#Steam Distribution
Explore tagged Tumblr posts
Text
Steam Boiler for Oil Mill: Efficient Heating Solution
In the oil mill industry, a reliable and efficient heating system is essential for various processes, such as seed preparation, oil extraction, and refining. That’s where a steam boiler comes into play. A steam boiler is a versatile and powerful heating solution that ensures optimal performance and productivity in oil mills. There are several types of boilers commonly used in various industries…

View On WordPress
#Boiler Efficiency#Boiler for Oil Mill#Boiler Maintenance#Energy Efficiency#Industrial Boiler#Oil Mill Boiler#Oil Mill Equipment#Steam Distribution#Steam Generation
0 notes
Text
spent like aaaaall day today mapping out what data goes where for party members in rhapsody's save files. BUT i forgot about the roadblock i hit last time which is that there's some sort of checksum i gotta learn how to solve first -_-
#save structure between PS1 and steam versions seems FOR THE MOST PART unchanged (they trimmed off some excess for the steam release)#so all i gotta do is figure out if the game uses the standard XOR checksums that most PS1 games do and then transfer that knowledge. i hope#.txt#the world if i got the special distribution saves working on the steam release like i was trying to do like a year ago: 🌈🐬💖
5 notes
·
View notes
Text
youtube
In case I don't get around to playing it myself in a timely manner, mystery adventure game Noriamore Academy might tickle the fancy of folks into certain doll-adjacent media with its character designs, sporting a nearly(?) all-unicorn humanoid cast.
Its demo is currently part of Steam Next Fest, and its Kickstarter is fundraising until November 8th.
#vg blue bird#Seems fully voiced acted!#Website says it'll be distributed through Steam and later Epic#No physical release tied to the Kickstarter. Presumably because it's currently only projected for PC#Also they're at unicorn war and have radio-like powers which is fun flavor and probably important#Youtube
2 notes
·
View notes
Text


re: prev rb. baked!!! i said baked!!!
#simple resippy. buy small ones (fingerling or whatever you can find—if you are fancy or american the sack will say smth like#'ideal for gratin' 'perfect for gratin' etc.)#wash them very well. use a gentle wire sponge if particularly dirty. u know they are clean when the water runs clean. crest them#or simply poke 'em a bit w a fork. (this will prevent steam from building up inside them and ensure even cooking)#then. in a big light bowl. plop poatoes + sprinkle salt & herbs & sesame seeds & pepper if desired. spray w cooking oil.#i use olive. anything w a similar smoke point will do. shake the bowl until the herbs n such have evenly coated the potatoes.#on a tray lay down a baking sheet then plop the potatoes on it evenly distributing them.#bake for 30-35 minutes at abt 170 C. actual time will depend on ur oven and potato size etc#you should check them at the 25 min mark tonsee how theyre doing. they are done when the skin looks a bit papery#+ when poking them w a skewer or fork they fall away w little resistance and without leaving crumbs#enjoy them w cottage cheese or by themselves
5 notes
·
View notes
Text
...also here's the rest in case anyone wanted the full set! People were saying they were bummed there were no L4D/2 references when there are in fact THREE OF 'EM
HAPPY 20TH ANNIVERSARY STEAM just wanted to share a couple of my favorites from the whole set! Can't believe that I got to draw these on company time baybeeeee 😎
#valve#steam#long post#I tried to distribute amongst the various Valve franchises pretty evenly as I was goin'#apologies to Ricochet
23K notes
·
View notes
Text
Advanced Water Treatment Systems for the Pharmaceutical and Biotech Industries: Ensuring High-Purity Solutions
Water is a critical resource in pharmaceutical and biotech industries, as it is essential for drug manufacturing, research, and various laboratory applications. Due to the stringent quality requirements, these industries rely on sophisticated water treatment systems to produce high-purity water free of contaminants and impurities. This article delves into the key components and technologies involved in water treatment systems, focusing on their significance in pharmaceutical and biotech sectors.
1. Pre-Treatment Systems
Pre-treatment is the foundation of an effective water treatment system. The process involves the removal of suspended solids, organics, chlorine, and other contaminants from feed water before it enters more complex purification stages. Technologies such as multimedia filtration, activated carbon filtration, and softening are commonly used. Pre-treatment ensures that downstream systems, such as reverse osmosis and ultrafiltration, operate efficiently and have an extended lifespan, reducing maintenance costs.
2. Purified Water Systems
Purified water is essential for pharmaceutical manufacturing processes, and water systems must meet rigorous purity standards set by pharmacopeia regulations like USP, EP, and JP. Purified water systems typically utilize reverse osmosis (RO) and electrodeionization (EDI) to remove ions, dissolved organics, and other impurities. RO-EDI systems are a vital component of purified water systems in pharmaceutical and biotech industries, providing consistent water quality for applications such as formulation, rinsing, and cleaning.
3. RO – EDI Systems
Reverse Osmosis (RO) systems, combined with Electrodeionization (EDI), offer a highly efficient solution for producing ultrapure water. RO systems remove a broad range of contaminants, including bacteria, dissolved salts, and particulates. EDI further polishes the water by using electricity to eliminate residual ions, ensuring that water meets the strictest standards. These systems are particularly valued for their reliability and low operational costs, making them indispensable for pharmaceutical and biotech facilities.
4. Water for Injection (WFI) Systems
Water for Injection (WFI) is the highest-grade water used in the pharmaceutical industry, mainly in the production of injectable drugs. WFI systems must comply with stringent pharmacopeia standards, ensuring that the water is free from pyrogens, bacteria, and endotoxins. WFI systems typically utilize multiple technologies, including RO, distillation, and ultrafiltration, to meet these requirements. The quality and consistency of WFI are critical for the safety and efficacy of injectable products.
5. Ultrafiltration Water Systems
Ultrafiltration (UF) systems are a key component in ensuring the removal of colloidal particles, bacteria, and viruses from water, which is crucial for industries requiring high microbiological purity. UF systems operate by forcing water through a membrane that retains unwanted particles while allowing pure water to pass through. These systems are often used as a pre-treatment for RO or as a standalone solution for certain high-purity applications.
6. Pure Steam Generation
Pure Steam Generation systems play a critical role in sterilization processes in pharmaceutical and biotech industries. Pure steam is used to sterilize equipment, piping, and vessels. The quality of steam must meet stringent regulatory standards to ensure the sterility of manufacturing processes and the integrity of final products. Pure steam generators typically use high-purity water, such as that produced by WFI systems, to generate steam that is free from contaminants.
7. Mix-Bed Plant
A Mix-Bed Plant is an advanced water treatment technology used for final polishing of water after RO-EDI treatment. It combines cation and anion exchange resins to remove the remaining ionic impurities, achieving the highest levels of water purity. Mix-Besd Plant systems are particularly valuable in industries requiring ultrapure water for sensitive processes, such as the production of biopharmaceuticals.
8. Storage and Distribution Systems
Proper Storage and Distribution Systems are essential for maintaining the purity of water after it has been treated. These systems must be designed to prevent contamination and maintain water quality by minimizing microbial growth and biofilm formation. Advanced systems often incorporate features like sanitary piping, automated controls, and regular sterilization processes to ensure consistent water quality. In pharmaceutical and biotech industries, the water storage and distribution system is often integrated with real-time monitoring for compliance with regulatory standards.
9. DM Water Plant
A Demineralisation (DM) Water Plant is another essential system used in pharmaceutical and biotech industries. DM plants utilize ion exchange resins to remove dissolved ions from water, producing demineralized water that is free from minerals like calcium, magnesium, and sodium. DM water is often used in applications such as cooling, cleaning, and as feed water for further purification processes, including RO and EDI systems.
10. Chemical Dosing System
A Chemical Dosing System is used to introduce precise amounts of chemicals into the water treatment process to control pH, prevent scaling, and eliminate microbial contamination. In pharmaceutical and biotech applications, chemical dosing systems are often integrated with real-time monitoring to ensure that chemical levels remain within specified limits, safeguarding the integrity of both the water treatment system and the final product.
11. Bio-Kill Systems
Bio-Kill Systems are designed to eradicate microbial contamination in water systems. These systems utilize techniques like UV radiation, ozone, or chemical dosing to eliminate bacteria, viruses, and other harmful microorganisms. In pharmaceutical and biotech industries, where microbial contamination can compromise product safety, Bio-Kill systems are indispensable in maintaining high-purity water systems.
Conclusion
Water treatment systems are integral to the success of pharmaceutical and biotech industries. From pre-treatment to advanced purification technologies like RO-EDI, Ultrafiltration, and WFI systems, every step ensures that water meets the highest standards of purity required for drug production and research. The integration of sophisticated storage, distribution, and microbial control systems further ensures that water quality is maintained throughout the entire process. For pharmaceutical and biotech companies, investing in high-quality water treatment systems is not just a regulatory necessity but also a critical factor in ensuring product safety and efficacy.
SWJAL PROCESS Pvt. Ltd. is a leading provider of advanced water treatment systems, specializing in solutions tailored to meet the exacting demands of pharmaceutical and biotech industries.
#swjal process#water treatment system#pre-treatment#RO EDI#Ultrafiltration#DM Plant#Chemical Dosing#Mix-Bed Plant#Pure Steam Generation#Water storage and Distribution system#Water for injection#Purified water plant#Pharmacutical#Biotech#Industry
0 notes
Text
for beta testing?
#cyuziposts#cyuziplays#cyuzigaming#gaming#Sonic Generations#Sonic X Shadow Generations#Sonic the Hedgehog#they're distributing the classic sonic skin now and this is from my steam receipt after redeeming
0 notes
Text
I went swimming after work today and my god I am knackered how do people exercise every day
#i say swimming#i evenly distributed my time between the pool the steam room and the hot tub#maybe its just because im overweight and lazy that im not used to it#stop talking helena
0 notes
Text
I god kicked outta steam
Goddamnit!
#memes#humor#steam#I didn't fucking do shit#steam just logged me out#I can't play tf2 anymore#valve fix your fucking video game distributer#im inside gabens walls
1 note
·
View note
Text
HOUSE IN NEBRASKA — Logan "Worst Wolverine" Howlett x Mutant!Reader AO3 version Spotify Playlist
WORD COUNT — 15.4k SUMMARY — Reader gets roped into saving the timeline with ex-best friend Deadpool, coming face-to-face with a variant of Logan that uproots memories she'd long suppressed, only to find that this version of him lost her in his universe, too. TAGS/WARNINGS — she/her pronouns (minimal usage), female anatomy, flashbacks in italics, angst, enemies to lovers, alcoholism, smoking, arguments, canon typical violence, cursing/bad language, Deadpool breaks the fourth wall like twice, canon behaviour worst wolverine, religious trauma, honda odyssey scene self-insert, eventual smut, unprotected sex, multiple orgasms, dirty nasty talk (logan has a filthy mouth), mentions of cocaine literally once. smut is marked after last divider if you want to skip plot but i'll kiss you if you don't!
You’re smoking a cigarette on your porch when the snowfall happens. It would be normal, you think, if it weren’t for the fact that it’s dead in the middle of July. A group of nanas, elbow-deep in the community garden soil, glance up to the sky and begin muttering prayers amongst themselves.
You’ve lived in this safe house for a while now, up in the mid-west of the Appalachian mountains, surrounded by thickets of pine and opposite a bubbling creek. You grew up somewhere near here and the locals welcomed you back with open arms and a plateful of hot food when the humans started the culling— when the X-men fell apart.
It has plenty of benefits. The smell of lavender, for one, and your cat, Kevin, loves chasing the pigeons, even if he’s not the most successful hunter. The locally sourced produce means you can avoid the poisoned food they’re distributing in supermarkets.
But, most importantly, the humans can’t find you out here. You’re lucky the gossip of your… genetics, so to speak, doesn’t leave Sunday morning church.
Things have been different, lately. The trees are shedding down to dust, people are disappearing at an exponential rate, and there was a time when you’d be on the front lines helping them. You’re on the edge of your seat waiting for the call — a learned habit — but it’s never coming. Charles is dead. Logan is dead. The X-men are dead.
The snow is warm when it lands on your skin. It feels like rot, and your solitude suddenly feels lonelier and more daunting than ever.
You reach to take a sip of your steaming coffee when you hear movement. A zipping strobe light crosses your vision and you flinch against the intrusion, but you’re not afraid. You’ve surely survived worse.
Stryker worse.
A comical and confused looking figure pops out from an orange portal, scratching the crown of his head over the red and black mask on his face. You sip your coffee as you observe him nonchalantly.
He notices you and approaches with a dainty point of his finger.
“Um, excuse me, ma’am.”
“Well, well well,” you suck on your cigarette with a frown. “Look what the cat dragged in. Got a new suit, Red?”
“What, aren’t you happy to see lil’ old me?”
“You’re on my property,” you say matter-of-factually. You had a shotgun stowed away inside for emergencies, but frankly, you never had to use it. You were enough of a weapon yourself. Consider it insurance, if the corn-syrup they’re poisoning ever finally makes it way to you.
You glance sidelong at the old ladies in their aprons, clutching one another with stern gazes in your direction. The deal was that you didn’t bring trouble their way — but it looks like trouble found you. You narrow your eyes and silently hope that this doesn’t turn messy, as it so usually does where he’s concerned.
He sighs heavily and continues approaching regardless. You analyse his stature and take notes of the weapons on his holsters and back. You reckon you could take him if it came down to it, but he didn’t seem threatening.
You and Wade used to be friends, but after isolating yourself from grief, you don’t necessarily consider yourselves to have a close relationship. More often than not he brought trouble; hence your defensive response.
“Listen, ants in your pants, I’ve done this about a hundred times,” he huffs and places a hand on his hip, waving the device around in his hand. You take another drag of your cigarette and perk your brows before rising to your feet.
“I’ve had my spleen shattered by the Hulk, about eighty stab wounds…”
He rambles on about his collection of injuries and you tilt your head with amusement. Must be another one of his famous mental breakdowns. This might be entertaining, at the very least.
“…You’ve even killed me a few times in different universes!” He claps his hands together. “And frankly, I was just going to let you die here. You’re not even canon, so you won’t be missed, but you appear to be of use to me. So I need you to come with me. Now. Please.”
What on Earth was he talking about? What on Earth was he ever talking about?
You bark a laugh. “I ain’t going anywhere with you, Red and Black.”
“Will it change your mind if I add a cherry on top?” He asks with a dry laugh before nodding enthusiastically. Manically. “You’re coming. Kevin’s life depends on it.”
“What are you talkin’ about? Are you threatenin’ my cat? That’s a new low, Wade.”
“Is it? Is it really? I am certain that I can go unfathomably lower.”
You roll your eyes, half-way through turning your back on him.
“You see this?” He holds out a gloved hand and catches some snowflakes. He rubs them between his fingers and they spark and fizzle before dusting away. “That’s not snow. That’s time death. Our universe is dying, womp womp. Stay here, sure! By all means, but—”
Your cat launches out of the door behind you, chirping and meowing to himself before promptly dashing through the portal and disappearing into the blurry void on the other side.
“Well. Looks like he made his choice.”
He sighs and lets you process. You take the final swig of your coffee and huff a breath.
“You literally have nothing left to lose. Trust me. I know. I’ve seen all kinds of you and, believe me when I say this, even though I love and cherish this version of you, this—” he points two fingers at you and gestures towards you judgmentally. “— isn’t the best look on you, honey.”
You want to dismiss him. You want to turn him away, to tell him to get lost. Grief swallowed your heroism whole, turning it into a barren wasteland of bitter indifference. You used to be bright, full of light, love, and hope.
Fucking hope. It’s the reason Logan left you to help Charles in the first place. You just wanted to settle down and disappear, to live a normal life. You lost an intrinsic part of your being when he died; you remember feeling it before you heard the news. Fucking hope.
Hope, hope, hope. Nana Rose chants on about it when she clasps your hands with her wrinkly ones, dragging you to church in spite of your atheism.
“And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts,” she chants, basket of flowers on her hip. “Romans 5:5. You’d do well to do your readin’, tulip.”
You didn’t and don’t ever usually believe a word she says, but you can feel her faith. It’s solid as steel, pouring out of her like blotting light through the gaps in the trees. Undying. And you’ll be damned if you let anything happen to her.
A flicker remains. You imagine what Charles would say to you now, how you’d hang onto his every word and he’d bring out the better of you. You truly do have nothing left to lose, except maybe your cat. Over your dead body.
“Come ooon,” he pokes his fingers together. “Fancy being a hero? One last time?”
You take the final drag before stubbing the cigarette out on your railing. “Alright, Red. I’ll bite.”
“Then suit up.”
Your friendship with Deadpool was a rocky one. There was a time you told him you’d be there for him through everything, and you technically owed him one for saving your life that one time even though your ego insists that, to this day, you could’ve taken the fight. That’s what heightened cellular control of your body is for, right? Accelerated healing? Empathetic abilities? Faster reactions, enhanced strength— you get the point.
Though you didn’t realise that returning the favour meant following him through space, time and alternate dimensions, you were a person who stayed true to their word, and you hated being indebted to someone.
So, here you were, waking up in the middle of a barren wasteland that was seconded as a cocktail soup of abandoned universal relics and heroes ripped from their worlds, accompanying your ex-best friend to restore your timeline.
But, one thing about paying someone back, it doesn’t technically count if they lie to you about the terms and conditions of the agreement. Only a few mere moments after you come to, dazed by the impact and the blaring wobbly heat of the sun, you rise to watch as Deadpool takes six blades of Wolverine to the chest.
You’re still a little dizzy when you stagger to your feet, head throbbing, as you’re trying to process if, yes, that’s exactly what you were witnessing.
“Let’s see you grow your fuckin’ head back!” Wolverine growls.
Deadpool holds his hands up in surrender. “Wait, wait, wait! I can fix it! I can fix it!”
The man in yellow hesitates. “Fix what?”
“Whatever it is that you did, whatever made you so bad—” Wade pants, catching his breath. “Those pricks at the TVA, you heard ‘em. They have the power to end my universe, but they also have the power to change yours. We get back there, and we can fix your world! Together. I promise.”
You stumble from around a pile of debris, clutching your side as a rib pops back into place. Wolverine sniffs the air, face blanching as he snaps to look in your direction.
When you first make eye contact with him, it feels as though you’re resurfacing from water after being on the precipice of drowning. Your heart leaps into your throat, adrenaline boils your veins and your lungs burst with relief of breathing.
“Troubles always gonna find you, baby,” Logan murmurs, kissing his way up from the pulse in your throat as he rocks against you. “But so am I.”
You’ve never loved him more, you think, than when he fucks you slow like this. A snowstorm rages outside the cabin, howling full of glass and needles and rattling the window frames. His skin against yours burns a fire within you, warming you to the bone. He sweeps hair away from your face before capturing your mouth in his, swallowing the sounds of your pants, threading his fingers between yours.
You could stay here forever, you think.
Your fingers shake from the whiplash of the memory. You instinctively reach towards him but you catch yourself. This was the husk of him, not your Logan. The realisation feels akin to ripping open a haphazardly sewn wound right down to the fatty yellow flesh, raw and needling and sore.
He’s broader than you remember. Hair a little darker, wrinkles a little deeper. He smells of alcohol and cigars — that much is familiar. That’s him, flesh and adamantium bone, living, breathing. Alive. The physical shell of him prods alive parts of your inner circuitry that you weren’t aware had fallen asleep, like intrinsic nerves untangling within you.
You can sense that he knows you, too, based on his emotional response. His noise is extremely loud, spilling out of the cracks of whatever wall he thought he’d successfully built up. This version of Logan certainly had a lot of secrets.
“You,” he whisper-growls. It’s almost intangible, leaving him like a breath. He pulls his blades promptly from Deadpool’s chest and kicks him backwards.
You’re starting to understand that faith thing that Nana Rose was knocking on about when he strides towards you, large and tall. You certainly weren’t a believer by any means but you’re sure you’d be the picture of unbridled worship for the way you’d fall to your knees for him.
Your empathetic power lurches for him, seeking him out as you used to — like a flower to the sun — but it physically recoils from the aura that it touches. It was all your Logan but not in a familiar way. It’s tainted, dark, and it tastes like copper and screams.
All colour melts from his face and his body shuffles in a way that indicates discomfort; a dry swallow, tense shoulders and flicking eyes that refuse to meet your gaze. He omits feelings of guilt and shame that linger on the tendrils of your empathetic powers where you connect with him.
You try to zone Wade out, squinting as you attempt to navigate through his cobweb of emotions (seriously, this guy’s aura could do with a cleanup) but it’s like wading through black-tar syrup, feelings negated by years of alcohol-abuse and avoidance. Eventually, you feel something that makes your guts twist and your legs shake: a version of romantic attraction and recognition so carnal and raw that you begin to blush, a warmth that creeps its way up from your belly. A breath escapes you like a punch.
“Well. This feels awkward.” Wade glances between you both and places his hands on his hips. “Why do you both look like you’ve seen a ghost? Do I need to call Egon Splegler and tell him to bring his ghost sucky-sucky vacuum? Oh my god—” He slaps his hands to his face and gasps sharply. “Cross-Universal lovers?”
As inappropriately timed and tone-deaf his one-liners could be, you’d never been more appreciative of an icebreaker. You think you could’ve stood there for an hour, frozen in silence, staring at a reanimated corpse, basking in the noise of his emotional frequency like an addict finally getting another hit.
But then the noise stops, swallowed up like a heaving black hole had split and atomised the tension whole with its unforgiving jaws. He closes himself off from you. Connection severed. You reach out and feel a cold nothingness similar to how, on particularly rough nights, you’d try to reach out to him after his passing. You’d clung onto his plaid shirts until the smell and emotional residue wore off of them.
“You with the mouth? To fix things?”
You nod tightly. You don’t think you can find your voice in front of him.
“Let’s just keep moving. And stay out of my head,” Logan grumbles, crossing you with a cold shoulder and mumbling something incoherent under his breath. When he’s made enough distance, you turn to your old friend with a cold glare.
“Ooh, brr. Anybody else feel a chill?”
“Wade.”
He twists towards you comically slow.
“You. Motherfucker.” You begin approaching him. He backs up slowly and holds his hands up.
“I knew if I told you the plan you wouldn’t have gone along with it!”
“Are you insane? You think multiversally grave-robbing my fucking dead ex-boyfriend is going to save our timelines?!” You yell.
“Technically he’s not dead—”
You push him. “He should be! He- he was— he is!”
“Well, this one isn’t!” He pushes back. “And I’m not sorry for finding a loophole in the plan to fry — not just mine, mind you — but both of our timelines! Did you happen to forget that? No multi-dimensional depressed Logan? Alright then! No more Kevin!”
He’s talking about your cat. Anger flares.
“Don’t you dare bring Kevin into this.”
“You forced my hand!” He yells, mouth moving alien-like behind the mask on his face. “Besides, I’m not doing this for me—”
You blink your eyes closed. You might reach the end of your tether if he said her name one more time. You’ve been in his company for approximately an hour, and he’s already drilled a hole into your brain with his incessant yapping about the “love of his life”.
“Wade, you need to move on. She clearly has.”
“I will not move on from the only people I love in this fucked up dimension. This isn’t just for Vanessa.” He shoves a glossy photograph in your face. “This is for you and blind Al and even that shit-head teenager and her pinkie-pie girlfriend! They deserve their timeline!”
“I literally don’t care about any of those people!”
Even yourself?
“Well, I do! I have people I care about! Aren’t you supposed to be a hero? God, all of you X-men are so depressing. Is it the suits they make you wear? Is that it? Can’t breathe in that thing?” He continues poking at you. “Loosen up a little!”
You straighten your posture and the black leather of your suit crackles. You swat his hands away as he continues poking. “Alright! Cut it out!”
“Think of Nana Rose.” He draws a heart with two fingers. “Little old ladies like her deserve a chance, don’t they?”
And even though humans had done nothing but wage war on your kind for simply existing, you still felt obliged to help them. Besides, the thought of other mutants — kid mutants — dying when you hold the chance to save them in the palm of your hand? You were hardly managing as you were now. You’re not sure you’d be able to live with yourself if you kept going like this.
“Alright, alright!” You huff, heart pounding in your chest. You look over at where Wolverine kicks at rocks in the distance. “Fucking hell, Red. Holy fuck.”
You say it again, only this time you scream it into your hands.
“You should’ve warned me.”
“Are we good?”
“Are we go—” You scoff. You kick his ankle, feel the bones shatter and crunch beneath your foot. He lets out a short, high-pitched yelp. “You deserved that.”
“Motherfuckermotherfucker… oh you’re lucky I feel bad about lying to you or I would’ve twisted your milk bags off for that I swear to God.” He sucks in a breath. “I’ll allow it. Just this once.”
“Mhm,” you murmur, walking forward. “That doesn’t sound like an apology.”
He limps after you, floppy ankle dragging a line in the sandy dirt. “I’ll be dead before you ever get one of those out of me! And too bad I can’t fucking die!”
The difference between this Logan and your Logan is stark, minus the uncanny resemblance. Your Logan was soft and gentle, but this version is sharper and blade-edged, and your fingers bleed when you try to touch him.
Staring at him feels like throwing up a mirror and analysing yourself, a picture of what happens to a person when they make all of the wrong choices. You’re embarrassed, almost. This isn’t a version of you that you ever want him to know, but at least you can say you’re trying.
Him, on the other hand…
“Are we going to keep up the awkward silence?” You snip, awkwardly adjusting the restraints on your wrist.
You’ve been in Logan’s company for all of an hour, and yet accompanying one another through literal time purgatory didn’t seem to irk any feelings of obligation from his end. He’d been cold-shouldering and ignoring you the entire time, even though you kept catching him staring.
“I have nothing to say to you,” he spits, wriggling uncomfortably against a very unconscious Deadpool. “You got us into this mess.”
You frown, small. You can feel hatred pouring out from him, leaving a sickly bile taste in the back of your throat. You’ve lived through enough hate for being a mutant in your lifetime, enough that you’d become accustomed to tuning it out of your radio channel, so to speak, but something about it coming from the man you loved makes it a little harder to swallow.
You’re quiet when you next speak. “Don’t make this more difficult than it has to be.”
He shoots you an indistinguishable look and grunts to himself. Such a Libra.
“So, what’s the story here?” Johnny asks with a sly grin. He turns to you with a glimmer of mischief in his eye. “You two know each other?”
You cringe. “Sort of. Last I remember, he wasn’t this much of a prick.”
“Oh, trouble in paradise, huh?” His grin grows. “That’s a shame. Not often we get girls like you in the void.”
“Seriously?” You say with a side-eye.
He shrugs, all blue-spandex biceps and charming smile. “No harm in trying.”
Your breath hitches as Cassandra approaches, wide eyes and tilted head aiming for you purposefully. Logan swiftly angles his body so that he’s standing in front of you and she halts as a delighted, implicating smile stretches across her face. Your chest constricts, tendrils of yearning coiling tighter. It appeared to be muscle memory: his instinctual, protective flinch. Just like your Logan used to, despite how capable he knew you were.
“Now, I’ve always wanted a Wolverine.” Her finger moves along the crowd. “Knew I’d get one eventually. But I never even dreamed of having you.”
Cassandra zips behind you and her slender fingers delve into the crevices and valleys of your brain, lips intimately close to your neck and ear. Wolverine snarls territoriality, but he’s unable to move. The urge to reach for him is overwhelming.
“Do you know that there are so few universes where you exist?” She whispers, caressing your deepest memories. “I even asked the TVA about you, in exchange for keeping the peace. I was disheartened when I found out one of you died. But you’re here! Now, I don’t believe in fate, but this almost feels like it was meant to be.”
You flinch when she uncovers a particularly fond memory, one you hadn’t been aware was so prominently in the forefront.
In the back of his truck, a cigar between his teeth, hands sliding under your shirt. In another world, he would’ve taken the time to do this properly, but living in a school didn’t exactly grant two consenting adults any privacy.
“Waited long enough for this.”
He kisses up from your bare foot to the sensitive skin of your inner knee, lips scorching against your skin.
“Logan…”
“Easy,” he murmurs, leaning away for a moment to remove his plaid overshirt, leaving himself in that white vest you could eat him alive in. “Still wanna take my time with you.”
You’re desperate, he can tell— can probably smell it, too, but you’re far too humiliated to ask him if he can.
Logan wasn’t your first by any means, but with the way you were near trembling for him truly felt like you’d be losing all of your innocence in the back seat. You’re shy and quiet, everything he isn’t. You’re infatuated with him — have been since he burst out of the lab in his grey hoodie — and have daydreamed about what it would be like to have him. You certainly didn’t let him know that right away, and with whatever shred of composure remained around his relentless flirting and teasing remarks, you tried to play hard to get.
Until you couldn’t. Because you weren’t. He had you, and with every fibre of your being, you wanted him to.
She pulls her hands from your brain with a shlick sound, rubbing her fingers together as if relishing in the produce of your memories. She grabs a rag from her pocket and smirks knowingly.
“You’re thinking of that at a time like this?” She laughs all witch-like. “Worry not; your secret’s safe with me, naughty girl.”
Wade lowers his voice and leans towards Logan. “She was thinking of me.”
“I can read between the lines, darling,” she potters on. “This isn’t about a sexual fantasy. Deep down, you just want to be wanted. To be loved.”
She steps back and extends her arms. “After all, you’ll never amount to anything in your world. It’s such a shame that your Logan left you so abruptly. Did he break your heart?” She giggles. “Why suppress your powers in his name? For a level-five mutant, you certainly don’t act like one. You can do that, here. Freely!”
Your worn thin tether creaks with exhaustion like a dilapidated bridge under pressure. There isn’t a singular fibre of your being that desires to be stuck here, but the small, angry teenage voice in your head would love nothing more than to just let go. You’d been containing your powers for as far as you can remember, and they'd always been as irresistible as the promise of Pandora's box.
But you know how that story ends.
You take a moment’s pause. “I have no interest in livin’ in a garbage dump.”
She tilts her head and neatly clasps her hands behind her back. “Do you forget where you come from? I think we both know who lives in a garbage dump.”
“You motherf—”
You’d just managed to escape Cassandra’s lair with Alioth’s foggy storm fangs nipping at your ankles when you ran across the abandoned diner.
You’re ravenous, wrist aching from how you dig at the freezer-burned ice cream. It’s your least favourite flavour but you’ve been running on fumes for the past day or so, so you’ll take what you can get, though you begin to lose your appetite when you remember Johnny, and how Cassandra had zipped the skin from him like popping a blood-filled water balloon.
Something is rumbling beneath your surface. A distinct, constant buzzing, like two atoms slowly building up radioactive energy. You’d asked for none of this, and would certainly give Wade a talking to when the time called for it, but, for now, you’re trying your hardest to make this as easy a process as possible.
Your male counterpart, however, was doing exactly what men generally do. He was making this fucking unbearable.
Logan sits across from you, brooding, fingers gripping the medicinal bottle as if it’s anywhere near appropriate to be drinking. He throws you a particularly lingering glare when he notices you staring, but refuses to maintain eye contact when you look back at him
You toss the tub and spoon across the table with a sharp clatter, your patience collapsing.
“What? Can’t even look at me?” You snap. His eyes look exhausted when they finally meet yours. Wade, being the characteristic little fucker he is, pulls a delighted, shit-stirring grin as he glances between the two of you as if watching a tennis match.
Logan gasps as he finishes taking a drink. “Not much to look at,” he says, wiping the back of his mouth.
The words twist like a fist in your gut. For a moment, you’re rendered too stunned to respond, like he’d tossed a flash-bang toward you. His casual cruelty digs deeper than you care to admit— but you’ve had far too much therapy, too much psychological training, to know he’s deflecting.
But you wouldn’t doubt for a second that there was a more beautiful version of you somewhere.
“What, you comparin’ me to someone?” You ask. You can tell you’ve struck a nerve by the way he goes for another sip. “That it?”
He grimaces.
“Do I make you feel sick? Am I making you feel sick?”
He stares at you hard, but silently. He takes a long swig of the rubbing alcohol and you cringe as his throat bobs. His silence and feigned indifference light a fire of indignation.
“You know, you’re not the only person who’s suffered. Who’s lost people.”
He laughs like what you’re saying is funny. “Yeah, right, bub, you have got no idea what loss is.”
“Oh, you are such a fucking cunt,” you spit, slamming your hands on the table as you rise to your feet. “You know what, Wade? You’re right. I can’t do this. So fuck you and fuck his timeline and fuck every timeline that had anything to do with it! I’m done.”
A wave of uncontrolled psionic energy born from your anger blasts from you upon your final words, slamming them back into their seats and sending the cutlery, nearby debris and weapons flying. The neighbouring windows smash, shattering explosively and sprinkling outside of the diner.
The simmering stops, replaced by a stifling emptiness.
“I wasn’t finished with that!” Wade cries, crouching down to scoop up what remains of the gelatinous spam.
You pause for a moment, glance at your hands, and then grab your jacket in an aggressive fit.
Wade whines your name, halfway through gagging down a forkful of cold spam off of the floor (one of which resonates with a particularly distinct crunch, but you don’t stay to find out whether or not he just truly ate glass), and he doesn’t attempt to get up and follow you as you storm off.
You take a heaving breath of hot desert air when you leave the diner. The sandy breeze tousles your hair, and with the prickly energy of an incoming nervous breakdown, your legs kick and you’re running.
“Stryker got you, too?” Logan asks, eyebrows flicking up.
You don’t look him in the eye when you nod. You cross your arms and slouch a little, caging your heart in. Stryker — the ex-militant with a fetish for experimenting on mutants — had held you captive for several years. He’d brainwashed you into using your empathetic abilities for nefarious purposes, like seducing other mutants, and sometimes important political and militant figures.
“You like me?” He questions, quieter this time.
“No… no, not like you,” you reply. “I don’t have the fancy bones. I heal fast, but I wouldn’t survive that kinda procedure.”
“Ah.”
“I don’t remember everything. Just bits and pieces. Feelings, mostly. Nightmares,” you explain. He nods understandingly. “I’m always on edge.”
“You always seem so calm,” he observes. “Nothing seems to phase you.”
“I have to be. It took a lot of pain and damage to get this level-headed,” you respond quickly. “If I don’t manage my emotions, all the emotions that I receive, touch— it all comes out. Explosively. It has to come out somehow. I could hurt people.”
“Funny. School therapist ‘n’ you’ve got the most issues,” he teases light-heartedly.
“You got no idea, lumberjack.”
You hated killing.
You’re on your knees, arms and hands and chest soaked crimson, sobbing. They’d come out of nowhere, the raiders, and they were hungry for something you couldn’t quite put your finger on. All you know is that you felt their need, their desperation, their willingness to do anything to get it.
The flash of harrowing horror someone feels before they die isn’t a unique experience. It simply varies in strength — sometimes it’s a feather-like touch that careens over you, a shuddering realisation that they’re taking their last breath, and sometimes it’s like a crack of lightning. Bloodied hands gripping your biceps with fear in a final attempt to survive. They’d rather cling to you than die alone.
You hate killing. Especially this up close.
You don’t cry for them. You don’t even cry for yourself. It’s a small emotional space where they cry vicariously through you.
You were black-out when it happened, you tell yourself, and suddenly regress to the student you used to be, sobbing on your knees in front of Charles as he tries to teach you serenity and control after an outburst had caused you to kill a nest of birds. He’d done it for Magneto, he said— so he could certainly do it for you.
You should have meditated more.
The sound of a car gurgles somewhere behind you, but you haven’t the energy to look or use your powers to seek out who’s approaching and what their intent is. You’re exhausted enough that whatever they wish to do with you — turn you to processed dog kibble, send you back into the jaws of Cassandra’s lair, kill you — whatever. Just let it happen.
A slamming car door and then the crunching of boots on gravel.
“You’re easy to track.” A pause. “You look pathetic. You done throwing your tantrum?”
Logan. Of course, it’s him.
“Leave me alone, prick.”
“As much as I’d like to, you and the Mouth still have to hold up your end of the bargain,” he quips, folding his arms across his broad chest. “Now get up.”
You glare up at him and his arms unfurl as he notices your tear-streaked face. His expression drops, softens, before it quickly ticks back up into an incredulous, irritated look.
“Are you crying?” He asks with a scoff. He pauses before dragging his hand down his face and rubbing his scruffy jaw. “Jesus Christ. Get up. Get in the car.”
“I ain’t fuckin’ around, Logan. Piss. Off.”
He mumbles a string of incoherent curses and turns on his heel. You think, for a moment and a breath of relief, that he’s truly going to give up on you and leave. He could finish this without you. It’s easier this way.
Instead, a thick bicep wraps around your middle and you’re flung over his shoulder with a yelp.
“Quit your squirmin’.”
“Then put me down!” You yell, thrashing in his grasp. He promptly ignores you, unphased by the jabs you strike at his back. You quickly unsheath the small knife from your jacket sleeve, winding up your arm before you drive it into the muscly pocket by his kidneys.
“Ow! Cheap shot, you little fucker!”
Wade sighs and clutches his hands in front of his chest romantically. “Oh, the newlyweds.”
Logan dumps you into the front seat of the car carelessly, grumbling something as he slams the door shut and applies the child locks. Petty motherfucker.
You rub the sore spot on your tailbone where you landed on a seat buckle funny. You want to bite your tongue but you’re flared up.
“We should switch places. I’m a better driver than you are.”
Logan doesn’t bother looking at you as he starts up the ignition. “Just shut up.”
“You can go on ahead and smoke a cat turd in hell, then.”
“So fuckin’ immature. Grow up.”
“Mom and Dad can you please stop fighting!” Deadpool cries out from the backseats.
You just roll your eyes, resigning into your chair and folding your arms.
At some point along the ride, Wade falls asleep, snoring soundly to himself. You’re silent in the front, drumming a beat on your knees, awkwardly thinking of something to say. You have the impulsive need to fill the silence, even if you were trapped in a crappy car with a man who had made it vehemently clear that he irrevocably hated you.
“So, if they can fix your world, what’s the first thing you’ll do?”
Logan rips his eyes towards you. “What did you say?”
“I said when you get back, what’s the first thing—”
“No, no, no— before that.”
You hesitate, wondering if you’d landed yourself in a trap based on the sharpness of his tone and the way that anger crackles off of him like static lightning.
“If… they can fix your world?”
He slams his foot on the brake and you just about catch yourself before your nose goes flying into the dashboard. Wade is thrust out of the front window, smashing through and promptly falling unconscious underneath a tree, neck broken at an awkward angle.
Your eyes widen.
“What do you mean: if?”
“That’s what Wade said—”
“I don’t give a fuck who said what. He promised me he would fix things—”
“Well, I didn’t promise you shit!”
He laughs, low and devoid of humour. “You don’t have a clue if they can fix things, do you?”
Well, no. You’ve been operating on a hunch the entire time and had half come to accept that you might be stuck in the TVA void forever. Who knows how much time has passed elsewhere?
Regardless of the fact you truly had nothing to do with whatever came out of Wade’s mouth, you weren’t about to let Mr. Worst Wolverine shit all over him and his plan to save his friends.
“Is it really that far-fetched? We made an educated wish!”
Something dark flashes across his face. You can feel hate pulsing off of him in dizzying waves, doubling with each passing moment.
“You made… an educated fucking wish?”
“What’s your problem with me, huh? Got a stick up your ass?” You reach for the car door handle, but he snaps up your wrist, holding it high. “You better let go of me right now, old man—”
“Or what, huh? Gonna run away again?” He threatens.
“You geriatric, alcoholic motherfucker. I’ve done nothin’ but try and be civil with you and you treat me like I’m the one who ruined your life! I don’t know what version of me you knew but you need to stop actin’ like I ain’t worthy of being here because of what you did!”
“Listen, I’ll tell you what my problem is with you—” he leans closer, eyes roving over you with a disgusted look on his face. “I mean, you are a ridiculous, emotional, immature crybaby. I have never met a sadder, more attention-seeking, foul-mouthed little bitch in my entire life and that says a lot because I’ve been alive for more than two hundred fuckin’ years.”
“And I’ll tell you, that bald chick was right about one thing: you will never amount to anything. You’ll never save the world. You couldn’t even save a relationship with me. I’d say you should’ve died alone but it’s one of God’s best jokes that in this universe you didn’t seem to fuckin’ die, except that ones on the rest of all of us!”
He breathes heavily when his rant finishes. You’re taken aback, jaw slack, eyes warm with the onset of tears born from shock.
“What, you got nothin’ to say, empath?”
You suck in a deep breath, blinking slowly as you flick the emotional switch off in your head.
“I’m going to hurt you now.”
He snorts. “Oh, are you?”
In a swift manoeuvre, you raise your slap him around the face. You knew better than to punch a metal skull, but you still wanted him to sting. His eyes slit, nostrils flaring in challenge.
“That all you got?”
“Not even close,” you snap back, knuckles whitening from the way you curl your fingers into your palm. “You want to play this game, Logan? Fine— but I’m not gonna sit here and keep on provin’ myself to you. I’ve had enough of your Christ-born-again superiority complex. Did you forget that you’re the worst Wolverine?”
“Oh, yeah? Well, at least I’m honest about who I am. Look at you— you’re a fuckin’ joke, pretending to be some hero in a suit made for a dead team,” he barks back, voice rising with each word. “I don’t need your bullshit “wishes”— you should know, I’ve buried people for less.”
“Yeah, because you’re so perfect, ain’t that right?” You yell, voice cracking from the power of your anger. “The almighty Wolverine— the unkillable bastard who can’t seem to hold onto anythin’ good in his life! You’ve had centuries to get your shit together, and look at you—” You look him up and down with disgust. “—still just a bitter, lonely, broken man, takin’ it out on everyone else and a goddamn bottle.”
His eyes narrow, muscles in his jaw twitching as he appears to fight and keep his temper in check, but there’s an obvious crack forming, the dam of his unbridled rage near overflowing.
“You think you know me, huh?” He murmurs, voice a deadly whisper, the calm before the storm. “You don’t know a goddamn thing about what I’ve been through. You’re nothing but a lost woman playing make-believe and hiding in the shadow of a fuckin’ merc. You’re pathetic.”
Something inside of you breaks. “I’m pathetic? Look at yourself! You’re so goddamn desperate to feel anythin’ that you’ll lash out at everyone around you for some semblance of warmth. There’s a fine line between hate and love, after all! You think you’re so strong because you can heal, because you’ve lived forever? Yeah, right— you’re the weakest, most cowardly man I’ve met in a loong time.”
The blades between his knuckles shoot out with a shink! For a moment, you think that he’s going to attack you. Hell— you even hope that he will, just to diminish some of the unbearable, stifling tension. Instead, the blades retract with a deep breath, and he grabs you forcefully by the collar of your suit, yanking you so close that you can feel the heat of his breath on your face.
His voice is low and rough, each word dripping with venom. “Go on, keep psychoanalysing me. You wanna talk about cowardice? How about leaving people who need you, just because it’s easier to run? Better yet, how about the fact that you abandoned the X-men to hide away in the mountains, huh?”
Your eyes widen with recognition.
“Yeah… Wade’s got a big mouth. Told me everythin’. You’re no hero. Hell, you’re just a selfish, reckless hillbilly who failed at pretending to be human.”
Your heart palpitates in your chest, each word coiling and slicing like blades in your intestines, but you refuse to let him see how much it hurts. Instead, your lips curl into a cold, bitter smile, one that doesn’t quite reach your eyes.
“And you’re just a sad, angry old man who can’t handle the fact that he’s lost everythin’. Go ahead: keep pushing people away! Keep hidin’ behind that anger o’ yours! It’s got you this far, ain’t it?! I’ve treated kids with trauma worth double yours and they were nothin’ but kind and selfless. I won’t let you project your failures onto me. I’m done with this.”
“Yeah, why don’t you walk away!”
The argument reaches a fever pitch, tension sizzling in the air between you. You’re so close, glaring at each other with so much anger, so much resonating heat, that it feels like something’s going to break. And then, suddenly, it does.
Before either of you can think, you close the gap between you, lips crashing against his. It’s not gentle, it’s not soft— the kiss is rough, violent, a clash of lips and fury. His grip on your collar tightens, and for a moment, you’re both frozen, caught in the shock of what’s happening.
But then something more fiery in nature than anger ignites, and he kisses you back just as fiercely, and maybe a little more desperate— like he’s trying to pour out all of his pain and resentment, into this one moment. Your tongues slide against each other and his teeth catch against yours as he groans into your mouth. Your hands thread through his hair, yanking him closer as if trying to hold onto something real and tangible in the chaos of the kiss, reeling from the sudden spinning in your head. It’s angry, raw, filled with all the things you’re not capable of verbalising: grief, love, yearning, reconciliation.
The result of a painful reunion.
The world falls away and all that’s left is the taste of him, the feel of his lips against yours, rough and demanding. You hate him right now— hate him so much that you can’t help but want him. The sheer intensity of it all overwhelms you and makes your fingers shake against the nape of his neck, but you can’t pull away— not now, not when you’ve tasted the wine. You’re too far gone, caught up in the storm of his intoxication, fantasising about ripping that yellow and blue suit off of him and riding him until there’s nothing left for him to regenerate.
And then, just as suddenly as it started, the bubble of the moment bursts with the sound of slow clapping coming from outside the car. You jerk back from Logan, breath coming in ragged gasps. Logan is equally as stunned, still tight-gripping your collar as if he doesn’t know what else to do with his hands.
You both see Wade sitting up, hands together, eyes wide as saucers as he takes in the scene.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Did I just wake up in a telenovela?” His voice is laced with amusement. “I mean, I know you two clearly had some unresolved sexual tension— but this? Oh, this is gold. Please don’t stop on my account, just let me get the camcorder first!”
You’re too stun-locked to respond, lips parting and closing as your brain scrambles to formulate a response as you’re still reeling from what just happened. Logan (for once) seems equally as lost for words, his typical scowl replaced with a look of confusion.
“Shut up, Mouth,” Logan barks, but there’s no real heat behind it. There can’t be, really, not when you’ve both been caught red-handed. He releases your collar at once.
Wade, however, is having none of it. “Oh, no, no, no! You don’t just get to brush this off like it’s nothing! That was a full-on makeout session! I only interrupted because I thought you were about to rip each other’s clothes off.” He sighs wistfully and crosses his legs. “Here I was thinking that you two hated each other— but I guess all that anger was just foreplay, huh?”
Your face burns with a mixture of shame and something else you’re not quite ready to admit. “Wade— cut it out.”
He grins, not deterred in the least. “Oh, but I’m loving this. All that pent-up aggression finally coming to fruition. It’s beautiful, truly.”
Logan shoots him a look that could melt iron, but Wade just simply shrugs, unfazed. “Hey, I’m just saying what everyone’s thinking. Everyone being me.”
“Wade,” you warn through gritted teeth.
“Well, unless you want me to watch (which I am not opposed to, by the way) maybe next time the two of you should get a room,” he tilts his head. “Or, you know, a couples therapist.”
He then turns to address Logan directly.
“And I must’ve missed the AO3 tags because I did not peg you for the enemies-to-lovers type, Mister. Who knew all it took was a bit of hate-kissing to get the sparks flying? Don’t look so ashamed! I’m just jealous I didn’t get to you first.”
He stumbles towards the car and collapses into the back seat. “Next time you wanna bump uglies, just ask for some privacy! You can save me the broken neck!” He gets himself comfortable, man-spreading and laying his hands on both of your shoulders as you stare dead-forwards, unable to look at each other.
“Gosh, you’re both so tense.” He begins massaging. “Look— props to you both for not letting all that angst go to waste. This is a safe space, and there’s no shame in a little hormone-induced—”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Logan interrupts, revving the car back to life and shoving his prodding hands away. “Just be quiet back there.”
“Fine, fine. I’ll keep the commentary to myself. But just so you know— got that bad boy playing on repeat, right here.” He says, tapping the side of his head.
You bury your face in your hands. This was going to be a long car ride.
As the car starts moving again, you muster the bravery to risk a glance at Logan. His expression is hard to read but his energy thrums with uncertainty. The boiling hatred seems to have dialled down to a gentle simmer, mostly redirected towards himself rather than you. There’s something else— something that wasn’t there before. You rip your eyes away quickly, mind racing.
For somebody so in tune with emotions and the literal ability to manipulate them if you so desired, you were horrendous at navigating your own. You don’t know what this kiss meant, or if it even meant anything at all.
If there’s anyone you didn’t expect to come across in the void, it’s X-23— Laura. She’s taller, now, with hair down her back, but she’s still got that stern, mean look on her face that intimidated you the first time you met her.
The weak front door squeaks when you open it a crack. A girl, maybe in her small teen years, blinks up at you.
“Can I help you?” You ask, wiping your flour-dusty hands down on the front of your cooking apron.
“Are you—” she says your name.
You attempt to swing the door shut, but she jams it with her boot. You flick your eyes up, glance around for any signs of threats, and then lower your gaze to her. You wrap your cardigan around your mid-section.
“I don’t go by that name anymore. Who the Hell are you, kid, and what do you want?”
“I’m here about Logan,” she says, matter-of-factly.
Logan. A name followed by your own, both of which you hadn’t heard in years.
“He’s not here, kid. He died years ago.”
“I know,” she answers, unwavering. “I was there when it happened. Your name was the last thing he said.”
You’d let her in for a glass of sugary sweet tea that day, but once stories were exchanged you told her not to come back. She respected your wishes— she said she simply wanted to put a name to the face, to get closure, but you’d felt her desperation. Perhaps she was seeking out respite, or family, but you were in no position to be sharing your space with someone who could put another target on your back.
After introductions were made with the others who had been ripped from their timelines (Elektra, Blade and oh my god a Gambit variant with muscles so huge he could pop your head between his biceps) you excused yourself to sit outside. The buzzing emotional energy made your collar feel a little tight around the neck, your head a little fuzzy with noise, so you decided to reignite the small campfire a few yards away from the safe-house and rest there, instead.
You hadn’t realised you were being followed.
“It’s not safe here.”
“It’s not safe anywhere, Logan.”
He looks defeated, raising and clasping his hands behind his head.
“I gotta leave, baby.”
“If you leave, I ain’t lettin’ you back,” you whisper. “You don’t heal the same anymore, Logan, and you promised me—”
“I know what I promised,” he rebuts, but not angrily. You can already see on his face that he’s made his choice. He’s not coming to you to discuss it. “But I owe it to him. To Charles. He gave me everything.”
“So then what did I give you?” You ask. “Not a home, not my love, not everything?” You slam the tea towel down and turn away from him as the tears form. He’s quiet, perhaps processing everything, but you’re too impatient.
“If you’re just gon’ get up and leave, do it now. I won’t beg you to stay, Jimmy.”
“I love you.”
You don’t say it back.
You wake up with a start, damp clinging to your forehead. You immediately sense another presence and glance over to see Logan watching you with a steady gaze. His expression is soft and almost reverent at first, but his facade hardens with a quick tick of his jaw.
“You talk in your sleep.” The bottle in his hand sloshes as he takes a drink. “Nightmare?”
You sigh frustratedly when you realise it’s him. Of course, it’s him — his energy reeks of whiskey and self-loathing. You prop yourself on your elbows, massaging the sore spots on your temples where sleep fog forms.
“I can’t even get some rest without you botherin’ me? You’re leakin’ self-hatred everywhere.”
“Quit hogging the fire then.”
“Fuck you,” you murmur, but it’s without bite.
A moment passes before he fills the silence again. “What are you even doing out here, alone? Trying to get yourself killed? Pretty stupid.”
“Do you know how hard it is to sleep when nobody shuts up?”
His brows knit. “They’re all dead asleep.”
His hand runs up and down your back.
“Can’t settle?” He asks after you sigh.
“No.” You turn so you’re lying on your back, shoulder touching his, staring up at the ceiling. “Everyone is feeling so loud. It’s like a frequency I can’t turn off.”
He hums. “They’re grieving, I s’pose.”
“Even you and you always said you hated the guy.” You shuffle to lie on your side, facing him. You place a hand on his bare chest. “I can feel it, you know.”
“I didn’t hate Scott. Just found him… obnoxiously irritating.”
“Tough guy.” You giggle and stroke his cheek. “You’re turnin’ soft, old man.”
He pulls you flush against him and presses a kiss to your hairline. You lay in verbal silence for a while, soaking up his presence (god, you were so in love), but you’re interrupted when he abruptly sits up and grabs the white vest he discarded somewhere near the bed.
You lean on your elbows. “Where you goin’?”
“Let’s go for a ride.”
“What?”
“You can’t sleep here. Let’s go somewhere quieter.”
“But Charles said—”
“Screw Charles. You comin’ or what?”
He hadn’t told you he loved you yet, but at that moment you felt it.
And so you do, clinging to his mid-section on his motorcycle, head stuffed into the helmet he affectionately forces you to wear. It’s a warm night in New York, soupy with heat, but the further you get away from the compound with him by your side the more you feel you can breathe.
“’Course, you don’t understand.”
You reach for the small pouch on your hip and retrieve a cigarette. You light it between your lips, taking a seat a few paces away from him, hands still shaking a little with the aftershocks of the night terror.
“Since when did you start smoking?”
You perk a brow. “I’ve always smoked.”
He seems to realise something and simply shakes his head before returning to the vice in his fist.
“Right.”
You stare at him for a long, passing moment, before pulling out your lighter again and offering it towards him. He perks a brow.
“I know you got a cigar in there somewhere,” you say. He pauses, sighs, and then retrieves a thick cigar from one of the pouches on his suit. You lean closer, flick the lighter, and cup your hand to protect it from the breeze, shamelessly glancing at the dancing glow that bathes his face amid the firelight. You feel the urge to kiss him again, and when his eyes flick up to yours, you think for the briefest second that he wants to kiss you, too.
Swallowing, you collapse your lighter and clear your throat. You sit quietly, smoking and drinking in a silence only negated by the distant sound of chittering bugs around you. Once you’re finished with your cigarette, you toss the butt into the fire.
“We’re infiltrating tomorrow morning.”
He laughs dryly. “Yeah, good luck with that.”
Your lips tighten into a thin line. “We won’t make it without you.”
“Sure you will. I’m not him, you know,” Wolverine grumbles, slugging another shot of alcohol.
You scrutinise him from across the log. You wonder if he feels as pathetic as he looks.
“No— you got that right,” you answer. You pry the liquor from his hands but the grip he releases from the neck of the bottle must have been a mercy on his part because you knew he was extraordinarily stronger than you. “He was much braver than you.”
His eyes flicker from the flames to you as you take a long swig.
“Although probably just as stupid.”
A pause. Crackling and popping firewood fills the silence.
“But, he was a hero. And so are you.”
A beat before he spits a dry laugh, “what gave you that idea?”
You give him a once over and offer a half-smile. “That suit, for starters.”
He looks down at himself like he’d forgotten he was wearing it and wipes away a stray speck of blood from the bright material that you’re sure you might be responsible for.
“What, you like it?” He grunts.
You can’t help but smile. “Yellow suits you.”
“This is all I had left to remember you— them by,” he says, tone turning more sombre as he reminisces.
You decide it’s not the time to make another jab, so, instead, you play back and forth with the bottle for a while until the alcohol stops stinging your throat.
Something small shatters inside of you when you watch him muster the strength to look into your eyes, and his look a little glassy.
“Did you love him?”
Woof, that needed a healthy drink of courage to answer. When you hold his gaze, there’s a hollowness to his expression— an unasked question. Was there truly a version of him worth loving?
“Yeah.” You wipe the back of your hand across your mouth to cover the crack in your voice. “Yeah, I did.”
He’d insisted he hadn’t wanted you around yet he’d kissed you and now followed you to where you’d been sleeping. That had to count for something, so you extend your arm and gesture the bottle towards him— an olive branch in the form of shitty Jack Daniels. Your fingers touch when he accepts it and the brief glimmer of eye contact you share sends shivery energy zipping between you.
“I loved him,” you repeat, as if convincing yourself. A repeated balm to soothe the pain of letting him leave.
“He’s an idiot for leaving you.”
You bite back a sob-laugh, imagination caught somewhere between wondering who you’d rather beat up more: him, or yourself.
“Maybe I’m an idiot for not followin’ him.” You sniff deeply to push back the incoming sob-induced mess. “Not that he woulda let me.”
He hums resignedly.
Clearing your throat, you tuck your hands between your thighs. Swiftly moving on. “What was I— she like?”
He takes a long drink and sighs thickly when he comes up for air. He looks down at his hands when he talks as if choosing his words thoughtfully and carefully.
“Strong, smart. Stubborn. Far too fuckin’ stubborn.”
You force a smile over the flinch of pain in your chest. “Guess we got that in common.”
You reach up and twist the dog tag around your neck, feeling for the ring you’d slipped around the chain. You were never married legally but were in all the ways that mattered. Your heart aches for the brief moment of domesticity you shared with him. You expect him to be finished, but he once laughs, a smile cracking on his face.
“She loved kids— had a soft spot for the weird ones.” He squints and rubs at the flesh between his knuckles where the blades typically protrude. “Put me in my place. Stood up for what was right.”
His words strike a chord in your heart, playing the familiar tune of yearning and guilt and grief. A swelling sensation rises from your stomach and you’re not sure if you’re going to scream, cry or throw up.
“Were you—?”
“In love with her? What, like you can’t tell?” He interrupts, face hardening. Another drink. “It doesn’t matter. We argued one night and I refused to follow her back to the school, ‘bout the same time the humans went mutant hunting.”
Logan takes a moment to catch himself.
“When I came back, shit-faced from the bar, I realised I’d gotten my version of you murdered, along with the rest of them. Laid up like a fucking log pile. That’s what loving me got you.”
The gruesome imagery sours the liquor in your stomach. You push the nausea down with a hard swallow.
“I’m sorry.”
“Wh—” He jolts back, face pinched. “I got you killed, and you’re fuckin’ sorry?”
“There’s a world where you didn’t make that choice. You know, I’m not proud of who I am, either,” you answer, softly. “After you left and I lost you… I got bitter, stopped pulling my punches.”
“You never liked hurting people.”
“I didn’t.” You take a deep breath, willing away the warmth that pools behind your eyes. You quickly regain composure with a short cough. “Whatever woman you’re comparing me to, I stopped being her a long time ago. Like you told me— I’m no hero.”
He grunts, looking like he regrets saying that now. Checkmate. You’re not what either of you expected or yearned for in one another, but maybe you’re exactly what you both need.
“You know, your accents thicker.”
He says it as if to draw a line of separation, but you take it as an invitation. Your head swims from the alcohol, and against what probably is your better judgement, you inch closer to him until your knees bump against each other.
“That’s what I get for hidin’ in the mountains. Got adopted by a scary old lady and her church friends. I reckon she rubbed off on me. You’d like her, I think,” you tell him fondly. There’s something wistful about it, imagining a life with him. You grieve a life you never had but somehow, in his company, the melancholy loosens its grip.
“Maybe we got lucky,” you add flatly.
He lifts the bottle with a dry laugh. “You have a very funny idea of what lucky means, bub.”
“Well, I wouldn’t be so sure. Y’see, they didn’t get lucky. They died, ‘n’ we lost each other,” you explain, glancing up at the stars as if either version of you would ever be in heaven, as if it was as loving enough as a mother’s womb to stretch wide enough to allow space for mutants.
God probably hated you just as much as they did down here.
You lower your head onto his shoulder. “But, we’re still here. Maybe there was always space in my universe for you.”
“You’re drunk,” he observes flatly, but he doesn’t move.
“A little.” You get more comfortable against his tense bicep and close your eyes. “Humour me, why don’t you?”
He sighs, but it’s gentle. “Just for a while.”
“Good, because you’re not very good at keeping your feelings quiet. I know you like this.”
“Keep that to yourself.”
You sigh, eyes remaining closed. “We ain’t gonna talk about it, are we?” You ask, in reference to the kiss.
“Nope.”
A high-pitched whine resonates in your ears, vision blurring as if lying underneath a rippling river current. Paradox has just explained the stakes to you — to stop Cassandra, somebody would have to lay down on the wire and make the sacrifice play. This wasn’t a matter of regeneration anymore— it was being ripped apart from the seams, atomised.
It just so happens that your cat, Kevin, has been loving his little journey around the TVA. Cheater.
“You won’t survive it,” is what you say in response to Logan offering himself up for the job. What you really meant was: I don’t think I can survive losing you again.
“I know,” Logan answers. His eyes drip to where you palm at the slow-healing wound on your side, courtesy of the Lady Deadpool variant. You’re winded, running on fumes, and know you’re in no position to start throwing yourself out there as a suicide volunteer. You’d never make the journey, let alone succeed in your venture.
“That’s why it’s gotta be me,” Deadpool interrupts, peeling the mask from his face to address you both. “Neither of you asked for any of this. You were right. I lied. I lied right to both of your faces — just to get you to help me, and you did.”
“You didn’t lie,” Logan replies, throwing you a glance. “You made an educated wish.”
He reaches into his pocket and slaps the bloodied Polaroid of Deadpool’s friends against Wade’s chest. The gesture is a final, silent acknowledgement of why any of you are here in the first place, and everything that’s led to this moment.
“I got nothin’ back in my world,” he explains, the sharp arrow of his words striking a sting straight through your heart. “Let me do this. For you.”
You could see that this meant more to him, that he would only deem himself worthy and die a peaceful death if he could do it knowing he saved at least one variant of you. This is more than just a mission. This is his only chance to redeem himself, and you know you’re in no position to start trying to convince him that you’d have him either way. Fuck redemption.
You’re parallel from one another, standing just outside of touching distance. It was a cruel existence— reaching out and never quite being able to hold on. It’s inevitable, the pull you feel. You’re dictated by his gravity but cursed by the narrative.
Your chest rises and falls with shallow, laboured breaths as you attempt to process what’s happening, what he’s asking you to let him do. The pain in your side ebbs only from the comparative pain of watching another version of the man you love sacrifice himself for you.
His voice is a quiet whisper. “Give me this.”
But I love you. The words are there, hiding behind your clenched teeth, gnawing at the bars like a feral animal caged in the reminder that this isn’t — shouldn’t be — the man that you love.
Something shifts and as you’re running on the delirium of your battery running low, healing resources drained, you decide that you don’t actually care to make the distinction any more.
You’re in no condition to fight; you barely had the energy to argue with him, let alone stop him. But you can’t just let him go.
One wobbly step forward. You poke his chest, mustering whatever energy remains to express your feelings in the only true way you know how. “I…” you stammer, but you suddenly can’t find the words.
His hand reaches up and he splays yours flat against his chest. Faintly, buried deep behind the armoured layer of his suit, you feel the distinct thunk, thunk of his heart. He exhales deeply when your empathetic energy transmission reaches the other side. Your eyes connect, and even through the sharp whites of his mask, you can feel the psionic pulse resonating between you two— strong enough that the wound on your side begins to sew itself together.
“I know,” he whispers.
And you believe that he does.
He nods shortly, releases your hand, and turns on his heel. You collapse against the control centre, eyes needling through the camera footage, desperate to watch the final moments and know that his sacrifice was worth it.
It’s about the same time that Deadpool yanks his mask back on and barrels down the hallway after him.
“Wade!”
You glance back at the party as you creep towards the apartment door to leave. Your consciousness has only recently slipped back into place, having hovered somewhere above your body for the entire time you witnessed your friends atomically ripped apart, only for them to return mere moments later.
You think it might’ve been witnessing Wolverine sweaty and shirtless that was finally the last straw for you. You’re not sure you’ve recovered since.
You thought you were being sneaky about your departure, but a flat hand reaches from out of view, splays and then holds the door closed.
“You sure I can’t convince you to stay?” Logan asks, voice slow and tentative.
“I ain’t runnin’ this time, I promise,” you answer. He rests his arm on the beam above him, making him appear even taller and maybe even more imposing. Your pulse quickens as you look up at him, trying to find the right words, ones that you hope won’t give you away. You nearly squeak. “I um— just—”
He arches a brow, a hint of a micro-smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. He shifts, getting closer by just a fraction. “Yeah?”
Trying to keep your distance is proving to be immensely hard when he’s gotten himself this deliciously close. His energy tastes of confidence, a stark contrast to the self-loathing only a mere few days prior. It’s magnetic. If you make eye contact now, you’re not sure you’ll be able to control yourself.
The atmosphere crackles with tension, like the static energy right before lightning strikes. His gaze is intense when you look at him, and with the way his eyes glance purposefully down at your parted lips—
Jesus. Pull yourself together.
You gently pull away from him and feel the spell of the moment dissolve. “I just… need time.”
Recognition flashes on his face, as well as a tick of disappointment, but he seems to understand.
A beat, then he taps the door before stepping aside. “Alright. Don’t be a stranger.”
Wade bursts around the corner, arms wide and voice booming. Vanessa hangs off of his arm, white teeth gleaming with mischievous joy.
“Whoa, hey there, lovebirds! What’s going on here— a secret rendezvous? Looking for somewhere to sneak off? Should I cue the romantic music or just give you two some privacy?”
You jump in surprise at his sudden entrance, flinching away from Logan as if you’d been caught doing something you shouldn’t. Logan’s expression shifts from whatever tender moment was brewing, spell broken, to a mix of exasperation and resignation, jaw tightening.
“Wade,” he grumbles, voice sharp, but you can acknowledge there’s a level of begrudging affection beneath the steely surface. “Timing, as usual, is impeccable.”
“Um, actually, I was just leavin’,” you answer, tugging on your bag.
“WHAT!” Wade exclaims, face dropping. “We haven’t even gotten to our favourite part yet!”
You tick a brow. “Our favourite part?”
“The cocaine part,” he says, matter-of-factually.
“Wade, that was one time,” you pinch the bridge of your nose. “I’m sorry. Thank you for inviting me. I just can’t miss my flight.”
Dogpool jumps at your ankles, whimpering and chewing on the hem of your jeans. You give her a gentle scratch on her head, deftly avoiding the lick of her impressive tongue. Wade scoops her up, holding her against his shoulder and kissing her affectionately on her wet nose.
“You, ah, need a ride?” Logan offers.
Your heart stutters at his chivalrous attempt. “Oh, um. That’s okay— I called a cab. So.”
That was a lie. You hadn’t— not yet. You just weren’t sure if you were going to make the right decisions if you were alone in his company for an hour. Probably wouldn’t make it to the airport without fighting or crying or making stupid choices.
He rubs his jaw. “Right.”
“I’ll… see you around?”
“I better!” Wade yells, using two fingers to gesture that he’s keeping his eye on you as Vanessa yanks him around the corner gleefully.
A magnetic tether — or red string, whatever you want to call it — seems to strain when you walk away from Logan. You feel the pull in your chest, a fluttering of electricity, but you swallow the urges and ignore the way they scratch like glass on the way down.
You call an Uber, squeezing your bag tightly for a source of comfort as you crowd yourself into the back seat. You spare one last glance at the apartment and think for a brief moment you see a silhouette of someone watching you from the balcony, but they slip away into the light before you can discern it.
You know, though. Of course, you know.
You expected relief when you arrived home, but, instead, the aching, gnawing black hole in your chest seems to grow exponentially. You go through the motions— feed your cat, tend to the garden, eat the food with no appetite, go to Church.
The fixture of Jesus pinned to the cross gives you pause for the first time. You wonder if he was a mutant.
You weren’t sure how much of this “time” thing you were going to need to heal or make a decision on where you and Logan stood after everything, but only after your second night, sleepless and alone, do you start to doubt that this will be an easy process. You communicate like you know what you’re doing, but you haven’t stopped shaking since he kissed you, like a newborn foal traversing ice.
You want to do things right. You’re not trying to replace any missing pieces or live up to any expectations he might have of you. The girl he knew seemed to be a softer, sweeter (less traumatised) version of you, and you worry that you’d be constantly comparing him to a ghost of himself.
The rain lulls you as it patters on the window by your bed, but sleep doesn’t take you.
You hear thunder, you think, and wonder if the chickens are frightened in their coops. However, the distant grumble continues to grow, reverberating through the floorboards of your rickety cabin. As it creeps closer you discern that it’s not a brewing storm— but the growling engine of a motorcycle.
Awash with a deep sense of knowing, you throw yourself out of bed and knot a silk robe around your middle. The sound of the engine dissipates, replaced only by the hammering rain and the rushing pulse in your ears when you tear your door open.
You see him— all leather jacket slick with rainwater and tight jeans, brows pinched against the onslaught of the weather as he dismounts his bike.
Logan.
When your eyes meet, there’s a palpable shift in the air, and the storm, angry as a howling spirit, mirrors the turbulent emotions within you. You don’t speak, you don’t think, you just act.
Barefoot, dressed in your slip of a robe, you race down the short path and meet him halfway.
“Logan? Logan?” You call out. “What are you doin’ here?!”
“Had to see you,” he calls out between strides, voice nonchalant as if what he’s said was obvious.
You’re closing the distance. “That’s a day’s ride, and the weather—”
Instead of letting you finish, he grasps your face, kissing you suddenly and with a reverence so sincere that your knees feel gelatinous and weak. His thumbs brush away the raindrops— tears? —that drip over your crystallised lashes. His touch is both grounding and electrifying; the warmth of him pressed against you is a stark contrast to the chilling downpour.
Your fingers curl against the front of his jacket, clinging with equal fervour as if it’s the only thing keeping you anchored from floating someplace else. The strength of his body crowds over you, arm sliding down to capture you by your waist as you lean into him, syrupy-decadent and entirely reliant on him to keep you upright.
The kiss deepens, his tongue sliding over yours tasting both bittersweet and intoxicating in equal measures, like cigar smoke and peppermint gum. There’s a distinct sharpness of liqour and you wonder if he had a shot (or bottle) of courage before coming here. You breathe deeply against his skin, smelling rainwater, musk and gunpowder; your senses are completely overwhelmed by him and you’re not sure that anything could pull you away.
The red string knots.
When you both eventually take pause, gasping for air as the rain continues to pelt, his eyes lock with yours. He radiates relief, desire, and a raw vulnerability that makes your heart ache.
“You’re freezin’,” he murmurs, peppering kisses against your lips, your cold nose, and pulling one of your hands to his face to peck along your palm. You feel dizzy in his embrace, drunk on his lips.
“You should come inside,” you whisper, “before the neighbours start askin’ questions.”
He quietly nods, kissing your fingers before following you inside and ducking away from the rain.
Once inside, he shakes the rain from his hair with a flick, eyes immediately roaming around the innards of your respectable (tiny) house, the size of him immediately proportionally shrinking the interior. He absorbs your surroundings, chivalrously pretending like he can’t see every curve of you in that wet material.
You lead him towards the heath, lighting a small fire to help dry you both off. You leave, pottering around to gather some towels for your hair, and arrive back to see he’s peeled off the top layer of his clothes, leaving him half-exposed, his back an impressive marvel of rippling muscle. He glances at you over his shoulder.
You’re lost for words, but can’t just stand there ogling him. “Um, I don’t think I have any spare clothes that’ll… fit…”
When he turns to face you, his rain-slick torso shines in the firelight, skin glistening on the taught muscles of his biceps as he accepts a towel from you. Your words lag, entirely distracted by the realisation of one thing when you glance down at his v-line and dark, coiling hair that creeps down into his jeans: you’re absolutely going to have sex with this man.
You might’ve decided that when you watched the way his jeans clung to him when he dismounted his motorcycle, but that’s beside the point.
“That’s alright,” he answers, towel slung over his shoulder, eyes roving shamelessly over the damp, silky robe that clings to your silhouette effortlessly. “Don’t need ‘em.”
Your mouth dries when he steps closer to you, head angled, lips centimetres apart.
“Logan…” you breathe, tone edging toward a warning.
He presses against you, tilting you back. “Tell me you don’t want this, and I’ll stop. I’ll get back on that bike and I’ll leave.”
You creep further away, trying to catch your breath. “I—”
The words don’t manifest, simply because you don’t have it in you to lie— to deny yourself of this.
He cages you in against the wall, shrinking you underneath his frame, eyes narrowed and dark as they search for yours through lowered lashes. “Tell me you don’t feel somethin’, and I’ll walk away. You won’t see me again.”
His bare-chested proximity was overwhelming you. You’re acutely aware of every inch of his skin that touches yours, pebbled nipples hard against his warm flesh, stubbled jaw nuzzling against your neck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. You feel like a teenager again, anxious and hormonal, a ball of puppy fat and unrequited crushes. The space between your thighs positively aches with heat, throbbing like a second heartbeat.
“I can’t… I can’t tell you that I feel something.”
He leans back, lips quirked with a flash of disappointment.
You blink up at him. “Let me show you instead.”
He ticks an eyebrow.
You use your empathetic influence to decrease his heartbeat, relaxing him down to the bone. He sighs, nosing against your shoulder, arms flexing as he holds himself up against you.
“Just with a little influence…” you stroke your way up from the slow pulse in his neck to his jaw, capturing him swiftly. You use your mutation to increase his heart rate this time, hiking it up to an excitable level. His cheeks begin to flush, pupils dilated, lips parted with the anticipation of your kiss. His eyes darken with something intrinsically primal and hungry.
“Does it excite you?” You ask, innocently.
He shakes his head all dog-like as if to regain control, canine showing as his lips curl into a wolfish grin.
“You’re not the only one with… tricks. I can do that, too— in other ways,” he says, tone low and suggestive. He lifts a hand, tracing a knuckle over your exposed collarbone, shifting the soft material of your robe just an inch. Your breath hitches.
“You know I can hear your heartbeat, right?”
You blush. You hadn’t known that.
You challenge his eye contact, feigning self-control and authority. The stare-down has your pulse spiking, arousal ricocheting down your spine and sitting low and syrupy in your belly.
“Your heart’s beating pretty fast, too.”
Oh, Hell. He’s got you melted like butter in a pan.
You rest your head against the wall, breath quickening. “If we do this, I don’t think I’ll be able to stop.”
“Good,” he growls. “I don’t like to stop.”
The teasing back-and-forth game of teetering towards nearly touching finally gets the better of you. You’re weak, as malleable as soft dough, so you invite him against your mouth with a sigh-wine and a tug on the nape of his neck.
He positively devours you, a hand palming at your breast as you kiss desperately and feverishly. The shoulder of your robe slips and you’re half-exposed, the slip barely holding itself together by the loose knot on your waist. He pulls you impossibly closer, the skin of his chest flush against yours as he reaches and digs fingers into the globe of your ass, hips twitching together.
You fumble between your bodies, yanking on his belt buckle and zipper impatiently. He pulls backwards, a wet string of spit snapping between your lips as you separate, helping you with steadier fingers to remove his jeans. With equal passion, he swiftly tugs on the waist-tie of your robe and discards it somewhere on the floor.
When you’re both bare, nude silhouettes sharp and soft in the firelight, he stumbles you over to the plush rug in the centre of the room. He nods to the couch.
“Legs up.”
You obey without hesitation, taking your seat and spreading decadently for him. He kneels below you of you, hips between your ankles, and gazes at you like a hungry, stalking animal. You feel impossibly sexy and dangerous.
He peppers kisses along the bone of your ankle first, foot hiked up onto his shoulder, only breaking eye contact to flutter his eyes closed. He moves along the inner length of your leg, pausing keenly against the sensitive parts— the thin stretch behind your knee, the soft plush of your thigh. He lowers himself, scruff tickling between your legs, and then licks a molten stroke between your folds, parting you with his tongue and burying his face deeper.
You clench around his skull, mindfulness of your heightened mutant abilities long forgotten. You can’t crush metal between your thighs. Or can you?
He groans into you, varying suckling and kissing you on your clit with long strokes on the blade of his tongue to your hole, lapping up the nectar of your arousal, fingers digging bruisingly into your hips. The sting of his grip and the relentless lave of his tongue entice moans from you, fingers raking into his hair for some semblance of reality grounding in your pleasure-lapsed consciousness.
Jesus. With as filthy as his mouth was, you should’ve known he would be this good at eating pussy.
You come quick, orgasm pulsing on his lips. The burn of overstimulation seizes your muscles, writhing against his onslaught, but he shoves your hips down.
“Not done with you yet,” he murmurs possessively, leaning back to wipe his chin. “On all fours.”
You bite your lower lip, suppressing the humiliation of the intimacy (vulgarity) of it. You turn, belly still clenching with the aftershocks, arching with the anticipation, whining moments later when his mouth reconnects with you. His hands palm at your ass, spreading you wider, tongue slipping dangerously close to the tight ring of muscle.
He slides a finger knuckle-deep, miming fucking you in a rhythmic pulse. His other hand massages you, thumb sliding down until you jerk sensitively against his nudging intrusion.
You feel impossibly full and tingly, clenching around the burn of his thumb and the velvet of his finger, second orgasm surging and bubbling over with your face pressed against the couch cushion, lips agape. You’re slick, drip-dropping onto his cupping palm, every nerve in your body burning raw as his wrist works you through the pulses.
You turn over, relishing in the sight of his scruff glistening with the aftermath of your orgasm, his eyes dark with lust— a hellish man, seraphic on his knees for you. Your insides clench at the sight as he quite literally shatters and redefines what worship means to you.
“Tired already?” He hums, massaging your hips.
You perk a challenging brow. “That was just the warm-up, old man.”
“Alright,” he seethes, sucking on his lower lip as he lifts himself up to your level. “Show me what you got then, baby.”
When you kiss, his mouth slides against yours, drenched with the taste of yourself. His cock steels against your belly when you pull him close, tip pearl-smooth with precum when you reach down and grasp him with a hollowed fist. The feel of him, heavy and warm in your grip, fans to life the flames of your briefly quenched arousal, and you hungrily pull him down onto the couch beside you.
Moisture pools on your tongue as you rub him. You spit on your hand before stroking him from the base to tip, lathering him silky with your drool. You tuck your hair behind your ears, narrowing your cheeks as you slide your mouth up and down his length, fisting the inches that remain.
“Christ.” He twitches in your mouth as you gently massage the warm weight of his sac, lewd sounds emanating from where your lips and tongue meet him. “Just like that. Good fuckin’ girl,” he snarls, gripping your hair in a fist at the crown of your head. Your engine purrs with his encouragement, revving with newfound enthusiasm.
You always gave as good as you got, after all, and you’re certainly not one to back away from a challenge.
His head lolls onto the back of the couch, thighs tense beneath you, cock hot and hard on your tongue. He growls when he comes, pulsing strongly in your mouth as you lap up the produce of his orgasm, salty and molten down your throat.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck—”
“Put those regenerative powers to good use, why don’t you?” You ask, working him through the over-sensitivity with your wrist. His eyes don’t once leave yours, even as they glaze over and flinch from the pleasure burn. There’s a sharp look of challenging determination on his face— a grit of his teeth, the furrow in his brow. He remains hard in your hands and you perk an impressed brow. Not bad for an old man.
There’s a sweet moment of vulnerability when you crawl over him, a brief sobering in the cloud of lust, a clarity of two not-quite strangers and their shared grief and yearning.
You’re not sure where this moment will take you, but the love of somebody scraping together the shards of a shattered heart for a brief time, even as it cuts their hands, holds you with a semblance of human connection so sincere that you’ll carry it with you for a lifetime.
His thighs spread to accommodate you. You hold your fingers against the thick chords in his neck for support as you fumble between your bodies, slotting him against the catch in your cunt before lowering yourself entirely.
You hiss against the intrusion and he steadies you with a hand on your hip.
“Easy. Don’t hurt yourself.”
You laugh-moan, laying your palms against the coils of hair on his sweat-shimmering chest.
“I can take it.”
The fire, intended to help dry you off, creates a heated environment that beads sweat on his temple. The only brain cells that remain coherent bounce around on lust in your skull — so you lean forward, lick the salty droplet clean, and sigh-whine as you begin rocking against him.
You fall into sync quickly, a desperate rhythm of desperate bodies. The delicious ache of him inside you is a masochistic thrill, similar to the irresistible press on a day-old bruise. The squelching shlick between your bodies is an animalistic reminder of your flesh and blood as you chase the pleasure, bouncing with vigour.
“Christ— I can feel you…” his jaw clenches with resolve, fingers digging into the meat of your ass. “…dripping all over me. You wanted this bad, huh?”
“Wanted to ride you in that fuckin’ Honda,” you straighten your posture, leaning away from him to hold your breasts, panting words between bated breaths. “Thought it might shut you up.”
His hand snaps up and grabs you roughly by the chin. “Mm… mouthy, aren’t ya?”
You grin. “You got no idea, lumberjack.”
He pulls your face against him, meeting your mouth halfway in a sloppier, fever-driven kiss that shoots arousal to your core like a shot of his favourite whiskey. Something feral stirs within you: a primal, cellular-deep need to connect with him further. Your empathetic power roils off of you like steam on a hot spring, surging into and merging with him until there’s nothing but one feeling, a black hole of unquenchable desire.
You suddenly feel as though you are him: navel-deep, a throbbing muscle with an aching desire to dive further into the serpent-clutch of your cunt, gliding through tingly, honey-silk velvet, blades hanging onto a tether of self-control as they threaten to slide out of your knuckles in ecstasy.
Well. This was certainly new. Add “voodoo sex doll” to your list of mutations.
You gasp, ripping away from the kiss, your powers recoiling back into you at whip-lash speed, dizzying in its ferocity. His eyes meet yours with darkened curiosity.
“Did you—”
“I felt that,” he grunts, tongue darting out to roll over his lips. “It always like that for you? Feelin’ so fuckin’ full?”
You half-laugh blissfully. “Only the good times.”
“I’ll show you a good time, alright.”
He isn’t gentle when he manhandles you, forcing you into an arch as he repositions and aligns himself behind your thighs, one foot planted firmly on the floor, the other bent to accommodate the new angle. He reinserts himself inside of you with ease, hands palming your hips and ass.
You feel him nudging cervix-deep and you reach out, clawing at the couch to hold your jerking body steady against the relentless slap of his hips. There’s no need to tell him faster or harder when you feel the metal plate of his adamantium hips pressing against your ass, pounding and vulgar with the sound of sweat-damp skin-on-skin.
It’s involuntary, the way you pant and cry out, intoxicated by the relentless drag and pull of his cock. He says something to you but you either don’t hear him or have enough conscious space in your sex-drunk fog to process words and respond. He slides a hand down your spine and pulls on your hair until you’re upright, breath hot when it fans against your neck.
“Where’s that mouth gone?”
You lick the drool from your lip, throwing him a glance over your shoulder. “Fuck you.”
The half-lidded up-and-down look he gives you as satisfaction grows slowly on his lips turns your bones to jelly. “There she is,” he growls back, offering a sharp slap of encouragement on your ass as he drops you back onto your front. You involuntarily grip around him, puffy clit throbbing with the almost-but-not-quite-there anticipatory build. “You gonna come for me? Yeah? I can fuckin’ feel it.”
You slide a hand underneath yourself, reaching for the swollen nub with two fingers. You’re overwhelmed with kinetic energy akin to a fizzy champagne bottle— two more shakes until you’re ready to pop.
You hear a Snikt! behind you, accompanied by a throat-caught groan, and then the distinct ripping shred of blades impaling your couch. You finally come, hard, when you feel him throbbing inside of you, followed by the decadent syrupy flood of his orgasm filling you up. He ruts into you one, two three more final times, milking himself dry, before collapsing over your body in a sweaty heap, sparing you the weight of his metal bones with a forearm propped next to you.
Shared fluids drip to the couch when he eventually pulls out of you, blades retreating into his clenched fists. The fluffy innards of the chair spill out beside you, and, while you were in no financial position to afford another, the sight entices a humoured smile from you.
“Sorry,” he says with a wince, helping you sit up when your unreliable legs shake beneath you.
“That’s alright. It’ll make for an interestin’ story,” you retort, fanning yourself with a hand. You both let out a shared laugh, mostly from the relieved delirium of it all. After a beat, you lean into him, massaging a hand across his belly. “So. We really doin’ this?”
His face softens. “If you’ll have me.”
You cup his face and kiss his cheek. “I’d take any version of you I could get.”
divider credits: @/vysleix and @/cafekitsune tag list: @bearwithegg, @uhlunaro, @sseleniaa, @jxssimae, @autumnsymphony
#logan howlett x reader#wolverine x reader#james logan howlett#wolverine#x reader#deadpool and wolverine#honda odyssey#logan x reader
6K notes
·
View notes
Text
To the folks saying that Xbox was laughed at when they announced the Xbox One was not going to let you run games without mandatory internet checks every so often and then bullied into NOT doing it...
They did do it back then. They're still doing it now. They just don't tell you up front anymore.
And the company (Sony) that made fun of them at that E3 also started doing it and are still doing it now. They ALSO don't tell you up front.
And Steam does it for a bunch of titles.
And Epic's game services does it too.
And so do all digital distribution platforms.
And so do any/all software that have become "subscription services" too.
This has been going on for 15+ years now, it's been a whole ass war on you NOT actually owning the digital version of the thing you "purchase" and that the company you buy it from has the ability to lock you out of it temporarily or permanently on a whim.
It ain't just a gaming issue, it's a whole Companies Vs The People issue on all fronts.
Like seriously a company, once again, tells you "Yeah that's what this is and what it always has been" and people are acting like this is NEW.
It ain't new, you've just been not informed by the companies doing it to you for the last 15+ years after one company got made fun of for it one time and they learned that telling you made you mad.
So when a different company tells you again and you get mad again - we're just gonna repeating the cycle in infinitum until a real solution is found.
1K notes
·
View notes
Text
making a beautiful new discovery while doing research for the website im making and rubbing my hands together mischievously like some sort of evil creature. perhaps the grinch
#.txt#ive ripped both of the special distribution save files for rhapsody AND found a way to convert them to work with NA region copies. >:) hehe#now i just need to get them to work with the steam port...... it should be possible. i think.#the steam port is essentially just an emulated instance of the game with a couple of extra doohickeys added on from what i can tell#augh. im so NORMAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
3 notes
·
View notes
Text

Armored Lady Monday
you may or may not know this about me, but i really like when character designs are really bulky on one side of the body, and very straightforward on the other side of the body
and i havent drawn a sci-fi looking armor in so long i figured id try cus i feel like lifting legs like that would need aid from sci-fi technomagic
you can check out full res and more on my patreon!
Also let me take you into a bit more intricate design i liked about this one in particular, when i was designing the legs i thought about making chicken legs like a lot of mecha, but with human joints that wouldnt quite work.
So i opted for a more propulsion and impact reduction base, her feet would reach just about the ankle (where the little triangle is on the lower leg of the armor) so shed have up and down movement of her feet, but all the bottom of the actual contraption is built of is purely for impact reduction. If look, the leg that is planted on the floor, the space between the blue feet guard and the "hooves" is lower than the one that she has raised.
And the other bit is the turbines on the ankle and back of the knee, i like to think that since those get really heated, whenever she has to use them for movement, the inner thigh bit closes fully (instead of having the gray metal bit inside showing) for them to move the turbines outward and connect them to the fuel source, aswell as initializing the cooling process, and this depects something along the lines of her just comming out of her running mode and the steam is the heat distribution of the engines.
And finally! the things on her wrists are for laser daggers of course
2K notes
·
View notes
Text
VALERIE
pt.2 of pull me in
summary : due to bruce distancing himself from reader and seeing other women - the rest of thr batfamily has to watch her willow away.

Damian carefully sets out delicate China plates onto the oak table - he always ensures that he places the golden forks and its corresponding smaller spoons next to them - just like how Name taught him . It all seems like a forgone , a distant memory , but when Damian had first moved into the manor - he met Name always cooking.
She was a woman who always preferred home cooked food over bought food - taught him that having the privilege to have food and to enjoy it was a luxury many cannot afford in this time - so the fact that this family can - they should cherish it.
He was, of course, weirded, out by it - of course, he grew up having maids cook for him - he never had to think of his next meal but because he respected Name wishes . His respect was even further upheld because Name was an amazing cook - everything she's ever made him practically melted in his tongue , the taste etched into the depths of his mind.
He remembers in his earlier days of living here - he always hovered over her in the kitchen , he found it peaceful and a way to escape to constant arguing and fighting he had with the rest of his other siblings. He always gravitated to her , he didn't understand why - he already had a mother, Talia , but for some reason, he still felt the need to be around her.
Maybe it was because Name was a quiet woman and a woman who never bothered to fix him or opted to berating him about something - instead, she opted to just live in his space , to just quietly carry about herself. That doesn't mean they haven't spoken , his very first day, he remembered her asking if he had any allergies or certain food preferences.
They had other conversations, too , like the time she caught him fiddling with the washing machine when he was trying to wash his Robin suit, and she explained the workings and mechanics of using both the washer and the dryer. Or the time she caught him sneaking out, and she literally told him to use the backdoor next time.
Safe to say , Name and him bonded quietly, but that's what he loved about her - she was patient and loving - a silent type of love not one that's too overbearing or one like Bruce's were it left you guessing.
Damian sets the jug of water at the center of the table - ensuring it was perfect and neat just like Name taught him . Jason and Tim soon enough comes barreling in with takeout bags and left them on the table half hazardly.
" Tch - Jason, just because your room is a pigsty doesn't mean our dining table has to be." Damian quarreled as he immediately straightened it . " Yeah, Jay mom has a system." Tim quirks up as he helps Damian straighten it.
Jason awkwardly rubs at his head , " Sorry - never got ma's tidy genes," he apologizes . Damian rolls his eyes, but let's out a smirk . The dining door opens again to reveal Dick and Name walking in , Dick immediately pulls out a chair for Name and helps her get situated in.
" We got Chinese takeout, ma," Dick explains as he gestures towards the bags on the table. A small smile graces name's face as she gives a small nod at the boys. They immediately lit up - glad that their mom was happy with today's dinner choice.
" Yeah, we got you your steamed broccoli and beef ma " Jason says as he carefully hands her a box . Name nods as she takes the box into her hands and rests it carefully on the plate . " Jay and I got fry rice and shrimp wontons - Dick got spicy noodles with chicken, and well, we all know Damian got his sucky tofu " Tim furthers as he distributed the boxes out.
Dick practically snatches his before sitting next to Name . He opens up his box, and the smell of the spice practically engulfs the entire room, causing everyone to cough. Jason, who has opted to sit across from Name, glares at him , " Dick how spicy did you order that damn thing -" he complains.
Tim, who was sitting next to Jason, stuffed his mouth with a wonton , " $50.00 he's gonna start crying again when he eats it -" he bets. Damian takes his seat in the opposite of Name and grumbles annoyed with his siblings antics , " Grayson I swear to God if you get an upset stomach because of this on patrol I am personally going to stab you " .
Name giggles quietly - no matter how shitty life went for her - nothing could beat watching her children be happy like this. " Ya'll are being dramatic. I just got normal level this time, alright - plus I have a better spice tolerance than you all," Dick defended as he slurped his noodles.
Everyone literally rolled their eyes at that. " Dick you got the spice tolerance of an old white man," Tim muses . " Tim - you are a white old man too you shouldn't be talking either " Jason interjects.
" This argument is pointless - you all are pathetic at cuisine - only mother and I have a superb palette," Damian adds in as he carefully eats his tofu. A collective groan echoes in the dining room. " Okay - Mom has a good palette, hands down, but definitely not you, Damian." Dick argues - pointing his fork at Damian dramatically.
" Okay, first off, I am the only one here who can somewhat replicate Mother's pelau -" Damian defends . Jason , pursuing his lips cuts him off , " You burnt the bloody rice last time. What do you mean replicate ?" Jason points out. " I said somewhat, Todd, maybe Harvard should take back your English degree," Damian snares.
" When you are making pelau , rice goes in last, and then you add in your water," Name interjects before the conversation goes south and explains - her voice soft . The batboys still - its rare their mother ever talks - ever since Bruce told her voice was annoying and grating - she very rarely spoke . Safe to say , they were overjoyed . " Thank you, ma - tell them how a real cook does it !!" Jason exclaims .
" Ma, I miss your cooking - we literally have to survive off of Alfred and Dad's poor attempts," Tim practically begs. " I'm sorry, babies, you know Mama can not cook anymore like she used to, but I'm sure Alfred and your father can cook." Name apologizes , grimacing at the ' your father ' part .
The batboys too grimance at the mention of Bruce - it's no secret that they dislike him - no matter how much Name pleads and tells them to respect him and remind them that he was their father - they couldn't bring it upon themselves to respect that man . In utter rebellion, they all start calling him Bruce - even on patrol since none of them could give a shit .
Heck, that's how Selina found out . It was like any other patrol except that night , Tim and Bruce were really deep into another argument. " Bruce - I am not going to another stupid gala - especially because Ma isn't going," he argued . " Your mother doesn't control you, Tim," Bruce argued back as he continued looking over the roof - already done with the conversation.
" Yeah, well, maybe the fact that you're married to the woman should control you from being tongue deep down in some other woman, huh ?" Tim yells back before he turns away from Bruce . Selina was standing right behind him , jaw-dropped and eyes blown open in shock . Tim shoves past her before disappearing off in the night - he couldn't stand being in either of their presence .
Before anyone could say anything , the dining room's door pushes open to reveal a scowling Bruce . His neck is covered in lipstick marks and hickies , and his shirt is wrinkled. Name practically froze in her spot , arms shaking as she took him in . She could feel all of her insecurities bubble with her - practically drowning her in scalding water .
Jason scoffs - already pissed at absolute audacity while Tim just stares - his face void of any emotion. Dick's eyes got dull, really quick when his eyes drifted between Name and Bruce and well Damian - his face was red - down to the tips of his ears was red , he was practically seething in his seat - ready to pounce .
" I thought I said to make dinner Name ?" Bruce questions as he takes a seat to the top of the table. The air is tense and cold, and no one at the table makes a move to acknowledge the sheer stupidity of his demand. " And we thought being married means being loyal to your partner," Jason sassed - his glare practically cuts into Bruce's own.
" Have some decorum at the table, Jason," Bruce corrected as he stares at Name pointedly , " Again Name , why is there no dinner prepared . Are you so lazy that you have to waste my money on cheap takeout ?" He asks again. Name stayed there frozen - her lungs began to collapse on her as panic ensnares her.
" If you want dinner prepared, then prepare it yourself." Dick seethes out . Silence consumes the table once again - the air practically thickens when the dining door opens again to reveal none other than Selina , black dress equally wrinkled and her lipstick smudged.
Name stared at her and then at Bruce before standing up , her chair scraped against the floorboards, leaving a mark in its wake. " Go rot in hell " Name says , voice dripped in calm rage , eyes boring into Bruce challenging him to say something .
Name then looked to Selina , face void of feeling as she did a once over , " Last season of Channel's couture? Pathetic , at least look good if you are going to be a homewrecker " She says casually before strutting past her as if Selina was a measly fly.
The room goes silent fast, and soon enough, everyone began dismissing themselves, leaving Bruce and Selina alone to tend to each other's bruised ego's.

thank you for reading !!
please like + share + comment
note : this is a work of fiction . This work does not represent Canon versions of Selina Kyle , Talia AL Ghul, and Bruce Wayne , please do not unnecessarily hate these characters .
#dc universe#batfam#dcu#dc x reader#jason todd#damian wayne#platonic batfam#bruce wayne#batfam x y/n#batfam x neglected reader#timdrake#dickgrayson#angst#angst no happy ending#angst no comfort#cheating spouse#batman x reader#batfamily x reader#batfam x you#batfam ff#neglectwife#Spotify
1K notes
·
View notes
Note
Noona i NEED to yap about this thought I had about the angst Dukedom au so my brain worms will let me sleep. I Imagine a people's princess duchess who spends time with others to fill in for the lack of emotional connection between her and John and people just do not understand why she is out of the house so much. Tea with the ladies? She's there. Charity event for struggling orphans? Duchess is there to help! Church in the middle of the afternoon on a random day? She's in the pew. The house is taken care of, her parties are enjoyable, but why is she gone so often? Duchess just gives a pained smile and says that her husband does not mind her being gone because neither the staff nor him want her there. Why ask her husband for love when he clearly just needed someone to run the duchy?
Hope your sleep went well <3 i nees these men to suffer tbh
The house runs itself.
At least, that is what you tell yourself. The schedules are in place, the staff well-trained, the estate thriving. You have done your duty as Duchess of Price, managing affairs with grace, ensuring that the duchy’s name remains untarnished, that the books are balanced, and the tenants are provided for. You have even done more than what was expected, expanding the duchy’s charitable reach, establishing new programs for the less fortunate, and ensuring the nobility sees the Price name attached to every act of generosity.
And yet, despite all your efforts, there is no warmth in your home.
The staff keep their distance. There are no hushed greetings in the morning, no inquiry into your health when you sit at the long dining table, staring at your untouched, cold meals that are a stark contrast to the others’ steaming dishes.
They serve you as required, but do not linger. They do not ask if you would like another cup of tea, if your shawl is warm enough, if the flowers in your room are to your liking. You don’t need them to do it, but- it’s the emphasized loneliness that hurts the most.
John is no different.
You see him at dinners, always seated across from you, his gaze never lingering, his words few and functional. He speaks to Kyle more than he speaks to you. He shares glances with Simon that you have never been privy to, and when Johnny appears with a dish in hand, John’s expression softens in a way it never does for you.
Meanwhile, you are… tolerated.
And so, you leave.
Your absence from the manor goes unnoticed at first.
The city welcomes you in ways your home never has. Tea with the noble ladies? You never miss an afternoon, sipping floral blends as you listen to idle gossip, smiling where appropriate. A charity event for struggling orphans? You are the first to arrive, personally distributing warm coats and new shoes to children who look at you with something you rarely receive- gratitude.
Church in the middle of the afternoon? You kneel in silent prayer, hands clasped, seeking answers from a God who offers none. And yet the statues and pews are still not as cold towards you as your own husband.
“Duchess, you do so much,” Lady Bethany remarks one afternoon over luncheon, her fan flicking open with an appreciative snap. She’s a pretty thing, recently wed and already draped in the pretty glow of pregnancy. “I swear, I see you more than your own husband must.”
You laugh softly, demure and mindful. “The duchy has many responsibilities.”
“And yet you make time for everything but your home?” Another lady muses, curiosity laced in her tone.
You lower your gaze to your plate, the question hanging in the air. You have learned to navigate this tightrope of expectations, of unspoken truths wrapped in silk and civility.
With a practiced, pained smile, you say: “My husband does not mind my absence.”
You let the words settle before adding, voice barely above a whisper, “Neither he nor the staff particularly miss me.”
The silence that follows is thick.
Lady Bethany’s fan stills, her eyes softening towards you. Another woman fidgets with her gloves. No one speaks, and you take a sip of your tea, the bitterness sharp on your tongue.
Why ask for love when your husband only needed someone to run the duchy?
And the house remains indifferent to your absence- at first.
The staff continue their duties as usual, the butlers maintaining the schedule, the maids ensuring the rooms remain pristine. No one spares a thought for why you are always gone, only that it makes their jobs easier.
Until, one evening, Kyle pauses in the study, glancing at the untouched tea left on a side table. The Duchess usually ensures the staff are well taken care of, he realizes. Who had reminded them today?
No one.
In the kitchens, Johnny frowns when he notices the ledger left open, the list of requested ingredients unusually long. You had always been meticulous, approving the finest quality for the household, ensuring every item was fresh and of the best stock. The kitchen had run smoothly for months, never wanting for anything.
Now, it was as if no one had noticed the difference until the fruits arrived bruised and the meat not quite up to the usual standard.
Simon notices, too. The events you planned, the invitations you managed, the way you always ensured John’s name was spoken with admiration at every gathering- without you, the social scene seemed… quieter. The duchy’s presence less prominent.
And John notices most of all.
At first, he does not think much of it. His wife was always attending some function or another. That was her role, wasn’t it? To manage the estate, to see to the duchy’s reputation?
But then, he starts seeing the effects of your absence the longer you continue to keep to the people and not the duchy.
The reports come in slower. The meetings with city officials, once neatly arranged for his convenience, are now scattered, delayed. The letters from the nobility are fewer, the invitations sparser. The charitable events- ones that bore the Price name- have dwindled in number.
And the house itself… feels empty.
John returns from meetings to silence. Dinners are quiet, even when the others join him. There is no soft rustling of skirts as you pass through the halls, no gentle murmur of your voice as you speak to the staff.
One evening, he enters his study to find a stack of correspondence on his desk- letters you had handled, decisions you had made.
You had been doing so much.
Too much.
And no one had noticed.
When he finally seeks you out, it is not in your chambers.
John finds you in the drawing room, seated by the window, your hands resting idly in your lap. Your gaze is distant, unfocused, the usual light in your eyes dimmed. Winter was drawing nearer, and so gatherings dwindled in number and as a result, you had to spend more time in this cold, unfeeling house.
For the first time in months, he hesitates.
“…You’ve been busy.” He says at last.
You turn your head slightly, but you do not smile. Or at least, put no effort in making your smile appear genuine. “As have you, my lord.”
He swallows, uncertain. “You have done a fine job with the duchy, wife. The duchy is in good standing.”
You inhale, waiting for the unspoken ‘but.’
“But…” He hesitates. “Some matters are not quite as well-managed as before.”
Your lips curl in a faint, humorless smile. “Did it take you long to notice?”
John exhales slowly. He had not noticed, not until things started slipping. But now, looking at you- at the exhaustion in your frame, the emptiness in your eyes- he realizes you had been holding up far more than he had ever given you credit for.
“… You aren’t here anymore much.” His voice is quiet now, almost careful. As if he is speaking to an animal that will bite him if he misspeaks.
You laugh softly, but there is no joy in it. “Would you want to spend your days in a house where you are not wanted? That aside, I assumed you would prefer not to see me at all.
“I never said you weren’t wanted. Nor have I told you I’d prefer it if you were away.”
“You didn’t need to.”
The realization strikes down much like a hammer, and all that’s left in its wake is silence.
John had always assumed you knew- knew that your marriage was one of convenience, that his affections lay elsewhere, that you were never meant to be part of the life he had built with his men.
But looking at you now, he realizes he had mistaken your silence for understanding. Had mistaken your silence for acceptance, for agreement that you were complete fine with this cruel treatmeant.
He had thought you accepted it, that you preferred the distance.
But had you?
Or had you simply endured it because… there was nothing else to do?
You sigh, bowing your head to avoid his gaze. Your voice is quiet when you speak next, bereft of any hope, any warmth.
“…I shall return to my duties in the morning, and I will keep out of everyone’s way, my lord. Goodnight.”
588 notes
·
View notes
Text
The first time Simon saw you struggling with your crutches, he didn’t say anything. He just watched from across the barracks as you wrestled with the awkward weight distribution, as your injured foot gingerly hovered above the floor.
He figured you were stubborn enough to push through it alone. After all, you always had before. But then he saw the way you hesitated before stepping up the short flight of stairs leading to the mess hall, your fingers tightening around the crutches until your knuckles turned white. That was when he decided to step in.
He approached without a word and placed his hand under your elbow. You startled, nearly losing your balance, but his grip was firm.
“Easy, love,” he murmured. “You alright?”
You wanted to tell him you had it under control, that you didn’t need help, but the dull ache in your foot—the one that had been hammering at you for hours—said otherwise. You let out a slow breath and nodded, though not convincingly.
He didn’t press for an answer. Instead, he kept his hand near, not quite holding you, but not leaving either.
Over the next few days, Simon was constantly around you. He never made a show of helping you, never made it seem like pity.
He just acted as though it was the most natural thing in the world to be by your side.
When you couldn’t reach something, he handed it to you without being asked. When you needed to sit, he subtly maneuvered people out of the way so you had space.
If you ever so much as wobbled, he was there, catching you before you could fall.
You didn’t know what to make of it. You were friends, sure. You worked together and fought together. But this? This was different.
One evening, as you sat in the common room, foot propped up on a pillow, Simon settled into the chair beside you. He didn’t speak at first, just sat there, arms crossed, staring at nothing in particular. Then, after a long pause, he said, “You’re not a burden.”
You stiffened. “I never said I was.”
He turned his head slightly, looking at you from behind his mask. “Didn’t have to.”
You swallowed, suddenly feeling exposed in a way that had nothing to do with your injury. You tried to muster up a joke, something to deflect, but nothing came out.
Instead, you sighed and glanced down at your bandaged foot. “It’s just… frustrating. Not being able to do anything for myself.”
Simon nodded slowly, like he understood that feeling all too well. “You’re healing,” he said simply. “Takes time.”
“Yeah, well, I hate time,” you muttered, crossing your arms.
He huffed a small chuckle, after which silence stretched between you, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. If anything, it was comforting. Knowing that he was there for your, was enough.
Days turned into weeks, and your reliance on him lessened, but he didn’t go away. He was still there, hovering in the periphery, making sure you didn’t push yourself too hard.
One particularly cold evening, after another long day of physio, Simon found you outside, sitting on the steps, bundled in a blanket. The air was crisp, and the sky was scattered with stars. He approached silently, as he always did, before lowering himself beside you.
“Shouldn’t be out here in the cold,” he said, voice softer than usual.
“I needed air,” you replied, adjusting the blanket around your shoulders. “And quiet.”
He nodded in understanding and pulled something from his jacket—a thermos. Without a word, he unscrewed the lid and poured a small amount of steaming liquid into it before offering it to you.
You took it hesitantly and took a sip. Tea. It was warm and soothing, just what you needed at the moment.
“Thanks.”
Simon shrugged as if it was nothing, though the gesture spoke volumes. He watched the sky for a long moment before speaking. “Gonna keep ignoring this?”
You frowned, glancing at him. “Ignoring what?”
He didn’t answer right away. His gaze lingered on you, before he exhaled through his nose, shaking his head slightly. “Never mind.”
But you knew better. You looked down at the thermos in your hands, fingers tightening around it, before forcing yourself to meet his gaze again.
“I’m not ignoring it,” you said quietly.
Simon tilted his head slightly, looking at you, and after a moment, he reached out. His hand was slow, brushing a loose strand of hair behind your ear before retreating just as quickly. He didn’t say anything else, but he didn’t need to.
You swallowed, feeling your pulse quicken, but you didn’t pull away. Instead, you shifted just a little closer, just enough that your shoulder brushed against his.
A smile grew on your face when you realized that he didn’t moved away.
---------------------------------------
thank you anon for the request :)
i didn't want to rush them into a relationship, but this is a great beginning of something beautiful, i believe. if you want, i'll write another part where they end up together
@daydreamerwoah
#simon ghost riley x you#simon ghost riley x reader#simon riley x you#simon ghost riley#simon riley imagine#simon riley#simon ghost riley x female oc
665 notes
·
View notes