in front of his chest. “Forget it! I’m not fucking going.”

“Fine. Just drink your coffee.” Just drink your coffee, dear, you might have said, sounding, even to your own ears, like a child’s mother. He narrows his eyes.

“She sent you to manage me.”

“I’m your assistant, Aegon! What do you think I’ve been doing the last few years?”

“I don’t know, making copies?”

“Oh, go fuck yourself!” The profusion of air that leaves his nostrils can’t be called a real laugh, but it’s close enough given the circumstances. You smile.

You watch him blow over the rim of his cup before he takes a sip, the motion childlike, almost delicate. You sit down and track the subtle movements of his lips in the shadows, his throat working as he swallows. In that moment, nothing is as important to you as the simple repetition of him lifting the cup and setting it down, over and over, until you’re sure he’s had at least half of what you gave him.

He seems lucid, sits straighter than when you first walked through the door, and you’re thinking now might be a good time to coax him into your car when he breaks the silence.

“He even had to die in the most useless way.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Don’t tell me what I do and don't mean!” His fist pounds the table. One second he is glaring daggers at you, the next, he begins to cry—curled in on himself, shoulders heaving violently, his body wracked by sobs that suck all the air out of the room with a grief so vast you feel you’re drowning in it, flailing as you try to pull him back towards safer shores.

“Aeg…”

He tugs his arm away. Helpless, you try again, closing your hand around the delicate wrist, reaching for something, anything, to make the outpouring stop.

But nothing can make it stop. He cries until the tears peter out and he whimpers, clasping your hand, not so much for comfort but as an anchor. His hold is brutal, unyielding, and then gradually it loosens until the clamor subsides. Embarrassed, he lets you go and wipes his eyes with the heels of his palms.

He picks at his fingernails when he’s anxious. You can't see them in the dark, but it’s a habit of his you know by heart.

You ask the question because you want to take his mind off his father, because you’re curious and you feel like the answer is important somehow—to you, and to him. “What were you doing tonight, before you took my call?”

He freezes. His hands drop and he folds them almost primly on the surface of your faux-wood dining table, avoiding your gaze in such a fashion that you think, if the lights were on, you would find him blushing as well as stammering. He mumbles an unintelligible response.

“What?”

“I was at the Sept!”

“Of Baelor?” You lean forward as if this will help you picture Aegon Targaryen, of all people, resorting to a place of worship during a time of need. “You were in a sept? Willingly? And you didn’t burst into flames?”

“Fuck you,” he laughs, another breathy thing but stronger this time.

“I’m glad I didn’t wager any coin on your whereabouts or I’d be bankrupt right now.” Especially after Ruby. You tuck that story away for a later time, hoping it brings some much needed levity after the funeral or in the near future. There won’t be much humor, you know, in the days to come. “Why the Sept? I know your mother attends services but I didn’t think…”

“For the quiet?” he replies. “And I figured no one would come looking for me there.”

“Well, you thought right.”

“I have my moments… not that he ever thought so.”

“Aegon.”

He waves you away. “I’m not looking for sympathy.”

“Well, I think you're bloody entitled to it—if not now, when?”

He doesn’t reply. He finishes his coffee. The sound the mug makes when it rolls between his hands sounds like a marble, repetitive, ominous. “It was always Rhaenyra… He wanted Rhaenyra—are we all just supposed to forget that? Pretend it never happened? The last twenty years of my life—”

“Like I said, you don't have to go.”

“Is that what my mother told you?”

“No.”

“I thought not.” His bitterness, and the truth lying behind it, that Viserys loved his eldest daughter best and treated her half-siblings like less than a footnote in his life, hits you with a wave of restlessness. He’s right; there’s no use telling him otherwise, and nothing Alicent does now can wipe away the resentments of the past. It was always Rhaenyra.

It was always Rhaenyra.

You get up from your chair and rush to the sink to fill a clean glass with water. “Here,” you say, setting it down in front of him like it should cure all of his ills.

“You’re being fussy,” he complains.

“I’m being assistant-y.”

“You’re treating me like a basket case.”

“Well… you haven’t always been the steadiest bulb in the box, have you?”

You mean it as a joke, but Aegon doesn't take it that way. He slides the glass over and stares into the depths, his expression hangdog, miserable. “You’re right… I’m sorry.”

“That’s not what I—”

“No, I’m a nightmare to work for. I know it, my mother knows it… No one wants me at the helm—let Aemond fight our sister for it, if it’s that important to him.”

“Your mother will say you’re the firstborn son, the natural head of the family.” He scoffs. “There was a time—” A time when he took interest, when he had just graduated from university and sought actual responsibility from his father only to be made redundant at every turn. Let the more experienced men handle it. Keep quiet and watch. Your input isn’t necessary. You’re more of a family representative, anyway. Gradually, he had lost interest, lost confidence. If no one cared, why shouldn't he get blackout drunk during work hours? Show up weary and hungover to important business meetings? Say the wrong thing and blow up tenuous relationships cultivated over decades?

Aegon must be thinking the same thing. “It doesn't matter anymore,” he says. “Nothing—” Nothing matters anymore.

“Aegon…”

“Would you choose me?”

You feel your stomach drop.

“If you were on the board, one of the shareholders… do you think I could do it? Would you choose me over Rhaenyra?”

“I—” Your face heats, your mouth goes dry. You want the floor to open up and drop you in the basement, hide out on the next boat to Pentos. Of all the things he could have said, you would take anything, literally anything, over this. “I—”

“You can't even say it.”

“You’ve stopped trying, Aegon! Maybe if you did… maybe if you applied yourself. You have your mother in your corner, your grandfather, Aemond, people at the company who would take your side. If you wanted it—”

“Bullshit.” He snatches his coat from the back of his chair, stands fast enough that you actually believe him about not being wasted. All you can do is chase after him, grab his arm when he's halfway to the door, just to the side of your cramped, unused kitchen.

“Wait, where are you going?”

“I didn't come here so you could lie to my face! Me or Rhaenyra?” he spits through the gritted teeth.

This is do or die, you know—either you tell the truth and risk hurting him or shatter years’ worth of trust in a second. Even if Alicent pats you on the back and says “job well done,” Aegon will never want you again. He’ll drive you away, make your life miserable if he has to, anything to get you out of his sight.

Your throat is clenched almost to closing when you say, “Rhaenyra… I would… I would choose Rhaenyra. But that doesn’t mean—”

“What? That I’m not useless? That my father didn’t find me a disappointment up to the bitter end?” He turns away, and you can see his jaw clench, the shadow of stubble around his cheeks. “Are you close with your parents?”

You nod.

“Then you don't know. You never will, and there’s no use trying. Tell my mother you couldn't find me.”

No use. You tug on his arm, but he is determined to get to the door and manages to open it a crack before you push it closed, squeeze your body around him to act, irrationally, like a human shield between him and the exit. “Don’t go,” you plead. “I’ll tell her whatever you want, but don't go. Don’t go out there like this.”

You know exactly what he’ll do if he leaves the building: he may have given his vices a mostly wide berth when he first got the news of Viserys’s death, but now, raw with grief and anger and Alicent’s heavy expectations, he’s liable to find the closest bar and drink himself under the table and into oblivion. To call the dealers Aemond threatened six months ago if they ever sold to his brother again. To go off the deep end… for good this time.

Aegon frowns. “Why do you even care what happens to me?”

“Because.”

The word hangs in the air, inadequate. If you tried to explain the feeling, he might call it pity, and perhaps that's what it is: three years' worth of annoyance, resentment, frustration, concern, three years of watching him walk into the office with black eyes or reeking of booze from his latest bender, of watching him and his—admittedly—disgusting friends squandering their fortunes on women, drugs, and self-indulgent purchases. As a man, Aegon has proven himself to be crass, irresponsible, petulant, entitled, completely unreliable. But you have also, on certain rare occasions, seen the set of his face when he thinks no one else is watching.

The fear. The exhaustion. The way his hands shake beneath glass tables. The desire to please, and the ignorance as to how.

The truth is, when he’s not being an absolute tosser, you do see him as something fragile, to be pitied. If you said that out loud, he would hate you and probably fire you on the spot. And it might be for the best, you think. What do I want with this insanity?

But standing there between him and the door, his gaze boring into yours, the faint smell of alcohol, cigarettes, and coffee on his breath, you know that you do care what becomes of him. Even if he fired you—even if Alicent fired you—even if you quit—you would still dread the coming of a day when you would pick up your phone and find a news alert: Aegon II Targaryen, Son of Viserys, Dead at 25 or 26 or 30. It’s as if, in this moment, having been forced to look at him—to really look at him, not just as an unwilling charge, a fully grown man-child you’re forced to contend with every day to make your living—you can see his life unfurling, past, present, and future… ignominious, burdened, without purpose.

How can he stand it? A mere glimpse of it leaves you breathless. Exhausted from a night of fraught nerves and virtually no sleep, you feel your heart kick in your chest like a frenzied horse. How can he stand it? How can any of them? Who would want to be a Targaryen?

“Hey, hey, what's wrong? What’s wrong?” Aegon asks more insistently. He puts his hands on your elbows, lowers you to sit—for lack of a better alternative—in front of the door when your knees weaken and your body sags. “Hey, listen to me, you’re alright, you’ve just got to breathe… Breathe…”

Frantically, you shake your head. I can’t.

“Don’t be a fucking idiot. If you couldn't breathe, you’d be passed out right now. In and out… look at me…” He takes a breath. “In… out…”

It takes a few minutes, but the feeling subsides, leaving you trembly and more than a little embarrassed.

“What in gods’ name is wrong with you?” Aegon asks, stroking his hands up and down your arms.

“Long day?”

He rolls his eyes. “Tell me about it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be stupid, I give people panic attacks all the time.”

You let out a watery laugh.

Aegon shakes his head at you. “I won’t let her fire you, if that's what you're so worked up about.”

“That’s not…”

“You’re not my keeper. She should never have called you in the first place. This isn't your mess to clean up, you’re meant to take messages and go on coffee runs and… keep track of paperclips—”

“Stop trying to make me laugh.”

“Why? It’s been your cheap ploy all night. That, and fussing like a mother hen.”

You sigh. This isn't at all how the night was supposed to go. You were meant to be the helpful one, the adult, the one one in control, the one who could be relied upon. But you're not in control. Not of yourself, certainly not of Aegon. If anything, he’s the one sitting next to you on the floor acting sanely, not having a secondhand existential crisis like a world-class fool. (Aegon, to his credit, had the good sense to lose his shit in the privacy of a sept, without any witnesses.)

“Listen,” you begin, “what I said before…”

“Forget it.”

You don't want to forget it. You want to tell him “You tricked me into saying something I didn't want to say”, something you can't take back, something which, while technically not a lie, obscures a more important truth—what that truth is feels too broad and frightening and, worst of all, pointless, for words. And yet you want him to know. Too many people have failed to bother. The last thing you want is to be added to that list.

“I meant what I said… about Rhaenyra. But for the record, and for whatever minuscule thing it might be worth, I wish that I didn't.… I really, really fucking wish that I didn't.” His hand on your face takes you by surprise, his fingers sweeping against your right cheek.

“What are these for?” He blots your tears away, ones you didn't know you had shed. His voice is hushed and disapproving. Without thinking about it, not even once, you pull him towards you by the back of the neck and crash his mouth into yours. Clumsy and graceless, it is less a kiss than a desperate exchange of air.

Stupid, stupid… Something at the back of your head is conscious enough to ring the alarm, but it is Aegon and not warning bells that is most immediate, solid and real and here. The heat of his mouth. The sound of his breathing. The staggering hesitation of his tongue when it brushes against yours.

Immediately, as if barraged by warning bells of his own, he pushes you away. “I don’t want your fucking charity.” His words are snarled, dangerous. He is a wounded animal and you should let him be. But you can’t. The seeing—you wish you didn’t know him so well, not now, on this night and in this moment. You wish you could shove your knowledge into a box of indifference and leave him to his fate, to face his mother, his brother, and his half-sister, his father’s ghost alone, but you can’t. A fierce possessiveness buzzes through your veins alongside the shock and stress and fear.

You feel tied to him somehow.

Perhaps it's naive to want to save him. The Targaryens are a dying breed, a glorious capstone creature just before its inevitable extinction. Rhaenyra will never go quietly—in the end, they will eat each other alive, if not this morning, then some other day, and a different house will rise in their place. They always do.

There will be other billionaires, other jobs, other men.

But at present, the most important thing to you, more important than your job or your reputation or your morals or basic common sense, is to make Aegon Targaryen believe you… to throw him a rope and feel him take it. And you know—because by now you think you’ve learned the major ins-and-outs of him, the dark passageways, narrow roads, the winding alleys no one dares to travail—that the only way to do that is to hurt him. “You are… an idiot,” you hear yourself say.

His face freezes, only his eyes giving the injury away.

“You’re right, maybe no one at the company except for your own mother wants you at the helm. You’re late to everything. You don’t give a fuck about anything of any weight. You’re a fucking embarrassment around waiters, and half the time a complete dick to Aemond… although, granted, he’s a complete dick to you as well and has a stick up his arse that'll probably never come out without surgical intervention. Your friends are clowns—I mean it, fucking nincompoops with shit for brains. You are borderline actually an alcoholic, and sometimes it feels like you haven't bothered yourself to open a book in the whole of your existence. You have everything, stuff people would kill for, and you appreciate none of it. But I get it… You think I can’t ever hope to understand because I love my sister and my parents call me every week and send me nameday cars, but I do. I’d be like that too, maybe, if I had Viserys for a father. Maybe you’re right… maybe the company is cursed and the best thing you could do for yourself right now is take the next flight out to Lys or Dorne or literally anywhere on the fucking planet and forget about it—forget about your name, your family, the company, all of it. I can take you,” you say. “My car is downstairs, I can drive you to the airport, I can make up a story and throw your mother off the scent if you really want me to. But I also think you’re tired of being this person… You’re a shitty liar, Aegon Targaryen. Maybe the top seat isn't for you, but you're looking for an excuse to stop being the guy who lands on trending pages for being an eternal fool. CEO won’t do that for you… your mother can’t do that for you… gods know that getting high off whatever backstreet shite Reyne and Estermont procure definitely won’t do that for you…”

“Let me guess,” he quips, “only you can.”

“Ha! No, that’s—this is—that is not what this is. What, are you crazy? I’m not your shrink, and anyway, it's not like I’m being paid a small fortune every week to exorcize whatever the hell’s wrong with you and your privileged-yet-unbelievably-fucked-up family. All I’m saying is… work your shit out, Targaryen. Fucking communicate! Don’t let your father, of all people, have the last word on who you want to be, especially if you feel like he did fuck-all to deserve it!”

“Are you finished?”

“Done. That’s my two-cents. So you can stop your whingeing about pity and charity and all of that nonsense. Only one of us has their bed in the same room as their dining table, and only one of us was pulled out of sleep by your terrifying mother who whacked me over the head with an NDA before I was even fully conscious.”

“That sounds like her.”

“She hasn’t even told Rhaenyra that your father is dead.”

“…that sounds like my grandfather.”

You sigh. “I didn’t kiss you out of charity, you numpty. I—I just wanted to. I just really wanted to… I still do.”

“I’m no good for you.”

“Probably not.”

“You’ll end up hating me… you’ll quit.”

You let out a mock gasp. “No one to guard your paperclips? How will you cope?”

“I don’t know,” he says, dead serious. “Not anymore.”

There is no humor in the set of his face. He is all grim, all self-despisal, all—could you be imagining it?—thwarted longing. You are beyond the facetiousness he uses as a shield. He wants you. You can see it in his eyes, in the labor of his breathing, in the way he leans ever so slightly towards you and then leans back. I’m no good for you. You’ve decided you don’t care.

“Aegon, kiss me,” you whisper into the dark.

He’s on you before you’ve finished, kissing you desperately, with tongue this time, the slow wet drag pulling a moan from you which you have neither the time nor the presence of mind to regret before he’s kissing down your jaw, your neck. You feel his teeth scrape against the soft hollow behind your ear and you climb into his lap, ungainly, perhaps, but it matters not when you settle to find him hardening beneath you.

He groans into your shoulder, hooks his thumb inside the open collar of your button-up top to part the material and suck at your clavicle, while his other hand, on your hip, guides you to rub against the seam of his trousers. It occurs to you that he must not realize the way he’s writhing beneath you; if anything, he seems only half-aware as he rambles, underneath his breath, “Need you… gods, I need you…”, before ravaging your tongue again.

Impatiently you undo your shirt buttons. Aegon’s hand moves over your breast, first over your bra, then directly over your naked flesh when you fling it aside, along with your top, to land who-know-where. Your nipples pebble underneath his thumbs. You roll your hips. The placket of his trousers catches you directly and you groan, arching your back, bearing down on him so that a breathy, rumbling laugh escapes his throat.

Aegon’s laugh feels better than his tongue in your mouth, than his hands on your breasts, than the ridge of him growing long and hard beneath you. Oh no… you shouldn't like to hear him laugh.

“Should we get off the hallway floor, d’you think?” Only you can hear the nerves behind his humorous inflection, the wobble in his voice that tells you a part of him is expecting this to be the end, the moment you give in to regret or common sense and send him on his way, push him out the door and never speak to him again. He avoids your gaze, trains his eyes somewhere around the vicinity of your collarbones and he looks, in the faint light coming through your half-parted curtains, like a little boy bracing for the worst.

You pull his head up to your level, kiss him slow and deep, rock your hips, relish in the tightening of his hand around your waist. “Yes,” you say into his open mouth. You feel him relax, feel the exhale of relief that moves from his body into yours before he kisses you with renewed vigor.

He anchors his hands on your lower back, then throws you off balance, lowering your body onto the chilly tiles and laving down your neck to the valley between your breasts, slotting his knee against you—by chance, you think at first. Then his movements become deliberate, impossible to deny. His hands are all over you, running up your sides, pressing along the dip and rise of your hipbones. Your heart pounds beneath his lips. “This isn’t how we get off the hallway floor,” you protest.

“But your bed is so far away!”

“Not so long ago, you were calling my flat tiny,” you remind him, with no little store of resentfulness.

He grins—“I guess it’s all a matter of perspective”—and lets you turn away so you can press your palms against the floor and push yourself into a standing position.

Aegon stays on the floor, splayed, smiling up at you until you offer him a hand. He lets you lead him to bed, where your sheets are rumpled, the duvet fallen on the floor. Neither of you cares enough to notice. After laying you down, he takes the time to unbutton your slacks, take off your shoes, slip your trousers down your legs, pausing only to drop a kiss at the curve of your ankle, the side of your knee, the inner portion of your thighs. When the mattress dips beneath you, you know that he is kneeling at the foot of the bed. You feel two of his fingers going down your slit, over the gusset. Your breath comes in shallow pants. You aren’t ready, but there’s enough for it to dampen the tips of his fingers and make them slide through.

Your mouth parts, hungry, expectant. For a moment, your eyes lock, and you have enough wherewithal to freak out about the fact that he—Aegon, your boss, Alicent Hightower’s son—is looking at you with a fuck-me gaze and that you, despite all common sense, are pressing your clothed cunt against his hand and whimpering—actually whimpering—for him to touch you.

Between you the tension stretches, and then breaks. Aegon dips his head and puts his mouth on you, the heat of his tongue following the same path as his fingers. It glides and it flicks and it tastes you hard enough to make you throw your head back against a pillow, but it doesn’t make contact with your heated skin. You buck your hips against his face, pull at his hair, and he lets out a moan which, if you aren’t mistaken, is laced with a deep, buoyant laugh. He’s enjoying this… The thought makes your muscles clench and pulls a long, fluttery gasp from you. And then, only then, does he bare you fully.

The night air and his warm breath hit you in a way that has you squirming, halfway up the finish line before you feel his lips close around your swollen peak, suckling and laving, gathering your considerable moisture on his tongue only to spit it back out onto your naked cunt.

His fingers move through the mess, gently probing, rubbing circles against you one minute before he turns his wrist and enters you. You moan, feeling two of his fingers stretching you out. In truth, you can’t remember the last time you were fucked, probably around the same time you started working for the Targaryens, and now that the floodgates have opened you don’t know what to do, how to behave. As his fingers work you and he nuzzles his face against the top of your mound, his stubbled cheek rubs against your clit in a way that makes your breath catch and your toes curl, and all you can think is more—not just his cock inside you, but more… more of him… You want him to have you any way he wants.

You clamp your eyes shut and try not to think about the implications of that.

His fingers make an audible sound when they move inside you now. Between squelching and moans and the rumbling in his throat, the room beginning to acquire the heady smell of sex, you’re getting close, so close, to coming undone on his mouth. “Just a little more,” he hear him say to himself, “just a little more…” He brushes against something that makes your eyes roll, your neck tense, your legs spasm around his shoulders. You clutch the sheets and feel the silence that overtakes your body as the knot of pleasure breaks and you hang—back arched, tense—suspended over something that snaps and leaves you boneless, powerless, at his mercy when he withdraws to throw off his clothes and kiss his way up your chest, slipping his tongue in your mouth and notching his hips against yours.

You feel him hard against your tender core. He slides against you, deliberate, slow. You whimper and try to squirm away from him, but he nuzzles the side of your face and strokes your hair, makes calming sounds like the ones he would make for a nervy horse. He doesn’t rush things. Only holds you and touches you where you’ll allow, only occasionally bucking his length against your inner thigh. Slowly, the sensitivity subsides and you kiss him in earnest, restless and eager, moving your hand down to hold him, first loosely and then as tightly as he seems to like. His lips part. His breaths are ragged as he moves over you and thrusts his cock into your hand, the head damp, the length of him pulsing hotly in your palm. You think about stopping, pushing him onto his back, swallowing him down as far as he’ll go. But he stops you.

“Tell me this isn’t just because my father died.”

“It’s not,” you say, your hand going still.

“Swear it.”

Your first thought is What a ridiculous thing to say, but it isn’t ridiculous, not to Aegon. So much of his life has been defined by his father, by what Viserys did or failed to do, and if he won’t have the old ghost here, in the bedroom with you, well, it’s not such an unreasonable thing to ask.

“I swear it,” you say, holding one half of his face and staring levelly into his eyes.

He nods. “I think you might be the only person in the world who doesn’t think that I’m a fucking joke.”

“That’s not true.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“Aegon, can we stop bloody talking about your father? Fuck him! He didn’t know you.” Not like I do, is what you want to say, but too soon, too soon. You kiss him to stop the words from falling out. “I want you… I want you. Is that really so hard to believe?” You take his hand and let it delve between your slit again, to feel how wet you are, how ready. To feel the needy moan you push into his mouth… the way you angle your hips until his tip is nestled, just so, at your entrance. “Do you want me to swear upon the Seven?” you ask him, tightening your walls so he can feel you squeezing around his leaking cockhead, inviting him in. “I’ll do it if you want me to… Mother, Father, Maiden, Smith—”

Aegon puts his hand over your mouth. “Shut up or you’ll remind me of my mother.”

You begin to laugh, a bubbling, ecstatic thing which he knocks right out of you when he pushes in to the hilt. You gasp, only vaguely aware that you never asked him to wear a condom, but he feels so good, too good to stop now. He hitches one of your legs and snaps his cock into you, increasing the pace. You moan at the length of him, the breadth of him, the way his fingers dig into your flesh, the sound of his stones hitting the back of your thighs, rhythmically, over and over again.

His eyes are shut, his teeth clenched, you feel him trembling above you, torn between taking and delaying his own relief. Always something to prove. Annoyingly, he is dampening the moans in his throat just as you want to hear him—gods forbid you think less of him. “Aegon… it’s okay,” you speak into the curve of his neck. You kiss his shoulders, tighten your thighs around his hips, bear up on his length.

From his lips pours a sound of mingled pleasure and distress. He is trying so hard not to finish, but can no longer keep up with the measured thrusts he first started with. His pace falters, he grinds against you, fucks you deep into the mattress in a way that, had he lasted longer, might have drawn from you another peak. But it doesn't matter. You feel his body start to shudder and you want it, want him to cum, want him to come undone, want him to cum inside you—what are you thinking?—want him to feel good, want him to feel so good… Not even with a gun to your head can you later recall everything you said to him in those crucial seconds before he spilled inside you with a deep, audible groan.

You remain that way for an unmeasured length of time, arms wrapped around each other, sweat cooling, breath coming slowly back to baseline. Then, with a kiss to your cheek that is sweet and almost chaste, he parts from you. You wince at the loss, the mess pooling between your thighs, and for a moment you fear that this is it—Aegon will walk out the door like he’s done to so many others. Goodbye. Thanks for the good time. Instead, he rests his head on your shoulder, tentative, an uneasy dog craving affection but not wanting to get in the way. You kiss the top of his head, let him doze. Even when he shifts away from you to lie on his stomach and bury his face in a pillow, he keeps his arm thrown across your middle.

The gesture is oddly moving. You think about it until you wake, just a little after 7:00 and see that the sun is newly risen in the sky. For a few minutes you match your inhales to Aegon’s, his exhales, the brief pauses in between. You’ve never felt closer to him than now, and with that comes a feeling like he’s yours somehow. Yours…

He wakes on his own, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He turns his head to squint against the daylight, and though you’re trying to be chill and sophisticated about it, you hold your breath and wonder what his reaction to you will be.

“Seven hells,” he curses, burrowing face-first into his pillow. “Did we only sleep for two hours?” We. The little word calms you, even as he drags his body to sit at the edge of the bed.

Without overthinking it, you wrap your arms around his chest and kiss the side of his neck. He sighs, caresses your arms and holds loosely to your wrists. Soft as you can, you ask, “What’ll you do?”, and press your cheek against his thin, pale shoulder.

“I’m going to see my mother. I’ve kept her waiting, and I can’t just hide from her like some pathetic—” You squeeze him and he breaks off. “I need to speak with her. After that…”

“Whatever comes after that comes after that.”

“Wow… you’re a regular portrait of wisdom.”

“Hey! You came here, remember!”

“That, I certainly did.” From the smirk you see spreading across his face, you can tell he isn’t referring to the simple act of having walked to your flat.

Your face heats. “Idiot.” You say it without bite and it comes out fonder than you meant it to. He smiles. “Do you want me to take you?”

“I can manage.”

“I know… but you don't have to.”

“Fine.” The word is vulnerable. Immediately he has to clear his throat, stand, and begin to dress. You do the same.

You should really have considered having a shower, especially after the long night and the hasty sex (the sex… a part of you still can't believe it happened except for the dull ache between your thighs and the way you keep stealing glances at Aegon, remembering his hands on you, clinging, seeking, sorrowful) but there is no time. The markets open at 9:00. Alicent will want to speak with him before then, draft a last-minute press release, calm the shareholders, the board. As it is, you and Aegon are walking a thin line. You settle for picking a clean black dress out of your closet, and are in the process of trying to fix your hair when you feel him coming up behind you, his hands gentle on your back as he zips you up.

The gesture is so simple, so earnest, that it breaks down every pretense and you have to admit to yourself that, even if you’d had the time, you don’t want to wash him off or have this quiet moment you’ve shared come to an end.

In the car, he sits with his head propped against the passenger window, deep in thought, fiddling with his hands, and especially with the signet ring that depicts his family crest.

Try as you might, you can't read his thoughts and you don't want to pressure him by asking what he plans to do. He could very well be on his way to starting a war between his family, or he could end it—walk away, probably earning the resentment of Aemond and his mother. Either way, there isn't a right choice to be made, only one he thinks he can live with.

Once out of the car, he takes your hand and doesn't let it go, not in the lift up to the lobby, not when you swipe your keycard for the executive floor and the doors open to a hushed, semi-lit chaos. He doesn’t speak. He keeps his head bowed, wary, observant, but he is calmer somehow—you can tell that he’s decided.

Together, you walk around a small handful of department heads speaking into phones. Their assistants cross the floor, exchanging fretful looks while clutching file folders, tablets, cups of coffee. Along the far wall, glass-encased offices are mostly empty except for Conference Room 1, where Alicent Hightower stands at the head of a table at which are seated her father and the head legal counsel, the company’s financial officer, a few of their allies on the board. Aemond, too, is there, immaculate even at a distance. He is the first to spot them; his lips purse, even as his one visible eye remains defiant.

“See you on the other side?” Aegon asks, finally letting go of your hand. You tug his fingers before he can pull the conference room door and he turns to you, waiting, watching you rack your brain for the right thing to say. “Don’t worry, it’ll be all right” and its many variations seem like the veriest wrong, platitudes, lies.

“You can handle it,” you tell him at last, “whatever it is.”

Aegon appears doubtful at first, then he exhales. His face settles, his shoulders square. He has a look about him you've never seen before… Perhaps he and Aemond have more in common than either of them think. Perhaps he is more like his mother than he believes.

He strides through the door and everyone turns to look at him, the heir apparent or the prodigal son. You leave him to it, thinking, To war, then, or whatever it may be.

[calypsocolada]

THE PROPHECY | t. shigaraki

synopsis: tomura doesn't want to be your enemy anymore. authors note: hi hi hi. been working on this fic for a few weeks. it's sort of a continuation of the first kiss fic with him in it. also I'm working on a few other fics and requests and hope you enjoy this one in the meantime. it's a lot longer than I thought it was gonna be. also with the release of tswifts new album expect a few little nods to her songs... cw: blood, gore, suggestive, enemies to lovers, lovesick!tomura, obession, fem reader wc: 5k

click here for my masterlist

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He watched you from afar. He watched your television broadcasts and studied your face as though he’d missed something the first hundred times. He remembered your smiles, and could decipher whether real or fake. He’d visit places you had been and imagine you there now. Future number one hero. His number one. Tomura was sick. Sick in the head, sick in his chest, his heart, dark and decrepit only beat for the sun. His days were dark and gray until he saw your shining face. So bright sometimes it made his stomach turn. He wouldn’t call it an obsession. It was something far worse. He didn’t just want you. He needed you. He needed all of you. Wanted your things in his room. Wanted your body sprawled over his bed in one of his worn t-shirts. Wanted you eating at his kitchen table, something only he cooked for you. He wanted to hear you talk to him. To say his name. Wanted your eyes on his and your hands on him. He wanted your time and your heart and your being. He couldn’t have it though. The prophecy that encircled him was stuck on its unwavering path. Even you couldn’t deter his fate.   

Sometimes he thinks about the first time he saw you. Only when he’s alone and no one can see just how far gone he truly is. 

Him in company with the shadows as you were announced as the next pro hero. You were standing on some podium. The microphone was taller than you as you reached for it and it yelped with feedback. You had laughed it off and cleared your throat. You looked radiant, with glowing skin and bright hopeful eyes. You were signed to Endeavors squad. Tomura knew you were stronger than that bumbling fire breathing idiot. But still you smiled just as bright. 

All that untapped potential within you. Those powers could cause devastation if in a villain's hands. Which is why All For One asked Tomura to keep an eye on you in the first place. To see when the time to strike and steal those powers would be. But Tomura was past that. You had far more meaningful things he wanted rather than your powers.

You had thanked Endeavor after he gave a speech introducing you, your hand wrapping around the mic. Tomura fed off the shadows, after all they were giving him the ability to see you in person. It was an unreal feeling. Your speech wasn’t too long and you ended it before your eyes could well up with tears. The last words of your speech swirling around in Tomura’s head. 

“I have always wanted to do good. I’ve always wanted to be a hero. Thank you for giving me the chance to do just that.” 

He could see that good in you. Could see that swirling hope, that devotion to all things just. He unfortunately could see All-Might's influence. Endeavor walked over and placed a hand on your shoulder and Tomura felt something sick churning. He didn’t like people touching you. He knew you were nice, maybe too nice to say anything but he’d gladly be your voice if you needed it. When it was over you had walked out to meet people. Tomura watched you still. You were like some drug he couldn’t fend himself off of. He followed you at a healthy distance through the crowd. He wanted to see if he could corrupt you. See if he could drive you to the edge. See if those powers could be used for more than just causes. He could grab the man standing beside him and use decay. He could create mass panic. He could see your powers up close, could feel the weight of your stare. But as he got closer he saw you bending over to smile at a little girl. He heard your laugh and melancholy voice telling the little girl that if you could be a hero, anyone could. His reaching hand paused when you straightened and turned, almost like you felt the heat of his piercing eyes. Like you had a feeling creeping down your spine. Good intuition. He turned to leave just as your eyes found his. Just that split second of eye contact sent him pushing his way through the crowd and towards the exit as though he had just committed some atrocity and needed a quick exit. 

You two crossed paths many times after that day. Tomura did learn the full force of your attention and it completely turned himself in on his once well sought after goals. Because now… you became his goal. His ultimate end. He wouldn’t mind dying if only it was by your hands. There was no saving him, no redemption for you to give him but death. He could see it in your piercing eyes. Could feel it in the way you fought him. You didn’t fight like other heroes. You had something to prove. Most heroes in your position would be cocky. But not you. No you were calculating and smart, but above all… you were vicious with him. Those powers were something to fear and Tomura loved them more for it. The one person that could end his endless suffering was also the root of it. 

And the moment had finally come for him. After fighting, Tomura’s endurance wavering, he saw a thirst for blood in your eyes. A hunger so deep he knew you could never feel the same for him in a million millennia. And when the time came he accepted the death you’d grant him with open arms. 

But you didn’t grant him a thing. 

You had every opportunity to but you hesitated. Tomura saw it. Saw the quickest of uncertainties pass your heavenly face. Your eyes flitting up to him. The eye contact was nothing like he’d ever experienced before in his miserable life. You weren’t looking at him with anger or contempt. But something else. Something he wishes he could ask you to explain. He watched your lips part and heard you suck in a breath, not realizing he’d been holding his own. 

“Well… what’re you waiting for, hero?” He asked. This moment like something right out of his stupid daydreams. You tightened your grip slightly at the sound of his voice but that uncertainty stayed. Tomura couldn’t help but glance at your lips. After all this was probably the last time he’d ever see them this closely. And he couldn’t help but get caught up, to just stare and drink in his fill before his demise. You flinched when he looked back up and right then and there he knew you couldn’t kill him. He didn’t know what it was but he could feel it as deeply as he felt for you. 

“I can’t.“ You affirmed his suspicions. Tomura’s stomach clenched. He’d never heard your voice this close, speak this softly. He melted at the moment. You let out a ragged breath and there was a moment shared before Tomura saw Dabi’s blue flames travel towards your unguarded back. Tomura acted without even thinking. He gripped you by the shoulders and spun you out of the line of fire. You felt the heat graze against your shoulder before your back hit the ground, Tomura shielding you with his own body. He was burned badly with that little move. He groaned above you, shooting a glare back at Dabi. You stared at him above you in utter shock and confusion. He’d just saved your life. He stared at your mouth then saved your life. And you couldn’t kill him. You had every opportunity to end everything right here and now. He was already injured, you could finish it all here and now. But when Tomura turned and your eyes met again you couldn’t do it. Tomura reached for you, his thumb just barely wiping dirt from your cheek. It was surprisingly intimate. Until you realized the hand touching you was the same one that could easily turn you to dust. You were quick to act, quick to fire up your powers and send Tomura back towards the fire. Something burned in you, some feeling of guilt as you struggled to your feet and ran off towards the rest of the hero’s that had started to fall back. Tomura hit the ground hard, slightly startled by the force in which you sent him flying. He rose and watched you meeting back up with the rest of the hero’s. Watched Hawks run over and meet you halfway, grabbing you gently and looking you over for any wounds. Tomura felt his stomach twist in a sickening way. Jealousy like a vice around his chest. 

You had tossed and turned all night. Unable to turn your mind off. The events of the day played in a loop. Fighting Tomura, taking him to the ground. The curious way he looked at you. The curious way you looked back. The inability to kill him after everything. You could justify trying again if he hadn’t saved you. He saved you. Tomura Shigaraki saved your damn life. He took a burn for you. And then he touched your cheek. Without evil intent. And the look in his eyes when he did it. That’s what haunted you so stunningly and consistently for the entire night. You sighed heavily, turning over in your bed, running a stressed hand through your hair. 

Was this a thing now? That hesitation that took such deep root, that act of kindness to keep you from the flames. What if he had done it to confuse you? To test your allegiances. If so you had failed sort of spectacularly. Letting him touch you and feeling something when he did. You sat up instantly. You felt something when he touched you. You felt something when you watched his eyes watching your lips. You pushed out of bed and felt the cold flooring beneath your feet as you rushed from your room. You needed to do something… anything to get your mind off of him. In your haste you slammed right into Hawks. 

“Woah… hey there you alright?” He asked, steadying you. You cleared your throat. 

“Y-yeah, just hungry.” You lied. Hawks slightly cocked his head as he surveyed you for a moment. 

“You seem… rattled.” Hawks says. You look up at him a little too quickly. You shake your head. 

“I’m fine.” You say and slightly cringe because you did not sound fine. But Hawks wasn’t one to pry. He just gave you a small smile and nodded his head. 

“Well… you know where to find me if you aren’t actually fine.” He says before walking off to his room. You turn slightly as you watch him walk away. You suddenly wished he was who you were laying up at night thinking about. Wished you could chase him down now and release the pent up energy that swirled within you. But that wouldn’t be fair to him because you’d be thinking of someone else. You ran a stressed hand down your face and proceeded to the kitchen. After you ate and calmed down a bit you were able to wrangle in those unruly thoughts. Just because he saved you once doesn’t mean he deserves to take up rent in your head. The man was evil. You’d spent the better part of a year facing off with him and his followers. He doesn’t deserve your hesitation or confusion. The next time you faced off with him would be the last.

Tomura could only watch as his mind was stolen, watching his body being overtaken by a force he wasn’t strong enough to stop. All for One’s control taking over. He knew he had seconds left before he’d no longer cease to be himself. You burned with hatred beneath him, your left arm broken and useless, your right hand holding some sharp shrapnel that you’d plunged desperately into his side, your powers flickering weakly within you. He didn’t feel the pain. Your eyes flashed, his hands around your neck, squeezing. Someone was going to win here but… it wasn’t going to be him. 

He pulled you hard, the fire in your eyes licking and burning his own but he couldn’t care less. If he was going to die he was going to make one last grave mistake that might send him to the grave earlier than expected. He leaned down where you were pinned beneath him and with impressive force, smashed his lips against your own. 

The kiss was like a fight. Like all your other fights. But lips instead of fists. With breaths instead of words. With groans instead of screams and growls. His hands gripped your face hard to keep you where he wanted you. You, in a fit of confusion and pure survival instinct twisted the shrapnel in his side. He gasped in pain but that only spurred him on, his mouth cracking yours open in a feverish attempt to be as close as humanly possible. He had no indication whether or not you wanted this until the pain ceased and he felt your tongue brush against his. His breathing hitched, muddled with pain and sorrow and complete obsession. He pulled you off the ground roughly and kissed you until you both  were gasping for air. When he pulled back the state he left you in was enough to satisfy him for years. Your lips were kissed pink and wet, your cheeks had a wicked blush across them as you stared at him with utter bewilderment and something else that had his stomach tangling in knots within him.

He resigned himself to death then. He was guilty as sin.

Your hand was still on the hilt of your shrapnel that was embedded in his side as you stared at each other. Breaths heavy. Tomura didn’t know how to be kind. He didn’t know how to be soft. He’d never kissed anyone before and it should’ve been pretty damn suspicious when the first person he’d ever felt the need to devour with his lips was the one standing opposite of him in this endless war. The one he needed to destroy. And to say he wanted to devour you was almost an understatement. He wanted to climb into your body and live in your ribcage, safe and tucked away. He wanted to be inside you, wanted that mind of yours to only know him, wanted those pink lips to only speak his name, those pretty eyes to only meet him. The obsession was endless. He wanted it more than ever right now. Death knocking down his rotted door. So bad that he hadn’t even noticed his own tears before they fell and hit your cheeks. You blinked a few times, slowly coming back down from the clouds. Tomura reached for you a last time, the pad of his thumb swiping his tears off your cheek. 

“Save me, hero.” He breathed out before everything went black. 

Your breathing staggered as you watched Tomura change before your eyes into something else. You had been warned about Tomura’s connection to All For One but you let yourself get caught up in the moment. You were able to take advantage of the moment and put a little distance between you and the hijacker. You could hear Hawks calling for you somewhere but you weren’t leaving this. Tomura had asked you to save him. With tears in his eyes. And god dammit you were going to save him if it killed you.

“I know you're still in there,” You call out, voice steadier than it had been all day long. The hijacker looked up and the smile was pure evil. All For One. You’d never met him in person and without Aizawa here to cancel his quirk you were dead in the water. But you weren’t leaving.

“Tomura’s not here, girl. But he sends his condolences.” Even his voice didn’t sound the same. You kept your head high and even though your body screamed in pain you got ready to fight. 

“Get out of his head.”

“You sound like you care, hero?” You flinched at the nickname. It didn’t sound as good coming from him. 

“I can’t ignore someone in trouble.” You say, your heart speeding slightly as All for One laughs. 

“Is that so?” He asks, cocking his head. “As though you weren’t seconds away from killing him before I took over.” You were slightly relieved he didn’t seem to know what had transpired moments before he took over.

“He asked for help.”

“Does he deserve your help?”

“Everyone deserves help.” You shoot back defiantly. All for One just laughs, walking towards you. Your powers flickered weakly within you and you felt overwhelming fear, felt the urge to run. But you stayed put. 

“How about a trade, hmm?” He asked. You stared at him. He wasn’t to be trusted, you know that. But still… 

“A trade?” You echoed.

“I’ll give him back to you if you hand over those powers willingly.” All for One stated. You stared at him. All you ever wanted in life was to be a hero. You were blessed to have powers like these and as much as you wanted to save Tomura, these powers in All For One’s hands would only cause death and destruction. 

“I- can’t.” You said and watched a sympathetic smile spread across All for One’s stolen features. 

“Some hero you are.” He said. “And to think this host pathetically loved you for years.” Your eyes cut to his. 

“What?”

“You heard me. What an idiot he was, thinking you could save him.” You saw red. You charged without even thinking, your powers flaring up as you hit All for One square in the jaw. He lost a few steps, blood dripping from his lips as he laughed and laughed and laughed. “You’re bold.” He said and you burned. You only had one good arm and you hit him again and again until you couldn’t feel your knuckles, your hand bruised and battered. You screamed to let Tomura free but your words fell to uncaring ears. All for One caught one of your punches and sent you flying. You crashed into some loose debris. You coughed up blood and dizzily tried to push yourself to your feet. Your endurance was gone, at this point you’d been fighting for hours. You were past your limit, undoubtedly bleeding externally and internally. But still you pushed to your feet only to be caught by the throat and slammed into the wall. All for One pinned you there, with your feet not touching the ground you gasped and sputtered for air. You kicked hard but All For One just laughed it off. “You’re a strong one, hero. I’ll give you a valiant death.” Fear gripped your heart and in a last ditch desperate act you grabbed the closest thing you could find and sunk it into the flesh of All for One’s arm. He didn’t budge. With his hand around your throat, blackness danced around the edge of your vision. You had no strength left. You were going to die. 

“Tomura-” You struggled to breathe, your voice coming out in a choking gasp. Somehow… you’d grown to care. “Come…back.”

When you woke up it was a startling affair. You sat up quickly, gasping and reaching for your throat, you felt the tender flesh there, undoubtedly bruised. Warm covers fell from your body as you looked around. You were in some small cabin, a fire burning in the hearth, a soft orange glow lightening the room. You were bandaged up pretty thoroughly, your arm in a sling. You pushed the covers from your body and swung your legs around to the edge of the bed and that’s when you saw him. Sleeping soundly in the wooden rocker beside your bed was Tomura. His hair was damp and falling in stringy curls around his face. You stared at him, unable to look away. What had happened? It was clear to you that some time had passed since fighting All for One since it was dark outside. But how you got here and with Tomura was a complete mystery. You silently move to your feet and wrap the cover around your freezing body. You move towards the door, hand inching towards the door knob.

“Leaving without a word?” You flinch hard at his sleepy voice. Hand stopping before it touches the knob. You don’t turn to face him, ashamed after everything.

“Where am I?” You ask over your shoulder. You hear Tomura sit up in the chair.

“A cabin, safe.” 

“Not good enough.” You snap, turning slightly. Your eyes meet and you instantly regret turning. Tomura is looking at you in a way that makes your stomach flip. Tomura stands and you pull the covers tighter around yourself. He walks to you and you take a step back. Was All for One still in control? Was this an act? As though he read your thoughts he held up his hands in mock surrender.

“It’s me.”

“How?” You question, keeping up your guard. Even if it was him the air between you two would still be foggy. He kissed you when you thought he was going to kill you. You weren’t sure at all where you stood. 

“I heard you.” He says softly. “I heard your voice and it… gave me purpose.” He doesn’t reach for you but a part of you wishes he had. You hazard another look in his eyes. What was this spell that suddenly had such a tight hold over you? This feeling that only sprung when he first touched you. Just looking in his eyes made your knees weak. But you were good at maintaining a poker face. 

“Purpose to finish the job yourself?” You ask. Tomura doesn’t react to your venom, it was as though he expected it. He looks away from you.

“I won’t ever kill you. Not even if my life depended on it.” He says. You stare at him.

“I don’t understand.”

“You… affected me, hero. It’s not something I can… explain exactly.”

“Try.” You say sharply. Tomura looked slightly stressed, he ran a hand through his hair, his shirt popping up slightly. You blush and turn away. Tomura couldn’t even imagine this moment in a million years. You, standing mere feet from him, cheeks pink, moments from a confession he didn’t even know how to word. He was sure his kiss spoke volumes. 

“It’s rather simple,” He starts, taking a hazardous step towards you. Your eyes cut up to his, watching his every move. “I don’t think of you as my enemy.” You suck in a silent breath, your lips parting in surprise. You didn’t have to ask what he meant by that. You were sure that kiss was a power move and that he’d gotten the better of you. But it seems you have had the better of him for quite a while. You pulled the cover closer as though it could shield you from something you didn’t quite understand just yet. But… you wanted to understand.

“You saved me. From Dabi’s fire weeks ago. I… never got to thank you.”

“You being alive is thanks enough.” Tomura says. Your heart skips in your chest. You breathe in somewhat unsteadily.

“How long… How long was I out?” You ask, clearing your throat.

“Just a few hours. After I got control back everything sort of fell into chaos so I just grabbed you and ran.”

“You patched me up too?” You ask and Tomura nods his head. 

“You should rest some more. No one’s going to hurt you here.”

“I don’t trust you.” You say. Tomura looks hurt by that but more so he looks like he understands, after all this was all sort of new territory. Tomura had no intention of forcing you to do anything, after everything you two had been through he’d be delusional to think you’d up and change how you thought about him in one day. He never thought that could even be possible, that someone could trust him enough to love him. That someone could look at him, perceive him and know him to his very core and choose to stay. He’d stay for you. But he didn’t expect you to stay for him. 

“That’s okay. Are you hungry?” He asks softly. Your eyes meet again. This time tension builds properly and you're reminded how he kissed you. How he grabbed you like a starving man and slamming his lips against your own as though he’d rather do that than breathe. You blush at the thought.

“I need to go. I need to tell my team I’m alive.” You say.

“Stay. Just this one night. I’ll even leave. Just stay, eat something, rest and leave in the morning.” Tomura says, almost like a plea. You swallow, something in his tone had your stomach twisting. You were in trouble. Deep trouble. 

“I… I can’t stay.” You shake your head, dropping the cover and reaching for your clothes but Tomura catches your wrist. His grip is gentle and he’s stepped much closer to you.

“Don’t go.” He pleaded. You couldn’t even speak, not with him this close. You're not sure where your composure had gone but you sorely missed it at this moment. “Just one night-” You cut off his sentence, pressing your lips to his. He got to surprise you once, now it was your turn.  

A curiosity burned inside you, a need to feel the way you felt when he kissed you that first time. Tomura melted at your touch, he groaned against your lips and stepped fully into your space, gently walking you back against the cabin door. A heat burned in the pit of your stomach, only his touch satiated it. Your body ached from the earlier fight, scar and bruises stinging with every movement. But you didn’t care. You dragged Tomura to the bed and pulled him down on top of you. You kissed him hard, kissed him with a need to understand him. To crack him open and live inside. He pulled back just slightly.

“Do you really want this-” You grabbed his shirt and showed him exactly what you wanted. All those sleepless nights, thinking of him. You could solve all the mysteries now. You wanted him horribly bad. Clothes were shed, breaths shared. Tomura was careful with you because of your injuries and although you didn’t exactly want that it was nice not being in complete pain during all this ecstasy. Tomura kissed everything he could, he mapped you out. Wanting to carve the sight of you beneath him into his own skin. To remember this night for years to come. He didn’t expect this lapse of judgment to be a recurring thing. He fully expected you to come to your senses and be gone in the morning. The vicious cycle back in effect. But he wouldn’t fight you any longer. If you wanted to win all you needed to do was ask. Tomura kissed his way back up to your mouth. Your eager touches almost sent him over the edge. Tomura wanted to take things slow but it felt achingly slow, he was just as eager as you. He wanted to see the reactions on your face when he touched you there, wanted to catalog every sound, every noise that escaped your pink lips. He wanted to be rough, it was in his nature but he just couldn’t, he just wanted to kiss you, you were very dear to him. To be close to you. He wanted the soft touches, but above all he wanted the reassurance, even if he knew he could never have it. You could feel it, so you flipped around and pressed him into the covers. He gasped beneath you. If this was anything like your fights you’d come out on top. You leaned and kissed his lips, you trailed kisses to his neck and savored his labored breaths and small whimpers. You barely moved your hips against his, just to amp up the tension. You wanted so badly for years to hold a win over his head, to conquer him but you never thought it would be in such a different context. You tangled a hand in his hair and left marks on his neck. He twitched beneath you, his gentle grip on your hips slowly tightening. You could tell he was holding back. Maybe because you were so injured.You had realized you had been moving sort of fast, consumed by the moment. So consumed that when your hurt arm hit the bed it sent a sobering pain through you like nothing before. Tomura sat up, gently helping your arm back into the sling, careful hands brushing your hair from your face.

“We should stop… I don’t want you injuring that arm anymore.” He says softly as you nod in agreement. He rises from the bed and disappears into the kitchen for a moment before coming back with some food and medicine. As he watched you eat he thought about what he wanted. He wanted you to be the one to stay. To break his curse and change the prophecy. He’d beg and plead if he needed to. Pray to anything above that would hear his desperate pleas. He just wanted you to stay.

“This is good.” You said. “Didn’t know you knew how to cook.” You say, realizing you really don’t know much about Tomura on a personal level. And that you did want to know him. 

“I’m glad you like it.” He says, but it was clear his mind was somewhere else. He watched you with this sort of wanting expression.

“Have you eaten?” You ask and when you look up he leans just slightly to press a soft kiss to your lips. Your breath hitches as he presses his forehead to yours. 

“Will you stay?” He whispers to you. You nod your head and his hands slide against your cheeks as he deepens the kiss, hand tangling in your hair as he drinks you in. How could you not stay?  

[longlivechips]

A drabble on what if Arthur repealed the magic ban while Merlin wasn't there. I like the idea of Arthur thinking Merlin will be mad, he said magic has no place in Camelot afterall. And Merlin being like shit I'm gonna have to start telling the truth.

A fic where Merlin goes to visit his mother for a few weeks. It's Yule and he misses her.

While he is gone a child comes to trial. Hardly 12 and clearly terrified. She had been caught using magic.

She swears she didn't mean to, that it just started happening one day and she was so scared of what was happening to her.

The law says she is to burn.

But Arthur just can't seem to make the call. He can only think of the girl Morgana used to be when he looks at her.

He speaks to Gaius and Geoffrey about what Camelot was like before the ban. How people square magic. He learns, for the first time, more than his father had ever let him.

He's thinking of......well not reversing the magic ban. But this girl can't be evil surely.

He wishes Merlin were here, his advice is often quite sound. But Arthur is unsure if Merlin, who has been so outspoken against magic in the past, would agree with such loose laws.

But it comes down to this. Arthur cannot in good conscience kill that girl. And he can not have her as an exception. So he changes the law.

Merlin hasn't spent this long in Ealdor since before he left. He finds it quite lonely without Will to cause trouble with.

But he finds he is not ostracized like he was when he was a boy. In fact, more often than not he has to dodge mothers pushing their daughters onto him as prospects.

He is in his mother's house trying bundles of herbs to be dried and taken back to Camelot when his mother rushes in.

She stairs at him for a moment. Eyes wide, something clearly about to spill off her toung.

"Mother?" Merlin says moving closer, " What's wrong what happened? Has goodie meridan gone into labor?"

"Merlin. My boy. We just received news from Camelot. Gaius sent a letter. I....." Her face is flush. She doesn't look scared but Merlins heart drops anyway

"Arthur...." Merlin starts

"He's fine, he's fine" Hunith walks towards her son, cupping his face in her hands.

She laughs. Full belly and full of joy, her hands on his face strong, they almost hurt.

"He repealed the magic ban Merlin. Oh my boy by royal decree"

Merlins knees nearly give out.

"Surely you aren't serious....." Merlin gasps. "Do you have the letter?"

She hands it over and he reads frantically.

My good Hunith.

I write you instead of Merlin for reasons that will become obvious.

I also just request more of that dried lavender you sent last time, it does not smell the same from the north.

How is your neighbor Gregory fairing with his leg? My tonic recipe helped I hope, I would like to hear how it went.

There is news from Camelot. You might have heard, it will make fast news I'm sure.

A girl was brought to court for magic. Hardly 12 summers, she swears she did not train for magic, that it came naturally and she has no control.

Arthur was hesitant to burn her, despite the law, and tasked me with examining her.

I explained my findings, you know my friend how truly common it is to have magic as the girl does. Arthur listened well, and I sent the king off with what recommendations I could.

There are few books left on the subject but he spoke to Geoffrey. I assume he found some enlightened reading.

The next day, his verdict was as follows.

"The law of the land, as set by my Father King Uther, is that magic has no place in Camelot. I quite agree. Magic is dangerous, it has raveged my family.

But I can't help but think these laws might create more enemies. I cannot kill a girl for a crime she did not willingly commit. But I cannot banish her and create an enemy."

The council spoke on formal matters and specifics but Hunith, it is looking well. I feel hope I haven't had in decades.

Arthur has repealed the magic ban, in part. There are specifics to be worked out, and it is unclear if it would apply to Merlin. It certainly wouldn't apply to myself.

I will write again when I have more details.

I wish I could see the boy's face when he hears the news. Give him my love

Gaius

Merlin reads it. Than again. The third time he skims it he is tearing up. Looking desperately for any sign that Gaius tells a lie.

When he finds none, and there is no answer but that Gaius's words are true.

Merlin weeps. He falls to his knees and weeps.

Hunith cradles his head, spilling some tears of her own.

"oh my boy" she says. "What news. I knew Arthur would be a good king." She presses a kiss to her son's head.

Merlin cries, and wonders why he feels more scared than ever.

[starcurtain]

I wish everyone collectively understood aventurine’s character like you…things would be so much easier! I genuinely don’t understand how people keep getting his motivations wrong??? Could it be because some of the most popular Aven fanfics were written prior to his release? That could have contributed to some of the takes we tend to see about him…thoughts?

I struggled all day to come up with a concise way to answer this and couldn't think of one, so here, have a long-winded ramble:

I don't think early fic writers have much impact in the situation with Aventurine's character now, since most people can look at when a story was posted and go "Oh, this was before we had ____ information."

I think that Aventurine's problem is being a male character in a gacha game. Gacha game characters are designed to sell. Hoyo can sell female characters very, very easily. Give her huge tits and a visible underwear strap and you're good to go. I love all my guy friends, but I'm not gonna sugarcoat it: straight men are not the hardest audience to please. Hit a particular fetish (feet, spandex, dommy mommy), and you're gucci.

Nah, we all know why Jade's trailer is Like That.™

Male characters in gacha are harder to sell because women as consumers are a little harder to predict. Does every woman want a tall, ripped hunk? Shit, no, small cute boyish models like Aventurine are selling better now? Why?! Would a bad boy be more popular than a nice guy??? It's harder to account for women's tastes, especially because they are often (a little) less visually-oriented.

Hoyo is good at what they do though, and they've figured out that male characters sell very well when they possess at least one of two specific traits:

Endearing vulnerability/helplessness

Gay ship tease

Give a character both, like Aventurine? They might as well be printing money.

That sound you hear is Hoyo's stock prices rising.

So, from the very beginning, Hoyo is incentivized to create a character that appeals to people, a character people will want to crack their wallets open for. And they achieved this, first and foremost, by giving Aventurine traits that female players (in particular, but men too), find especially appealing: emotional and physical vulnerability.

We see Aventurine's pain. We sympathize with his grief. We identify with his struggle to make meaning of his difficult life. He's our woobie, blorbo, babygirl, whatever the hell they're calling it now.

He can't hide his suffering anymore. He's on the very edge. He's a dude in distress. He's surrounded by enemies! He misses his mama! He's been betrayed! No one understands him like you do, dear player!

The ultimate feeling evoked is: He needs to be saved.

When people talk about male power fantasies, I think they forget that women can experience them too, and "Emotionally vulnerable man that only I (or my favorite character) can fix" is actually a female power fantasy.

And from there it's really easy, right: the people who shell out cash to buy warps for their harmed-husbando feel like they've saved him; the people who are into mlm ships look for the nearest hot dude to be the savior Ratio was waiting for his time lol.

Morally and intellectually, this type of deep-down-golden-hearted, emotionally-wounded male character is very easy to digest. There is nothing to dislike about this type of character or role in the story: this character is a good guy who has just gone through so many terrible situations, whose victim status makes him endearing, and whose lack of agency means that any of the questionable or downright bad things he does are always the result of someone else forcing his hand, and never something he would have chosen himself.

His motivations are always clear and consistent: get free, heal, and live happily ever after.

Insert the Wreck-It Ralph meme: "Do people assume all your problems got solved when a big strong man showed up?" But to be fair, a big strong man did kind of solve Aventurine's problem, so--

Anyway, it's simple. It's straightforward. Morally, it's pretty cut and dry, black and white: Aventurine is our hero, which means everyone dictating the course of his miserable life is evil.

Hoyo is not remotely discouraging people from literally buying into this emotional appeal.

And trust me, I get it. I'll be the first to admit that hurt-comfort is its own entire genre in fandom because it is so appealing. People eat up Aventurine's tragic backstory like candy! The idea of watching a character go through hell at the hands of bad guys just to finally find a happy end is like the definition of everyone's favorite story.

In fact... people love Aventurine's suffering so much, they have invented whole new ways for him to suffer that aren't even in the game.

This is where we get all the headcanons that Aventurine was a sex slave, every single person he meets hates him because of his race, the Stonehearts are executioners holding knives to his throat, Jade enslaved him to the IPC with a lifelong contract, his material possessions belong to the company, the IPC is forcing him to take only the most dangerous missions where he is being required by his evil jailers to continually put his life on the line... You name it and I promise you, I can find a fanfic where Aventurine suffers from it. 😂

Bro can't even sleep in on his day off; life is so hard for this man.

Being serious: if the game is telling us that Aventurine is a victim... Why not make him the perfect victim?

Why not envision an Aventurine with no freedom, who bears no responsibility for any of the horrible situations he is in or any of the dubious things he does?

It's so natural to like that version of Aventurine, so appealing to see a totally powerless underdog use his own wits and charms to claw his way up to freedom. Or, if you're the kind who really relishes angst: It's even appealing to see Aventurine lose more. To delight in fics where he loses his wealth, where the IPC punishes him for past crimes while he's powerless to stop them... (I assure you, this is many people's cup of tea and the fanfics prove it!)

Ultimately, there's nothing wrong with liking characters who are exactly this straightforward! It's completely fine to embrace characters that are intentionally written to be morally above-board, whose primary role in the story is to generate angst by being a good person who suffers, or those characters who never show unlikable traits, bad decisions, or contradictory actions.

The problem is that that's just not who the game is telling us Aventurine is.

Hoyo may be capitalizing off people who love to envision poor Aventurine still living his life as a slave... But the game also needs to tell a complicated enough story overall to appeal to people who don't care about this specific husbando--Aventurine's role in the actual game's plot has to be interesting enough for almost everyone to appreciate it, not just Aventurine's simp squad. (Don't get mad, I'm in the simp squad with you.)

So his character doesn't stop at just being a pure-hearted victim who is still waiting to be saved.

Aventurine is not that easy to label, and I think the biggest struggle in this character's fandom right now is between people who prefer the even-more-angsty, still-a-slave Aventurine versus people who want a morally grey, self-destructive character instead.

To me personally, while I greatly understand the appeal of fanon!Aventurine and the joy of a really juicy angst fic where characters lose it all, I think that missing out on the depth that canon is suggesting would be a real loss on the fandom's part.

The character motivations that Aventurine shows in the game are complicated. They cancel each other out. They're basically self-harm! He makes almost every situation he's in worse for himself--on purpose.

He is a good person, but also a person who has done unspeakable things. He does have morals, but he's not above allowing those who don't have them to use him to their advantage.

He's both the victim and the victor. He's his own worst enemy. He's a lost little boy who's been making terrible decisions for himself since he was like eight years old, and a grown ass man who is barely managing to fake his way through an existence that destiny is not letting him quit.

This kind of character is a lot harder to embrace. He's done things that most people would find appalling--like willingly joining up with the organization that let his entire race be massacred. He's invented a whole new peacock persona to frivolously flaunt riches he doesn't even care about (Poison Dart Frog Self-Defense 101). He actively plays into racist stereotypes about his people to manipulate others through their preconceived expectations. He's made a mockery of his mother's and sister's hopes and dreams by endlessly trying to throw his own life away.

He has flaws! He bet everything he had on a ploy without doing his homework to find out if the people he was risking his life for were even still around. (Maybe he already knew, and couldn't bear to admit it, even to himself.) He's intentionally off-putting and obnoxious to everyone he meets (Poison Dart Frog Self-Defense 102). He terrifies everyone who gets close to him by (seemingly) carelessly throwing himself into the jaws of death without the slightest provocation.

He knowingly allows the IPC to exploit his power and talents for profit. Did everyone forget that his role in the Strategic Investment Department is asset liquidation?! Like, his actual day-to-day job is ruining people's lives. Canonically, Aventurine kills people when his deals go bad.

His motivations change off-screen in two lines of story text. We're told in one line that his biggest reason for joining the IPC was to make money to save the Avgin, then in the next line we find out that's impossible. And... then what? What motivations does he even have now? The whole point of his character arc from 2.0-2.1 is that he was on the edge of giving in to utter despair and nihilism because he couldn't even perceive a single reason to stay alive. He has no purpose in life before Penacony, and that didn't start with the Stonehearts at all??

People keep saying Aventurine was held in the IPC by golden handcuffs, but how do you tie down someone for whom profit is meaningless? What can you offer to a man whose only desire is to bring back something already lost forever? How do you imprison someone whose only definition of freedom is, canonically, death?

Working for the Stonehearts is obviously not healthy. But that's why Aventurine was doing it--because taking dangerous missions allowed him to put himself at risk. The job that he originally pursued hoping to save his people became a direct means to self-harm, and the IPC's only real role in that was just happily profiting off the results.

The journal entries for Aventurine's quests are there deliberately to tell the player what is on his mind, and none of it has to do with escaping from his job:

Like... Work is the least of this man's problems.

At really the risk of rambling on too long now, he's also just a massive walking contradiction:

Aventurine is among the most explicitly religious characters in the game, yet he's one of the only people in the entire game that we have ever seen actively question his people's aeon.

You might be tempted to think Aventurine's risky gambles with his life as an adult are a result of giving up after finding out about the Avgin massacre... Butttt no, Hoyo makes sure to tell us that even at knee-high in the Sigonian desert, Kakavasha was already willing to risk himself in a fight to the death against monsters because even back then he found his own life to have less value than a single memento.

He's the "chosen one" who will lead his people to prosperity... except they're all dead.

He's explicitly suicidal... andddd also a pathstrider of Preservation.

He wants to die... He doesn't want to die. He wants to make it end, yet goes to staggering lengths to continually survive. (Every plan risks his life on purpose--but every plan's win condition is also to live.) He life is the chip tossed down, but his hand is trembling beneath the table. When faced with an otherwise unsurvivable situation, Aventurine literally became a winner of the Hunger Games. He beat other innocent people to death with his own chain-bound hands just to come out alive.

He knows the IPC failed the Avgin and left them to die... and he still willingly sought out a position of power in their organization. Maybe he really is after revenge... but maybe not.

He starts his journey in the IPC with a truly noble goal in mind: to help his people using his newfound wealth and power. He's a good guy who did genuinely want to save the Avgin and repay all those who helped him. But once it became clear he was too late, once it was obvious he would have no use at all for that monetary wealth and power he risked his life to get... What did he do with it? Unlike Jade, we don't see him over here donating to orphanages. (I'm not that heartless; I'm sure he does actually do a lot of good things with his money on the side, but the point is that the game does not show us that--it shows us, over and over again, Aventurine putting on a wasteful, over-indulgent persona toward wealth. We've supposed to feel how meaningless money is to him, how meaningless everything is becoming to him.)

He outright refuses to use underhanded tactics or to cheat at gambles, which is meant to show us that's he's more morally upright than his coworkers. There's an entire exchange where he says that he'll never stoop to using manipulation the way Opal does. But... he doesn't have any issue fulfilling Opal's exact agenda. He was never remotely morally conflicted about denying the Penaconians their freedom by dragging Penacony back under IPC control.

He's willing to risk his own life, which is one thing--but he's also willing to risk other people's well-being. Topaz accuses him of constantly egging their clients on into dangerous situations; we've actively seen him shove a gun into Ratio's hands and pull the trigger with no care for how Ratio would feel about that on their very first meeting... Dragging the Astral Express crew into the entire Penacony plan in the first place was exceedingly dangerous...

To me, I just think it's vital to understand his character through the lens of these contradictions because they demonstrate the extreme polarity of Aventurine's life: from rags to riches, from powerless to empowered by multiple aeons, from willing to kill to survive to killing himself... He has quite literally lived a life of "all or nothing," and while he is the victim of many terrible situations out of his control, his arc as a character involves facing the truth of himself and the future his own actions are hurtling him toward.

Frankly, the Aventurine that canon is suggesting is a little annoying. You want to grab him by the shoulders, shake him, and say "Why are you like this?!" And he won't even have an answer for you, because he doesn't even know why he's still alive.

In the end, to me, this is so, so much more interesting. I can read an endless supply of hurt-comfort fics where Aventurine escapes the evil IPC and Ratio is there to fill the void in his life with the power of love and catcakes and be a perfectly happy clam online, but I want canon to continue to serve us this incredible mess of a man who constantly takes one step forward and two steps back.

Who is fully aware of his role as a cog in the grotesque profit-wheel of cosmic capitalism and still manages to say he never changed from the rags-wearing desert rat of the Sigonian wastes.

Who over and over again flirts with nihility but, ultimately, even if he has to wrest it from the grip of the gods themselves with bloody, chain-bound hands, chooses life.

[storiesfromafan]

I'm Sorry Baby - Benny x Reader

A/N: I am back! And with Part 4 of my Spitfire series. This one was fun to write...as I am throwing myself into a bit of smut 😅

Also, want to thank @strayrockette for reading and advising on my attempt at smut 😂 I appricate her opinion.

Warning: my attemtp at smut after 10+ years, which even then might not have been good. So please, go easy on me 😅 also, might be grammer and spelling mistakes.

Tag list: tagging those that previously comment, in case you were looking forward to the next part haha.

@redwitchbitch1 @bellesdreamyprofile @cherryaustin

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

A few days after his return, and you pretty much throwing him out, Benny had been staying in a motel. He had been thinking everything over, trying to work out how to get back in your good graces. So, here he was at the bar, currently sitting with Johnny. With a short glass in hand, half full of amber liquid, Benny's poison of choice. He was having a talk with the one person he could talk too. One married man to another.

“What did ya expect, kid? Her to welcome ya back with open arms?” Johnny chuckled taking a sip from his glass.

“Nuh...but I didn’t think I’d get the door shut in my face” Benny sighed.

Johnny softly laughed. “She’s hurtin’. If ya could have heard her” – a look of guilt crossed Benny’s face – “Well, ya get what I mean...”

Benny nodded, taking a sip from his glass, eyes looking off into a void.

“Look kid” Johnny began, sitting up and leaning in, “woman are tricky. Wives are trickier. In a relationship there is two of ya. Not just you, or her. The two of ya. Yeah, she told ya to leave. But it was you who made that choice”.

Again, Benny nodded his head.

“But I’m not sayin' it’s your fault. It’s both of ya's fault in some way. Why hadn’t you been goin’ home at a decent hour?”

Benny shrugged. “Dunno, I’ve always been here, I guess...”

“You guess?” Questioned the Vandal leader. “You’re crazy about the spitfire, yeah?”

“Yeah” was all Benny said.

“Then you should have been goin' home to her. The club will still be here the next day. The knuckleheads will still be knuckleheads. But your woman, she ain’t somethin’ to take for granted” Johnny pointed his finger at Benny as he said that.

And he knew Johnny was right. Benny was crazy for you, had been since he saw you. He was crazy for your sass and attitude, for your fire. But also your caring and warmness to him. You were something special, something he had taken for granted. Benny was determined to get you back, one way or another. He would fight for you, fight for your relationship.

“What do I have to do to get her back?” Benny asked the older Vandal.

“I’d say get on ya knees and grovel” Johnny downed the last of his drink. “A woman with her spirit, she ain’t gonna just roll over. Your gonna have to show her what she means to ya. Or pray for a miracle”.

Getting up, Johnny patted Benny on the back laughing. He knew his younger Vandal was in for a fun time. But he wished him luck, and hoped it all worked out. Benny stared at the last of the liquid in his glass, before downing it and placing the glass on the table. Now he had to think of what he could do to win you back.

Finally it was closing time at the salon. Your feet were aching, and you had a small headache from listening to client after client either gossip or complain about life. You loved your job, but women could be so catty. And then there was Benny, and his reappearance a couple days ago. How it weighed on your mind and heart.

Betty had called you last night to let you know where he’d been staying, and how he was going. Apparently she’d seen him that day and he didn’t seem himself, lost in his thoughts. And that he hadn’t gone to the bar for long. She thinks he was riding most of the night, or back in his motel room. She believes he was thinking of you, and your relationship. You thanked her for the information before ending the call.

Part of you felt guilty, and missed him like crazy. But that fire in you wanted to give him a taste of his own medicine, for him to realise what he did and learn a lesson. You helped the owner clean up while she handled the till and books. You both conversed on the day in the shop, laughing at bits of gossip you’d both learned about other clients.

“So, how are you doing?” Sophia – salon owner – asked peering over at you, as you swept.

“Yeah, I’m alright” you replied off handedly.

Sophia nodded. “I heard Benny’s back, I take it he came home?”

You nodded. “Yeah...but I didn’t let him back in. I need my space”.

With that you collected the hair and moved to the back, where you’d dispose of it. The conversation done with, for now. Sophia wasn’t blind. She’d see how the week without your husband effected you. And how closed in and shut off you’d been. But Sophia also saw how happy you’d been when you got with Benny. Compared to your ex, this relationship was much better and you were the happiest she’d seen you.

With all the end of day chores done, you and Sophia headed out the front door. You were the last, closing the door and locking it for your boss. She always struggled to get the lock secure, so you just do it, since it seemed to like you. Sometimes you’d even be the one to lock up, and gave Sophia an early mark.

“Well, that’s a sight for sore eyes” Sophia said softly.

You’d just secured the lock, before turning to the woman, that was looking to across the road. Following her gaze you were greeted to the sight of your husband, who was leant against his parked bike. It reminded you of when he’d pick you up after work, seeing him after you’d finish work. How he'd light up when seeing you coming towards him, and how you’d greet him with a sweet kiss. But now you weren’t sure what to do.

“Are you gonna go to him?” Sophia questioned, turning back to you.

You shook your head before heading to your car, Sophia followed, as her car was next to you. Once coming to the cars she stopped you, she gave you a soft, small smile.

“Look Hun, can I give you some advice?” – You nodded for her to go – “there will always be fights in a relationship. But I know how much that man means to you, and no doubt it’s the same for him. So, don’t let this fight stop you from being with him, alright?”

You let her words sink in before slowly nodding your head. “I’ll try not to Sophia...but right now, I need some time...”

She nodded. “I know, but don’t take too long. He’s too good looking to stay away from” she teased with a wink, which made you softly laugh.

You hadn’t laughed in a little while at a teasing remark about Benny. Maybe you were already beginning to get over it. But you would give it a little more time till you were completely ready to have Benny back in your house and your bed. With a see you tomorrow, you both got in your cars and left. Briefly you looked to Benny as you drove out of the car park, and headed home.

Benny had watched the whole time you left the salon, to getting to your car. He could see how you and your boss talked, and saw how the woman had looked to him first. And when you looked to him, he felt his breath catch in his chest. You didn’t look mad or upset, it was more a blank stare at him. And he understood you still needed time. But he would make sure to be close by, keeping an eye on you and looking out for you, ready for whenever you needed him. It was one way to show you he was there, and not going anywhere from now on.

The little things will show how I care, he told himself.

Benny watched you drive off, not moving to go after you, not yet anyways. Taking out a cigarette, he placed it between his lips before lighting it up. Taking a long drag, he removed the cigarette before releasing the smoke. Benny smoked the cigarette but didn’t enjoy it as much as he usually would, it was just a way to distract himself and fill time. It was you that he was craving more then the cigarette. Craved your attention, your smile, your lips, your warmth. He craved you wholly.

The following day you arrived at work just before nine, you knocked on the door and Sophia let you. With a morning to each other, you put away your bag and got ready for your day to begin. It was going to be a relative busy day, which you didn’t mind. It was yourself, Sophia and another woman named Ella. Between the three of you, you could get a good amount done.

When your first client showed up, an older woman who was a bit of a stick in the mud, you wasted no time in getting her set up in your chair. Draping the cape over her, you made pleasantries. Though you know she did not like you, just your work. She was a stuck up woman, who you knew talked about you behind your back. But you did your best work, that way she couldn't run you down on it.

It was just after ten, the salon bustling with activity, when a delivery man came into the shop, in his hand a lovely bunch of flowers. He stepped into the shop, a little shyly. You watched him in the mirror before you, thinking those flowers had to be from Sophia's husband for her.

Sophia spoke to the young man, taking the flowers before thanking him. He didn't waste time to leave the shop and move on to his next delivery. One of the clients, being nosey, asked Sophia if they were hers. She was looking at the beautiful flowers before spotting a card. A look of surprise crossed her face, before a small smile crossed her lips.

“Mrs Carpenter, I wish they were, but they're not for me" mused Sophia.

All the women in the shop looked to Sophia, then around at each other. All wondering which of them they were for. Some probably hoped their husbands had sent them flowers on a whim, to surprise and cheer them up as they got their hair done. But they’d be wrong.

With the flowers in hand Sophia stepped around from the counter. She moved across the room and came to stand beside you. She was smiling at you as she looked at you in the mirror. They were for you. You should have guessed from the various flowers that you liked, making up the arrangement.

“Seems these are yours Hun" commented Sophia, holding out the flowers for you. “Why don't you go put them in some water out the back. And read the card. I'll take over for you while you're gone".

Reluctantly you finished cutting the piece of hair you held in your fingers. “Ah, sure...” you replied, unsure and uneasy.

Taking the flowers from your boss, you slowly moved from the floor and into the back. All the time questioning who would have sent you flowers? You didn't wait, taking the card from the flowers and laying them on the counter by the sink. You held the small envelop in your hand, reading your name before turning it over. You took a moment, looking at it once more before shakily opening the seal.

Slowly you removed the card, and taking a breath before finally reading what it said:

Flower's for my girl, my wife.

I hope they brighten your day,

Just like you will always brighten mine.

Love Benny.

Your heart skipped a beat reading his words. Words that he couldn't always say. Word's he knew you needed to read. For Benny knew how your days at the salon could be. He had seen how you come home, tired and drained. How you would have good days and bad days. He would listen to you tell him about the bitchiest women, who were the worst to deal with. But also how joyous you were when you had a day of nothing but sweet, lovely women.

Benny sent you a reminder that you were the brightest thing in his life, just as he was yours. You smiled softly, clutching the card delicately in your hand. Your chest aching with thoughts of your husband, and missing him. Maybe it was time to start working on getting your relationship back on track. Yes, this was the start. But you would make sure that man knew he had some serious work to do if he wanted you back completely.

Fixing up the flowers in a make shift vase. You walked back onto the salon shop floor, silence rolling in when you came back. All eyes watching you as you placed the flowers on the front counter. They noticed the sparkle in your eyes, along with a small smile on your lips.

“Take it the contents of that card were good, huh?” Teased Sophia, various women giggling.

You rolled your eyes. “If you must know, it was...”

Sophia smiled brightly and giggled. “Guess he made a good peace offering".

“It's a start" you retorted before taking back over working on your client, leaving Sophia to go off to do what she had to do.

Locking up on your own tonight, you noticed no Benny waiting across the road today. Which surprised you. None the less you got into your car and drove home, the radio on softly and you hummed along. Your flowers were sitting on the seat next to you, every time you looked at them you would smile softly. You wondered where Benny was. Was he at the bar? Would you have to go to him? Or could he have changed his mind?

Turning onto your street, you slowly came closer to your house. Your concerns and worries died away upon seeing the person on your mind. He had parked his bike across the road, again he was resting against it. As you pulled into the drive way, you could see him watching you, cigarette between his lips.

Benny had chosen to wait for you at your shared home. He knew to wait outside rather then just waltzing inside. He didn't want to upset you, especially after sending you flowers at work. It could have got either way, in his favour or made it worse. He hadn’t long lit a cigarette and taken a few drags, before your car turned onto the street. He watched as you approached, and turned into the drive way. But Benny never moved, he was going to see if you would invite him in, back into the house and into your arms.

Getting out of the driver seat, you leant back in and grabbed the flowers. Once you were out and the door closed, you looked to Benny. Still he lent against the bike, but he straightened up once seeing the flowers in your hand. Looking to them, you brought them closer to you. After that you walked up the few stairs to the porch – the same ones Benny climbed before you slammed the door in his face – and came to the front door. You used your keys to unlock the door and pushed it open.

Crossing the threshold, you paused a moment. Then you turned around to look at your husband. You kept your face blank, but there was a calmness to it. You looked at Benny for a few minutes before closing the door, but kept it propped open. It was a way to tell him that if he wanted, he could come in. You were calm and ready to talk.

You crossed the lounge room and entered the kitchen. Placing your bag on the counter by the door way, you moved over to the sink. You placed the flowers down before fetching a glass vase. You proceeded to put some water into it, then began to undo the wrapping to the flowers.

Mean while, Benny had watched your every move from car to front door. When you stood in the door way looking to him, he was silently hoping you would call out to him to come in. When you didn't, and began to close the door, Benny thought he would have to try again tomorrow. But when the door was left open a bit, he released the breath he had been holding. Hope bubbled in him.

Benny stood up from his position against the bike, stretching out his arms as he began to walk towards the house. Taking one last drag of the cigarette, Benny removed it from his lips and flicking it away. The smoke slipping from his lips as he walked up the path to the stairs. Up he went, boots landing on the porch. He stood there for a moment, taking a deep breath before pushing the front door open slowly.

You weren't in the lounge room, but he could hear you moving around the kitchen. He closed the door before taking off his jacket and hanging it up the door. Benny crossed the room to the kitchen, stopping in the doorway. He lent against the wood frame, watching you silently.

You had most of the flowers in the vase, you were just putting the remaining in and moving them around when you felt his eyes on you. It sent a shiver down your spine. Who would speak first? How would this all go?

When you had finished, you picked up the vase and moved to place it by the window on the counter. You would figure out where to put them later, for now you had to have a conversation with your husband.

“Do you like them?” Benny softly asked, when you placed them down and stared at them.

“Yes" you replied, “I like them a lot, actually...”

He nodded, though you couldn’t see it. “Good...I remember you sayin’ how you liked those kinds of flowers...”

It was awkward, but it was something, right? To know Benny remembered what flowers you liked, it showed he had been listening. And he did, majority of the time. Slowly you turned around, choosing to lean against the counter. For the first time in days you took a good hard look at Benny.

He looked tired, maybe he hadn’t been sleeping properly. His clothes – different to what you’d last seen him in – were deeply wrinkled, most likely worn when sleeping or trying to sleep. From the way he was leaning, you could tell Benny was uneasy. Not because of you, but for what could happen between you right now. He was guarded, yet trying to keep his defences down just enough so you in turn would let yours down. You could tell he didn't want to fight, he wanted to sort this out like adults. No more running, for either of you.

“...I’m sorry for leavin' baby" Benny said, breaking the silence. “I shouldn’t have taken off like I did. Nor did I want to worry ya".

You nodded your head. “I know...”

“When I bring up leavin'...its somethin' in me that switches when a fight gets too much" Benny tried to explain. “I know its not an excuse, but I want ya to understand. But I promise I wont do it again...if I do, you can kick me out".

You chuckled. “Like I'd want you to go...” you said softly. “But Benny...you gotta know it did hurt. You just up and goin', no word of where ya were or if you were alright. I was worried sick".

Benny moved from the door frame to you, but stopped himself from pulling you to him, to hold you close and kiss away the hurt he caused. He looked at you with soft, guilty eyes. Waiting for you to give him the ok that he could touch you, hold you.

“I’m sorry for worryin' you, baby. If I could take it back, I would" Benny said softly, hands itching to rub up and down your arms.

“I know Benny...” your voice was soft, fragile. You looked at your husband with hurt eyes, only killing him more. You then looked to his hands and back to his baby blues. That was all Benny needed, for he stepped closer and pulled you to him.

Benny wrapped his arms around you, holding you closely to him for the first time in what felt like forever. Having you close felt right. You rested your head against his chest, your hands gripping his t-shirt. A few tears, that you hadn’t realised that had risen, escaped down your cheeks, they a mix of hurt but happiness.

“I’m sorry baby" Benny whispered into your hair.

You stood there for a few minutes, just letting Benny hold you and whisper sweet things into your ear. You felt better. You felt a part of you healing. Just like it was for Benny. Reluctantly Benny pulled back, moving to look at your face. Seeing the remints your tears left, he brought a hand up and whipped them away.

“Benny, you know we need to have a long talk, right?” You questioned softly, afraid he might get spooked.

He nodded. “I know, baby. I am ready for it...”

So, with a deep breath and standing where you were, not waiting to leave his space, you began. You told him how you'd been feeling, how him staying out effected you. That you wanted him to come home more, but not to take him away from the club. Benny heard you, he agreed to it. He told you how he adored that you respected his ties with the Vandals, and not trying to entirely change him, which made you laugh. Music to his ears after so long. Benny didn't ask much of you, as you had been perfect the whole time.

“I guess Johnny was right...” muttered Benny as he moved from you, as you crossed to the kitchen door way.

“Hmm?” you asked turning back to Benny.

“Johnny...I spoke to him the other day. I asked him what to do" Benny paused, gauging your reaction, with a nod he knew to go on. “He said I should grovel, or show ya what you mean to me...”

You held in a laugh at the suggestion of grovelling. “Is that why you sent flowers?”

He nodded, “but I meant them and what I wrote, baby. As well as watchin’ out for you, I wanted you to know I wasn't goin’ anywhere".

You smiled softly, moving to stand before your man. You cupped his cheek with one hand, thumb stroking his stubbled jaw. It was rough but soothing. You enjoyed feeling of it rubbing against your skin, be it your cheek, neck, inner thighs.

You moved your hand to back of Benny's head, gripping it firmly. You stared into his eyes. “I wouldn't mind you on your knees...but not necessarily grovellin’...”

You saw realisation flash in Benny's eyes when your words sunk in. Holding his head firmly, you pulled your husbands head down. Pulling his lips to meet your own, a firm closed lip kiss. The feeling of his lips against yours feeling like home. You closed your eyes, savouring your lips reuniting.

You moved to grip his hair, pulling a little. Causing Benny to groan in the most delightful way, which you had missed. His hands moved to your hips, pulling you close as he removed his lips for just a moment. Adjusting the angle, Benny brought his lips back to your waiting ones. This time it was a feverish, slightly open mouth kiss. Over and over, short and sweet. But soon Benny went in for a longer, deeper kiss.

He didn't wait for permission, his tongue delving into your mouth, seeking out your own. Tongues colliding, caressing the other in a fast paced dance. You moaned into his mouth, which only made Benny return with his own. Stepping forward, Benny backed you up against the small table in the kitchen. The edge digging into your backside. Without breaking the kiss, Benny picked you up and set you on the tables edge.

Your other hand moving to cradle is cheek, while its partner ran threw his hair before pulling it occasionally. That only spurred Benny on further. His hands moved to your slacks, unbuttoning them and pulling down the zipper. Pulling away from the kiss, you both took a moment to get some much needed air. And in that time Benny silently instructed you to lift your hips. You did, and he removed both your slacks and underwear, leaving you sitting in bare from the waist down.

Benny wasted no time falling to his knees, as you both had mentioned. This kind of grovelling was not for forgiveness, but for your own pleasure. Benny would worship every part of you, if it would make you happy.

His rough hands moved up your calf muscles, slowly over your thighs, pushing them open wider. His eyes drinking in the sight before him, Benny placed kisses along the inside of your thighs before coming to his destination. Slowly – tongue flat – he licked at the opening of your sex. Tongue finding your hard nub, applying the right amount of pressure as he caressed it. You moaned, head tilting back, as one hand moved to Benny's hair.

Benny worshipped you with his tongue, bringing moans and praises from your lips. When he would change movements with his tongue, you would pull his hair lightly, encouraging him further. Then when he added a finger inside of you, and then a second after sometime, he had you a mess upon the table. Your free hand moved to clutch the edge of the table, trying to ground yourself. Your man knew how to worship at your alter.

“I-I need you, baby" you managed to get out, between moans.

Reluctantly, Benny moved his head back. His baby blues, now dark with desire, staring at you as he licked his lips, tongue taking in your essence that had been resting there. After a brief moment of watching you, he rose to his feet, standing between your legs. Without delay, your hands moved to Benny's jeans. Undoing the button before pulling down the zipper. You pushed his jeans and boxers down his hips.

When he was freed from its confines, you wrapped a hand around his member. Slowly moving your hand up and down the shaft. The way Benny's breath caught in his throat, before a small strangled noise came from his parted lips, such noises pleased you. He leant in and captured your lips once more, sloppily and mindlessly at your touch and ministrations.

“Baby, I want you" Benny sighed against your lips.

You hummed in approval. “I want you too".

You guided him to your sex, Benny's hands coming to hold your hips. His tip brushed against your nub, drawing out a moan. He was teasing, but you'd allow it. You brought your hands up to his neck, one resting there while its partner tangled with the hair at the base of his neck.

Finally lining himself entrance, Benny began to enter you. The way he felt, stretching you, you sighed as you gripped his hair. That action cause Benny to buck his hips, finally sheathing himself completely in you. You both moaned in satisfaction of being one again.

Benny moved in, taking your lips into a deep kiss. He drew back his hips before snapping back into you, over and over. At first a gentle pace, but with your hold on his hair and nails at his neck digging in, Benny picked up speed. Before long you were head tilted back, moaning, as your husband slammed into you. His lips upon your neck, sucking and biting, while he too made beautiful sounds.

With the rise in pleasure that Benny was giving you, and feeling, it had to come to an end. The tension rising and twisting in the pit of your stomach. You tightened around him, only adding to Benny's please, and making him move more vigorously.

“Cum for me, baby" Benny said with a groan, fingers digging into the flesh of your hips. No doubt there’d be bruises later. “Ya gotta cum for me".

You nodded your head, whimpering at his words.

Benny placed his forehead to your own, his eyes staring deeply into yours. The pressure just building inside you both. Finally he hit that spot, and you tipped over the edge. You cried out, clenching tightly around his member, while you let your release wash over you. With a few more sloppy thrusts, Benny finally found his release. Buried within you, his seed coated your insides. His hands moving to the edge of the table, while catching his breath.

You opened your eyes, which had closed at some point, to look at your husband. He looked gorgeous, breathing heavily, trying to calm down after your vigorous activity. When his baby blues found yours, the smile that graced his perfect lips, melted your heart. You smiled right back at him. You both sharing a tender moment.

Those lips met with yours once more, but this time a chaste kiss. Pulling back, Benny reluctantly removed himself from you, which made you whimper at the lose. But with a promise that he'd gladly make it up to you later, you giggled with joy.

You watched as Benny pulled his boxers and jeans back up, fastening them before turning to you. He helped you down from the table, legs a little shaky from how well he had taken care of you. With some work and help, you had your own underwear and slacks back on. You kissed Benny's cheek to say thank you.

“Remind me to thank Johnny" you said off handily.

“Why's that baby?” Benny asked, confused.

You smirked. “For givin’ you the idea to grovel" was your reply before laughing.

Benny shook his head, pulling you close to him. “Oh”.

“And Benny" you said after a moment of silence. He waited for you to go on. “Next time you leave me, and hurt me, I will castrate you". Then you chuckled.

Benny softly laughed. “But what about kid's, baby. I'm gonna need them”.

Wrapped in his arms, you pondered Benny's words. “That is true...I will just take one then. You can give me kid's with just one, after all".

“Yes ma’am” Benny said in humour.

You both roared into laughter. Though you told him, as you laughed, you were serious. And it would be smart not to test you. Benny just continued to laugh before scooping you up over his shoulder, and carrying you off to your shared bedroom. Not without a small smack to your backside at you sassing him, as he walked up the stairs.

[peppermintquartz]

(Tommy's pov of this)

He's in the process of making sure the bird is ready to go when he turns and sees Howie, as well as two unfamiliar young guys following him.

Good-looking faces too. Maybe they should do the calendar next year. The shorter one has large, soulful eyes and a confident stride that speaks of military experience; the other is a tall, leggy man with a boyish smile and seems to be visibly thrumming with energy.

Of course they bring in the studs after I'm gone, Tommy thinks, half-exasperated that he's missed out on eye candy and half-amused at his own shallowness.

"Howie, hey!" Tommy says and embraces his former colleague and current friend. It's not always possible for them to meet up, but a life debt is not something Tommy will forget. "Long time."

Howie claps him on the back. It feels like a silent thank you, which, given the enormity of what they're going to do, the less said aloud the better.

Can't risk someone overhearing that they're going to steal a helicopter on a mere hunch.

Tommy knows he has a good poker face, and it's proven to be effective because no one seems to realize how nervous he is. They may cause an international incident if anything goes "pear-shaped", as his old instructor Winslow used to say, but Tommy isn't about to back out now.

"This is Tommy, Tommy Kinard," says Howie to the other two, telling them about him being a former member of the 118 and also about his being a fathead. At least Howie acknowledges that Tommy's grown out of it.

"Thanks to you," Tommy says. He sticks out his hand to the new faces.

Soulful Eyes grins when he grasps Tommy's hand. A firm grip, almost challenging. "Eddie Diaz."

Tommy smiles, feeling like he's found a kindred spirit. "Pleasure. And you are...?" He extends the hand to the other young guy.

"Uh, Evan," he says, eyes wide and curious like a puppy in a new environment. His hand is warm and dry. "E-Evan Buckley."

"Hi Evan." The splotch just over Evan's left eye is a birthmark, Tommy discovers. To his amusement, Evan doesn't let go of his hand, as if he's completely forgotten that they were just shaking hands in introduction. Tommy doesn't want to embarrass the guy, but he doesn't want to rudely snatch his hand away either. He opts for a slight tease. "I'm gonna need that hand to fly the chopper, kid."

"Oh! Oh, right. Sorry." Evan drops Tommy's hand like it's hot. His ears go red. Tommy thinks, That's so cute, and then sternly warns himself not to read too much into anything. He's not falling for a straight guy again, just because they're cute. And he's glad that he doesn't read too much into Evan's fluster because Evan says, "I was just, um, thinking, about Cap and Thena."

Bobby Nash must mean a great deal to Evan, judging by the way his gaze skitters from Tommy's face to the chopper and bounces lightly on his heels. For some reason, he reminds Tommy of Bambi.

Howie sticks his hands in his pockets. "Yeah, we're gonna need Hen to show soon with some coordinates. Can't go flying all over the Gulf of Mexico."

Tommy makes a mental note to re-check fuel levels. It's definitely topped up, but ninety minutes one way and ninety minutes back in what will definitely be rough conditions is not a walk in the park. Nevertheless, he keeps his tone light. "We'll do what we can."

A pair of headlights slide along the road that leads to harbor. Tommy doesn't really know if it's Hen, but his nerve is starting to give, so he says quickly, "Wait, I see a car pulling in. Might be her. Get in the backseat, strap yourselves in. Once I get Hen clear of Melton, we'll dash. Hopefully she has a good cover story..."

Eddie doesn't hesitate as he scrambles in, nearly knocking his head on the roof of the chopper.

Seeing that they aren't about to call him out on his fake calm demeanor, Tommy blows out his cheeks to center himself. Then he smiles, asking, "If we're all arrested, can I blame it on you, Howie?"

Howie snorts as he gets in next to Eddie. "Yeah I really twisted your arm with the 'Please help us save Cap and Athena'."

(In fact, Howie actually said, "Hen has a hunch, she won't let us help, but she''ll need a chopper. So I'm gonna need you to steal one for us to save Captain Nash and his wife." And Tommy agreed instantly. He trusted Hen Wilson's hunches too.)

"You know it's because of your irresistibly pretty face," Tommy quips as he helps guide Evan - the tallest of the three - in without hitting his head. "Alright, put those helmets on. Careful, Evan," he says when Evan nearly bounces the helmet off the bridge of his sharp nose.

It's a very nice nose. Be a shame to bruise it.

Fuel. And preflight. Tommy inhales sharply and gets into his seat as the three firefighters strap themselves in. It's a calming ritual by now, and he feels ready. He knows he is ready.

And Hen should be here by now.

"Alright. She's ready to go when we are," Tommy announces, patting the stick fondly. As he opens the door to get to the hangar, he says to the three men, "Don't touch anything. I'm gonna hang out near Melton and run intercept."

Howie rolls his eyes. Eddie holds up three fingers of his right hand, like a Scout's promise. "We'll behave."

Evan beams a dazzling smile at Tommy, like they're not actually about to commit a crime.

It's a good thing Tommy has to focus on flying into a hurricane, because otherwise his heart will be tripping all over itself to get Evan to smile like that once more.

Nope. No crushing on a straight guy, Kinard, we've been through this.

Instead, Tommy jogs towards the hangar where he sees Hen approaching Melton, holding a form that Tommy knows will not stand up to scrutiny.

Boy, if you can't convince someone, confuse them, Winslow used to say over drinks after their flying lessons. Act like you know exactly what you're doing and seventy percent of the time they'll let you get away with it.

Tommy takes a deep breath, puts on a smile, and walks into the light of the hangar.

--

edited on AO3

[seventeencryinghorses-blog]

Tbh I had this already written. Poll had the shortest time as a day. HELLA warning though, this isn't non or dub con but it IS gorey. I wrote this shit at like 11pm and I was stressed the hell out and kinda pissed. (well the outline of it anyway). I'm a gore enjoyer, not in a weird way I just like the way it's written or drawn i don't like actual gore. Anyway the gore here isn't that bad but there is some so I'll say there is gore as a warning. I also put a small border for the people that don't wanna read the smut since there is some story.

The Cute and Obsessive You

Yandere Shanks x Male reader. Reader matches Shanks's freak. Smut so minors read something else until I write not smut. top male reader. Violence warning. 4,135ish words.

Your boyfriend is very cute, you know that of course, you also know that he gets just a little worried when you’re out of his sight. That’s why when you opened your eyes to an unfamiliar place, tied to a chair, your first thought before worrying for yourself was ‘Oh no, I hope my boyfriend is gonna be okay.’ and you were correct in your worry, because Shanks is not okay.

“(Y/n)!?” Shanks calls out as he searches around for you. “(Y/n)!” He calls out, his heart racing. Where are you? Did you run away? Finally getting tired of him and leaving? How could you do that to him, when he cares about you so so much!? He gave you everything! Something clicks, what if you were gone unwillingly? What if someone took you. Took you from him? “(Y/N)! Sweetie, please come out if you’re somewhere around here!” He’s been searching for a while now, feeling stupid. Of course you wouldn’t leave him, you loved him, but he had thought this island was safe. Shanks had taken his eyes off of you, busy with the townsfolk swarming him. He hadn’t been to this island in a long while so they were excited to see him, and you had told Shanks you were going to explore nearby. Shanks trusted that. Trusted that this island that was friendly to him would be friendly to you, there should’ve been no danger to you. That’s not to mention you weren’t weak either, but people don’t always get what they want by being strong. A pretty looking flower is what it took, you’d been interested in the local flora so you went to check it out. It was only when you took a closer look that you realized it looked unusual, by then it was already too late. The fake flower had let out a gas and knocked you out. Now here you were, in a place unfamiliar to you.

“Hello?” You call out, but there’s no answer. Your weapon has been taken, but they’ve made a mistake, not finding the knife that you keep on you for emergencies. That means you could cut yourself free… but what then? You don’t know where you are and the door is locked, and to be honest.. you’re a little curious. You don’t feel like you’re in any real danger, and Shanks is probably going to find you eventually. The thought of him finding you, desperate to see you with a crazed look, fills you with satisfaction; so you wait. Eventually a woman comes down from the stairs and enters the room holding a long blade.

“Hello.” She greets you. “You’re lucid, good. Do you know why I’m doing this?” You think for a moment, Shanks had said this place was friendly so you’re not sure, but she answers the question for you. “I’ll just answer anyway. I did this because you bother our chief, clinging to him like a leech. You’re not nearly as strong as him or the rest of his crew, I even managed to kidnap you with some fake flower. It’s dangerous for him to have someone by his side, especially someone so weak. He’d be better off without you.” Her words sting a little, she has somewhat of a point. If it weren’t for the fact that it might be impossible to leave Shanks this could’ve even convinced you to.

‘Wow.. my cute and obsessive boyfriend knows some people that act similar to him.’ You think to yourself as she points the knife to your neck, pricking you. ‘Uh oh.’ This got much more dangerous quickly. Meanwhile, Shanks is still searching for you, finally finding flattened grass where it looks like someone was dragged.

‘He didn’t run away!’ Shanks is almost relieved before he realizes you being kidnapped and in danger isn’t much better. He clenches his jaw and quickly follows the flattened grass to a cottage in the woods, entering and looking around. “I don’t have time for this.” He mumbles to himself and decides to destroy everything until he finds you, crashing things to the floor and breaking through walls to find his lover. You hear the sounds above you and try to yell out, but your mouth is quickly covered by the woman. You take a deep breath and instead tip over your own chair and let yourself slam to the ground. The sound alerts Shanks and he looks down, realizing there's a room underneath this cottage. He needs to get to you, that thought sticks to his mind until he breaks a hole into the floor and drops into the room with you and the woman; though there was an entrance he could’ve found had he looked a little longer.

“C-Chief!” The woman stutters, panicked. “You, I-I” She doesn’t know what to say, turning silent when she looks at Shanks and finds someone she doesn’t recognize. Someone unlike the kind person she’s been doing this for. Crazed eyes look from her to your fallen and tied up form.

“Baby, are you okay?” He goes to you, ignoring her.

“I’m alright, just tipped my chair over.” You reassure him and he’s about to sigh in relief when he catches sight of something. Blood on your neck from the prick she had given you earlier. Blood, your blood. His vision quickly goes red and he grabs her, slamming her onto the ground.

“Chief, please let me exp- AAHH!” Her words are interrupted by a scream of pain when he stomps on her arm, shattering it. She starts to cry but it’s too late, he’s seen your injury and the blood you’ve shed is worth more than she could ever be.

“How dare you, how dare you. Mine, You hurt my boyfriend. My boyfriend.” His voice is laced with rage as she cries, screaming as he stomps on her limbs. Hands, arms, legs, it’s not long until they’re reduced to a mess of flesh and bone stuck to her by her skin.

“sorry sorry ‘m sorry it hurts.” She can’t even struggle, having screamed too much already. You stare at this, then try to move out of your restraints. Pain shoots up your leg.

“Ow!” You yelp and Shanks turns to look back at you, anger replaced by worry. “I’m okay! I think I just twisted my ankle a little when I fell.” You explain, feeling a little embarrassed you yelped over such a small injury. He looks back at the woman and she realizes, in her final moments, that you were so much more than she could’ve comprehended. Shanks grabs her by the hair and slams her head into the wall, creating a crater with the impact. What’s left of her head splatters across the concrete, and he drops her crushed corpse to the ground with a thud. He can hear the blood rushing through his ears, only snapping out of it when he hears your voice. “Shanks!” The redhead turns back to you, walking over and crouching down.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I let you out of my sight and doubted you when you were stuck here. This is my fault-” He starts but you interrupt him.

“Shanks you’re very lovely like this but please untie me first.” You ask him and his eyes clear.

“R-Right. Sorry.” He quickly cuts the ropes with his sword and you stand while rubbing your wrists. Once you’re both standing he starts to shake, emotions filling his psyche. Anger for the ones that hurt you, guilt he let this happen, sadness you got hurt, relief you’re still alive. They swim in his head, crowding and messing with his mind. You notice this and pull him into a soft hug

“It’s okay~ It’s okay~” Your fingers run through his red hair, ignoring the blood mixing in. “I’m okay, I’m alive and safe. You didn’t fail me, I’m right here.” He clings to you.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.. I’m so happy you're safe.” He says, burying his face in your shoulder. Shanks still feels guilty, but his emotions calm with you in his grasp. You feel him clutch onto you tighter and you can tell his anger is coming back now that his emotions are more sorted.

“It’s not the townspeople’s fault, honey.” You tell him, sensing his thoughts.

“They let this happen to you.” His voice is cold. This is their fault, they don’t deserve his help or his protection. They don’t even deserve their lives.

“Not all of them could’ve known.” You respond and he doesn’t answer. You sigh and pull him back enough to look into his clouded eyes. “Let's do this, we can go back into town, find out who helped this happen, and you can punish them. Okay?” He stares at you, considering what you said, then nods. “Good, thank you for understanding.” You give him a kiss on the cheek.

You and Shanks walk through the town, ignoring the horrified looks of townspeople seeing him covered in blood. Once you’re to the town square he yells out. “Everyone gather up!” They begin to gather in front of him while the Red Haired crew puts any children inside. They don’t need to see this. Shanks’s eyes scan the crowd until they finally land on a married couple, a wife and husband; they look guilty. Unlike the others who are scared and/or confused they look visibly jittery, as if they’ve done something wrong. What's more, when they meet your eyes they look away, as if from shame. ‘It’s them, they did this, they helped this happen.’ He walks over and stops directly in front of them, staring them down as they start to tremble. “You two have done something.” He says and they flinch. Some townsfolk try to ask Shanks what’s happening but Beckman and the others are smart, quickly leading the rest back inside so they don’t see their chief do this; or get caught in the crossfire. The couple try to deny it at first but eventually the wife breaks and starts to cry.

“Chief I’m sorry, I didn’t know she would go this far. We did this because we were worried about you.” She pleads with him and he stares at her.

“Worry? Worry!? You think your worry for me is enough of an excuse to do this? To harm what’s mine? No no no this isn’t how you’re going to escape responsibility.” Shanks is angry, angry that the town he trusted could do something so deplorable as causing harm to his boyfriend. He looks down at her with disgust and grabs her by the collar of her shirt. “You put your hands, your disgusting hands on my everything while I spent my time entertaining this town.” He moves his hand so it’s wrapped around her neck, gripping it firmly. "Was it amusing seeing me smile with you all, oblivious, while your friend was about to kill the love of my life?" She cries out and tries to struggle but it’s no use, he’s too strong; even as those struggles turn to scratches from his tightening grip, she's unable to make him budge as her vision goes dark.

SNAP

Shanks drops her lifeless body to the ground, red eyes trailing to the husband. He looks at the body of his wife, dead, and tears roll down his cheeks slowly. “Oh gods, please, chief please. I’m sorry.” His pleas are weak and useless as Shanks’s eyes bore into his. This is it, he can’t do anything. Even if he tried to run away he knows it’s futile, he wouldn’t even make it a step. His only hope is you, turning his head to look at you. You meet his eyes and give him a nervous laugh.

“Well it is kinda your fault, right?” You say sheepishly and his hope is gone, looking back to Shanks.

“Don’t look to him for help, you don’t deserve it.” The redhead states coldly and the husband closes his eyes, the world going black as Shanks cuts his head off of his shoulders. It rolls pathetically on the ground, and he stomps on it for good measure. The two previously pleading people full of life now reduced to lumps of soulless flesh. Shanks stares at what’s left of them, emotions still raging. It's unhealthy, you know that. This look of his is dangerous, the proof and symptom of his instability, but to you it's so so beautiful. The eyes of the kind, friendly, and lively red haired captain everyone knows are unlike everything about him. They're obsessive, crazed, uncaring, the light in his irises replaced by the unhealthy darkness you bring out of him. So beautiful.

“Shanks.” You call out and he quickly snaps his head to you, chest heaving with emotion. “You’re so cute like this.” You can’t help it, your crazy yandere boyfriend is so endearing when he’s obsessive like this. His face flushes slightly, caught off guard by the sudden compliment despite the gore around him.

“Really? Cute? N-Now??” He asks, he wouldn’t have been shocked if he turned to see you looking at him with disgust, disappointment, or even fear; but instead you look at him with your cheery and warm expression, nodding.

“Mhm!” You walk over to him and cup his face. “You were worried about me, right? I’m okay now, you saved me and punished the bad guys.” At that his shoulders finally untense, his sanity slowly coming back.

“Of course I was worried, I couldn’t bear the idea of anything happening to you.” Shanks says, letting out a held breath as his expression softens. He leans into your touch and closes his eyes for a moment before opening them to look at you. The brown of his eyes are replaced with red, his pupils dilated. You love it, the unsettling look in his eyes is so nice to see; even when they change back to brown. Like this, the crew in the background see their friendly captain as his yandere self, and his cheerful boyfriend who turned out not normal either. The captain can feel their gazes on him, but it doesn’t matter. All that matters is you, you you you. The you that’s in front of him, touching him, loving him, the you that’s safe.

“Your eyes are creepy like this, y’know.” You say and place a kiss on his forehead, making him sigh in contentment.

“Creepy huh? That’s one way to describe em… Do you like it?” He asks, a bit insecure.

“And if I don’t? What’re you gonna do then?” You respond and Shanks’s heart sinks at the thought of you not liking anything about him. He loves you too much, he wants you to feel the same. He looks into your eyes, trying to gauge how serious you’re being. When he can't tell he speaks with hesitance.

“I’d.. change them.. I don’t want you to dislike any part about me.” Is his respnse. You hum, kissing his cheek.

“Hmm~ How would you change them?” You continue the question and Shanks tries to think through the chaos in his head, almost tempted to say he’d rip them out for you but managing to think more rationally.

“Colored contacts.. or try to appear less obsessive. Tone it down a bit.” He seems a little sullen talking about it, the idea that he would have to change himself for you is bumming him out; even if he would do it. You can tell he's unhappy, letting it go.

“That sounds like a hassle. It’s good I like them then!” You say and a weight is lifted off of his heart, your words always have so much effect on him. “I like everything about my crazy and cute boyfriend.”

“Good, because this crazy and cute boyfriend of yours loves you. A lot.” He speaks with a sigh, wrapping his arm around you to pull you into a tight hug.

“Mhm~ I love you too.” You rub his back as he buries his face into your shoulder and inhales, relishing in your scent.

“I’m so glad you’re okay. I love you. I love you.” He murmurs into your shoulder, muffled by your skin as you soothe him through his love confessions. He doesn’t even notice he’s getting blood on you. "You mean everything to me. You're the light in my darkness, the reason I keep going. I don't know what I would do if anything happened to you, I couldn't bear it. I love you more than anything in the world." His hand moves up to thread through your hair. "I love you so much. Never leave me." His voice is almost pleading at this point.

“Shh.. I’m never gonna leave you. You’re the only one for me, you’re my crazy and cute boyfriend. Look at me.” You tell him and he pulls back enough to look at you. “Hi honey~ I love you~” His expression falters, his heart warming. He’s still affected by what's happened but he’s here looking at you, and that makes everything feel better.

“I love you too.” Shanks kisses your palm. His voice is soft now, but still laced with a possessiveness that makes your own heart feel full “I’m looking at you too and I love you too” So happy, and just from being with you. You run your fingers through his red hair, scratching his scalp lightly, and his eyes close from bliss as he lets out a small content hum. When you use both hands a small shiver runs up his spine from your touch and attention. Can’t help it, too enamored with you.

××××××××××××××

“You’re so adorable.” You say and kiss him, feeling the way he melts into it. So pliable for you, and the slight jolt he gives when you roll your hips against his is satisfying to feel. ‘So reactive too’ you think to yourself as he lets out a small moan, trying to hold in another as you continue. It's to no avail, giving you the chance to slip your tongue into his mouth. Shanks hums, the both of you making out in front of the two corpses of the people Shanks killed for you. Oh and is it all for you, he doesn't even remember them right now. Your hands go to his hips and pick him up, walking a few feet away before laying him gently down onto the grass. He looks up at you, eyes foggy with lust and confusion.

“(Y/n)?” He asks and you wrap his legs around your waist, grinding your dick directly against him, causing him to curse with a moan.

“Sorry, my obsessive boyfriend was too sexy while protecting me.” You say as he pants underneath you, his face flushing. The crew, forgotten, slowly make their leave.

“You think I’m sexy? Even like this?” He asks you, not understanding how you can look at him with such caring lust when he just committed such a vile act. Even if it was for you, he didn’t need to make the deaths as gory as he did.

“Of course! My boyfriend is the cutest and sexiest in the whole world!” You say it as if it’s fact and it sends a shock of happiness and pleasure through Shanks’s body.

“In the world..” He mutters and you nod.

“Yup~” You’re pleased seeing him like this, and your hand goes to slide under his shirt, making him flinch. “The whole world~” Your hand slides up to his chest along with the fabric, showing his bare torso to you as his back arches slightly to follow your touch.

“B-Baby.” He tries to speak but it comes out as a whisper as you run your hand along his chest, stopping at one of his pecs to squeeze. “(Y/N)!” His back arches more and you lovingly circle a finger around his nipple, tapping it with the pad of your finger as he lets out soft gasps. “Fuck...” You’re teasing him, but he’s just too cute not to tease. Alas, you won’t keep him waiting, especially when the captain has been so good for you. You press the pad of your finger onto his nipple and he lets out a breath, your other hand moving to his chest as well as you grope and fondle both of his pecs. He loves it, you can feel it from the way he hardens against you and hear it from the grunts escaping his lips. His chest is nice, big, muscular, reminders of his strength along with the few scars that run along his body. You lean down and kiss one of them before flicking your tongue onto one of his nipples, earning a cuss from above. He grips onto your hair, blood coating your locks as you bite and suck his chest, moving from one pec to another; but never leaving one unattended with the help of your hands. You wonder for a moment if he could cum just from this, but you’ll leave that for another day, taking your mouth off of him with a lewd pop. The sound makes Shanks’s breath shaky. You sit up and look down at him.

‘So beautiful..’ You think to yourself when you see your boyfriend. Covered in the blood of townspeople he slaughtered in your name, eyes cloudy with lust, and shirt lifted up with perked up nipples. “My sexy honey is so sensitive, even when near the corpses of people he’s killed.” You grind against him and he grunts. “Do you care? Should I stop so I can take you somewhere else?” You ask him and Shanks struggles to form a coherent thought, mind clouded by you.

"No.” He starts, his voice shaky. “I don’t care about the bodies, I want you, I need you.” He responds, needy.

“Awweee~” You coo to him and lift his hips up, sliding his pants away enough to expose himself to you. You put your fingers to his mouth and he parts his lips to wet them. “You’re so good for me, my perfect boyfriend~” You praise and he lets out a small happy whimper, his heart racing. He always gets like this when you’re more dominant, sometimes it’s the only way to get him to calm down. Of course, that’s not why you’re doing it right now.

“Hahh.. hahh..” He pants and then gasps when you slip a finger inside him, something about his unstable emotions right now is making him more reactive. Maybe it’s the adrenaline or the relief of knowing you're safe, maybe both.

“I love you Shanks.” You say while putting another inside, relishing in how he squeezes around the digits. “Do you love me too?”

“Yes yes I love you I love you. Please, I need you.” He says, voice strained as you stretch him out.

“Are you sure? I get a little insecure sometimes.” You pull your fingers out and tug down your own bottoms, grabbing your dick to rub the tip around his entrance.

“Fuck.. I-” He’s interrupted by his own long whine as you press into him slowly, his head going foggy until you give him a smooch. “I love you, I love you more than anything, you’re my love- Ah~!” you start to move. “You’re everything to me can’t live without you I love you so much it hurts but feels so goOD~!” You lift his hips up to slam into his prostate, making his eyes roll back as he pants and groans.

“Good boy I love you too, you're doing so good for me~" You praise while bullying his prostate, Shanks’s mind going numb.

“I love you more than anything and everything I love you more than treasures or air or breathing or- ah~! or even myself~! I need you you’re my home and purpose my love and the blood flowing through my veins!” He’s happy, he’s happy you love him and he gets to say everything he wants to without worrying about your disgust. “You’re the reason I get up in the morning and the last thing I think of when I go to sleep-” He rambles as tears prick at his eyes from pleasure “m-my life and my purpose. I want to spend every second with you, I would give up everything for you. I love your voice and your laugh and your skin your hair your fingers and the way you feel i-inside me~!” His back arches, he’s close. “I can’t hold back any- ah~! longer!”

You kiss his neck, sucking marks into the skin. “It’s okay, you don’t have to hold back. Let everything out.” With that, he opens his mouth and lets out a loud keen as he cums.

“You’re all mine you’re m-mine! No- nngh~! one else’s mine mine~!” He rambles absentmindedly as you fuck him through his orgasm, repeating posessive words before you slam into him as much as you can and coat his insides. He whines, aftershocks continuing as your dick throbs inside of him with each burst. Once you've emptied you lean down and nuzzle his cheek affectionately before kissing him.

“You’re right. I’m yours and no one else’s. I’m never gonna leave you, because you’re my boyfriend and I love you.” Your words of confession make his heart feel full. He can’t think about anything other than you, that he’ll never let you go. His legs wrap around you and pull you into another kiss, happy. You’ll clean up in a bit, you’re still in public after all and the townspeople can’t be inside forever; but for you’ll indulge your cute and obsessive honey. Just because you love him so much.

There you have it. As for the Jealous reader x Shanks that's still gonna happen, the poll was just to choose which one I focused on first. I still do whatever by the way, I'm not gonna become smut focused or anything.

[its-rach-writes]

Two Galleons and a Sickle - Sirius Black

Pairing: Sirius Black x Reader

Summary: When your sixteen year old daughter starts acting strangely, your paranoid husband fears it might be drugs.

Warnings: fluff, fluff and more fluff! mentions of drugs, implications of sex, everyone lives au

Words: 1.3k

A/N: Back in my Sirius Black feels, so sad that I can't get into my old account but alas! Hope you guys enjoy this! I'm thinking about making a lil series of one shots. Please let me know what you think, I love you all! xxx

It was a lovely day in Godric’s Hollow, you smiled as you heard the laughter and joyful screams of the neighbourhood kids. School started again next week so they were enjoying their last bit of freedom. Your youngest was starting at Hogwarts in September too. You were excited for him but funnily enough, you weren’t looking forward to having an empty house.

“Ooh, smells good in here,” your husband chuckled as he kissed your cheek before he snagged some shredded cheese from the open packet.

“I’m making a little dinner for Reggie before he goes to his sleepover. You know he’s gonna have one slice of pizza and that’s it,” you spoke as you plated up the pasta, shouting for him to come downstairs.

“Reggie is going out too?” Sirius asked as he caught you around the waist.

“Mhm,” you laughed as you wrapped your arms around his neck, “Reggie’s got a sleepover, Eva’s going to sleep at Hermione’s, and I was thinking we should get a takeaway.”

“Absolutely, and we can finally crack open that bottle of goblin made wine that James got us for our wedding, if we’ve got the place to ourselves,” he smirked and pulled you into a kiss.

The kiss was short lived when Reggie came down the stairs and made a disgusted noise. You laughed as you pulled away from Sirius and handed Reggie the plate of pasta.

“Oh, mum, you know that Matt’s parents are gonna order pizza.”

“Yes, my darling but we both know that you’ll have one or two slices and decide it’s too greasy.”

Reggie scowled at you but said nothing as he went back upstairs. You decided to follow him upstairs to see if Eva wanted anything before she went out.

“Hey, Ev,” you knocked on her door before walking into her room, it looked like she was halfway through putting her hair in rollers.

“Hi, mum.”

“Hi sweetie. Do you want anything to eat before you go out?”

She shook her head no, “me and Mione are gonna grab some food with the guys.”

You nod as you leaned against the doorframe, “you will be safe won’t you?”

“Yes,” she rolled her eyes, “and before you – or dad – start overthinking you know that the strongest thing in Hermione’s house is cider.”

You laughed, you couldn’t help but agree and you were thankful that Eva chose to spend most of her time with Hermione.

By the time Eva was leaving, you and Sirius were one glass into the wine, along with half a Chinese takeaway.

“I’m going now,” she offered a small wave.

This apparantely wasn’t good enough for Sirius who leapt up to give her a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

“Bye sweetie. Call us if you need anything,” Eva nodded with a small smile and then she was gone.

Sirius flopped back next to you, wrapping an arm around your shoulders, “so,” he started.

“So,” you giggled.

“So, we have the house to ourselves.”

“Looks that way.”

“I’ve got a couple of things in mind to keep us occupied,” he smirked, his hands going down to your waist.

“Yeah? Like what?” you moved so you were straddling him, your hands on his shoulders.

“Well, if I remember correctly, it goes a little like this,” he cupped your cheek and pulled you into a kiss.

You eagerly kissed him back, your hands immediately tangling in his soft hair. It didn’t take long for you to realise that something was up, “what’s wrong?” you mumbled as you pulled away, your eyes flickering down to his slightly swollen lips.

“Nothing,” he shook his head before kissing you again. This continued for a couple of moments before he sighed and pulled away again.

“Is it me?”

“What? No, love of course not,” his arms tightened around your waist, silently asking you to stay where you were, “it’s Eva,” he sighed, “she’s acting strange isn’t she?”

You shrugged, “she’s just acting like a teenager.”

“I’m worried it might be drugs.”

“Well, sweetie, that’s pretty rich of you to say considering the amount of times I could smell that bong from your dorm in school.”

Sirius laughed but you could tell he was still thinking about it, you kissed his cheek, “how about I talk to her about it?”

Sirius nodded as his hands gently squeezed your hips, “let’s not waste this free house.”

You giggled as you leaned in to press a chaste kiss to his lips, “I completely agree.”

When Eva got back the next morning, you left her a while before you went to talk to her. You didn’t want her to feel ambushed.

“Can we talk?” you asked as you sat next to her on her bed.

She sighed and put her Quidditch book down, “dad thinks I’m doing drugs, right?” she scoffed when your eyes widened in surprise, “he’s not exactly subtle. I’m not doing drugs by the way.”

“Then what is it? Have you got a boyfriend? Have you got a girlfriend?”

Eva laughed, “look it’s nothing bad, okay? I’m just not ready to talk about it yet.”

“Well, that’s fair enough.”

Unbeknownst to you, you were soon going to find out what had your daughter acting so strangely. A couple of days before school started you and Sirius invited your friends over for dinner. It was an annual thing and this year it was your turn to host. Reggie was delighted as most of the attention was on him. James was asking him if he was going to try out for Quidditch while Lily asked him what house he wanted to be sorted into.

When the wine you and Lily were drinking was empty, you both went to get another one, giggling like school girls. As you walked into the kitchen, you both stopped dead as you stared at the scene before you. Eva and Harry was pressed up against one of the kitchen counters. Kissing. You and Lily exchanged a look before she spoke up.

“So, this is why dessert is taking so long to come out?”

The two teenagers immediately pulled away from each other with flushed cheeks and bright eyes, “mum,” they said in unison. Harry’s eyes were wide as he looked at Lily while Eva refused to look at you.

Lily giggled as she grabbed the bottle of wine from the fridge, “don’t mind us, we were just getting more wine,” she ushered you out of the kitchen. You were too dumbfounded to speak but you were secretly glad Eva had chosen someone nice like Harry.

A couple of minutes later, the two teenagers came back outside with the dessert in hand, they sat down as they placed it in the centre of the table. You witnessed them having some sort of silent conversation and after Harry nodded, Eva spoke up.

“Dad?”

“Yeah sweetpea?” Sirius asked as he glanced over.

“I’m not doing drugs, um,” she stumbled over her words as she glanced at Harry, “me and Harry are dating.”

Sirius looked like he didn’t understand what she’d just told him but before he could speak up, Remus asked his question.

“Who asked who out?”

“Erm,” Eva frowned at him in confusion, “I asked Harry out.”

“Ha! Pay up,” he shouted across the table at Regulus, Sirius’ brother.

Regulus rolled his eyes as he handed some coins over, “ugh, there. Two Galleons and a Sickle.”

“Seriously?” Sirius scowled, his eyes flashing.

Regulus and Remus shrugged in unison, “if we had to watch all the pining looks we decided we at least had to make it interesting.”

“Pricks,” James rolled his eyes.

“Well at least it’s not drugs, I’m very happy for you two.”

Eva scoffed, “I think you’re the last person who can preach to me about not taking drugs, I’ve seen the pictures of you guys in school. Mum and Lily must have been high if they dated you guys with those awful haircuts.”

You looked at Sirius’ perfect hair, “she’s right you know. They were awful haircuts.”

[hwaslayer]

love you in slow motion (psh) | two.

♡ spotify playlist | series masterlist ♡

—summary: seonghwa will go through hell and back for you, as long as he can continue to see that smile on your face. because to him, that smile feels like a rainbow after the rain, the warmth of the sun on a winter day. because to him, you’re more than just his bestfriend—you’re love. even though everyone seems to see that except you.

—pairing: park seonghwa x f!reader

—genre: (18+ - minors dni) bestfriends to lovers | fluff, angst, eventual smut

—word count: 7.3k

—chapter warning: cussing/mature language, alcohol consumption and intoxication, some drunk crying lol, yacking, lil inkling of jealousy, overthinking and burying feelings, more seonghwa x oc dynamic

—a/n: hi hi! hope you guys enjoy this update! the next two updates will be quite lengthy lol stay tuned! if you need a lil something fun, i posted after hours last weekend!

"You know, Y/N. One day, you should sit down and eat with me. I'll pay for everything. It'll be a nice little date." The old man who is a regular at the restaurant smiles up at you while you switch his empty cup with a newly refilled cup of beer. 

"Sure, but you know, my boss is also my cousin. I could always ask her for free food if I wanted it. Wouldn't a date be nicer somewhere else?" You laugh and nod, giving him a wink before walking off. "Mr. Ong asked me out on another date."

"Ou, to our restaurant? How sweet of him. Maybe one day you should actually sit down and eat with him."

"I'm not looking for a sugar daddy, Soyeon."

"He probably just needs company, you weirdo." She laughs. "Aye, might be nice, though. You never know until you try." You roll your eyes. "Unless.."

"Unless, what?"

"Someone else has your heart." Soyeon nudges you behind the counter as you two work on packing some to-go orders.

"Who is someone else?" 

"You know, only your bestfriend of 16 years who does everything and anything for you." Soyeon giggles. But, before she can even indulge in her own little fantasy she's trying to project on you, Seonghwa walks through the front door— black, wavy hair messily framing his head. "Speak of the devil." You glare at her and roll her eyes while she continues to giggle loudly next to you.

"I can't fucking believe you."

"What?!" You look up at Seonghwa and give him a nod. "Hwa! Our favorite person ever."

"Hey." He smiles at Soyeon, giving Junseo a wave as he helps Yoongi in the kitchen.

"What're you doing here?"

"Thought I'd pick you up for Sannie's thing." He looks at you.

"Aw, Hwa. I told you I was okay taking bus."

"I was already in the area." He sits at the bar, watching as you continue to pack the remaining orders. 

"Want anything?" Soyeon asks, making Hwa shake his head in response.

"I'm good, thanks."

"You should get going so you can meet up with everyone on time." Soyeon nudges you.

"Let me give Mr. Ong his check and direct him your way before I go." You grab a new batch of dried squid with the check, pacing over to Mr. Ong with a huge smile on your face. "My dear, I have some bad news. I'm off for the night. Here's a refill of your dried squid and the check. Just pay with Soyeon at the front, okay?" He frowns and playfully protests.

"You can't go that early! What am I supposed to do when my favorite is gone?!" 

"Oh, I know. It's a tragedy. I'm so sorry, Mr. Ong. I'll see you next time!" You give him a sweet smile before walking to the back and hanging up your apron. "Soyeon will take great care of you!"

"I sure will, Mr. Ong. What else do you need?" He continues to playfully protest and partake in cute banter with Soyeon, even as you grab your things and walk out the door with Seonghwa.

"Really got the hots for you. Gonna let him take you out on a date?" Seonghwa adds as he leads the way to his parked car up the street.

"Well, just so you know, he actually did ask me on a date today. For the umpteenth time. He offered to pay for my dinner at the restaurant." You giggle as you step into the passenger's seat of Hwa's car. You always commend Hwa for being so clean and tidy, his car always in pristine condition like a new car would be. You especially love the air freshener that sits on his rear view mirror, Seonghwa always making sure to hang a new one to keep the fragrance alive.

"How sweet of him." He chuckles. "How was work otherwise?"

"Good. Busy." You let out a breath.

"Not too tired to go?"

"Never! I need to see Sannie, are you kidding?"

"I'm just giving you some options." He says, pulling away from the curb to begin the trek over to the bar.

"Thanks, Hwa. I'm perfectly fine and excited." You clap your hands in excitement.

"I think they're all already there."

"They're just waiting for us?"

"Mhm."

"Can't wait. I can't believe he went MIA when he was in Barcelona."

"I mean, we heard from him every now and then, but yeah." Seonghwa licks his lips, eyes focused on the road in front of him. "Guess he really wanted to focus on his program. Plus, I'm sure he was just basking in the new environment. Being in a new country and taking it all in."

"Good for him. I strive to be that way."

"Long way to go." You playfully smack him on the arm, making him give off a small yelp.

"I'm glad he did that, though. You don't normally find yourself in a situation like that all the time." Seonghwa nods.

"Yeah. I agree." You rest your head back against the headrest, giving yourself a moment to rest before the chaos begins. Before you could even get a few seconds of peace, Seonghwa is turning at a corner, instantly pulling into a free spot on the street.

"Mind if we walk a bit? I don't think we'll find anything closer to the bar."

"Sure. If I get wasted, it's on you to carry me." You unbuckle your seatbelt and hop out of the car while Seonghwa follows suit.

"Hell no."

"So what, are you just gonna leave me?"

"Yeah." He says nonchalantly, walking ahead of you.

"You're so mean to me." You pout, making Seonghwa look down at you once you finally catch up to his side.

"Am I? Even though I lose sleep to save you from your shitty ex-boyfriend?"

"Hey, I was just kidding." He laughs. "It's not funny. Are you sick of me?"

"Y/N, please."

"Seonghwa, are you sick of me? Cause if you are, then I am too!" You tug on his arm and he shakes his head. 

"We wouldn't be in each other's lives for this long if I was." He scoffs. "Besides, what the hell have I done to make you sick of me?"

"I thought so. Don't get me started." You playfully attempt to smack him on the arm. At this point, the two of you have finally reached the entrance to the bar, Wooyoung being the first to spot you walking over.

"Baby girl and her grumpy bodyguard are here!" He yells, waving you two over. You call out Wooyoung and Hongjoong's name while waving happily, but the individual next to them causes you to pause and almost short-circuit.

Because what do you mean that's Choi San?

You gasp when you finally process that it's San standing next to Wooyoung, his cheeks a rose-tinted color as he fiddles with his hands. He's nervous seeing you for the first time in years, hoping you'd still be the same around him like before.

"Sannie!" You scream, running into San's arms and allowing him to swing you around. When he puts you down, he gets a good look at your face and smiles, sending those butterflies loose in your stomach.

He definitely changed over the years.

It's been about three years since you all graduated, and since you last saw San. Once graduation was over, he felt the need to travel and explore, eventually stumbling into an Art and Architecture program in Barcelona. That's where he spent a majority of his years abroad before coming back home.

To you, your friends, his family.

This.

The familiar.

But the last time you saw San, he was a super sweet, awkward guy who experimented with hair colors and lacked consistency with the gym [even though he said he wanted to be better about a million times]. In reality though, he didn't think too much about his physical appearance and wasn't big on dressing up, was glued to his games and his shiba pillow pet named Shiber— even after graduation.

Now, he stands in front of you— a nice fitting black tee tucked into some dress pants and boots, brow slits, black hair slicked back with strands falling to his face, buff as shit in all the right places. You still smell his cologne lingering on you, on your hair, even as your eyes continue to glaze over his body.

"Wow, you look.. different." You accidentally let out while letting your eyes linger. He chuckles, showing off his deep dimples.

"What is that supposed to mean? I haven't seen you in about three years and that's the first thing you say?" He teases, pulling you into another tight hug, your cheek pressed against his chest while Seonghwa furrows his brows. Because what the fuck is he watching right now? It's so easy to tell when you're feeling some type of way, even if you won't admit it.

"Sorry, I meant that in a good way." You look up at him and playfully tap his chest. "I'm happy you're back home. It's been too long."

"I am, too." Seonghwa clears his throat, breaking the weird, flirty silence between the two of you.

"Can we go inside?" Seonghwa chimes in, looking at anyone for some sort of agreement.

"Okaaaaay!" Wooyoung says, clapping his hands awkwardly. "You didn't have to make it so fucking weird, Mr. Grumpygills." He and Hongjoong snort while they begin to walk into the bar, Hwa's hand coming up to smack Wooyoung on the back of his neck. "Ouch, what the fuck! Joongie laughed too." He whines.

"Shut up."

"I can't wait to hear your stories about Barcelona!" You link your arm with San's as you two trail behind and begin to talk about how he's been lately. Wooyoung, Hongjoong and Seonghwa slide in first before you and San follow suit into the booth.

"Somebody order before he loses his shit watching this." Hongjoong mumbles, eyeing the happy hour menu.

"Tequila? Soju?" Wooyoung yells, already calling the server over. "Both? Fuck it. Seonghwa looks like he needs it anyway."

"I will personally toss your ass out of this bar myself." Seonghwa says under his breath, glaring at Wooyoung before returning his attention to the menu. After a few moments of peace and silence, Hongjoong takes initiative to order for the booth— making sure to include everyone's wants and wishes before thanking the server with a smile and a curt nod.

The soju bottles come out first, and you immediately crack them open to get the party started. You line up all of the shot glasses and start pouring [heavily], passing it onto the boys for them to join you.

"Goodness." Hongjoong says, carefully lifting his shot glass filled to the brim. "Y/N, I love you, but we have all night, you know?"

"Exactly, Joongie! More time to get in more shots!"

"Yeah, that's the spirit babygirl! Don't worry about the grandpas!" Wooyoung yells along, tapping his glass against yours. "Sannie's back!" San shyly laughs, saying a few words along the lines of 'thank you' and 'i missed you guys a lot.' Everyone taps their glasses once more before downing their shots, with you wasting no time to pour the next round.

But the next round becomes the third, the fifth, maybe seventh, tenth? You aren't really sure when it's mainly you, San and Wooyoung taking the shots and requesting bottle after bottle. At some point, the empty bottles are gathered in the middle of the table and Seonghwa is having to play tetris to make the food fit.

"I need to pee. I'll be back."

"Are you good to go by yourself?" Wooyoung questions. "I can stand outside in the hallway until you're done."

"I'm good, I promise!" You slip out of the booth once San has slipped out of the way at the end, taking a moment to get your balance together since the world seems to be spinning a lot more than usual right now.

"Wow, I think I'm drunk." Wooyoung laughs as he plops back down onto the seat.

"Saaaame." San burps a bit before picking at the calamari sitting in front of him. "Y/N's fun. I forgot how fun she is."

"She is." Wooyoung smiles. "That's babygirl."

"Babygirl? Is this a new nickname we're calling her?"

"It's a nickname I'm calling her and Hwa hates it." Wooyoung giggles when he eyes Seonghwa next to him.

"It's just weird."

"Not! You're just mad you can't come up with a cuter nickname for your bestfriend."

"I don't need to." Seonghwa continues to eat, brushing off Wooyoung's drunk teasing.

"Did you guys come from work today?" Hongjoong shifts the topic as he munches on some of the food, hearing the slight annoyance in Seonghwa's tone.

"Yeah. Picked up Y/N on the way over."

"When are Soyeon and Junseo leaving for Japan?"

"In a few days." Wooyoung gasps.

"Does that mean we'll get to see Chacha?!"

"That's right, I never met Charli." San says, cheeks flushed completely to red now that he's 100% drunk.

"She's cute." Seonghwa smiles a bit. "But yeah, Soyeon asked Y/N to take charge in watching Chacha since Yaya's knees have been bothering her." Hongjoong nods.

"She's really cute, dude. She turned three not too long ago." Wooyoung shows San a picture. 

"She's so cute." San laughs at the pictures of Charli.

"I'm back!" You announce, the boys at the end slipping out of the booth to let you get back inside. "What're you guys looking at?"

"Chacha." You smile.

"Aw yeah, Charli! You haven't met her. She'd love you." You look at San.

"Can't wait. She's super cute."

"She's stuck to this one the most, though." You point at Seonghwa. "All she does is cry for Hwa." You pour yourself another shot.

"He's no fun, though." Wooyoung pokes fun and pouts at Seonghwa.

"It's cause mentally, you're the same age as Charli. Of course you relate the most."

"Aye." Wooyoung flips him off while laughing. "Fuck you."

"Am I wrong?" Seonghwa smirks.

"Is she just gonna stay with Yaya when she doesn't have preschool? She only goes three days, right?" Hongjoong asks.

"Yeah, but I'm not sure." You reach across to grab some food, getting in Seonghwa's way. "I know Yaya won't mind, but I might just bring her along to the restaurant. She can color or something. Our regulars don't mind keeping her company, too."

"Cute." 

"But, she'll be sleeping with me and everything." You say with a slightly full mouth. You feel Seonghwa accidentally nudge you while grabbing a chicken wing, making your drunk ass glare back at him just as you roughly nudge him. He mumbles a quick 'stop' as he nudges you again, making you respond with an even more aggressive nudge that has him moving in his seat. The childish back and forth has Hongjoong confused, eyes peering over the edge of his phone while he watches the interaction mid-text. "You stop." You groan.

"Seriously?" Hongjoong asks, sometimes unsure how you two have dealt with each other for this long.

"He elbowed me first." You drunkly respond, that last shot of soju finally settling in.

"It was an accident. I was trying to grab food." Seonghwa gives you a look. It's gonna be a long night. "Eat more. Drunk ass." Seonghwa drops a wing onto your plate before continuing to pick at his food.

"No." You pout and he furrows his brows.

"Fine, suit yourself. You're gonna be mad you didn't." He watches as you reach over to grab the soju bottle and pour Wooyoung and San another shot.

"Don't be a killjoy, Hwa. Sannie is back, doesn't that mean anything to you?" You whine, your doe-eyes peering up at him as he eats. He doesn't respond, nor does he keep eye contact with you for long because he can't stand it when you look at him like that. 

"I'm driving, remember?" He raises a brow. 

"Right." You giggle. "I'll take another on your behalf then." You shrug and take one last shot of soju right after San and Wooyoung take their shots.

"She's gonna yack tonight." Hongjoong says while puckering his lips, keeping his eyes glued to his phone.

"Yeah, probably." Seonghwa nonchalantly munches on a mozzarella stick.

"Am! Not!" You direct your response to Hongjoong, but before you can go on and defend yourself even more, a loud scream erupts when the DJ starts to play one of your favorite songs.

"Who wants to dance?!" Wooyoung yells loudly as he stands at the booth, San already ready to make his way to the dance floor. "Babygirl sure does!" San grabs your hand and leads the way, with Wooyoung pushing Hongjoong out of the booth to follow along. "You two coming?" He asks just as Hongjoong and Seonghwa shake their head, leaving him to nod and find you and San on the floor.

"Looks like those two are gonna get extra close again now that he's back for good." Hongjoong takes a turn teasing Seonghwa, knowing the flirty interaction from earlier in the night is still irking the living daylight out of him.

"Mm, maybe." Seonghwa continues to chomp on his food while avoiding eye contact.

"Wow, they're dancing awfully close like that together." Hongjoong lies, watching as Seonghwa's eyes suddenly dart to the dance floor ahead. He tries not to make it obvious but my god, is he hoping that you and San aren't dancing up on each other and are leaving room for the Holy Spirit instead. "See, you're full of shit."

"Dude, fuck off. Why is everyone on my ass about this today?"

"Maybe cause you should do something about it."

"If she wants to date San, then she should go for it. Can't tell her who she can or can't date."

"You're right, by all means. But I'm telling you to be fucking real with yourself." Seonghwa rolls his eyes and shakes his head before looking back out to the dance floor. He's a little irritated that he's had to hear this not once, but twice in one day— though, he knows his boys are only looking out for him and telling him the truth. For some reason, he just can't think about it right now. He refuses to, mainly out of fear. He doesn't want this to consume him, to change things without him even realizing.

He wants you, but he'll have you the way the universe will allow him to have you.

After you, Wooyoung and San are done dancing [a very long hour or so afterwards], the group decides to call it a night shortly after. You're still drunk as hell, and Seonghwa doesn't even know how he's gonna get you home without creating chaos at this time of night. He just hopes he can at least get you to bed in one piece.

At least you're not running off to Mingi.

"I had so much fun!" You giggle. "Choi San." You tap his chest before hugging him. "I'm so glad you're back."

"I am, too."

"We have to hang out more now that you're back. T-to make up for lost—" You hiccup. "—time."

"That sounds good with me." You smile at him before hugging Wooyoung and Hongjoong.

"I mean it!"

"I know, I do too!" He laughs.

"Hwa get home safely, please." Joong says before grabbing at Wooyoung's shirt just as he's about to run to the water fountain nearby. "No, you're not going to the fountain."

"I just wanna make a wish and toss a coin in there! I'm not gonna dive in!" Wooyoung whines while San laughs loudly. "Why are you being like that!" He continues on.

"You too!" Seonghwa calls out, picking up his pace when he realizes you've already started walking off. "Shit." He mumbles to himself.

"Wooooooo!" You skip happily as you and Seonghwa walk down the street to his car. You stumble on your feet a bit that he has to grab your wrist and pull you back towards him before you end up on the busy street where cars are constantly driving up and down.

"Y/N, be careful." He says, almost whining that you can't just stay still next to him.

"Hwa, I'm fine."

"Are you?"

"Y-yes!" You giggle and pose as if he's taking a picture, only to lose your balance and stumble on your feet again. You laugh though, and it makes Seonghwa chuckle a bit when he grabs your arm and holds you close.

"Okay, yeah. You're right! Perfectly fine." He lies just so you're satisfied.

"Aw, see. I told you so." You scrunch your nose at him and continue to let him guide you to the car. "Hwa." You tug on his arm.

"Mhm?"

"Sannie is so cute." You pout. "He is so, so cute. I m-mean." You hiccup. "He's always been cute but he's so attractive now. Like prince charming." You say ever so smitten, and it makes Seonghwa wanna silently scream and punch the air right now. "Isn't he?!"

"Sure."

"Do you think he'd like me? We're just friends and he probably just—" You hiccup again. "Just sees me as a friend."

"I think he would."

"You're not just saying that because you're my bestfriend, right? You can tell me the truth. You hate Mingi and you tell me all the time."

"I always tell you the truth." He chuckles. "And I do hate Mingi. That has never changed. He's an asshole and doesn't treat you right."

"Would San treat me right? Would you like him? We've all been friends so you know him." Seonghwa sighs.

"He would. He's a really good guy."

"I knooooow." You pout. "But he wouldn't like me."

"He would."

"Would he actually?"

"Why not? You're beautiful inside and out, smart, funny. Fun to be around. You're a headache at times, but everything about you is worth it." He almost mumbles the last part hoping you wouldn't catch it. You do, but it doesn't bother Seonghwa as much knowing you won't remember shit tomorrow.

"Aw, pichu." You stop and look at him while he unlocks his car and swings the passenger door open for you. "You really mean that?" Your bottom lip looks like it's trembling and Seonghwa can't help but furrow his brows in confusion at you.

"Are you gonna cry?"

"Yeah." Your bottom lip pokes out even more and you actually do start crying. 

"That wasn't meant to make you cry, Y/N. I'm just answering your question." He laughs as he wipes your tears, but you continue to cry, even as you drunkly plop onto the passenger's seat.

"It was so sweet, you're always so good to me. Sometimes." You sniff. "Well all the time. I feel like I don't deserve you."

"Don't say that."

"It's true."

"It's not, or else I wouldn't be here, right?" He looks at you just as he finishes buckling your seatbelt.

"Did you know?" You giggle with glazed, hooded eyes. "I wanted to marry you at some point. I couldn't see anyone else in my life the same way that I saw you and thought I'd end up marrying you." You snort and laugh loudly. "Kinda crazy isn't it? We would never date though so how could that even happen?" Seonghwa can't help but continue to look at you, even though at this point you've shut your eyes and started to lean back against the seat.

"Hm." Seonghwa hums. "I wouldn't say never."

"You're my bestfriend. We can't break up, remember? Ever. If we date, then ultimately we could get tired of each other and break up. A-and hate each other. It'll kill me." You mumble. "Even though I love you, I really, really love you, we promised not to break up or go there."

"Yeah." Seonghwa's heart shatters, the pieces falling to the pits of his stomach.

"Listen, even though I have this crush on Sannie, or I think I do, I don't know—" You giggle again as you tap his arm. "I want you to know that I'll always love you more than anyone or anything. Okay? You're always first!" Your eyes pop open to look at him. "My heart belongs to you and only you, Park Seonghwa!" You laugh and point at him cutely, shutting your eyes again to finally try and sleep this off. 

"I love you, too." Seonghwa mutters as he drives off, but you're already sound asleep in the seat— head leaning near the window. He's not sure what to feel right now, and he'll probably never bring this up for your sake. He'll never bring it up though the thought will consume him.

But, did you really mean it? All of it?

He's hoping yes, but what is that gonna do for him? You're drunk. You won't remember this. He won't bring it up. Does this mean it's actually time for him to be honest before it's too late? Before San can sweep you off your feet for good and Seonghwa never gets the chance to tell you how much he truly loves you and adores you?

Before he just has to sit back and bury his feelings for good? All because he decided he couldn't tell you?

He'd hate to say you were the one that got away, especially when a whole new door just opened in front of his eyes. It's just a matter of him taking those steps.

Fuck.

Why do things have to be so complicated?

When he gets to your house, Yaya is sound asleep and all the lights are off. Seonghwa makes sure to open the side door and the door to your suite before coming back to his car to quietly unbuckle your seatbelt and carry you to your bed. You whimper and make a small noise when he lifts you, and he gently shushes you back to sleep— reassuring you that he was putting you to bed and that he'd be around if you needed him.

He lays you down, taking off your shoes and setting them aside before grabbing some clean clothes for you to change into later. He knows you'll probably get up in the middle of the night, especially with how drunk you were. He sets a glass of water near your bed side and places the trash can next to you just in case, before shutting all the curtains and changing into comfier clothes himself [the perks of you wearing his clothes home]. He lays down on your couch and throws the extra blanket over his body, taking a moment to scroll through his phone and text the boys before attempting to get some sleep.

You do end up yacking that night, and it's not as slick as you had liked.

You abruptly woke up, suddenly feeling warm and like you needed some sort of release, feet quickly padding to the bathroom that you didn't notice Seonghwa asleep on your couch. You shut the door to the bathroom and instantly vomit into the bowl— all the alcohol and things you've eaten coming right back up. Seonghwa is already awake, though. He heard you shuffling over to the bathroom and knows exactly what's happening behind the door. He lets out a breath while walking to the bathroom, finding you head first into the toilet. He gently gathers your hair and pulls it back, rubbing your back as you let out another round into the bowl before flushing it away.

"Fuck." You say. "Really do regret not eating more." You spit into the bowl before flushing it once more and stand to wash up.

"Figured." Seonghwa smirks with a little chuckle. "You alright?" You nod as you begin to brush your teeth and get loads of mouthwash ready.

"I think I'll be okay now. I feel a bit better even though I'm kinda dizzy still." You look at him through your bathroom mirror. "Were you here the entire time?" Seonghwa yawns and nods as he leans against the door frame.

"Took your little drunk ass home and stayed here just in case."

"How many hours ago did we get home?"

"Probably like 2 or 3."

"How drunk was I?"

"Drunk enough."

"I didn't say stupid shit, did I?" You spit out the mouth wash and start to make your way outside to change into comfier clothes, still feeling disoriented.

"No, but you did manage to be all up on San." You gasp and cover your mouth, Seonghwa laughing as he plops back down onto your couch.

"The fuck, Seonghwa! Don't lie!" You smack him on the shoulder.

"I'm kidding. Kinda. You were dancing with him and Wooyoung, and you wouldn't stop talking about how cute he was." You start changing in the bathroom with the door open, listening to him go on about that.

"Did he hear?"

"No, you were still being a flirt though."

"Fucking christ." You mumble, hand to your forehead at the dull headache now present post-yack session. "No, I'm not thinking about this now." You lay back down and toss the sheets over your body. "Are you sure you're okay to sleep there?"

"Mhm. Not like I haven't before."

"We've also shared a bed without issues." Seonghwa pauses, swallowing the lump in his throat. Can he really share a bed with you the same way he used to? Especially after you just blurted out that your heart belonged to him? Whether it was the truth, or for shits and giggles— he can't just share a bed with you and keep his distance.

You fucking blurted out the L word.

You said you loved him; really, really loved him.

"It's okay. You should rest comfortably. You need it more than I do." You hum as you sink into your sheets and let the warmth envelope you. Seonghwa lets out a quiet sigh before returning his attention to his phone, waiting for the drowsiness to hit him again. His groupchat with the boys still seems to be active, so he scrolls through to catch up on the texts:

[hongjoong]: just got home after dropping these punks off

[hongjoong]: can't believe woo and san convinced me to go to another bar

[hongjoong]: hwa did you and y/n make it home okay?

[wooyoung]: did y/n yack her brains out? cause babygirl was drunk drunk

[san]: you guys, speaking of her

[san]: y/n is so fucking cute, i missed her a lot

[san]: she's really not seeing anyone right? because she's so pretty

[san]: maybe she'll finally give me a chance lol

[hongjoong]: you're drunk. sleep it off? lol

[san]: no i really mean it ☹️ she rarely paid attention to me before..

[hongjoong]: what are you talking about, she was always with us lol you guys always hung out??

[hongjoong]: please go to sleep

[wooyoung]: u better ask bodyguard seonghwa first, he might drop kick that ass

[san]: shit hwa i'm sorry, am i overstepping here??

Seonghwa is annoyed and he's irritated, but he won't say it. And he won't take it out on San because it's not his fault. It's not anyone's fault but Seonghwa's own. He chooses to keep this to himself and not do anything about it, so can he really mope around and sulk? You weren't his to claim. It was free game, and if it's gonna be anyone, he would want it to be San. Seonghwa would ultimately support you and San if it ever went down that route. That way, you wouldn't keep hurting yourself over Song Mingi, too.

Despite adoring you and loving you to bits, all he wants is for you to be genuinely happy. That's the most important thing here.

[seonghwa]: don't listen to wooyoung's dumbass, you don't needa tell me or ask me anything. y/n is her own person

[seonghwa]: and yeah joong we're fine

[seonghwa]: she did throw up but shes asleep now

[seonghwa]: i'm gonna take my exit, tired as hell

He sets his phone aside, turning inwards on the couch to try and catch some shut-eye. Though, he feels like at this point, he's probably not gonna have the best rest. He manages to fall asleep for the next couple of hours, tossing and turning every now and then until he finally decides to just call it quits and start his day. He washes up and tries to make himself look a little more presentable after the long night of tossing and turning. He folds the blankets and sets them aside, happy to see that you're still sound asleep deep under your covers. He grabs his keys and phone, deciding to make a run for some pho to bring back and share with you.

"Seonghwa." Yaya says as she waters her flowers in the garden. "You're here." She smiles.

"Mhm." He gestures towards your suite. "Brought her home after we all went out last night for San."

"Oh, that handsome boy. I'm so happy to hear he's back home." She stands and places her hand on her hip. "Was she okay?"

"Yeah, just drank quite a bit. She's okay though. Promise." Seonghwa smiles sweetly. "I'm gonna grab us some food before she wakes up."

"You're the sweetest boy I know." She cups his cheek.

"Do you need anything while I'm out, Yaya?" He asks as he's about to head out of the backyard's side door.

"No, Soyeon, Junseo and Charli are coming over soon. You're gonna be here, right? Charli would be so sad if she missed you."

"Yeah, I'll be here." He chuckles. "Be back." 

With that, Seonghwa heads off to the small Vietnamese restaurant that you, your family and his family have come to love. It's a bit of a drive from your place, but he doesn't mind. The restaurant is owned by a lovely middle-aged couple who has seen you and Seonghwa grow since your high school years. When Seonghwa calls, they know his voice— immediately starting on his order before he could say anything and asking for him to swing by as soon as possible so they can see him.

So, that's what he does.

He sees them as soon as possible, walking into the store with a huge smile on his face while Mr. and Mrs. Dao happily wave him over with a huge bag of food nearby on the counter. He stands near the counter to engage in small talk for a bit, giving them cash with extra tip for all the good food they've packed for him [and you].

"Where is our girl?" Mrs. Dao asks, tying the knot securely on the bag.

"Asleep and hungover." She laughs, handing the bag over. "Gotta make sure she gets some food in her system."

"That's sweet of you." She smiles at him. 

"How's your family? How's Y/N and hers?" Mr. Dao asks him, wiping his hand on his apron.

"They're all good. I'll tell them you guys said hello." They nod.

"I packed some spring rolls and extra peanut sauce in there. I know those are her favorite." Mrs. Dao whispers.

"Thank you." Seonghwa winks before waving one last time and walking out of the door. 

As promised, when he arrives, Soyeon, Junseo and Charli are over. Seonghwa steps out of his car with the bag of food, a screaming Charli running towards him from down the hallway. She barrels through her own mom and dad to get to him quickly, with Seonghwa having to set the bag on the island counter down to appropriately welcome her into his arms and swing her around.

"Uncle Hwa! Uncle Hwa!" She screams repeatedly.

"Charli, please. You don't have to scream." Soyeon chuckles a bit.

"Chacha." Seonghwa taps the tip of her nose before she giggles and snuggles her head into the crook of his neck. "I missed you. Where have you been?" He asks teasingly.

"Preschool! With friends!"

"Aw, you've been making friends? That's good." 

"Hwa, don't let that child lie to you." Soyeon adds. "She's so mean and sassy. There was this kid who wanted to sit next to her and she kicked her foot out so he wouldn't." Junseo laughs.

"Wonder who she gets that attitude from?" Junseo chimes in.

"Can't forget that one time we took her to the park and another kid wanted to play with her, but Chacha held up a stick so they wouldn't get close to her." Seonghwa laughs at Junseo's story before he rubs at Charli's back.

"Aw pea, you can't do that."

"I don't!"

"Mhm. Now she wants to act all sweet and innocent cause you're here." Soyeon crosses her arm and nods at the bag. "Long night for Y/N, I'm assuming."

"You could say that." He continues to hold Charli against his hip while grabbing at the bag. "Hey, let's go wake up Auntie Y/N?" She happily nods as Seonghwa walks off to the suite. As expected, you're still deep under your covers, messy hair the only thing peeking out from under. "Go wake her up, Chacha." He says lowly, putting her down so that she can run to the bed and wake you [rather aggressively].

"Titi Y/N! Titi Y/N! Wakey wakey!" Seonghwa chuckles to himself as he sets the food out on your coffee table, grabbing two bowls for you both. 

"Oh my god, Chacha. Please." You groggily say as she bounces on your bed. "How are you even in here right now?"

"Uncle Hwa! He has food so you need to eat now." You would've thought she was grown with that attitude, you think. You chuckle as you rub at your eyes and sit up, giving your niece a proper bear hug and cuddle.

"Thank you, pea." You give her a kiss on the side of the head before you get up to wash up and get yourself ready for the day. Once you've freshen up, you do feel a bit better, though your tummy still feels unsettled so Seonghwa's timing is perfect.

Like always.

You plop next to him on the floor, while Chacha welcomes herself on his criss-crossed lap. He pushes the container of spring rolls and the huge bowl of pho towards you since he's already had his first helping, eyes glued on your TV even though it's just the Secret Life of Pets [probably by Chacha's choosing].

"Thank you, Hwa." His big eyes dart to you before he gives you a small smile and slurps his noodles.

"Course." He feeds some to Chacha when she politely asks for a bite. "You feeling okay?"

"Yeah, a bit. This will help majorly." You slurp the soup.

"Chacha! Let's go! I told you we were only stopping by for a bit!" Soyeon calls from outside.

"No, mama! I wanna stay with Auntie Y/N and Uncle Hwa." She whines loudly, on the verge of an actual breakdown as she stands in between you two.

"Hey Chacha, remember? We're gonna spend some time together soon while mama and papa are away." You pull her close to you and brush the hair out of her face. "Just me and you. Uncle Hwa too." She nods, a tear falling from her eye as she pouts. Seonghwa has to look away because he's finding that the more he's fixated on this scene, the more he imagines a future like this with you. 

And he can't do that to himself.

"Okay." She mumbles with the pout still on her face. You continue to brush her hair back and wipe the straggling tears before standing. 

"Say bye to Uncle Hwa." You dust down your clothes as Charli throws her hands around his neck for a tight hug.

"Bye cutiepie." She giggles before taking your hand and meeting her mom and dad outside in the backyard.

"Swear, she's so stuck on Seonghwa." You laugh and hug Junseo.

"Can't blame her." 

"Well, good to know you're alive. And not at Mingi's." You roll your eyes.

"Always ruining the moment. Leave." Soyeon sticks her tongue out and waves.

"I'll call you later to talk more about the trip. Gotta prepare!" She says in an excited tone, one where you can't help but laugh a bit and shake your head.

"Yeah, whatever. I'm charging you double this time." You call out before giving one last wave and heading back into your suite. Seonghwa is still seated on the ground, but he's drinking water and has his bowl pushed aside. "You're not gonna eat more?"

"No, go for it. It's mainly yours. Mrs. Dao gave you spring rolls and extra peanut sauce on the house."

"Aw, I love her. She's so sweet." You take a bite into one. "What're you gonna do today?" He shrugs.

"Probably hang out at Joong's or San's." He looks at you. "Why?"

"Can I come?"

"No?"

"Why not?" You whine playfully, knowing you don't actually wanna join their weird little boy party.

"Because all you're gonna do is flirt with San and we have important business to take care of." You snort and laugh loudly.

"No I'm not! And important business? Like fucking yelling at each other during a game of FIFA?"

"No."

"Right." You roll your eyes. "I'm kidding, I don't wanna join in your sad little no girls allowed party."

"Girls are allowed." He smirks. "Just not you."

"You really are such a dick to me sometimes." He laughs, blocking the pillow from hitting his face.

"What, and you aren't a brat to me?"

"I beg to differ."

"If only you knew." He snorts, pinching your cheek. "I'm just joking, you know I am. You're always welcome to come."

"No, I really don't wanna go. Was just teasing." You finish up your food.

"What're you gonna do then?"

"Work at the restaurant and serve some middle-aged men their beer and food while they ogle at me." You joke and he winces.

"Mmkay well, have fun with that." Seonghwa stands and cleans up his trash before wiping your table down thoroughly. "Make sure to invite me to the wedding or else I'll be pissed."

"You're full of shit, Hwa." He groans when he sees a drop of peanut sauce land onto the surface that he's just cleaned. "Oops."

"I swear to God." He sighs, cleaning it again before shaking his head.

"You love me."

"I beg to differ." He mocks you just as he washes his hands and stretches. "Alright, well I'm out. Get some more rest before you head to the restaurant, you look kinda torn up." He ruffles your hair, causing you to smack his hand away and flip him off.

"Fuck you, get out." He chuckles as he heads out the door and leaves you to your peace.

When Seonghwa gets to his place, he manages to tidy up a bit, shower and throw on some fresh clothes before calling Hongjoong to see what the consensus was for the meeting place. Hongjoong ends up telling him that they're all on their way to San's, giving Seonghwa the green light to head over as well. 

On his way over, he tries to push his thoughts to the back of his mind. He tries his hardest not to overthink, not to focus too much on all the stuff that's happened.

The stuff you said.

He knows it's probably just you being drunk and babbling all this mess, especially now that you're finding interest in San. But as with everyone says, the drunk mind speaks sober thoughts. 

Was there some kind of truth to it?

Did you really see him that way at some point?

Is there a part of you that still feels that way?

"What's wrong with you?" Seonghwa looks at Wooyoung in slight disgust as he steps aside and lets him in. 

"Nothing. Just didn't wanna see you first."

"You're an asshole." Wooyoung laughs. "How does Y/N deal with you? She's so sweet and fun, everything you're not—" Hwa smacks him upside the head. "Ow, see!" Wooyoung continues to complain.

"Speaking of her, how's Y/N?" San eagerly asks as he sits next to Hongjoong on the couch, continuing his journey on Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.

"All of a sudden." Hongjoong snorts.

"She's good. Recovering from her night, I guess. She's going to work soon."

"Mm. Glad she survived."

"What have you guys been up to?" Seonghwa plops onto the beanbag and scrolls through his phone, finally letting out a breath of relief after his night. At least he could relax and chill out here.

"Just hanging out. Trying to figure out what to eat." Hongjoong looks at him. "You eat already?"

"Yeah, I went to grab some pho for Y/N."

"Okay, thanks for the invite."

"You can take care of yourself." Seonghwa snaps back at Wooyoung, making him mock Hwa in return.

"Aye, are you guys down to head to the mall in a bit? We can just grab food there." San asks, eyes still focused on the TV.

"Why do you need to go to the mall?"

"I just wanna buy some new clothes."

"For what?" Hongjoong chuckles. 

"Listen, I haven't been around for awhile, okay? I started cleaning out a few things from my closet for donations. Plus, I haven't treated myself in a long time cause I've been so focused on the program and what not."

"Mm okay, so what's the real reason?" Wooyoung asks, chomping onto a banana. Seonghwa glances at San from his seat, taking note of how his cheeks and ears turn red and how he's suddenly getting shy. Nervous, even.

And he's not sure how to feel. He has a feeling he might know exactly where this is going, and he's hoping he's wrong. Maybe overthinking. Jumping to conclusions.

"I definitely wanna take Y/N to dinner and catch up with her. See where this goes.." San trails off, causing Seonghwa to pause mid-text— trying his very hardest not to make it too entirely obvious that his heart has dropped from the statement, equally sad and annoyed by the entire situation [for his own selfish reasons].

Fuck.

♡ taglist: @hwasbabygirl @fairyofhueningkai @chngbnwf @tinyteezer @everyonewooeverywhere @pearbunny @mxnsxngie @starhwahwa @woosmaid @yeosangsbbg @jycas @asjkdk @bintificreads @interweab @svintsandghosts @cheolliehugs

[sen-ya]

Life After Info Post

[Click here to access the Life After Digital Comic Book]

Summary: Two years ago, a viral outbreak rose the dead. Considering how his life had gone up to this point, surgeon Trafalgar Law figured this might as well happen too. When a supply run into the nearby city gets intercepted by a seemingly reckless and impulsive former patient, the dependable routine Law had settled into in this new life shatters. He finds himself exposed — his body out in the infected landscape, his conscious clawing to define what he believes is right, his heart begrudgingly deciding to find a new home on his sleeve. Maybe there’s more than a virus roaming the new world that can bring a dead man back to life.

Content Warnings: Canon typical violence, zombies/body horror (but lbr I am not good at making scary things look scary)

Relationships: Luffy x Law

Update Schedule: New page every Monday/Wednesday/Friday

Page Count: [37 posted | 55 drawn]

Latest Update: [7/21/24] WOWEE did I get myself carried away this morning. I just spent 5 hours organizing my comics and creating the digital comic book pages. I could have spent that time drawing or idk not doing what I do for my job, but I cannot be stopped. Anyway I blocked out 30 pages of this comic last week and they include the most intense action sequence I've ever done in my gotdang life. Wish me luck because I am nervous about tying down all my drawings lmao.

OLD UPDATES:

[6/29/24] HULLO! I'm doing so bad at keeping my masterposts updated lately I am sorry. All pages of life after are tagged life after if you're ever looking between masterpost updates! Also exciting update, I finally have figured out all the different plot points i'm gonna be hitting (yay!). I got hung up on something for awhile that made me not wanna work on this project, but I'm back at it. I think we'll end up with 6-7 parts! I have probably another 80-100 pages to draw lol. Also i got the app Magic Poser and it's AWESOME and I immediately used it to block out sets cuz MAN I hate backgrounds.

[6/10/24] HELLO. I'm sorry I've been shit at updating my masterposts lately. It's easiest to do from my computer, which I rarely use, and life has been happening. I also can't believe I bungled the queue and posted pg19 before pg18 i am very sorry 🤦 Eventually I'll have to turn this into an airtable base I'm sure, but until that day comes where I have like 100 pages of this comic we're stickin to the regular post lmao

[5/26/23] I got real caught up in doing summer of lawlu comics this week and this is the first week since the first week of April I haven't drawn new Life After pages and it feels weird 🙊

[5/19/24] More Luffy backstory comin' this week! :^)

[5/12/24] Updating now so get myself on schedule to update on Sundays like I had been with my other comic master post!

[5/8/24] Thank you to everyone who's liked/reblogged/comment on the first few pages!! It means the world to me that anyone's reading my silly little comics.

[4/28/24] HULLO. It’s happeninnng. I’ve spent the last few weeks working on this comic, and I gotta make this post so I can start queuing pages & link this in them! This is the most like….legit? Comic endeavor I’ve undertaken perhaps….ever. I’m very nervous about committing to how long it will need to be lol. This story is dear to my heart — zombie content is kind of my very favorite. I’ve always found it to be a great backdrop for exploring themes like grief, coping with change, community, and learning to live again. It’ll be a long haul but I hope you’ll ride it out with me!! Tomorrow I’ll be posting the first two pages. After that a page will post every Monday/Wednesday/Friday. As of this post I’ve completed over 20 pages so that I have a good lead on what’s posting and continuing to write, so I’m hopeful that’s a cadence I’ll be able to maintain. I’ll update this post weekly to include the most recent pages the way I do with my main comics master post. All pages will be tagged 'Life After' and I'll tag any pages with zombies in them with 'zombie' for blacklisting etc.