#WILSON HAS BEEN IN MY HEAD FOR A SOLID THREE WEEKS AT THIS POINT | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lingthusiasm · 4 years

Text

Transcript Episode 49: How translators approach a text

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 49: How translators approach a text. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 49 show notes page.

[Music]

Lauren: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Lauren Gawne.

Gretchen: I’m Gretchen McCulloch. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about the relationship of the translator and the text. But first, we’re heading into Lingthusiasm anniversary month! This is our fourth anniversary of doing Lingthusiasm, and we’re really excited that we’re still doing this four years later.

Lauren: We love a bit of reflection and nostalgia. The month of November is always an opportunity to be grateful that we have another year of Lingthusiasm. We have a whole 12 great main episodes. We have 12 more bonus episodes. As with every year, if you want to share a link to your favourite episode, November is an especially nice time to do it.

Gretchen: There are still people in this world who don’t know that they could be listening to a fun podcast about linguistics that makes them feel like they’re at a linguistics party instead of doing the dishes. You could help people find them. Most people still find podcasts through word of mouth. Every year we’ve done this in November, we see a big spike in people listening to the show and finding the show. If you wanna share on social media, we are very happy to thank you if you tag us in things.

Lauren: If you want to share off social media, please accept our deepest gratitude non-publicly for sharing shows as well.

Gretchen: Or, if you share Lingthusiasm privately and you still wanna be thanked, feel free to tell us about it on social media. We will still give you a little heart thank you comment. Yes, thank you already for all of the support that you’ve given the show over the years.

Lauren: If you like things additional to podcasts, because we are coming up to the holiday season, it’s also a good time to think about some Lingthusiasm merch or a copy of Because Internet. It’s a pretty great book. I like it. It’s available in paperback now. These things make great gifts.

Gretchen: We now also have annual memberships on Patreon. That could make a great gift to gift somebody to listen to more Lingthusiasm episodes as well as access to the Discord for an online linguistics community.

Lauren: Our most recent bonus episode was about honorifics as a way of being polite to someone either through the title you choose or a variety of linguistic strategies.

Gretchen: You get access to the honorifics bonus as well as 43 other bonus episodes and new bonus episodes every month by going to patreon.com/lingthusiasm.

[Music]

Gretchen: So, Lauren, I’m gonna talk to you about Beowulf.

Lauren: I know this because you have been messaging me for weeks about how we have to talk about Beowulf.

Gretchen: There’s a new translation of Beowulf. I’m really excited. This made me want to build an entire episode around the translator’s relationship to the text because this new translation of Beowulf does a really cool job of it, and I wanna talk about it.

Lauren: I don’t think you’ve been this excited about a translated text since Emily Wilson translated The Odyssey. I’m pretty sure that’s what motivated our 18th episode on word translation.

Gretchen: You are not wrong about this. I think there’s a similar excitement that I have which is old texts – texts that are a thousand-plus years old that have been translated so many different times by so many different people – it feels like it’s hard for someone to do something new with a translation of them. And yet, here people are doing that, which is exciting to me. This is the new translation of Beowulf by Maria Dahvana Headley. She’s done some really cool things with translating Beowulf as a feminist text. It’s a text that uses very modern style language in this thousand-year-old epic poem of Old English literature.

Lauren: I feel like when it comes to translating, before you even translate one single word, there’s all these decisions that a translator has to make. In Episode 18, we looked at translation, but we looked at word-to-word translation. And that’s definitely one part of a translator’s job, but they have so many more decisions to make. It is such an impressive job, and it’s why it’s as much an art form as it is a technical skill to translate something well. So, what are some of the big decisions that Headley made before even starting to translate Beowulf?

Gretchen: One of the things about Beowulf is, as an oral poem, it has this intricate rhyme scheme. The Old English rhyme scheme is based on half lines. Each line has two halves and there needs to be an alliterative bit in one half that is repeated in the second half.

Lauren: So, Old English is way more interested in alliteration compared to our modern English obsession with rhyming. That’s one of the stylistic features you find in Old English.

Gretchen: It’s all about the beginning of the words rather than the ends. Trying to figure out, okay, how much am I gonna use alliteration? How much am I gonna try to represent – because we can do alliteration in modern English – how much am I gonna try to represent the existing rhyme scheme? Where am I gonna try to put it in actual rhymes like you would do in modern English – if you’re writing a poem, you might rhyme it? What am I gonna do with the metre? She’s produced this really oral text that uses a certain amount of modern slang as well in ways that are really effective. One example is there’s a dragon in Beowulf, and the dragon at one point is described as “Putting the world on blast.”

Lauren: Nice.

Gretchen: To some extent, this is modern slang, but it’s also a very literal thing that a dragon can do. It’s not using modern slang for gratuitous – like, there’s no “lols” or “omgs” in this text. It’s not like here’s this facile text-speak version of Beowulf. It’s what are the bits here that actually work with the metre and the rhyme scheme but also not shying away from using a modern idiom where a modern idiom really works.

Lauren: It’s interesting to put this in contrast to the other most famous version of Beowulf in translation that I know of which is Seamus Heaney’s from somewhere in the middle of the 20th Century where I feel like he tried to capture the mythical grandeur of Old English and chose very stoic, solid sounding Old English words. I don’t think he would’ve had the dragon “putting the world on blast.”

Gretchen: Well, I don’t think he would’ve – I think it came out in 1999, this translation. In some ways his translation is fairly vernacular, but he tries to do that in a different sense. Can I read you the first bit of the Headley translation and the Heaney translation?

Lauren: Yeah. This is super fun.

Gretchen: Okay. A big thing about Beowulf translations is the first word which in Old English is “Hwaet.” That has gotten repurposed as a meme, which we’re not gonna get into much detail about. Some people translate that as like, “Lo!” or “Hark!” or “Listen!” or something like this. Heaney translates that as “So,” which has already got a certain level of vernacularity to it. His first three lines go, “So, the Spear-Danes in days gone by and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness. We have heard of those princes’ heroic campaigns.” This is very stately and like, “Here’s this thing you’re gonna do.” If you compare that with the first three lines of the Headley translation, the new one, she translates this “Hwaet” as “Bro.”

Lauren: Hm, that’s a very different tone.

Gretchen: It’s a very modern tone. I mean, you could pick a whole bunch of very modern things like “Yo” or “Hey all,” but specifically the reason she picks “Bro” is because she wants to highlight the bro culture-ness of this entire story. You can see that in the next couple lines which is, “Bro, tell me we still know how to speak of kings. In the old days, everyone knew what men were – brave, bold, glory bound. Only stories now, but all sound the Spear-Dane song, hoarded for hungry times.” It just leaps off the page in a way that really excites me.

Lauren: Yeah, no “princes” there.

Gretchen: Right. “Kings who ruled had courage and greatness” – “The men were bold.”

Lauren: The thing I always love about Beowulf is that it’s a millennium-old oral poem that happened to be written down, and a millennium ago people were like, “Let me tell you about the olden days.” [Laughter]

Gretchen: Right, it still takes place in this semi-mythic space, and it uses a certain stylised language that we even think was stylised at the time. You’re always picking between some kind of stylisation. There’s no neutral choice that exists. All of the choices are recreations at some level.

Lauren: I mean, it is kind of weird to think you’re translating from English into English, but it just shows how much the language has moved on because reading Beowulf if you don’t know Old English is an incredibly uncomfortable attempt to just guess some words that have retained some familiarity. I always find it interesting that you have to translate. And then because English went through enough changes by Shakespeare, we kind of put up with all of the features of Shakespeare that aren’t immediately obvious to us.

Gretchen: Right. But Beowulf is really this alien text. Like, “Hwaet. We Gardena” – and “Gardena” is “Spear-Danes,” but we don’t have “Spear-Danes,” and “Gardena” is not obviously related to those. There’s this great miniseries from The History of English Podcast that does a very in-depth line-by-line reading of Beowulf which I enjoyed a while back.

Lauren: My one semantic anecdote from that series is “Gar-Danes” as in “Spear-Danes” – garlic is the “spear-leek.”

Gretchen: Yes, it is!

Lauren: Because it’s like a little spear.

Gretchen: It’s like a little spear-leek. I love that anecdote. It’s interesting to be reading Beowulf at the same time that my book club is actually reading The Tale of Genji.

Lauren: Ah, from like a similar – Genji’s also a millennium old, yeah?

Gretchen: Yeah! In some sense it’s like Beowulf and Genji are kind of contemporaries.

Lauren: But they’re very much not contemporaries. Beowulf is about warrior bro culture in the Old English setting, whereas Genji is a Japanese court drama.

Gretchen: I don’t think they would’ve gotten along. I think they would’ve just found each other completely incomprehensible. Genji’s also one of those classic texts that’s been translated a whole bunch of different times in a whole bunch of different ways. For one thing, you’re translating from a much older version of Japanese. There are modern Japanese translations of The Tale of Genji as well. And then you’re also translating into a different cultural context. But the cultural context for Beowulf is also very weird. Like, I don’t do going and fighting monsters under lakes any more than I do writing haikus about the moon. In fact, I’m probably more likely to write a haiku about the moon than I am to go fight a monster under a lake if we wanna talk about relatability.

Lauren: Everything I know about Genji is because one of my colleagues in the Languages Department at La Trobe is a Genji studies scholar. It’s one of those pieces of work that is so big and so canonical that it has its own literary studies tradition associated with it. I also really love my colleague because the other part of her expertise is cosplay studies. I think it’s such a great combination of Japanese cultural experience there – Genji and cosplay.

Gretchen: I mean, what more do you want? The neat thing about reading Tale of Genji at the moment is because I’m reading it as part of a book club through Argo Bookshop – which is a bookstore that did the book launch party for Because Internet and I really like them – they’re having this Tale of Genji book club, and we’ve been reading it throughout the year a few chapters at a time because it’s over 1,000 pages. It’s huge. So, we’ve been reading it section by section, and different members of the book club have picked different translations into English of the same work.

Lauren: Ah, cool! Are there radical differences between the translations? Or do they all try and go for a literal approach?

Gretchen: They’re really different. One of the big things with Genji is at the time in 11th Century Japan it was considered very rude in the court to refer to people by their actual names. None of the characters in the original Tale of Genji manuscript have names, except for maybe Genji. So, you can imagine reading a thousand-page book where none of the characters have names is a bit of a feat of the imagination.

Lauren: Yes.

Gretchen: Different translations – and a lot of them have conventional names that literary scholars have used to talk about the characters. For example, Lady Fujitsubo lives in the Fujitsubo, which is the western pavilion, and so she gets called in the tradition “Fujitsubo” because that’s where she lives, and this kind of stuff. Or Murasaki gets called that after a flower, I think, the character. In some translations, they just use these conventional use names as if they’re the actual names of the characters. In some translations, they just use descriptions like the original text did, and they don’t really refer to characters by even pretend names or use names.

Lauren: So, one of them is trying to strive for cultural authenticity, and the other one is trying to just help the poor confused reader a little bit more, and that’s choices that each translator has decided to make.

Gretchen: Exactly. You also have other types of decisions like, “Are you going to try to” – because it’s a court drama, you have all these court positions. Are you going try to map those positions onto a western court so that people understand what a chancellor is? Or are you going to try to use those as a more direct translation of what the specific terms were at the time? That’s just different decisions that different translations can use.

Lauren: When you meet as a book club, is everyone following along, or is there a lot of clarifying across translations? Such an interesting little exercise.

Gretchen: Well, the nice thing is, is the division into different chapters is very constant, so we can be like, “Okay, we’re reading Chapters 6 to 10 now. We’re gonna talk about what happens in those.” But sometimes you do pull something up, and you’re like, “Okay, so this bit where this thing was said, do we think Genji is kinda misogynistic here?” And somebody will say, “Well, in my translation, it doesn’t actually seem like he’s misogynistic.” And here’s what’s going on in this particular translation versus that particular translation. And how much of it is the translator bringing their own preconceived notions of how people relate to each other? Because some of these translations are from the 1920s or something. People may have had different politics there. And how much of that is in the original text which was composed by a woman who we don’t know that much about? But it’s the first modern novel. It’s an interesting like, “How much are you going to try to westernise this book for a western audience?” Which some of the older translations do a bit more with the westernisation adaptation because people in the west hadn’t heard of Genji very much before. You do all this adaptation for your English-speaking readers. Whereas, more recent translators, people tend to have a higher degree of expectations of fidelity when it comes to a more modern translation. Sometimes they try to do that. And, you know, how many footnotes do you have? How much do you try to explain additionally? How much do you try to just make the text stand on its own as a story?

Lauren: So many choices to make as a translator. I’m eternally grateful to people who do this and make it appear so effortless while doing so much work bringing all of this context together.

Gretchen: It’s really neat. I’m not gonna read this 1,000-page book five different times in five different translations, but being able to experience portions of those translations vicariously through other people talking about, “Oh, here’s what happened in this one, here’s what happened in this one,” it does let you do this interesting comparative textual study.

Lauren: I’ve been thinking about translation in practice a lot lately because having worked with P. M. Freestone on their Shadowscent books, “The Darkets Bloom” and “Crown of Smoke,” these books have gone into translation in a whole bunch of languages, mostly European languages to date – Spanish, German, French, Russian, and Polish. I’m very excited about the upcoming Hungarian translation which will the first outside of the Indo-European language. But these translations involve a couple of things that are really interesting in that, in these books, I worked on creating the Aramteskan language, and for this language to work across different languages, sometimes it gets technically transliterated, or you need to add a different type of plural. For example, Russian has a different alphabet to English and so you need to fit this language into the Russian Cyrillic alphabet.

Gretchen: You’re not trying to pretend that Aramteskan is always written with the Latin alphabet. Even when the book itself is in Russian, you’re like, we’re gonna transliterate it into Cyrillic?

Lauren: No, translators have very much done what they think is most appropriate. I have a habit of buying these translations now and checking out what they’ve done because they’re not just translating from English into another language, they also have to translate this completely fictional language and this fictional world into that language as well. It’s one thing to maybe study in-depth Old English warrior culture or Japanese court culture and decide what to bring across, but with a fantasy world, there’s all kinds of choices you have to make as a translator as well.

Gretchen: Yeah, like what are you gonna do with the magic system? Or if you’ve invented all of these words for different scents or something, then they have to figure out some sort of equivalent of inventing those words for the other language.

Lauren: There’s a lot of scent vocabulary even in the English that P. M. Freestone has written in, so really taxing that part of the translator’s repertoire. One thing that’s been particularly interesting and that there’s been some discussion on how to manage is that in this world, both in the historical part of the world and the contemporary part of the world, the culture and the grammar allow for gender neutral third person like the English modern use of “they,” which Kirby Conrod gave a great interview about how that works in contemporary English. In fact, I did a little historical evolution of the pronoun system that fits with the story of the world where originally there was no gender distinction in the pronoun system, which fits with the old religious system of the world. And the religious system evolved younger gods that are all gendered, and the pronoun system evolved genders at the same time while still having that scope for gender neutral. Without spoiling too much, but a character that pops up in Book One and is much more a part of Book Two is gender fluid within the world. That works for current English because we have gender neutral singular they, but there are some languages like Czech or like Russian that the book’s being translated into where there isn’t that flexibility in the linguistic system. So, decisions have to be made about how that is negotiated in the translation.

Gretchen: Do you know what they did?

Lauren: I don’t know what they did for Russian yet, but I believe the solution in Czech is at various times this character is overtly identified using masculine and at other times using feminine – being much more flexible about the duality of their relationship with gender.

Gretchen: This reminds me of a thing that I heard Ada Palmer talk about at a conference panel with her book “Too Like the Lightning” and the sequels, which are set in this far future of English – well, far future and they’re written in English – in which singular they is used for everybody except when you’re writing in this faux-archaic style with “thous” and “thees” and “hes” and “shes.” It’s very marked at that point. Ada Palmer was talking about how this was translated into French where in modern English the progressive thing that people do is like, “Oh, we can use singular they. That’s very progressive.” In modern French, the progressive thing that people do is they make feminine versions of all of the professions.

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: You have feminine versions of “professor” or “doctor” or these kinds of things to try and make the gender more visible. And so erase the gender in the French version wouldn’t have the same effect – where you’d end up using the default masculine or something in the French version – it wouldn’t have the same effect as using singular they all the time in the English version. There are modern French pronouns like “iel” that have been coined to solve this problem of using a gender neutral third person pronoun, but it wouldn’t work to use them in this particular case because the style is supposed to be faux-archaic. What the translator ended up doing was digging out this French pronoun “on,” which in the modern form “on” is used like “we” or like “one does this.” It’s related to like, “One does this.” There’s an older usage of “on” which is like a non-specific third person pronoun as well that – I speak French, but I didn’t know about this archaic form. And the translator went and looked for what other historic pronoun things could I do and ended up doing with “on” thing, which is a really interesting adaptation.

Lauren: The thing I find interesting is if you were – 50 years ago, you didn’t have the grammatical resources in English to use singular they for a specific person. It’s something that’s really only emerged in the last couple of decades. I think the translator has felt frustrated to not have – you know, you sometimes feel like you’ve got this road block because you don’t have resources in one language that you have in another and you have to innovate. I did have a colleague in Italian studies tell me that they read a whole novel once where the gender of one of the characters was deliberately written around and avoided in a way that was an incredibly artful, thoughtful translation. It is possible that you could maybe do this with this character in the Shadowscent books, but it would be such –

Gretchen: But you couldn’t do it with the whole world in the Terra Ignota books because all of the characters would have to have that.

Lauren: Yeah. And you could do that amount of heavy lifting at the cost of some other things, but when you’re doing an efficient translation for a commercial novel, you don’t have the resources to really max out your art and strategy in that way. It’s interesting that, you know, translation is a really resource-intensive activity even to just do a good translation, let alone an incredibly strategic and thoughtful translation.

Gretchen: Even translating one word, like that word at the beginning of Beowulf, involves thinking about, “Okay, what kind of relationship do I want this word to have to the rest of the text? What am I trying to set up here in relationship to the whole text? Where do I see this attention-getting word as going?” Like, what the text as a whole is doing, which is this interesting question. I should say, speaking of translation news, this is very hot off the presses, but I have received news that there are gonna be translations of Because Internet into Persian, Chinese, and Japanese. So, all – well, Persian is an Indo-European language, but it has a different writing system, and then two non-Indo-European languages. I don’t know anything else about the details yet.

Lauren: This is news that I didn’t even know. This is very exciting.

Gretchen: It’s very recent, yes. It’s not – I dunno. I will have official links when they exist. They won’t exist for, I dunno, probably a couple years. I dunno how long it’ll take them to do. I know nothing.

Gretchen: The surreal thing about translation means that you will see you work and not be able to read it. There’s something so amazing and magical about that, that words you have created are finding new audiences – you know, there’s a lot of trust in the translator in those contexts.

Gretchen: Yeah, and I don’t know if I’m gonna get to have any say in who they get to translate it and how much they know about the internet or things like that.

Lauren: Translating non-fiction is an entirely different process because you’re not translating an internal narrative world as much as you are potentially translating something that explains how this world that we live in right now exists, or how a set of historical realities existed. That also takes deftness and skill.

Gretchen: And you’re potentially trying to translate technical vocabulary between one language or another, which isn’t necessarily the same as, “Okay, we need to keep the characters’ names consistent. It’s like, “We need to use this word that has a technical meaning in its technical sense.” Speaking of non-fiction translation, I dunno if you’ve been following in translation news relatively recently, there’s been a lot of things going on with the Scots language Wikipedia.

Lauren: Yes, I did read about this. So, Scots language is a language in the same family as English. It has a lot of similarities with English but is considered its own “variety,” using that very deliberate linguist term where you don’t commit to just how much it’s a dialect or its mutual intelligibility with other varieties that its related to. And it has its own Wikipedia.

Gretchen: Scots is kind of like, as an English speaker, I’ve always been kind of jealous of people who speak Dutch or German or something because they can kind of understand each other a bit. Or Spanish and Portuguese and Italian because they can kind of approximate understanding each other to some extent even if they haven’t formally learned the languages. I’ve always been like, “Why doesn’t English have some closer neighbours?” But I hadn’t been thinking about Scots when I was thinking that. Scots is probably English’s closest neighbour but is still a distinct language and, especially, there are grammatical differences and there are a lot of political reasons as well why people consider it its own language. However, [laughs] the Scots language Wikipedia, which has all of these articles written in Scots, had apparently been being edited for the last seven years by an American teenager who didn’t know any Scots and was just looking up the English articles in a Scots-English dictionary word-by-word and just picking the first word of the translation and subbing that in for the Scots word.

Lauren: This has been such a difficult story to read because everyone throughout this process has acted in the best faith. This teenager wasn’t doing this for any reason other than a passion for sharing knowledge on Wikipedia and a passion for seeing the Scots Wikipedia grow but with a really uncritical approach to translation. You can see where translation really does require this understanding of vocabulary choice and style choice and how it can all go really, really wrong.

Gretchen: Yeah, it’s really painful because this person started when they were, like, 12, and we have all believed very foolish things about the world when we were 12. It’s just many of us didn’t write thousands of Wikipedia articles in a language that is just really not the way anybody who actually speaks this language actually writes because it’s cobbled together badly from a dictionary. It’s this very painful, “Oh, no! You thought you were helping.” And yet Wikipedia is used as the basis of a lot of machine translation, and language detection, various natural language processing tools, and so this has been potentially sabotaging the efforts to try to create other machine tools in Scots because they’ve all been in this weird dictionary-a-fied version of English.

Lauren: It’s been really heartening to see the Scots language community and the Scottish Wikipedia community come together to figure out a strategy for how to approach cleaning house – I guess it’s the biggest spring clean ever, right – how to approach this, like, thousands and thousands of articles with this very strange approach to translation.

Gretchen: It illuminates one of the issues with smaller language Wikipedias in general which is that they may only have a few active editors because to be a Wikipedia editor is to be a volunteer. It takes a long time to translate things or to write articles. If you’re a language like English, you can have tens of thousands of editors. But if you’re a language like Scots which has many fewer speakers, you may only have a dozen active editors of which maybe one of them is a well-meaning but very clueless American teenager.

Lauren: We’ve both done lots of Wikipedia editing. We have run LingWiki events to improve linguistics content on Wikipedia. It’s challenging enough to write these articles in one language that I am proficient in. I’m always in awe of people who choose to translate and support content in their second or third languages because it is a non-trivial task to translate really complicated information in a way that is really clear.

Gretchen: Translation is a technical task that is one of those things that looks at all of the different levels of language where you have some things at the individual word, or even sound, or if you’re trying to translate poetry and you wanna make it beautiful in a very aesthetic sense with the physical properties of language, all the way up to words and sentences and structure and these discourse-y particles like “Hwaet” at the beginning where you’re trying to picture a whole framing device for the structure of an entire tone of a narrative. Or if you’re trying to pick, “Okay, how are we going to treat technical vocabulary that maybe has been borrowed from English?” because its scientific vocabulary that was invented from English, how are you gonna treat that when it gets borrowed into Scots? Trying to figure out how to make these technical decisions is non-trivial. It’s this very interesting train wreck. It can go spectacularly right when you have this very clever decision for a dragon to put the world on blast, and it can also go spectacularly wrong when you just say, “Okay, I’m gonna look through a dictionary and then pick the first word I encounter.”

Lauren: One of the great things about appreciating a good translation is that language never takes a break. Culture continues to change, and we move further away from the era of Beowulf. We move into new cultural settings and new cultural expectations. It means that there is space for new translations that bring new approaches, or try something different, or aim for really capturing something about the language of the era it was created in, or set an old story in a radically new setting. Even when you find a really satisfying translation, you know there’s still possibilities for finding other interesting ways to engage with the text.

Gretchen: I think that’s a thing that’s exciting about both the translations of these thousand-year-old texts, whether Beowulf or Tale of Genji, where they go through lots of different authors who put their own spin on the translation. And also thinking of Wikipedia as a place for translation where you have multiple authors working together on the same shared text, and a bunch of different people – like Scots Wikipedia has been having these Wikipedia edit-a-thons to try to clean the place up. You have a whole bunch of contributors that are finding out about this need because of this story and coming in and working on the text together and contributing to the shared text. In many ways, even though each of these editions of the translations are published as their own book for book-length ones, it’s this very intimate relationship that you can have with a text when you’re trying to render it in a different language or in a different textual interpretation.

[Music]

Gretchen: For more Lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube, or wherever else you get your podcasts. You can follow @Lingthusiasm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. You can get IPA scarves, IPA ties, and other Lingthusiasm merch at lingthusiasm.com/merch. I can be found as @GretchenAMcC on Twitter, my blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com, and my book about internet language is called Because Internet.

Lauren: I tweet and blog as Superlinguo. Have you listened to all the Lingthusiasm episodes and you wish there were more? You can access to 44 bonus episodes right now to listen to at patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website. Patron also get access to our Discord chatroom to talk with other linguistics fans and other rewards as well as helping to keep the show ad-free. Recent bonus topics include pangrams, honorifics, and linguistics with kids. If you can’t afford to pledge, that’s okay, too. We really appreciate it if you can recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone who needs a little more linguistics in their life, especially as it’s the anniversary month.

Gretchen: Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our editorial producer is Sarah Dopierala, and our music is “Ancient City” by The Triangles.

Lauren: Stay lingthusiastic!

[Music]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

#language #linguistics #lingthusiasm #episode 49 #transcripts #translation #translations #beowulf #tale of genji #maria dahvana headley #shadowscent #p m freestone #wikipedia #scots #japanese #old english #scots wikipedia

113 notes · View notes

hopekiedokie · 4 years

Text

That’s Rough Buddy (Seokjin)

SUMMARY : You were invited to your friends' annual Halloween Costume Bash™ and were supposed to go on a matching couples costume but your date cancels at the very last minute. Nevertheless, you pushed through with going to the party in your costume not knowing that you would still end up matching with someone. But unfortunately, it was with that very annoying (yet very attractive) guy that you despise so much.

PAIRING : Seokjin x reader

GENRE: humor, fluff, a sprinkle of angst in the end, enemies to lovers or frenemies to lovers (kinda?)

WORD COUNT : 16.6k+ words

WARNINGS: A swear word or two or seven, Jin is a crackhead (shocker), too much halloween games, excessive use of Avatar The Last Airbender quotes and references (aka Jin channeling his inner Azula)

NOTES: I originally was gonna make y/n and Jin dress up as Team Rocket and title this AU "Prepare for Trouble" but I ultimately decided on this. It pained me to do so because I am such a simp for purple haired Jin. Even if there are SO many hidden ATLA references here, I don't think you need to see it to understand this AU. Although, what on earth are you doing with your life if you've never watched the show?? Anyways, I hope you like this even though it's well into November now. Also, this is my very first fic so hopefully you’d enjoy this! Appa yip yip!

The smell of pumpkin seems to be enveloping the entire Park residence. You have barely reached the front porch and the scent has already hit your nostrils. How could a simple scent have possibly diffused into such a huge proximity, you wonder to yourself as you knocked on your best friends' front door. It wasn't until you entered the household when things became clear to you. Dozens upon dozens of pumpkins in different sizes were littered from their front hall to their living room. Some were already carved, some were sitting idly, and some were lined up to be carved by Park Jimin and Park Luna.

You were invited here on this lovely afternoon with the promise of free food. But after being handed a plate of pumpkin muffins and a bunch of carving tools, you felt a strong urge to just go home and maybe sleep through the holiday. Of course the two gremlins sitting on the floor, seemingly a pair on a mission, did not allow that to happen. So here you are on your seventh pumpkin, scooping out its contents, definitely not thinking of a million other things you'd rather be doing now. You were just about to stab your eye out with the sharp stabbing tool due to a possible mental breakdown when you got a text from Kim Taehyung.

Taehyung is Jimin’s best friend whom you might have had a crush on for about a year now since you’ve become friends with him. The two of you are going in matching costumes for the annual Park Halloween Costume Bash™ and have been texting non stop for two weeks now. Everyone in town takes this party seriously, including the adults. Even their parents are in on it though unfortunately this year, they're out of town so they aren't really involved. But the chosen winners for best costume are still to be awarded with a free dinner at the famous Park's family restaurant.

Tae Tae 🌻 : So that's a solid no on shaving my head? Cause I really wouldn't be opposed to it if it means a free heavenly meal from Papa Park 👀👀👀

You quietly chuckle at the thought of a bald Taehyung running around. The commitment of this man amazes you. You were about to type a reply when you felt something aggressively tap against your forehead. You look up to see an annoyed looking Luna.

Feeling something is stuck to your forehead, you slowly brought your hand up to touch it and you instantly felt a bit of pumpkin mush. "Did you just hit me with your filthy ladle?!" You disgustingly shouted at her.

"Dude, now is not the time to be all lovey dovey when the party is in three days and we still have about...uhm..." She looked around, started counting and then went to add stuff with her fingers, "A total of 27 pumpkins to stab and a whole house to decorate!"

You groaned loudly and fell on your back on the floor. You feel a headache start to develop from being surrounded by too much pumpkin flavored and scented things. If your two best friends' goal is to put any pumpkin patch to shame, then they definitely have achieved it. At this point, the stench of halloween in this area is strong enough to linger until the holiday comes back next year.

"Okay, but I don't understand why I'm being subjected into pumpkin slavery as well when this isn't even my party to throw?"

"When you're this behind on everything, all hands on deck are needed. We literally have not started on any of our to do list aside from pumpkin carving." It was Jimin who replied to your question. You watch him puncture a bunch of holes on the purple pumpkin he is working on. If you hear the word "pumpkin" one more time, you just might spontaneously combust or repeatedly bash your head with the wooden ladle in front of you. (A/N: Tbh, same here. It's only been a couple of paragraphs and I've already used the word 12 times.)

"I thought we'd be on top of this without mom and dad's help!" Luna started as she too began poking holes on her [word redacted]. "We are so behind! I mean, this guy still doesn't have a costume!"

"YAH! Stop exposing me like that! I told you, it's a…a work in progress."

Luna snorted at his step brother's remark. "In order for a work to be in progress, it must first be started-" Jimin cut her off by throwing her some [word redacted] meat.

It effectively stopped her from further embarrassing Jimin from his lack of costume days from the single most important party of their year. But it did start a revolting [word redacted] meat fight which lasted about a good minute. For the good of everyone, you stomped over to the war zone and pried the two idiots from each other. For a bunch of fools who are supposed to be rushing to get things done, they seem to be just fine with wasting their time.

"OPPA STOP IT!"

"I wouldn't have declared war on you if you hadn't outed me like that to y/n!"

"Well, it's not my fault you're so unready!"

"ALRIGHT THAT'S ENOUGH FROM YOU TWO!" You shouted as you yanked Luna off of him. Why on earth did their parents think it would be alright to leave these two on their own is beyond you. You gave Luna a reprimanding look and said, "Seriously, you'll make no progress if you continue with your antics."

Her eyes widen, looking like a little child being scolded by her mom. "He started it!"

From behind you, you can hear Jimin snickering. Probably feeling smug from her sister taking all the scolding. Honestly, are they five? You faced him with a much dirtier look than the one you gave Luna and he instantly stood straight, lips pressed into a thin line.

"And as for you!" You started, "I can't believe you still don't have a costume! This is so disappointing coming from you. How could you have let this happen?"

This may seem over dramatic, but this costume party is really THAT important. It's the highlight of the autumn season. This family really knows how to celebrate it and they do not fail to over shine what they had the year before. So this is really a bunch of steps back for these two.

"I know, I know!" Jimin yelled exasperatedly. "It's not that I haven't been planning. It's just that, how could I possibly top what I dressed up as from last year?"

He does have a point. He and Luna teamed up last year on what might be the most iconic costume ever. They both dressed up as the Wilson sisters from the movie White Chicks. They even had prosthetics on just like how Kevin and Marcus impersonated the twins. You guess you would not know how to beat that costume as well.

"I don't know what you're talking about. Maybe you're just uncreative cause I found a costume that will surely be a big hit to the people." Luna taunted her brother.

"What is it?" You and Jimin asked at the same time.

"You'll just have to wait and see!" She answered in a sing-song tone and proceeded to clear up the mess they made.

Jimin began helping her sister pick up [word redacted] mush with a long face. "Well that sucks hard for me. How about you y/n? What are you dressing up?"

"Oh, she's going as Katara, alongside Taehyung who is dressing up as Aang!" Luna answered for you, uttering the latter part in a way that sounds like she's teasing you.

"Oh, sweet! A date with Tae! I didn't know you two were finally going out?"

"What? No, don't listen to her. It's not a date! We're just friends." The two stared at you with a "yeah right" kind of look so you were compelled to explain further.

"Look, we were talking about The Last Airbender a few months ago and I mentioned how much I really wanted to cosplay as Katara. One thing led to another then poof! Here we are going as Aang and Katara to your party. It's not a big deal."

Jimin had a knowing sly smirk that made you somewhat uncomfortable. "Yeah, except Aang and Katara were madly in love and ended up making babies AND you obviously have a crush on each other." He said.

You reached for the nearest bowl of discarded [word redacted] meat and flung it towards the boy whose eyes have now disappeared and is in a laughing fit.

"No, no, no! You've got it all wrong! Y/n doesn't have a big fat crush on Taehyung." Luna defended you. Thank God for her! Between the two goons, she really is the one you can truly count on. You were about to say thank you when she added, "It's obviously Seokjin she has a huge ass crush on!"

Your mouth fell agape.

"Wait, oh yeah it's him!" Jimin agreed and tag teamed with his sister to tease you. Sometimes, you forget that they were born with different parents. Apart from their DNA, they’re pretty much identical. And it's scary.

"Okay, you know what? I take it back. You both deserve this!" You grabbed the mushy bowl and threw gloop after gloop towards the siblings.

Needless to say, you spent more time cleaning up afterwards than working on the decorations.

The next few days went by like a huge storm. Chaos definitely ensued. You spent more time and effort on making this party possible than you ever did with anything in your life. All you see are purple and orange with a hint of red even when you close your eyes. Halloween seems to haunt you even in your sleep. Just last night, you dreamt you were being wrapped in spider webs (Which let's be honest, is pretty much just cotton) by that huge scarecrow standing in your best friends' lawn.

You were out in town with Jimin doing last minute shopping, telling him that weird and disturbing dream of yours when he suddenly told you he has something to do and pretty much dashed away to the direction of a women's shoe store. What's that all about?

He's been absolutely frazzled since that afternoon you spent terrorising [word redacted]. You can't blame the lad. It's hours away from the party and it seems like he still doesn't have a costume. You and Luna don't know how he's gonna pull this off. If he does though, you'll thoroughly be impressed and would never question Park Jimin's capabilities.

On your way to the nearest bus stop, you received a message from Taehyung. You instantly felt giddy. The fact that you're going to a party with him in matching costumes have only sunk in this morning when you finished with the party preparations. You opened the text and your face instantly fell.

Tae Tae 🌻 : Y/n! I really don't know how to say this. But I don't think I can come to the party tonight. My little sister woke up to a very bad fever this morning and both my parents are working this evening. I'm so so sorry to cancel on you. I know we've been looking forward to this for so long 😔

You know you can't be mad at him. It's not like he planned for this to happen. But you can't help but feel absolutely gutted. He's right, you've been looking forward to this for so long. Since April this year actually. If he's not coming, everything just seems pointless.

You : Aww that's a shame. Don't worry about me though. There's always next year. Worry about your sister! I do hope she'll get better soon. She shouldn't miss out on halloween ☹☹☹

Tae Tae 🌻 : I know. She's not gonna be able to go trick or treating. But I'll make sure we'll watch halloween films!

Tae Tae 🌻 : Wait what do you mean there's always next year??

You : We'll just have to wait for next year to debut our costumes!

Tae Tae 🌻 : WAIT NO. Don't tell me you're not going to the party?? Just because I can't come??

You : Well yeah. It seems pointless to go.

Tae Tae 🌻 : Don't be like that! You're making me feel guilty 😭 Your costume deserves to be flaunted. Go or else I'll never talk to you again 🤧

Despite his order for you to come to the party, all desires to go left you the moment you read his initial text. The entire point of coming is to go as a pair. You both have been working hard to make your costumes as accurate as possible. To come alone doesn't make sense.

You were too engrossed with your phone that you did not realize you were going to crash into a person when you took a turn at the corner of the street. "Oww." You clutched the top of your head, as if you hit a hard wall instead.

"I'm so sorry-" the guy began to apologise but stopped short after he saw you. "Ah y/n! Watch where you're going! Don’t just mindlessly walk around!” he said, rubbing his chest where your head presumably collided with.

“Oh! I bet you're going as Wonder Woman tonight. Get it? Cause you wander too much around!"

The hollering buffoon in front of you, laughed at his own joke so hard that people around you started looking at the both of you. Wanting to get out of this embarrassing situation, you circled around him and proceeded to walk towards the bus stop. But he unfortunately followed right after you.

"Hang on." He jogged in front of you and held both of your arms. He looked you in the eyes with such seriousness that you think he has something very important to say. But alas, you should’ve known that nothing intelligible ever comes out of his mouth.

He opened his mouth and said, "Are you actually going as Wonder Woman?"

You made an annoyed sound and slapped his arms away as he said things like "I knew it!" and "I am such a genius!".

"No Seokjin! I'm not going as Wonder Woman.” you said as you reached the bus stop.

“Well that’s a relief! Honestly that’s super low and pedestrian even for you.” He jabbed at you but you stayed silent, not wanting to banter with him, unlike the usual. He carried on blabbering for the remaining time, telling you how “Spicy and scorching” his costume is. Whatever that means. At this point, you have half the mind to believe that he’s dressing up as a jalapeño. Knowing Seokjin, you wouldn’t put it past him to do so.

“You know what, actually, I'm not going at all." you butt in as an attempt to shut him up. His head whipped towards you at such a lightning fast pace, you were sure it would have snapped off. Oh how you wish.

"You're not going?" He said in what sounded like a very disappointed tone. Huh, why would he be disappointed, you thought to yourself.

You shake your head no.

For once, Seokjin seemed rather speechless and something else. Dare you say sad. This is really weird for him but you chose not to analyse him further and stood at the bus stop. You both just stood there in silence for a couple of seconds until a bus came parking.

You were already inside, swiping your bus card, when you heard him say, "Well that's rather disappointing. Who would go and scare the little kids away now?"

The bus doors closed just as his infamous laugh came rolling. You weren't able to hear it but the sound of his signature windshield wiper laugh still rang in your ears. You flipped him off and hastily took a seat after an old man looked at you with such distaste. You took one last look at Seokjin giving him the finger once more but much discreetly as the bus abandoned his still laughing form.

When 8:30pm arrived, you were sprawled on your bed watching this god awful halloween film starring Adam Sandler. You, honest to god, love Adam Sandler. But this film isn’t it. You stopped paying attention half way through the movie and started scrolling through your phone when your mom unceremoniously barged in your room.

“Mom, for the last time! I’m not coming to the party!” You told her for like the thirteenth time since you got home this afternoon. It most probably wasn’t the thirteenth time and was probably just the third time. But you’re really not in the best mood.

“Are you extremely, positively, a hundred percent sure about that, honey?”

You rolled your eyes at that. Your mom is never the one to keep repeating stuff as she is also easily annoyed just like her daughter. “Yes, mom. I am firmly, undoubtedly, and conclusively stating that I am staying in this room for the rest of the night.” You proclaimed, not even sure you can string up further words to describe how sure you are with your decision.

Your mom sighed as you closed the movie, not interested in it anymore. You look up at her with a raised eyebrow, silently asking why she’s still in the room. She fully opened the door and said, “Well, if that’s the case, then you need to tell that to Freddie Mercury downstairs.”

Not really understanding what she meant, you just stared at her dumbfoundedly until your brain finally started to function properly. “Uh, excuse me. But come again?”

She sighed once more, probably already tired from the night and the high jinks that came along with it. She never really liked halloween.

“Just come downstairs. Now.”

You hurriedly got up from your bed and sprinted out of your room. You haven’t even stepped foot at the top of the stairs when you indeed caught sight of the one and the only Freddie Mercury at your front door, rocking his iconic Live Aid outfit, topped with a lavish red robe, and a completely blinged out crown. Of course, we can’t forget the aviators and his emblematic moustache.

“Ay oh!” Freddie yelled at the top of her-I mean his lungs. It was so loud that your cat ran out of your house. Meanwhile, you shamelessly gawked at the person in front of you as you descended downstairs. You were absolutely confident that your best friend wouldn’t be able to top her costume from last year. Oh you were wrong.

“Darling, I know I’m fabulous but don’t ogle at me like that. Now do tell me, what’s this news I’ve heard from the grapevine that you’re not coming to the party??” She asked annoyedly in a pretty decent posh London accent. You on the other hand, ignored her.

“Woah that looks utterly real.” You touched her moustache and she slapped your hand away.

“Oi! Focus, lass! How could you possibly spend the last three painful days with us on what seemed like the halloween edition of Amazing Race, only to bail on us at the finale?!" Her accent slowly slipped away as her voice progressively got much louder. Once again though, you chose to ignore her.

"Your crown is so beautiful! Is this custom made? Oooh can I touch it?" You asked while reaching for it, not even waiting for her approval.

"Y/n stop it! I asked you a question. Answer it! Why all of a sudden, you decide to not go--"

"Dude, you really hit the nail on this one! Although I have to say, I don't think Freddie had protruding boobs."

Luna dramatically gasped at your statement and covered her chest using her robe. "I do not have protruding boobs! You make it sound like they're massive!"

"Well, compared to Freddie Mercury's, I guess they kinda are."

She hit you for the second time since she got here. "This is as much squeezing I can handle to flatten them out. Nevertheless, I believe I have normal sized breasts! Besides, I'm sure Freddie would've loved to have protruding boobs anyway."

A couple of seconds passed with you two just staring at each other, feeling the weight of your conversation. Realising how stupid your topic is, the both of you burst into laughter.

"What on earth are we talking about? I can't. This is too stupid. What the heck are you even doing here?" You managed to spit out in between laughs

Luna stopped laughing and gasped once more. She hit you for the third time now and ignored your protests of pain. "You little shit! What are you still doing here in your pyjamas! The party started 30 minutes ago! Come on, let's get you dressed up!"

She yanked your arm towards the direction of your room but you stayed planted to where you stand. "I can't. I told you, I'm not going."

She dropped your arm and took off her aviators. She had a really disappointed look which must be mirroring your own expression. "You can't be serious. We've been working hard for this. We've been excited for it since the first day of autumn!"

You didn't reply to her, you just looked at the ground. "But what about Taehyung?"

"Taehyung isn't coming."

Confusion spread across her face so you told her about his dilemma with his sister.

“Well that’s just bullshit.” She concluded with such spite. Your eyes widen at her aggression towards Taehyung. You can’t believe she would be this hostile about him choosing to care for his sick little sister. What else was he supposed to do? Abandon her for you?

“What the hell, Luna! HIS SISTER IS SICK! How could you be so bitter to him?”

“Woah! Woah! Woah!” She waved both hands up in a defensive manner, “I’m not mad at him! I’m mad at you!”

You rubbed your face with both of your hands. You guess it makes sense for her to be mad at you but now is really not the time for you to agree with her. You're not in the best mood to carry out an argument. You just want to crawl back to your room. That dreadful Adam Sandler movie suddenly sounds so temptingly riveting. Having said that, you still made it clear to her as to why you would prefer staying in tonight.

Luna, being the stoic person that she is, completely disagreed with your reasoning. "Oh quit being dramatic! He already gave you the heads up to go tonight. What more do you need?"

"I don't know, Luna. I just feel like I'm betraying him if I go."

She glared at you for a good second as if trying to telepathically make you change your mind. When it dawned on her that you're not conceding, she sighed the longest sigh you've ever heard from anyone, dramatically placed her aviators back, turned around while flicking her robes on your face, and then strutted away from you.

"Fine then! If you'd rather sulk here over a boy rather than spending an astounding good time with your friends, then be my guest! I guess all that hard work you've put in will be for nothing. But that's fine! There's always next year anyway, right?"

You watch her shimmy her tush towards the front door as she spews out reprimands after reprimands. And she says you're dramatic. Birds of the feather, really do flock together.

Her hand is on the doorknob when she gave you what meant to be her last look on you. It seemed more of a plea to you though. At that moment, you felt a pang of guilt. Are you really going to abandon your best friends for Kim Taehyung?

You gave her a small smile and said, "I'm sure you'll have a fucking marvelous party!"

Finally, she gave out a groan of defeat and opened your front door. "Oh whatever y/n! I should've left the second your mom told me you're not coming. Jimin needs my help, anyways"

Jimin. Somehow, you remembered that that boy didn't have a costume even until this morning. You wonder what on earth did he pull at the very last minute. So you called out to Luna.

"Luna, wait a second!"

"WHAT NOW?!" She yelled exasperatedly

"I just want to know what Jimin dressed up as."

She let go of your front door knob and crossed her arms. "Why'd you wanna know? It's not like you care about this party."

"Oh give me a break! Just tell me what it is!"

The smirk she has on her face tells you that she's not giving you what you want. Which you are absolutely correct.

"I'm not telling you what he dressed up as. If you want to know, then you find it out yourself. All I'm saying is that his costume is literally everything."

Some way or another, that statement of hers stirred something inside of you. Somewhere, a few blocks down, is a Park Jimin dressed up as something "literally everything" (Park Luna, 2020). If there's something you know about Jimin is that his definition of marvelous is a normal person's definition but times ten. She could be bluffing, but your curiosity is really peaked.

Damnit, you need to know what he dressed up. Right now.

You stood at the doorway of the Park residence living room with your mouth on the floor.

In the middle of their room is where a really cool light up dance floor is. You already know that since you were there when it was set up yesterday. What caught your attention was the guy dancing wildly right smack in the middle of everyone. A wild Jimin was twerking, doing high kicks, and *gasp*! Did he just do a split???

Beside you, stands a preoccupied Luna, too busy taking a video of his untamed brother. “What did I tell you? Fucking everything!” She hollered and yelled at him to do some more of his high kicks.

You looked at your thick blue Southern Water Tribe coat lined with fur and then at Jimin, wearing his Patrick Star hooker costume. Suddenly, you feel overdressed. He was only wearing a tight pink sweatshirt, Patrick’s famous green shorts, fishnet stockings, and some sexy thigh high leather boots. Yet he is indeed stealing everyone’s attention. How could he possibly bust out those kinds of moves in those thin stilettos? A normal woman can even barely stand in them. Hold on, so that’s why he bolted to that women’s shoe shop this morning, you thought to yourself. It all makes sense now.

Luna was left enabling his brother's thotty attitude as you walked to the kitchen. Luna was right, staying at home was a dumb idea. You can't help but admire all the halloween decorations the three of you have placed everywhere. Now you understand the vibes the two siblings were going when they said they wanted the house to be illuminated by jack o lanterns only. It looks really pretty here. Let's just hope and pray that this house won't burn down at the end of the night because this is definitely a fire hazard.

A guy approached you as you were standing by the snack bar. You don't really know who he is but he's dressed up as Dumbledore so you felt obligated to talk to him. "Your Katara costume is so cool! I'm a huge fan of the series! (A/N: Honestly who isn't?) Is it okay if I take a pic with you?" He asked and instantly whipped his phone out.

Who were you to say no? So you awkwardly stood close to him and smiled for the camera. Is this what fame feels like?

"Gee thanks! I'll have to take another picture with you later but with your date too."

Your face fell for a fraction of a second for being reminded by Taehyung. How does this guy know that Taehyung and you were supposed to go in matching costumes?

"Oh, I'm sorry! Taehyung won't make it tonight which is a huge shame."

He looked at you weirdly. "Who's Taehyung?"

"Uh my date..?" you stated but ended up sounding more like asking a question.

"Oh, your date!" Realisation hit him and you slowly nodded. "But he did come!"

"WHAT?"

"Yeah. I saw him arrive earlier. I must say, he looks sick!"

Taehyung came? But what about his sister? Did she magically get better? Why didn't he text you or something? You are so confused.

"Have you seen him anywhere?" You asked rather hopefully.

"Yeah! He's out back giving palm readings in his fortune telling booth."

Well now you're even more confused. That booth was meant to be a prop display only. What the hell is Taehyung doing, playing fortune teller with it?

You thanked the guy and zoomed out to the backyard as fast as you could. There were no signs of Taehyung anywhere. You roamed around for a couple of minutes, trying to maneuver around the massive crowds towering over your pretty small form, until you heard a loud guy complaining about some drink.

"I'm telling you man! We need cactus juice up in here!" Oh, that annoying voice, you're sure you'd recognise that anywhere. It's only a matter of time until you run into him.

"It'll Quench Ya!" Hold up, that’s a Sokka line! Why would he be quoting from “Avatar: The Last Airbender”??

"Nothing's Quenchier, It's The Quenchiest!" You hear him say before he bust out his windshield wiper laugh. His voice seems to be coming from that large group of people by the fortune telling prop. You approached the group not for Seokjin, but to see if Taehyung was around. The two of them are in the same friend group.

It was difficult to scout around the group since everyone is a lot taller than you. You jumped around until you caught a glimpse of the hollering man in the middle, wearing something red and what appears to be a large scar on his face. Why does that scar look familiar? Realisation hit you like a ton of bricks. It seemed like time stopped for all the wrong reasons when you took in the entirety of Seokjin's costume.

"Hey, look! It's Seokjin's date!", someone said and every single head there was in that group turned towards you at the same time. Even Seokjin, himself. It's so comical and stupid that you'd think you're in some sort of sitcom.

You looked like a deer caught in headlights, just stood frozen in front of the crowd. To be fair, how were you supposed to react anyway?

“Damn, she looks really pretty!

“Those are some fine hair loopies!”

“I don’t understand why they would go as Zuko and Katara. It doesn’t make sense.”

“ZUTARA MOTHAFUCKAS!!!”

One, you agree that you look banging tonight. Two, You also agree that if the two of you were indeed on a date, it wouldn’t make sense to go as Zuko and Katara when they weren’t even a thing. But three, yes, Zutara all the way and you would go down with that ship faster than you can say Bonzu Pipinpadaloxicopolis The Third.

Although the crowd had valid points, you would still think that Seokjin would contradict some of them. You know, like the accusation of the two of you being on a date? So it was a shock when he approached you with open arms and a huge smile while saying, “AH! There’s my sugar queen! Flameo, hotman! I was beginning to think you’ve bailed on me.”

You stepped back even before he got the chance to hug you.

“Uh what the heck is this all about?” You were pointing out the ridiculousness of him acting like the two of you twinning was planned but he thought you were talking about his fortune telling booth.

“Oh you know me! As a theatre arts major, I can’t help it when situations arise that forces me to slip into a different character.”

You looked at him unamused. “That’s literally a mental disorder you just described and literally, NO ONE forced you to do this. That prop was happily chilling in the background and you just have to go and torment it.”

He shushed you with a finger to your lips and it took all the will in you to not bite it off. “You’re just saying that cause you haven’t tried getting my expert opinion.”

“Expert opinion- You know what? Whatever! I don't have the patience to do this right now. I'm out here looking for my date so this night could get better. So why don't you just tell everybody here that we are not- hmmp!" Seokjin's rather large hands covered your entire face to shut you up or maybe slap you. Honestly you weren't sure. He was intending to cover your mouth but in his haste, he managed to smack you instead.

"Hey, guess what? I think you're the only person here I haven't told their fortune yet! That's just a shame, that won't do. No, no, no. What's that? You wanna go now? What a brilliant idea! Let's go, sugar queen!", he said all that in one breathing then pushed you towards "his" fortune telling booth that YOU had set up before the sun even rose this morning.

It was a very small purple tent (Actually, it was just a massive piece of cloth hanging from a tree trunk) with a little table set up and a crystal ball in the centre. He yanked the front part close for some privacy and you think you've never been more repelled in your entire life. To be stuck in such a small confinement with Seokjin and his ten foot wide shoulders is something that should be illegal.

He pushed you aside so he could sit at "his" table with you nearly falling through the cloth at the process. Once he's settled, he looks at you expectantly with a huge grin as if you actually wanted to get your fortune read by him. As if you volunteered yourself to be in this position.

His brain really is something and whatever that something is, you don't even want to try and decipher it.

Against your better judgement, you dragged yourself to sit in front of him. You're already here, might as well just try and enjoy the ride. Right?

Your butt had barely touched your seat and Seokjin was already declaring some insights about your future.

"Your future is full of struggle and anguish. Most of it, self-inflicted.", he said in all seriousness.

And of course, this is just some mischievous way to rile you up. What else did you expect from this guy? Or better yet, why do you even bother with him?

"You're not even gonna read my palms or bust out some tarot cards? Maybe do a little gazing into the crystal ball?"

"I didn't need to. It's written all over your face."

It took you a second to realise that he just directly quoted from Avatar again. You are quite annoyed at his childishness and slightly amused at his apparently extensive knowledge for Avatar references.

"I'm gonna give you the count of three to get the hell out of my face. If you're still here, I'll make sure your destiny ends right here." You replied, also quoting from the series.

He chuckled at your threat, finding it real cute just how easy it is for him to irritate you. "Okay, calm down. No need to get murderous."

"One."

"Hey, it's not my fault you're bound for failure!"

"Two!"

"Wait, are you actually being serious now?"

"THREE!", you yelled and lunged at the scarred boy.

He made a high pitched scream as you went and grabbed one of his shoulders. Your tiny chair went tumbling down and the crystal ball rolled off to the ground in your vicious movements.

"Please, not the face! Anything but the face! It's too VIP!"

"Oh, I'll make sure that stupid scar becomes a permanent part of your face!"

One of his hands were on your arm while the other was held tightly around your hand that was trying to claw his "VIP" face. For a small person, you seem to be putting up a big fight against him.

The scene that was unfolding inside that small tent is a sight to behold. If anyone ever walked in right now, they definitely would think that a more salacious thing is going to go down. All of the ruckus the two of you are making can probably be heard from the outside. But the both of you are too out of it to even consider the embarrassment you might get if someone barges in. Which is why you didn’t notice Jimin’s head poke inside the tent.

"Wow you guys. If y'all wanted a room, you could've just asked. As a very supportive friend, I would gladly give you one." The voice of Jimin rang from behind you and you instantly let go of each other, feeling a bit flustered.

"It's not what it looks like!", you tried reasoning with the boy. "He's being his usual little shit self and I'm just trying to purge it out of his system!"

Jimin, equally being a little shit like his older friend, brushed your reasoning aside. "Y/n, y/n, y/n. Out of all the people here, you're really the one to mess this perfectly set up prop? Didn't us setting this up at midnight meant anything to you? Couldn't you have just let Seokjin hyung here to peacefully give you his readings?"

You rolled your eyes at him. “Can you just shut up? Also, you knew this shithead was using our prop and you just let him be?”

“Of course he did! He’s taking 25% of my total earnings tonight.” Seokjin muttered.

“Total earnings- You’re making people pay for your made up bullshit?!” You hollered at the wide shouldered guy. Why are you even surprised about this? It’s Seokjin we are talking about. He could probably convince people to pay him just by walking past him.

“Oh you bet! But don’t fret, I’m not gonna charge you. With that kind of fate that you have, I’m sure you need every bit of kindness.”

Steam could might as well visibly come out of your ears right now with how enraged you are at him. You wanted to strangle him, bloodbend even. You didn’t have the chance to do anything though because Jimin was pulling you away. “Would you two stop with the lover’s quarrel for like a goddamned minute?”

He shoved you outside then did the same to Seokjin. “Everyone’s already inside about to play games and you two are still out here, too busy being all over each other!”

Jimin didn’t even need to say anything else or to further force you two. Just the word “games” made you both run inside at record speed. If people got real competitive with the costume contest, the halloween games are a whole other thing. Usually, after an hour or so since the party has started, the Parks hold a series of halloween themed games. The winners get various coupons. They aren’t as good as a free four course meal but that’s better than nothing especially if we're talking about the Park’s restaurant.

Sometimes, these games are done in groups but usually it’s in pairs. You weren't surprised that this year, all games are going to be done in pairs but unlike recent years, the games are going to be done in a "last man standing" manner. You knew all of this since you helped pick these games. You'd be more hyped up about them if it weren't for the fact that you don't have a pair to play with.

All these talk about games reminded you of Taehyung. You completely forgot you were supposed to look for him. But it became clear to you that he didn't really come when almost everyone who you came across with to your walk back inside pretty much assumed that Seokjin was your date. They all made some comment regarding your matching outfits which Seokjin didn't even try to deny. He was just gobbling up their compliments.

You listened to Freddie Mercury and Patrick Star explain the mechanics of this year's "Halloween Olympics". Now, what you didn't know was that they also changed the prize system. Apparently, they upped the prize since it's going to be a bit more difficult to win and there's only going to be one winning pair. This year, the winning pair is also going to win a free dinner. That got people buzzing.

With that, Luna explained that only the first 20 pairs to find a small, red, and hidden [word redacted] could compete in the games. Chaos ensued as you watch everyone scour around the house. All at once, you felt like you don't want to be competing against anyone in this room. Everyone seemed too terrifying as they went berserk. But alas, tonight doesn't seem like your night.

One by one, pairs came towards the siblings with their [word redacted] until only one was left hidden. Some guy, for some stupid reason, made the wrong decision to point and scream out the location of the last one. Obviously, everyone else made a beeline towards it.

Everything went in a complete blur for you. All you remember was seeing a tall guy in red jump for it. Then you were yanked by the said guy. Next thing you know, you were competing in the first game. Well, “competing” is a strong word. Seeing as you were dragged here unexpectedly without your consent and were in a total daze, your partner took full control of the reins. Now that you're coming back to your senses, you think this is for the best if you want to win. For once in his life, he can finally put his frat boy skills to good use.

The first game was announced to be a game of eyeball beer pong. It seems like the siblings are trying to get people drunk this early. You guess it’s a good strategy to easily kick people out of the games. But you and your partner ain’t going to be one of them. You watch your partner make perfect shots after shots, hitting every cup of the opposing pair. It wasn’t long before you both had won and eliminated the other pair.

“I can’t believe we lost! I really thought we had it in the bag.” One of the other guys had the audacity to say in front of Kim Seokjin, a true blue frat boy.

“Oh don’t flatter yourself! You were never even a player.” Seokjin muttered to the guy and held his hand up to you as if you were actually going to give him a high five. Instead, you gave him a long hard stare as cold as any of the water tribes. Any sane person would be decent enough to feel remorseful. He didn’t. Instead, he grabbed one of your wrists and gave himself a high five.

You smacked him upside his head. “You insolent fool!” You hollered like a villain in a Disney movie.

“Yah! What was that for?” his feigned innocence made you want to tear out not only his hair but also your own.

“You think I want to compete with you?”

He crossed his arms and slowly shook his head at you. Almost as if he is disappointed in you. “Tsk tsk tsk. I carried the whole bench and this is what I get from you? Just say ‘thank you’ and go.”

You scoffed. “For your information, I didn’t ask to be paired with you. You just yanked me from nowhere!”

“Well then, you're welcome, sugar queen!”

“YOU’RE WELCOME?? I don’t want to be paired with you!”

Your seething rage seems to somewhat alarm him. “Okay, okay, calm down!” You opened your mouth to interrupt him but he didn’t let you. “I admit that I did just yanked you and didn’t ask for your permission. Sure, that wasn’t really cool. BUT! In my defense, I was so deep in my competitive zone that I didn’t take the time to notice who I was pulling.”

He looked at you to see if you had anything to say but the annoyance remained etched on your face so he continued reasoning with you. “Listen, we both just want the same thing and that is to win. That ain't happening to you seeing as you're all alone. So really, I kinda did you a favor here. Come on, it'll be fun!"

You hate to admit it, but he does have a point. Maybe it's not that bad of an idea to pair up tonight. You both are pretty competitive. Besides, you do need a little cheering up err- a distraction, I mean.

"I guess we could try and not tear each other apart even just for tonight. This is for a good cause. We do both really want that free meal. Fine, I'll call truce for now." You finally conceded and held your hand out to him. He took it and you shook hands.

"I'm glad you're seeing it my way. Because to be honest, you're not winning a free meal with that costume." He confidently said with a shit eating grin.

You squeezed his hand a little too tightly and ignored his yelps of pain. "And neither will you because guess what?! Your scar is on the wrong side!"

"Ah! I knew someone's gonna tell me that sometime tonight. I can't even be mad at that reference."

"No Seokjin. Your scar really is on the wrong side."

"Yeah, and tea is just hot leaf juice."

"Uh, it really is though. But I repeat, your scar’s on the wrong side, buddy!"

“No it’s not.”

“Believe it or not, it is!”

"Are you actually being serious?"

You let out a really long sigh of disbelief to what you'll have to put up with. This is for sure going to be a long night.

To your surprise, the night did not go on as a drag. The next game did start off rocky with you not being able to guess any of the given Halloween charades. Either you are not as cultured as you think you are or you just don't get the mind of a theatre major. Or maybe, it's just his mind you don't understand, to be honest.

"How on earth was that Silence of the Lambs?!"

"What do you mean 'how on earth was that Silence of the Lambs'? What else does this even mean?" He replied while acting like his arms are pinned to his sides then proceeded to cover his mouth and then did a fluttering motion with one of his hands that seemed to be coming out of his lips.

"That could literally mean anything! For all I know, that could mean The Mummy!"

He scoffed at you as if you just told him the most offensive thing in the world. "The Mummy?? Oh, you are absolutely hopeless. We are so doomed if we keep letting you guess."

"No, we are SO doomed if we let you act out the things! You dare call yourself a theatre major?" To any other person, you would think that your comment is in fact just downright offensive. But that's not the case with you two because it seems like you could push all the wrong buttons of the other person and somehow still not end up really hurting anyone. You wouldn’t admit it, but maybe both of you find this weird comfort in these silly banters and in the midst of it all, you've unknowingly built some form of bond.

You collectively agree to switch roles and just like that, the tides shifted. The two of you were suddenly getting the correct guesses each round. At the very last round, you drew the movie Caroline from the witch hat. If it were you and Luna playing, you guys would have guessed this in a heartbeat since it's your favorite movie. But you're with Seokjin and you are extremely positive that he has never even seen the movie.

When the one minute and thirty second counter started to tick down, you immediately made a circle around one of your eyes and made a sewing motion to it. You thought it couldn't be anymore obvious than that but he just stared at you. By the time forty seconds have passed, your hope for him trickled down. You could hear the opposing pair celebrating prematurely on the side which ticked you off so much.

Your sewing motions got a lot more aggressive as you gave Seokjin the most desperate look you could ever give him. He in turn, gave you a very rare apologetic look. Yup, you guys were doomed from the beginning. All you can think of is how much this night really sucks for you. You probably should have stayed at home.

Once everyone started counting down from fifteen, you bid goodbye to the grand prize. The idea of it was just too good to be true. You stopped with your motions and gave Seokjin a small nod of defeat. He acknowledged this by giving you a slow nod as well and this seemed like the end for your pair. His gaze on you, however, flitted towards something or someone from behind you. His eyes stayed there for a good five seconds, appearing to be in deep concentration. You didn't even have the chance to look back since right before the audience counted to one, Seokjin was screaming the correct answer.

"CORALINE! It's Coraline! Of course, how could I not know?" He announces while flapping his arms wildy just a second before the timer rings. Everyone cheered at this sudden victory. The turn of events left you stunned. You thought for sure he wouldn't get it. He just keeps surprising you.

Seokjin approached you with a huge smile on his face and you can't help but return it to him. Not only that, you gave him a big hug which caught him off guard. You didn't know what came over you to do that but it felt like the right thing to do. He didn't seem to show any signs of protest as well.

"What the fuck? I really thought that was the end of the line for us!" You told him after sharing a brief hug.

"You really need to put a little trust on me. What can I say? I'm a genius." Just like that, you went back to wanting to punch his face again.

Rolling your eyes, you murmured, "Did the definition of genius change in the last 100 years?"

While you turned your attention to Jimin who was already announcing the next game, Seokjin glanced towards Luna and gave her a smile. Unbeknownst to you, this so-called "genius" partner of yours actually had help. He, did in fact, was never going to get the correct guess. He has never seen Coraline nor does he know anything about it. But your best friend, Luna, decided that she wanted to keep you two in the games so she tried so hard to discreetly mouth "Coraline" to Seokjin a couple of times.

You didn't need to know that though.

He didn't mind receiving a few assistance to win, but it does hurt his pride and it will hurt more if you find out. Fortunately for Seokjin, he didn't need any further helping hands. Even from you.

Either the games are too easy or you're just completely and utterly incapable because Seokjin pretty much breezed through them without even batting an eye. If you didn't know any better, you'd think he's trying to impress someone. You, maybe? Wait, no. That doesn't make any sense. Why would he do that? Besides, he made sure to gloat on you everytime your pair wins with you contributing nothing.

A couple of games and one harrowing round of What's Inside the Box later, just six pairs remained. It wasn't exactly all fun and games since along the way, your pair or rather, Seokjin made a rivalry against another pair. This couple dressed up as Team Rocket really got on his nerves. You can't blame him though. They kept on flirting with each other after every round and not to mention, they also kept taunting you two. You'll bloodbend them if you hear "Prepare for trouble and make it double" one more time before a game starts. To be fair, they do play very well. Actually, they seem to be the only other pair that puts up a good fight.

By this time, everyone has migrated outside for the last few games. For this one, as you already knew, you'll be playing blindfolded bean bag toss. One person would have to guide the other as they go through three different levels. The pairs that don't make it through would obviously get eliminated.

"Oh, we are so gonna dominate on this one!" You hear the girl dressed up as Jessie says.

"For sure. Why don't they all just pretend to be a tree and leave?" The guy dressed up as James condescendingly said and they both laughed out loud at his joke.

You visibly cringed at that. Can they get anymore intolerable? That's saying a lot coming from someone who knows Seokjin, arguably the most abhorrent creature in your life. Jeez, and you thought his jokes were the worst.

Seokjin made a gagging noise beside you, voicing out your sentiments. You can't help but laugh out loud with him until Patrick and Freddie approached you two.

"Okay, who's going to lead and who's the blindfold wearer between you two?" Patrick said and snickered a little after realising the other implications of his question. This little shit.

"Well, seeing as her skills are lacking, I'm gonna once again step up to the plate and handle this one." Seokjin reached for the blindfold but you snatched it from Luna's hand before he could.

You can't just let this night go down like this. Honestly, you're kind of having fun watching all the chaos ensue from the sidelines. But you're a woman of honour. You can't possibly go for a win while doing the bare minimum. You dare dress up as Katara and let some man take over?

"I'll be playing this one." You calmly but confidently declared.

"Sugar queen, I love the assertiveness. But I think you should-"

"I'm playing this one." You interrupted him with such firmness in your tone, they couldn't do anything but just nod to you.

Hell no are you gonna let Seokjin annihilate this night all by himself. You need to prove that you can match up to him. You'll show his stupidly pretty face and wrongly placed scar not to mess with your capabilities.

You took a long hard look at the three targets. Each one going higher and farther than the one before. You are to be given a practice round each level to get your bearings. Yada yada yada. You tuned the siblings out, of course you already knew all this. As the person who placed the goals, you'd think you have the upper hand. You were overly confident, bordering the line of cockiness, that you could do this. You even had the audacity to sneer at Team Rocket when they uttered their catchphrase to you.

You watched each pair try and make their shot. Surprisingly, everyone made it. That only added fuel to your fire. You were excited. You couldn't wait to finally do something. On top of that, Seokjin kept muttering things to you that if they can do it then so can you.

When it's your time to play, you are extremely buzzing. Going last is always an overwhelming feeling. All that built up confidence died down though the second you put on your blindfold. The darkness that enveloped you instantly made you feel unbalanced and disoriented. Confusingly, it's as if all your other senses heightened but it also felt like they all shut down at the same time.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck." You chant in your mind as you feel your awareness of your surroundings slip from you.

This is not good. Why did you subject yourself into doing this, again? You should've let Seokjin play when he had the chance. You clearly cannot do this.

In the midst of your swelling panic, you feel hands place on both of your shoulders. You jumped at the unexpected contact but it was just Seokjin. "You can do this, Okay? Just focus on me." He whispered in your ear with such comfort and softness that you had to shiver a little.

He rubbed small circles on your back with his thumbs, soothing you for a second until Luna gave you the go signal.

You slowly walk as straight as you possibly can even if you feel like toppling over the entire time. Please don't. The entire time, Seokjin was behind you. You halted when he told you and to the best of your abilities, you "delicately", as he instructed you to, tossed the bag to the left.

"Okay, that was shit." He truthfully told you in a nice tone as you hear the people around begin tittering at what you assumed to be such a horrible shot. You think you just heard Team Rocket announcing their victory. Shit, shit, shit, shit. You are royally fucked.

"Seokjin..." You can't help but whine, your anxiety creeping up ten fold.

"Hey, hey, hey. That's fine! What are practice rounds for?" He tried easing you.

"But everyone-'

"Forget about everyone. It's just you and me right now. Calm down and focus." The gentleness of his words and the lulling of his voice somehow allowed your breakdown to dissipate a little. If you're in a better state, you'd be surprised at how he is behaving towards you. You'd probably dismiss it and reason that he just badly wants to win. That's the only fitting explanation.

Sensing that you've calmed down a little bit, he let out a breath that he unconsciously has been holding. Your sudden mood shift made him really nervous. "Okay, sugar queen. I know you're a waterbender but mind channeling a little bit of your inner Toph for now? Just try and maybe get in tune with the surroundings? Come on, you set this thing up. Can’t you, like, use that to your advantage somehow?”

Easier said than done. But the way he’s practically cooing at you as he talks makes you want to subconsciously do anything for him right now. He could ask you to go find him a dragon egg and you’d most probably follow his orders blindly. Which is a concerning thought that you’d mull over later. For now, you focus only on his voice and try your best to toss the bean bag inside the goal.

You took a deep breath and said you're ready to attempt your shot. Seokjin instructed you to make your throw a bit more vigorous. By how much? You have no idea. Hell, you don’t even remember how hard you threw your last shot. This is literally all up to chance, if we’re being real. So you prayed to every spirit out there to put all odds in your favour.

Around you, some people began cheering. Some people were kind of waiting for you to completely miss again to get some good laughs out of it. Other pairs were taunting you, making a distraction. But you tried your hardest to tune them all out. Right now, all you can focus on is your aim and the nice words Seokjin is throwing at you. With shaking hands, you make a swing with what you hope is enough force to get to the next level.

You weren’t aware of it but to everyone else, it’s as if time went in slow motion. People’s heads comedically followed the direction of your bean bag. Your two best friends were both wide eyed, Jimin had both of his palms on the top of his head and Luna had her mouth wide opened. Seokjin stood nervously behind you with his hands intertwined in front of his lips as if reciting a prayer. Your bean bag’s hang time felt like an eternity but it was more than enough to realise that you still weren’t going to be able to make it. Seokjin almost cried on the spot at that realisation until your bean bag hit the rim of the basket. That split second of it hitting the rim made all the difference in the world. Everyone literally went silent as the bean bag bounced off the rim and went straight inside the basket.

With your vision completely obscured, you were clueless to all the spectacle that’s happening. In contrast to everyone, everything went in fast forward to you. Right after you made your shot, you instantly heard people yelling your name and a pair of arms encaged you from the back. Seokjin lifted you up and started spinning you around, obviously a sign that you made it.

With everyone’s reaction, you would think you made a championship winning shot. You don’t really understand the hype but you were just glad that you did it and it did wonders to your confidence.

“I told you that you were doing great! You just need to follow my voice.” Seokjin told you as he set you down and you took your blindfold off. Everyone still kept cheering wildly as Luna declared the start of the second round.

“Well, it is hard to ignore.” You joked at him but for some reason it made him blush. If his long hair weren’t hiding his ears, you would also see how harshly they’re flushing. He didn’t have a witty comeback and just avoided your gaze. He is flustered. How cute. You openly thought to yourself without even feeling an ounce of shame. It seems that the tides are indeed shifting and you’re not even fighting against the current.

The game continued with less dramatics, oddly enough. Even more odd is that you easily made it through the entire game. In the end, you weren’t even sure why you panicked in the first place. Two pairs got eliminated so you are now down to four. That’s fortunate for you. What’s unfortunate is that Team Rocket still hasn’t blasted off.

The next game was a round of Paper Dance. You were relieved that you both had to actively participate on this one and not have one of you slacking off to the side. You weren’t quite relieved when you remembered the mechanics of the game. Basically. You are given a sheet of newspaper and are forced to dance around it. When the music stops, both persons need to step inside the paper and stay there. Every round, the paper gets folded in half so the pair gets pretty close and intimate with each other.

The thought made you nervous and you slightly broke into a sweat. You were feeling rather uncomfortable with your heavy layers so you opt to take off your outer coat. Some tall and lanky guy dressed up as a sunflower, which you believe is also one of Jimin's close friends, started hollering, “Take it off now girl, just take it off!”

As objectifying his words are, you choose to laugh at how ridiculous he looked. A soft delicate flower uttering such promiscuous things. You thought maybe humour could divert your fluttering heart long enough for one pair to get eliminated so you could all move on to the next game. It didn’t, of course, what were you even expecting?

As the newspaper shrank, the more agitated you became. The fact that it was taking so long for one pair to get eliminated makes you weak in the knees and you don’t know if it’s a positive or a negative reaction. At this moment, the paper is still relatively in a decent size but it could only accommodate one pair of feet inside. Due to your lack of communication, you both stepped one foot inside when the music stopped and you collided with one another rather harshly. You immediately went flying down to the ground but Seokjin managed to grab your arm and pull you towards him. Once you were flush against each other, both of you instinctively wrapped an arm around the other person to gain balance.

The action might have saved you both from getting eliminated but it definitely put you two in quite a dangerous spot. Just like when you were blindfolded a while ago, everything around you tuned out and all you can focus on is you and Seokjin. Only this time, you weren’t facing just an empty dark abyss. You were face to face with the dark abyss of his eyes. Your faces were mere centimeters away. An hour ago, you would willingly defenestrate yourself, horrified at the idea of getting this close to this guy. But right now, as you two stare and hold on to each other, you weren’t so repelled. Neither is he.

You two were just getting comfortable with each other if it weren’t for Jimin blatantly calling you out for this really personal moment. “Oi! The music is back up! You two can get back to your lovey dovey moment later but for now we game.” The actual buffoon roared at the mic. His very public comment made everyone start hollering and teasing the two of you. Just like that, you went back to square one, an awkward mess.

At one point, Seokjin almost fell off when he gave you a piggyback ride. You thought it was either because you were too tense to even jump properly on his back or you are just plain heavy. You’re not even sure which option is better. The way that you are so conscious around him has never been a problem to you. You have an inkling as to why this is happening but you refuse to say it to yourself.

While you mentally kept cursing yourself, Seokjin was having the same problems. He was too shaky to properly hold you. He too was cursing at himself for acting so muddled around you all of a sudden. This is getting pretty bad. He needed to get a hold of himself fast. By that, he means go back to being a cat and mouse with you. In other words, go back to insulting you. But his inner self is telling him to just let this moment be and to let himself indulge in it.

Another agonising round later, one pair finally got eliminated. Thankfully for that, Seokjin was only tiptoeing on one foot at this point whilst carrying you. You, on the other hand, had other reasons to be thankful for.

Now, you were down to just three pairs. The semi finals are up next so you really need to get back to your senses. You are so close to achieving the grand prize. Remembering what the next game is, you knew you were monumentally screwed.

The semi finals, as Jimin is explaining, would be a bat doughnut eating contest. Five doughnuts shaped in a bat are individually hung on a string in their clothesline and both pairs would have to stand on either side, eating them all as fast as they could without using their hands. Both pairs are only allowed to work on one doughnut at a time. Now, that’s just on a completely different level of invasion of personal space. But you can’t blame anyone because you came up with half of these games, including this one.

“Let’s quickly push through this one.” Seokjin told you from his side. “We can’t let the others win. Remember, only the first two pairs get in the finals.”

You admire how composed he is right now. Why can’t you be as unaffected as he is? This is for the sake of the grand prize. Do you even want it? If yes, then you badly need to keep your eyes on the prize and nothing else. Definitely not on Seokjin, or on his piercing eyes, or his soft looking lips. NO STOP. Just what on earth is happening to you?

Realising you haven’t given him an answer, you simply nodded. With that, you heard the go signal and all three pairs started devouring the doughnuts.

They are [word redacted] flavoured. Of course, what did you expect? You try not to gag at that and you also try to avoid accidentally making out with Seokjin while making sure you eat the entire thing at lightning speed. There were way too many things going on at the same time for you to handle. Your brain could not possibly keep up. It’s like your brain and body were being controlled by two separate things.

One doughnut down and you move on to the next one, then the next one, and the next one. “That’s it, keep going!” Seokjin kept on muttering motivating words whenever he could. Again, how could he be so composed at a time like this? Somehow along the way, your brain completely shut down and your body went into autopilot. The two of you fell into an unspoken strategy of having sides so to have some boundaries. The moon spirit knows you badly need that.

Your pair is on the lead when you reach your fourth doughnut. For the first time since this game started, you felt comfortable. Did you stay like that for the entire game? Of course not. Naturally, the universe just loves aggravating you tonight.

Half way through your fourth doughnut, you accidentally brushed lips with Seokjin. The action was absolutely brief, but it was enough to halt you two and send tingles that you would feel throughout your body down to the tips of your toes. You two stared at each other for a second too long because Luna was announcing Team Rocket to have taken the lead. You two couldn’t care less though. For the third time tonight, all you could focus on is each other.

Wide eyes filled with something you two are too embarrassed to accept, lips slightly molding into shy smiles, and faces covered with icing and powdered sugar. In that moment, you two seemed to have some sort of self understanding that didn’t need to be said.

The moment didn’t last though. As brief as your little kiss was, you two were back at the game instantaneously. The other pair seemed to have gotten past you two as well. With a new found comfortness, you find yourselves working together without anymore awkwardness. You were back to your old competitive selves. You gobbled up the doughnuts at a jaw dropping speed. All that matters now, is winning especially since Team Rocket is advancing to the finals. The two of you didn’t even bat an eye when your lips would unintentionally touch a couple of times in your haste. You certainly weren’t complaining about it now. As a matter of fact, you felt him linger a few times. So were they really unintentional? We would never know.

You amazingly caught up with the last pair even with a few cheeky antics on the side. The two of you are currently on top of the world and just breezing through. For sure, you would end up beating them. There is no need to worry about anything.

What sealed the deal was when one person of the remaining pair mildly choked at a particularly large chunk that she had swallowed. You two took that opportunity to finish up your fifth and final doughnut. You swallowed for the last time and cheered for your partner to finish chewing. Everyone else was completely yelling at this point, it was such a euphoric feeling. Once Seokjin finished, you went and engulfed the larger man as best as you could in a bone crushing hug.

You two were all laughs, happily celebrating even if you haven’t won yet. “We are so going to come home with that prize.” You declared with such finality while you break away from the hug. You kept each other very close though.

“Oh yeah? You’re not gonna freak out on me again?” He teased you but you can’t help but just hit him.

“Only if you keep yourself in check.” You playfully replied. You fell into a comfortable silence, once again staring at each other with shy smiles. His eyes dropped to your lips for a second and you felt compelled to lean in. When he realised what you were allowing him to do, he leaned in too. You were slowly leaning towards each other, taking your sweet time and savoring every second of it. Your lips were pretty much fully touching, you could feel the warmth and softness of his.

“You’re lucky that chick choked up.” James, whatever his real name is, from Team Rocket woefully stepped into your moment. It took every fibre in you to not punch the guy.

“She’s obviously inexperienced. Couldn’t be me!” Jessie quipped and they both started laughing together. This time, it took every fibre in you to not bash their heads together. But as mentioned before, you are a woman of honour. You are willing to take the higher road and settle this fairly through the games.

Seokjin, well, he is Seokjin so he didn’t let the two slide so easily.

He let go of you and approached the two. He laughed along with them in such a forced and sarcastic laugh that it pained you. “Yeah, you’re right. We are lucky!” He said then squished himself in between the couple and placed his arms around them. What on earth is he on about, now?

“We definitely were just born lucky. But at least we’re not like other people who are only lucky to be born. Right, hotmen?” He said and slapped their arms in a playful manner but ended up being too hard. He left them completely offended, sauntering back to you with his windshield wiper laugh that you know all too well.

"Was that necessary?" You scolded him with both hands on your hips.

"Don't be such a Katara! I know you're dressed as her but please don't take it too seriously. Unless you really do want to be a sugar queen?" He wagged his eyebrows irritatingly.

You rolled your eyes at his usual foolishness. Glad to know he hasn't gotten fully soft on you. You would prefer for him to stick to his playfulness even if it annoys the crap out of you.

"And then there were two." Jimin starts, grabbing everyone's attention. Yeah just two left and it just had to be with Team Rocket. Oh, it would feel even better to win knowing you were up against them.

You were one step closer from a satisfying free full course meal cooked by Jimin and Luna's parents. Is that heaven or what? In the middle of fantasising and practically drooling about the impending prize, it dawned on you that once you win, (Yes, once and not if) you'd have to go on that dinner with Seokjin. An actual dinner. As in a date???

The thought made you slightly pale. You don't get why the thought of going on a date with him made you all nervous when you were practically stealing kisses from each other just awhile ago. The idea of going serious with him is nerve-wracking when just this evening, you wanted nothing more than to punch his guts. Now, you still do want to punch his guts but also kiss him.

You needed to snap out of it. All you did tonight is think of this guy. You were probably overthinking things. He probably doesn't even want anything serious with you. Maybe, he's just playing with you. Wait, no. That's too cruel even for him.

Your internal battle was stopped when Seokjin, himself, flicked your forehead.

"Oww! What was that for?" You grumply asked as you rubbed the sore spot.

"Your brain seems to be flying a couple hundred miles away. Y/n, now is not the time to be daydreaming about me. Did you even catch what I said?" Is he a mind reader? Most definitely not but even so, you are too embarrassed to say anything so you quietly hummed to him.

"What do you think? You agree with me?" You absentmindedly hummed again.

He clapped his hands together so loud, it made you jump out of your haze. "Good! That settles it. You're bobbing then."

"I'm sorry, come again?" You think you misheard him but it sounded like he said you're going bobbing? As in bobbing apples? What?

He stared at your dumbfounded expression. He realised that you weren't listening to the siblings' explanation and you obviously weren't also listening to his plan of attack just a few seconds ago.

He sighed and repeated everything to you even if he didn't want to. "We're bobbing apples for the last game. Since I don't want to ruin my perfectly good scar, you're up for it."

You scoffed. "And I want to ruin my perfectly good hair and makeup?"

"Hair dries off and without your makeup, you're still Katara. I, on the other hand, would just be some random handsome firebender without my scar. So really, it's better that you do it."

"But I don't want to do it!"

"Well boo hoo for you. You already agreed to it." He said and dragged you towards a large basin near Jimin and Luna.

"Wait, no I wasn't fully aware of the situation!"

"That's what you get for zoning out at a crucial time. It's too late now, you already agreed. A consent is a consent."

He was seriously being mean right now. You pulled your arm back to stop him but he wouldn't let go of you. So you kept your feet planted firmly on the ground. It ended up looking like he was dragging a very stubborn kid. "Y/n quit playing around! You need to do this."

"But Seokjin, I really don't want to do this." Your innocent looking eyes paired with that same whining voice that you used when you didn't make your first shot with the bean bag instantly turned him soft.

He stopped pulling you and placed a hand on your neck. The way he is genuinely looking at you makes you think that he'll probably switch with you. He didn't. Big shocker.

"Y/n, I know you don't want to do it but you need to." He started using that gentle voice of his that he used on you earlier. You knew you were a goner now. He's definitely found your weakness and he isn't afraid to use it on you. Curse him and his captivating soothing voice. What are you supposed to do now other than obey him?

"I, without a doubt, believe that you can do this. I'm sure you can defeat those two wobbuffets over there and we'd win! Don't you want that?" You nod your head yes.

"So will you please do me the favour of winning this game for us?" You nod your head yes without thinking twice. So much for being a woman of honour.

He smiled at you and caressed his thumb over your cheek. "Good girl." He said and you'll be damned if you're not going to do whatever it takes for him to call you that again. Forget everything. You want him to call you that again.

That is why you find yourself involuntarily walking up to the water and apple filled basin assigned to you.

"Step aside, filth." Seokjin jokingly muttered at James from Team Rocket. You hear Jimin and Luna giggle but you were too out of it to even appreciate his Zuko reference.

To your left, Jessie stands in front of her basin. She gives you a sly smirk and winks at you condescendingly. You want to burn your eyeballs.

You can't believe you're in this position. You can't believe you would willingly let your hair, makeup, and quite possibly even your costume get ruined. Lastly, you can't believe at just how much power Seokjin has had over you in a single night.

You stared hard at the apples. You've only bobbed for apples once when you were nine and it was one of the worst things you've ever done. You weren't even able to successfully capture an apple with how bad you were. Well, you're back more than ten years later and you're back with a newly found determination. Vengeance will be yours.

You hear Luna count down from three.

Seokjin's "Good girl" rang inside your head. No one's letting this magenta haired girl beside you win. You gripped the sides of the basin hard. Alright apples, it's time to face your doom!

"...One and go!"

Inhaling a sharp breath, you plunge your face inside the deep basin. You tried to keep your eyes open to see the apples but it was proving to be difficult as light was barely passing through the metal basin. Nonetheless, you kept biting around until you reached one apple. You tossed it outside the basin and took another breath, repeating the same actions.

You don't know how many times you did your little routine. All you know is that this is the longest minute of your life and you just want it to end so much. You were having such a miserable time. Your snot, your saliva, and even your sweat too were mixing with the water. Even though you avoid it so badly, you still manage to drink the water in your haste. Some of it even got inside your nose at one point. Bobbing for apples just might be one of the most disgusting things you could ever do. This must bloody well be worth it in the end.

Everytime you come out of the water, you hear the cheers of the people. You most certainly hear your partner, ear piercingly shrieking your name. It further feeds into your hunger to win. You don't care if you look absolutely ridiculous or that you were probably gonna end up throwing up later. All that matters is to win this for you and Seokjin.

At long last, Jimin blows an air horn to dramatically end the game. You came up gasping and snorting for air. How fucking graceful and beautiful. Seokjin rushes to you with a towel in his hand and wraps it around you right away. He pats you dry, careful to not smudge your very wet makeup.

Luna began making a speech on how much fun this year's Halloween Olympics were. You didn't pay much attention to her as Seokjin kept murmuring words of affirmation while he was still gently patting you dry. In all honesty, you could've done that yourself. But after what you were just subjected to, you definitely could use a little pampering.

"Again, thank you to everyone who participated in the games. As for the rest, you've been absolutely wonderful, cheering our players. Until next year's Halloween Olympics!" Luna concluded. Well, they did more than cheer, alright.

"And now, let's count the apples these lovely ladies bobbed so we can find out this year's victors!" Jimin continued and everyone counted magenta head's apples with him.

"Twelve apples in total!" Everyone cheered wildly and you felt your heart clench. That's a lot. What if you had less?

"Twelve?? Ha! Suck on that!" James ridiculed.

Seokjin just glared at him and he grabbed hold of one of your hands. He squeezed it tightly as everyone started counting your apples. Oh please be higher than twelve, please be higher than twelve, please be higher than twelve, please, oh please, oh please.

"Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen!"

"A grand total of eighteen apples! Wow that's a lot more! Which means we have this year's victors!" Jimin announced.

Eighteen? You bobbed six more apples than her? Wow, your nine year old self would be proud of you now.

Seokjin couldn't contain himself, he grabbed you by your waist and lifted you up in an embrace. "Y'all hear that? My girl just beat your asses badly! Suck on my poké balls!" He finally cracked and straight up insulted Team Rocket while still holding you up. You ignored the sickly sweet feeling that bubbled inside you when he referred to you as “my girl”.

"You will never rise from the ashes of your shame and humiliation!" Instead of a maniacal laugh, his windshield wiper laugh came out. The punchline was already perfect if only his stupid laugh didn't ruin it. As annoying as it is, you didn’t seem to be complaining about his laugh now in your head unlike always. Actually, it’s kind of endearing in a way. Crazy to think just how much one night can change. You wonder what happens now to the two of you.

Jimin and Luna called the both of you up on their makeshift stage to properly announce your rain of terror- I mean, your victory. Along with that, they are also going to announce the winner for best in costume. With all the action that’s been happening, people have forgotten that the awarding for best in costume is actually the main event of the night.

As Seokjin predicted earlier, you didn’t win. Some guy, Jung something something, dressed up as Shrek won by popular voting. You think he is also a part of Jimin’s friend group. You can’t be too sure as there are too many guys in that circle of friends for you to care. Which leads you to believe that maybe Jimin did some rigging of the results because his Shrek costume kinda deserves to be kicked out of the swamp. Not that you care though. As far as you’re concerned, you already won the grand prize as well.

“Told ya, you wouldn’t win best costume.” Seokjin says as you leave the stage.

“Neither did you. All because your scar is definitely on the wrong side.”

He groaned loudly. “You’re never gonna drop that, aren’t you?”

You laugh, thinking just how stupid he is for messing up his scar. For someone who seems to be able to quote directly from the show with ease, it’s really funny that he would overlook such a crucial detail.

“Neverrr!” You said in a singsong voice.

“Whatever.” He said while waving his hand in a dismissing manner. “It’s not like anyone else noticed it. I guess you were paying too much attention to my face, huh?”

You blushed at his remark. “Jeez, get over yourself, will you?”

You rushed your steps towards the house to leave him. You are sure Jimin and Luna are now tearing it down on the dance floor. He easily caught up with you though with those long legs of his and draped an arm over your shoulders.

Cackling at your flusteredness, he said, “Okay, then! So let’s say you weren’t gawking at me the entire time for you to notice my mistake.”

You hummed at him.

“Then I guess the only explanation why people seem to have failed to notice is because of my handsome face! They are too distracted by my beauty to notice my misplaced scar. Don’t you agree?” You elbowed him hard and left his yelping, laughing ass. What a weirdo. You giddily smiled though.

The rest of the night went by pretty fast. It was filled with dancing and laughing with people you know and don’t know. You even got to hang out a little bit with Team Rocket. You wouldn’t say you’d become friends with them but they aren’t all that bad.

The only missing thing though is that you didn’t share any more “personal” moments with Seokjin. He disappeared off with his group of friends after you left him. Not that you were fully expecting anything to happen, but you were slightly disappointed. Luna was quite chill about it at the start. She was probably wanting to discuss it in private. You know, for your own sake. But as she got tipsier and tipsier until she was full on drunk, she was practically squealing about it every few seconds. Hence, why you decided to socialise with other people which you would never do. Honestly, what is going on tonight and who are you even?

After the party, you remained to clean up. But Jimin told you that none of you would have to deal with the mess right now. He understands that everyone is completely knackered at this point. There were still a few people left but he ushered you to go home now. He assured you that he could deal with them and his hammered sister.

With that, you said thanks and hugged each other goodbye.

Walking out of their house, you thought back to earlier when you were thoroughly convinced to stay at home. You wonder how things would be if you had stayed. You would have totally missed out on so much! But you also wonder what would happen now. It seemed like Seokjin was unmistakably giving you the vibes that he likes you. You were too. So why did he suddenly vanish?

“You want me to walk you home?” A very familiar voice said from behind you. Ah, speak of the devil.

You faced him and smiled a little too big of a smile. “You live in the complete opposite direction. What are you talking about?”

He chuckled and made his way to you. “I was just thinking, what kind of gentleman would I be if I let you walk home all by yourself at 2 in the morning?”

He stopped a few feet in front of you. You find yourself a bit irritated with the distance between you two. You wanted to be a bit closer than that so you made the move to get nearer to him. “I think I can handle myself pretty well.” You said as you approached him until you were inches away from him.

“Oh, I’m sure you can.”

There was a brief moment of silence that fell between you. It wasn’t at all awkward or anything unpleasant. Actually, it was the complete opposite. You were just drinking everything in.

“Surprisingly, I had heaps of fun tonight. I never thought I would ever say that in the company of Kim Seokjin.” You said in a hush tone. You don’t know why you were speaking in such a way. The entire moment just seemed too delicate.

“I told you, you need to put a little faith in me, sugar queen.” He whispered. You smile at the term of endearment he had given you tonight due to your Katara outfit.

“I think I already have.” You said and his face started inching down towards yours.

Just the mere thought of finally getting to properly kiss him released thousands of butterflies in your stomach. You wanted to rush him to finally feel his lips but at the same time, you wanted to drag this moment as long as you possibly can. If someone told you this morning that you would be having these thoughts as you were about to kiss Kim Seokjin tonight,you’d laugh at their face. You’d probably also tell them that you’d rather slam your tongue in a car door.

He took his time with you, also wanting to milk every second of this moment. There was no need to rush anything. He was literally ghosting his lips against yours. He was probably teasing you. It annoyed you so much. So much so that you made the executive decision to take full control of the situation. You made the move to press your lips against his but before you could, someone walked out of the house and started yelling towards you two.

“SEOKJIN HYUUUUUNG!” A guy dressed up as Snoopy literally yeeted himself between you two and placed an arm around him. What is everyone’s deal with interrupting you two? At this point, it’s like the universe is telling you a sign or something. Wait, what?

You frown at the thought you just had. It’s a stupid thought. But then why are you having this sinking feeling inside you?

“Hoseok, for the last time, I’m walking home. I live just two blocks away. I don’t have a car to drive you home.” He told the guy, obviously exasperated just like you.

Hoseok started whining and arguing at the older guy. It’s clear that he was dead drunk. You wouldn’t try to argue with him right now. Seems pointless since everything will fly over his head.

“But why walk when you can drive???”

“Hoseok-ah! You’re really gonna ask Seokjin hyung to get you home when I’m here?” Another guy came out of the house. You turned to the voice and saw Yoongi approaching, dressed up as Garfield. You’re friends with him because he seemed to be the closest to Seokjin so you see him more often than not.

Hoseok immediately let go of Seokjin and went to hold on to Yoongi. Yoongi seemed to be in a rush to get home. Can’t blame him. It’s really late and it’s been a long night. So he said goodbye right away. But before they could leave, he turned to you.

“Before I forget, by the way, Taehyung wanted me to tell you to call him. He said you haven’t been replying to him all night. I think he wants to take you out later.” He made a fast but pointed stare towards Seokjin when he said the last part. It seemed like his way of telling him to do something about it. You didn’t notice though.

“Oh, okay. Thanks Yoongi. Good night and drive safely!”

With that, the two went off.

Another silence fell between you two. This time though, it wasn’t as comfortable. You didn’t know whether to continue off from where you got interrupted and how to continue. The both of you looked like you were in deep thought.

Taehyung. You completely forgot about him. Now, you feel really bad and shameful.

You notice Seokjin pulling something from his trousers that appeared to be two small envelopes. That’s probably your prize.

He held them both and looked at them for a few seconds. “I want to ask you something.” He started, not looking you in the eyes. He’s nervous. Is he going to ask you on a date? Well, that just made you nervous.

“Yeah?”

He didn’t say anything for a while. You watch him clearly having some sort of argument with himself. It felt like an eternity when he finally looked you directly in your eyes.

“Y/n, I want to-” Once again, he got cut off. Maybe the universe really is saying something here.

Your phone started ringing. It was Taehyung, calling you.

“I...You should answer that.” He instructed you. You should. But you didn’t make the move to. Your eyes switched back and forth from your phone to Seokjin a couple times. You were completely torn and didn’t know what to do.

You were just going to answer his call. What’s the big deal about that? It’s not like he knew everything that happened and was supposed to happen between you and Seokjin. It’s not like he was going to chastise you for all of that.

Before you pressed the answer button, the call dropped and you became tense.

Seokjin sensed your inner turmoil. He didn’t like seeing you like this. But he thought that this was becoming too much to handle right now. He looks at the envelopes he is holding. Sighing, he can’t believe he is about to do this.

He reached out both envelopes towards you. “Here, take them both.”

“What? Why?”

“Take Taehyung with you.” You could not believe what you were hearing right now. To say you were dumbfounded is an understatement.

Seeing as you made no move to get them, he took your free hand and placed the envelopes in your grasp.

“Listen, it’s bad enough that Taehyung didn’t get to enjoy the night. I think it’s only fair if he went with you.”

“But you worked hard for this too. It was a team effort between us.” You told him, still not understanding why he would give up the prize just like that when he was so adamant to win them the entire night.

“I know. But it’s fine, really. Don’t worry, I could always find a way to get free food from Jimin. Besides, you deserve to spend some time with your Aang.”

You still didn’t fully understand the situation at hand. But it appears that he is not going to let you go until you accept the prize from him.

You finally conceded and pocketed the envelopes.

“It’s getting late. We should really go home. It’s been one hell of a tiring night.” You nodded at his statement.

“Thanks for being an amazing partner tonight, Y/n. I genuinely enjoyed every single moment of it.”

“Me too, Seokjin. Me too.”

You wanted to hug him. But he didn’t make any other move. He was clearly just waiting for you to leave. You thought, maybe this isn’t the right time with him. With all the interruptions and should haves tonight, it’s most likely for the best to leave things here.

With a heavy heart, you gave him one final look and said goodbye. With an equally heavy heart, he watched you leave and disappear down the street.

“What the fuck was that all about?” Jimin’s sudden appearance from the front door made Seokjin jump.

“Yah! Couldn’t you have been a bit more careful?” He asked the younger boy while placing a hand over his chest to calm himself down.

Jimin paid no attention whatsoever to his agony. “You deserve to spend some time with your Aang.” He mocked Seokjin. “What on earth were you thinking?”

“I don’t want to- hang on. You were listening to our conversation???” Seokjin felt violated. Does this boy not know the meaning of privacy? First he kept interrupting you two all night then now he eavesdrops on your conversation and has the audacity to mock Seokjin.

Jimin did not feel nor look like he regretted what he had done. If anything, he looks really mad at Seokjin. “That’s besides the point. The point is, why are you just letting her go? You already had her!”

“No, I don’t think I ever had her to begin with. I mean, come on! She went dressed up as Katara and I’m dressed as Zuko. I think it was never meant to be.”

Feeling utterly frustrated, Jimin rubbed his face harshly. He had half the mind to take off his boots and impale his older best friend with them.

“That’s just bullshit! You’re too superstitious. You don’t listen to these signs! You take matters to your own hands.”

Seokjin knew that Jimin wouldn’t understand his point of view. He’s the type of person to chase anything and everything if he so pleases it. Which fair play to him, isn’t a bad thing. But that’s not how Seokjin rolls.

“Listen, you won’t understand me.” Seokjin started and Jimin openly agreed with him. “All I’m saying is if it’s not your time, then it’s not your time. You need to accept that and patiently wait. I did what I had to do tonight.”

Jimin did not respond to him. Truthfully, he does get what Seokjin is trying to explain. He does not agree with it at all though and still thinks it’s bullshit. But he can’t really do anything other than to support his stupid best friends and to let them learn things on their own. When that happens, he’ll for sure throw another party.

“Wow. Just wow. That’s rough, buddy.” Is all he can reply to Seokjin.

Indeed it was.

#bangtan #bts #bts scenarios #seokjin x reader #jin x reader #bts x reader #bts fanfiction #bts fanfic #bts imagine #bts humor #kim seokjin #bts au #bts one shot #seokjin oneshot #seokjin fanfic #jin oneshot #jin fanfic

77 notes · View notes

vanaera · 4 years

Text

Defining Epilogues (ksj)

Synopsis: Seokjin thinks he could always see the end of something before it even comes. When an annoying girl starts to rent the weirdest books from his shop, all Seokjin could see is how she will be the one to end him.

Characters: Seokjin x Female Reader

Trope/Au: Book rental shop owner!ksj x animator/artist!you (onesided enemies to lovers)

Genre: Fluff, comedy that’s close to crack

Wordcount: 6.3k

Warnings: Books with weird titles and secondhand-embarrassment-inducing sfw sex jokes (PG-15 Rating)

A/N: Happy birthday to my best girl @sophrosinn!!! This is my gift for you! This fic is done with the great help of the ever wonderful @senfleurs who edited this story and stayed with me for the past 24 hours while I cry, laugh, and panic writing this fic! This fic also ended up helping me ride out a massive writer’s block.

If Seokjin ever prides himself for something, it’s on his ability to tell how things will end the moment he sees them. He can tell when someone is about to fail their exam. He can sense a fight within a crowd before it even happens. He can stand at the end of the street and know the woman with the umbrella is about to break up with her boyfriend. And it always ends with Seokjin being right.

Seokjin’s thankful for this skill because he’s been able to learn when it’s the right time to pursue something or when it’s time to give up. If it weren’t for this ability, he would have not been able to accomplish his dream of having a book rental shop that actually sells. Seokjin just didn’t expect he would have to start thinking twice about this skill soon after his shop’s opening. All because of a Y/N L/N who appears in his life like a wild Pokemon.

From the start, Seokjin was already certain of one thing: Y/N is far from his type. For one, he didn’t even like having her as a customer.

“Hey, I think that girl’s been staring at our way for three hours now. Are you sure I’m not supposed to go help her out?”

Seokjin turns around to face his assistant and he hates that he’s able to see that girl from his peripheral. Seokjin shakes his head and turns back to the new books he’s been putting on the database, “I’m sure, Jungkook. Go back to work.”

“Are you really sure? I think she’s the type who’s too shy to ask for help and instead, hopes to send a telepathic message by burning holes on our heads.”

“I’m sure, Jungkook,” Seokjin repeats with a sigh. “Now why don’t you try working on that next book instead of stalling?”

“I’m not stalling—”

“Hello. I want to borrow this book.”

Seokjin looks up from his counter. The girl stands in front of him, staring straight into his eyes as she pushes the book his way.

Natural bust enlargement with total mind power: How to use the other 90% of your mind to increase the size of your breasts by Donald Wilson.

Seokjin looks back at his work and sighs, “Jungkook, get this.”

Jungkook picks up the book. He must have been taken aback as he looks at Seokjin, confused.

Seokjin closes his eyes and waves him off. “Don’t even ask. Just do the usual.”

“Okay,” Jungkook says. “Uh, ma’am, please write your name here. Okay, so Ms. Y/N L/N, you’re gonna return this—wait, you’ve been borrowing this book for three weeks?

“Yes. Why?”

“U-um, n-nothing. Just curious. It only has 141 pages and you’re not, um, finished yet?”

“Well, I want to learn more about how to mind control my breasts to make them bigger.”

“Uhh…”

“Alright,” Seokjin stands up and nudges Jungkook away. “Ms. Y/N L/N, you’ll need to return this book five days from now, on March 23rd.” Seokjin slams his date stamp on the paper. “If you fail to return this book on time, we’ll have to charge you $1 for every day past the due date. And if the copy gets destroyed or lost, we’ll also have to charge you. Understood?”

“Yep.”

“Now, that will be $17.”

Y/N places the money on the counter and heads for the door. But she doesn’t leave without sending one last stare into Seokjin’s way.

Seokjin plops back down on his seat and clicks his tongue. “She didn’t read the book again.”

Jungkook rolls his chair next to him and asks “Aren’t you being judgmental? Maybe she’s just a slow reader.”

“No, she does not read it. The author didn’t mean literal mind control as she said. The book is about conditioning your mindset to a more positive view of your body image.”

Jungkook looks at him with his forehead scrunched, “Wait, you’ve read that book?”

Seokjin’s lips turn into a frown and he rolls his chair away from his assistant. “Don’t even ask.”

When Seokjin first met Y/N L/N, he was convinced that she’d be the type of customer he’d hate the most. The type that comes in, picks a book, stays for god knows long, and leaves without borrowing anything. She used to do this back when she first came to his shop within its first week of opening. She kept the tradition strong for a solid month, and Seokjin was convinced that some highschoolers noticed her behavior and attempted to use his shop as their new hangout spot. He’s glad his shop was getting packed as the days went on. It’s just a different story when a hoard of teens started flocking around his shop without renting anything and prevented actual renters from entering his shop. Seokjin had to put up “No loitering” and “Maximum of 3 hours stay” signs on his windows to end this money-ripping tactic once and for all.

That didn’t seem to stop Y/N, though, as she would still come to his shop to pick a book to read right in front of his face without ever renting it. This time, however, she made sure to follow the three hours maximum to avoid getting called out. This went on for another week until Seokjin decided he had to talk with her about this. That didn’t end as well as he had hoped, as Y/N just looked at him straight in the eye and left immediately after he got his last word out.

Seokjin remembers getting so embarrassed at how he unknowingly did a monologue to a single-person audience. He wasn’t left mulling over it for long as Y/N came back the next day and actually began to rent a book. She still stays the three hours max limit most of the days but she doesn’t let a week pass without renting a book. She also manages to lower her ‘miser’ type level to the ‘weird borrower’ level in Seokjin’s annoyance scale. Having a customer with a renting history surrounding the most ridiculous-sounding books is much better than having them rent none at all.

Albeit, that’s a bit of a stretch, too, as Seokjin finds out that Y/N’s not exactly the weird borrower type, but the weird borrower who comes again on time just to rent the same book for weeks. And she doesn’t even read them. Seokjin confirms it one night when Y/N came to his shop a minutes-breadth away from the closing time.

“Wait!” Y/N screams, running towards the shop.

Seokjin stops pulling down the metal gate to give her a glare, “I’m already closing, L/N. Come back tomorrow.”

“But I have to borrow something!”

“Oh no you don’t—”

It’s too late though, as Y/N slips under Seokjin's elbow and pushes the unlocked glass door open.

Hearing his bell on the counter ring for consecutive times from the incessant taps of the infamous L/N, Seokjin knows he’s already lost the fight. He sighs as he makes his way back to the counter.

“What do you want?”

“This,” Y/N smiles.

The Beginner’s Guide to Sex in the Afterlife by David Staume.

Seokjin eyes her as he picks up the book, “This again? You’re still not done reading 164 pages after, what, two months?”

Y/N gulps as she clasps her hands in front of her, “Well, um, I still don’t get how people engage in sexual intercourse in the afterlife.”

Seokjin decides not to reply and continues to do his job.

“If they believe in a god. Or gods. Wouldn’t they worry about their god seeing them do...lewd stuff?”

Seokjin feels his right eye start to twitch.

“Unless...their god is a sex god?”

Seokjin closes the book louder than necessary. He pins Y/N with a glare. “Look, Y/N. This book is about sexual energy transcending material life and even moving to the astral world. Just like how people pass away. What made you think that this book was about literally having sex in the afterlife?”

Y/N looks at him with wide eyes, “You read the book?”

Seokjin scowls. “Don’t turn this on me. We’re talking about you. Why do you keep borrowing books you don’t even read?”

Y/N looks at him then back at her clasped hands. “You don’t have to know,” she mutters under her breath, taking Seokjin by shock when she slams the payment on the counter and leans over to stamp the renting slip with the due date herself.

Seokjin tries to call after her retreating figure by the door. “Wait, I didn’t even tell you the—”

“Yeah, $1 for each day after the due date and you’re gonna charge my card if I destroy the book,” Y/N yells over her shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’m gonna come back on time!”

Seokjin pales in his seat. Her announcement sounded like a death sentence.

He wishes he wasn’t so easily bothered at the slightest of things Y/N said. He wishes he didn’t spend too much time deciphering a way to stop her. Most of all, he wishes he didn’t become too intrigued by her to the point he’s started to care about what she’s actually doing.

And Seokjin hates it. He hates how he stresses himself reading the books Y/N borrows. He hates how he wastes his time trying to re-arrange the books in the shelves just so Y/N would start picking books with titles that actually made sense (which he learned is futile as Y/N had a penchant for finding weird books around his shop whenever and wherever). And, Seokjin hates how he basically studied her long enough to memorize her pattern. Long enough to realize that underneath all that weird borrowing behavior, Y/N just comes to his shop to stare at him. Moreover, Seokjin hates how he confirmed it with a friend.

“Y/N must be making you quite busy, no?” Jimin asks over a mug of coffee.

“You know her?” Seokjin asks in disbelief.

“Yeah,” Jimin nods, “I’m friends with her. I consulted their animation company for the ad I told you I was making for Books to Tell. She was the one who assisted me and we just clicked. Especially after I learned that she’s also friends with Namjoon.”

Seokjin’s eyes go wide, “She’s also friends with Namjoon?!”

“Yeah, they kinda knew each other in college. Why are you so shocked? You were in the same major as Namjoon. You could have seen her with him around uni.”

“Uh, no, I didn’t.”

Jimin rubs his chin and shrugs, “Well, it’s a small world then. So, how is she? I actually told her to go visit your shop when you first opened.”

Seokjin chokes on his coffee and Jimin hurries to pat his back. “God, why are you like this today? Is something wrong—"

“How come you’re just telling me all of this now?!” Seokjin cuts his friend with a glare, making Jimin jolt in surprise.

“W-what? Was I supposed to tell you about this earlier?”

“Yes! Y/N’s been annoying me for four months now!”

“I…didn’t know about that,” Jimin steps back and sits in his chair. “I just told her to take a look at your shop and she said ‘okay.’ She didn’t say anything after that so I figured it left her mind. I didn’t know she was a regular in your shop. She just brought it up again yesterday when she told me how…” Jimin zips his lips and shrugs.

“How what?”

“...how she likes your face.”

Seokjin chokes again. This time on his own spit. He should have seen this coming. He was long aware that some of his renters only went into his shop to get a look at his face. Even if he had to suffer through the tedious cycle of rejecting their queries for his number and offers of coffee, some of them ended up as his regulars. Seokjin didn’t mind. Money is money after all. He just didn’t expect Y/N to be like them after all the months he spent trying to decode her actual intentions.

Seokjin tried to brush Y/N off just like he did with the previous renters. Although she hasn’t pulled off anything yet, Seokjin believes it’s better to set things straight before it happens. The sooner he ends this, the faster he’ll find his peace again.

Seokjin hired his neighbor, Jungkook, who’s been bugging him for a part-time job for so long and made him his assistant. He entrusted him with entertaining the customers so Seokjin wouldn’t have to deal with Y/N bugging him anymore. And like always, that plan goes down the drain because Y/N always, always ends up in front of Seokjin even when he’s countlessly told her to go to Jungkook.

Seokjin’s tired of stressing over her so he forces himself to ignore her and the ridiculous books she borrows. But even that proves to be hard when Y/N hasn’t even done anything untoward but to stare at him from time to time. And give him a headache with the books she borrows like The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America by Julian Montague, 50 Sad Chairs by Bill Keaggu, and Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich by James Yannes. For after all the progress he thought he’s put in, Seokjin still finds himself reading these books all because of a goddamn curiosity he couldn’t put down.

It becomes harder when Namjoon and his friends pick up Seokjin’s weird setup with Y/N. And mutual friends being the annoying mutual friends they are, Namjoon and the gang begins to invite him and Y/N to hangout.

“Why is she here?” Seokjin mutters to Namjoon the moment he sees their table.

“Who?”

“You know who.”

“Oh, Y/N,” Namjoon prolongs the syllable as if her name is the most amazing thing ever. Seokjin grimaces. “Why? You got a problem with her?”

“No,” Seokjin instantly denies. “I’m just asking why you invited her. It used to be just us for so long.”

“Yeah, it’s always been just us that’s why it became boring.”

“Boring?”

“Yeah, I’m getting tired of your face,” Namjoon chuckles, stepping ahead of Seokjin. “Besides, what’s wrong with adding a new friend? Y/N is cool.”

Oh hell yeah, Y/N is cool. She beams at Seokjin like she always does as if their legs weren’t just casually touching after their friends made it a point to choose a cramped barbecue restaurant and sit the two of them next to each other.

“So Seokjin, I heard you and Y/N are getting close,” Namjoon starts and Hoseok hoots in support.

Jimin, being as annoying as ever decides to ride in too. “Yeah, why don’t you tell us how you met.”

“I was doing my business and Y/N just rented a book. That is all,” Seokjin says dismissively as he grabs his shot glass and downs the gin in one go.

“Are you sure, that’s all, Seokjin?” Rose leans forward, grinning, “Maybe you’re hiding something from us.”

“I’m not—”

“He’s not hiding anything. That’s true.”

The table pauses as all eyes dart to Y/N. A wave of self-consciousness washes over her and she directs her focus back on her clasped hands on the table, “S-Seokjin’s right. I just rent books from him.”

Seokjin glances at Y/N then back at his drink. It’s the first time she actually addressed him that night after engaging animatedly with Namjoon, Jimin, and Rose for the past hour. The table nods slowly and Seokjin guesses they’re already about to drop the subject. Seokjin’s lips tug in a small smile. Maybe tonight’s not gonna go as bad as he initially thought.

However, Jungkook, being the ever-living oblivious fuck that he, must’ve not gotten the memo, decides to stir up the subject again.

“No, I don’t think so. Seokjin and Y/N do have something going on. I catch Y/N constantly looking his way and Seokjin for some reason, knows every single weird-ass book Y/N borrows.”

Seokjin’s lips part in shock. Jeon Jungkook did not just give him away like that. “Of course, I’ll know those books. I bought them to rent them to people. That’s my business!”

Jungkook blinks. “But you know every single detail about them.”

The table goes silent. It doesn’t last very long, though, as Rose and Jimin break into simultaneous laughter while Namjoon repeatedly slaps his thigh. Hoseok shoots, “Oh my god, you must’ve kept on buying books with weird titles just to keep Y/N borrowing!”

“What? I did not!” Seokjin yells but his voice is lost in the sea of laughter and teasing. Seeing as there’s no hope in making his friends stop anytime soon, Seokjin decides to lean on his seat and cross his arms in silence. His friends are going to jump onto another topic eventually. Looking at his empty plate, his eyes glance at the person who’s equally quiet next to him.

Y/N is busy fiddling with the seams of her jacket. She looks up from time to time to their friends to wave off their playful jibes at her with a laugh.

Seokjin feels an annoyance prick on his skin. His friends invited him over just to tease him. Seokjin is sure it’s only him because he’s the only one who’s gotten frustrated over this debacle while Y/N sits chill beside him. Y/N doesn’t even break a sweat laughing with the others as if she hasn’t been bothering him for months now. Seokjin swears he’s gonna decline the next time his friends invite him again. Or at least try to, because he’s gullible to their promises of “Hey, they’re giving out free drinks. Free is free!”

It’s the same as that one fateful night.

Seokjin stops in his tracks and grabs Hoseok by the shoulder. “Why is she here again?”

“Who?”

“Y/N.”

Hoseok raises a brow, “Why do you keep asking this question when you already know the answer?”

“I don’t,” Seokjin shakes his head. “I don’t know why you keep inviting her whenever I decide to join you guys.”

“Oh, don’t be such a grump. Y/N’s our friend, too.”

Feeling Seokjin still in his spot, Hoseok turns around and sighs, “Hey, we only see each other ‘bout twice a month, you know. Let’s have some fun, okay?”

Seokjin should have known Hoseok’s definition of ‘fun’ is far from his as he sits across Y/N in the restaurant. All their friends out of sight.

Hoseok started a game after dinner where everyone had to draw a piece of paper from the cup being passed around. The partners would then have to leave together in a form of a friendly date. It’s similar to seven minutes in heaven but messed up because instead of seven minutes together, they had to spend the rest of the night with the person they’ll end up picking.

Seokjin should have known that this was all planned when Namjoon oh so coincidentally pulled Rose, who everyone knows he’s been secretly crushing on. Meanwhile, Hoseok, Jimin, and Jungkook obviously ended up drawing each other’s name just to purposely get Namjoon and Rose together. And well…him and Y/N together. Seokjin sighs as he stands up. He just had to get this done and over as quickly as he possibly could.

“Look, Y/N—”

“I know a good place near here.”

Seokjin halts. He looks at the girl who’s already looking up at him with wide eyes. "There's a cafe down the block and I heard it's really nice."

"Uhh, that sounds amazing. I guess. Look, Y/N-"

"They let you play with board games and borrow books, too."

Seokjin scratches his head, "Uhh, I don't know about that, Y/N. I haven't had the time to check them out yet...I mean...if those cafes are good...or bad," Seokjin internally cringes at his words. Making believable excuses was never really his forte.

"Oh, it's good!" Y/N smiles, “I’ve tried it before and I had a really good time."

"Uhh-"

"It's really good. You can trust me on this.”

“No, I can’t,” Seokjin says before he could think about it and he immediately feels the guilt pang in his heart when he sees Y/N’s eyes drop to her feet

“That’s…okay. I'm sorry. I just wanted to make up for the days, and uh, nights I probably made you uncomfortable. I thought, maybe you'd enjoy having a few drinks at the cafe since I always see you with a to-go cup on your counter."

Seokjin looks at her with surprise written on his face and Y/N flushes. "Sorry. I tend to observe... stuff. I’m sorry," she repeats again, voice dripping with remorse.

Seokjin bites his lip. He didn’t mean to make her sad. He just wants to…run away from her. The reason? Well…Seokjin doesn’t exactly know why. Maybe it had to do with the feeling that nagged at him since the night started. The feeling that something may happen tonight that he wouldn’t like. He tends to prioritize his disposition because more often than not, his gut feeling has saved him countless times from unnecessary drama and unpleasantries. But for tonight, Seokjin decides to shake them off. It wouldn’t hurt to take up Y/N’s offer, right? It’s just some coffee.

“Okay. Um, I forgive you.”

“You do?” Y/N perks up, lips curving up again.

Seokjin looks away, “Yeah. I think I’m being difficult, too. I’m sorry if I also made you uncomfortable.”

Y/N waves her hands, “Oh no, don’t apologize. You don’t make me uncomfortable. Far from it, actually.”

Seokjin doesn’t know what to say to that so he clears his throat, “Okay, so...let’s go to the cafe?”

“Sure,” Y/N grins.

It feels weird to walk side by side with Y/N when he’s gotten used to having a counter between them. It’s even weirder that he actually enjoyed their time together inside the cafe. The cakes were delicious, the coffee was amazing, and the books and board games were a wonderful addition. Seokjin didn’t know he'd actually have fun playing scrabble against Y/N.

“I can’t believe I lost again!”

Seokjin chuckles at her, “That’s because you kept using short words.”

Well, it really is fun when he’s winning.

Y/N pushes the game to the side, “I don’t want to play scrabble anymore.”

“That’s okay,” Seokjin chuckles, “I can find another game I’m sure to win again.”

The two of them fall in a comfortable silence. It’s the first time Seokjin felt this way around Y/N. For all the months she came to his shop, he did nothing but be forever on his toes around her.

“You know...I really like your face.”

Or maybe not. Seokjin tenses up in his seat.

Y/N puts her hands up, “Oh, I didn’t mean it like, in a bad way. I mean, I like your face. It’s so...expressive.”

Seokjin looks at her, confused. Expressive?

“You’ve asked me before about why I keep on borrowing books I don’t even read and I told you that you didn’t have to know. It seems right to tell you the reason behind it now..” Y/N fiddles with her hands, “Since you’re now paying attention to me.”

Seokjin knows this isn’t true but he doesn’t say anything.

“You see...I’ve been fumbling around my work for so long. Well, it’s more like a personal project for now. I’ve been meaning to pitch in the idea of a lighthearted romcom series to my department. I just wanted to have a solid draft first so I could at least let them see my vision. I’m pretty bad with words. I need things to be spelled out completely and I don’t think I can do it with this one so I will have to get the drawings complete instead,” Y/N scratches her head. “I want this pitch to have a solid chance. I’ve been working on it for almost three years now. I just can’t seem to finish it because I didn’t know what to do with my lead male. Until I heard about you from Jimin.”

“Me?” Seokjin points to himself.

“Yeah. You have this look in your face that just exudes…greatness. It’s like you’re telling me...‘I’m a star.’”

“Huh?”

“What I mean is, your expressions are perfect for a leading guy!” Y/N squeals, “Oh my god, I just found the right words.”

Seokjin laughs nervously, “Y/N, just so you know, you’re not making any sense right now.”

Y/N cautiously fixes herself again, “Uh, what I’m trying to say is, you have this aesthetic around you that’s just perfect for the male lead I am envisioning. It’s easy for you to make various expressions that stretch from annoyance to glee and beyond. I’m really surprised at how well you could do that. If you think about it, you can be an actor if you’d like. You’re even handsome.”

Seokjin flushes at the sudden compliment.

Y/N continues, “And that’s that. You became my muse and I kept visiting for inspiration because I obviously couldn’t take pictures without your permission. That’s illegal.”

Seokjin should be appalled. He’s never met a person before who said such...things aloud in the open as if they’re just talking about the weather. But here he is, looking at Y/N, and feeling at peace. Maybe it had to do with him finally getting the answers he’s been looking for for months.

“Well, you should have just told me from the start. I wouldn’t have been...too weirded out by you.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry. My bad,” Y/N softly laughs.

“I thought you’re purposely messing with me with the way you pick the weirdest titles from my shop.”

Y/N awkwardly shrugs, “Yeah, sorry ‘bout that.”

Seokjin chuckles but halts. Why does Y/N bother to pick the weirdest titles when she can just pick from the hundreds of normal-looking books he has? She won’t even read them anyway.

Seokjin clears his throat, “Um, Y/N, why do you always borrow the weird-looking titles?”

Y/N’s eyes grow wide. She darts her eyes at her lap, “Uhh, I just, uh, do.”

Seokjin isn’t convinced. No one spends time finding the weirdest of books in a shop ‘just because they do.’ Seokjin feels the familiar itch of his curiosity. He needs to know why. Only then will he probably stop finding a pattern in the ridiculous-titled books Y/N borrows.

“Okay, you can keep doing your...inspiration thing.”

“What?”

“I’m not angry about what you said. You don’t have to worry. Everyone has their own inspiration. You can keep coming to my shop. After all, you’re my regular renter.”

Y/N’s smile immediately grows into a grin, “Okay. Thank you, Seokjin.”

Seokjin feels his chest lighten with satisfaction. But at the same time, he can’t deny the feeling that he’s probably signed himself up to something he’s unprepared for. He presses his lips together. His gut feeling was right. He doesn’t like this night.

Seokjin confirms this when tomorrow comes as well as the following days. Y/N comes in like usual in the afternoon, maxes her three hours, and finds a book with a weird title to rent. Nothing had changed much except now, Seokjin had to see her stare at him openly and not behind a book, as she intermittently looked towards his counter then back to her sketchpad. He regrets having ever welcomed Y/N because now he thinks he’s the one who’s weird for feeling his heart pound in delight whenever Y/N looks at him.

Seokjin hates what he’s become. He hates how he simultaneously dislikes and likes Y/N’s presence in his shop. He likes how Y/N has begun using her three hours to tell him another story from work. He likes how she makes him laugh even when her jokes don’t make any sense. He likes how easy it is for him to tell her his own stories—his dreams, his fears, his past relationships. He could even say the most ridiculous musings he ever had without feeling ashamed of it because Y/N understands. But at the same time, he can’t help but dislike how he’s started to constantly wait for her return in his shop. He hates how he instantly feels so down when he realizes Y/N won’t be able to make it to his shop. He dislikes how he finds himself oversharing stuff without feeling any guilt when all his life, he made it sure not to say to let people know too much. The more they know, the easier it is for them to inflict hurt. Because they know what part is gonna hurt the most. And so, Seokjin tells Y/N everything other than the things he feels about her. The things he really wishes to say.

All his life, Seokjin has always anticipated seeing how things will end up. Because he knows he’s right. And he always almost is. He knows that this relationship he has with Y/N is purely transactional. Y/N just kept coming because she needs someone who’ll give her inspiration. Seokjin knows if he ever lets his feelings out, he’ll only end up breaking his own heart. He knows how this will end and yet he can’t but wish he isn’t always right. Now, he sits fearfully in anticipation of the day Y/N stops her visits as soon as she finishes what she started coming to his shop for.

Turns out, Seokjin didn’t have to wait very long. Because on one Thursday morning, he finds a copy of Y/N's final draft on his counter and no presence of the girl. Y/N doesn't appear during the following week. Or the week after that.

"What do I do?" Seokjin mumbles. He covers his face with his hands as he slumps on Jimin’s dining table. The rain thundering outside fits his current mood so well. Seokjin hates it.

"Well, you shouldn't have been so hostile to her from the start," Jimin says with crossed arms.

"Don't you think I already know that? I've already played through all the different things that could’ve happened if I didn't pick on her borrowing habit."

"It's not that," Namjoon says. "We meant how you usually react when we invite her over to our hangouts."

"Yeah, you always look so stiff next to Y/N even after we set you guys up on a date," Jungkook remarks. "Anyone would have looked at you and would’ve commented on how uncomfortable you looked right next to her."

It's true. He felt uncomfortable whenever he sat beside Y/N. In his defense, it no longer felt like the uncomfort he felt when they had first met. This feeling of uncomfort felt different, it’s brought by the heat that fills his body when Y/N's leg brushes against his.

And it didn't help that earlier that day, Y/N pulled quite a stunt on him.

"Hey, you have something on your hair," Y/N points at his head. But before he could pick it up on his own, Y/N had already leaned over the counter and picked it away for him. She came so close that Seokjin could clearly see how long her lashes actually were and how pink and soft her lips looked. He feels his Adam's apple bob up and down.

"There," she smiles, "All handsome again."

Seokjin feels heat rush to his ears as he looks away.

Seokjin looks at Jungkook, “Well, I can’t control how I feel. You know how bad I act when I’m not okay.”

“So you’re not okay being by her side in public but you’re okay when you guys are alone?” Jungkook eyes him, “Don’t you dare deny it because I saw you guys getting chummy across the counter.

Seokjin gulps. He knows what Jungkook is talking about. He didn’t know where and when but somewhere along the way, he and Y/N started to blur any nuance of personal space around each other. He just found it natural to tuck her hair behind her ear when it falls on her face as she draws. He found it natural to let his fingers brush on Y/N’s own as he grabs a book from the upper shelf for her.

“You must have been watching too many romantic movies.”

“Why?”

“You’re really acting like a main lead now. You’re making me feel as if I’m the female lead.”

Seokjin freezes and tears his eyes away from Y/N. He pulls the book and unceremoniously pushes it to her. “Here’s your book,” he mutters before walking back to his counter.

“Hey, don’t just leave me here!”

And Seokjin found it natural to let his actions do the talking for him instead.

“Do you trust me?” Y/N asks as she looks up at him. “I already made you look good on paper. What more if we go to this amusement park together?”

“I don’t trust you,” Seokjin says but his hand grips on hers tighter.

“Of course, I’d feel better when we’re alone,” Seokjin grunts as he grabs his coffee, “Who would want to see two people touching each other in public? Not to say people who engage in PDA too many times will eventually break up since the pressure from the public-”

“We’re not telling you to engage in PDA,” Namjoon cuts him. “What we’re trying to say is that, why do you refuse to act on your feelings?

“Yeah,” Jimin seconds, “It’s obvious that you like her. You wouldn’t keep on buying weird books and reading what Y/N borrows just to check if Y/N will indeed read it. You wouldn’t keep asking me if she’s alright at work whenever she doesn’t show up or leave you any messages under the pretense of ‘ensuring she wouldn’t come to your shop to disturb you’. You keep asking me because you’re worried about her. You keep buying her weird books because you’re happy seeing her smile happily about them. You keep welcoming Y/N into the shop even when you hate getting distracted because you like her!. It’s so obvious! Why can’t you say it?!”

“Because I know how this thing between us will end. What we have is purely temporary. Y/N came in to find a muse and that’s that. She comes to my rental shop just to finish her project. Y/N never intended to stay long, and I made sure she didn’t. I knew she was leaving the moment she finished. If I said I liked her then, it would’ve only made us awkward and I would’ve ended up absolutely miserable.”

“Well, she already did leave,” Namjoon deadpans.

“And you didn’t say anything but you’re still miserable,” Jungkook says.

Seokjin closes his eyes and nods. He’s fully aware that Y/N is gone, but it’s not like he can act like nothing happened. It was his fault, after all. “Yeah, I know now. I’m stupid. I’ll just have to deal with it on my own and move on.”

“You don’t have to deal with it on your own.”

Seokjin jolts at the familiar voice. He turns around and finds the very person he’s been missing for weeks. Y/N. With the deep bags under her eyes and her hair all mussed up, she looks far from Seokjin’s type. But she’s still the most beautiful person he’s ever seen in his life.

“Okay, I guess this is our cue to go.”

Seokjin whips his head to Jimin, his eyes wide, “You planned this?”

“Obviously. It looks like you still needed a little push after the last stunt we pulled. Jungkook, stand up from your goddamn seat.”

Y/N stays in her spot until their three friends leave them alone. Seokjin looks at his feet as shame and self-consciousness mingle in an unsettling mix in his stomach. Y/N is here and he must look like the stupidest idiot in the world right now.

“Did you mean it when you said you liked me?

“Yes,” Seokjin sighs.

“Then why didn’t you say so from the start?” Y/N says in a soft voice. “You kept blocking my advances. I was trying to let you know that I liked you, too.”

“You like me, too?” Seokjin asks, shocked and confused.

“Of course! Did you really think I just picked weird books out for fun? Okay, I did have a lot of fun picking them — but the point is, I did all of them to get your attention!!! For god’s sake, did you think I sat through your lecture on divine afterlife intercourse “just because”? No!! Okay,” Y/N closes her eyes, I first went to your shop for inspiration. But that all changes when I started liking you. You’re just so hardworking and smart and even if you’re grumpy on bad days, you actually care so much. I just want to stand out at least a bit so you could see me, too. And just when I thought I had finally succeeded when you agreed to let me draw your face, you started giving me mixed signals. You’d come near me and touch my hand and would let it go right when I started to talk about it. You’d act so affectionate then say the exact opposite. Do you know how bad it hurts when I ask you if you’d trust me—even when I sound like I’m joking—and all you’d ever answer is ‘no’?”

“I thought...you already knew the answer.”

“No, I don’t, Seokjin. I told you I’m bad with words. I need things to be spelled out. I-”

“Y/N, I trust you. I thought you figured it out already when I told you everything about my life.” Seokjin looks at his hand, “But it turns out it wasn’t enough. I’m sorry we had to take the long route like this because I couldn’t say what I really wanted.

“And what is it?”

“You.”

Y/N flushes at his sudden confession. The surprise in her eyes morphs into a satisfied glint as Y/N’s lips curve into a soft smile. “It’s okay. You have me now,” She steps into his arms and Seokjin immediately engulfs her in his embrace. For the very first time in his life, he doesn’t anticipate anything. His mind doesn’t conjure any endings. All he could think of is how he wants to prolong this moment as much as he can. Seokjin smiles into her neck as he tightens her hold on her. This must be what it feels like to be finally at peace.

“So you like me now, huh?” he feels Y/N murmur at his chest.

“Yeah.”

“And you trust me now?”

“2000%” Seokjin grins.

“Good. I’ve been wanting to try out something that I read.”

“Oh, so you’ve finally read something,” Seokjin chuckles by her ear.

Y/N giggles, “Yeah. I wanted to do it right this time for this book.”

“What book?”

“Edward Jaye’s The Cookie Sutra.”

“What?”

“Cookies and Kama Sutra.”

A/N pt. 2: Hello my dear @sophrosinn. Happy birthday! First of all, I love you. I LOVE YOU SO SO MUCH. AND MY LOVE FOR YOU CANNOT BE CAPTURED ENOUGH BY THESE WORDS. You’ve been with me for four years of my life and I couldn’t believe it’s just four years when it feels like I’ve been living my whole life with you. Yeah, you made a super large mark in my life and I couldn’t imagine what my life would have been if I didn’t meet you. You’ve helped me out in so many difficult times of my life. Through all the shits and slumps I had in school, in my family, and in my writing journey, you’ve stayed with me throughout all of those things. Gave me the advices I needed to hear. You’re still here, helping me heal from the pain I’ve suffered and still suffering. You’ve always been a rock of support in my life, @sophrosinn, and I wouldn’t have come this far if it weren’t you. When I look at you, I still wonder how life managed to let me meet such an astoundingly wonderful person like you are. These days have been tough but I hope you know you don’t have to suffer through it alone. I and @senfleurs will always be here to hear you rant, listen to your basog moments, and help you lighten your load as much as we can. Whenever life brings you down, I hope you always remember I will be here for you to give you an ear that will listen to you, to give you a shoulder you could cry on. I want to also be your rock of support you could always go to without hesitation just like you’ve always been for me. So Happy happy birthday my dear best girl! You have gotten a year older today but don’t worry, you’re not gonna be alone. I and @senfleurs will be by your side as we grow old with you! Here’s to more amazing years! I love you!

P.S. Yes, this fic is inspired by this reddit post you sent to us.

I just changed it up a bit bc my mind went blank when I first drafted the “we’re married” concept. Hope you like it, anyway! I tried writing both your serious and quirky sides through Seokjin and the OC!

P.P.S. I’m sorry I couldn’t get this fic out much earlier. My writing slump is still as bad as it can be but oof, I managed to get it out just before August 11 ends! I hope the wordcount and the feels and laughs make up for that > u <

158 notes · View notes

5289belle · 3 years

Text

Captain America’s Legacy

Summary: When Katerina Rogers watches as the flags smashers cause further mayhem, she knows she needs to come out of hiding and go help Sam and Bucky take them down, all while dealing with the fact that the United States government replaced her dad with some idiot as Captain America.

Meet Katerina (Katy) Rogers, the daughter of Natasha and Steve. Will take place during the falcon and the winter solider with some flashbacks to black widow and civil war. Also Tony is alive in this timeline, Steve did that snap instead, Natasha still died getting the soul stone.

Chapter One Captain Americas Legacy

Sitting on the bed in her hotel room in Paris, Katy looked up to the tv and watched as Sam Wilson gave away her dad’s legacy to some museum. How could he when her father had chosen him to replace him while he lay there dying, anger and grief swelled up in her as she angerly switched off the tv.

It had been six months since she lost both of her parents within hours of each other and it hadn’t gotten any easier, she was all alone with her grief. Wanda was off somewhere trying to get through her own trauma and grief, Clint was taking time to be with his family again, thinking of him getting to be with them again made it easier to handle her mama’s sacrifice. It hurt too much to be around her mama’s family, they all reminded her too much of her mama. Tossing and turning in bed she found it difficult to sleep when she knew what awaited once she did manage to go unconscious for a few tortured hours.

Sometime around six and five am she managed to fall into a semiconscious slumber, until her alarm went of at noon. Rolling over to turn it off and turn back into her pillow to get a little bit more rest. Soon she would have to get up and leave. Never stay in one place too long, that was her motto, the constant moving helped to keep her mind distracted.

About two weeks later she was strolling through the streets of London when she spotted the news paper stand. On the front cover it read “Cap is Back” below it described how John Walker was the new Captain America. Unable to read anymore she back away and ran back to her hotel room. Flipping on the tv to try and forget what she had just seen, she looked up to see the man in question having a interview on Good Morning America. She felt sick to her stomach, scoffing she sat down to see just who this Walker guy was.

“It’s the greatest honor of my life um, but I I’m just a little shocked how’d a guy like me end up here?”

Ugg, his obvious self-depreciation was revolting, as if. She could tell he was trying to hard to emulate that humble hero, trying to emulate her dad. After watching a few more minutes to get a better understanding she decided she had enough and flipped the channel. In its stead a news report about the flag smashers was playing.

Apparently they were escalating and even caused a panic and injuries at a robbery. Watching the news footage, she noticed that one of the masked smashers had apparent super strength. That was news to her, to her knowledge the only ones with the super soldier serum that was still alive was, her dedushka(grandpa), all the former black widows had a form of the serum including Yelena and her babushka(grandma), Bucky, and herself. Though her was from her parents passing on their enhanced genetic codes.

Letting out a breath she didn’t realize she had been holding in, she looked down to her hands. This whole situation was getting out of hand and obviously the GNC couldn’t handle. She knew she couldn’t hide out anymore, not when people were getting hurt. It was time to go back home and follow in her parents’ footsteps.

Two hours later she was on a plane, heading back to the states.

Hopping out of her uber she thanked the driver and closed the door. Now she only had to find Sam and get to the bottom of the situation. According to his phone he shouldn’t be too far off. Not too far up ahead she spotted him with Bucky, having one of their usual banters no doubt. Though the closer she got to them she noticed Bucky a bit more. He had cut his hair, and hot damn if it did not suit him. “Fuck me” she muttered to herself before noticing and blushing.

You have got to be kidding me when did she find herself thirsting after him. Okay be cool she thought to herself, but damn he really was hot.

“Well I don’t trust redwing” Bucky said to Sam and he followed after him.

“You don’t have to trust redwing, but I’m gonna go see if he’s right. Because I have a feeling they might be part of the big three.” Sam replied back slightly annoyed by the other man.

Hold up, the big three? What the hell is that? Apparently Bucky didn’t know either because he asked Sam “What big three?”

Looking at him incredulously he replied “ the big three, androids, aliens, and wizards”

Shaking his head Bucky said “that’s not a thing’

“Since when has that been a thing?” Katy interrupted with genuine interest.

Both men looked over in shock, they hadn’t expected to see her. Not after she took after and disappeared.

Bucky did a double glance real quick, she seemed different somehow.

“Where have you been all this time? We looked everywhere for you.” Sam said with a worried expression. Giving them a tight-lipped smile, she looked away towards the skyline and then turned back to them. “Oh, you know, touring Europe.” Grimacing she continued “ I just, couldn’t face it. It was easier to disappear, but when I noticed all the trouble the flag smashers were causing and the GNC inability to do anything, I decided it was time to come back.”

“Are you doing any better?” Sam asked. “Of course, others wise I wouldn’t be here. Any way what the hell is the big three? I’ve never heard of that..”

Rolling his eyes Sam, looked to Bucky and then back to Katy. “ You know the big three, anytime we fight anyone it one of those three.”

“So who are you fighting now? Gandalf?” Bucky replied back sarcastically.

Taking a moment to register what he said Sam responded back incredulously “ uhh, how do you know about Gandalf?”

“ I read the hobbit, in 1937 when it first came out”

“So you see my point”

“oh, I love the hobbit. I read it back in fifth grade” Katy said to aloud, glancing at the both of them she was surprised to see they looked shocked at her admission. “What, it’s a good book.”

Looking back to Sam Bucky replied “No I don’t, there are no wizards”

“Doctor Strange” Sam said to which Bucky quickly replied “Is a sorcerer”

“ahh, ha ha. A sorcerer is a wizard without the pointy hat.” Sam said smiling in triumph.

“No, a wizard does magic with a wand or stick, a sorcerer used their hands” Katy interview with her commentary.

“Same difference” Sam looked over to her.

“Any ways’ he went on “they use brute strength, just like you guys and are incredibly annoying like the guy in front of me with a staring problem” With that he walked away to the plane with Katy and Bucky hot on his heels.

“I’m coming with you” Bucky and Katy said in unison to Sam.

“No you’re not”

“Uh, yeah we are. I’m not just going to sit back while I could be doing something to help people. Okay so I am going with you rather you like it or not. She said with a snarky tone, looking for Bucky to back her up. He merely nodded to her and followed Sam into the plane.

“Fine you and Cyborg can come with, just don’t annoy me” Rolling his eyes Sam couldn’t help but think how much she reminded him of Steve, always sure of what they were doing.

A few hours later sitting on the plane Bucky and Sam were having some kind of stare off. Looking between the two of them she couldn’t believe it. Seriously they were to grown ass men behaving like teenagers, her partners on this mission. Joy. Standing Bucky asked, “So what’s our plan?” Sam merely looked over to him and went back to putting in his earpiece and handing one over to her.

“Great, so no plan” Bucky said while sitting back down.

Torres interrupted with “Thirty seconds”

“Enjoy your ride Buck and Kat”

“Nah you can’t call me that”

“Why not, that’s what Steve called you”, shooting back Bucky said “Steve knew me longer, and Steve had a plan”

“Fifteen seconds to drop”

“I have a plan”

“Really? What is it?” he said while spreading his arms out walking toward Sam and Torres. Following after them Katy, stepped closer to Bucky.

Sam just jumped out the window, rather than replying back and dealing with those two.

Looking over to Torres Bucky asked “Great, where is the chute?”

“Were 200 hundred feet. It’s too low for a chute”

Huffing, Katy looked to Torres and asked, “Do you have some rope?”

“I don’t need it anyway” Bucky said while walking over to the open doorway and ripping off his sleeve with the metal arm.

“Yes we have some rope, why exactly” Torres questioned, looking over at Katy.

“Perfect, I can use that to jump out. Thank you”

Looking back to Bucky he replied, “You sure about that?”

“Yeah”, with that he jumped straight out.

Walking back over with the rope he handed it to her and watched as she wrapped it around herself and then to the plane, “have a nice flight” Without she dove right out of the plane and did a flip while holding out to the rope and scaling down to the ground. After fifteen seconds she let go and free fell another fifty feet before lading and doing her iconic superhero pose.

Looking over a few dozen feet, she noticed Bucky laying on the ground trying to catch his breath. Letting out a chuckle and smiling she walked over to him to make sure he was okay.

Standing over him she put her hands on her hips and looked down while asking “Are you okay? That looked like it hurt”

Suddenly Sam interrupted with mirth “I have all of that on camera, you know that right”

Then redwing flew over to them, Bucky merely looked over to her and said “Yeah, im fine. How are you?” and then looking over to redwing hovering above them he grunted “ Get out of my face, Sam or I’ll break it.”

In the comms he just simply said “okay, head north”

Sticking her hand out to him she offered to help him up. Reaching to take her hand with her flesh one she pulled him up, and then quickly took a step back flustered at his proximity, “come on lets go” with that she went north.

Walking into the abandoned building Bucky and Katy looked around, while walking around redwing swooped right by Bucky prompting him to swat at it while she chuckled, and Sam said “don’t hurt him”

While they walked up to Sam he called out “You’re doing that staring thing again”, looking down to his wrist he continued “They’re in there.”’

“Where’s they guy?” Bucky asked, “I don’t know, I think they’re smuggling weapons, though.”

“Well, I think you could be right”

“hmm,” was all Sam said.

“Well, I think we should do something about it rather than just standing here and bantering about it” Katy called out with a smirk and then walked closer to get a better look to see what the two guys were doing.

Looking over to her Bucky had a light smile reach his eyes at her quip, while Sam just laughed. “There’s only one way to find out, I see a clear path. I say we take it.”

“We’re not assassins”

Grimacing as his reply Katy looked over her shoulder and then looked back.

“I’ll see you inside or not.” Bucky replied in his deep baritone voice staring out Sam, then walking over to Katy.

“Hey, come on man. I’m just messing with you. Come back” smiling Sam trailed after them.

With Bucky leading they way she trailed behind him.

“Look at you. All stealthy.” Chuckling Sam continues through the comms “all stealthy. A little time in Wakanda and you come out White Panther”

“It’s actually White Wolf”

“Huh”

“All right, I’m inside therefore, way ahead of you.” Crouching down her looks over to Katy and then back to the scene in front of them. “It’s not great, but very doable with Katy and I”

Feeling a presence creeping up behind her she looks back to see Sam stealthy creeping up behind them.

“huh”, Bucky said in confusion”, then went on in a sarcastic tone “Hello. How are you?”

“Good. What did I miss?”

“Nothing”

Huffing out she replied between them “Boys, can we get back to the mission? Kind of important here..”

“Alright let’s go” Bucky replied

“No wait.” Sam said.

“I got a vibranium arm. I can take them”

Something felt off about this, it looked almost too easy, before she could say anything Sam quickly responded “And I can fly, Katy can take them down with hand-to-hand combat. Who gives a shit? Wait.” “I wanna see where they’re going”

“Now wait a minute, I can do more than that” she said offended.

“There’s two people”

“You only see two?, what about you Kat?”

“That’s what I saw. Bucky responded while looking over to her.

“I only see two, but I..” She stops to take a break and then looks at them unsteadily. “I can sense more, if that makes sense.”

Both men are surprised by this and look at her questioningly.

Sighing she looks to them and the says “About seven years ago I was taken by the red room, and they experimented on me, apparently they saw an opportunity with my already enhanced DNA. From that I’ve been able to sense things, kind of like a sixth sense. I don’t know if that makes any sense, but it’s all I got.” Unable to elaborate anymore she looks away and hopes they will be satisfied with that answer.

Noticing her apprehension, they let it go for now and focus back on the mission. Bucky has a straight face, yet there’s concern there and a bit of understanding.

“Let me see what redwing sees.” Looking down at his wrist Sam points of the multiple body heat signatures redwing is picking up.

Grateful they let it go, she looks over to see that there appears to be five people.

How many people you see now? One, two…. Oh, here it comes again. Four, five. Yeah five.” Sam continues while Bucky just snaps “fine”

“Yeah.”

“So they’re strong whatever. All right lets go.”

“No, no wait. Shit”

Watching as the people look up from the noise, the trio held still trying not to be noticed. Finally, they looked on and continued their tasks.

“Alright, lets move” A woman call out to the other people. Waiting for them to be out of sight the three follows after . Looking at his wrist Sam notices that one of the trucks has an eight person in it. “I think they have a hostage he remarks.”

With that Bucky and Katy run off towards the truck while Sam flies towards it.

Running up the truck Bucky jumps up onto the back and opens the door climbing in, with Katy hot on his wheels. Walking in further he begins to look around, trying to find the hostage. Looking around they notices the crate and the contents, “They’re stealing medicine. Vaccines”

Looking up she notices a young woman poke her head out from one the crates, she looks scared and slightly hopeful. Alarm bells are going off in Katy’s head, but before she can do anything Bucky is saying hi and getting himself jacked out of the truck.

“Oh shit” she remarks before kicking out the woman and then turning to Bucky to see him being pulled up onto the car truck by two guys. Jumping up onto the other truck she goes to help him out with the other woman right on her heels. Turing around she blocks a swing from the red head and take a step back raising her arms and falling into a defense position.

Thrusting her foot forward she kicks out at the woman and hit her gut before she can even react. Thanks to her mom she has the quicker reflexes and quickly continues on her attack, turning to check on Bucky.

In her distraction the other woman get a kicks in and sends her flying back before Bucky’s feet, redwing then comes soaring in taking shots. The woman jumps up and catches it and then uses her knee to break it in half.

While on her back Katy quickly jumps back up landing with her one foot tucked in a kneeling position and the other in front while her hands are touching the floor.

Bucky looks up and happily says “I always wanted to do that.”

Sam’s going to be pissed she thought with a smirk and then turned and lashed out at the guys holding onto Bucky, sending them stumbling away. Ordinary her kicks would have wiped them out, but with the serum the just took a few steps back. Annoyed by this she turned around to see Sam swooping down and kicking the woman.

Ha she thought, I knew it.

While Sam was engaging in combat with the woman Bucky yelled out “Good of you to join the fight Sam” Quickly Bucky and she took on the other two men. In the meantime, the fight was joined by the other truck rolling up and two other men joining.

Sam was kicked onto to other truck leaving Katy to run up to the other guys and quickly jump up towards them, using her body as leverage she wraps her thighs around one of the guys and uses the momentum to throw him down, quickly raising her wrist she shoots out one of her widow’s bites from her gauntlet. It was a gift from her mother for her eighteenth birthday.

To her dismay it didn’t take him down for long, “Damn super soldiers” She muttered to herself.

Suddenly one of the men fighting Sam was hit by her father’s shield, looking up she noticed a helicopter with that Walker idiot jumping out. Rolling her eyes, she went on fighting.

Before she knows it the shield is flying around nocking the flag smashers down, while another mans jumps down on a rope. Great another idiot to contend with, who the hell is he supposed to be?

“Sam. John Walker, Captain America.”

“Lemar Hoskins”

Walker continues “Looks like you guys can use some help”

The two men say, responding to the questioning looks.

Ugg she thinks he looks way to proud to be brandishing that shield around. Dark thoughts quickly take over her mind, the very sight of him enrages her. Using that anger she quickly takes out her opponent.

The woman quickly makes her way up the Walker and Hoskins, Walker goes to hit her with the shield and then throws it out the other guys, while it soars back Bucky catches it with ease, handing it over to Walker reluctantly.

Witnessing the whole thing, the only thing that comes to mind to Katy was “Damn, that was hot” While slightly panting, blushing and hoping no one notices she looks towards the other two.

The fighting continues for a few more minutes before Bucky is pushed off the truck, faltering at the sight she receives a swift hit to the gut, quickly focusing back on the task at hand she continues to fight. Worried over Bucky still she notices Sam swoop in and them him and Bucky tumble away onto the field. With her head turned away her opponent kicks her off the truck sending her over in the direction the other two went.

Tumbling onto the ground below her and then rolling onto the grass, she berates herself for allowing herself to get distracted enough to get her ass handed to her. She was better than this, trained by a former red room assassin and a freaking super soldier since she was her girl.

Standing up she notices Sam and Bucky walking towards her.

“Well, that went horrible. We got a asses handed to us back there. I mean we are professional’s right? Because after that it seems like were amateurs. It’s embarrassing”

“Yeah, we sure did. Although I might add they were all super soldiers” Sam tuned in while him and Bucky walked off onto the road following after her.

“Well, this should be a fun walk back” Bucky said aloud looking straight ahead. Are you okay doll?” He said looking towards her.

Stuttering in her steps at the name, she quickly collected herself and responded with a smile “Never better, always love it when I take a tumble off a moving semi-truck, in the middle of nowhere.”

“Only twenty more miles to go of this” Sam intoned.

#bucky x y/n #bucky x oc #bucky and reader

3 notes · View notes

marvel-medigeek-fics · 4 years

Text

“Guys, why are the cabinets filled with nothing but cake mix?” Bobby says to a half asleep crew, all of whom are barely human, much less able to help with the cake mix overload.

“What kind?” Buck says from the table, shoveling down cereal like he hasn’t eaten in days.

Hen has her head down on the table, not listening to anything, so she’s no help. Eddie opens the cabinets sleepily, pulling out a bottle of oil and half a vial of vanilla. Chimney snores loudly from the couch. It’s not a surprise that everyone is so tired: 6 calls in a row, including a strip mall fire and a nasty wreck. There hasn’t been an hour to sleep since 8 hours ago: before their shift.

“Can we send it back?” Eddie says, leaning against the counter.

“When we could be making cake? No! Are you out of your mind?” Buck replies after slurping down the remaining milk in his bowl.

Eddie holds his hands up in surrender and walks around to the couch opposite the one Chimney snores from. Bucks eyes follow Eddie until he lays down, then they snap to Bobby’s raised eyebrows and “really?” expression.

“So? Cake?”

—

When Chimney wakes up, three different cakes are cooling on racks and Buck has frosting over every part of his exposed skin: some flung across his face, some dripping off of his arms and some somehow in his hair like gel. Bobby looks happy, mixing batter and slyly licking the spoon, rinsing it before continueing to mix.

“What’s with the cake?” Chimney says, breathing in the amazing smell of a baking cake.

“Bucks idea. He said we should use the cakes for a good cause.” Bobby’s pride is evident on his face and Chimney grins, reaching forward for a taste out of Bobby’s bowl.

“That good cause being the dispatchers.” Buck says coming up behind Bobby, still holding a piping bag and wearing frosting.

“Then hand me a box. I’m making Maddie a cake!” Chimney quickly acclimates to the idea of it means making Maddie happy.

The three of them churn out cakes, some of them looking like flaming piles of garbage and others looking like professional cake off pieces. Chimney and Buck never miss a chance to smear batter or frosting onto each other, quickly turning it into a competition. That’s what brothers do.

—

Eddie wakes up to the klaxons echoing and Buck cursing as he pulls out a half done cake without oven mitts.

“Are you guys making cake? Seriously?” Eddie says, pulling on his gear and climbing into the ladder truck.

“I would’ve asked you to help, but...” Buck teases him about his lack of cooking skills.

“I may be a terrible cook, but I’m damn good at frosting.”

“I’m holding you to that, just you wait.”

When they get back from tending to a simple house fire, Eddie immediately is handed a piping bag and pointed to a waiting cake. Just like he said, Eddie is a natural at decorating cakes.

“Where’d you learn to pipe like that?” Chimney says, innocently licking a red velvet covered spoon.

“My sister taught me.”

“Can she teach me, because that is awesome, dude.”

“I’ll ask her.” Eddie says, piping a rosette in Bucks arm when he turns back to staring at the ovens. He doesn’t even notice it and both Chimney and Eddie snicker in the background.

Hen, who has been watching them the whole time, speaks. “How many of these are you planning on making?”

“All of them.” Buck says, still not noticing the now 6 rosettes dotting his arms.

“And that is..?” Hen continues.

“57.” Bobby says from his bowl, mixing his 6th cake. “And It’ll go a lot faster if you help us, Hen.”

Hen dissolves into laughter and when she finally composes herself says, “I have never made a cake that didn’t come out like soup. Do you really want to be feeding soup to whoever you’re making these for?”

“Dispatchers. Oh look, frosting.” Buck answers her questions and then pops each rosette into his mouth one by one, ignoring Chimney giggling in the background.

“I will gladly eat cake, but make it? No. But if you need help with anything not baking related, you know where to find me.” She heads over to the couches and falls asleep quickly, exhausted from shift and the bedtime battles.

By the time the shift is over, 39 cakes are stored all over the firehouse, in any unoccupied box. 18 cakes were deemed fails, including the one Buck slightly burned his hands on, the one that turned in to a brick courtesy of Chimney, the one that splattered on the floor while Eddie moved it from pan to rack, and the one Bobby determined wasn’t spicy enough for a spice cake and threw away.

—

The next week, after a mountain of paperwork and musical chairs with cakes and freezers, dispatcher appreciation day organized by one Mr. Evan Buckley is finally here.

The call center smells amazing, sweetness wafting all over the building. The call lines buzz and it gives Buck an enexplainable happiness. Maybe it’s just thinking about what happens after the call comes in. He’s been sitting here since Maddie came in for her shift at the crack of dawn. Okay, 8 AM.

The first people that come in aren’t even fully conscious and jump when Buck wishes them his appreciation. They take the cake though and thank him. There’s going to be an awful lot of friendships made today.

Josh is the first person to come in that Buck recognizes, “Are you here to challenge Maddie to a rematch in public?”

Buck dips his head and laughs, grinning when he looks back up at Josh, who is happily eating a slice of cake. “Something like that. Happy dispatcher appreciation day.”

“Thank you. Especially for this cake!”

“That good, huh?”

“Um, yes. What’s your recipe?”

“Just plain old boxed cake mix.”

“Well, let me tell you. Delicious.” Josh winks at Buck and leaves with another slice.

Different members of the 118 switch out throughout the day and Chimney takes the next shift. Maddie just happens to take her break when Chimney enters from the elevator. Josh’s knowing face doesn’t escape either of them, and they just grin.

“Happy dispatcher appreciation day to my favorite dispatcher.”

“Thank you, Chimney.” Maddie replies, smiling so hard her cheeks hurt. She slices two slices, sticks a fork in to them and passes one to Chimney. They don’t take their eyes off of each other, and twice Maddie stabs her fork through the plate, she’s so distracted by Chimney: the way he looks at her and the way his thumb rubs hers softly captivating her focus.

Bobby and Hen have the next shift, and it takes Hen most of hers to drag Chimney away so Maddie can do her job. Bobby, meanwhile, strikes up a conversation with Sue, who was watching quietly over Maddie and Chimney’s *ahem* conversation.

“Happy dispatcher appreciation day.”

“Thank you, Captain Nash. My only question is how you got your crew to work together to do all this.” She gestures with her fork around the counter and the styrofoam coolers in the corner.

“Buck has his ways of getting people to work together.” Bobby smiles proudly.

“Maybe it’s the puppy dog eyes.”

Bobby chuckles. “They are convincing.”

Hen appears in the doorway shaking her head. “When he uses them on Eddie especially.” She smirks and waves to Sue.

Bobby doesn’t say anything to disprove that, instead smiling knowingly. Terry comes in, stepping around Hen carefully. “Hey, Hen.”

“Hey, Terry.” Hen replies, fondly remembering her first meeting with Terry a few years ago during a police investigation. Terry was the reason the police closed the case and that was the start of a beautiful friendship.

“I’m not technically a dispatcher, but I hope I can still have some cake. Hopefully not made by Henrietta “terrible baker” Wilson.” Terry teases.

“Of course you can. They were made by Bobby the nationally recognized baker, so no need to worry.” Hen replies, pointing to Bobby.

“Not exactly.” Bobby laughs wryly and Sue stifles a giggle. “But thank you, Hen.”

“I ain’t wrong.”

“Don’t disagree with Hen.” Eddie surmises sarcastically.

“He isn’t wrong.” Bobby replies.

“You know it.” Hen winks, waving a subtle goodbye to Terry and Sue, who are also on their way out.

Bobby stands to leave as well and Eddie throws him a bewildered look. “Going to leave me alone? I don’t know anyone.” He fake pouts and Bobby rubs his shoulder calmly.

“You’ll be fine. Don’t sweat it.” Bobby smiles like he has a secret. Which he does.

Eddie takes a seat, politely thanking the dispatchers that come in for their service. He knows a few of them, not well, but Buck mentioned some of them when he was relating the tale of the heist. Eddie chuckles wryly at the way Buck told that story like it was the end of a murder podcast.

“What’s so funny?” Eddie looks up at Buck smirking in the doorway. He somehow cut a piece of cake without Eddie noticing.

“Nothing.” Eddie sighs and continues. “You know that cake is for dispatchers, right?”

“I was almost a dispatcher, you know.” Buck says, tapping the fork on his forehead. “Went through the training and everything.”

“Solid backup plan.”

“Shush.”

“I think you would’ve rocked that polo.”

“Thanks.” Buck says, amused and slightly embarrassed.

Maddie appears at that moment, with Chimney right behind her.

“Hey guys.” Buck says and Eddie nods to them both. Chimney waves and Maddie says hello back. Chimney stealthily nuzzles a kiss into Maddie’s neck and both Eddie and Buck avert their eyes politely.

“You guys can kiss too, so it’s not weird.” Maddie says, winking.

“No, I think that would make this way weirder.” Eddie shakes his head, not removing his hands from over his eyes.

“Can you just eat cake in the break room? Like normal people!” Buck says, groaning softly.

“Nope!” Chimney says, kissing Maddie again.

“Eww!” Buck fake gags and Eddie busts out laughing.

“Don’t be childish.” He teases. Buck continues gagging as Maddie and Chimney continue their public display of affection. Maddie flips him the bird behind Chimneys back, which only makes Eddie laugh harder.

Will you be that childish when I kiss you for the first time? Eddie thinks to himself.

46 notes · View notes

mermaidxatxheart · 5 years

Text

You Feel Like Home

Here’s my submission for @panicfob‘s #25DaysofChristmas Challenge.

Day 18: Mistletoe

Pairing: Sam X Reader.

Word Count: 5649

Warnings: Mention of character loss, injuries, swearing, slight panic attack.

Summary: The Avengers’ Christmas Party

This is a continuation of Home (Part 1) and Home for Christmas (Part 2) I’m going to have to end up making a master list for this one if I keep going!

I hope you all like it! if you’d like to be added to my tag list, send me an ask to let me know :)

“Are you sure you can’t just reconsider?” You ask Sam, looking over at him. He’s fresh out of the shower, and even though he finally managed to convince you to get out of bed to get ready, you’d happily say screw the Christmas party and drag him back between the sheets. The soft towel hangs low on his hips and you lick your lips hungrily, not yet having had your fill of this beautiful man.

This has been the best week in a long time. Staying in bed, movies, takeout, relaxing with the love of your life and all the mind-blowing sex you could possibly want.

But then he makes you get up to shower and get ready. While he gets to keep lying in bed.

“Baby, I won’t let you slap Steve.” He laughs.

“Just a little one? He probably won’t even notice.” You pout and he grins, bending down over your shoulder and kissing your cheek.

“Have I told you how much I love you?” He whispers.

“Not in the last ten minutes.” You roll your eyes.

“Well, that’s a crying shame.” He murmurs, lips fluttering against your skin in the most distracting way.

“Samuel, if you continue to kiss me, I’m taking off this fucking dress and we’re staying in bed.” You warn.

He chuckles. “Alright, alright. I’ll get ready.” He pulls back and you catch his wrist.

“I mean, you can always go like that.” You say slowly, eyes trailing down his near-naked body and he shakes his head.

“Woman, you are damn dangerous.” He turns and grabs his suit, disappearing into the bathroom.

“So, that’s a no on the towel?” You call, grinning a little.

“If you’re not ready in ten minutes, I’m leaving without you.” He calls and you pout but finish applying your makeup.

You retrieve your clutch and heels, checking to make sure you have everything you need. You pull on your black heels, wobbling slightly. Sam walks out of the bedroom in his tux, attempting to fix his bow tie and looking so damn good. You drop your foot, staring at him.

“What?” He frowns.”

“We can be late. Just by an hour or two.” You say and he rolls his eyes.

“No, baby.” He says firmly.

“I’ll leave the heels on.” You offer and he pauses, looking at you. He’s so close to caving and you take a step towards him.

“No. After.” He walks to the front door, opening it for you. You pause in front of him, fixing his bow tie. “You look beautiful.” He mumbles.

You softly kiss his cheek. “I know.” You reply with a wink.

He chuckles, offering you his arm. “Remind me why I put up with you?”

“Who else would put up with you disappearing for months at a time?”

“That’s a good point.”

***

Sam opens the front door to the Stark Tower, fidgeting with his cuff links as he leads you over to the elevators.

“Sam?” You start. He had fallen silent about halfway over here and now he’s acting nervous.

He jabs the button a few times before looking at you. “Yeah?”

“Are you okay? You’re acting weird.”

“I’m fine. You shouldn’t be nervous, you know. They’re gonna love you.” He says. His eyes are unfocused, far away. He’s thinking about a million things all at once, you’ve seen that look on him when he gets back from a mission sometimes.

“I’m not nervous.” You reply, a smile tugging at your lips, trying to reassure him.

“It’s okay, you know. If you are nervous. It’d be understandable.” He nods sagely, stepping inside the small box.

You follow, slipping your hand into his and he tightens around it automatically. “Can I ask you something?” You start.

“Of course.” He jabs at the button for a floor up high.

You turn him to look at you square on. “If they don’t like me, would you break up with me?” You ask and his eyes clear for a second.

“Of course not. Why would you ask me that?”

“I’m just wondering why you’re so nervous. Because I’m not. I love you, and you love me. I know your friends love you. So, it sounds to me like we’re off to a great start.” You cup his face, making him look at you. “I’m not nervous.” You promise.

His eyes close and he pulls you against his chest. “Of course, you’re not. My fearless girl. Who else would be crazy enough to want to slap Steve Rogers?” He chuckles, hugging you tightly.

“I may settle for kicking his shins.” You say brightly into his shoulder and he laughs, pulling back.

“No kicking, slapping, hitting, or biting.” He kisses your forehead as the doors open.

“You’re no fun.” You sigh as he leads you out of the elevator.

The space is massive and brightly decorated with Christmas decorations. People are over, at least 200 people, everyone is all talking and laughing, getting along.

There are food and plenty of drinks, loud music playing. But when Sam walks around the corner with you, all the conversations stop for a second.

You spot the faces you’ve seen on TV; Stark, Banner, Thor, and... Captain fucking America. The jerk who keeps stealing your boyfriend.

There’s a redhead who waves to Sam, a man standing next to her with short, dirty-blond hair, who gives a wave as well.

Tony Stark appears in front of you, champagne glasses in hand. He hands them to you both with a big smile. “You must be Y/N.” He kisses the back of your hand. “Wilson absolutely never shuts up about you.” He grins and Sam rolls his eyes, taking your hand back.

“Thanks, Tony.”

“No problem. Glad to see you’re healing just fine. I was worried there for a minute.” He says to Sam and you nearly choke on your champagne as you turn to look at him.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I thought you would have told her by now. It’s been three weeks since the-”

“Finish that sentence and I’ll kill you in front of all these people,” Sam warns.

“Oops,” Tony mutters, backing away.

“I’m gonna kill him anyway,” Sam mumbles, his hand clenching into a fist in the back of your dress.

“If I can’t snap Steve, you can’t kill Tony. What is he talking about?” You demand. You’ve been in bed with him all week-there was no sign of injury anywhere on his perfect body.

“Nothing. Do I look injured to you?” He asks and your eyes widen.

“Do you want to be?” You retort and he smiles.

“Baby, there’s nothing to worry about. I’m fine. I can tell you all the boring details later, but now is not the time nor the place.” He says quietly.

“I just wanna know one thing. Was it bad?” You ask, spotting Steve walking towards you. Sam follows your icy gaze and steps in front of you before you can head for Steve.

“It could have been worse. Steve saved me, taking the brunt of it.” He rushes. “See him limping?”

You peer around him and there is, in fact, a limp in his gait. “He saved you?” You ask quietly. He nods once. “Fine, I won’t slap him.” You mutter.

Steve hesitates back a little, sensing something going on between you two. Sam drapes an arm around your shoulders, but you don’t feel the warmth of it right now.

“Hey, Steve.” Sam greets easily, a subtle way of letting him know it’s safe to come closer. He gives the big man a solid handshake. “This is Y/N. Babe, this is Steve.” He introduces and you automatically stick your hand out.

“Nice to finally meet the woman who wants to beat me up.” He grins, shaking your hand.

“Nice to finally meet my boyfriend-stealer.” You reply but your heart isn’t in the wisecrack.

You’re struggling to breathe. You almost lost him. He was almost taken from you and you didn’t even know it. And what’s worse, the guy you should be mad at for putting him in that situation is so damn perfect and nice, you can’t even be angry at him!

Jerk.

Why does he have to be so nice?

“Baby, I’m gonna go talk to Steve for a minute. Just a last-minute work thing.” Sam says and you nod mutely. He sighs and presses a kiss to your forehead.

You stand rooted to the spot for a minute, struggling to breathe and keep a lid on your emotions.

“He’s fine, you know.” A sultry voice says behind you and you turn to see the red-head that waved before.

She’s gorgeous, petite nose, big green eyes, plump red lips. She’s a tiny thing but you get the feeling that she should not be underestimated.

“I’m sorry?” You say and she smiles, linking her arm through yours, leading you over to the bar.

“Sam. He’s fine. Was more worried about getting to your Christmas party in time.” She smiles. “I’m Natasha, by the way. This is Clint.” She gestures to the blond man who was standing next to her when you walked in.

“What happened?” You finally ask, trying to ignore how pretty she is. Sam loves you.

“A land mine. He won’t even have a scar. Neither will Steve.”

“Why wouldn’t he tell me?”

Natasha reaches over the counter to pour you a drink. “Probably didn’t want to worry you,” Clint says with a shrug.

Your eyes flick to his hands. “Do you keep it from your wife every time you get injured?” You ask with a nod to his left hand.

Clint looks down at his ring finger where the faint tan line lives. “You’re good.” He grins.

A hand is placed on your lower back and you turn to see Sam, a playful smile on his handsome face. He steals your drink with a wink at you.

“Everything okay?” You ask him.

“Perfect.” He smiles. “Dance with me?” He takes your hand and you glance over to where other people are dancing.

“Yeah, okay.” You nod and he scoops you into his arms. He pulls you close, arm snaking around your waist. You rest your head on his shoulder as he moves you slowly to the song.

“What are you thinking?” He asks softly.

“You lied to me.” You grip his hand tighter, not to hurt, but to feel him. You need this man. If he ever decides he’s better off without you, you’re screwed.

He sighs a little. “I didn’t want to worry you. You always worry too much while I’m gone.”

“But now I’m freaking out in public. For no reason. Because you’re here and logically I know you’re okay, but you could have died and I never would have known. I’d be so... I can’t lose...” you squeeze your eyes shut, breath hiccuping in your chest.

“Sh, sh, sh. It’s ok, sweetheart. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He rubs your back, pressing kisses along your hairline and forehead. “I’m okay. We’re okay.”

“No more secrets, please? We’re a team.”

He nods. “I love you.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m mad at you still.” You mutter and his answering chuckle shakes through you.

“I’ll make it up to you.” He promises, holding you close, cheek to cheek. You sink into his arms, not fully relaxed but you won’t pass up a second to be this close to him, no matter how hard you’re trying to keep your thoughts at bay. If you let your mind drift, you’re going to panic for sure.

It’s a tough line to walk because the things that would make you feel better are the same things that are going to make you freak out.

He hums along softly, out of tune, in your ear and your fingers curl into his jacket. Don’t think about how you almost lost him. Don’t think about how you would never get to hear his terrible singing again, or feel him shift in the middle of the night and crush you while simultaneously stealing your blankets.

Your breathing is too quick, too short. Your hand flattens against his chest, searching for his heartbeat. Tears prick behind your eyes and he holds you tighter, feeling your panic. “Wanna get some air?” He asks softly. You nod, not trusting the strength of your own voice right now.

He steps back from you, rubbing your arms and you meet his gaze, his worried eyes trained on you. His fingers trail down your arms gently and take your hand, leading you through the big room. He nods to Steve as you pass him.

There’re a million little things that you would miss if he never came home, and you didn’t even know to appreciate them before. Like the way he links his big hand with yours in such a way that every part of his hand is touching you, inch for inch. Most people leave spaces at the palms when they hold hands-not Sam. He has to touch you as much as he possibly can. His deep voice and his bemused chuckle when you do something stupid. The way his whole face lights up whenever he sees you doesn’t matter if you’ve been gone one minute or a whole day. You’d miss his cologne, the way it reacts with him. You’ve tried just spraying the bottle on his pillow or his shirts and it just isn’t the same. It’s missing that one element of him that makes it perfect. You’d miss the way he insists on making pancakes on Sunday mornings, and how that’s the only thing he really knows how to cook that isn’t on a grill.

And who else would put up with you being so angry all the time? Most guys would get pissed that you throw lamps at them, that you yell at them all the time for being gone or not calling. But Sam just chuckles and loves you even harder.

He leads you over to a corner door and slides it open, stepping out onto a balcony. “Are you with me, angel?” He asks.

You shiver slightly in the cold air and nod. He pulls off his jacket and carefully slides your arms into the sleeves. You can’t take your eyes off his face, mesmerizing every detail, even though he’s all you see when you close your eyes. He pulls it tight around you and pulls you close.

“I could feel you freaking out.” He mumbles, wrapping his arms around you.

“Am I not supposed to?” You mutter. Your breath is coming shorter and shorter and now you can’t look at him in the eyes, those warm as melted chocolate, big brown eyes because you’ll really lose it. You’re trying not to, a desperate, frantic cling to your composure. This is supposed to be a party, for crying out loud. Get it together.

“This is why I didn’t want to tell you.” He sighs. “I’m gonna kill Stark.”

“Not allowed.”

“Baby, I’m fine. There’s no reason to panic.”

“Yeah, now! Because you didn’t tell me.” That little nagging voice in the back of your head starts chanting that he doesn’t trust you. He didn’t tell you because he can’t trust you enough, not like he can trust Steve and Natasha and Clint.

“I didn’t tell you because you already worry enough about me and I hate that look on your face. It breaks my heart that I do that to you.”

“I have a right to worry about you. Do you even know... do you understand what I would do if you never came home? If I l-lost you-” you open your mouth to say more but the words get stuck. You don’t know how to say what you mean—the words etching themselves onto your heart. You don’t want to be mean; this isn’t about hurting him, but you’re afraid that the words are going to come out that way.

He means the world to you and the fact that everyone else knew when you didn’t stings a bit. But this is about more than your pride. Your pride means nothing if you can’t curl up on the couch, safe in his arms and binge bad tv just to be with him.

“You can tell me anything.” He says and you glare at him, punching him in the arm as hard as you can. Given the conversation you’re having, it seems a bit hypocritical. He grins, not fazed at all by your reaction as he rubs the spot. He just loves you harder. “Alright, I deserved that.”

You take a deep breath and cover your face.

“Everything okay out here?” Tony asks, poking his head out the door.

“Yes, no thanks to your big ass mouth,” Sam says, pushing Tony’s head back inside. “Go on.” He prompts, looking back at me.

“I love you, Sam. I do. I love you with everything I have. You mean my entire world and every time you leave you take all of me with you. And I get it... that you aren’t... that you don’t...” you trail off, but now isn’t the time to get into how you love him more. “But it can’t be all rainbows and sunshine all the time. That’s not real. And I want what we have to be real for as long as we can have this. I can handle the truth. Yes, I worry. What you do is dangerous as fuck and I’m crazy about you. I worry when you go to the grocery store. So, I need to you trust me and be honest with me when stuff like this happens so that I can freak out properly for you, instead of having a meltdown in public after the fact. I should be sitting at your bedside, taking care of you and crying about you like a good girlfriend. And, also, that way Stark can’t blindside me again. I deserve the truth. You would get it from me, especially about an injury. And I think I’ve earned your trust. And I can’t believe you were just gonna let me come here and slap Steve after he saved your dumb ass.”

Sam cracks a small smile. “You wouldn’t have hit him.” He mutters.

“You don’t get it. I would burn the entire world for you, stupid.” You punch his arm again. “Three months, Samuel. ‘I’ll be back before you can say I miss you’.” You mock and he laughs.

“Alright. Fair enough. And I do trust you. That absolutely has nothing to do with anything. I don’t trust anyone more.” He tilts his head, looking down at you. “I’m not what?” He asks and you frown, not following.

“What?”

“Just a minute ago. You said ‘I wasn’t’ but you cut off. What am I not?”

“It’s not a big deal, Sam.” You shake your head and his whole face widens.

“Ooooooooooooooh! So, this is what the truth looks like from your perspective. Okay! I was concerned it would sound like actual words.” He teases you and for fuck’s sake, you could just fucking slap him.

“It’s just not important, not enough for here.”

He looks down at you, nose wrinkling. “Later?”

“Much later.” You agree. And after many, many, many drinks. Because he won’t like what you have to say.

Steve knocks on the glass door and steps outside. He glances at Sam before turning to you. “I was hoping I could speak to you, Y/N, fisticuffs notwithstanding.” He holds up his hands and you feel like if you weren’t so cold, you’d be blushing. You nod and Sam sighs, kissing your cheek.

“Please don’t kill him.” He whispers, his lips brushing against your ear.

How could you want to kill Steve now, after he saved your whole world?

“Get me some eggnog?” You reply instead and he nods, disappearing inside with a parting ‘good luck’ to Rogers.

He’s quiet for a long minute, leaning against the railing. “I thought about asking you to dance so we could talk, but I never learned. So, I figured I would save myself that particular humiliation.” He says with a dry smile.

You aren’t quite sure what to say to that, so you remain silent. It isn’t lost on you that the only reason you’ve just had the best week of your life is all thanks to this big man before you. And clearly at a great cost to him.

“Are you okay?” You ask finally and he looks at you, surprised.

“I’ll be fine in a day or two.” He shrugs. “I wanted to apologize.”

“For what?”

“If I had been paying attention, it wouldn’t even have been an issue. We were talking, discussing the best way to do something and I let myself get distracted. He never should have gotten hurt in the first place.” His face is pained, and you don’t think it has anything to do with the limp he’s sporting. Steve Rogers is the type of guy to feel responsible for everything.

“I know you’re this super soldier and all, but I have a hard time seeing how even you could miraculously know where a land mine would be. Just because you have that serum doesn’t make you responsible for everyone. Not every mistake is your burden to bear.” You say, placing a hand on his forearm. “And from what I understand, from the very little I’ve been told, I have you to thank for having him back.”

“Yeah, well. I had to get him back to you. I couldn’t have you hating me any more than you already did.” He says casually and you cover your eyes. How much has Sam told him? “Plus, Sam wouldn’t stop crying about it. Threatened to haunt me forever.”

You give a watery chuckle, feeling downright terrible.

“Are you crying?” He asks, appalled. “Not you, too. He’s fine, I made sure of it.”

You punch his arm hard, just like you did to Sam. “It’s delayed.” You grumble.

“Ow.” He laughs, rubbing his arm.

“And I don’t hate you, not really. I strongly dislike it when you take him on 3 month-long missions. But I don’t hate you.”

He smiles, brushing a tear off your cheek with a quick gesture. “Sam makes me well aware of how much you dislike it.” He says. “I can’t tell you how awful I feel, Y/N.”

“I forgive you.” You sigh, dabbing under your eyes. You know he probably was more concerned with Sam getting medical attention than he was about himself.

“We should go inside, you’re freezing.” He says softly.

You turn towards him and hold out your arms. “I think it’s time.”

He scoops you up in a tight hug, his big arms wrapping around you. “Thank you.” He says softly.

“Until you take him away again, I’ll like you.” You press a soft kiss to his cheek and he laughs.

“That’s fair.” He lets you go and gestures for you to step back inside.

Sam is standing over they the bar, watching the door with a terribly fake disinterest. You walk over to him, stepping easily into his arms. You give his jacket back, his body heat enough for you.

“What did you two talk about?” He asks softly.

“He professed his undying love for me. Asked me to move in with him.” You reply evenly, taking a sip of your drink.

“And naturally you replied with?”

“Take me, I’m yours.” You smirk and he sighs dramatically, resting his forehead against your shoulder.

“My girl is so mean to me.”

“If you make me say it one more time, I really will be mad at you.” You warn.

“How can I make it up to you.”

“Take a vacation.” You reply instantly.

“That’s all it would take?” He raises an eyebrow.

“Yes. I’ll take one, too. We can go somewhere nice, tropical. Little umbrella drinks, you can rub lotion on my back. No one shooting at you, certainly no land mines, no one asking me stupid questions.”

“Done.” He agrees and you eye him suspiciously.

That was way too easy.

“I don’t trust you.” You say, squinting at him.

“You wound me.”

There’s a tap on your shoulder and you turn to see some of the bluest eyes you’ve ever seen.

Thor.

“May I have this dance?” He asks, holding out his big hand.

“Great, someone else to try and steal my girl away.” Sam sighs. You kiss his cheek before turning to Thor.

“I’d love to.”

He guides you easily to the floor. He pulls you into his big arms, swaying you sillily. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you,” Thor says, his voice deep, whiskery beard scratching at your cheek. “I think we all feel like we know you already.”

“Thank you.” You blush furiously.

“Are you mad at him?” He asks, glancing over your head and you don’t even need to look to know that Sam is watching you like a hawk. You can feel his eyes burning into you.

“Have you ever tried staying mad at that man? He makes it nearly impossible.” You sigh, closing your eyes. Tonight has been a whirlwind of emotions and your stomach twists in knots, knowing you’re going to have to admit to Sam the ugly truth later.

“Something wrong?” Thor asks.

“It’s difficult, knowing I love him more than he loves me. But I wouldn’t change him for the world.” You glance you at him, cringing slightly. “Please don’t tell him I said that.”

“Sorry, how do you know you love him more?” Thor asks gently.

“Either that or he’s a fantastic liar.” You shrug. “He’s always happy, even when he’s gone. Even after weeks away, he can make jokes and laugh. I can barely get out of bed because I miss him so much. People avoid me at work, I’m not...” you trail off, seeing how the others might see you.

You’re mean, cruel, a bully.

No wonder Sam doesn’t love you as much. How could he? Sam is nothing but good. He risks his life to make the world safe, he volunteers to help returning vets deal without their pain and trauma and make sure they have someone to talk to. Even when you’re so horrible to him, talking at him and throwing things-he’s always kind to you.

“You’re not what?” Thor asks, searching your face, but you hardly see him. All you can see is how much you don’t deserve Sam.

“A good person.” You mumble, feeling the need to escape to the restrooms as soon as you can.

“Let me tell you something.” He says, cupping your face gently, making you look at him. “You say he’s a good person? Do you trust his judge of character?”

“Yes.” You mumble. His hands are warm, calloused, giant.

“Do you think he would love you if you were as terrible as you think you are? If you were anything less than wonderful?” He gives your face a little shake. “I can see it in your eyes, you’re panicking. Take a deep breath.” He says calmly.

Your chest struggles to expand as you take a steadying breath, squeezing your eyes shut. “No, he wouldn’t put up with it.” You admit finally. “Sam does what Sam wants.”

“And let me inform you of something else, he probably won’t like it very much, but I think you need to hear it. When he’s not on the phone with you, he’s miserable. Absolutely annoying everyone by talking about how much he misses you. And this last time, he was so mad that his phone broke and he couldn’t call you. Clint wanted to throw him out of the jet towards the end.” He says. “He puts on the happy façade when he’s on the phone with you to make you feel better. He says that if he can make you laugh, just a little, it’s worth it, because he knows how you get when he’s gone. He never wanted you to know that because he thinks it will just make you feel worse. But I think you need to know it’s all an act so he can hear you laugh, just for a moment. And in that moment, his whole face lights up. I’m 1,500 years old, and love like that is rare.” Thor says softly, thumbs brushing your cheeks gently.

“Do...” you have to clear your throat to make your voice come out clearer. “Do you mind if we cut this dance short?”

“Of course.” He smiles, releasing your face.

You turn around, instead of looking for an escape, you’re searching at the bar for Sam. It’s where you left him, but he’s not there. You know you could feel his eyes on you while you were with Thor.

Where the hell could he have gone? Maybe he got bored and went off with Steve again?

You can still feel him watching you, his eyes like a pressure on your skin. Your eyes slid slowly around the room, searching for him. He’s standing with Steve way in the far corner. He catches you watching and his face changes from troubled to a smirk. There’s still something there, in his eyes. Worry, or annoyance, and you have no doubt it’s over something you did. Maybe it looked a little too much like Thor was going to kiss you? He lifts your drink in a toast and you smile at him, determined to be the kind of girl Sam Wilson deserves.

No more taking your bad moods out on everyone.

His smirk falters and he mumbles something to Steve at his side. You make your way over, having to skirt around the crowd to get there. You reach him and he almost backs up a step as you reach for him and you frown.

“What did I do?” You ask.

“You didn’t roll your eyes. When I wasn’t where you left me, you smiled. It scared me.” He jokes and you chuckle.

“I was just happy to see you.” You take your drink out of his hand and have a small sip before setting it down. Something over your heads catches your eyed and you look up to see a bundle of mistletoe. You smile to yourself and tap his shoulder. He looks down at you and you point up.

“Who am I to break tradition?” He grins, pulling you close. His lips are soft on yours, kissing you like you’re made of glass. Your fingers curl into his suit jacket and he pulls back much too soon.

“I love you.” You whisper. He presses a kiss to your forehead.

“I know.” He grins.

A loud shattering noise catches your attention behind you. It sounds like a ton of glasses. You turn fully to look at the commotion, seeing Natasha standing in the center of broken glass. She glances up, making eye contact with you, sending a wink your way.

“Do you think she needs help?” You ask, watching her, worried. She doesn’t look embarrassed or anything. Someone is already rushing towards her with a broom and dustpan.

“No,” Sam says, bemused. “She’s fine.” He assures you. You turn around, eyes searching for Sam and frowning when he’s not at eye level.

He’s kneeling, hand held out in front of him. A small velvet jewelry box is in his grasp, hand shaking slightly, he’s nervous, and it’s the cutest thing. You can’t breathe as you stare at the beautiful silver ring.

“Y/N?” He starts, his dark brown eyes on you. “I know being with me hasn’t been easy, I’ve stressed you out, frustrated you, made you angry and I’ve left you when you needed me most. I honestly don’t know how I got so lucky to have you in my life, willing to put up with this insanity. But I do know, after recent events I’m even more certain, that I can’t live without you. You’re the most important part of my life and I can’t lose you. So, if you want me to quit and fight Steve, I totally will. Just, please, please say you’ll marry me?”

Your knuckles are crushed into your lips, bruising them against your teeth. You’re looking at the most beautiful man you’ve ever seen, inside and out, and he actually wants you. You’ve known how much you need him for a long time, but you never thought he would wake up and feel this way. And didn’t you just tell Thor that you wouldn’t change anything about him?

You meet his gaze, so nervous, thinking that there’s even a possibility that you could say no.

You nod, holding out your left hand. Cheers erupt around you as he slips the ring onto your finger. You pull him to his feet, kissing him lovingly before wrapping your arms around his neck.

“Don’t quit. And I won’t even make you fight Steve.” You whisper and he laughs, squeezing you tight, arms wrapped fully around you.

“Just let me know if you change your mind.” He presses a kiss to your temple.

“I don’t want you to change. I love your big heart and how you always have to do the right thing.”

“I don’t want you to change. I love your eye rolls and how you always tell me what you’re thinking and feeling, even if it’s not popular.” He tips your chin up to look at him. “But you’re wrong about something. There’s no way in hell you love me more.”

“How did you hear that?” You ask, eyes widening.

“Can we agree that we love each other the same amount?” He offers, smoothly avoiding your question, but you have a sneaking suspicion it has a great deal to do with the super-soldier next to you.

“Fine. As long as we both know the truth.”

He laughs, pulling you close and kissing you fiercely beneath the mistletoe once more.

Everything Tag List:

@everythingisoverrated @dsakita @shreddedparchment @bitsandbobsandstuff @after-avenging-hours @alexblrus @thinkingsofamadwoman @i-dont-want-to-be-called @thefridgeismybestie @fortheloveofallthatsholy @crazychaotic @pleasureoftheguiltiestvariety @redstarstan @justreadingfics @themistsofmyavalon @sebastianstanslefteyebrow @wkemeup @thiccbinch @glide-thru @moli1497 @ellaenchanted91 @part-time-patronus @janeyboo @jensensjaredsandmishaslover @thirstybitchqueen @xxloki81xx @stuckonjbbarnes @browngirlmagic @geeksareunique @nicoleplacee @lexshead @gambitsqueen

#marvel #panic's 25 days of christmas fics #25 days of christmas #panic's 25 days of christmas #sam wilson #sam x reader #sam wilson x reader #sam wilson x you #romance #home #mermaidxatxheart-writes

173 notes · View notes

bookdancerfics · 5 years

Text

words like physics (an unstoppable force), a 9-1-1 fic

Summary: Hen and Buck end up dangling over a cliff, with Buck only holding onto Hen, but she can’t hold on to the cliff side forever. Buck thinks the solution is an easy one; Hen disagrees.

Series Summary: 5 times Buck prioritizes his family’s wellbeing over his own, and the 1 time they help him prioritize himself.

Relationships: Evan “Buck” Buckley & Henrietta “Hen” Wilson

also available on ao3 and ff.net

Series: checking vital signs, part one, part two (this fic), part three (yet to be posted) / six parts

The next time the 118 go out for “team bonding,” Hen is going to automatically veto anything Buck suggests. It’s the only thing, she figures, that will prevent situations like this one: where she and Buck are hanging over a cliff’s edge, no footholds in reach, with their team members waiting for them back at the trail’s parking lot and their phones sitting tantalizingly close by, where Hen had recommended putting them so they wouldn’t accidentally drop them over the edge. Little did she know that the edge of the trail would end up dropping out from under them, reminiscent of the hiker who Buck still insisted had a ghost call 911. The entire situation is so ridiculous that if she didn’t know any better, she’d think someone was making the whole thing up.

And yet, here they are.

She clutches Buck’s hand tighter when she feels it slip a little. She has one hand on the short chain that had served as a barrier between the trail and the cliff’s edge, although it hadn’t done much in keeping her and Buck from sliding when the whole thing went. Now it’s the only thing keeping them from dropping several hundred feet, although the loose dirt at the top doesn’t give Hen any confidence in its stability, especially not since the skinny stakes it’s connected to are now parallel to the earth. She doubts the stakes or chain had a good foundation to begin with, and her and Buck’s weight is only making it worse. Her hand not holding the chain grips Buck’s, and in return, his “free” hand grasps her wrist. Although the cliffside is close enough to Hen to press against her chest, it turns into an overhang at her ribs, and her legs and Buck’s whole body swing out in empty air.

She grunts, doing her best to tighten her grip on the chain in an attempt at establishing a more secure hold. It’s rusted, red dust flaking off under her palm, but it beats the alternative of a slippery new chain.

“Hen,” Buck says, his voice more serious than normal.

She shakes her head. “Sorry, Buckaroo, but it’s not happening.”

He’s silent, and then—“How’s the adoption process going?”

“What?” She risks moving just to stare at him, and he stares back up at her, his lips twitching.

“What’d you think I was going to say?”

Hen huffs and tightens her grip on his hand. “Nothing, just think this is a strange place to start a game of twenty questions.”

He grins, and if Hen doesn’t look above his nose she can pretend that it reaches his eyes. “It’s a beautiful day, Hen. Nice and peaceful, no one yelling at us to clean the truck. Even the sun is out. Where else would you want to talk about your future kid?”

Hen rests her cheek against the cliffside. It stings, and she knows that she scraped it up when they first fell, but it’s a reprieve from having to hold up her head in addition to Buck’s weight and hers.

“We met this little girl last week. She’s eight.”

“Eight, huh? Probably going through a creative phase if she’s anything like Chris.”

Hen manages a weak smile. “Her brother’s eight, too.”

For the first time since they fell, Buck frowns. “But Denny’s not—”

Hen grins at him as his jaw drops.

“Twins?!”

“Yeah,” Hen says. She readjusts her grip on the chain just a fraction and tightens her hold on Buck. “Crazy, right? Karen’s uh…” She clears her throat, then coughs. “Karen said she was going to go visit them again today, see if they’re ready to meet Denny.”

“Hen, that’s awesome,” Buck says, and even if Hen weren’t looking at him, she knows she’d hear him beaming through his voice.

“Thanks.”

Buck squeezes her hand and his smile finally drops. “Do you want to try again?”

As much as Hen wishes he were still talking about adoption, or even the IVF process, she knows he’s not. But she remembers the last time they tried, how Buck’s grip had transferred to her shirt and their combined weight had become more centered, more focused, as he tried to climb up her to reach the cliff’s edge. And even though she wants to reach her family, wants to at least go down fighting, she shakes her head. “Last time the shift in weight almost made the whole thing come down. I don’t think we can risk it.”

Buck nods, and they’re both silent for the next couple minutes.

“Try yelling again,” Hen says finally.

Buck glances up at her. “You have a good grip?”

She nods.

“Okay, then,” he says, and his own hold on her hand tightens as he raises his face to the cliff’s edge and screams for the rest of their team. He yells for Cap first, then Chimney, and finally Eddie, until they know for sure that no one else is in range.

“They’ll be here eventually,” Hen says. The thought is heavy, though, almost as heavy as her and Buck’s combined weight, and she tightens her hold on the chain so much that her fingernails dig into her palm.

“But not fast enough,” Buck replies, and Hen looks at him sharply. He stares up at her, a muscle in his jaw twitching. “We both know it, Hen. Just as we both know the only way out of this.”

“Sure,” Hen answers, ignoring what he obviously wants her to say. “Except physics doesn’t work that way when the contact point is so unstable. Swinging you up will only drop us both.”

“Hen,” Buck says, and it’s the same serious tone he’d used before asking her about the adoption process, back when they both knew what he was going to suggest until she shut him down.

“I mean it, Buck,” she says. “So don’t even think about it. I’ll never forgive you otherwise.”

“Henrietta,” he says, and she squeezes her eyes shut, shaking her head as best she can against a cliffside.

“No,” she insists.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

In the next moment she can feel him prying at her fingers, but she just tightens them more, digs and digs and digs until she has rust under the nails of one hand and blood under the nails of the other.

“Hen, please!” he says, begging, but she won’t let go of his hand and she’s proved it now.

“No!” she yells at him. “So help me, Buck, we’re both making it out of this or I swear I’ll—”

They both freeze at the same time, staring at each other. In the distance, there’s a bird squawking, the whistle of the wind over the cliff, and along the path—

“Did you hear that?” Hen whispers, and Buck nods, utterly still now.

“Hen?” The call is faint, coming from far away, and Buck’s mouth hasn’t moved. “Buck?”

“Here!” she yells. “Chimney, we’re here!”

A couple minutes later, she hears the pounding of boots along the trail, and she and Buck scream for them until Bobby, Chim, and Eddie’s faces pop over the edge.

“Hey,” she manages, breathless but still smiling at them. “We’d love some help.”

“No kidding,” Chimney says, his eyes wide. “What even happened?”

“Tell you after,” Buck calls.

Hen tightens her hold on him instinctively, feeling her hand start to slip in their combined sweat and literal blood.

“Hurrying would also be nice,” she says.

Buck’s own grip tightens around her wrist, and he shoots her a wry grin. “No worries, I’m not letting go.”

Hen just scowls at him. “Tell that to the you of five minutes ago.”

“Ok, Hen, how much longer do you think you can hold on?” Bobby asks, even as he and Chimney grab the chain to keep it from slipping.

Hen shakes her head. She’s been holding on for so long, now, her whole shoulder feels numb, and she knows her grasp on the chain only lasted till now because of sheer determination and the knowledge that if she fell, then Buck would, too.

“Alright, we don’t have time to get anything from the cars, then. Eddie, grab Hen’s hand. Buck, do you think you can climb up?”

Above her, Eddie lays on his stomach and then gets a good grip on her arm. And below her, Buck starts climbing.

He gets about halfway up before Hen feels her hold on the chain start to go.

“Eddie!” she warns, and the chain slips through her fingers.

“Crap,” Eddie gasps. Hen realizes that she’s involuntarily closed her eyes to everything, and she opens them to find that they’ve dropped further, her and Buck’s combined weight too much even for Eddie, who’s halfway over the cliff himself now. Above him, she can just make out Chimney and Bobby. The two are piled on Eddie, apparently using their own weight to keep him from budging.

“Holy shit,” Buck says, and a strangled laugh escapes Hen in response.

“Please hurry up,” Chimney says, his own voice tight with fear.

“Going,” Buck answers. “I’m going.”

He grabs Hen’s shoulder, heaving himself up just a little further until he can finally reach the hand that Bobby holds down to him. Together, with Buck scrambling for hand and footholds, and Bobby practically doing a one arm bicep curl to help pull him up, they manage to haul him onto solid ground.

“Okay,” Bobby pants, still sprawled on top of Chimney and Eddie. “Now Eddie and Hen.”

Hen somehow manages to hold on even tighter as they pull Eddie’s torso back onto the trail, and then they keep going, dragging Hen up until they’re all collapsed, panting, on solid ground.

“Oh, gosh,” she groans, staring up at the sky as she lays next to her team. “If it wasn’t dirt I’d kiss it.”

There’s silence, and then from a few feet away Buck speaks up, his voice quiet. “… yeah.”

Hen blinks, turns her head until she can look Chimney in the eye, and a beat later they’re all laughing.

“Don’t laugh at me!” Buck says, even as he laughs with them. “Hen was the one who said it!”

Hen just shakes her head, positively cackling now, and clutches at her stomach as it starts to hurt.

“Oh, my abs,” she gasps, and their laughter, which had started to die down, turns into giggles. Hen tries to take a breath in an effort to stop, but they’ve all stumbled right into an infectious laugh-fest, and it’s hard to even breathe at this point, they’re laughing so hard.

“I can’t stop,” Eddie groans.

“Fuck,” Buck says. Someone pounds a fist against the dirt in response, and Hen stares at her team and loses herself to the bliss for a split second.

“We should get away from the edge,” Bobby manages, and in the end that’s what sobers them all up, silence echoing around them as sudden as they had started laughing.

Chimney moves first, getting to his knees and then his feet, and Hen grabs his hand when he offers it, letting him pull her up for the second time that day. Bobby follows, grunting as his knees crack, and normally Hen would laugh at him for it but the humor of the situation has completely fled the scene. All Hen can think about now is what almost happened, what would have happened if Buck had made his move a few minutes earlier, or the others had gotten there a few minutes later.

As soon as Eddie and Buck join them all on truly solid ground, Hen turns right around and pokes Buck in the chest as hard as she can. “Don’t you ever do that again, you hear me?”

“What?” Chimney asks. “We were just joking around.”

But Buck stares at her, his mouth turned down and his eyes serious, and then nods.

“No,” Hen says, and pokes him in the chest again. “Say it out loud. Let ‘em all know what you were planning on doing.”

“Hen?” Eddie says cautiously. “What’s wrong? You’re both fine. It was just loose dirt, it wasn’t Buck’s fault.”

“Not that,” she says. “And not the joking around, either.” Buck’s gaze goes to the dirt, but she knuckles at his chin, forcing him to look at her again.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “But there are records of people surviving twenty thousand foot plus falls, I figured as long as I landed right it’d be fine. Break my legs, sure, but we’d both live.”

Someone takes a sharp breath next to her, but Hen doesn’t bother to see if it was Bobby, Eddie, or Chimney. It doesn’t matter.

“You don’t know that.” Hen grabs Buck’s shoulder and gives it a small shake. “Buck, you don’t know that. Even if you did everything right, you still could’ve died. And if you lived, what? You wanted me to be responsible for you being off team again? I don’t think so. I was ready to hang there as long as it took, you understand me?”

“You couldn’t have supported both of our weight that long,” Buck protests.

Hen shakes her head. “What’d I say about the beat of my own drum?”

Buck finally cracks a smile at that, and Hen claps him on the shoulder in return.

“And hey, Buckaroo,” Hen levels a look at him, then smiles. “You ever call me Henrietta again, you won’t like what I’ll do to your locker.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Buck laughs.

#evan buckley #henrietta wilson #hen wilson #911 on fox #911 fic #911 fanfic #9-1-1 fanfiction #my fic #mine #checking vital signs

26 notes · View notes

master-sass-blast · 5 years

Text

You Can Always Go Back Home.

THIS FIC IS 22K WORDS LONG. 61 PAGES IN WORD. THREE WEEKS OF WRITING!!!

VALIDATE MY PARKING P L E A S E !!!!

Summary: You wake up alone in a cell with no windows. The following days are nothing short of Hell on Earth.

Rating: M for physical abuse, emotional abuse, verbal abuse, manipulation, injury, blood, vomiting, mental health stuff, panic attacks, kidnapping, and H E A V Y A N G S T.

Pairings: Piotr Rasputin x Reader, Nathan Summers x Wade Wilson, Frank Castle x Karen Page, and Alexandra Rasputin x Nikolai Rasputin.

Set after “The Literal Crack Fic.”

Taglist: @marvel-is-perfection, @chromecutie, @super-darkcloudstudent, @girl-obsessed-with-things, @nebulous-leo

You wake up alone.

Okay, not necessarily disturbing.

You’re in an unfamiliar room with no windows, no conceivable exits, and no memory of how you got here.

Definitely disturbing, and also worrisome, troubling, anxiety-inducing, alarming, perplexing, and… other adjectives…

You push yourself off a small cot. You’re dressed in a baggy white shirt and baggier white pants, someone’s taken your engagement ring, and upon inspection you realize that someone’s put a mutation repression collar on your neck. Okay. Might be time to panic.

There’s a door on the wall opposite where the cot sits. It goes practically flush to the floor and ceiling, has no handle on the inside, and has a small hatch at the base that is currently closed, as your luck would have it.

There’s a couple of vents pumping out cool air along the line where the walls meet the ceilings; they’re far too small to try and escape through –though, without your powers, it’s not like you could get the covers off anyway.

At the far end of the room –not that you have to go far to get to it—is a bathroom. Upon inspection, it only holds a toilet, a small wastebasket, and a sink; checking the drawer attached to the base reveals a small hairbrush, a toothbrush, and some toothpaste. The cabinet underneath has a couple packages of toilet paper and some menstrual products.

This is a holding cell, that much is obvious. You’re meant to be here a long time, judging by the amount of toilet paper and toiletries.

You frown.

Kidnappings aren’t all that uncommon with the X-Men –an unfortunate hazard of the job, one might say. It would seem that you’ve been snatched up –but by who? Are the rest of the X-Men here with you, in different cells? Was someone targeting the X-Force specifically? Did some of your uncle’s enemies figure out where you were and grab you to get to him?

You try to walk back through your memories, but nothing fruitful comes of it. The last thing you can remember is waking up next to Piotr –but was that a few hours ago, or a few days ago?

You suppose it doesn’t matter, in the long run. You’re trapped for now, but someone will look for you eventually and come rescue you. All you have to do, for the time being, is wait.

You head back to the cot with a sigh and plop down as you prepare yourself for the mind-numbing boredom that awaits you.

***

The first hint comes when a meal –lunch or dinner, presumably, judging by the contents—is shoved through the hatch at the bottom of the door on a small tray.

There’s no anxiety medication.

Either whoever’s holding you doesn’t know you’re on antidepressants, or they intend for you to suffer.

You sigh heavily as you crack open a little mini bottle of water and sip from it –then grimace; it tastes like room-temperature plastic bottle.

Judging by the lack of any recording equipment whatsoever –cameras, microphones, speakers, nothing—these people are amateurs. They’re not particularly concerned about you breaking out –which even with your powers gone, if they knew anything about you, they should be. You’ve built a career out of getting out of tough situations.

So, whoever these chumps are, they haven’t done their homework on how to keep you stable –or done any real homework on your past “is a mutant,” it would seem.

Admittedly, that would stack things in your favor, except you’ll be facing withdrawals before too awful long. Hopefully, you can figure out how to get the mutation collar off and escape before you get too deep into those.

You bite into what is arguably the blandest turkey sandwich of your life and lean back against a pristinely painted white wall. Karma, don’t fuck me over now.

***

There’s no mirror in the bathroom.

You notice after your meal, when you try to head in and twist the collar around so you can see what make and model you’re working with –a short lived plan, to say the least; without a mirror, there’s not much you can do to figure out what you’re working with.

Still, you can at least get a sense of the locking mechanism –keypad, key, fingerprint scanner—from touch.

You smooth your hands around the collar, then grimace when you only find a solid plastic node on the back of it. Shit.

These types of collars, as your uncle had taught you, are lockdown collars. They’re meant to go on and stay on, to permanently render a mutant incapable of accessing their powers. No keypad to hack, no lock to pick, no fingerprint scanner to override. The only way to get the damn thing off is short circuit it or cut it off.

Just your luck, there aren’t any scissors in your little cell.

***

The boredom kicks in fast. There’s only so many times you can analyze your surroundings or make escape strategies before you start to lose your mind from the repetition.

There’s not too much to be said for pacing your tiny quarters, either. The room is three strides wide and four strides long –borderline claustrophobic, only big enough for you, the cot, and… that’s about it, really.

Confined spaces can be used to torture people; even if they aren’t particularly claustrophobic, the inability to move around and do things can drive even the most grounded individuals a little batty.

You wind up laying on your cot and staring at the ceiling. You spend time thinking about how to handle your anxiety once your most recent dose of medication runs out, about your upcoming wedding, about what you want your future home with Piotr to look like…

About Piotr. You think a lot about Piotr. You’re not sure how long you’ve been separated from him, but you already miss him dearly.

You sigh, and roll over onto your stomach. Come find me, baby. I’ll be waiting for you.

***

Dinner –well, your second meal, and you’re starting to realize that without windows you have no way of knowing what time of day it is—is delivered what feels like a few hours later; it’s another little bottle of water, a plain turkey sandwich, an apple, and some canned corn that’s been put in a bowl.

Along with it comes a little bottle of shampoo, a little bottle of conditioner, a little bar of soap, and a washcloth.

You’re stumped at first. There’s no shower down here, how could they possibly expect…

The sink.

You let out a shocked laugh when you realize that your captors mean for you to wash yourself via using the sink. No way! No fucking way!

But… you don’t have any other options –unless you want to use water from the toilet, but ew, gross.

You sigh, shocked and more than a little frustrated, and dig into the sandwich.

***

The lights turn out halfway through your venture with attempting to wash up using the sink.

You yelp, drop the bottle of shampoo, and topple against the wall behind you; you wince as you rub your shoulder. With a rush of annoyance, you realize that there aren’t any light switches in the main room or the bathroom. You have absolutely no control over when the lights are on and when they’re off.

You scowl in the direction of the ceiling. “Really!”

***

The lights switch on again while you’re sleeping. You’re not sure how long it’s been, but it doesn’t feel like it’s been a whole eight hours.

Then again, that could just be the cot. It’s thinly padded, and no matter how you sleep you can feel the metal frame holding it up.

You’re also starting to feel the effects of withdrawal. Your brain feels foggy, your anxiety has spiked (well, more than the situation’s already spiked it), and you have pins and needles feeling all over your body.

You shiver as you wrap your thin blanket tighter around you and curl into a little ball. Baby, please come find me.

***

Your first meal of the day –or is it the third? How long have you been asleep, even?—comes what feels like a couple hours later.

Objectively, you know you should eat. You need to keep up your strength, but as you look at the tray of a plain turkey sandwich, a little bottle of water, an apple, and some canned corn –and no meds, which further confirms that your captors aren’t giving you any—you can’t even work up the shadow of an appetite.

You manage to choke down a few bites of the turkey sandwich before your stomach churns, take the water bottle and the apple, then chuck the rest of your meal in the trash before setting the tray with the others.

***

You try to focus on exercising. Easier said than done, considering you barely ate anything, but you push yourself through to try and keep your endorphins up. You do rounds of push-ups, squats, crunches, planks, and lunges until your limbs are shaking from exertion, then chug water from the sink faucet until you almost puke it all back up.

You whimper as splay out on the floor in an effort to cool down faster. Okay. I need to pace myself better, and I need to eat regardless of what’s given to me. They’re clearly trying to break me by keeping my schedule off. Slow and steady is key.

You take a deep breath, then focus on your breathing and the points where your body is making contact with the floor in an effort to meditate.

You manage to keep that up for a bit until a panic attack hits –and normally you’d use an app on your phone to help yourself work through it, or meditate, or call Piotr, or Nate, or Wade, or Ellie, or Yukio, or Russell, or Neena…

It’s so much worse without the meds. You can’t catch your breath, you can’t stop the overwhelming rush of anxiety, you can’t get your mind to stop racing—

Bed. Get to the bed.

You crawl across the concrete floor and barely manage to get into the cot before you curl into a fetal position and sob.

***

It’s hard to be alone.

You’ve gotten used to having your friends and family right at hand over the past few years –come to depend on it, even; they’ve always been there to help you through rough patches. You’ve come to love having so many companions around you during your time at Xavier’s. It’s a direct one-eighty from growing up, when you only had yourself and your parents for company most of the time –and your parents weren’t exactly what you’d call “company.”

Aside from exercise (which you can’t do too much of without risking hurting yourself), there’s only sleeping, yoga (also limited for safety reasons), meditating, masturbating (which you don’t feel like doing, given your current withdrawal situation), or listening to the gentle hiss of the air vent.

You can’t remember how you got through being so alone as a child –though, technically, you suppose you didn’t; it fucked you up. Badly.

That, and you’d barely been able to handle being at Xavier’s when you’d first arrived. It’d been like a shock to your system. You couldn’t fathom so many people being around each other all the time –and wanting to spend that time with you, no less.

Objectively, you know that isolation is a basic destabilization tactic –but that doesn’t make it any easier to go through.

You roll over so you’re on your other side –your ribs are hurting from the metal support frame for the cot—and close your eyes. Piotr’s gonna come for me. He’s gonna come for me. He won’t leave me here.

***

You have to resist the urge to scream when your next meal is slid through the hatch at the bottom of the door.

Plain turkey sandwich. Canned corn in a bowl. Apple. Room temperature mini-bottle of water.

Sadists.

You’d kill for a bag of Cheetos right now. Or some of Piotr’s pancakes.

You take the tray back to your cot –your ass can’t handle any more of sitting on a concrete floor, and your back can’t handle leaning up against the concrete walls—and try to focus on recalling any sort of memory that might tell you how you wound up here while you choke down your meal.

Waking up next to Piotr. Him smiling at you. And… everything goes black after that.

A blackout might mean head trauma. Or a traumatic event. Or drug use –someone might’ve knocked you out.

A quick check of your head doesn’t reveal any sore spots or cuts –but you probably would’ve felt that when you woke up for the first time. You can’t do a full body check for injection sites without a mirror –not to mention it’s possible the drugs were fed to you—but you can’t find anything on the parts of your body you can see. As for trauma-induced memory repression, well, it’s possible, but you have no way of knowing if that’s it.

You take another bite of sandwich –and it immediately hits your tongue wrong, making you gag.

You spill your corn all over the floor when you dash to the bathroom.

***

You have to get out of here. You have to, you have to, you have to, you have to youhavetoyouhavetoyouhaveto—

“Information first,” you can remember Nathan telling you during one of your earliest training sessions with you. “Get as much information as you can, then act. Patience never hurt anyone.”

You measure the hatch at the bottom of the door first. It’s big enough for you to slip through, even with the collar around your neck. After some careful debating, you decide it’d be best to slide through on your stomach; your back will be facing up, meaning your face and organs will be more protected from blows, technically.

You’ll have to wait before you can declare your “recon” done, though. You have no idea how long the hatch stays open for, or if you’ll be able to hear any footsteps through the walls that’ll alert you to when the hatch is going to open.

You squat down by the door and get as comfortable as you can.

You waited nearly two decades to get out of your first cage. You can wait another day to escape this one.

***

Waiting nearly kills you.

It isn’t the patience –as contrary as you like to play with Piotr about the topic, you are capable of being patient.

No, it’s the exhaustion. The medication withdrawals are doing a number on you; you can’t remember another time in your life you’ve been this tired. Even the accidental coke withdrawals from that one mission where you fell into a vat of the stuff weren’t this bad, because at least you had your family, your friends, and your fiancé to help you.

You chuckle a little to yourself at the memory of the incident. You’ve definitely lead an… interesting life.

You groan as another wave of withdrawal-induced pins and needles pain sweeps through your body, then perk up –well, as much as you can perk up right now—when you hear a series of dull thumps approaching the door to your cell.

Footsteps.

You hardly breathe as the hatch unlatches and slides open –and it retracts into the door, which is another factor in your favor—and count off the seconds as a tray of food slides in. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine—

The hatch slides back shut and latches once more.

Nine seconds.

It’ll have to be enough.

***

You’re wide awake well before the lights come on again.

Your entire body feels like a live wire. Your chest is tight, your palms are clammy, your mouth is dry, your muscles are tense, it feels like something’s constantly crawling up the back of your neck, and despite the fact that you’re utterly exhausted, you can’t sleep.

You stagger to the bathroom on shaky legs and all but collapse onto the toilet. You have no idea how long you’ve been down here, but you know you can’t afford to stay any longer. You need your meds, you need your family –fuck, you need some understanding of how time’s passing; you feel like you’re on the verge of losing your mind with the way things currently are.

You shiver as you stare down at your bare feet, jaw and fists clenched tightly. I’m getting the fuck out of here.

***

The waiting game for the footsteps to sound outside the door is a long one. You pace in short circuits near the door, careful not to wander too far so you don’t miss the sound of them approaching and lose your earliest window of opportunity. You switch to doing what exercises and stretches that you can when the pacing starts to drive you batty, then wind up just crouching next to the door, staring down the hatch with laser-like focus, as though you can make it open with sheer will alone.

And –finally—after what feels like an eternity, you hear the footsteps approach.

Adrenaline surges through your system as your entire body tenses in anticipation. You get down into a borderline army-crawl position as you hear the latch for the hatch release, ready to whip the tray out of the way and dive through the hatch opening before your meal-deliverer can react.

Sure enough, the hatch door slides away, and a tray starts skidding across the threshold—

You rip it out of your captor’s hand and shove yourself halfway through the hatch, eliciting a scream from whoever’s delivering your meal this morning—

You know that voice.

You look up in time to see your mother collapse back onto a flight of wooden stairs, looking half scared to death at your sudden appearance.

Shock hits your system first, both at seeing her face for after so long and the realization of just who is holding you and all the implications that bears.

Anger –rage, white hot fury snarling in your chest like a caged lion—hits next, prompting you to bare your teeth at her in a vicious scowl. “You fucking bitch! Let me out of here!”

Your mother screams again when you grab her by the ankle in an effort to yank yourself out of your cell, then rears back and kicks you in the face repeatedly. “Demon child! Get off me, you whore!”

You shout when the toe of her shoe makes direct contact with your brow, then duck your head when you feel blood start spurting down your face.

You need to retreat. You’re not in a good enough position to fend off her blows like this, and at this rate you’re liable to get seriously hurt before you can get out and get to your feet.

You duck back into your cell and hunch over, pressing a hand to your brow in an effort to stem the flow of blood.

The hatch slams back shut, and your mother’s frantic footsteps retreat back up the stairs and out of hearing range.

You stumble to the bathroom and unravel nearly half a roll of toilet paper before pressing it to your brow. You’re shaking like a leaf as a mixture of adrenaline and fear course through your system. That was my mom.

Your mother, in flesh and blood. Not a withdrawal induced hallucination. The real-life woman who gave birth to you, then made your life hell on earth when your mutation presented.

What the fuck?

***

You have to be at your parents’ house. That’s the only logical explanation. Even though there are other scenarios that might bring your parents into the picture –you’re being held in community bunker back where you grew up, and your mom just happened to be delivering your meal when you tried to break out, for instance—the least complicated answer is usually the most accurate one. Combine that with the knowledge that your parents have tried, inexplicably, to have you kidnapped and brought back home before, and there’s no other explanation that does justice to your current predicament.

Again, what the fuck?

Why the fuck can’t they just leave you alone? They never wanted you –at least, not after your mutation presented—and you don’t want to be around them, they literally don’t even have to think about you since you left, so why do they keep trying to bring you back?

Although…

What if you never left to begin with?

Once the thought pops into your brain, it takes root so deep you can’t stop it –because what if you really haven’t left? What if you’ve been here the whole time, and your precious memories of Xavier’s and your friends and family there are just delusions your mind came up with to help you cope with the abuse you’ve suffered over the years? Your escape, your time spent at the Institute, Nate, Wade, Ellie, Yukio, Russell, Neena, Piotr…

Piotr.

A desperate whimper rips through you as the realization that Piotr might not be real sinks into your brain. No! you think desperately as tears start mixing with the blood on your face. No, he’s real! He’s my fiancé, we’re going to get married—

But you don’t have your ring. Your parents took it from you before locking you in here –or maybe whoever abducted you to begin with chucked it or sold it or—

Or maybe it was never real to begin with.

You sob brokenly, chucking the bloodstained wad of toilet paper away and ripping more off the roll to try and clean up your face as best you can. Without the ring, you don’t have proof that any of what you’ve experienced in the past few years is actually real. Any of the new scars on your body could be explained by abuse or other unsuccessful escape attempts, your muscles could be explained by working out in your cell…

It’s real, you tell yourself desperately as you gasp and choke on sobs. It’s real, it’s real, Piotr’s out there, he’s going to find me, please just let him be real.

You toss your latest wad of toilet paper away –then double take when you see your left hand.

There’s a tan line in the shape of a ring band on your ring finger.

A mixture of hope and relief courses through you, even though you barely dare to let yourself feel it—

And then the lights turn out, plunging you into darkness once more.

You pant frantically as you try to get a grip on your spiraling anxiety, then scream.

***

You manage to crawl back to the cot and fall asleep at some point. Your face hurts –your entire body hurts, really—and there’s no good way to lay without irritating your new cut in some way, shape, or form, but you do eventually pass out for a bit.

The lights come back on sometime later, waking you up with a jolt. You groan, both from exhaustion and the bolt of pain from the cut on your brow –and then all the hair on the back of your neck stands up when the door –not the hatch, the door—to your cell opens.

It’s him.

A slew of memories, some that you’d forgotten, rush into your mind’s eye. Growing up, there’d been a pattern to the abuse you’d suffered from your parents. You’d do something to upset your mother –either legitimate or some made up slight she’d create so she had an excuse to punish you—and then she’d verbally and emotionally abuse you –sometimes physically, too—before locking you in your room for hours on end.

And then she’d lament to your father about how poorly behaved and undisciplined you’d been when he got home from work, and he’d “correct” you with whatever he had at hand –usually his belt.

Get up. Get up, get up, get up getupgetupgetupgetup—

You manage to roll out of the way of his first strike. You tumble to the floor as his folded-up belt smacks against the cot, making the frame vibrate from the force of the strike. Before you can get off the ground, though, he kicks you in the gut and knocks the wind out of you.

“You ungrateful brat!” he snarls as he brings down his belt against your body over and over, often hitting you with the metal buckle. “How dare you disrespect your mother like that! In my home!”

You scream and try to shield yourself from his blows as best you can. “Stop it! Stop hitting me!”

“Spare the rod, spoil the child,” he growls before yanking you off the floor by your hair.

You move on instinct, muscle memory. You knee him in the crotch before breaking his grip, block a weak attempt at a punch the way Nate taught you to, then snatch his belt off the floor and get behind him before he can try anything else. You wrap the length of leather around his neck and pull it tight as hard as you can.

Your father chokes and struggles, attempting –and failing—to get his fingers between the belt and his neck before trying to reach back and pull you off him.

You snarl as you stumble with his movements, trying to keep control over him and his belt. Unfortunately, given your withdrawals, you’re nowhere near as steady as you need to be. You trip over the cot and lose your grip, tumbling to the floor in a heap.

Your father hacks and gasps as he gets his own belt off his neck, then staggers towards the open cell door.

You charge after him, narrowly avoiding slamming your face into the metal surface when he gets it closed before you can reach him. You pound your fists against the door as his hurried, stumbling footsteps retreat up the stairs and bellow at the top of your lungs, “I’ll fucking kill you! You bastard! I’m going to kill you!”

The lights turn off again, leaving you stranded in the dark once more.

You seethe as you step back from the door, then let out a wrathful shriek.

***

Your stomach is killing you.

You hadn’t been able to eat the meal your mother delivered earlier due to the adrenaline dump over the realization that you might’ve never truly escaped from your parents’ home. Even if you could find any of the food in the dark, the meat in the sandwich has definitely gone bad by now, and you’re pretty certain everything else got smashed beyond edibility during your struggle with your father.

You do manage to find the mini-bottle of water. You drain it without thinking, then head to the bathroom to guzzle some water out of the sink when you’re still thirsty.

Except the tap’s been shut off from upstairs. And, when you get desperate enough to check, the water reservoir for the toilet –along with the bowl—has been drained, too.

You laugh until you cry, then cry until you laugh, then follow that cycle until you throw up.

Worse still, you’re unbearably hot. The flow of air was shut off shortly after your confrontation with your father. You’re pretty certain that you’re still getting some air, but without the air conditioning on your tiny cell is downright stifling.

Maybe it would be better if they’d sealed you in here to asphyxiate. At this point, you’d take passing out and dying shortly thereafter over suffering like this.

Your head swims as you wipe a layer of sweat off the back of your neck. You have no idea how much time has passed since your fight with your father. You’ve been lapsing in and out of consciousness, meaning that it could’ve been anywhere from a few hours to maybe over a day.

Are you going to die down here? Is this how you’re going to go out? To malicious negligence?

You weep softly as you curl up on your side. You’d hoped, ever since escaping, that you’d die in comfort, surrounded by those you love –or, if not that, in a blaze of glory that leaves everyone awestruck.

Though, considering you may have never escaped at all, perhaps those aspirations were never meant to be within reach for you.

Your body tenses when you hear footsteps outside your door. This is it. This is the end.

You force yourself into a standing position. You’re not going down without a fight, even if the fight you have left in you is bordering on pathetic at this point. You brace yourself against the nearest wall as the door swings open, letting light from the stairwell into your cell—

Nathan steps in, dressed in all black and with a gun strapped to his back. “Kid!”

You stare at him, shocked. “Dad?”

Neena follows in after him, beaming when she sees you. “We’ve got her,” she says into an earpiece. “She looks a little rough, but she’s conscious.”

Nathan doesn’t bother to talk to whoever Neena’s talking to. He closes the distance between the two of you faster than you can blink, yanking you into his arms and almost crushing you with a hug and—

It’s him. It’s really him. Down to every single last detail –the way his techno-organic arm whirs when it moves, the smell of the soap and deodorant he uses, the slight rasp of stubble on his chin and cheeks that he can never seem to get rid of no matter how often he shaves, the fuckboi haircut Wade never stops ripping on him for.

Dad.

You sob, borderline scream, with relief and collapse against him. You cling to him for all you’re worth, ignoring the various pains in your body that the effort causes.

Nathan holds you tight to him, smoothing your hair and kissing the top of your head in a paternal manner. “It’s okay, kid. It’s okay. I’ve got you, you’re okay.” To Neena, he says, “Let’s get her upstairs.”

You make it to the first step of the stairs outside your cell before you have to stop. “I’m too dizzy,” you whine as your legs give out. “I haven’t had my meds, I’m too dizzy—”

“Okay, okay.” Nate sits down with you. “We can wait here until you feel better.”

You grip his shirt like your life depends on it and cry against his human shoulder. “Please don’t leave me, I don’t want you to leave me—”

“No way in hell I’m leaving you,” he reassures you, wrapping both arms around your shaking form. “I’m staying right here with you, I promise.”

“They took my ring, dad,” you ramble, almost manically. “They took it, they took my ring, they took the ring Piotr gave me, I don’t have it anymore, I thought none of you were real—”

“Go find the ring,” Nathan commands to Neena. “And let Pete know where she is.”

“It’s gone,” you protest. “They took it, it’s gone, I don’t have it—”

“Hey.” Neena kneels in front of you and clasps your shoulder gently. “Look at me, Y/N. This is me we’re talking about. I’m going to find your ring and that’s the end of it. Okay?”

You sniff loudly and nod. “Okay.”

She smiles reassuringly at you. “Good. First, though, I’m going to get your guy and send him down here.”

You stare after her as she jogs up the stairs, then look over at Nathan when she disappears from view. “Piotr’s here?”

“He is. He was very worried about you. We all were.” His face creases into a frown as he takes in your full appearance. “Oh, kiddo…”

“My dad hit me,” you choke out as you start crying again. “And my mom—”

Nathan hugs you again, rubbing his human hand up and down your arm as you sob. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. We’re going to get you out of here, I promise.”

Then there’s the sound of frantic, extremely heavy footsteps at whatever’s at the top of the stairs—

Piotr.

He stops at the top of the stairway leading down to your cell when he sees you –and then you’re surprised he doesn’t trip over his own two feet with how fast he gets down to where you and Nate are, but then he’s pulling you into his lap and wrapping his arms around and kissing you—

You cry until your throat goes raw. You cling to him until your hands hurt. You kiss him until your lungs burn, until you’re on the verge of passing out, but it’s all worth it because he’s real, and he loves you, and you’re going to be okay.

“Easy, easy,” Nate says after a minute. “Let her breathe. She needs to breathe.”

Piotr pulls back, which is when you realize that he’s crying, too. “I love you so much, myshka. Bozhe moi, I thought I would never see you again—”

You mash yourself against his chest as hard as you can, given your injuries –and even then, you’re still not really giving them the consideration that you ought to. “I missed you so much, baby. It’s been so horrible. They didn’t give me any meds, and I couldn’t keep my food down—”

Almost like magic, Piotr reaches into one of the pockets on his cargo pants and produces a protein bar. “Here. Eat this.”

You giggle, wet and a little hysterical, as you accept the snack. “Always protein bars with you, huh.”

He manages a smile for you. “Good for bones.” His face quickly creases back into a teary frown, and he cups the back of your head while he kisses your forehead –scrupulously avoiding the cut by your eyebrow—and murmurs something in Russian that you don’t understand.

“Turn around for a minute, kid,” Nathan says, tugging on the power cell for the repression collar when you do. “Let’s get this thing off you.”

You hold still as best you can while he works on the collar, then let out a sigh of relief that sends a gust of wind up the stairs when he finally gets the thing off.

“There we go,” Piotr says with a smile as he rubs your back soothingly. “Much better.”

“Have you had anything to drink today?” Nathan asks, looking you over and gauging your overall physical state.

You manage to shake your head limply. “No. They shut off the water supply to my room after my fight with my father.”

Nate’s mouth tightens into a deep grimace, then he stands with a grunt. “We need to get her upstairs and start hydrating her.”

You whimper when Piotr tries to lift you up. “No, no, no, no! I want to walk, let me walk—”

Both men quickly soothe you, and Piotr sets you down so you can walk on your own. It’s slow going, given how unsteady you are, but eventually you reach the top step.

You’re in the basement of your childhood home. Everything’s where you remember it being; there’s a washer-dryer set next to a laundry sink, a folding table with a small pile of clothes on it, a few cardboard boxes set on some storage racks, and a desk that your father used for various “tinkering” projects.

“Come on,” Nathan encourages you after a moment. “You’re almost there. Just one more flight of stairs.”

You lean heavily against Piotr as you stumble up the last flight of stairs. Your head is swimming, and you feel nauseous even though your stomach is empty, but you don’t want to stop. You want to get out of here, you want to go back home, and you never want to see your parents again for as long as you live.

“Holy shit.”

You look up as you step into the kitchen of the house where you grow up –and almost do a double take, but that is most definitely Frank Castle standing in the dining room, dressed in all black, a tactical vest, and carrying a gun that’s almost as big as Nate’s.

(There’s a euphemism there, but you’re too tired to think about it enough to find it.)

He also looks genuinely shocked and concerned as he takes your appearance in –and you know Frank’s not the sadist the media makes him out to be, but you’re starting to think that you might look worse for wear than you originally suspected.

You manage to flash a weak smile at him. “Hey.”

He nods back. “You okay?”

You let out a thready laugh. “Been better.”

“She needs water, ASAP,” Nate says as he emerges from the basement behind you.

Frank reaches into his jacket and pulls out an unopened bottle of water, which he then tosses over to Nate.

Nathan cracks it open and hands it over to you with the stern instructions to “Sip slowly. Don’t guzzle it; you’ll make yourself throw up if you do.”

“Oh thank fuck, you found her!”

Piotr takes the water bottle from your hand a split second before Wade crashes into you, wrapping you in a hug so tight and borderline full-body that he must’ve found a way to incorporate octopus DNA into his regular gene sequence to give himself extra arms.

Which… he might’ve actually done. Because he’s Wade.

You still cling to him just as tight anyway, crying like you did when Nate found you, and then again with Piotr, because you’re just so damn happy to see him.

“You’re okay! I’m so glad you’re okay!” He pulls back, and he winces –he’s forgone his usual suit in favor of wearing black tactical gear like everyone else, though he is sporting his mask. “Or I spoke too soon. Ow.”

“Did I grow second nose or something?” you ask, laughing nervously as you reach up to feel your face. “Everyone keeps looking at me like something’s wrong.”

“No! Nothing’s wrong!” Wade says, forcing a bright tone. “You definitely don’t look like your face lost a fight with a blender.”

“You look like you got hurt,” Nate clarifies when your expression changes to worry. “It’ll all heal just fine.”

“You found her?”

Your jaw drops when you see Alex poke her head into the kitchen. “What are you doing here?”

“Rescuing you,” she says as she gives you a thorough once over before pulling a cellphone out of her pocket. “I will call him quick.” She lifts the phone to her ear and disappears, though you can hear her say something in Russian to someone else—

And then Mikhail appears in the kitchen, wearing the same get up as everyone else: black tactical gear and strapped within an inch of his life. He claps a hand over his mouth when he sees you, recoiling for a second before approaching you tentatively. “Bozhe moi, you are okay? We were so worried! Is hugs okay?”

“Hugs are fine,” you confirm with a shaky laugh, tearing up again as he gently wraps his arms around you.

Piotr hands you the water bottle when Mikhail releases you. “Little sips,” he reminds you as he gently rubs his hand up and down your back.

You lift the bottle to your lips, and while you work on not sucking it all down in one go, you finally look around and get your bearings.

The sky outside the kitchen windows is stained a golden color that fades into slowly darkening hues of blue–the light’s coming from the west, if you’re remembering the orientation of the house correctly, meaning that it’ll be night soon.

You glance over at the stove clock.

The digital display shows it’s a little after seven.

“It’s nighttime, right?” you ask quietly.

“Evening,” Nathan confirms.

You nod as you process the information and continue scanning the kitchen. It’s as conspicuously clean as you remember –save for a half-eaten piece of toast left on a plate, a mostly empty glass of orange juice, and a partially read newspaper next to it.

A quick inspection of the floor reveals some smudged, barely-there red stains that, if you squint, might be patterned like the tread of someone’s shoe.

You don’t have to guess how those got there.

“How long was I gone?” you ask, still quiet, as you start in on Piotr’s protein bar. Your stomach gurgles greedily when the smell of chocolate hits your nose, and the past few days of barely eating hit you all at once. “And when can I get something to eat?”

“Four days,” Nate answers again. “And we’ll get you something more filling once we’ve cleared the town.”

Alex comes back around the corner at that moment, arguing with someone on the phone. “Yes, yes –she’s fine, I already told you she’s fine… do not take this out of context, you know what I meant.” She hands the phone off to Wade abruptly. “Keep him occupied for two minutes.”

Wade takes the phone and lifts it to his ear. “According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way the bee should be able to fly—”

She turns and faces you, cupping your face in her hands as she looks you over with motherly concern. She frowns sadly, and gently rubs your cheeks with her thumbs. “Malen'kaya ptitsa…” She lifts her hand to gently brush her fingers against the cut above your eyebrow. “How did you get this?”

Any steadiness you might’ve gained crumples as your eyes start watering again. “I tried to escape… my mom kicked me in the face…”

Alex visibly tears up at that and pulls you into a tight hug.

You shake in her arms, partially from the past few days and partially from the overwhelming feeling of having a maternal figure that loves you.

You have a feeling you’re going to wind up dedicating a few therapy sessions to both.

Frank pipes up from somewhere in the living room –probably keeping an eye on things, given his background and your dad’s general ability with constructing a mission plan. “Still no sign of anyone. Not even across the street. Entire town’s dead.”

“They’re probably at the church,” you pipe up as you step back from Alex and lean against your fiancé, wiping your face dry with your shirt. “Deciding what to do with me.”

Mikhail frowns. “They already took you. What else is there?”

“Whether or not they need to kill me,” you say, voice flat –and even though you’re exhausted and more than a little out of it, you can feel the snap of tension that runs through everyone else within earshot.

“We need to get her out of here,” Nate says, voice low and thrumming with barely controlled anger. He taps Wade on the shoulder, who is in the middle of rambling in Spanish to whoever’s on the phone. “Cars. Now.”

Wade gives Nate a little salute –without stopping his monologue—and heads towards the front door.

“Wait!” You panic a little when Nate and Piotr start moving you towards the door as well. “My ring –I still don’t have my ring, I need my ring!”

“It is okay, myshka,” Piotr reassures you. “I can get you new one—”

“I don’t want another one!” you sob as you dig in your heels to keep from being moved further. “I want the one you already gave me –it’s mine, they took it from me, it’s supposed to be mine—”

“I found the ring!” Neena shouts from upstairs. There’s a series of quick footsteps above you, then a thud that makes you think she jumped the entire flight of stairs in one go, and then she’s jogging into the kitchen with your engagement ring in hand. “I believe this is what you’re looking for.”

You almost collapse with relief when you see it. Your hands are shaking so bad that you can barely hold onto your bottle of water, much less a delicate engagement ring.

Fortunately, Piotr’s there to help you. He takes the ring from Neena with a murmured ‘thank you,’ then carefully slides it back into place on your left ring finger.

“There we go,” Alex says with a note of approval in her voice.

Nathan nudges you forward –albeit not unkindly—as Frank, Neena, and Mikhail head out the front door. “Come on. Time to get out of here.”

You walk through the dining room and entryway on shaky legs, then across the small porch and down the little flight of steps. It’s cool outside, and Piotr shucks off his jacket and drapes it around your shoulders when you shiver.

There’s two sleek, modern, massive black SUVs that look entirely out of place on your parents’ gravel driveway. Neena’s behind the wheel of one, Frank’s behind the other—

And Wade is standing between the two cars, holding the cellphone six inches away from his ear as some rages at him from the other end of the line—

You recognize the voice; it’s your uncle.

Wade shoots Alexandra a slightly shell-shocked look. “I think he’s pissed.”

You hold out your hand to him. “He’ll settle down when I start talking to him.”

Your uncle’s still going as you clamber into the back of the SUV that Frank’s driving. “—Wilson, I swear to all things holy and not, if you don’t put my niece on the phone right now—”

“Hey,” you say quickly before he can start listing off various death threats. “It’s me. I’m okay.”

Your uncle lets out a rush of air that almost makes you think he’s been punched in the gut “Punk.”

Piotr climbs in next to you –which gets an eyebrow raise from you, to which he merely kisses your forehead—and buckles you into your seat before buckling himself in and closing the door next to him.

“Hey,” you say again, voice wobbly and hoarse from all the crying you’ve been doing. “It’s okay, I’m okay—”

Your uncle lets out a broken sob. “Punk –Y/N—I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry!”

“It’s okay,” you reassure him, equally as teary. “It’s okay, it’s not your fault, it’s alright.”

Nate closes the front passenger door of the car with a thud and quickly buckles himself in. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

“We’re leaving now,” you say as Frank pulls out of the driveway. “I’ll be home soon.”

“I’ll be here,” your uncle promises. “I’m… I’m sorry I couldn’t be there.”

“It’s okay,” you say for the umpteenth time. “I know you would have if it was an option.”

“Damn right.” He sniffs wetly, then groans. “There’s some other people here that want to check in on you. I need to… yeah.”

You let out a tired laugh –you don’t have to ask what he means. “That’s okay. I’ll see you when I get home.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Alright, I’m gonna put you on speaker before I get mobbed.”

There’s a brief moment of shuffling on the other end of the line, and then—

Chaos.

Russell, Yukio, and Ellie –and possibly Kitty as well, if your ears aren’t deceiving you—all try to talk at once, asking how you are, what happened, when you’re coming back, what’s going to happen to your parents… It all comes out as a jumbled, cacophonic mess, and even though you have to hold the speaker of the phone away from your ear a little, it makes you smile.

“Okay, okay.” Nikolai’s voice breaks through the din, warm and fond but undoubtedly authoritative. “One at time. Do not want to overwhelm here.”

And that devolves into, from the sounds of things, a ‘rock-paper-scissors’ match for who gets to talk first—

Until Illyana takes the phone. “How are you?”

“I’m okay,” you answer while trying not to giggle at the grumbling you can hear in the background. “I’ve been better, but I’m okay. I’m on my way home now.”

“What’s going to happen with your parents?” Russell blurts –which gets a few hisses of ‘don’t ask that’ from the girls, but you can understand why he’d want to know.

When you come from backgrounds like yours and his, it’s natural to want to know if the people like your abusers are being held accountable.

“I don’t know,” you say honestly. “But, if I have it my way, I’m never seeing them again.”

“We missed you a lot,” Yukio pipes up. “We were all really worried about what happened to you.”

“I missed you guys, too,” you say, choking up with emotion again. “I’ll be home soon, I promise.”

“Did Wade kill anyone?” Kitty asks, which prompts a snort from Illyana.

“As far as I know, he behaved himself.”

“Told you,” Russell grumbles at someone –Ellie, most likely, she’s usually the first person to doubt Wade’s self-control (not that she doesn’t have good reason or plenty of evidence to support her suspicions). “Karen’s here, too.”

You blink, surprised. “Karen? As in… Karen Page?”

(You swear you see Frank perk up in the driver’s seat, just a little.)

“Yeah,” Karen says, speaking for the first time. “I was brought here for… supervision.”

Which is another way of saying ‘safekeeping,’ but either way it isn’t hard to miss the distaste in her voice over being babysat.

“Well, uh, thanks for loaning your friend out,” you say for lack of something better to comment on. “I appreciate it.”

Karen snorts. “Now that’s a business idea. But we both wanted to make sure you came back in one piece.” She clears her throat. “How are you doing?”

“Been better,” you admit wearily. “Been a lot better.”

“I can imagine.”

“I’m sure, considering you’re New York’s ‘most kidnapped reporter.’”

Frank snorts.

“Did he laugh at that?”

You smirk. “Yeah.”

Karen grumbles something under her breath before saying, “Well, I’ll have you know that claim is unsubstantiated at best.”

“I’m sure,” you yawn, suddenly overwhelmed with exhaustion.

“We’ll let you go,” Karen says decisively. “You should rest.”

“Probably,” you mutter, too tired for functional human conversation. You make your good-byes with the group –Nikolai promises to say good-bye to your uncle for you—then hang up.

The car’s already at the fringes of the town where you grew up. The populated area is quickly giving way to fields of crops and forest; if it weren’t for all the sins you know lie close to the surface of the place, it’d look beautiful.

You watch the sun continue to set before you turn away from the window and let exhaustion claim you.

***

The cars pull over to the side of the road about twenty minutes later –far enough outside of town that you’ve got a head start, but still too close for comfort in your opinion.

You blink sleepily as Nate hops out of his seat and walks over to the door next to you. “What’s going on? Why did we stop?”

“We need to get you cleaned up and make sure you don’t have any serious injuries that require immediate attention,” he explains as Alex and Mikhail hop out of the other car and walk towards him.

You frown. “And if I do?”

Nathan nods to Mikhail. “He’ll teleport back to the Institute with you so you can get immediate treatment, and the rest of us will finish the drive back.” He pauses to take a large medical kit from Alex. “You got a preference for which one of us looks you over?”

“Dad,” you decide, voice quiet, after a moment of thought. “I want dad to do it.”

The three of them nod, and Alex and Mikhail walk a respectful distance away while Nathan puts on a pair of medical gloves.

“Alright,” he says as he turns on a mini flashlight. “Look straight ahead for me.”

Piotr unbuckles his seat belt and shifts so he’s sitting behind you. He kisses the top of your head when you interlock your fingers with his. “Does anywhere hurt?”

“Everything hurts,” you grumble as you follow Nathan’s light with your eyes.

Nate clicks the flashlight off. “No signs of concussion. Can you run me through how you got injured?”

You swallow hard and grip Piotr’s hand tighter. “I tried to escape… earlier today, I think. I caught my mother off guard… and she—” you tap where you’d gotten the split in your skin on your forehead “—kicked me. Couple times.”

Piotr lets out a shaky breath and scoots closer to you, lips pressing against your temple.

“Later, my father…” You chin trembles as your voice trails off, and you find yourself blinking back tears.

“It’s okay,” Nathan reassures you. “You don’t have to tell me how it went. I just need to know where you got hurt.”

“Ribs. Stomach. Neck,” you rattle off. “Legs too, probably.”

“Okay. Can you lift your shirt up for me so I can see your ribcage?”

You do –and for the first time, you realize there’s blood crusted on a good portion of your shirt. Some of it dripped down onto your pants as well. “Oh. That’s why everyone was looking at me weird. I look like Carrie.”

“All you’re missing is the bucket,” Nathan deadpans. He helps you roll up your shirt to the bottom of your bra when you wince, then grimaces. “Aw, kid…”

Your ribs are a mottled myriad of purples and reds, shiny and just a touch swollen. “Huh. I was wondering why that hurt.”

“That would do it,” Nathan agrees, jaw clenching as he inhales and exhales slowly. “Alright, I’m gonna feel your sides to make sure your ribs aren’t broken. This’ll probably hurt a little.”

It hurts a lot, but it’s nothing compared to the past few days.

You squeeze your eyes shut and breathe through the stabs of pain that Nathan’s poking creates. “I used the fighting techniques you taught me with my father. Almost choked him out.”

He presses a fatherly kiss against your forehead. “Atta girl. Good job. Alright, your ribs don’t seem to be broken, but you’re going to be sore until you can see one of the healers. We can always have Mikhail take you back if you’re uncomfortable.”

You shake your head automatically. “No. I want to stay with Piotr.”

Piotr hugs you gently, careful to avoid your bruises, and kisses your cheek. “Myshka, be reasonable.”

“I thought I was never going to see you again!” you whimper as you press yourself against him. “I thought you weren’t even real! I’m not leaving you!”

“We have painkillers,” Nate says when Piotr hesitates. “We can keep her physically comfortable, and her physical well-being isn’t in question. The next immediate step is her emotional well-being. She’ll be calmer if she stays with you.”

Piotr nods after a moment. “If you are certain she will be fine.”

“If I wasn’t, I’d be sending her home with your brother.” Nate nods when Piotr nods again, then pulls a pack of baby wipes out of the medical kit. “Okay, kiddo. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

“Pictures,” Frank pipes up from the driver’s seat. “This is an abuse case. You need to take pictures.”

“I’m not taking my parents to court,” you sigh. “I probably wouldn’t win, since I’m mutant. All I ever care about is not seeing them again.”

Frank meets your eyes in the rearview mirror. “All due respect, ma’am, but they went to the trouble of kidnapping you and dragging you back to their house. Even if you’re done with them, they clearly aren’t done with you. You need a paper trail.”

“He’s right,” Nathan says when you pull a frustrated face. “The more documentation we have, the better things go if the courts ever do get involved.”

You sigh, exhausted and frustrated. “Fine. Let’s just make it fast. I want to get all this blood off me.”

Nathan calls Alex over to help with the picture taking process. Using Nate’s phone, they start off by taking several pictures of your face and the cut and bruising there, before documenting the state of your clothes and all the blood over it. The snap a few shots of your neck –chafing from the mutation repression collar, apparently—then move on to taking pictures of your ribs and back.

Piotr kisses your forehead soothingly when you whimper from your ribs hurting. “Almost done. You are doing so well.”

They finish off by getting photos of the bruises on your legs from your encounter with your father, then Nate hands the package of baby wipes to Alex. “Start getting her cleaned up. I’m going to save these.”

Frank rolls down his window and holds his phone out to Nathan. “Send them to Karen’s number, too. She works with a law firm; they’ll be able to help.”

“I thought she was a journalist,” you say as Nate copies Karen’s number into his phone.

“She moonlights as a private investigator and paralegal for a law firm, too,” Frank explains.

You nod, impressed. “Pays to be connected.”

“It certainly does,” Alex agrees as she clasps your chin with her hand. “Alright, malen'kaya ptitsa, let’s get you cleaned up.”

With the practiced gentleness of a loving mother, she wipes your face clean with methodic, circular strokes. She goes through several wipes before she moves on to your neck, gently scrubbing the dried blood off your skin.

Your hold on Piotr’s hand tightens further as waves of emotion threaten to overwhelm you.

This should’ve been your mother. The societal laws of the universe dictate that it’s your mother, the one who gave birth to you, who should be loving on you and caring for you like this.

Instead, she helped lock you in a cell and kicked you in the face when you tried to escape.

“There we go,” Alex says softly, fondly. “All clean.” She throws the baby wipes in a plastic bag, then nods at the medical kit –which is really just a black duffel bag with more medical emergency supplies in it than you would’ve thought possible—as she ties the plastic bag off. “There’s clean clothes for her in there. Help her get changed.”

Piotr kisses the back of your head before sliding back across the back bench of the SUV and exiting on his side of the car. He circles back around to you and withdraws a pair of pajama pants, some fresh underwear, and a shirt of his that’s large enough your won’t have to wear a bra. “Alright, myshka. Let’s get you into proper clothing.” He stands so he’s blocking you from view of everyone else –even the driver’s side mirror of the car, not that you’d ever take Frank Castle as the ‘sneak peek’ type.

Still, you appreciate the gesture.

You shuck off your white, baggy clothes with Piotr’s help, then let out a sigh of relief when you pull on the fresh underwear and pajama pants.

“I bet that feels better,” Piotr says as he helps you get the clean shirt on.

“Yeah, it does,” you admit.

Piotr puts your bloody clothes in another plastic grocery bag, then ties it off and tucks it in the medical kit. He zips the duffel bag shut, hands it back to his mother, then nods at Nathan. “We’re ready.”

“Good. We can’t afford to stand still any longer.”

Your stomach growls angrily as everyone gets back in their respective car seats. “Dad, I really need to eat something.”

“I know, kiddo. I promise, as soon as we’re a good distance away, we’ll get you fed,” Nathan says as he buckles himself in. “Think about what you want in the meantime. We’ll get whatever sounds good to you.”

Piotr kisses your cheek as he buckles you back into your seat. “Hang in there, myshka. Just little bit longer.”

“I want burgers,” you whine tiredly –you’ve earned a good whine, though. “Plural. As in lots of them.”

“We can get you burgers,” Piotr promises, buckling himself in as Frank steers back onto the road.

“And fries. I want fries.”

“You can have fries, also.”

“I want your fries, too.”

Piotr chuckles, then nods. “You can have my fries as well.”

You lean against his shoulder, worn out. “Can I get a milkshake, too?”

“Whatever you want, dorogoy,” Piotr says as he carefully wraps his arm around you and kisses the top of your head. “You can get whatever you want.”

***

Forty minutes later, you finally hit a strip with a bunch of stores –and, even better, fast food joints. The two cars order enough food for twenty people, then drive over to an abandoned movie theater with a parking lot that’s more grass than asphalt and park there so everyone can eat.

You manage to slurp down half your chocolate shake before Piotr takes it from you and hands you one of the burgers you’d asked for. “Protein first, please,” he says as he sets your shake in your cupholder. “I do not want for you to get sick.”

After four days of withdrawals and plain turkey sandwiches, the burger tastes like heaven.

You moan obscenely as you take your first bite, then gulp it down before going back in for more.

“The hell are you doing to her?” Mikhail asks, grinning lasciviously as he opens his door and swing his legs so he’s sitting sideways in his seat, facing the car you’re in. “I could hear that through my window!”

Piotr just rolls his eyes, takes a bite of his burger, and hands his fries over to you, the sweetheart.

“What’s the plan for the parents’ house when we get Y/N back home?” Wade asks as he horks down his burger almost as fast as you’re eating yours. “I’m feeling something arson-y. Frankenfurter, you down?”

You can almost hear Frank’s eyes roll at the nickname, but he shows restraint by only flipping Wade off for it instead of cursing him out. “You’re buying the gas.”

“Ooh, I do love good burning!” Mikhail says with slightly manic brightness. “If I come, you will not even need matches!”

“Send a good message,” Nathan reasons, techno-organic eye flaring as he considers the idea. “Warn all the other shitheads not to go after mutants.”

Behind you, Piotr makes a noise of disapproval. “X-Men do not kill.”

“We’re not X-Men!” Wade reasons. “It’ll be fine!”

“I don’t know,” Neena says softly as she watches you closely. “I’m not getting a good feeling about this idea.”

You’re not sure when you started crying, but her sudden attention makes you realize that you’re shaking and that tears are trickling down your cheeks.

“Hey, hey, hey.” Wade crouches in front of you, smiling brightly even though panic is easy to see in his eyes. “It’s okay. We wouldn’t leave you out of it.”

Piotr sighs heavily. “Wade—”

“Hey, a little vengeance towards childhood abusers is very cleansing for the soul!”

“No,” you snap, scrubbing at your face –and then wince when you press against the cut by your eyebrow too hard. “No one’s doing anything. No arson, no killing, no threats, nothing!”

“What the shit? Are you listening to yourself right now?” Wade exclaims. “These are your parents, the people who beat you growing up and again within the past twenty-four hours, and you just want to –what—let them get away with it? The fuck kinda bullshit is that!”

“You can’t,” you sob, almost on the verge of hyperventilating. “You can’t –Wade, you can’t, you have to promise me—”

“Hey, hey.” Nate clasps your hand while shushing softly. “Deep breaths. No one’s going to do anything if you’re not okay with it.”

“Speak for yourself!”

Neena kicks Wade in the shin –albeit not too hard. “We’re trying to calm her down right now.”

“What do you think the arson is for?”

Piotr lets out a harsh exhale behind you. “Wade—”

“Everyone be quiet,” Alex interjects in a tone that brokers no arguing. She fixes Wade with a steely glare when he opens his mouth to argue anyway. “I said quiet. There is more going on here than you realize.”

Wade gives you a skeptical look. “What else could there possibly be? Your family situation is already entirely fucked.”

You sniff wetly and blow your nose into a Kleenex provided by Piotr, then give everyone watching you –which is the entire group at this point—a desperate, pleading look. “What I’m about to tell you cannot ever go any further, okay? Someone else’s life is at stake. I’m putting them at risk –and the rest of you, too—just by telling you all this.”

Everyone nods seriously –even Wade—and then it all comes tumbling out.

About your uncle. About the life he was forced into. About how he got out and has to stay under every radar conceivable to avoid being forced back into “government service.”

“If anything happens to my parents –or their property—that isn’t natural causes, the government drops a massive manhunt on his head,” you explain, voice thick with emotion. “It’s an agreement they made to keep him from taking me when I was a kid and to keep him from lashing out at them from all their bullshit.”

“Why haven’t they just dropped the bomb on him anyway?” Neena asks. “Your parents don’t exactly seem like the most rational, deal-honoring people anyway.”

“He warned them that if they did pull something like that, his first stop would be to come get me and ‘wipe all evidence of them from existence,’” you say. “I think they valued their own lives enough to keep from doing that.”

“Why not just take you and run anyway?” Mikhail pipes up, forehead creased with confusion and concern.

You purse your lips. “For all about him that’s great… he’s flawed. I don’t think he ever thought he’d be in a good position to take care of a kid –and, in all honesty, he wasn’t.”

“But he could have saved you,” Mikhail argues. “He could have gotten you out.”

“My uncle was just as abused as I am, if not more,” you say flatly. “He’s had his own demons to deal with –still deal with. And, at any rate, this isn’t about what he has or hasn’t done; this is about his present safety, and believe me when I say there is a very real threat staring him down.”

“We believe you,” Nate reassures you. “And we’re not going to do anything that’s going to put your uncle at risk.”

Wade holds up his hands defensively when you give him a pointed look. “I’ll behave! I promise!”

You heave a sigh of relief and lean back against Piotr. “Thanks, everyone.”

…

While you all finish eating, Nate, Alex, Neena, Piotr, and Frank work out how the rest of the travelling is going to go.

There’s no stopping for a hotel –or anything other than food, gas, and bathroom breaks, really. Even though you’re safely out of your parents’ clutches, the possibility of them chasing after you –along with who knows who else—still looms ominously like a black thunder cloud.

“We left the collar at the house,” Nate says while looking over some maps with Frank and Neena. “With any luck, they’ll think she got it off and escaped into the woods.”

“By unlocking the door from inside the room,” Frank says, voice heavy with doubt.

“I can unlock handcuffs with my powers,” you retort between massive bites of burger and fries. “And I used to take my bedroom door off its hinges to escape from my room. It’s not that much of a leap.”

Frank shrugs, looking equal parts impressed and irritated –though the latter, you’re certain, is directed at your parents. “If you say so.”

“If they come after us,” Nate says, stressing the first word for your sake. “You’re—” he points to Mikhail “—going to get her and get back to the Institute. We’ll be able to handle whatever they throw at us.”

You frown when Mikhail nods and look to your fiancé. “What about you?”

Piotr kisses your forehead. “I will be fine. My armor mutation will keep me safe.”

“Yeah, honey, but you’re official X-Men. You can’t be associated with a shoot-out in case something hits the news.”

“Grab both of them,” Nate tells Mikhail.

“Do I have to?” Mikhail mock-whines. “Mladshiy brat too heavy.”

Piotr rolls his eyes and says something in Russian, which Mikhail pulls a face at and replies in a short, irritated tone, and then the two of them tangent off into some sort of rapid-fire argument that leads to the two of them talking over each other—

“Stop it, both of you,” Alex admonishes them crisply. “This situation is serious. Act like it.”

“One of us is,” Piotr mutters under his breath.

“Trakhni tebya!”

“Enough.” Alex levels a serious, mildly annoyed look at Piotr. “Quit antagonizing.”

Mikhail laughs.

“That goes for you, too, Koroleva dramy.”

You squeeze Piotr’s hand when you catch him barely suppressing an annoyed grimace. “Be nice.”

Frank noisily balls up the wrapper his burger had come in, effectively distracting everyone away from the argument. “We should get moving again. Do we have a route picked out?”

Neena tosses him a map with a series of roads and highways highlighted. “I’m feeling good about this one.”

“Still lazy writing,” Wade grumbles under his breath.

Nate pats Wade on the shoulder before heading back to his seat. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

Once you’re buckled in, Piotr hands you a small container with some pills and a bottle of water. “Medication,” he explains when you give him a perplexed look. “Dr. McCoy wanted you to have meal before you took it.”

You quickly –gratefully—down one of the pills and follow it with a swig of water. “Thanks, babe.”

He produces another bottle with a few smaller looking pills in it. “Xanax. He instructed me to have you take one as well to help you sleep.”

You take one of the Xanax, chase it down with some water, and flop back in your seat with a sigh as Frank drives the car towards the nearest highway. “How long until we’re home?”

“About two days, give or take four hours,” Nate answers from the shotgun seat of the car.

You adjust yourself so you’re leaning against Piotr and close your eyes.

You may as well get some sleep in that time.

***

You wake up to the sun blasting your eyes –and ow, no, I didn’t need my retinas to be functional, just go right ahead and scorch them, you fucker. You blink hard, trying to get the little spots from accidentally staring at the bright, early morning light to fade from your field of vision, and stretch your back and sit up.

For a moment, you panic when you realize Piotr isn’t next to you –but Nathan is, napping, and if he’s still here then you’re still safe…

You let out a little sigh of relief when you see that Piotr’s in the driver’s seat, steering the car around a bend in the road. You lean forward –mashing your face against the back of his seat in the process—and gently squeeze his shoulders. “Hi.”

He lifts one hand off the wheel when he gets to another length of straight, open road and lovingly squeezes one of your hands. “Dobroye utro, myshka.”

You yawn and latch onto his shirt when he lets go of you so he has both hands on the steering wheel once more. “How long have you been awake?”

“Couple of hours. I switched off with Frank around four.”

Sure enough, Frank’s in the front passenger seat, completely dead to the world and snoring slightly.

“How much longer until we’re home?”

“I think we will reach halfway point later today, provided everything goes well.”

You grunt a little and turn your head so only your cheek’s pressing the back of his seat. “Can we get breakfast soon? I’m hungry.”

Piotr chuckles a little and pats your hand. “Da, dorogoy. We can get you breakfast soon.”

***

Breakfast comes in the form of a Panera Bread. You can only imagine how big the cashier’s eyes must’ve been when Neena and Piotr had gone in to place the order, judging by the three massive bags of food and multiple drink carriers they bring out, but fortunately the place is pretty dead since it’s still early in the morning.

You all eat in the parking lot, car doors open to let in fresh air and facilitate easy conversation.

“We should refuel soon,” Frank says, voice still gravelly –well, more than usual—from sleep. “And stock up on some supplies and coffee.”

“You ordered three large black coffees for breakfast,” Neena remarks, disbelieving. “What are you going to need more coffee for?”

“He doesn’t just punish criminals and jackasses,” Wade quips. “He also likes to punish his cardiovascular system by scouring it with mass amounts of caffeine.”

Frank just rolls his eyes and flips Wade off.

Alex groans as she works a brush through her hair. “I will be glad to not sleep in car soon. I am too old for this.”

“I can take you back,” Mikhail offers, a worried frown tugging at his lips.

Alex merely shakes her head, though. “I would rather be present in case something goes wrong.”

“We’ve made some good progress,” Nate says as he works on polishing off a breakfast sandwich. “If we were going to see them, it would’ve been last night, either at the house or when we stopped to treat her injuries.”

“Doesn’t mean they’re not following behind us,” Frank adds darkly. “Best to stop as little as we have to.”

***

The two SUVs stop at a gas station fifteen minutes later.

Nate eyes the meter critically as the beast of a car continues guzzling down fuel. “And people say climate change is a myth.”

The eight of you head into the gas station two at a time to freshen up in the bathroom and get whatever snacks and drinks you might want, while everyone else keeps an eye on the road for any signs of trouble.

Mikhail comes out with two bags full of Monster and Red Bull.

“Nyet,” Piotr says before you can even muster up so much as a hopeful look. He points at the bags his brother’s carrying. “Keep those in other car.”

“Do you mind if I ride in the front while he drives?” you ask Frank when he comes out from his trip to the gas station, nodding at Piotr while you speak.

Frank shrugs. “Sure. I can sleep in the back.”

“You should rest, myshka,” Piotr says as he kisses the top of your head.

“Yeah, but I want to rest next to you,” you explain. “And hold your hand.”

He chuckles and hugs you gently before ushering you towards the front passenger seat. “I suppose that is reasonable.”

***

For the first time in your life, you don’t mind the monotony of car travel.

You can keep track of how much time is passing, you’re close to Piotr the entire time, you have access to water and good tasting food, and you’re able to talk to the people you love most (other than Piotr) basically whenever you want.

The only real downside is that Frank listens to Bruce Springsteen on repeat whenever he’s driving –during the day that is, he’s not enough of an asshole to play it at night—but even that’s tolerable compared to your past few days in hell on earth.

Piotr sticks close to you throughout it all. If he’s driving, you’re in the front passenger seat next to him. If you’re in the back, he’s sitting in the seat next to yours. If you head into a gas station to use the restroom, he’s the one that heads in with you. Wherever you eat –usually in the car, but sometimes leaning against the side or the hood so you can stretch your legs—he’s right next to you.

You’re both equally clingy to each other, really. On some level, you know the considerate thing to do would be dial it back so you don’t annoy everyone else –but, on the other hand, you spent four days being held and tormented by your parents and thought that everyone you’d ever met outside of your childhood community might’ve never existed to begin with. If anything, you’ve earned a little PDA.

(Besides, it’s not like anyone’s complaining or pulling faces.)

“I thought you didn’t exist,” you murmur quietly one night, while Nate’s driving and Frank’s co-piloting for him. You’re in the back with Piotr, nestled against his chest and snuggled up in his jacket. “I thought I’d made you up –that I’d made everything up.”

Piotr holds you tight, cradling you in his arms as he kisses the top of your head. “I will always find you, myshka,” he promises in an equally quiet voice. “You will never have to wake up alone again.”

***

The two SUVs finally reach the X-Mansion around three in the afternoon, a little over two days after your rescue.

Your uncle’s waiting in the garage for you, pacing nervously and generally looking like a wreck.

“And I thought I was the one that was kidnapped and held prisoner,” you remark as you watch him stare down the cars, like he can make them park and turn off faster if he keeps his eyes on them through the whole process.

“He was pretty cut up when you went missing,” Nate says from the backseat. “Flew here in twelve hours when Xavier contacted him with the news.”

“Holy shit,” you mutter under your breath as Piotr finishes parking the car and turns the engine off. You unbuckle your seatbelt and get out of the SUV as quickly as you can—

Your uncle’s still quicker. He practically lifts you out of your seat and into a crushing hug, sobbing brokenly as he holds you.

Which makes you start crying. You’re surprised your tear ducts have anything left to offer after all the crying you’ve done over the past couple days.

“I’m so sorry!” he gasps between sobs as he clutches you tighter and tighter. “I’m so sorry, punk; I’m so, so sorry!”

You hold onto him just as fiercely. “It’s okay; it’s not your fault, it was never your fault…”

The two of you collapse to the cement floor of the garage in a discombobulated heap, weeping and clinging to each other like it’s all that either of you can do.

And, given the depth of everything that’s happened, it just might be.

Piotr, Alex, and Nate help the two of you stand, steadying you both until you’re each calm enough to stay upright on your own power.

Your uncle cups your face his hands, jaw trembling with rage as he looks you over. “What did they do to you? What did they do –I’m gonna fucking murder them!”

Alex shushes your uncle, quickly stepping between the two of you as he starts shaking again. “Deep breaths.”

“Don’t you fucking ‘deep breaths’ me!”

“She needs you calm,” Alex fires back, pointing at you.

Which you don’t think is the whole truth; of the two of you, you’re miles calmer than your uncle (that would be the Xanax, thank you modern pharmaceutics).

But he needs to calm down. And if thinking he’s helping you is the bridge that gets him there, so be it.

You offer your uncle a watery smile when he looks at you. “Honestly, all I really want is to go inside, take a shower, and nap in a real bed.”

That ekes a ghost of a snort out of your uncle. He takes a deep breath, then nods. “Yeah. Probably a good idea. Easier to bathe in water than in deodorant.”

You snicker. “You’re telling me.”

You’re ushered into the house by your uncle and your rescue group. Piotr stays by your side the whole way, holding your hand reassuringly as you step through the back door and into the kitchen—

And there’s Russell, Yukio, Ellie, Illyana, Kitty, Nikolai, and Karen, all waiting for you with varying looks of worry and anticipation.

Russell, Yukio, and Ellie all swarm you at once. It takes a bit of work figuring out how to hug all three of them at once, and it makes your ribs sting like a bitch, but you don’t care. You’re overjoyed to see them; you’ve missed their energy and company fiercely during all of this.

Illyana and Kitty go next –though they have a little more self-control and opt to go one at a time, sparing your ribs from an extra squeezing.

Illyana holds onto you for a surprisingly long amount of time. When she lets go, her eyes are watery enough that her usually impeccable eyeliner has started running.

“Was very worried about you,” she manages, voice wobbly with emotion when you ask her what’s wrong. “And for medvezhonok. Very distraught while you disappear.” She smiles at you, genuine and bright despite the tears in her eyes. “I am glad you are home.”

You have to hug her again after that.

Nikolai’s hug almost makes you cry (again). It’s so gentle and nurturing, and in direct comparison to the past few days –save for being rescued—it’s an outright shock to your system. “We are all glad you come home, malen'kaya ptitsa,” he says before placing a gentle, fatherly kiss against the top of your head.

If you sniffle a little when you step back and wipe a few tears from your eyes, no one mentions it. “I’m glad to be back.” You turn—

And then it’s just Karen left.

She grimaces when she sees you. “You look rougher than you did that one time when Frank brought you by my apartment.”

“Hey, at least I didn’t bleed on your couch this time.” You mentally flounder for a moment, then shrug at her. “You want a hug, too?”

Karen chuckles –along with everyone else—and shrugs back. “Why not? Hugs are good.” Your hug with her is briefer than your hugs with everyone else, but she does clasp your shoulder when it ends. “Your dad sent me the pictures he took of your injuries and a basic rundown of how they found you. I showed them to the law firm I moonlight for –they’re willing to represent you, if you’re interested.”

Granted, you’d rather not have anything to do with your parents ever again, but knowing what your legal options are wouldn’t be a half bad idea.

First things first, though.

“Can I, like, at least take a shower and a nap first?” you ask.

Karen smiles and nods. “Yeah, definitely do those first. I’ll let them know you’re interested in working with us?”

You nod after a moment of thought. “Yeah. I’m interested.”

***

Before either a shower or a nap, though, comes a thorough medical examination and healing session. Vitals, x-rays, bloodwork, the whole nine yards and a few extra for good measure.

Hank takes some higher quality pictures of your injuries and documents your medical status for your meeting with your new lawyers, then sends you off to one of the healers so you don’t have to treat yourself like the most delicate, frail china doll until everything heals.

“Alyssa and Professor Xavier want to do a session with you,” he informs you before sending you to one of the healers. “To make sure no irreversible damage has been done from going off your meds and being held captive.”

“Define ‘irreversible,’” you sigh as you rub your neck.

Hank flashes you a pained smile. “I know. But better to take all the steps than cut corners. Especially with situations like this.” He waves you along when you go quiet. “Go on. Go get healed up. That should help you feel better.”

***

The healing session does help –but honestly, all you want now is a shower and a proper bed.

Which is exactly what you get for yourself. Once the session is done, you head straight for the room you share with Piotr, beeline for the bathroom, and make yourself a nice, steaming shower.

Ah, just mildly scalding, you think as you step under the cascade of water. Perfect.

The warm water feels like heaven. You can feel your muscles relaxing under the soothing spray, and you waste no time washing your hair and scrubbing yourself down.

The first shower after a healing session is always a little weird. You know you were injured –you can still feel dull pain in your ribs and the stress your body went through from coping with the injuries—but seeing completely smooth, unmarred skin in contrast to all of that always makes you feel like you’re having a bit of an out-of-body experience.

Your fingers automatically lift to your brow. There’s not so much as a fine line scar left from where your mother kicked you, let alone the scabby, crusty mess that had been there only fifteen minutes ago.

You’re not sure whether it’s a blessing or a curse to have everything erased like this. On one hand, you definitely don’t want to bear the proof of your parents’ hatred towards you for the rest of your life. On the other hand, if you don’t have any proof at all, does that mean you didn’t even suffer? It could’ve all just been a nightmare, or a horrid hallucination your psychosis cooked up—

You groan and scrub your face with your hands. I need to sleep.

Piotr joins you halfway through your shower. It takes him considerably less time to scrub down than it does for you, so he spends most of his time caressing your body and planting kisses along your jawline and neck.

By the time the shower’s over, you’re wound up in an entirely different way.

The two of you dry each other off –which really means that you spend more time kissing and groping each other than you do actually drying each other off.

You moan softly as Piotr runs his tongue over the spot where your neck and jaw meet. “Take me to bed, baby.” You sigh happily when he complies, looping your arms around his neck as he picks you up and carries you out of the bathroom.

You’re home.

***

“How are you doing?”

You let out a harsh bark of laughter. “How the fuck doing you think I’m doing?”

The corner of Alyssa’s mouth turns up in a smile. “Probably like shit.”

You snort, then nod. “That’s not far off the mark.” You sigh heavily. “I’m happy to be home.”

“But?”

You shrink back into the couch in your therapist’s office, picking at the hem of your shirt. “I’m scared.”

“That it’s not real,” Alyssa supplies when you don’t volunteer any other information. “Your dad mentioned that you said something about thinking none of this was real when he rescued you.”

Your jaw clenches as the moment you saw your mother’s face for the first time in over two years flashes through your mind’s eye over and over again. “I just… I saw her face, and I felt like I’d been hit by a truck.”

“That’s not an uncommon reaction. Interacting with abusers puts our systems through a great deal of stress.”

You swallow hard, staring out the window as everything that followed that moment flashes through your head at dizzying speed. “It was like… everything I thought I knew uprooted in that moment. And I thought… ‘what if I made everything up? What if I’m a delusional maniac?’”

“What makes you think you’re delusional?” Alyssa asks, clasping her hands in her lap as she studies you.

“I don’t know,” you admit. “Just… I’m afraid that none of this is real, and that I’ve been with my parents this whole time.” You look over at her. “I could be delusional. It’s possible.”

“Delusional people don't question whether or not they're delusional,” Alyssa says calmly. “They hold their beliefs with total conviction, regardless of whatever evidence is presented. The fact that you're questioning your experience is symptomatic of your anxiety and depression, not because of a delusion.”

“But it is possible!” you insist, gesturing with your hands in short, agitated motions as your anxiety spikes. “It technically is! People cope with abuse in all sorts of ways! Delusions can be one of those ways!”

“Yes, they do, and yes, it is, but that’s not the case with you,” Alyssa fires back. “In order to construct an alternate reality, you would have to be severely schizophrenic. Delusions can be a subset of schizophrenia, but they're about beliefs and obsessions, not constructing locations, people that have never been met, seen, or heard of, or interactions with those people. The latter would fall into the category of hallucinations. What you’re describing to me isn’t within the limitations of a delusion.”

“Then maybe I’m schizophrenic!” you exclaim.

“You’re not,” Alyssa says evenly. “You don’t exhibit any of the symptoms of schizophrenia. And, if you were, your interactions with your alternate reality would not be as linear as anything you’re experiencing now.” She cocks her head to the side as she looks at you. “Why do you keep looking for reasons why this might not be real?”

“I have to. I have to make sure that everything’s real.”

“Why? What’s the worst thing that happens if none of this is real?”

You draw in a shaky breath as you rip at your shirt’s hemline. “Because if none of this is real, that means I was always with my parents, and no one ever loved me.” You freeze, full body, as what you just say registers, then slump over against the arm of the couch and start crying.

“There it is,” Alyssa says softly as she pulls a couple tissues out of the box on the table next to her chair and hands them to you. “Not delusional. Just scared of not being loved.”

“But what if it is?” you whimper. “What if no one really loves me?”

“It’s not a delusion, honey, I promise. Your questioning reality was a side effect of heightened anxiety due to withdrawals, that’s all. This is all real, and you’re really loved.” She hands you a few more tissues. “Your parents were working very hard to destabilize you, even if they didn't know you were on medication. They took away your ability to track time, any personal effects, had almost complete control over your schedule. When you got back to being in control of yourself and back on your medication, you stabilized. People with delusions don't stabilize when interacting with the delusion. You've stabilized due to being out of a stressful environment and getting back onto medication.”

You grit your teeth as you wipe your cheeks dry with a balled-up tissue. “I hate them. I hate them so much.”

“I know, honey. And they’ve definitely earned it. Just make sure you don’t stay there,” Alyssa encourages you, smiling softly as she looks you in the eye. “Because you don’t deserve having to give them all that energy and effort when they never did that for you.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not sure how fast the whole ‘moving on’ thing is gonna go,” you grumble as you start shredding your wadded up, damp tissue.

“Fast doesn’t matter,” Alyssa reassures you. “Just as long as you’re moving.”

***

Franklin “Foggy” Nelson and Matthew Murdock are nothing like what you expect.

Though that may largely have to do with the cheery “Hiya, Red!” Wade tosses Matt’s way as soon as the man walks through the front door to the Institute, which makes Matt pull a face like he’s about to shit his pants so hard he’s gonna rip the seams.

Granted, things aren’t necessarily much improved by Frank following them through the door –presumably to make sure Karen stays safe in case things blow back with your parents somehow—

Except Matt turns towards him and growls, “You didn’t say Wilson was going to be here.”

Which leads the grand revelation that one of your lawyers is actually Daredevil, one of Hell’s Kitchen’s leading vigilantes and a staunch rival of sorts with both Frank and Wade.

…Honestly, it’s not the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to you.

***

“I’ll be honest, Miss L/N,” Foggy says once the whole “Matt is Daredevil” kerfuffle is settled and the five of you –Matt, Foggy, Karen, you, and Piotr, who agreed to sit in when you asked him to—finally have a chance to sit down. “Given the severity of your abuse case, I’m a little surprised you haven’t already taken steps to issue a restraining order against your parents. You have more than enough grounds for it. Heck, you have enough grounds to take them to criminal court –and win.”

“I’m not interested in having a day in court,” you say quietly. “I just never want to see them again.”

“Understandable, given the tragic circumstances of your upbringing,” Matt says, tone perfectly sympathetic; he’s clearly had a great deal of practice with this. “A restraining order, however, would go a long way towards making sure that could happen.”

“We’d work with the authorities and whatever legal support your parents might have,” Karen adds, notepad settled on her lap and pen poised to start taking notes at any moment. “And, given the severity of the abuse you’ve suffered, we could represent your interests along with someone that you give power of attorney. You could be as removed from the situation as you want.”

Piotr’s hand closes around yours when you don’t say anything, thumb tracing delicate circles against your skin. “It may be worth considering.”

Matt tilts his head for a moment, a slight frown tugging at his lips. “Is there a specific reason why you never issued a restraining order against your parents, Miss L/N?”

Right, you think dejectedly. He’s Daredevil. He can hear my heartbeat. “You think I’m lying.”

“No—”

“You think I’m hiding something, then.”

Matt’s mouth hangs open for a moment, then slowly closes shut.

You swallow hard and look away as tears threaten to spill. “It’s a complicated situation.”

“We work with complicated situations all the time,” Foggy reassures you. “The more open and honest you are with us, the better we can help you.”

“This isn’t just for you,” Matt tacks on. “Restraining orders can also be used to protect whatever children you may choose to have in the future. Even if you don’t want it for you, it may be worth the peace of mind for your future self, to know that your parents can’t get anywhere near your offspring.”

And that does make the whole idea a lot more tempting. Matt’s right that you really don’t care about yourself in all this, but you wouldn’t wish your parents upon your future kids in a thousand years.

You also know you can’t rain hellfire down on someone’s life without even consulting them first.

“Would you mind if I took a few minutes?” you ask, desperately trying to keep your voice steady. “There’s, uh, someone I need to talk to.”

Matt nods. “Take all the time you need.”

You’re not sure if he’s being nice, or if he doesn’t mind because he’s paid by the hour and you’re still technically using his time.

“We’ll be here when you come back,” Karen says with a reassuring smile. “In the meantime, Mr. Rasputin, perhaps we can get started on asking you some questions about your relationship with Y/N, how much you know about her history, that sort of thing?”

Piotr nods when you nod, squeezing your hand before letting it go. “Of course. Whatever I can help with.”

You quickly step out of the classroom the five of you had settled in, then all but run down the hall and towards the residential side of the mansion.

You need to find your uncle.

***

He lets out a low whistle. “Restraining order. That’s some serious shit.”

The two of you are seated in the gazebo towards the back of Xavier’s property. The skies have decided to cast a relentless downpour on the world beneath them, drenching everything within their reach and making mini-swamps out of various patches of the lawns that encircle the mansion.

The space under the gazebo is dry, though, and the rain is loud enough that you don’t have to worry about anyone overhearing you, and the spot is far enough removed from the house that the telepaths that could pick up what you’re talking about will be able to infer by the distance that the conversation you’re having is deliberately private.

“It’d be good for my future kids,” you comment as you watch little streams of water drip off the edges of the gazebo’s roof. “Honestly, it’d probably be good to do more than just a restraining order, make sure that my parents are completely locked out of everything.”

“Damn right it would,” your uncle agrees with a nod. He glances over at you. “So what’s stopping you?”

You sigh heavily. “They’d probably rat you out to try and get me to stop the proceedings. Or just rat you out to spite me.”

“Oh, there’s no doubt about that,” you uncle says immediately. “The second you do anything to actually shut them out, your mom’s going to throw an absolute shitfit. I know for a fact that the only reason they didn’t turn on me sooner is because, legally, the government couldn’t do anything to force you to go back home to them.”

You frown. “Wait, how can you know that?”

Your uncle flashes you a pained smile. “Who do you think supplied them with the repression serum? Or the collar? Or built the holding cell you were in? Sure as shit wasn’t me, punk.”

Your blood runs cold. “Why?”

“Probably wanted another agent,” your uncle says, entirely too blasé about the whole thing for your comfort. “They knew I was around, they just didn’t know where to find me.”

“Then why not get rid of me?”

“Because getting rid of you would make your mom a ‘bad mother.’”

You scoff, fists clenching against your thighs. “And kicking me in the face doesn’t?”

“Spare the rod, spoil the child. No, I figure once you turned eighteen, they would’ve shipped you off and claimed you were at college or working or what have you.” He grimaces, eyes going flat and dark. “You are lucky you chose to run when you did.”

You swallow hard, trying to stay calm despite the rage bubbling up inside you. “Then why keep kidnapping me? What’s the fucking point of it? They don’t want me, I’m out of their hair, what do they get by dragging me back to a place I never wanted to be from the get go?”

Your uncle shrugs. “Could be the government ordered them to track you down so they’d have better tabs on their ‘potential asset.’ Could be that they just wanted to keep control over you. Honestly, I’m not sure –and I don’t really care to know, either. I stopped trying to figure out your parents’ fucked up cognitions a long time ago. But we’re not talking about them. We’re talking about you getting your parents out of your life.”

“I mean…” You scrub your face with your hands and let out a frustrated groan. “I’m not sure what I can really do. If they’ve got government backing—”

“You let me and the other people in your life worry about that,” your uncle says firmly. “You’ve got more than enough mercenaries and vigilantes in your pocket. If someone tries to fuck any of this up, they’ll get their ass handed to them in short order.”

“But what about you?” you fire back, finally pointing out the elephant in the room. “If I go through with all this, your former handlers are going to start a manhunt for you.”

Your uncle considers that for a moment before shrugging. “Not my first time I’ve had to run. I can always do it again.”

“No! That’s not fair to you!”

“You’re right, it isn’t, but that’s not your fault. I was dealt this hand a long time before you ever showed up,” your uncle says, eyes shining as he smiles at you. “Don’t put your life on hold for me, punk. You deserve to live it without having to deal with your parents. I’ll be fine.”

You hug him, wrapping your arms around his waist as you start crying. “What about your house?”

“I’ll clear it out and burn it. Give them a good ol’ ‘fuck you’ before I duck under.”

You frown. “But… you won’t have anywhere to go once everything settles.”

“Eh, I’ve been thinking about relocating for a while now,” he comments casually as he stares out at the rain. “Maybe… somewhere closer to New York.”

You look up at him, disbelieving. “Really?”

He grins and hugs you closer. “Yeah, really. I miss you when you’re gone, punk. And…” He sighs. “I’m tired of being on my own so much.”

You gasp, feigning shock. “Are you… admitting you feel emotions?”

Your uncle snorts. “Don’t get used to it.”

The two of you sit in silence for a moment, listening to the rain fall and watching it wash away the sins of the earth.

“I might need you to answer some questions for my lawyers,” you finally say. “Just so they know what’s all going on.”

Your uncle pats your shoulder. “Whatever you need, punk. Whatever you need.”

***

Matt, Foggy, and Karen take your uncle’s status in remarkable stride –which, considering that Matt is Daredevil, Karen unearths some sort of mob or government conspiracy every other week, and Foggy is constantly looped into the two’s insatiable drive to get into as much shit as possible, isn’t all that surprising, actually.

Your uncle does help confirm everything you’ve said –and everyone else, for that matter—about your parents. Even if he can’t testify, he can tell the three of them where to look for various details to confirm your version of events.

“Given your medical and therapy records, we have what basically constitutes an ‘open and shut’ case,” Foggy says during one of your sessions with them. You’d opted to meet at their office, which is attached to a deli and butcher’s shop run by Foggy’s family. “Even this doesn’t get taken this to criminal court, getting a restraining order should be easy. I can’t imagine there’d be a judge in New York that’d deny it.”

“Well, maybe one or two, but they’re in prison now,” Matt adds with a small smile.

Piotr squeezes your hand gently when you don’t react to either lawyer’s statements. “Are you alright, myshka?”

“Yeah,” you say quietly. “Just… it’s a lot to wrap my head around.”

“Why not start with an ex parte order?” Karen suggests. “That’ll make sure you’re immediately protected, and then we can work with the judge to get a long-term order in place. Once that’s done, we can look at your file and work on anything else you might want to get set up to safeguard yourself against your parents.”

You nod sluggishly. “Yeah, just… can I have a night to sleep on it? I’m still trying to recover from everything.”

“Absolutely,” Matt says immediately. “You’ve been through a great deal of trauma, Miss L/N. It’s understandable that you’d want to take time to think about everything.”

You know he means to sound sympathetic and understanding, but right now it just sounds coddling. All you want to do is go home, crawl into bed, and sleep for a thousand years.

Piotr makes good-byes for both of you as you head out of the office and towards Piotr’s car. He catches up with you quickly, gently lifting you up from where you’d slumped against the car door so he can open it for you. “Are you well, myshka?”

“Yeah,” you murmur as you plop into your seat. “Just really tired. Can we go home?”

Piotr bends down, ducking under the roof of the car so he can kiss your temple. “Da.”

“And can we snuggle?”

He stops mid-way in closing the car door to give you a loving smile. “Konechno. Whatever you would like.”

***

Once the two of you get back home, Piotr lifts you out of the car and carries you all the way upstairs to the room the two of you share. He gently tucks you in bed before slipping his shoes off and climbing in on his side.

You wriggle over to him, nestling against his chest as he wraps his arms around you. “I’m so tired.”

“I know,” he murmurs as he kisses the top of your head. “It is okay. You are allowed to be tired.”

You trace your fingers over the planes of his chest in swirling, nonsensical shapes. “I just… I don’t know how to feel about it. The restraining order.”

“Why is that?”

“I don’t know. I guess… it feels like I’m not allowed to do it.”

“Because of your uncle?”

“That, but also… I spent my childhood trying to figure out how to be a good daughter. I feel like if I lock my parents out, they’re never going to love me.”

Piotr stays quiet for a moment, before hugging you tighter and trailing kisses from the top of your forehead to your lips. “Perhaps you are right. But, I would say you have so many people here that love you. People who you do not have to prove yourself to. And I think it would be worth peace of mind to not have your parents looming over your shoulder so much. Especially when we start having children.”

And that’s the kicker of it, in the end.

Besides, Piotr’s right. You do have a wonderful family and life here at Xavier’s; everything’s improved for the better since leaving your parents and hometown community. No sense in fucking that up by leaving things to chance –especially once kids come into the picture.

“Okay,” you decide, pressing your forehead against your fiancé’s chest. “I’ll do the restraining order.”

***

You’re still extremely fatigued and weak the next morning, and Piotr deems you too unwell to travel (not that you’re complaining, because hello pajama day). He calls in to the law firm of Nelson, Murdock, and Page and lets them know –and as luck would have it, they’re in a position to make a house call since all you’re doing today is signing paperwork.

Frank also shows up. Whether it’s of his own reasons or he’s tagging along with your legal team, you neither know or care. He pretty much pairs off with Nathan and Wade as soon as he steps over the threshold into the house, talking with the two fellow assassins in hushed tones about who knows what –the latest style of bullets, maybe, or the most efficient ways to clean a gun.

(What do assassins talk about over lunch, anyway?)

You set up shop in the dining room with Piotr and your lawyers. Piotr’s family and your uncle are a few feet away in the kitchen, and further back are Nate, Wade, and Frank, still enraptured in whatever conversation they’re having.

“Alright,” Foggy says as he pulls a sheaf of paperwork out of his briefcase. “This is going to look like a lot, but it’s really just a bunch of reading and signing. Some of these are just waivers giving us permission to act in certain capacities –to use your medical records and therapy records as evidence in the courts, to act on your behalf without you being there in our capacity as your attorneys, stuff like that—some of these are forms that basically just say you understand, to your best ability, that you’re telling the truth, and some of these are also your permissive relief requests.”

You stare down at the papers like they’re liable to catch fire at any given moment. “And then?”

“Then, an emergency protective order goes into effect,” Karen says. “The emergency protective order only lasts a few days, but in that time we’ll request the ex-parte order to extend the time while we work through the litigation. Once we get through the process of establishing the long-term restraining order, it’ll be issued.”

You take a deep breath and nod slowly. “And then?”

“Given the severity of your case, we’re going to push for the longest term possible,” Matt explains with a small smile, “which is about five years. You’ll have to renew it at those intervals, but given the amount of evidence that supports your side of the story, it shouldn’t be difficult.”

Piotr puts an arm around your shoulders when you start shaking. “Are you okay?”

“Just… feel like the world’s going to explode,” you murmur as you try to breathe evenly. “Or… that they’re never really going to love me again.” You hide your face against his shoulder as tears start leaking out.

Karen produces some tissues from her purse and hands them over to Piotr. “I know this isn’t easy…”

Normally, you’d snap at anyone who dared to issue that phrase while you’re dealing with family shit, but something about the sincerity in Karen’s voice makes you believe that, somewhere along the way, she’s gone through the same kind of shit that you have.

You lift your head and meet her gaze.

Her eyes are just as watery as yours. “Letting go of people who were supposed to love you but don’t is never an easy thing to do. It hurts, and it sucks, and it forces you to go through so much grieving that life just doesn’t prepare us for. But you deserve to have peace of mind in your day to day life. You deserve to never go through again what you went through two weeks ago.”

You sniff, inhale deeply, then nod. “Okay. Just… uh… do we have to go in any order?”

“Nope,” Foggy says with a kind smile. “Just so long as everything gets signed.”

“Okay.” You take another deep breath, then nod to yourself. “Okay. Let’s do this shit.”

***

It’s so much paper. The top of the dining room table has disappeared under all the papers you have to sign. At least twenty forests must’ve died for all this paper to be here.

Also, you’ve officially hit the point where you’re questioning whether or not you know your own signature or not. Just looking at the black scrawl of ink makes you go a little cross-eyed.

“Alright, almost done,” Foggy says as he preps the next form for you to sign while Karen organizes everything and gets them tucked back in his briefcase. “We just have your permissive protections request left and the form that lets us act in your capacity as attorneys.”

“Thank fuck,” you mutter as you reach for the permissive protections request. “Is it possible to get carpal tunnel syndrome in less than a day?”

“I did it once!” Wade calls from the kitchen.

“I don’t even want to know how you managed that,” you fire back as you sign and initial the various spots on the form and hand it over to Karen. “Alright, last one.”

Matt stiffens in his seat before Foggy can hand it over to you, though. “Someone’s coming to the door. Several someones.”

Everyone freezes –and, sure enough, a couple seconds later there’s a series of raps on the front door.

You can hear Russell get up from the rec room and head towards the door, and then the door swinging open—

And past that, you can’t necessarily hear the conversation, but Matt’s hackles basically go up, which makes you tense further—

“Wade!” There’s a brief sound of struggle, and the Russell books it towards the kitchen. “Wade, Y/N’s parents are here with a bunch of other guys!”

Your blood runs cold, then white hot. If they hurt him, if they fucking hurt him…

Piotr tries to grab you when you jump up from your chair. “Myshka, stop—”

Your uncle reacts at the same time, immediately lunging in the direction of the front door. “Fucking assholes—”

Alex and Nikolai catch him, and Frank wraps his arms around his waist and hauls him back and out of sight for good measure.

You manage to slip past everyone in the chaos caused by your uncle’s attempt, charging down the hall towards Russell’s panicked voice. You can hear Piotr behind you, along with Wade, but you can’t think about either of them right now. All you can think about is Russell, and making sure no one hurts him, and if they hurt him, I’m going to kill every last one of them with my bare hands.

You nearly collide with the younger teen, but push him behind you and snarl directly in the face of your town’s pastor. “Get the fuck out!”

He –along with your parents and several of the men from your community—recoil in the face of your rage and the gust of wind that blasts through the hall.

Hit a dog long enough…

Your mother recovers first, scowling at you as she advances on you. “You disobedient, disrespectful—”

Piotr bursts into the hall, physically putting himself between you and everyone else before anyone can do anything. He glares down at your mother, drawing himself up to his full, massive height and balling his fists at his side. “Do not dare touch my fiancée.”

You mother blinks, shocked. “You actually proposed to her?”

“You took my fucking ring off me!” you snap, pointing at the hand in question.

“I thought it was fake!”

Of course she did. The whole time she told you –and everyone else told you—that no one would ever love you, and they actually believed it themselves.

Fuckers.

“Everyone, please,” your town’s pastor says above the chaos and all the shouting. “We don’t want to cause a scene or a problem.”

“Oh, I think you’ve already fucking done that,” Wade says, voice deadly, as he steps up to stand next to Piotr.

“You’ve been doing that for years,” Nate adds, gun clearly visible on his belt, as he steps between you, Russell, and everyone else.

“We’re not here because we have a problem with any of you,” your town’s pastor continues. “We’re just here to take Y/N back home, where she belongs.”

You stare at him like he’s the one growing a second head. “What?”

“We’re concerned about your spiritual well-being,” he says, like that’s applicable to the situation in any way, shape, or form.

You sputter at him, outraged. “What the –fuck your religion!”

“You mind your mouth!” your mother snarls. “And you’re coming back home with us!”

“The fuck I’m not!” you shout back. “I’m an adult! You can’t make me go anywhere if I don’t want to!”

“The daughter’s place is under her father’s headship until she is married,” your pastor says, desperately trying to keep some semblance of control over the situation. “It would be most appropriate for you to return home until you’re married to ensure your sexual and spiritual purity.”

“Now, we don’t have time to unpack all that,” Wade mutters under his breath as he flashes a none-too-subtle ‘cuckoo’ gesture at you.

You just stare at the pastor, agape and eyes wide. “What the… what?”

“I know this may seem shocking—”

“They beat me!” you shriek, pointing at your parents. “They locked me in my room for days on end! They told me they hated me, that no one would ever love me, that I was an abomination!” You narrow your eyes when your pastor blanches, the chill of realization settling hard in your stomach. “You knew. You knew all of it was wrong. Just like you know that this is wrong! You let it all happen!”

He grimaces, but ultimately says nothing.

“Doesn’t matter,” your father growls flatly. “You’re not shaming my name by dallying about like some whore. You’re coming home. Today.”

You can’t even wrap your head around it. You’re staring in the face of people who know what they did to you, on some level, was wrong, but all they care about is taking you back to the environment where it all happened and will keep happening. Like they don’t care about your well-being, or what makes you happy, or about how much progress you’ve made since coming to Xavier’s—

I can’t make them care.

The penny drops right as you’re on the verge of tears. You can’t make them care about you. You can’t make them love you. Every single person you’re facing down –your parents included—decided a long time ago that you weren’t worth loving or respecting. No amount of arguing, pleading, or proof to the contrary is going to make them change their minds because there’s so much guilt on their shoulders –emotional or legal, though it should be both—that if they ever pulled their heads out of their asses, their necks would snap from the weight of it all.

And, amid all the pain the revelation causes, a single thought rises above all the emotional chaos: I can’t keep giving them my energy.

As much as it hurts to admit, it’s a useless fight. And as much as you want them to love you, they’re, at their cores, not people that are healthy to be loved by. You’d have to change every single thing about you –including things that can’t be changed—for them to ever love you.

And they don’t deserve that, least of all from you.

You look over your shoulder and see Foggy, Karen, and Matt all looking at you –well, Matt isn’t, but you know he’s focused on you and the fight unfolding in front of you.

Karen raises her eyebrows at you and holds up the form that lets them act as your attorneys without your presence and a pen.

An offer. A ladder out of the hell you were born to and raised in. A way to close the door once and for all.

It’s about time you take it.

“You know what?” you say, almost laughing from the sheer ridiculousness of it all. “I’m done with all of you.”

“And just what does that mean?” your mother says with a roll of her eyes.

You look back to Foggy, Matt, and Karen one more time before glancing over to your mother. “It means you’re dealing with my attorneys from here on out.” You turn and walk towards the trio, ignoring the squawks of protest the group from your hometown lets out.

As soon as you sign the form, they step past you and between Piotr, Wade, Nate, and everyone that’d joined your parents. “We represent the law firm of Nelson, Murdock, and Page,” Foggy says brightly. “And we’re here to inform you that you are currently violating an order of protection that was issued for our client’s safety against you.”

“The local authorities have been contacted and are on their way to arrest you for violating the order, in addition to charges of domestic abuse and conspiracy to commit abduction,” Matt adds.

“You fucking bitch!” your mother screams, lunging forward at you only to be stopped by Matt and Foggy. “You can’t do this!”

“Miss L/N,” Matt says, turning towards you. “For the sake of your emotional well-being, I would advise you to leave the room. Mr. Rasputin, perhaps you could accompany her for her comfort?”

“He needs to be here to represent the Institute,” you say, suddenly drained from the whole ordeal.

“I’ll go with her,” Wade offers, stepping back to clasp your shoulder. “Come on, sis.”

You put an arm around Russell’s shoulders. “Let’s go, bud. We’re done with them.”

Back in the kitchen –and out of sight of your parents and everyone else—Alex, Nikolai, and Frank are still holding your uncle back.

He relaxes once you cross the threshold and step out of sight of the hall. “Are you okay? What happened?”

You sigh, then shrug. “I decided to let my attorneys handle the situation.”

Your uncle stares at you, then smiles as tears well up in his eyes. “Good. Good job, punk.”

You try to smile back, but ultimately start crying.

He reaches over and pulls you into a massive hug.

The two of you stay like that for a while, holding each other while tears flow down each of your faces.

***

The whole process of your parents –and everyone else that decided to show up with them—being arrested is exhausting.

There’s a lot of screaming. A lot of arguing. A lot of insults –those are mostly directed at you, even though you aren’t in the room.

Frank and your uncle have to duck into the basement to avoid being seen by any of the officers –which Wade makes a “alternative seven minutes in heaven” comment about that makes you smile briefly, but you’re honestly too tired to really do anything except stare at a wall right now.

Piotr has to talk to the officers as a representative of the Institute, which means that you can’t just drape yourself over him like you want to and soak in his affection and love for you.

The only upside is that Matt, Foggy, and Karen can speak to the police on your behalf. Right now, you’re not sure you could handle dealing with all the questions you’re bound to be asked.

Eventually, Alex walks up to your seat and squeezes your shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go for walk.”

You frown up at her. “Don’t we need to be here in case the police have questions for us?”

“Your attorneys are already representing you,” she says. “Besides, if they really need something, Illyana will let us know and we can come back in.” She squeezes your shoulder again, then nods towards the back door. “Come. You could use some fresh air and quiet.” She puts an arm around you as you stand and gently ushers you to the back door and outside.

It’s far calmer outside. A cool, easy breeze ruffles your hair, and the grass is soothingly soft beneath your feet.

Alex nudges you forward, though not unkindly. “Come on. Medvezhonok keeps saying I should see the gardens.”

You walk alongside her through the various gardens that dot Xavier’s property. In the wake of the adrenaline and stress abruptly leaving your body, you’re feeling numb, almost detached. It’s almost like your body can’t fully process the shock and stress of having your parents show up.

Well, come to think of it, that’s probably exactly what’s going on.

Alex is markedly quiet as she examines the garden, expression placid and body language lax as she ambles along the pathways between various clusters of flowers and flora.

“You seem calm,” you remark, voice barely more than a mumble as you stare down at a few bright, cheery yellow lilies.

“Age brings serenity,” she says as she crouches down to better look at a butterfly feeding off some hummingbird mint. “And there is not much to be afraid of when you can outmatch nearly every opponent facing you. That, and they are not my nightmare.” She looks up at you, a ghost of a sympathetic smile on her lips. “They were –are—yours. It’s always harder when it’s personal.”

You let out a huff of air. “Ain’t that the truth.” You sit down on a nearby bench, staring blankly at nothing. “What happens next?”

“I am not the person to ask that question,” Alex admits, brushing her jeans off as she stands back up. “I would wager, though, that your lawyers will know how to handle things.”

You nod slowly, numbly. “Yeah, probably.”

Alex watches you closely for a moment before sitting down next to you. “How are you, malen'kaya ptitsa? How are you feeling?”

What you mean to say is something along the lines of “overwhelmed,” or “numb,” or “exhausted,” or maybe even “angry to the point where I can’t feel it anymore.”

What comes out, though, is: “I don’t think my parents ever loved me.”

You feel a slight pulse of shock hit your system once your words register in your own brain, then the slow, sinking dread and resignation as the truth of it sets in. You’ve been on the precipice of realizing the truth for a while, but you’ve never really admitted it at all, much less out loud to someone else.

Alex grimaces and nods. “I would wager you are right. No parent who loves their child treats them how you were treated.”

You nod along, lips tugging into a frown and chin trembling. “Yeah. I kind of just… realized I can’t make them love me or respect me. That’s why I just decided to let Matt ‘n Foggy ‘n Karen handle everything, you know? I was just done with all of it.”

“You’re right,” Alex reassures you. “On all counts. You cannot change their stance, but you do not have to hold onto people who refuse to treat you with decency.”

Your eyes sting and water as a lump rises in your throat. “I just… I don’t understand why I couldn’t be worth it to them. I mean, I get that they never wanted a mutant child, but I was just a kid. What about being a mutant made it worth beating me, terrifying me, demeaning me, abusing me, making my life a miserable hell every single day I lived in their home—”

Alexandra wraps her arms around you as you start crying and presses a motherly kiss to the top of your head when you press yourself against her. “Some people are just horrible, malen'kaya ptitsa. Sometimes they are so lost in their own misery that the only way they can make themselves feel better is to make others hurt, sometimes they only care about themselves to the point that they stop caring when they hurt others, and sometimes they just enjoy making others hurt because it brings them pleasure. Either way, the end result for their victims is still the same: pain and abuse they should have never suffered.”

You whimper and weep against her shoulder as she slowly rocks you back and forth. “I don’t understand –I tried so hard to be good—”

“It was never about you being ‘good,’” Alex murmurs against your hair. “You have always been ‘good.’ It was about their hatred and inability to love unconditionally. Unfortunately, you got stuck with short end of stick, and I am so sorry that you did, dorogoy rebenok.”

You sniff and swipe at your face as you sit up and look her in the eye. “Did you go through this kind of stuff with your parents? Did they care that you were a mutant?”

Alex’s face goes completely blank as she stares at you. “My par… Piotr never told you.”

“Told me what?”

Alex’s lips purse into a thin line; she slides off the bench to kneel on the ground in front of you and clasps your hands in hers. “Malen'kaya ptitsa… I was taken from my family when I was four to train as government asset. I never saw them again, and when the KGB disbanded in the nineties, I found out that they had been executed to prevent any leaks of information from spreading. The only family I have ever had is Nikolai and my children –and now you as well.”

Guilt drops in your stomach like a lead brick. “Oh God.” You double over and start crying again. “I’m sorry –I’m so sorry! I’ve just been complaining like a brat—”

“Nyet. Nyet, nyet, nyet -- malen'kaya ptitsa, look at me.” Alex cups your face in her hands, forcing you to lift your head and meet her gaze. “Never apologize for hurting after what you have endured. Understand?”

“But what you went through was so much worse!” you protest. “I at least had a family, I had a home—”

“You had neither of those things until you came here,” Alex insists sharply. “You may have had biological parents, but they were not family or home. ‘Family’ and ‘home’ means safety and love, and they certainly provided neither. And, yes, my time as asset was horrible, but I never had to second guess whether or not I was loved. I never had to deal with mind games as to whether I was wanted or respected or what have you. I always knew where I stood with my handlers and what was expected of me.” She rubs your cheeks with her thumbs, wiping the tears away. “People who try and rank pains as ‘worse’ than each other are people who cannot handle their own emotions and need to put them in boxes to cope –and, more often than not, they are the type of people who contributed to our pain in first place.” She swallows hard, tears welling up in her eyes, and when she speaks again her voice is shaky with emotion. “So please, do not stop yourself from grieving. Because I am most certainly grieving for you.”

You sob and collapse against her, body shaking as grief wells up and pours out of you –grief for the childhood you lost, for the pain you had to endure, for the love you should’ve had but never received…

And, through it all, Alex holds you tight with strong arms as she cries along with you. “It’s okay, malen'kaya ptitsa. It’s okay.”

***

Once the authorities leave –and take your parents, pastor, and the others that’d joined them along—Piotr comes out to the back with Nikolai to collect you and Alexandra.

The two of you are significantly calmer, having had time to cry and catch your breath, but it’s still apparent that you both have been crying.

Piotr lifts you into his arms and carries you towards the house, while Nikolai sits down next to his wife on the bench.

“Can we just go to bed?” you croak, voice hoarse and throat dry from crying. “I’m just really tired. I just want to go to bed.”

Piotr kisses your forehead as he adjusts his hold on you so he can open the back door. “Da. We can go to bed.” He carries you all the way up to your shared room and gently tucks you into bed before going back to close the door, then joins you in bed. “How are you?”

“Tired,” you mumble. “Angry. Sad. It’s just—” you point at your head, twirling your finger around like you’re stirring a pot of soup “—a lot in here right now.”

“I bet,” Piotr murmurs as he wraps his arms around you. “But you can rest for now. You have earned good rest.”

“You’re telling me.” You sling an arm over his waist, then sigh when he starts tracing swirling designs on your arm and shoulder. You slow your breathing, counting your inhales and exhales until you feel less like you’re about to completely crumble apart.

And then you say, “I want to get a tattoo.”

You can practically hear the slow, shocked blink Piotr does. “Uh… khorosho.”

You tip your head back so you can see his face –and he definitely looks surprised. “Is that really okay with you?”

“It is your body,” he says, smoothing your hair away from your face. “I was just more… surprised by lack of context, I suppose.”

“I mean, I kind of wrote it off when my uncle told me that the ink wouldn’t take as well, but… I want something permanent on me. Something that can’t be taken away. When my parents took my ring, and I thought you weren’t real…”

Piotr holds you closer as your voice trails off. “It is alright, myshka. And if you want tattoo, we can find way for you to get one.”

“You don’t think it’s irresponsible to get a tattoo because of the trauma I went through?”

He sighs as he contemplates your question. “In this case, I think not. I know you will get one done safely. And, honestly, I do not think it is very drastic change to yourself considering what happened. Besides, people who lose loved ones or self-harm or feel suicidal get tattoos to help them stay grounded. I do not see why you cannot do same.”

You snuggle closer to him, soothed by his support. “You don’t care if we have kids and I have a tattoo?”

He snorts. “Nyet. What you want to do to your body is your choice. My mother and Mikhail have tattoos, so our kids will see them anyway. Plus… I was thinking of getting some of my own.”

“Really?” You tilt your head back so you can see his face. “What were you thinking of getting?”

“Maybe DNA strand on my wrist, for mutantism,” he says, tapping his right wrist. “And possibly some work on my shoulder and back that looks like northern lights night sky scene. And… I know I want to get our children’s fetal heartbeats. On my forearm.”

You smile softly. “I like the sound of all of that. Especially the heartbeats one.”

He smiles back at you and leans down to kiss you. “So do I.”

You nestle closer to Piotr as he kisses you, hands softly gripping the material of his shirt as his arms hold you tighter against his body.

Your journey to recovery is far from over. If you had to wager, it’ll probably never be over, not entirely.

But you climbed an important mountain today. And with Piotr by your side –along with Wade, Nathan, Neena, Russell, Yukio, Ellie, and the rest of Piotr’s family—you’ll be able to keep climbing whatever mountains happen to find you.

One foot in front of the other.

You’ve got this.

Sources about how delusions work:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delusional_disorder https://www.buting.com/blog/2015/02/false-memories-lies-and-the-limitations-of-the-human-brain.shtml https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/delusion/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3016695/

#sass writes #piotr rasputin x reader #colossus x reader #nathan summers x wade wilson #cablepool #frank castle x karen page #alexandra rasputin x nikolai rasputin #ANGST ANGST ANGST #SO MUCH ANGST #tw: abuse #tw: manipulation #tw: injury #tw: blood #tw: vomiting #tw: kidnapping #this entire fic is basically a trigger warning #x men fanfiction #deadpool fanfiction

59 notes · View notes

stories-sometimes · 5 years

Text

Taking Him Down (1/?)

Steve Rogers x Reader, Sam Wilson x Reader

Summary: Cop!Steve Rogers works with the mob boss’s daughter to take him down.

Word Count: 1917

Masterlist

He had to make sure none of his colleagues ever found out. It wasn’t allowed, he had been taken off the case. But when has that ever stopped him before. A more corrupt captain replaced him, one who worked with Birling too closely. Everyone else was too far up that man’s ass to try to stop him. So that’s why he was waiting in a secluded corner of a sketchy dive bar on the outskirts of town for Birling’s daughter to show up - the only other person who wasn’t trapped in his pocket of influence.

“Rogers.” She finally greeted him. She always looked weird to him, not in a bad way, it was just that she had such an innocent face, as though she didn’t belong to the world she was born into. However if you noticed her for long enough you could see the darkness in her eyes or the little scars across her knuckles from years of fighting. She intrigued him.

“Took you long enough.” He replied as he sipped on his whiskey.

“Do you want my help or not?”

“You know I do, just sit down.” She did, instantly grabbing his drink and finishing for herself. “You could’ve just asked you know.” She sneered at him.

“I can find someone else to help me, push it too far and I’ll leave and take all my information with me.”

“I’m your best option.” He snapped back.

“Unfortunately.” She sighed as she reached down into her bag to pull out a series of files. “There’s a massive shipment of cocaine passing through here in a week, busting it will be a good place to start. If we frame it to look like the police captain was in charge of it my dad will lose faith in him. He’ll get more insecure, start second guessing everyone around him. After that we can start to cut off more and more of his ties until he’s vulnerable enough for us to really strike, take him down for good.”

“I doubt Birling’s gonna freak out that much if one shady police officer betrays him, he’ll just move onto the next easy to bribe guy on the force.” Steve stated. He’d seen this happen time and time again, for every one good cop in the city there were at least two secretly working for or along with the mob.

“Well then you obviously don’t know the first thing about their relationship.”

“Enlighten me.” He perked an eyebrow up.

“They go right back, they’ve been friends since the moment they were born. The captain only ever joined the force to help the mob, he’s the real number two of the whole organisation. I’ve seen how the two of them interact my entire life, if he trusts anyone, truly trusts them, it’s the Captain. He’s who we need to target.”

“Well other than you.” Steve said, looking closer at the files, exact, intricate details of Birling’s next heist.

“But he has to keep his faith in me. I would him no wrong.” She smiled sarcastically, barely concealing her disdain for the man.

“Of course not, you’re his precious little princess, ain’t that right sweetheart.” She wanted to wipe that smug look off his face, he loved to rub that fact in her face. That she had to keep up the act of Birling’s perfect daughter, the innocent face of an evil group.

“Don’t call me that.”

“What princess or sweetheart?” He was really pushing his luck.

“Either. Take a look over these, we’ll meet again tomorrow, bring your people.” Steve nodded. He went back to his flat, continuing to flick through the pages and pages she’d prepared. She was smart, he could be sure of that, the plans were solid and so were the people he was bringing onto this job.

The next day she walked into Steve’s apartment. Behind her stood a fiery looking redhead who had the same stoic look as others who’d grown up in the mob.

“Natasha Romanoff, she’s part of the shipment, she’s gonna be our girl on the inside.” She introduced the two of them.

“Nice to meet you.” Steve said, stepping forward to shake her hand.

“Pleasure’s all mine.” Natasha smirked back at him, a slight smirk on her painted red lips.

“She’s the one of the best agents I’ve ever seen, if anything goes wrong she’ll be the one to drag whoever your guys are out of the situation.”

“Trust me sweetheart, my guys are perfectly capable.”

“Well are you ever gonna show me them?” She asked. He nodded quickly, leading the two women further into his apartment. They were met with the sight of two men bickering on Steve’s sofa, they soon stopped upon seeing the others, standing to attention.

“This is Bucky and Sam, they’ll pose as the buyers. Both are well trained soldiers and spies.” The two men stepped forward to shake her hand, Sam’s gaze lingering on her for longer than Steve liked. He shook the thoughts out of his head, he had to stay focused on the case, he couldn’t let himself get sidetracked at all.

“So, let’s go over the plan one last time.” She instructed them as she pulled out all the visual information for the plan. “Natasha’s going to be with Birling’s men, she’ll keep us updated, inform us if anything goes wrong. Sam and Bucky will be posing as the buyers, they’ll wait by the west side of the pier, when you guys meet up Nat will send me and Steve the signal. I’ll tip off the captain saying a rival mob has a deal going on. When the police bust the sale Steve will go to pick up you three. Nat, you then tell Birling about the captain breaking up the big deal, he’ll confront him, breaking ties with the police.“

“What if the captain tells your father you tipped him off?”

“Like my dad would believe I would ever do such a thing to him.” She smiled, purposely making herself appear more innocent. “Memorise these.” She handed them each a file switching back to her more authoritarian look. “Now if you’ll excuse me I have dinner with my dearest father. You coming Nat.” With that they left leaving the other rereading the plan, ensuring that it was ingrained in their brains.

“Wouldn’t mind taking her out to dinner.” Sam said offhandedly earning himself a subtle glare from Steve.

“Keep it professional Wilson.” He replied, feeling oddly protective over her.

“Course I will, but who knows. If she’s interested, who am I to deny her a date. Dinner, a movie, a nice walk through a park, end it with a few rounds between the sheets and those goddamn thighs, sounds like a perfect night.” Sam wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. Steve scowled at him, hating the way it was making him feel. They were working together and that’s all it should be, mixing business and feelings during this gig would be a mistake, it could only end in smoke - that’s what Steve thought at least. But he’d be damned if he let anyone else try to get with her.

“Just read these, we can’t fuck this up. You gotta think with your head and not with dick.” Sam’s only reply was a smirk.

“Darling, how are you?” Birling said as she sat down at the dinner table.

“Hey dad, I’m doing good.” She said, fading back into the sugary sweet act she held around her father.

“Did you book that hotel for next week?”

“I did. But why do I have to be gone next week? I was thinking of meeting with some friends.” She asked, pretending to be clueless of the reason he was trying to get rid of her for a while, he always wanted to keep her away from the crime, at least it gave her a good alibi.

“Just thought you should have a break from the city.” He responded. She nodded, throughout the night she tried to pry little pieces of information out of him, but in the end it was useless.

Steve on the other hand left for the police station, he knew there was some evidence against Birling hidden away somewhere in the precinct. He rooted around the evidence locker, the captain purposely mislabel pieces of evidence so it would have to be disregarded. If he could get it and correct it he could pin it on the captain, more reasons for Birling to lose trust in him.

“Rogers.” He heard his name and froze in his tracks.

“Captain.” He answered, keep calm he thought, don’t slip up.

“What are you doing here so late?”

“Just finishing of a case, just that mugging you assigned me.” He picked up the bag he had left in here earlier. The captain seemed to buy it.

“Good work.”

The next day she was back in Steve’s apartment (although it was currently only her and Sam in home) hitting the punching bag he had hung up.

“Why aren’t you wearing gloves?” He pointed to her hands, only a flimsy layer of bandages protecting her hands.

“I wanna feel it. Get my anger out properly.”

“Wanna practice with me?” He asked, placing some pads on his hands. “I always get more anger out if I’m punching somebody else.”

“Sure.” She shrugged, turning and switching to punching Sam’s hands. He was right it helped and the little jokes cheered her up a bit.

“Come on, is that all you’ve got. Harder!” Sam said after a while.

“Oh you like it hard.” She teased.

“You know it, I like it hard and rough. If these isn’t a few bruises after what’s the point.” She blushed a little at his answer, pushing any thoughts of that out of her head.

“Good to know.”

“What about you?” The punching had all about stopped by now.

“What about me?”

“How do you like it?” He enjoyed the deeper shade of red her cheeks turned.

“At the moment I definitely need it nice and hard.”

“Good to know.” He echoed her word, moving closer to her, wrapping a hand around her waist. The other went to cup her cheek making her giggle.

“You should probably take the pads off first.” He laughed along with her as he quickly took them off, throwing them to the other side of the room. He raised his now bare hands.

“Better.” She nodded, lightly biting her lip. He leaned down to lock lips with her. Quickly he deepened the kiss, running his tongue along her bottom lip, she immediately allowed him access, opening her mouth so he could slide it in. They carried on like this until they heard a not-so-subtle cough from beside them. “Steve.” She said sounding shocked, feeling oddly guilty after being caught. She was allowed to kiss Sam, there was no reason she should feel so bad as Steve kept his eyes locked on her.

“Wanted to tell you I got the milk.” He said awkwardly. He walked out of the room.

“Alright man.” Sam replied.

“Steve! Wait!” She shouted, pulling out of Sam’s grasp. “Steve, I can explain, I -”

“It’s fine,” He interrupted her, although his clenched jaw suggested he thought otherwise. “Just make sure that doesn’t interfere with taking Birling down.” He didn’t like the way he felt when he saw her kissing Sam. He didn’t like the proud look on Sam’s face when he pulled away. He definitely didn’t like the idea of her being anyone else’s.

#Steve Rogers #steve rogers x reader #steve rogers imagine #sam wilsom #sam wilson imagine #sam wilson x you #sam wilson x reader #marvel #marvel fic #back at it again posting at 2am

29 notes · View notes

brideofedoras · 5 years

Text

The Loft: Redemption

Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to the images in the mood board, nor do I own The Loft or the characters from the movie. I only own my OCs.

Word Count: 2400+

Rating: 18+ only, please.

Warnings: Mentions of (later descriptions) of sexual abuse, mentions of infidelity and murder.

“I really wish you would reconsider this, Sam,” Kenna Wilson glared at her cousin as when she walked up to her in the lobby. “There are a hundred other jobs in KC.”

“Jobs that won’t pay enough to make the commute worthwhile, or jobs I’m overqualified for,” Samantha Monroe reminded the blonde. “Kenna, I need this job, stop trying to convince me not to do this!” She headed to the bank of elevators and pressed the call button. “This is a half hour drive from my apartment, and I am more than qualified for this position.”

“Sam—” Kenna dropped her head in defeat when one of the elevators arrived and the door slid open. She sighed heavily as she stepped into the car behind her cousin. “I don’t want you working for him.”

“I know, Ken,” Sam turned to face her. “I know how you feel about him, but I’ve never met him. You know I’m not about to judge a person based on second- or third-hand knowledge without getting to know them.”

“You’re making a mistake,” the other woman muttered.

“It’s my choice,” the brunette shrugged. “Kenna, please, I need you to support me on this.”

“Sam, the turnover in his office with administrative assistants has become legendary. He’s lost six assistants over the past twelve months!”

“You’ve harped on that for a week, Kenna,” Sam sighed. “But you haven’t told me the reason or reasons why.”

“He’s a bastard,” her blonde cousin answered quietly. “He’s cold, he’s demanding…”

Sam leveled Kenna with a look. “You forget, I’ve dealt with that my entire life,” she reminded the blonde. “I can handle cold and demanding.”

“But can you handle devastatingly handsome and brooding?” Kenna lifted her brow. “The man’s nothing but trouble, Sam.”

“Let me be the judge of that,” she said softly. “Everyone deserves a chance, unless they’re murderers, rapists, child abusers, child molesters, or animal abusers.”

“This right here,” Kenna whispered as the elevator slowed to stop at the eighth floor. “This is why I do not want you to work for him. You have a penchant for wanting to help lost causes, and he’s definitely a lost cause.”

“So am I,” Sam pointed out in a low voice.

“No, Sweetie…”

The doors slid open, interrupting Kenna’s argument, an argument she didn’t want to continue in front of witnesses on the eighth floor lobby. Instead she nodded her hellos to the three women at the reception desk, introduced her cousin and headed down the hall to VMS Architecture, LLC’s office and conference suite.

She opened the door and led Sam inside. “Good morning, Linda,” she greeted the older woman behind the secretary’s desk with a warm smile. “I’d like you to meet my cousin, Samantha Monroe.”

Linda McIntyre stood up and rounded the desk to shake Sam’s hand. “It’s nice to finally be able to put a face to the name of the young lady I’ve been talking with,” she smiled warmly. “Mr. Stevens is in a last-minute meeting downstairs but he should be back up soon. He told me to ask if you’d need to reschedule your interview and apologizes if that’s the case.”

Sam shook her head, “No need to reschedule, I don’t have any plans for the rest of the day, other than lunch with Kenna and cleaning my apartment.”

“All right,” Linda nodded.

Sam turned to Kenna. “Wish me luck, Ken?”

The blonde hugged her cousin tight. “If this is really what you want, I’ll support you,” she whispered. “Be careful with him.”

Sam nodded, hugging back. “Thank you.” She noticed Linda watching the exchange with a slightly concerned look but ignored it as she said good-bye to Kenna.

“Would you like coffee or a cinnamon roll?” Linda offered with a smile.

She smiled back, relaxing in the older woman’s presence. “I’m not a fan of coffee,” she admitted. “And I’m so nervous I’m afraid if I ate something I’d probably throw up all over the place and bomb the interview.”

“You don’t look nervous, Samantha,” she assured her, frowning at Sam’s flinch.

“Just Sam, please,” the brunette requested. “My stomach is in knots right now.”

“Interviews can be nerve-wracking,” Linda acquiesced. “Mr. Stevens is all bark, no bite, and if you ask me I believe you have this cinched, he was very impressed with your resume and references.”

Sam blushed. “I hope so,” she whispered.

Linda moved away from her and walked over to the small refrigerator behind her desk. She grabbed a bottle of water and returned to Sam’s side. “Here you go,” she offered the water to her. “Right this way,” she led her to the door to her left and flipped on the light. “This is the conference room. Mr. Stevens often holds meetings in here with clients. We usually make arrangements with a local business to cater the meetings, but on rare occasions a meeting will be arranged at the last minute. He tries to avoid those at all costs because he hates last minute changes. He was quite grumpy this morning when he was called down for the one he’s currently in.”

“I hate last minute changes myself, but things pop up,” Sam shrugged. “I’ve learned to roll with it.”

“Vincent usually does, as well,” Linda assured her. “He’s a good man to work for and I hate having to leave, but this was never meant to be a long-term job for me.”

Sam smiled as she set her purse and folder on the table with the water bottle. They’d had that discussion last week when Linda had called her to arrange the interview. “I’m sure he will hate to see you go,” she said softly, letting her eyes wander the conference room to take in the décor. Framed blue prints and artfully-framed collages of construction projects lined the wall butting up to the hallway, including old photos of some of the city’s most recognizable structures, both past and present. One garish painting adorned the wall opposite the door to the office had her grimacing.

“On the contrary,” Linda chuckled heartily. “He can’t wait for me to retire, he claims I’m a dictator in the office.”

Sam’s eyes shot back to the warm brown eyes of the older woman. It took her a moment to realize Linda was teasing. She huffed out a soft laugh. “I’ll do my best to make sure I won’t be labeled likewise,” she grinned.

“Oh, Dear, you’ll do just fine, I have faith in you,” Linda reached out to squeeze her arm. She started to say something else but a phone rang out in the office. “I’ll leave you to it, Sam, I’m sure Vincent will be right up. He tends to speed things along when he’s needed elsewhere.” With another gentle squeeze she swept out of the conference room. “VMS Architecture, LLC, Linda speaking, how may I assist you this morning? Oh, Mr. Stevens! No, I didn’t look at the caller ID,” she laughed. “Yes, Ms. Monroe has already arrived. No, she’s waiting, she had no issue with the delay. Vincent Stevens, must I remind you who you are talking to? Of course, I offered her food and drink! Pfft, no you won’t,” she laughed again. “All right, I’ll let her know.”

Sam’s attention was on the vast window overlooking the city and the river in the distance when Linda popped back into the conference room. “I take it he’s on his way?”

“Yes, Sweetie,” Linda smiled. “He tried to tell me how to do my job then told me he would miss me when I retire,” her smile turned into a fond expression. “I will miss him. He’s a good man, he just… lost his way for a while.”

“We all do,” Sam smoothed her hands down her grey slacks, her own smile dim from the memories she tried to shove down.

Linda nodded. “Chin up, Dearie, you’ve cinched this job, I just know it.” With that, she ducked back into the office.

Vin grumbled to himself as he stepped off the elevator on the eighth floor. With a polite nod to the receptionists at the main desk he strode down the hall to his suite.

Damn Mathison for arranging that 8:30 meeting at the last damned minute. He wanted to get this interview over and done with so he could make up his mind about whether or not to hire this seemingly perfect applicant.

Samantha Monroe was perfect on paper. She had an interesting employment history ranging from summer temp work in office settings to slinging tacos, and one solid office job for a landscaping company before moving to the city. Her college education was what drew his attention, she had a degree in business management with minors in architecture and marketing. Her former employers and references gave him glowing reviews, and he hoped like hell she was still interested in the job. Because the other resumes Linda had handed him (with a frown of distaste) had gone through the shredder after one cursory glance.

The other applicants were just like the other secretaries he’d gone through before he’d been blessed (and cursed) with Linda.

He hoped like hell this Samantha Monroe wouldn’t turn out to be like any of them.

He let himself into the office and gave Linda an apologetic smile before ducking into his office to grab the folder he had the resume tucked in. He grinned when his assistant handed him a fresh mug of coffee before heading into the conference room.

He damn near spilled his coffee when his hazel eyes landed on a petite brunette standing with her back to him. Long, wavy brown hair was pulled into a ponytail at the back of her head and spilled to her shoulder blades. A hint of a tattoo peeked out of the low collar of the black batwinged blouse she wore and the desire to tug that collar down her shoulder to expose the ink, so he could touch, lick, kiss the artwork hit him hard. He shook himself from that unwarranted wayward thought. God dammit, Stevens, she is a candidate for a job, not a woman to lust after! You’re NOT that man anymore!

Unfortunately the old Vincent Stevens had other ideas and continued the perusal. His hazel eyes slowly caressed down the young woman’s back to the way the hem of her blouse fit snug around her waist and stretched slightly over the smart grey slacks that clung to her hips and bottom before falling straight to her heels. Chunky-heeled shoes completed the ensemble that he could see, and damn if he didn’t find that smart look to be sexy as hell.

“Beautiful view.” Fuck my life, he instantly berated himself when the words popped out of his mouth in a husky tone. He caught a slight stiffening of her body before she responded.

“If you’re talking about the cityscape, I have to disagree,” she looked over her shoulder.

His breath caught in his throat. Long bangs swept over her forehead, black cat-eyed glasses framed big grey eyes. He forced his eyes to remain locked with hers for fear he would stare too long at her full lips and the shimmery nude gloss she wore. She’s beautiful.

Thank God she hadn’t fully turned around. He wasn’t prepared to see her from the front.

“Why’s that?” His voice was huskier than he’d hoped, shit fucking fire, he thought as he approached the window. He lifted his mug to take a drink of his coffee, hoping to calm his damned thoughts before he fucked up big time and scared her off. She’s perfect for the assistant position, but god dammit I can’t have her working for me, not if I’m already attracted to her.

She turned back to the window. “Five blocks out, there’s a three-block stretch of eyesore out there. Dilapidated buildings.”

“They’re coming down,” he told her. “To make room for a park and a pavilion.”

“Are you throwing your hat in the ring for design bids?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he nodded, taking another sip of his coffee. “I apologize for not introducing myself, although you already know who I am. Vincent Stevens.”

Sam found herself laughing softly at that. “Sam Monroe.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Ms. Monroe,” his voice was gruff again, dammit. Pleasure, indeed. Get yourself together, Stevens. “Tell me, Ms. Monroe, why do you seek employment with my firm?”

“I’ve worked office jobs off and on since high school,” she answered, turning away from the window to face him. “I’m very familiar with the environment, I’m highly efficient with organization, skilled at setting up for meetings, and as my mother would say, I’m a walking appointment calendar. I also have an interest in architecture, although my interest is more toward houses and landscaping.”

“Those would come in quite handy for this firm,” he nodded. “Why my firm? Why would you want to work for me?”

“Out of all the office jobs available at the moment, yours is the only one that pertains to what I’ve studied and what I’m interested in,” she answered. “Maybe someday I will go back to school to further study architectural design and landscaping so I could be a better asset for the company,” she added softly, looking out the window once more.

His brow quirked at that. “I’m sure you’ve heard all the sordid little details of my past, Ms. Monroe,” he tried to avoid looking at her but failed. His eyes swept down her frame before he sharply looked away.

“What happened in the past is just that, the past, Mr. Stevens,” she stated stiffly. “It has nothing to do with the position and therefore is none of my business.”

“It’s not an easy job,” he told her, switching tactics to try to dissuade her. I just got my life back together, just got my company back on track, I do NOT need her tempting me to fuck it all up!

“There’s no such thing as an easy job,” she countered, turning to face him. “You’re attempting to talk me out of the job, Mr. Stevens. A man in your position should not be pushing away a qualified candidate.”

He snorted again. “A job like this would eat you alive. We’re in the city, not some small town in the middle of nowhere.”

She shook her head again. “You do not know me, you do not know what I can handle,” she stated. “Let me have a trial week. Decide at the end of the week as to whether or not you think I can handle working as your administrative assistant.”

He nodded after a moment. “Okay.” Turning back to her, he looked her in the eye. “Mrs. McIntyre will give you the tour, show you the ropes, provide the paperwork,” he started toward the door. “Your trial starts now.”

#the loft #vincent stevens #karl urban #slow burn #redemption #romance

14 notes · View notes

pantstomatch · 6 years

Text

untitled winterhawk mess for lissa!

SO HERE’S THE THING. It’s creeping up on midnight (my time) and I promised @lissadiane I would write her whatever she wanted for her birthday (today) because she’s amazing and, listen, I’ve been extremely dependent on her, she’s all I’ve ever wanted in a writing buddy and just, like, A FRIEND, and it doesn’t matter that we live so far apart, I feel like I get to see her every single day. She is literally the only reason I ever write and share anything. So anyway, BECAUSE IT IS HER BIRTHDAY, and because she asked me to write Winterhawk on SGA, I have... done this. I have no actual idea how to write anyone in the marvel universe, so this is just... you know... hopefully not terrible. (the second half is rushed for time, shhhhh, just pretend this is balanced and maybe someday it’ll be magically fixed). HAPPY BIRTHDAY LISSA!! I HOPE YOU HAD AN AMAZING DAY DESPITE THE CAR THING.

The only reason Bucky tolerates diplomatic missions is because Steve's simultaneously the best at them and the worst. It's both a Steve thing and a Stark thing. Steve's got a sixty percent probability of becoming indignant on someone's behalf, and Stark's got a much higher likelihood of blowing things up. And that's only if he hasn't already accidentally insulted someone important on purpose. When things go well, they go great—one planet has a god damn statue of Steve, which Bucky finds hilarious and Steve hates with passion—which is the only reason they're still getting sent on these milk runs.

Bucky's got his palm along the outside of his P-90, pointed at the ground as he stands fifteen paces behind Steve, Stark, and Wilson.

The planet's delegation consists of two old pale guys in robes—par for the course—and a haggard nutbar that Bucky's pretty sure they're trying to sell as a wizard.

He notes Wilson watching all their hands, and scans the perimeter for threats.

The settlement is mostly a tent city built on the ruins of a more prosperous time. Half-crumbled brick and mortar, dull canvas tarps staked down over top.

For all the technology of the Ancients, the Pegasus Galaxy has basically been beaten back into the dark ages. He fucking hates the Wraith.

He's got his eyes on the sparse woods to their left when he hears a soft scraping sound. He barely tenses, forces a natural sweep of the tree line, back over the other three members of his team, and then lazily focuses on a narrow, dirt alley that snakes down behind a line of crumbling buildings. Out of the corner of his eye, he watches a thick stone slowly lift and shift. Grubby fingers appear, palms wrapped in worn cloth, gripping the edge.

Bucky forces himself to keep still, stance open.

A tuft of matted, brown-blonde hair pokes up, Bucky catches a fast look of blue eyes, busted nose and a split lip.

Graceful and quick, the kid—youngish, slim, rag-covered, barefoot—gracefully climbs out of the hole, and then promptly trips over his own feet. He catches himself on nothing, arms spread out with an almost silent whoosh of air.

Bucky spots what looks like a quiver of arrows on his back and a motherfucking bow, and rolls onto the balls of his feet, wondering if this is some kind of ambush. He slips his fingers down to lightly cover the trigger of his gun.

The kid just crouches down to heft the stone cover back over the hole, though, and when he lifts his head again, their eyes catch.

Panic moves fast over the kid's face before disappearing into a cocky quirk of lips. He winks at Bucky, lifts his finger in a 'keep quiet' gesture, and then flees around the turn of a tent before Bucky can even snap his mouth shut.

Huh.

"Buck?"

Bucky blinks once and says, "Yeah, Stevie," without looking away from the alley.

"Everything okay?"

A hand lands on his arm, the one attached to the hand still caressing his P-90, and Bucky looks up to see Steve's face schooled into Earnest Concern.

"Peachy," Bucky says. "Hey," he gestures to the hole the goddamn street urchin just popped out of, "where do you think those stone covers lead to?"

Steve shrugs. "Old sewer? Sophisticated Ancient underground bunker? Weapons store?"

Bucky feels his lips twist into a frown. Steve's eyes are twinkling.

"I know you're joking, Rogers," Stark says, swanning over, "but just because there hasn't been another Genii infestation, doesn't mean there won't be."

"I think calling them an infestation is offensive," Steve says.

"Are we done here?" Bucky asks. His skin is crawling. They're being watched.

"Nope." Stark claps Bucky on the arm and Bucky growls at him.

Stark tells him to, "Chill out, tiger," because he's a raging asshole, and the only reason Bucky doesn't punch him in the face is because Steve ducks his head to hide a smile.

Jesus.

Wilson moseys over, thumbs looped into his belt and gun draped across his back, even though he must notice Bucky's still on high fucking alert. "I don't know about you guys," he says, "but I can't wait to get off this weird-ass planet. I am not letting that grand high poopah dude read my chakra or whatever the hell he was twitching about."

Stark's face is practically plastered to a tablet but he waves a hand and says, "I believe the appropriate term, Wilson, is probe."

Over Steve's shoulder, Bucky sees the kid again, this time rapidly skirting the edge of the woods. He rolls his lips and doesn’t say anything and hopes it isn't a mistake.

Two days later, Bucky's cursing at the general motherfucking shittyness of their luck with his hands tied behind his back.

The 'jail' is one of the few buildings mostly still standing; dim light filters in from the single high window, and also weakly beams through the gaps in the stone walls. A solid push would probably take them down, Bucky's got enough rage to really put his back into it, but he'd prefer to have his hands free.

Fucking diplomats.

"How's it going, Stark?" Bucky asks through gritted teeth. He's hot, he's sweaty, his hair's all over his face and all he can do is scrape at the ends with his shoulder.

The only good thing is that Steve and Wilson weren't served the same fate. Steve's probably still in the 'talking them around' stage of negotiations, where he tries to explain that Stark didn't really mean it, and Bucky wasn't trying to assassinate anyone by accident, and it's sweet the way Steve always alwaysthinks that's going to work, even when it never does.

"It's going," Stark says absently. "Can't you bludgeon your way free with your robo-arm?"

"It's off," Bucky says.

At that, Stark lifts his head and an eyebrow, gaze slipping down the metal of his arm twisted behind his back.

"No," Bucky says, manfully resisting rolling his eyes. "They fucking turned it off. Nutbar wizard has the ATA gene."

"You mean old Turkey Face? Yeah, that guy's a treat," Stark says, and then his arms loosen and drop with a sigh and tiny robot with a saw climbs up over his shoulder to say hi.

Just as the little gizmo starts in on the ropes binding Bucky, the door slams open and street urchin kid gets tossed in with a yelp, and a shouted, "Sure! Be that way! See if he doesn't eat you, now!"

A guard kicks him in the leg, but he bounces up almost immediately and clings to the small slotted hole in the wood. He says, "Kidding! I'm kidding, please don't hurt him," and curses under his breath.

"Hello," Stark says, like he's real interested.

The kid's tall, but probably not as tall as he will be. He swings his arms when he turns and then leans up against the door, watching them warily. His mouth quirks up in a smile, though, and he says, "Hi. What are you in for?"

"Treason, apparently," Stark says dryly. "And failure to acknowledge the royal 'we.'"

Street urchin nods a lot, says, "Sure, sure," and paces to the small window and back to the door again. His lip's crusted over and his busted nose has radiated out into a black eye.

The tiny robot finishes Bucky's ties and he shakes out his hand in relief while the street urchin keeps one eye on him, and the other on the door. He's backed himself into a corner, arms crossed.

Bucky silently moves toward Stark and shifts so he can still see the kid.

Stark says, "Did you forget how to use your words, Barnes?" but reaches out for the latch underneath his arm, the Ancient tech lighting up in response to his own ATA gene.

Bucky doesn’t have one, the synthetic never stuck, and he's never considered it a liability before.

Stark, frowning, says, "We need to get you better non-Ancient tech attached to this thing. Give me a week after we get back. You can be a little lopsided in between missions."

"Gee, thanks," Bucky says.

His arm powers up with a whirl and a few clicks of the plates shifting. He's highly aware of the kid gawking at him as he lifts his arm and folds his fingers into a fist.

Stark waves him forward and says, "After you."

Bucky grins at him, feral around the edges, and punches straight through the wall.

Shouting from the guards kicks up as soon as they crawl through the rubble.

The kid says, "What the fuck was that?" blue eyes big.

Bucky only feels a little guilty when the awe and hesitation are what get the kid caught.

"Aw, man, no," he hears faintly as he takes off down the dirt path, conscious of Stark keeping pace beside him, because that's his job. Not saving some raggedy teenager who doesn't even have enough sense to wear shoes.

He's gonna see those big blue eyes in his nightmares. Jesus Christ.

He slows to a jog and then skids to a stop.

This sucks.

Stark says, "Hustle up, Barnes," and Bucky shakes his head.

"I'm going back."

"You want me to tell Rogers I lost his best friend to a sad-eyed alien that looks like a half-grown man-child?"

"Steve would go back," Bucky says, because it's true. Mostly true. He's pretty sure if it were between Bucky and a stranger, Steve would unhesitatingly go for him.

But Bucky's always been the only exception that feeds his martyr complex, so whatever.

Stark sighs like Bucky's a heavy burden. He says, "You don't have any weapons."

Bucky wiggles his metal fingers.

Stark pinches the bridge of his nose and says, "Take Tiny with you."

Tiny shoots tiny missiles. Tiny is Bucky's new best friend. Stark is never getting Tiny back.

Bucky goes for mass chaos over finesse, and has just enough time to grab the kid by the scruff of his neck and haul him backward before a wall falls on two of the three guards that were holding him down.

The shouts and explosions have brought out half the town and most of the diplomatic delegation, and Bucky sees Steve book it sideways in all the confusion, Wilson bringing up his rear.

This mission is officially fubar, unsalvageable, and Bucky just wants to get back to his tiny bunk in his tiny room with his own private tiny bath. Halfway down the street, he lets the kid go and hopes he just keeps running. It's not his problem anymore.

The Stargate is in an open field almost two clicks out of town. Bucky and Steve are the only ones not panting by the time they reach the dial.

"You came through the ring," the kid says, staring up at it with his mouth hanging open. "You came through the ring."

"Yep," Stark says, rapidly dialing out, sending his ID code through as it whooshes open. "What's your name, kid?"

"Clint." He rubs a hand over his mouth, staring at the rippling portal like he's never seen it open before.

"You going to be okay, son?" Steve says. He drops a meaty palm on join of his neck, squeezing once and then letting go.

"Oh yeah, sure," Clint nods, "but, uh," he drags his gaze away from the 'gate and up at Steve, "this planet is really small, and they were gonna cut my hand off, so, you know, anyway you can see yourselves letting me tag along?"

Steve's face goes dark. "What." Oh no.

"And Lucky and me don't take up much room, swear, except for the fact that Lucky actually does, but, uh—what?" Clint seems to finally notice how Steve's gone expressionless.

Stark whistles through his teeth and says, "Are we in Aladdin?" and Wilson snorts a laugh even though he says, "Not funny, man."

Steve says, "They're going to what?"

"Uh." Clint darts his gaze from Bucky to Steve and back again, like Bucky can somehow stop this clusterfuck of a situation.

Luckily, Bucky speaks fluent Steve. He hitches a shoulder and says, "He means you're coming with us."

"Oh, but. I mean, that's great," Clint says, but he doesn't look like he thinks that's great. He looks wary. He looks like a kid who was hoping for the best but clearly expecting the worst, and doesn't trust an inch of it—or them. "Don't you want to know why?"

"It doesn't matter why," Steve says—it totally matters why, Bucky thinks darkly, but keeps his mouth shut—and claps Clint on the shoulder, urging him forward.

Clint staggers and stops, digging his bare heels into the dirt, and blurts out, "I was stealing food."

Steve's eyes go soft. "That's okay, Clint."

"No, but. I was stealing food for him." He jerks his chin to something behind them, and Bucky whirls around to see….

It looks like how a dog would look like, if no one had ever seen a dog. If someone had just said describe a dog to me, and then drew it with their eyes closed. It's… an approximation of a dog. Floppy ears, lolling tongue, tail that wags like a flag. Big, four-footed, furry all over, but with too many teeth for its mouth and eyes too wide-set on its pointed skull.

It is, quite frankly, disturbing as hell to someone who emphatically knows what a dog should and should not look like.

Clint's shoulders slump. They're ridiculously sharp under his threadbare shirt, and he's woefully underfed. This beast looks sort of fat.

"It's okay," Clint says. He's sad. Hell, Bucky's sad. But, like, that thing can't come to Atlantis. It might eat everyone.

Which is why he's actually too stunned to protest when Steve says with deliberate, forceful calm that Bucky knows is absolute bullshit, "He can come too."

Wilson squawks. He says, "Steve."

Bucky tries to murder Steve with a glare, but Steve doesn't take an order he doesn't believe in, and doesn't offer anything he isn't prepared to back up with his whole soul. It's one of the things Bucky both loves and hates about him.

"Sheppard's gonna have a field day," Stark says gleefully, bouncing on the balls of his feet. "C'mon, blue eyes, the first step's a doozy."

Clint throws up all over the 'gate room to absolutely no one's surprise.

Also to no one's surprise, a bunch of guns get immediately pointed in the not-dog's direction until it bounds over and licks Bucky in the back of the neck. Christ.

"I have to go debrief," Steve says. "Buck, can you take Clint and, uh…"

"Lucky," Clint says, swiping at his mouth while gazing narrowed-eyed around them. Bucky doesn’t want to say he's casing the place, but he's a self-admitted thief.

"Can you take Clint and Lucky down to medical?" Steve gives him puppy eyes behind Clint's back, which is the only reason Bucky says yes.

Stark says, "I'll be in my lab." He jabs a finger at Bucky. "Barnes, arm. Tomorrow or Wednesday, whenever you're feeling it."

Bucky's tempted to not feel it at all, but on the other hand it's his arm, and he'd like it to work better.

Wilson mutters something about taking a, "Goddamn bubble bath."

Steve lifts his fingers like a boy scout but says, "Two hours. Full reports or I'll make you go talk to Sheppard. He'll hate it just as much as you will."

Clint follows Bucky out of the 'gate room, and Lucky follows Clint until they're stopped by an over-excited scientist from the xenobiologist lab. Bucky has no idea what her name is, but she's really insistent on quarantine and scans and people not accidentally dying, so he lets them herd Lucky down a split in the hallway.

Clint says, "What are they—" before cutting himself off with a sharp clack of teeth.

"He's going to the animal med bay," Bucky says. "We're going to the people-shaped one." Can't say human, he guesses, but Bucky actually knows fuck-all about the genetics of the Pegasus Galaxy. Supposedly they were all cut from the same Ancient cloth, so who the fuck knows.

In the infirmary, Dr. Biro tuts over Clint's clothes, his dirty hands, his crud-encrusted feet, and shoves a pair of scrubs in his hands before flipping the curtain around him closed.

She says, "Well," to Bucky with her hands on her hips.

"I guess… call Captain Rogers when he's done?" Bucky says.

Her eyebrows deepen into a V. "You don't want to wait."

Did he want to? Kind of. He's just not sure he should. He didn't make the decision to bring Clint back to Atlantis. He's definitely not his responsibility. At all.

Bucky sits down on the edge of an empty bed with a sigh. He needs a shower, and he needs to write up his report, and apparently he needs to make sure a too-thin alien street urchin isn’t going to die on them, too.

A half hour later, Bucky's half asleep sitting up. But Clint's got a mostly clean bill of health—dehydrated, half-starved, lacking nutrients, but in great spirits!—and is eighty percent dirt-free. He needs a shower, but his nose is taped, a butterfly bandage on his lip that definitely won't last, and the scrubs show-off his lean build and the bruises on the back of his arms, like fingerprints. He looks older and taller, even though Biro says, "He's eighteen or nineteen, he can't remember, and age in years is an Earth construct I still haven't figured out how to apply to multiple planets outside our solar system."

Sitting on the edge of the bed, Clint wiggles his toes in the fuzzy socks Biro had given him. He grins, "Hey, look."

"Real fancy, Clint," Bucky says. He quirks an eyebrow at Biro. "So he's good?"

"For certain definitions of good, sure," Biro says. "I want him hooked up to a IV for an hour and then someone can come collect him."

"What's an IV?" Clint asks, watching curiously as Biro takes hold of his arm and starts tapping along the veins.

Bucky wants no parts of that. He nods at Biro, says, "Good luck," and then slips out the door.

Bucky has a routine in between off-world missions. Breakfast at 530AM, followed by a two hour sparring session, followed by a second breakfast of whatever fruit they have on hand, preferably sitting on the highest balcony he has access to.

After that, it's a toss-up between a nap and a run around the serpentine corridors on third floor. Lunch, usually with Steve, and then he reports for duty wherever he's being rotated in for the day—control desk, lab security, clearing out and constructions. He winds up the time before dinner swimming laps off the southeast pier, if it isn't crowded. Very infrequently, he's bullied into team movie nights by Wilson. It's nice. Structured, but not too structured.

His first job after the bullshit mission where they found Clint is to… find Clint.

"What do you mean he's gone?" Bucky asks Steve, falling in step next to him as they walk down the corridors toward the living quarters. "Can't you just have Atlantis pinpoint his vitals?"

Steve's mouth tightens. "Apparently his biometrics haven't been entered into her systems yet. No one's seen him since I dropped him off after medical."

Bucky stops. "That was two days ago, Steve."

"Yeah, I know." Steve swings on him, visibly irritated. "But Corporal Jamison didn't see him leave his room, and when he finally went in to check—"

"Finally?" Jesus, did they not think Clint was eating? Or his... not-dog thing?

"Yeah." Steve looks real pissed about that, and it's only slightly mollifying. And then he looks hangdog and guilty, because of course Clint's their—Steve's—responsibility, and the thing Steve's gonna focus on most is that Clint hasn't been coddled enough to his satisfaction, and not the fact that he's a unknown variable in what is, technically, a hybrid civilian-military war zone.

Frankly, Bucky's more worried about that too. Not that he'd eversay anything about that out loud.

Steve says, "When he finally went in to check, there was zero signs of Clint anywhere. So that's where we're going to check first."

"The place where he isn’t," Bucky says, but follows Steve when he starts moving again anyhow.

"The place Clint somehow got out of without using the door."

Clint's assigned room is small, located on a less used corridor in the living section. It's sparsely furnished. There's a narrow bed, and round table with two chairs, and a postage stamp bathroom. The bed doesn't even look slept in. There's a pair of boots shoved into a corner. A folded pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt on a chair.

Bucky idly picks up the gray Air Force shirt and says, "So he's in sock-feet and the scrubs Biro gave him," hopefully, "and no one has fucking seen this guy for two days?"

One of the chairs is at a weird angle, spun around from the table and halfway into the cramped 'living space' that boasts a skinny tower bookshelf.

Steve places his hands on his hips and goes, "Huh."

Bucky skims fingers over a light dusting of debris on the shelf and then glances up at a roughly 12x24 vent in the ceiling. "D'you think his collarbones unhinge like a cat's?"

Steve says, "Well. Shit."

Clint could basically be anywhere on Atlantis. The main problem, though, as Bucky sees it, is that so could Lucky.

"So how can he hide a hundred and fifty pound… dog," Bucky generously allows, "in our recycled air system?”

The duct work threads all over the city, spilling out into every room, and god knows he's probably sleeping in there too.

Steve says, "Good question," and radios Colonel Sheppard, who lets out the longest, loudest sigh Bucky has ever heard in his life.

Steve and Bucky are unsuccessful in their mission that day, because a) the damn not-dog is still quarantined in the xenobiology lab, and b) Bucky almost punches Colonel Jamison in the face when he says he told Clint no when he asked for him.

"Now we know why he bolted," Steve says, looking like he wants to punch Jamison, too, "and we know where he was going. But we don't know why he didn't get there."

"Well," Dr. Simmons pushes her glasses up her nose. "The xeno labs are routed through a different ventilation system, since everyone was complaining about the smell."

Lucky is licking at the glass partition, staring longingly at Bucky, and he still looks like half a horror. An incomplete sketch. What comes for you in the dark and lives under your bed. Christ.

"So he's lost," Bucky says, which is why they had to end up gathering all two hundred and fifty three inhabitants of Atlantis in the 'gate room and commissary and then run a full scale vitals search on the rest of the compound.

No one is happy about it, even when Sheppard says everyone can get an extra jello.

Lost for two fucking days stuck in the vents without anyone knowing, and, god, Bucky just really hopes he got to sneak out to go to the bathroom.

An hour in, Bucky's lounging along the wall of the commissary, dreaming about all the ways he's gonna take Jamison apart in the gym, when Stark shouts, "Got 'em. Unless another bird got stuck in the tower again." He looks up at Steve. "The spire overlooking the west end."

Bucky swears under his breath. He's out on his Second Breakfast balcony. "Let me go," he says without really meaning to.

Steve looks as surprised as he feels. "You sure?"

Bucky nods. "Hold everyone from another twenty minutes, just in case he disappears."

"I'll let you know if he moves," Stark says, tapping at the tablet. He flicks his fingers over the screen and then spins it to show Bucky. "The transporter at the end of the hall only goes up to three, but it'll still be faster than going all the way around to the 'gate room. You might want to take the stairs the rest of the way."

If he thought he had the time for it, he'd stop and bring Lucky, too. He's only a little relieved that he doesn't.

He doesn't bother with stealth. He figures if Clint hasn't moved in the ten minutes it's taken Bucky to advance on his position, making noise isn't going to make a difference. When the door whooshes open, the high winds hit Bucky like a smack in the face. A storm must be heading in.

Clint's sitting on the ground with his legs dangling out under the railing.

Bucky drops down next to him and nudges him back a little, just for his own peace of mind. Clint doesn't react other than shifting further away, bringing his legs up to hug his knees.

"So," Bucky says after a long, quiet moment, "Jamison refused to bring you your dog and you go off and sulk, making the entire fucking city of Atlantis waste hours searching for you."

Clint glares at him. "What." He scoffs. "If I asked you, you woulda just let me have him?"

Bucky opens his mouth to say yeah, except who the fuck knows what he would have done. He would have at least asked the xenobologists if he was safe.

Clint snorts like a punk.

Bucky wants to wring his skinny neck and also, inexplicably, make him eat an entire plate of mashed potatoes.

He says, "Have you eaten anything?"

Petulance melts into a smirk. He says, "Maybe," which Bucky is taking for yes, and also the high probability that he’s been breaking into their stores.

Bucky sighs. This is going to be a full time fucking job. "Come back to your room," he says, "and I'll see what I can do about Lucky."

Clint makes Bucky feel old.

"You're not old," Steve says, determinedly sawing into his too-dense waffles. "We're not even thirty yet."

"Steve," Bucky says seriously, reaching across the table to cover his hand with his. "Steve, you're thirty-two."

Steve's mouth drops open, then snaps closed again. "No, I'm…. am I?"

"Stark's forty-one."

"No," Steve says, scandalized.

Clint befriended Romanov five days after he stopped hiding in the vents and they haven't stopped running rings around every single other person in the city since.

Clint can shoot an arrow at a bullseye two hundred feet away with his eyes closed.

He's bendy. He does handstands and walks across tables. He swings up into the rafters of the ‘gate room because using stairs takes too long.

Bucky's knees crack when he crouches down to pick up a dropped fork.

He's in shape, he's in great shape, and he's more active now than he ever was on base back on earth, but he also wears a brace on his left knee, and has to use reading glasses and if he were at home he has a sneaking, depressing suspicion that he'd have trouble driving at night.

Clint makes him feel old, and the only fucking reason that it matters at all is because he's definitely, maybe gotten a little crush.

It's been two months and Clint's filled out considerably and apparently has the arm strength to climb up the outside of Atlantis all the way up the second breakfast balcony—on a dare, because he's reckless and young—and it's fucking with Bucky's head.

Competency is hot. The fact that Clint trips over Lucky whenever he goes to open his room door and routinely falls off chairs like it's his job—he tilts them back way too far and can't seem to help himself—sadly doesn't detract from this at all.

Bucky wishes it did. In fact, it should. There's nothing sexy about a lap full of tough chicken, gravy and rehydrated rice, and yet…

So Bucky feels beat and old, even though he's twenty-nine and lied like a rug to Steve about it—Steve's hilariously susceptible at 5:30 AM—and Clint’s probably a good ten years younger than him and also an alien.

It's never going to work.

Romanov has been on permanent team rotation ever since she justifiably shot Rumlow and sent him hurling into space out the back of a puddlejumper. She subs for people stuck in the infirmary or if teams need an extra assassin on hand.

She teaches Clint how to fight dirty and gives him a gun and not even Sheppard has the balls to complain about it.

Bucky turns down every single request to spar with him because he's not a masochist, but he still manages to claim the seat next to him on the movie nights Wilson guilts him into going to.

He knocks their shoulders together and watches Clint's eyes light up when he says, "Hey."

Clint sits like an acrobat, knees and elbows in weird places, and Bucky feels all the points that press against him like fire.

They're watching Jaws and Clint's breath is fast, but Bucky can't tell if that's a Clint thing or a something is wrong thing, and he nudges his fist into the side of Clint's thigh.

"Okay?"

Clint turns to look at him, pupils blown in the half-light. "What?" he asks with a lick of his lips.

"Um." Bucky wants to reach out and curl a hand up under the hinge of his jaw. Without the tape and bruises and swelling, he's got smooth cheeks and a slightly crooked nose. "Are you okay?"

Clint's grin blooms across his mouth in honest, open affection and Bucky feels like he's been donkey kicked in the chest.

Bucky scrambles to his feet and ignores half the room staring at him like he’s lost his mind and books it out of there.

The next time Bucky sees Clint, he’s sitting on a table in Stark’s lab, swinging his feet and humming what sounds like Chariots of Fire.

“Bucky!”

Bucky winces at the volume, and Stark puts a hand on Clint’s knee to get his attention and mimes dialing it down.

Clint points at Stark and says, “Tony’s fixing my ears.”

“I didn’t know anything was wrong with ‘em,” Bucky says, watching the way Clint carefully watches his lips.

“He’s got truly horrendous tech in them that someone cobbled together out of what looks like twigs and bubble gum,” Stark says.

Bucky peers over his shoulder. It looks like regular wires and doodads to him, but he knows fuck all about that kind of stuff. “Those were in his ears?”

Tony hmms absently, but then he pins Bucky down with a look and says, “I haven’t forgotten about your arm either. Who made that crap, anyway? Hammer? Ancient tech is good, but mine is better.”

Clint stares curiously at his arm, but doesn’t say anything.

Bucky was down here for a reason, but now he can’t remember why. He’s losing it, mind and body. This is the worst.

Suddenly Clint waves his hands and says, “Oh! Guess what?”

“Uh… what?” He swears he’s usually more suave than this. He used to have game. He used to charm the pants off of ladies and men alike. His mouth feels too big.

“I’m 22 earth years,” Clint says proudly. “Tony figured it out.”

“Clint,” Bucky says, throat dry. “You weren’t even sure how many of your years you were.”

Clint shrugs. “Eh.”

Bucky takes a deep breath. “Okay, so…”

“Barnes,” Stark says, clacking what looks like a pair of tweezers together, “take the kid to lunch and a slow bone before I choke and throw up on all this tension.”

Bucky freezes. “Did you just. Did you just say slow bone?”

“What’s a… slow bone?” Clint says, head cocked, and this is when Bucky realizes that Stark hadn’t been facing Clint but Bucky is, and now he has to kill himself.

Stark arches an eyebrow at him. “That is not my fault.”

Bucky ignores him and rolls his shoulders and bites out, “Lunch.” He jerks his head toward the door and mans up. “Coming?”

There is a single glorious planet in the Pegasus Galaxy that boasts no less than fifteen different kinds of dinosaurs, and the fact that they have to keep going back to it to get a certain herb that both the botanists and medical doctors go gaga over is a source of unending joy to Bucky.

He fucking loves Dinosaur Planet.

He keeps trying to convince Steve to let him bring back an egg.

He knows the only reason Steve volunteers their team for these missions is because of Bucky. Stark usually insists on sitting them out, which is why they have Romanov with them this time instead. He has absolutely no idea what military organization she’s a part of, but she’s definitely not a scientist. No one’s willing to fuck with her after the Rumlow situation.

She’s got a cold, calm eye that gives Bucky the willies, but he doesn’t have a problem with her. They don’t have problems with each other.

Except, apparently, for right now.

“Uh.”

Romanov has her arms crossed. “Well?”

“You realize you’re ruining Dinosaur Planet for me, right?” Bucky could be getting run down by a T-Rex right now.

“Answer the question, Barnes.”

Bucky could have lived his whole life happily never having heard Romanov ask him if he was interested in boning Clint, Jesus, and he knows this entire clusterfuck is Stark’s fault.

“What answer is the one least likely to get me stabbed?” He’s not above lying to Romanov if he has to.

Luckily or unluckily, Romanov seems to take that as whatever she actually wanted to hear, so she nods smartly and then gestures over his shoulder with a lazy, “Incoming,” and that is how they spend the rest of the day dodging pterodactyls.

Bucky can’t wait to come back.

Clint doesn’t hesitate. Whether it’s shooting an arrow, sparring, eating, swimming, talking—Clint just goes for it, all in, even if he ends up making a fool of himself.

Bucky admires that.

He’s also extremely tired, hot off the Dinosaur Planet, and three minutes ago he was dead to the world face down on his bunk.

He scrubs a hand over his face until the blurry shape in his doorway in front of him resolves into Clint’s grinning face. “Huh?” He’s almost entirely sure it’s the middle of the night, but the city does weird things to his circadian rhythm.

“Sam told me what bone means.”

All Bucky’s body parts wake up and freeze at once. “I’m going to murder him.”

Clint says, “I hope it can wait,” and then lunges forward and kisses him. Kind of. It’s aggressive enough that Bucky thinks maybe it’s his first kiss, which is goddamn charming and almost irresistible. He’s just so enthusiastic.

Bucky slides his hand up to cup Clint’s cheek, rests his metal one on the small of his back, settling him into slowing down. He eases out of the kiss with, “It’s the middle of the night, Clint, and Stark’s probably watching us through his peephole.”

Clint’s mouth is red and his eyes are wide. “Oh,” he says, but looks out of it enough that Bucky’s ninety percent certain he hasn’t understood a word Bucky’s said.

Bucky says, “Go to bed, Clint.” His legs hurt from running from dinosaurs all day and he needs at least another four hours of sleep before figuring out how to handle… this.

“Right,” Clint says, but doesn’t move.

Bucky reaches out and squeezes his hand. “G’night,” he says, and the steps back and slides the door closed behind him.

The only thing that Clint loves more than Lucky is pizza, and the only thing Lucky loves more than Clint is also pizza, so Bucky sweet talks Corporal Lovett into making him a pie in exchange for three chocolate bars he’d been saving. It’s an approximation of an earth pizza, and it’s only 9 in the morning, but he’s due for second breakfast anyway.

Bucky rings the bell on Clint’s quarters and tries not to be skeeved out by the echoing wooffrom Lucky, like he swallowed an actual dog and that dog is making that sound from the bottom of his throat. Lucky’s cool. Bucky gets along great with Lucky if he doesn’t think too hard about him.

Clint’s normally open face is wary when he sees him. He’s wearing shorts and an old t-shirt that has ‘Barnes’ across the right breast that Bucky’s been missing for over a month. He’s still wearing the fuzzy, slouchy socks from that first day in medical.

Bucky says, “Pizza?” holding up the tray, and Clint’s grin finally reaches his eyes.

Clint takes the pizza with a too-subdued, “Uh, thanks?” and Bucky swoops in oh so suavely and slides a hand onto the nape of his neck, tugging him into a swift kiss.

If they’re doing this, Bucky’s gonna do this right—they’re gonna date first, second breakfast, lunch, dinner—and then they’re gonna bone.

#winterhawk #for lissadiane #writing buddies!#oh god

313 notes · View notes