#almost there kids!! we’ve technically done all of them but I’m gonna try to do em all in a Calendar year as well just because. I am.

[3amsnek]

a very merry birth to our most logical boy :]

click for better quality

reblogs >> likes!! don’t like if you don’t reblog!

[allthingsfuckd]

soft spot | Bucky Barnes x fem!reader

summary: Bucky, the diner owner pining for the reader, a regular at the diner and best friend, for years.

a/n: i wanted to post a Peter Parker fic but i had writer's block until i came to this idea. it's based on a few of my fav Luke and Lorelai moments from Gilmore Girls combined into this one fic. i hope you enjoy! as usual, feedback is very much appreciated and my requests are open. (you don't need to watch Gilmore Girls to understand it)

warning(s): fluff, teen pregnancy, absent father, pining.

“Coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee,” you repeated, your chest pressed against the counter, an evil smile on your face. He turned to face you and placed his hands on the counter, the chanting stopped. You purse your lips trying to contain your smile.

“You know it ruins your body, slowly corrodes your insides, and makes you die really really young, right?” he says squinting at you as he makes hand gestures.

“That’s the intention,” you say smiling up at him showing your teeth. You both stayed like that for a few seconds until he turned around, grabbed a mug, and the kettle from the coffee machine. Still squinting at you, he poured the coffee in the mug and slid it over the counter to you.

“I really hope it’s soon,” he grumbles, throwing the kitchen towel on his shoulders, and walks (or stomps) back to the kitchen. You sat there, coffee in your hands, smiling as you took a sip.

The door rings open and you hear a familiar voice. “Did you get one for me?” you turned in your bar stool to look at the figure that walked up to you. The beautiful girl who you delightfully brought into the world almost 16 years ago, Leah.

You shook your head, fake-pouting. A grumble came from the teen, something you could very much relate to; caffeine deficiency. “I tried, I tried but Bucky’s in his element this morning,” you shrugged your shoulders, stretching to the left to see if he was still in the kitchen.

“I’m gonna get one myself. He likes me,” she turned to face the kitchen, chanting his name as you did earlier. You hear them arguing as you enjoyed the drink in your hand. It was white noise to you — the arguing, especially in Bucky’s diner. With him being the crabby man you’ve always known him to be, it was basically daily routine.

“You were right, he is grumpy this morning,” she said when he walked away again, this time to the back. “Wonder what happened,” she said, shrugging as she took a sip of her coffee.

People in the town have always talked about how similar you both were; you and Leah. Sometimes it did feel like you were looking in the mirror and reliving your teen years as she told you stories about her day and it would scare the fuck out of you.

“Hey, so birthday planning. Let’s go,” she patted your forearm, waking you from your thoughts, excited to turn 16. You sat up and giggled, feeling excitement running up your spine.

“Okay, so we’re gonna have it at home this year,” she nods. “After last year’s event, I vowed to never again go to a Ms. Patty party,” you both shudder, remembering the massive drunken embarrassment you had to go through at your 15-year-old’s birthday party. “Before that, we’re going somewhere special, a surprise if you may. Then we’re going shopping, which thank god your birthday is the end of the month. Cause how could we have lux on your birthday without a paycheck. We’ve got a date with your dad, says he wants to finally actually give you your gift in person this year? And a massive birthday cake with your face on it by the one and only Sookie, as per tradition,” you yap, fast-paced.

“Wait, we’re meeting dad?” she asks, cutting you off. You nodded fast, feeling the caffeine kick in. She smiled, looking down at her mug. And that’s when you felt beat up. When it came to Christopher, it always put a smile on her face. Maybe they were right. You were alike. So easily manipulated by the one man in both of your lives, who is only always there when time and circumstances met his convenience. Something naivete and youth made Leah fail to realize.

“Okay, kiddo. We’ll discuss birthday matters this evening, it’s almost 8,” you picked up her bag, gravity pulling your hand down soon after. “Woah, wormie, what are you carrying? Bricks?” you teased.

“You never know how much reading I can get done with all the waiting we do in school,” she whined after downing her coffee. She kissed your cheek and left the diner.

“God, that kid is something special,” you hear Bucky say as you both watched her walk to the school right opposite the diner. You turned around looking down at your mug, Bucky noticing a frown on your face. “What’s wrong?” he asks, bending down to look at your face.

You looked up, smiling a little. “It’s Leah’s dad,” you scrunched your nose. You never talked about Chris with anyone in the town except with Sookie and Bucky, the name and subject a sensitive topic to you. Never saying his name as if terrified some sort of evil would be summoned. Your relationship with him was beyond complex. You were best friends before anything, you-me-against-the-world (or against parents and the rich community you were brought up in), you knew him like the back of your hand. You still see him as such but since you found out you were pregnant, it all took a different turn and it wasn’t something you felt was right for either of you.

“He called again,” Bucky’s voice annoyed, rolling his eyes. He’d met him once and it was the most awkward, testosterone-filled conversation you’d ever witness. You snickered, knowing how he, as much as you, despised talking about him. “Hey,” he touches your forearm with his leather-gloved forefinger. You looked up at him. “If anything, you come to me,” you half-smiled.

Everyone in this small town knew about the mother-daughter dynamic you and Leah had. Hearing how she turned out great with just you raising her was something you heard very often, something you wished you felt through every fiber of your being. But you didn’t. And Bucky knew you struggled with that, trying his best to remind you every time you doubted. More often than not, she reminded you a lot more of Bucky than Chris, since she grew up knowing Bucky more than her dad.

“Thanks, old man,” you said, snickering behind your mug. He backed away from the counter, his grumpy face showing again. His eyebrows furrowed and his cheekbones prominent. He hated it when you called him that. He may be over a hundred years old but technically he was your age, he would remind you. “There he is!” you cheered, laughing at his frowned face.

“You have a problem,” Bucky said, taking the mug from your hand, and you slid the bill across the table. Still maintaining your gazes, seeing a small smile starting to form on his lips.

You were known by the whole town to be completely oblivious, seemingly being the only one who doesn’t know how Bucky has been pining for you for years. Even from Mars, the love he held for you in his heart could be seen. He tried several times to ask you out on a date, getting closer and closer each time he would try but something always had to happen right at the time he wanted to spit the words out of his mouth. A coward, as Sam, another regular at the diner, would call him when he realized he'd been staring at her.

You did, however, think about dating him once after having a moment with him in the diner. It was late, and you wanted coffee after a bad date. Nearly kissing until Kirk came into the diner to get his emergency late-night burger. You brought it to Leah’s attention, but to that she immediately declined, saying it might ruin the best coffee in town for the both of you.

Saturday rolled around; Leah’s birthday. You woke her up at 3 a.m., another annual essential where you would tell her the infamous story of the day she was born.

“What do you think of your life thus far, my dear?” you brushed her hair as your lied down next to her.

“I think it’s great,” she yawned.

“Any complaints?” you asked, and she shook her head. “I think you’re a great cool kid and the best friend a girl could have,” you said to her lovingly.

“Back at ya,” she answered.

“And it’s so hard to believe that many moons ago I was lying in exactly this same position,” you looked up at the ceiling, flashbacks playing in your head.

“Oh boy, here we go,” Leah said. You shushed her and continued the story.

When you walked into the diner, you were greeted by Bucky at the front door. You frowned at him, being too close to you, your hands hovered over his chest. He opened an arm to gesture you to a table by the window on your right. When you looked, your jaw dropped. He decorated the table. He laid a beautiful lace tablecloth, with a vase filled with flowers in the middle and balloons next to one of the chairs and Leah’s favorite; a rainbow cake, with a lot of frosting.

“Bucky, what is this? This isn’t you. And flowers?” you looked at him, eyes in disbelief. He shrugged. “This is amazing,” you touched the table cloth, mouth agape. “Thank you, Bucky,” you hugged him, his face red to which you were too busy to see.

He walked away, knowing your order before you could tell him. The Y/N Special he printed in the new menu. Leah came into the diner, you sat up and smiled as you waited for her reaction. “What is all this?” her jaw dropped as well.

“It’s all Bucky,” you shook your head, as she caressed the lace tablecloth. “Where he got this tablecloth? No idea!” you leaned in, whispering loudly.

“Bucky, you big ole softy,” she said to Bucky who came with your regular. He blushed when she gave him a hug, quiet as he walked back behind the counter. Your eyes followed him, still surprised by his adorable gesture.

“Hey, remember what I said about dating Bucky?” you asked her, still looking at Bucky who was taking orders. She hummed as she gobbled down her food. “Do you think it’ll work out if we did?” you asked again.

“Honestly, I think it will,” she said, cheeks stuffed with food. “Especially after this,” she gestured to the decorations. “But yeah, I do,” she said after swallowing her food, following your gaze to look at him.

It was the first time she’d ever okayed a man in your life other than Chris. You both loved Bucky especially after what he’s been through. The grumpy demeanor he displays justified.

Lane, Leah’s best friend walked into the diner, squealing as she hugged and wished her. You stood up with your order and walked to the counter to allow them to chat.

“Hey, Buck,” you said, seeing him clean his toaster. He hummed, his back still facing you. “With your expertise displayed on the very lovely table there, could you help Sookie out with decorating my place while Leah and I frolic about town?” you asked, chewing on your waffles.

“Yeah, sure anything for my best customers,” he said as he grunted, fixing the toaster.

“Why don’t you use your tools?” you asked, pointing at the toaster with your knife. Stopping what he did, he turned to shoot a glare at you.

“My toolbox is sitting in your lovely home collecting dust because you could not and will not bother to give it back to me,” he complained. You snickered knowingly since you purposely brought up his toolbox.

“Well, it’s the only thing in the house that warns burglars that there could possibly be a man in the house,” you said melodramatically as you enjoyed your food. He grabbed the knife and fork out of your hand, your hands up in the air and mouth open. You placed your hands on your lap and sighed.

“Fine, you can have John back,” you said. His eyebrows crossed in confusion and frustration. You had a track record of being stubborn and playful. Something everyone who knew you grew to normalise.

“Not every non-living thing needs to have a name,” he said, putting the utensils back on your plate.

“Yes they do. I could tell visitors that John is in the living room sitting on the floor,” and you continued to yap Bucky’s ears off until you left to bring Leah on her birthday adventure. Reminding him that you left the decorations by the couch at home and he could use the key hidden under the turtle statue.

It was almost 1 a.m., Bucky heard a loud voice from outside, he dragged his feet to the window and opened it, sticking half his body out. Flinching when he saw a stone coming in his direction. “What the hell are you doing?” he shouted at you in your pjs, holding a pillow under your arm. He was wearing short-sleeved t-shirt, something you barely saw him wear.

“I’m homeless! I’ve got nowhere to go,” you shouted back. You heard a window open at the next building and turned to face it. An old man appeared out of the window.

“Hey, would you shut up? It’s late!” the old man with his thick Boston accent shouted at you. You looked at him and then at Bucky then back at him and burst out laughing. “Would you please get her the hell outta here?” the man said to Bucky and went back inside. He went down to get you, groaning as he walked down finding you, still in a fit of laughter.

“The resemblance? Uncanny!” you said, still laughing as he grabbed your arm and pulled you into the diner.

You helped Bucky set up the mattress after looking around his apartment and teasing him for things he owned. Being friends with him for years, you’d never been in his “home” above the diner before.

“What made you homeless tonight?” Bucky asks as you fixed the bedsheet together.

“Everyone else passed out drunk, even Chris,” you said. Shocked that you brought up his name, he fiddled with his fingers as he sat by his dining table. “I’m still kinda drunk. That name slipped out of my mouth,” you said, laughing nervously, sitting next to him.

“What did he do this time?” he asked looking up from his hands.

“Surprisingly, he was nice. He was a dad for once but he hasn’t left so we’ll see what happens,” you sighed. Bucky knew the reason for your uncertainty with raising Leah was because of Chris. The seed of doubt sprouted after years of Chris reminding you that you couldn’t do it alone which made Bucky’s blood boil.

“At least she’s not pregnant yet,” you said, running your hands against the wooden dining table.

“Oh yeah, I forgot about that,” he said. “You were 16?” he asked.

“15 and a half,” you pointed out. “Ruined my 16th birthday, my mother said. What a disappointment it must have been for my parents to have me,” you looked at him.

“Can’t imagine anyone seeing you as a disappointment,” he shook his head and you sighed.

“You know, Buck. Seeing what you do for Leah, I bet you’ll make a great dad one day,” you mention, examining his face. His eyes looked sleepy.

“You make a great mom. This whole town can vouch for that fact. For how young you were when you had her, 15 and a half? Every parent makes mistakes but you make the mistakes seem like fun,” you chuckled. “You were never alone in raising her. The town has played a part in raising her with you much more than Chris ever did so I don’t know what the fuck he’s talkin' about,” he says, a lump formed in your throat.

“Yeah, it’s just the daughter part I, uh, I don’t have down yet,” Bucky exhaled through his nose. You thought about a recent fight you had with Leah about the boy she’d been dating. Something you brought up as a problem because you were terrified of possible outcomes. But you knew he was a great boy, Dean. Sweet, charming and a gentleman.

“You looked great tonight,” you placed your hand on his, you felt the cold metal against your skin. You’d never really seen his metal arm, always hidden under the sleeve of his leather jacket and gloves. His signature look, even in the summer. You stroked his metal hand and even though he couldn’t physically feel your touch, he felt goosebumps form on his skin. Physical touch was never a part of your friendship.

He smirked, raising his brow and tilting his head making you roll your eyes. “I don’t mean you don’t look great all the time, you do, and,” you groaned. “Don’t be cocky now,” you clicked your tongue, laughing, still smirking at you.

“You looked great too,” his voice cracked, coughing to clear his throat. “y/n,” he called your name, his voice lower and deeper.

“Yeah?” you whispered. His eyes softer than you were used to, finally seeing his blue eyes.

“Would you want to go on a date with me sometime?” he asked, eyes looking at your lips then back to your eyes. He felt his palm get sweaty, heart thumped loudly in his chest he swore you could hear it. He’d always have the words play in his head but he never thought the moment would ever come.

You felt your cheeks burn, you never thought he’d ever ask you. He studied your face to predict what you were gonna say, cringing a little expecting a bad answer or a laugh.

“I would love to, Buck,” you bit your bottom lip. He let out the breath he held, smiling as he shifted in his seat. After years of pining, he finally got to take his favorite girl on a date.

[deniigi]

hi I have something for y’all called a disaster.

I wrote an Inimitable!Spiderman/Modern Star Wars AU because no one can stop me, not even myself. it is like 47 pages long. I am handing it tenderly to y’all.

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

Title: impossible scenario

Summary: Peter runs into some drunk assholes arguing, calling each other Han and Luke. He lets it roll off him until he can’t anymore and eventually finds himself for the first time on the other side of someone more chaotic than himself.

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

There was an argument happening under a fire escape. Peter knew about it because a concerned dude wearing a fuckin’ Yankees cap had flagged him down with waving arms and told him that someone needed saving, Spiderman. Some tall asshole was kidnapping a young blond dude, the guy  and his too-cool-for-him girlfriend explained. They’d heard the two scuffling.

Peter maybe stared for a beat too long at them because the gal pointed two blocks behind him and said, “That way. I think the blond guy might be drugged. He’s slurrin’ something strong.”

Peter liked her shoes. They looked like Miles’s, but blue.

“Spidey?”

Miles told Peter all the time that he wasn’t cool enough to wear Jordans. MJ and Johnny had agreed. Such sad times.

“Spidey.”

“I got it,” Peter sighed.

The gal tsked.

“Man, you’re too young to be this jaded,” she said.

Peter sighed.

“You’re the third person to say that this week,” he said. “You think I should go back to therapy?”

There was a pause.

“You know that answer, dude,” cool-gal said. “Go save the twink.”

Twink. Got it. Thank you, citizen.

“There are websites for that shit, Spidey.”

Bye now.

“Apps, even.”

Bye, bye.

“BetterHelp or Headspace or somethin’—”

“Two blocks, you said?” Peter asked.

 --

 Two blocks away, there was indeed a man with dark hair trying to lift a violently intoxicated twink up onto the first steps of a fire escape. Peter examined his options. There were many ways to ruin a potential kidnapper’s day. His favorite involved coke and mentos, although he’d received feedback that that was a waste of perfectly good food. Down the list was also the option to walk over and scream bloody murder so that the kidnapper shat themselves and dropped their target.

That was good, but Peter was tired and the thought of mustering up the energy to scream at a noticeable volume made his thighs turn to Jell-o.

That left snark and violence.

Today, he would not choose violence. Only for today.

He strode out of his dark temporary residence between two dumpsters directly towards the tall dude and his mark. The mark was a messy one. Bless his heart, he was unwittingly making himself the most noncompliant victim to have ever victim-ed. Every time the tall guy got him almost vertical, he gave up his corporeal form to become drunk slime and ooze back to the ground with various moaning sound effects.

It would have been funny if not for the kidnapping context.

The fact that Peter had been standing there under the beams of two separate side-building security lights and neither of those two had noticed yet was also objectively funny—or would have been, if Peter had the capacity for processing humor at the moment.

Alas. This was what he got for telling Tony that he’d evolved beyond the need for sleep. He got caffeine-pilled. And there would be no true rest until that shit wore off, exhausted as Peter’s body yearned to be.

“Kid, work with me here,” the tall guy said.

“I can’t, I’ll die,” the shorter one moaned.

“Luke.”

“I’ve done my time—thirty years in AZKA—”

“Keep your voice down, oh my god.”

Peter was just standing here, fellas.

“Luke.”

“Why’s it always me? Why’s it always gotta be me? The hell did I do to piss off the whole galax-galaxy? HA. My bad, my bad. The whole universe?”

God, what a mood.

The tall guy dropped his grip on the smaller one and loomed over his puddle of ooze with poison in his gaze.

“People are going to die, Luke,” he said.

“So what? They’re always dyin’. Everywhere I go, people’re dyin’ and when it’s not them dyin’, you know who is?”

“Kid.”

“ME.”

“So you’re just gonna wallow there, feelin’ sorry for yourself?” the tall dude snapped.

“Sure am,” the puddle of ooze hummed.  

This was not a kidnapping. This was a come-to-Jesus in the back alley of a bar. Peter was not needed here. He turned around on his heel and stopped when he heard a sharp intake of breath.

“Is that?” someone whispered.

“Don’t mind me, pal, just your friendly neighborhood—” he started.

“Look what you did,” Tall and Handsome hissed at Ooze-Man. “Someone went and called Spiderman on us.”

Peter lifted a brow as Ooze-man ripped its chest up from the asphalt and composed itself back into a human shape with fluffy blonde hair and huge wide eyes.

“Omigod, it’s Spiderman,” the guy said. “Wait, no. Gimme a hand. No, not that one, fuck off, nevermind, I don’t need you.”

He drew himself up to standing, only leaning slightly on his buddy there and gave Peter as lopsided smile.

“Hi, there,” he said with a twang that Peter couldn’t place. “Were you lookin’ for someone, handsome?”

Ah, they had reached the time of night when all the drunks needed to tell Peter things he already knew about his ass. He loved this time.

Not to mention that this dude looked eerily like Johnny. Scarily like Johnny. So much like Johnny that Peter almost wanted to take a picture of him to send to Sue so that she could print up some lost and found posters.

“Just lookin’ at you, babe,” he said. “This guy botherin’ you?”

The tall guy blanched and then grabbed at his face in horror. Peter swallowed his laugh.

“He sure is, hon. You got time to rescue me?” Blondie crooned.

“Luke, please. Please.”

“Because I’m in real distress,” ‘Luke’ said with a pout mighty enough to fell Thor.

“You sure seem like it,” Peter said. “C’mere. I’ll walk you home. Leave that tool, he ain’t worth your breath.”

He held out an elbow like proper gentleman and was pleased at the hand that Luke laid over his heart in response.

Peter could imagine Johnny’s face in six different expression of jealous horror at a selfie taken with this look-alike. Each was beautiful in its own special way. As payment for being referred to counseling by the public, he at least deserved to receive at least two of those faces.

“You mean that?” Luke asked him.

“He doesn’t,” his tall companion said.

“I sure do, where do you live? I’ll walk you,” Peter said.

“Oh my god, I’m gonna cry, he’s gonna escort me,” Luke said, all choked up and fanning his eyes lightly.

This tall friend grabbed him before he could escape, though, and pulled him back behind his own body.

“Listen, Spidey, this is a misunderstanding,” he drawled. “I know this idiot—he is technically my idiot— and I’m the one escorting his ass home. Thanks, though. You’re a real menace. Beat it.”

MMMMMMM.

And here Peter had been planning on being jaded and miserable this fine night. How could he now when this dude was ticking every box that made him feel alive?

“What’s your name, dollface?” Peter asked across the short distance.

“None of your business,” Tall Guy answered abruptly.

“Luke,” Luke said around him. “Are you gonna save me?”

“In just a minute,” Peter said, striding forward with a hard roll in his shoulder and deep drop in his knees.

It was amazing how Tall Guy wanted to take some steps back all of the sudden. Peter couldn’t help but let a smirk widen his face as he advanced.

“Okay, hang on now,” Tall Guy said with both palms out in front of him. “You don’t know what this is about, Spidey. You don’t want to get involved with this, trust me. He’s just bein’ dramatic. No need to get testy.”

“You sure do a lot of talkin’ for your friend there,” Peter noted through his grin.

“Yeah, Han,” Luke said.

Ha.

Han. Han and Luke. Ned was gonna be enraptured when Peter told him about this later.

“Luke. Back me up.”

“Why should I?”

“Because,” ‘Han’ finally snapped. “I’m not doin’ this because I want you to suffer, alright? I don’t want nothin’ to do with it either, okay? No one does. But it’s this or—”

“Or everyone else,” Luke finished for him in a strangely toneless voice.

Han sighed.

“It’s always everyone else,” Luke said.

“Not here.”

“Why’s it always everyone el—No, no, here. Why not? We’ve got fucking Spiderman in our midst, how much more surreal can this moment get? No. You listen to me, Han—”

“I’ve been listening to you all damn evening and you know what I’m hearing?”

“—I lost my life for this. I lost my home, my aunt, my uncle, my hand—”

“I’m hearing you making this about you.”

“—everything I ever knew, and I tried to make it right, didn’t I? I made the school. I gathered the kids—”

“And it’s not just about you this time, kid. It’s not about you, it’s not about me, or Leia, or Chewie or—”

“—I lost my kid and the love of my life, and I finally get a second chance at finding them and giving them the goddamn happy ending they deserve, and the next thing I know—”

“Luke, you’re the only one,” Han said.

“I WAS NEVER. THE ONLY. ONE, HAN,” Luke roared out of absolutely nowhere, sober as a saint. “I was never the only one. EVER. Ahsoka. Go find her. She’s everything that I’m not and more. She’s the real—”

“Luke.”

“Stop saying that name. I HATE that name. I would do anything for twenty goddamn seconds where I didn’t have to be him.”

“You don’t mean that,” Han said quietly. His shoulders had rounded out and become black and heavy under the weight of their shadow. Luke’s eyes, however, looked like topaz.

“I mean it,” Luke said.

Oho.

So shit had gotten real tense, real fast, so Peter about to make a decision that was gonna make Shelley so proud of him she would weep when he finally slunk back in through her office door.

He was leaving. He was turning around and taking a wee jog. Maybe turning a corner, having a little jump over a fence, up a wall, to a place as far away from this one as superhumanly possible.

Bye, bye.

“This galaxy needs you, Luke.”

Peter stopped five paces away.

“They need you,” Han repeated. “And I need you.”

Peter slowly looked back to see that Luke’s face had twisted sharply out of the light, towards the alley wall.

“I’m sorry that we met again like this,” Han said quietly. “I’m sorry it’s always you. You don’t deserve this. No one deserves this.”

“Shut up,” Luke said.

“But if you don’t do something, then it won’t be just me and you and all these random others sliding back into that cesspit we all barely crawled out of.”

“Stop.”

“You’ll never find him if things go back the way they were.”

“You—you don’t know that. There—maybe—”

“Luke. Listen to me. Please.”

“Maybe there’s a chance—”

“Luke,” Han said reaching out and putting a hand on Luke’s shoulder and clenching it hard enough that Peter should see the bunched fabric, “Do you want Din to live through this shitshow a second time? Hasn’t he suffered enough?”

Peter shivered. The pressure at the base of his neck was building. The Spidey Sense wanted to hiss in his ears like white noise. It pinned him where he was, staring over his shoulder at those two solid shapes, one digging a hand into the flesh of the other.

His stomach turned.

Luke said something that Peter couldn’t hear. Han pulled him toward his own body by the grip he had on his shoulder. At first, Luke seemed to stagger, like he was walking on black ice. He stopped a single step away from Han’s body, still with his face angled severely away. Han said something to him.

There was a long pause, then Luke seemed to fall forward. Han caught him and crushed his head into his shoulder, lowering his own until it was almost touching Luke’s ear. They clung to each other.

Luke was crying.

The Spidey Sense started to crackle and pop in Peter’s ears.

“I gotchu, kid,” Han said in a rasp. “I gotchu. We’re gonna get through it.”

Peter blinked once and finally unlocked the muscles in his neck. He wasn’t meant to witness this. He held out a wrist and fired a line.

  --

It was weird.

It was just weird.

Something wasn’t right. And Peter couldn’t make his stomach not writhe about it.

Luke.

Han.

An offhand mention of like, characters. Character names. They were character names. Leia, Chewie.

Peter had heard of people who lived their lives honestly believing that they had been other people—fake people—in past lives, but like, damn man. Why would you put yourself in a position like that were you were moved to actual tears for some elaborate street-drama?

Maybe it had been a joke? That was the only thing he could think it could be. Maybe the universe had gazed upon his hubris at work and gone ‘ah yes, I know what this young man needs: emotional confusion at midnight on a Thursday. That’ll fix him.’

If that was the case, then yeah. Good job, universe. Good job, larpers. Y’all are equally sick.

But if not—and Peter no longer lived in a world where he could rule out any possibilities—then he had just witnessed—Dude, he’d just witnessed—

He couldn’t even think it. It was beyond him. It was so far beyond him that like he might have a real stroke taking the thought seriously.

There was only one person who could hold that kind of information unscathed.

Only one.

  --

PP: Ned. I need you to listen to me and tell me I’m not crazy.

NL: no promises but go on

PP: I think? I just saw? Luke Skywalker? And Han Solo? In an alley behind Kitty’s?????

NL: fascinating

JS: Say more

PP: who let you in here?

JS: you?

PP: SECURITY

NL: Peter say more

PP: I can’t there’s a nerd in here and it’s vibrating at the wrong decibel. SECURITY???

MJ: yeah?

PP: I’m trying to have a breakdown. Can you remove Matchstick please?

MJ: what kind of breakdown

JS: he thinks he met Luke Skywalker

PP: Security has failed me. God?

NL: Peter can you name three things you can see.

PP: I am not manic. I am in touch with reality. I’m just having anxiety because I just fucking saw two people calling each other Luke and Han fighting behind Kitty’s. Like real fighting.

JS: nicknames?

PP: I—

PP: oh my god nicknames

PP: Johnny I’m so sorry I ever doubted you. never leave my side

JS: 😊

MJ: wow that’s cringe. Imagine naming yourself after SW characters

NL: does kitty do a cosplay night now????

PP: idk it was wild. People thought that ‘Han’ was trying to kidnap ‘Luke’ but when I got over there, Luke started flirting with me and then shit got real and they started arguing over like him hating his name and not wanting to do something and losing everything or some shit

NL: that’s a lot. I’m sure it was nothing, though, peter.

PP: yeah it was. My SS has been going nuts ever since I left. You think they bugged me?

JS: yes I will come search your body imminently

MJ: my job storm, back off

JS: after MJ has finished prelim checks, I will then search your body for you out of the kindness of my heart ❤

NL: that’s weird, the SS doesn’t usually freak out about cosplayers

PP: ikr?

NL: lol imagine if they were serious

MJ: don’t say that

JS: well now we have to lean in. thanks ned

JS: they were definitely real. God they were so real. You hear that Fate? You got us. They’re definitely real.

PP: BUT WHAT IF THEY WERE?

MJ: cue breakdown

NL: that would be so fucking funny. Luke Skywalker and Han Solo trying to save the world from the hellscape of nyc. The rats alone would thwart them.

PP: ned I’m freaking out

NL: oh you mean you’re actually freaking out?

PP: deeply

NL: oh shit sorry. I’ll be over, have you slept yet?

PP: NO

MJ: on it

JS: can I join?

NL: no johnny

MJ: no johnny

PP: 😭

JS: one day our love will build a bridge, peter. In the meantime I am stroking your ear comfortingly from midtown

  --

Need and MJ’s weight pinning him to a mattress brought sleep but not necessarily comfort. They both thought that this was a sick joke someone had played on him that was now destroying his psyche. They thought that the couple pointing him back towards the cosplayers had been in on the joke.

Peter would have agreed with them if it wasn’t for the Spidey Sense. Everything else lined up perfectly.

Ned sighed in the morning and told Peter to go talk to Wade.

 --

 Wade’s hallucinations were, by far, more auditory than visual, but he stayed quiet while Peter talked his ear off over the phone in his locked office. He waited until Peter had run out of words to describe the feeling of impending doom and then huffed a bit of a laugh into the receiver.

“Them Star Wars people are unreal, Pete, you know this,” he said. “Look at Ned.”

Ned was perfect.

“Take off those rosy shades, hon. Now, look again.”

Ned had perhaps memorized the entire scripts of the first three movie and 90% of the spaceship names and the jedi lineages.

“Uh-huh. Keep going.”

Peter didn’t want to.

“We all gotta do shit we don’t want do.”

Fine.

Ned’s goal in life was to go to his wedding in a stormtrooper suit.

“Keep going.”

Every Lego project they’d built together since 13 years-old had been a Star Wars-related one. When Ned had decided to move out of his parents’ place, he’d shed actual tears over MJ and Peter mutually suggesting that he sell some of his memorabilia.

“Will this delightful buffet before our very eyes, what is the likelihood of your two pals being drunk larpers in too deep to quit?” Wade asked.

73%.

“Uh-huh.”

“Thanks, Wade.”

“No problem. Although, now I gotta see this. You said they were behind Kitty’s? You think I can get a stormtrooper costume in 8 hours?”

“They’re not still gonna be there, Wade,” Peter huffed. “It’s 10 am.”

“You ain’t know that. What if Luke Skywalker’s a useless drunk, huh? You ever think of that?”

No.

“What’d he look like?”

Peter groaned.

“He looked like Luke Skywalker,” he said. “Blond hair, blue eyes—sort of like a chipmunk that forgot its stripes.”

“I’m onto you, Skywalker.”

Peter hung up to Wade’s cackle. He slouched low and tapped his pen against his desk. Then against his fingers.

He stared at the edge of his keyboard.

“What’s the weirdest thing you could imagine, Pete?” he asked himself.

 --

 PP: sam

SC: yeah?

PP: do you like star wars?

SC: nah

PP: you’re perfect

PP: do you believe in past lives?

SC: like spiritually or culturally? I know I was a cult-kid for a min there but before that we were Buddhists and like, past lives are part of the package

PP: that’s cool. What do you think of people being reborn as themselves again like, 500000000 years later? From a galaxy far far away?

SC: I don’t think about those people

PP: okay well, hypothetically. Let’s say that you were going to imagine someone who embodied that whole spirit. Who would it be?

SC: Buddha

PP: not buddha

SC: is this a riddle? Is it Jesus?

PP: THOR. Thank you this has been helpful ily bye

  Mr. Stark asked him over a cup of viciously black coffee why Peter was seeking out the demigod of his present nightmares.

That usually meant that he and Thor had disagreed on basic physics principles again. Peter took that also to mean that the demigod was still in the building. Possibly loose.

“He’s with Banner,” Mr. Stark said scathingly.

“Thanks, you’re amazing,” Peter said as he sailed out of the room.

 --

 Thor was sitting on Dr. Banner’s lab table, despite Dr. Banner telling him to get off no fewer than two times in the five minutes that Peter was in there, schmoozing and making pleasantries. He warmed Thor up to the home-run hit by asking him all about past lives and present lives and what the soul was on Asgard. Thor was only too happy to explain a load of nonsense that made Banner roll his eyes and poke at his muscles with a thermometer.

“So, hypothetically speaking,” Peter drawled in a very casual lean, “With the infinite galaxies and universes, etcetera, there could be one where Star Wars people exist. And so hypothetically, they could get reborn into a universe like ours.”

Thor blinked at him.

“You remember the laser swords?” Dr. Banner deadpanned.

Thor lit up.

“I suppose it’s possible,” he told Peter indulgently. “But if that was the case then it would be a long tragedy, no?”

…yes…

Say more, Thor-man.

“Well,” Thor said with a big, happy smile, “The series of events that unfolded in that story seemed to me to be one of triumph and tragedy. With one would come the other—that’s how these stories work, yes?”

…yes.

“So if Master Luke Skywalker and his companions arrived into our space here, then they must experience the same in order to be themselves,” Thor said, bobbing his head in pity. “Perhaps what would look like a new start for such people would result only in terror and disappointment until the same conclusion was reached.”

Peter felt his own grin twitch.

“So it’s not impossible?” he asked.

Both Thor and Banner looked at him quizzically at the same time.

“Peter?” Dr. Banner asked. “Is this coming from somewhere?”

Peter’s grin twitched so violently, it turned into a grimace that even superstrength would not let him maintain.

“Can I borrow one of you?” he asked.

 --

 Wade was not happy to be met outside of Kitty’s in the middle of the day, especially because his stormtrooper outfit, in his words, ‘did no justice for the size of his balls.’

Peter was ignoring that. He dragged Thor past Wade’s righteous anger until he was standing on the place where the other two had stood the night before. Thor stood there gamely.

“There,” Peter said. “Any like, energy signatures?”

Thor glanced around and shrugged.

Wade scowled at him and hounded him off the spot so that he could stand there instead.

“I feel nothing,” he said, devoid of emotion.

“Same,” Thor said.

Damnit.

“Perhaps you are—”

The Spidey Sense smashed through all of Peter’s sense and screamed at him to get to the street.

Get to the street. Get to the street. Get to the—

There.

Across the way. Chipmunk, no stripes.

That was the guy from the day before. He was on the opposite sidewalk smashed in with the crowd, dragging a hand through his hair and laden with a backpack and two separate totes. He was wearing a strange set of clothes—a mash of casual and formal—and seemed to be in a hurry, the type of hurry that involved pushing past folks at a half-jog and not stopping at streetlights.

“Got ‘im,” Peter hissed.

“No shit?” Wade asked over his shoulder.

Thor made a sound of interest.

“I see him, too,” he said. “What incredible energy, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Wh—

Peter whirled on him.

“Don’t you fucking say that,” he warned. “I’m gonna go distract. You two, on my six.”

 --

 Peter broke four traffic laws on his way around the block. He swung himself around a corner and fucked up the collar on his labcoat and counted to four before stepping out right into ‘Luke’s path.

They collided. Luke stumbled back and dropped one of his totes.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” Peter blustered. “Are you okay?”

Luke swore and dropped down without answering, collecting the odd ends of metal that had clattered out from his bag and now rolled loose over the pavement. Peter stooped to join, gathering rings and pipes of all sorts of sizes in his hands. Oncoming folks gave them a wide berth.

It took a moment for Luke to realize what Peter was doing, but when he did, his shoulders went stiff as a board.

“DON’T TOUCH THOSE,” he snapped, just as Peter made to pick up a little plastic bag with a wad of tissue inside it.

Peter froze.

“Oh. Sorry,” he said.

This time, Luke finally met his eye.

“Oh, Jesus. No. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that,” Luke blustered, “Thank you. I’ll—I’ve got them. Thank you, though. It’s okay.”

He took the metal out of Peter’s hands and stuffed them back into his bag. He snatched the plastic bag before Peter could touch it and put that on top.

“Excuse me,” he said as he stood. “Thanks again.”

And just like that, he hurried off past Peter down the pavement.

Peter watched him go.

“Catch?” Wade asked softly from the corner.

“Negative,” Peter said, reaching into his sleeve and holding up the thin aluminum tube he’d hidden up there by the edge of his shirt-sleeve.

It was shiny and longer than he’d expect for any plumbing project. The inside appeared to be coated with some sort of heavy, non-reactive material, and half of the outside had grooved bands carved into it.

“Someone’s building something,” he said.

“Mid-century sink?” Wade asked, taking the tube.

“Nope,” Peter said.

 --

 NL: That is a lightsaber hilt

NL: where did you get that? It’s like mega accurate. Was it etsy?

PP: I stole it

NL: give it back

PP: I can’t I stole it from Luke Skywalker.

NL: Peter.

NL: we talked about this.

PP: He’s Luke Skywalker. I swear on the grave of my mother

MJ: this is a problem. This is now an intervention.

PP: I will prove it. If he’s Luke Skywalker, then he will do ANYTHING to get this thing back.

NL: and if not?

PP: then I will wait two days before politely tracking down his home address and then I will return it via wall crawling

JS: UM

JS: SORRY

JS: PETER CAN YOU CALL ME?

PP: no

NL: no

MJ: no

JS: are

JS: are you sure??? Because there’s a guy in Reed’s lab right now talking to him and Sue, asking SUPER politely for access to—I shit you not—the crystals we picked up from that space trip the other day???

NL: …

PP: …

MJ: …

PP: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

MJ: fake

NL: no way

PP: WHAT’S HIS NAME, JOHNNY BOY????

JS: I can’t

PP: nope you gotta

JS: I can’t I’m gonna cry I didn’t ask for this

MJ: out with it

NL: please say it’s obi-wan

JS: HHHHHHHHHHH

JS: nope

JS: just a guy named Ben 🙃

PP: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

PP: I told you motherfuckers

JS: right. So like. Awkward. But you uh, know that hilt thing you have?

PP: …is Obi-Wan Kenobi about to beat my ass, Johnny?

 --

 There was something about putting the hilt into the palm of someone more famous than Captain America that made Peter’s knees weak.

It did not help that Luke Skywalker had flirted with him the other night.

It did not help that Luke Skywalker didn’t recognize him as Spiderman.

Nothing helped, really, especially when those big topaz eyes lifted and Peter could see that their rims were red and raw.

“Thanks,” Luke Skywalker—the embodiment of hope itself—said in a soft, defeated rasp.

Every alarm in Peter’s head said to save him. Save him from what? How? Who knew.

Ned and MJ seemed to feel the same way, if the pressure on each of his arms was anything to go by.

“Well, that’s all cleared up, then. Thank you so much for your help; it is deeply appreciated,” a stupidly pleasant gentleman with a perfectly combed beard and lovingly coifed light hair said to the room at large.

Obi-Wan Kenobi—pardon, Ben Kennedi—was far more handsome than any movie could ever dream to make him. What they’d done to him in the 1970s, Peter saw now, was a fucking crime. He watched as this beautiful human being set a warm hand on Luke Skywalker’s—pardon, Luke Naberry’s—shoulder and used it to steer him towards the Baxter Building’s front entrance.

He watched as the two of them, like true Master and Padawan, stepped out onto the landing and opted for the stairs. For one fleeting, unbelievable second, Luke looked back over his shoulder at all of them before taking the next step after his Master.

He was right the other night.

He wasn’t the only jedi. Not anymore.

“So that just happened,” Sue acknowledged for everyone after the door had clicked closed and the sound of footsteps had faded off to nothing.

“I’m going to cry,” Reed announced.

“This is single-handedly the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” Ned said.

“Obi-Wan Kenobi walked into our kitchen,” Reed told Sue like she hadn’t been there right next to him.

“The empire is trying to establish itself under our very feet,” Sue said back a little viciously.

“The real empire,” Reed whimpered.

Wait.

No, go back.

“For real?” Peter asked.

Sue and Reed looked back at the rest of them and then exchanged a look.

 --

 Peter was sad now. Depressed and laid out on his side staring back at Valeria’s huge eyes on the floor while Ned and MJ and Johnny asked Reed and Sue two hundred clarifying questions.

Peter didn’t need the specifics. He was thinking back on the conversation that he’d witnessed between Luke and Han Solo—Han Solo who was tall with dark hair and dark eyes and an accent straight out of New Jersey. Solo who had probably been charged with forcing Luke to face the facts in front of all of them because he was the one who Luke trusted most.

But it had shattered them—both of them.

The New Hope had given up everything. He was tired. His heart was torn. He was jaded just like Peter had been that same night. He’d been avoiding the tightrope that Peter had already started crossing, though, probably looking for every possible way to not have to set the first foot on that wobbly line.

He’d walked it before.

Valeria reached out with a chubby, round hand and touched the side of Peter’s face.

“Spiderman,” she said with terrifying understanding, “Someone needs help.”

He wriggled in close enough to bonk heads with her.

“Baby Storm,” he whispered, “I think you’re right.”

  --

MJ thought that Peter needed to leave things alone. She pointed out that he had plenty of problems without getting involved in universe-saving. She gestured to Johnny and volunteered him for the job.

Johnny refused on account of needing to be the prettiest blond in any room. He claimed that if he wasn’t, he had to fight for dominance.

Ned was on the other end of the spectrum. He had 43 reasons why Peter should get involved with things, and 40 of them ended up in the same place which was ‘it would be cool.’

One of Ned’s better reasons, however, involved pointing out that Peter had already stolen half of a lightsaber. He was good and involved now, whether he wanted to be or not. And that was enough for Peter to decide to go on a hunt to give a formal apology.

He recruited Ned to help him locate Luke Skywalker.

That didn’t work.

They tried Luke Naberry.

That didn’t work either.

They ended up going through every possible iteration of every Star Wars name they knew and then filtered out the people who’d been named by exuberant parents and then filtered out anyone who didn’t live in New York and they ended up with fat lot of still nothing.

It was like Luke Skywalker didn’t truly exist in this world.

Until MJ found his Instagram by typing in ‘guys who look weirdly like Luke Skywalker.’

She held the phone aloft in triumph and they all gathered round to gape in awe at her intelligence and research skills.

Luke’s Instagram was nothing but pictures of coffee.

He had one selfie and this selfie was enough to have gotten him onto a BuzzFeed article. In it he was holding—you guessed it—coffee. Iced coffee. One in each hand.

He was shaking them, and one had been labeled with his name—hence the public connection made.

“Someone needs to tell him that coffee is not a food group,” Johnny observed.

“Maybe he works nights,” MJ said.

Ned lifted an eyebrow.

“Maybe this is his job,” he said.

There was a pause.

Some snooping revealed that Luke was an honest to god food website editor. He was a cameraman.

Repeat. Luke Skywalker, cameraman. He filmed all the food hosts for his company’s Youtube channel. He edited videos. He more or less blended into the background of everything, while having his finger prints on damn near everything.

This was a man after Peter’s own soul. They were kindred spirits in hidden identities, content creation, and suffering under a boulder of responsibility too great to cope with.

He had to find him now.

And after they had his Instagram it wasn’t too hard. He seemed to hang out in various parts of the Bronx and Peter just so happened to know some folks out that way.

 --

 Louis told Peter that he would never speak to him again if he found, befriended, and then didn’t share Luke Skywalker (the man, the real man, I’m not fucking with you, Louis). But he also recognized a place on Luke’s instagram that he seemed to be working his way through the menu of. He sent along an address and told Peter not to forget his promises.

Angel asked why he was looking for Johnny Storm in the Bronx.

Peter left Louis to rattle sense into her.

He took a walk on Saturday morning. A long walk. A long train ride, then a walk, then a half hour of squinting, and then, lo and behold, he found a blond guy banging his head into the center of an out door metal table across from a woman with heavy braids trailing down the sides of her neck. She was much older than him and drummed white-painted fingernails across her cheek as she thought.

Peter hid and called Ned and MJ for an ID. He peeked the phone’s camera out enough for them to see the other two and then snatched it back.

Ned was about to flip a table.

“That’s clearly Ahsoka Tano,” he said. “She—the braids, dude. Dead give-away. And she put ribbons in them, like what even is discretion?”

Peter didn’t know that person. He continued not to know this person, even as Ned dragged him through a trainwreck of Star Wars lore.

“So she’s a friend,” he said.

“She’s like a jedi, but not like a jedi, she was a jedi, but then she said ‘fuck the order’ and—”

Great. Peter was approaching.

Ned held his face in his hands. MJ told Peter to report back on his findings. Peter ended the call and inched closer, weaving through the crowd and slipping into the coffee joint to see what nonsense they were selling.

It was nonsense with lots of syrup. He could never say no to syrup.

He watched the two outside while waiting for his order. Luke gesticulated to his friend and she spoke, giving reasonable gestures back. He stopped her and dug out his phone and that little plastic baggy full of fluffy material. He answered his phone. His friend took the little bag and held it up to the light.

She frowned at it.

Luke pushed away from the table and walked away to take his call. Peter’s order was called. He grabbed it and swerved out towards the patio.

“Hello,” he said at the edge of Luke and his friend’s table. “Is this seat taken?”

Luke’s friend stared at him.

“It is,” she said. “Move along, hon, you’re ten years too young.”

Wow.

“For your friend?” Peter tried. “Could I leave my number?”

He had this lady’s attention now. She was looking him up and down, appraising. Peter tried not to flex. He stayed cool. Matt-levels of cool. He smiled winningly.

“Alright, why not?” she said, digging through her bag for a receipt and a pen. Peter beamed as he leaned down to scrawl his number down on the back. He got halfway through before he heard a step stop nearby.

“Look alive, kid,” Luke’s friend said. “Hey, Luke, this guy was just—”

“You again?” Luke said.

Peter lifted his head and brows.

“Hi,” he said. “I just wanted to apologize.”

There was a long silence.

Luke’s friend looked between them and then gave Luke a long, judgmental stare.

“You don’t have to,” Luke said. “Thanks, though. How did you find me here?”

Mmm. Beginner’s luck.

“Here,” Peter said, offering his number on the receipt. “If you ever need someone to talk to who gets it.”

Luke’s friend bit her lip and looked away in secondhand embarrassment. Peter ignored her for now.

“Thanks,” Luke said. “You don’t and you won’t. But you’re very pretty.”

Nice.

“You’d be surprised,” Peter told him. “Gimme a text. I’ll leave y’all alone now. Enjoy your coffee.”

He left. But not before hearing, “but that ass, Luke.”

 --

 Ned told him that there was no way that Luke was ever going to text him and he was disappointed in Peter’s hostage-taking skills.

But he was proved wrong two hours later and, for his crimes, had to admit Peter’s brilliance publicly.

 LS: hi sorry. This is Luke. This morning when you stopped by our table, did you happen to see a little plastic bag on it?

 Why yes. The one in Peter’s pocket right now? That bag?

 PP: hi!! I did, actually. You guys aren’t very subtle 😏

LS: it’s not coke

PP: I’m not judging

LS: no, it’s not coke, I swear. It’s something INFINITELY more important. Did you happen to see if it had fallen on the ground?

PP: ah, no, sorry. I didn’t see it

PP: OH NO

PP: oh my god I’m so sorry, I think I took it with me when I accidentally took your friend’s pen.

LS: I

LS: what’s your name?

PP: Peter ❤

LS: Peter, you have a fucking problem

LS: I’m starting to think that you want something from me. And listen, you’re a handsome guy, but I’m not available and my type isn’t kleptomaniac. What do you want for it?

PP: well you got me

PP: to talk

LS: about what?

PP: mostly about why you look like you’re a wet phonebook in a bad gutter

LS: a phonebook???? What era are you even from????

PP: I could say the same to you, sir.

LS: I

LS: wh

LS: alright touche. The point is that I’m not going to talk to you. I just need that bag back. It’s a life and death situation.

PP: what are they? They aren’t coke crystals.

LS: how would you know?

PP: what are you, a cop?

LS: NO. This is going nowhere. What. Do. You. Want?

PP: To. Talk.

LS: I’m not going to talk to you.

PP: then why did you ask me to rescue you?

 He held his breath.

 LS: I didn’t

PP: you did

LS: I didn’t ask you for shit. This is it. What’s your last name.

PP: Man 😊

LS: Man what

PP: That’s my last name.

LS: Peter Man.

PP: oop, nope, sorry. That’s someone else.

LS: …so I’m calling the police, now. That’s what we’re saying?

PP: depends. Do you still need to be rescued?

 Come on, Skywalker. Come on, remember.

 LS: I never asked you to rescue me.

PP: You did. Think back.

LS: I didn’t

LS: I just made a joke to

LS: WHAT AFAJSDFA DTTH E FUCK

 Peter cackled and let himself fall onto his back.

 PP: Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii ❤

LS: YOU’RE

PP: Just your friendly neighborhood guy ❤

LS: YOU

LS: you

PP: me

LS: THAT’s how the storms knew you

PP: yep 💋

LS: I don’t even know what to say

PP: it’s okay, you don’t have to say shit. The main thing I wanted you to know was that I hear you. And if you need it, I’ve got you.

LS: You’re literally trying to rescue me??

PP: it’s my job

LS: IT ISN’T. How have you never been arrested? how did you find me? Did you track my phone? Is it some kind of spider thing???

PP: yes

LS: I am legally obligated to kill you with the force now

PP: harder daddy

LS: ADaaSDASFSDFSdd

LS: oh my god Han is going to lose his gourd

LS: I’m sorry I just I can’t believe you of all people stole my damn hilt

PP: I’ve got……………………..sticky fingers

LS: go die

LS: no I didn’t mean that sorry that’s a thing with me and my sister. I mean, okay. You got me. Hero of NYC.

 Peter’s cheeks were starting to hurt.

 PP: I’ll bring them back to you.

LS: Please do, Ben’s about to have a stroke.

PP: you mean obi-wan?

LS: he’s convinced his cat ate them. There’s a staring contest happening. No one has blinked in two minutes and I don’t want to be here for the internal investigation.

PP: where do you live?

 Luke sent an address. Peter held his phone high and walked it into the living room where Ned was bitchily composing an Instagram post. He and MJ looked up at the same time.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Peter said. “Luke Skywalker and Co. live in a cemetery.”

 --

 It wasn’t a cemetery. It was a funeral home, but close enough.

Luke was waiting outside on the stoop in a cardigan about four sizes too big for him. It was there probably to protect him from the equally large ragdoll cat in his arms.

Peter smiled. Luke stared at him and then shook his head and went through the screen door. Ned gave Peter a biting look.

“Made friends, I see,” he said.

“We’re doin’ great,” Peter told him, hopping up the stairs. “Look at us, totally—”

“Insidious.”

Peter stopped and turned nervously to see through the screen door where Obi-Wan Kenobi had seized both of the cat’s cheeks. Luke continued to hold it with maximum doneness levels.

“Where have you been?” Obi-Wan asked the cat seriously.

“We have guests,” Luke said. “Take your beast.”

Obi-Wan snatched the cat out of Luke’s arms with contempt all over his face.

“You are a villain of the highest order,” he told it.

“Ben. Guests. Please evacuate. I am hosting negotiations,” Luke said.

“We should have named you ‘Sith.’”

“Ben.”

Peter was not going to laugh at Obi-Wan Kenobi. That was too surreal.

“Come in,” Luke said, returning to hold open the screen. “I hope you’re not allergic. There are two of them.”

T-two?

“The other one is Junior.”

Peter stepped over the threshold and found himself in a room that looked like a human birdhouse. It was full of surfaces that were almost completely empty, as though an enrichment object had once lived there but had been removed as punishment. Luke waved Ned and MJ in and accepted their apologies on Peter’s behalf.

Peter ignored them to lock eyes with a creature more stunning than any he had ever encountered. It sat on the kitchen counter by a single clear jar labelled ‘Not Spice.’ It blinked grumpy green eyes.

“Oh, it’s these people again?”

They all looked behind them to see Obi-Wan peering around a doorframe with the first cat draped over his shoulders.

“Kleptomaniac,” Luke said, pointing at Peter. Peter waved.

“Huh,” Obi-Wan said simply. “I will distract Ahsoka.”

He vanished. Luke grimaced after him.

“Let’s go talk in the back,” he said. “There are no bodies, I promise.”

 --

 The funeral home had a little deck and a yard small even for this far out in Queens. It was crammed full of plants that appeared to be in a competition to bloom. Luke invited them to sit and then left to make coffee.

Coffee, yes, how had Peter forgotten.

He peeked over the side of the deck down where there was a large stone set in the center of the garden.

“A seeing stone,” Ned whispered to him.

“Oh, how did you know?”

They all jumped.

Peter swore that Obi-Wan hadn’t opened that sliding door. How had—what—

Ned was at a loss for words in the face of one of his greatest heroes.

“I—uh. M-movie? I mean, sorry. It was in The Mandalorian, second season, with the—”

“Yet more television,” Obi-Wan said derisively.

They all stared.

“Can you teleport?” MJ asked him.

“I thought you were bothering Ahsoka?” Luke asked, from inside. He squeezed past the man and his cat with three glass mugs in hand. He set them down on the little square table off to the side of the desk railing.

“I was, but then I got curious,” Obi-Wan said. “And I lost Junior.”

Luke stared at him.

“I’m going to lock you in the basement,” he said.

“Try, try, and try again,” Obi-Wan told him, petting his beloved cat’s head.

“Do you even know who Spiderman is, old man?”

“More television.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Peter had to keep a conscious watch on his jaw, lest it fall open in the face of the most handsome, clueless man on the planet. He watched as Obi-Wan, disgusted with all this ‘television’ nonsense skulked back off into the guts of the home. Luke shut the door behind him.

“So,” he said, holding out his hand. “We’re talking. Fork ‘em.”

Ah.

Fair was fair.

Peter produced the plastic bag from his pocket and handed it over. There was a shout somewhere inside followed by someone going ‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’

“Ben keeps our home ghost free. He terrifies all the wannabee haunters,” Luke said simply. “Thank you for these. I imagine it’s somewhat of a shock to learn that it’s all real.”

It was, but it wasn’t the weirdest thing Peter had encountered by far.

“How long have you lived in New York?” he asked conversationally.

Luke gave him a weird brow.

He seemed smaller than before in that enormous cardigan. Certainly smaller than the movies made him seem. His face was a little thinner too, and his lips seemed to slope into an almost permanent pout.

“About twenty years,” he said. “We were born in California, but Anakin moved us here when we were eight.”

Anakin? Like, Darth Vader, Anakin?

“’Luke, I am your father’—yeah, that guy,” Luke said with a scoff. “Except, you know, he ain’t dead. And he’s the only one who can make Ben remember that tea isn’t a meal, so we keep him around for that and to scream back at Leia.”

Peter was already completely lost to the dynamics of this household. It wasn’t like the books and movies—Ned’s twitching for his phone to take notes was proof enough of that.

“That’s awkward,” MJ said. “So did y’all do like, collective counselling for the past life shit?”

Luke deflated and moaned into his hands.

“It’s not past life shit if your damn name is the same,” he said. “It’s complicated.”

It sounded like it.

Imagine growing up with your apparently-Star War-obsessed father and uncle who’d built a home and a business (presumably) around that shit, only to find out later that they’d done it because it was literally their religion.

What a trip.

“When did you find out?” Peter asked gently.

“Oh, you know. Last week,” Luke said with a bitter grin. “Quit my fulltime job. Dumped my ex. Broke my lease and now here I am. Once again. Back at this place.”

“Do you want a hug?” Ned asked into the awkward silence.

“You’re very sweet,” Luke said. “If I touch another human, I will start crying and never stop.”

Yikes.

Barely holdin’ on by a thread there, buddy? How’s the hyperawareness going?

“Why does it matter, is my question. For you, I mean,” Luke said with a suspicious squint. “You fought a goblin guy, didn’t you? With a hover board?”

Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh, yeah.

Yeah, Peter sure had done that.

“And like, the bird dude? Didn’t you down a plane?”

Perhaps.

But Luke had blown up the Deathstar, no?

“These things are not equivalent,” Luke said flatly. “I joined a rebel alliance. There were loads of us.”

Mmm. Perhaps so.

“God, how old are you even? You look 22.”

Peter gawked.

“I’m 27,” he said.

Luke did a double-take.

“That’s a lie,” he accused. “Tell the truth or be compelled.”

“By the Force?” Ned asked hopefully.

Luke blinked at him. He pointed at the glass sliding door which revealed Obi-Wan holding Junior the cat above his head by the kitchen sink.

“The Force,” he said.

Ned’s face fell.

“Do we not have the Force, here?” he asked.

Luke flinched.

“Listen,” he said abruptly, “We’re workin’ on it. This isn’t our original galaxy. The rules are all different. The only one who’s managed to make even a spark happen is Obi-Wan so far, but as soon as we find Master Yoda, it’s over. We’ll already have won.”

“You lost Yoda,” MJ mused.

Luke stammered and caught himself.

“We lost a lot of people,” he snapped. “It happens when you shift galaxies. Anyways, that’s what the stone is for.”

MJ glanced back at the stone and then leaned her forearms onto the small table.

“So, let me get this straight,” she said. “You jedi folks all popped up over here by some cosmic accident. You don’t have the Force. Most of you don’t even remember who you are. You lost your most experienced Master, and you’re going to fight the Sith?”

Peter stirred his coffee nervously.

Luke’s eye twitched.

“We don’t need the others,” he said. “We only need the Force. To fight the Sith. Yes.”

MJ frowned deep and held her chin with both hands.

“So you need the thing you for sure don’t have the most,” she said.

Luke opened his mouth, but not before the window by the door snapped open and Obi-Wan leaned out to say, “We always have the Force.”

Luke covered his face in despair.

“I was listening from the kitchen window,” Obi-Wan told him lovingly.

“GO FIND CODY ALREADY,” Luke roared at him.

“I did, he’s right here,” Obi-Wan said soothingly, stroking his angry cat.

“The other Cody.”

“Oh, I am trying, don’t you worry.”

“Ben, so help me God—”

“Force.”

“SO HELP ME FORCE—”

Star Wars had really left out the part about Luke’s explosive temper. Peter winced, but Ned laughed and the sound seemed to have a calming effect on Jedi-on-Jedi crime about to take place in the kitchen. Obi-Wan appeared pleased with this development and emboldened. He wove past Luke out onto the desk and came over, cat and all, to point down to the seeing stone in the middle of the garden.

“Others who feel the Force’s energy will be drawn to it,” he told Ned fondly. “It’s how we got Luke back home.”

“It’s not,” Luke said. “You called me.”

“And so others will also come,” Obi-Wan said with confidence. “The most important thing is that we believe in the Force. And from that, we will find guidance and power and—”

“He means Yoda,” Luke translated. “He’s been putting frogs on it as an offering, even though me, Ahsoka, and Anakin told him that this is a human’s world. A human’s world, Ben. Even if he did eat them, he’s not eating them raw.”

“Don’t be discouraged by Luke’s attitude, he is very stressed,” Obi-Wan told Ned and Ned only affectionately. “I told him not to be, you see there are four of us here already, and the Chosen One is among us.”

“Anakin told you to stop calling him that,” Luke moaned, massaging his temples.

“He was the first to be aware of our present situation,” Obi-Wan said.

“He took a hallucinogen and had a paranoid breakdown,” Luke pleaded. “Ben, please. Go inside. Think of your blood pressure.”

“Perhaps, but it was a useful breakdown, was it not?”

“I am so sorry for him, he’s getting senile,” Luke said to the rest of them.

“Your energy is different,” Obi-Wan informed Peter out of absolutely nowhere. “Are you also Force-sensitive? Were you drawn to the stone?”

Er.

No.

Sorry?

“He’s Spiderman,” Luke said, gesturing pointedly. “Remember Spiderman?”

Obi-Wan did not. Peter suspected, actually, that Obi-Wan still used phonebooks, if he used phones at all, that was.

Luke took a deep breath and let it out.

“Okay, let me just lay it out,” he said. “We’re doing the best we can with what we have. You don’t have to get involved with this. We appreciate your help, but what would help us even more is if you stay out of it, alright?”

Yeah, okay. Sure. Peter could respect that.

“Amazing. And don’t tell other people.”

Understood.

“Unless they’re Force-sensitive,” Obi-Wan said. “In which case, ask them how they feel about rocks.”

Luke just stared at him coldly this time.

“You didn’t used to be like this,” he said dangerously.

“No, I used to be stressed,” Obi-Wan told him. “But you and Ani are doing that for me, so I have resolved to be a free spirit. Nice to meet all of you. Have more coffee. I don’t like this one; I will have it out of the house by sundown.”

He left, and possibly for good this time. No one knew what to say in his absence.

“So,” Peter tried, desperate for something to break up the tension. “You said a few days ago that you were looking for someone?”

Luke finally stopped making growling faces towards the sliding door. He lit up like a bulb.

“I am, actually,” he said.

 --

 Luke was looking for a very particular person named ‘Din.’ He described him as ‘six feet tall and covered in armor.’ He asked if they knew of such a person.

Peter had to shove a hand against his mouth in case he made an unwanted connection between this description and Obi-Wan behavior.

“Haven’t,” MJ said. “Who is he?”

“My husband,” Luke said.

Ned choked.

Peter choked.

MJ tilted her head.

“You have a husband?” she asked. “I would have remembered a husband in that series.”

Luke leaned his chin on his palm and gazed sideways over the city. He seemed to sigh.

“I don’t know why he isn’t connected to me in the media created here,” he said. “It’s probably because he’s always been very shy.”

Oh, aw. Peter loved that. The contrast between them was heart-warming.

“We had a son together,” Luke said. “His child. He brought him to me. One of my students, at first.”

Hang on a minute here.

Peter exchanged a glance with Ned. Ned tried very hard to pick a way to approach this sensitively. He landed on asking, “What was his name again?”

“Din,” Luke said. “Din Djarin.”

Ned cringed.

“He was a Mandalorian,” Luke explained. “Very, very, very shy. Like, he would rather chew off his own leg than make small talk with a stranger. I think, before I knew all this, I was still subconsciously looking for him. All my exes are the same type.”

That—

Okay, so like.

Did these people own a TV?

“Do we look like we own a TV?” Luke deadpanned. “No. If Ben senses anything bigger than a datapad happening in this place, he’s driven to madness and breaks it.”

UH?

“He doesn’t actually break it,” Luke sighed. “He just finds a way to make it unusable—putting clothes on it, disconnecting the monitor, that kind of thing. He thinks they waste electricity.”

What a guy. Peter wanted to put him and May in a room and see what conspiracies they could spin together.

“Why do you ask?” Luke asked.

Ned cleared his throat.

“Do you have a, uh, datapad, then?” he asked.

 --

 “DIN. That’s DIN. He’s got his own show. Oh my god, that’s—stay right there. Don’t move.”

Bless this man. Peter wanted to hug him so bad. They’d lost him to the staircase leading up from the second floor to the attic. Peter wondered who he was showing the tablet to.

Maybe Obi-Wan?

“I told you this already,” a voice up there said.

“LOOK AT HIM.”

“You’re killin’ me, smalls. We had this exact conversation last week. Did you forget?”

“You knew where he was.”

“Alright, alright. Downward march.”

Anakin fucking Skywalker came down the stairs with a handful of Luke’s shirt in one hand and the tablet shoved under his other arm. He paused and frowned at the three of them in the kitchen frozen in shock, and then apparently decided that that didn’t matter. He carried on dragging Luke with him towards the kitchen counter. He dropped the tablet onto it and Peter realized that the lower half of his sleeve on that side was empty.

He watched as the guy let go of Luke and chased the not-angry cat off the counter, cursing.

“Alright, this?” he said, tapping on the tablet. “Is the link I put here.” He rapped the same finger on what Peter now saw was a whiteboard covered in rows upon rows of symbols that he’d never seen before.

“Din here? Din here. You see?” Vader told Luke with untold patience.

“I can’t read that,” Luke moaned. “You lied to me.”

“It’s up in the kitchen, Luke.”

“You’re a liar and a cad. Do it in Basic.”

“This is Basic.”

Oh, dear. All that fanfic about Luke meeting Darth Vader and having a breakdown was looking real embarrassed now, wasn’t it?

“If it’s Basic, why can’t I read it?” Luke demanded.

“Because, like I told you last night, the night before, and the night before that,” Vader said painstakingly, “It doesn’t all come back at once. It’s going to take time.”

“We don’t have time,” Luke snapped.

Vader leaned his head back with half-lidded eyes. Luke didn’t look even remotely like his kid, even with him looking all pre-quels-like now.

“We talked about this, too, remember?” Vader asked.

Obviously not. Luke was distressed. He had eyes only for the tablet now.

“No, of course not, silly me,” Vader said. “Why are humans here?”

“Ahsoka went home,” Luke said.

“Thank you, that was not my question.”

“What was your question?”

“Why are non-order humans here?”

“I told you, Ahsoka went—”

“Son, I will kill you if you continue to act like Obi-Wan,” Vader said without missing a beat.

“You can try,” Luke said offhandedly. “But only one of us has two handed grip.”

There was a long stare.

“It’s Obi-Wan,” Vader told him. “Why do we have living guests?”

He gestured back to Peter, Ned, and MJ like they were flies on a set of blinds.

“Oh, because that’s Spiderman and he stole your kyber crystals,” Luke said.

Vader rounded on Peter, and Peter actually felt fear.

Vader blinked once.

“This may as well happen,” he decided somehow placidly. “I’m going back upstairs. Where did your grand-master go?”

“Into the mist,” Luke said. “Can you feel Din?”

“Negative, ghostrider.”

“When the Force chooses you first out of favoritism, can you feel for Din?”

“Ah yes, can I feel for your Force-repellant life partner with all of the Force energy that I do not have? Yes, I sure can.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“Anytime, primary monstrosity of my loins.”

UM?

This felt a little hostile for Peter’s tastes. Not that it wasn’t earned. Clearly it was earned. It was just horrifying.

“Guests, you are dismissed,” Vader said in their direction. “Unless you’re drawn to the rock outside, in which case, you may stay. Otherwise, do not darken this doorstep again, or else we will leave you with the other dead in the morgue.”

“Thanks for bringing the crystals,” Luke said from behind him. “And for talking. I do feel better, actually.”

 --

 They left the funeral home. Obi-Wan was outside by the mailbox as though waiting for them. Peter wasn’t sure he had any emotional energy left to approach him with.

“Thank you for speaking to Luke,” he said as the three of them attempted to pass unnoticed. “It’s good for him to talk to others his own age.”

Uh-huh. Good night, sir?

“Good night, Peter, Ned, and Michelle.”

They hadn’t given their names.

They definitely hadn’t given their names.

 --

 Ned wasn’t sleeping for two years. He made this clear with a lot of clapping gestures and then rolled around on the floor, talking about all kinds of shit that Peter couldn’t decipher. MJ watched him and flicked her eyes up to Peter with concern on her forehead.

“That family is cinematically dysfunctional,” she said.

Correct.

“They’re barely their own characters.”

Correct.

“What now?”

Peter wasn’t sure. The best he could think of was to just keep an eye on the situation. Maybe check in every couple of weeks?

“If you say so,” MJ said. “I think you made Ned’s life, by the way. Good job.”

 --

 Peter tried checking in every two weeks. It started because he happened to hear of a tunnel collapsing in Queens nearby the funeral home. He texted Luke to ask if he needed a save and all he got back was a ‘well, not anymore.’

After that, Peter kept a close eye on happenstances occurring around the city. There were more than he bargained for. And when he glanced at Luke’s Instagram after the first week after the tunnel collapse, he noted that two of the nails on the hand Luke held his coffee to the camera with had gone completely black.

That was worrying.

Peter was used to be the danger-prone asshole in his friendgroup. He did not like this role-reversal. MJ asked him sarcastically what the problem was.

He texted Luke again.

 PP: how many nails do you have left bro?

LS: we put a hole in one to release the pressure

PP: that don’t sound great bro.

LS: it’s fine. Oh, but good news

PP: oh?

LS: the most predictable thing ever has happened. The Vader has regained force power

PP: that’s worrying

LS: ? why?

PP: won’t he go dark?

LS: ah, no. He fucked up and raised me and Leia with Ben this time after our mom died. He had his chance to go dark and traded it for 8 consecutive hours of sleep instead.

PP: I truly don’t know what to say

LS: It’s fine we did 12 years of family therapy after the accident so we are no longer on the DSS watchlist

PP: I know less what to say

LS: he won’t find din :/

PP: is that your priority right now?

LS: aren’t you supposed to be spiderman or something? Don’t you have chaotic things to say?

PP: you know normally I do, this is literally out of character for me. but I think you also might be absorbing my chaos.

LS: that’s fair. I have that effect on people. Hey, is your buddy Ned available to chat? He knows more than I can remember about my old life. Can I borrow him?

 That sounded like a horrendous decision.

 PP: yeah let me get you his number.

LS: thanksssss

  --

Ned reported a few days later that his services were needed at the funeral home. He was leaving them all now to befriend Luke Skywalker as was his true destiny.

He came back a few hours later and reported that his services had been helpful and he was pleased to say that Darth Vader was now the official herder of ‘wans’ in the house. This included all Obi-Wans and padawans.

He seemed to be the only guy there who could like, retain information given to him for some reason. He accepted this as his lot in life and went around repeating the same things to the others ad nauseum until they finally stuck for them.

Peter wondered if that was his personal hell.

Ned didn’t think so. He thought the guy was pretty chill about it and had probably been doing it for a while now. He did it more for Ahsoka Tano and Luke than he did for Obi-Wan. Although that was probably because Obi-Wan appeared to be on a hunt that made all non-relevant information given to him slip off his back like water.

 --

 Another two weeks. Another text.

 PP: hey luke, I saw you drowning on the news. You okay?

LS: GOD my ex-workplace keeps calling welfare checks on our house. We’ve had more cops here then flies these last few days.

PP: ex-workplace is one way to refer to your old job. Sounds like they cared about you. What did you do?

LS: preschool teacher.

 Peter was going to lose his shit right here on this bed.

 PP: was that your calling?

LS: that was Luke Naberry’s calling. Luke Skywalker’s calling is to make the lightsaber go vrrrrrrm

PP: you honestly terrify me

LS: thanks han says the same thing. OH. HE FOUND CHEWIE.

PP: no shit??

LS: yeah I told Ned, not you. But yeah. He found him lugging boxes for a bodega. And now they both work at the same bodega. Which like, objectively, is a bad thing because Han was a UN translator.

PP: I’m

PP: sorry

PP: what?

LS: I know he was all respectable and shit. It was awful. I can look at him again without feeling like I’ve failed in every part of my life.

PP: dare I ask what your sister does?

LS: lawyer

PP: not senator?

LS: we’re not old enough to be senators.

PP: every moment becomes more concerning than the next. You fascinate me. This is why they put you in like, all the films.

LS: because I’m sexy yeah

PP: that too

LS: not to you. I’m off-limits bub. I’m married.

PP: how’s that going for you?

LS: Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

PP: I see. So no Din yet?

LS: I will find him if it kills me

PP: that’s so romantic. Hey you should watch that series. They gave him a little green yoda in it. Really cute.

LS: that’s my son you piece of shit

 There was no winning here.

 --

 MJ asked him a few weeks later if he was still keeping up with the Jedi drama since the whole city had recently decided that Peter was a snack.

Obviously he hadn’t.

She told him not to worry, Ned had. She told him to talk to Ned, so he went and talked to Ned with a heatpad in one hand and a coldpack in the other.

Ned patted at him sympathetically and informed him that Luke had reunited with the Force. It was going poorly for him, mostly because the Force wasn’t used to people being in touch with it in these parts of the universe. It kept telling each of the jedi that there was a disturbance and then luring them to each other to fight to the death.

Luke described it as the Force-equivalent of an auto-immune disease.  

They’d taken to gathering in the living room of the funeral home to meditate in a circle, as though to calm the Force’s anxiety while scenting each other for protection.

It had a 40% success rate. Everyone was sleeping in locked rooms for the time being, just in case someone got compelled to do something rash.

Peter asked Ned if he’d finally lost his crown as King Chaos of NYC.

Ned patted him on the knee more firmly than before and said that he could regain his crown by introducing a calming element into the jedi household.

Peter had his pride to defend, so he asked what that element ought to be.

  --

Din Djarin, the Mandalorian, the leader of all Mandalorians, was bound to have a name that looked nothing like the one they had for him. Luke nearly exploded when Peter approached him to asked him (and his taped fingers) more about who Din Djarin was outside the name.

They proceeded with caution, however. So far, Peter and Ned had discovered only dissonance between Luke’s account of his life partner (his ‘heart, stars, sun, and sand’) and the guy on the screen for the tv show. That was to be expected, given that they had met Luke now and learned of his somewhat explosive personality.

But even still, Luke’s description of Din Djarin as ‘kind, compassionate, tender, shy, emotionally stable, dependable, sweet, caring, and hunky’ seemed slightly biased.

Peter just wanted to know how tall this guy was. Hair color. Eye color. Skin color. Blood type. That kind of shit.

Luke said that Din had brown hair, brown eyes, Type Who Knows What blood, and was about six feet tall. He had no idea how much he weighed. He’d never had need for that information. He knew that Din was human, which was probably helpful in a galaxy far, far away. He knew that he spoke Mando’a as his first language, then Basic, then a whopping fifteen others. And he knew that Din was probably looking after their son.

Vader asked Peter over a mug of coffee (also labeled in the funeral home’s cabinet as ‘not spice.’) if Spidersenses could overcome a dearth of information. It took Peter a few moments to realize that he was sympathizing with him.

“You’re not going to find Din,” Vader told Luke. “You need to look for the kid. You’ll find the kid first, you always have.”

Luke took his coffee and poured it down the drain.

Peter decided that he didn’t want to get in between that burgeoning battle. He told Luke to text him if he remembered anything else.

  --

Wade was pissed that Peter had been meeting and ‘cavorting’ with Luke Skywalker without him. He claimed ownership of the Din Djarin mystery in order to cram himself into Luke’s good graces. But quickly, he ran into the same stumbling blocks as Peter.

Din Djarin was six feet tall with brown eyes and brown hair.

That was what they currently had to go on.

Wade would have torn out his hair if he had any, but he stopped himself and accepted the challenge. Peter watched over his shoulder as he chicken-pecked his way into a list of social security numbers held by the NYC State ID issuing department and started methodically filtering names that did not sound like ‘Din.’

He started broad with all ‘D’s and then narrowed it down further and further and further until he was left with a shitload of Daniels.

He stared at the screen before him and vibrated.

Peter massaged his shoulders before he cracked.

It helped. Wade started filtering by height, then by eye color. Then by hair, and only ended up with several hundred people.

He vibrated again, but this time, Peter couldn’t help him.

He sighed. Wade said that there had to be a better way to do this. He got up.

  --

Wade made about four thousand missing posters with the name Din Djarin on them which he recruited the whole team to plaster up around NYC. This was not a request.

Miles asked him why they were doing this for a tv character and had to be let in on the gig.

He lost his shit.

Louis tried to retain his shit.

Angel still didn’t know how the whole jedi thing worked.

Dave hummed and haw’ed and took his time in calling bullshit. Wade asked him to look deep into his eyes and ask if he was entertaining bullshit that fine evening.

Dave changed his opinion and took a stack.

  --

There was no way that shit was supposed to work. There was just no way. A) because Wade had the worst ideas of all mankind and B) because Peter had the worst luck of all mankind. So the two of them together should have destroyed all the prospects of success for that job.

But instead, while they were hatching a new plot involving setting up a sham sociological study for people who responded to Star Wars names, Wade’s phone went off.

He grabbed it and opened the message and lo and behold right there was a note that read,

“I hope you are not a reporting body because this is going to sound certifiably insane, but I think I might be the guy you’re looking for?”

Wade screamed.

Peter scolded him not to get too excited too soon. They had to see the man first.

Wade texted furiously, asking for a picture and got a message back that said, “please do not dox me.”

They got no answer until Wade promised not to dox the guy.

And then they got an image of a man with brown hair and brown eyes with olive skin. His face was remarkably square. The picture wasn’t just him, though, he had in his arms a little boy with a head covered in tight ringlets. His eyes were so dark they were nearly black and he was maybe two years old.

The caption said, “apologies, my son needed to be in the picture.”

Wade cooed and entered Dad Mode to ask how old the baby was and what he liked to do and Peter lost the fathers to that small talk for a while before Wade oh-so-casually asked, “So you feel like you’re from outer space?”

“It sounds strange,” the guy on the other said wrote back, “But I do. Like every day I wake up and look in the mirror and something is wrong. I feel like I’m always forgetting something when I leave the house. I watched the tv show of the guy who’s name was on your fliers and the kid in it reminds me so much of my son. It’s eerie. They make the same sounds. He made the same sounds before we even watched that show.”

Wade whistled.

“I think this is him, Pete,” he said. “He called Baby Yoda a ‘kid’ not a yoda.”

Peter stared. He hadn’t even caught that. That was smart as hell.

“So what now?” he asked.

Wade sniffed.

“Get Skywalker to send you a selfie,” he said.

  --

PP: Luke are you pretty right now?

LS: My face is intact

PP: take a selfie and send it to me

LS: cannot do that. Face is intact is a baseline situation. Let me find an old one. Oh, they all have my ex in them. This is awkward.

PP: it doesn’t matter I can crop it.

LS: no I have to be cute or I’ll perish hold on

PP: are you sure you’re not Johnny Storm?

LS: yes, he’s got loads of muscles. Sent.

 Selfie acquired.

Luke looked very smiley in it. His eyes were blown out from the lighting, but it showed his sloping smile and his low, back-set dimples. Peter sent it to Wade. Wade sent it to his new friend.

They waited.

They waited five minutes.

Then ten.

Then half an hour.

Then nearly two.

And finally, Wade’s phone rang. He picked it up and set it on speaker so that Peter could hear.

“Hello?” Wade said.

There was a long pause.

“Where did you get that picture?” a low, almost smoky voice demanded on the other side.

“A friend,” Wade said sleazily. “You know him? He’s a cute little thing, ain’t he?”

It took the dude on the other side of the line worryingly long to respond.

“What do you want?” he finally asked.

Wade brought his head down in interest.

“What’re you willing do to?” he asked.

They waited. Peter didn’t know what was taking this guy so long to—

“Anything.”

Ah.

Okay. That.

That sounded about right.

Wade cackled.

“You know his name?” he asked.

“I do,” the man said.

“What’s his name then, pal?” Wade asked.

“It’s none of your fucking business.”

Holy shit. Holy shit. Peter clutched the back of the couch. Wade was grinning so hard, Peter could see it through his mask.

“You want him, you need to show me that you know who he is,” Wade said. “I ain’t got ‘im here, but I know where he is. Come on, big boy. Who is he?”

Peter could hear the man take in a deep, shaky breath.

“His name is Luke,” Din fucking Djarin, the Mandalorian himself, said.

  --

Din fucking Djarin’s name at the moment was Danny Jabaran. He stood six feet tall with a medium build and that baby of his in his arms.

He was not afraid of Wade.

He was not afraid of Peter.

The suits didn’t scare him; this man was a space warrior. The leader of the space warriors. Peter was humbled to stand in his presence, old jeans and tattoos and all.

“Vigilantes,” he acknowledged.

“Deadpool,” Wade said, offering a hand. “And this is?”

“Grogu,” Djarin said.

Baby Yoda lifted his big liquid eyes up to Wade and blinked twice. Then he wriggled around and hid in Djarin’s neck. Djarin put a hand on his back and didn’t drop eye contact.

“Tell me everything,” Djarin said.

  --

Ned screamed. Michelle screamed. Peter reminded them that he had neighbors and invited Mr. Mand’alor to sit on the couch for a bit while he called Luke.

Michelle claimed the spot next to Djarin and asked Baby Yoda Grogu for his little hand. He studied her and hid again, making a prolonged sound of distress that Djarin cut off by saying, “Hey. Manners.”

This somehow made baby Grogu turn back to Michelle to stare at her offered hand.

He took it. She shook with him and then took hers away.

Grogu perked up and reached for it again.

“You’re the Mandalorian,” Ned said.  

Djarin looked right at him.

“A Mandalorian,” he corrected.

Ned blinked back tears.

“You’re so cool,” he creaked.

Djarin frowned.

“You...are too?” he tried.

Ned wept into a fist.

Peter left them to call Luke in his bedroom. Luke picked up on the third ring with the start of an ingrained greeting that sounded a whole lot like a customer service recording. He caught himself, though.

“I have someone I’d like you to talk to,” Peter said. “I think you might want to sit down.”

Luke’s unusual quiet on the other side made Peter grin.

“Are you sitting?” he asked.

“I’m sitting.”

“Alright, one moment,” Peter said, walking out into the living room. Djarin had edged far, far away from Ned, as far as he possibly could without being rude. He looked up when Peter came over and sat down on the arm next to him.

“Say hi,” Peter said.

Djarin frowned at him and then the phone.

“Who’s that?” he asked.

Peter waited. Djarin lifted his head over to see the phone’s screen.

“Hello?” he tried.

“Din?”

The Spidey Sense crashed through Peter like a tidal wave.

Djarin had gone completely still.

“Din? Is that you? Can you hear me?”

“Shit,” Djarin said, lifting a hand to cover his eyes. “Goddamnit. Jesus.”

“DIN.”

“Dank Fucking Farrik.”

“Oh my god.”  

Baby Grogu’s face snapped toward the phone with huge eyes. He grabbed at Djarin’s collar, then his jaw and started bouncing a little in his arms.

“Bu?” he asked.

Djarin couldn’t make himself move.

“Grogu?” Luke asked. “Hey, baby, is that you, bubba?”

Grogu grabbed Djarin’s face urgently, so that he couldn’t hide his raw eyes anymore.

He pointed at the phone.

“Yeah, I hear ‘im, kid,” Djarin said.

“MMMMM. Gib.”

“Ah. That’s not ours. We don’t grab. We ask,” Djarin reminded as Grogu pleaded for the phone. Peter snickered and gave it to him. He just held it, staring.

“Do you wanna see him?” Peter asked. “Luke, can we maybe video chat?”

“Y-yeah,” Luke said. “Hold on. Oh god, my face. Uh, hey Din are you still near-sighted, hon?”

Djarin huffed a laugh that turned into a whole-body tremor.

“I got contacts,” he said a little hysterically.

“You got WHAT?” Luke yipped, “Okay, no. No, I gotta. Be still, this heart. Okay let me just take off the butterflies. On moment, Grogu, Daddy’s just gotta dunk his face in the damn sink.”

MJ bounced her eyebrows at Peter as he gently took the phone back from Grogu and tapped on the camera. He offered it back the kid and received a deep gaze of wonder in return. Djarin turned the screen right-side up in his hands.

Luke finally turned his camera on and revealed himself to be very swollen in the jaw with damp hair and a cut very close to the rim of his left eye.

Grogu screeched.

Luke laughed.

“Look at you,” he said, “I’m gonna cry. Oh my god. Where’re your ears, pal?”

Grogu analyzed this reaction for 2 full seconds and then shoved the camera right into his dad’s forehead. Djarin took it from him and liberated himself so that he could see Luke who was clutching at his face, absolutely already sobbing, bless him.

He looked up to see Grogu and instead got Djarin and finally just broke right in half.

Peter swallowed back the growing lump in his throat. His eyes were starting to warm a little.

Djarin found a watery smile in himself.

“I know you’re not cryin’ because of me,” he said gently.

“Where’s your helmet?” Luke sobbed, wiping viciously at his eyes. “People are watching, you harlot.”

“I know,” Djarin said. “I lost it.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Luke.”

“This is all my fault. I should’ve—I should’ve—”

“Luke,” Djarin said again, full of warmth, “You died for us.”

Luke shook harder than ever.

“There is no greater sacrifice a warrior can make,” Djarin told him. “I was honored for you to have made it for me and our son. This has always been the Way.”

“This is the Way,” Luke stammered.

“I missed you,” Djarin said. “Where in God’s name have you been?”

“I was a preschool teacher in the Bronx, man, I dunno what happened,” Luke said tipping his face up to force the tears back in.

“In the Bronx? Where?”

“Uh, off Allerton and Lurting?”

Djarin started shaking with laugher.

“I work off Laconia and Mace,” he said.

“You what?”

“We’ve been blocks apart this whole time.”

Awwwwww.

“I’m going to stab myself,” Luke moaned. “I’m going to stab myself in the arm. I was right there and I sold out for my part-time gig barely weeks ago. Oh my god. I’m going to—move, old man, I’m suffering—Wait. Din, did you find your parents?”

Djarin stood up and held the phone out straight.

“Where are you right now?” he asked.

  --

Look at all these people hugging each other.

Look at them crying all over. There was a baby in there, wailing because he was so happy to be back in the arms of his other dad.

Aww. AWWWW. Peter was getting emotional again, he was going to see himself out.

“Wait. Peter.”

He looked up to find Luke holding a hand to him.

“Thank you,” he said. “You really are a superhero, you know that?”

Yeah.

Sometimes, he did.

 --

 The city had plenty of problems as it was, yeah, more now with a bunch of jedi running around, linking up with each other and spreading memory like mushroom spores. But it didn’t feel that much different.

What it felt like now was Ned showing Grogu how to hold his hand at the seeing stone in the funeral home’s back yard to make the Force happen while Obi-Wan reported cheerfully that the cat perched on it was still not levitating.

It also felt like watching Luke freak out over text to Ned and Michelle about his ex losing their mind at him dumping them after two years to marry this random mechanic within a week of getting together.

Peter got to see this from new angles, too, one of which was the bottom of the funeral home’s attic stairs, which Anakin Skywalker liked to sit on while his grandkids—both Grogu and Han Solo and Leia Organa (pardon, Leia Naberry)’s son—came over to show him things that he was very well aware of. These were stolen from him by Auntie Ahsoka and her friends who Ned knew and Peter did not.

And there was something warming about how even these folks—people from a galaxy far, far away, occasionally needed a Spiderman.

   --

[backtobackbakubabe]

Speak Easy Part 9

Dabi X Reader , Bakugo X Reader

Words: 3214

Masterlist

Reader has a siren quirk and has spent the past several years of her life as a captive being experimented on by “heroes” Now that she’s out she needs protection and safe place to heal. Who will be the one to put her pieces back together?

Words with ‘this’ is dialogue written in her journal rather than said out loud and and words with ~this~ is dialogue said in sign language rather than out loud.

***********************************************************************

You drank all day. Then took a nap, ate some pizza, and then continued to drink some more.

“Fuck Endeavor!” Dabi threw a pillow at the TV.

“Yeah fuck that guy! Small dick Energy!” You giggled at the sideways glare Dabi gave you.

“I would appreciate it if you didn’t talk about the size of my old man’s dick.” You and Dabi were lounging on the couch, your legs in his lap, empty beer bottles littering the coffee table. You were watching some trashy special on TV about Japans top heroes, and having fun roasting them all. Dabi chuckled as he rubbed circles into your calf. “I have to say… I didn’t think you’d still be conscious at this point. I had you pegged as a light weight.”

You snorted as you sat up to look at him. “Who the fuck you calling a… *burp* light weight?” You sat up too quickly and had to squeeze your eyes shut to keep the room from spinning. His hand came up to steady you and you leaned into his warmth. “I’ll have you know… I am a drinking queen!” You giggled and started singing Dancing Queen at the top of your lungs but replaced the word dancing with drinking.

He rolled his eyes at you before shoving you off of his lap and onto the floor. You landed with a loud thud, but you just continued to giggle. “Aren’t you a Siren? Isn’t your singing supposed to be… I don’t know…good?”

Gasping you held your hand to your chest in mock horror. “How dare you insult my singing. If I wanted, I’d have you on my knees in seconds.”

He smirked at you, “Wait, what does that even mean? Did you mean you’d have me on MY knees in seconds or you’d be on YOUR knees in seconds? Because those are two very different things.”

“UGH! You know what I meant!”

You gave him a pouty look to which he just chuckled in response. “I don’t think I do doll. Why don’t you show me.”

You narrowed your eyes at him. “I refuse to fall for your perverted mind games. I’m too smart!”

Dabi got an evil glint in his eyes. “Too smart huh?” He pushed himself off the couch and held a hand out to you to help you stand up on wobbly legs. “You’ve made some bold claims tonight princess. You say you’re a drinking queen. You say your smarter than me. You said you could have me on my knees in seconds… I just don’t know if I believe you.”

You swayed a bit as you jabbed a finger into his chest. “Bring it on bacon bits. Let’s make it a competition.”

“Okay fine. But it’s only fun if we put something on the line. What are we wagering?” His hand started to travel down your side to grip your ass.

Slapping his hand away you stepped out of his reach. “Nothing sexual! Keep your hands to yourself.”

He watched as you tapped your chin in thought. Obviously you were taking this competition thing very seriously. You looked cute in your drunken state. Your hair was askew and your cheeks a rosy shade or red. Suddenly your eyes beamed, “I know! Truth or dare!”

“Uh what?” Dabi quirked an eyebrow at your antics. “Did you forget that we are adults?”

“Oh come on, don’t be such a buzz kill!” You rushed over to the kitchen and started pulling out cups and beer. “We used to do this at UA all the time! It’s so much fun, come on!”

Dabi groaned as he approached the table that you were currently setting up for beer pong. “Oh come on… I was hoping it could be sexual.” It was his turn to pout now. “We could always play a quick round of strip pong. What do ya say?”

You paused as you set up cups, “Hmm maybe later. I know as soon as my clothes start to come off you won’t want to play games anymore.” You gave him a taunting look, “At least not any innocent ones.”

He raised his hands up in defense, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I am more than capable of keeping my hands to myself.”

You snorted as you set up the last cup. “I’ll believe that when I see it.”

He took his spot on one side of the table. “I’ll tell you what… I’ll compromise. For every cup we make we have to answer a question. If I win, we move on to strip pong. If you win or if I can’t manage to keep my hands to myself, I’ll do whatever silly little punishment you can think of.”

You shrugged your shoulders. “Sounds good to me.” You cracked you knuckles dramatically. “I hope you’re not a sore loser.” You were really confident for someone who was on the verge of passing out. But if you were being honest with yourself, you knew you were better at drinking games the drunker you were.

Dabi gave you a borderline evil smirk, “We’ll see how cocky you are when I make you play bare ass naked.” He threw a yellow ping pong pall at you, laughing as it smacked you in the face. “I’m sure there’s a some joke I could make about you liking balls in your face… bu-“

You tossed the ball and he watched as it sunk right in. One cup down, five more to go. His surprised eyes met your emotionless ones. You winked, “Drink up bitch.”

He scoffed as he yanked the ball out of the cup before downing it’s contents and flipping it upside down. “Alright… let’s get this over with…what are you gonna ask me?”

That was a good question. What were you going to ask him? You could only imagine the kind of secrets he had. Visions of all kinds of illegal acts and debaucheries crossed your mind. You were enjoying your little daydreams when he cleared his throat. “Any day princess…”

You tapped your chin, “Hmmm. Okay. Why did you leave the League?”

He groaned, “I thought you were gonna ask me something stupid like my favorite color… but no, of course you’d come out swinging.” His eyes looked a little nervous. “I technically never left, but I also was never really an official member. I’ve always done what I wanted. The only person I answer to is me.” His fists clenched, “But if you’re asking why I don’t really associate with them anymore… Well I may be a bad guy but even I have my limits.”

You knew that was probably all you were going to get when he squared his shoulder off and sunk a cup of his own. His eyes gleamed as he repeated your orders from earlier, “Drink up… bitch.” You stuck your tongue out at his before chugging your cup and loudly slamming it back onto the table. “Such attitude tonight? Makes me want to bend you over this table and-“

“Yeah yeah, bend me over the table and fuck me stupid… What’s your question?” Your cheeks flushed. From the embarrassment or the alcohol you weren’t sure.

He growled, “As soon as we finish this stupid game, I’m going to do just that you little brat.” His lips twitched into a brief smile. “So, I’ve been reading those really fun articles about you today and I noticed something… They never mention your hero name.. What is it?”

Your eyes grew cold and your arms came up to hug yourself. “I don’t have one.”

Dabi bristled at your short answer. “What do you mean you don’t have one. You graduated from UA, you worked at hero agency for a few years. Granted you were probably the only real hero in the entire building… but there’s no way you don’t have one.”

You shrugged, which earned you a glare. “Sorry, but I really don’t. When we picked names in school… Well I never really thought I’d actually graduate. Katsuki and Izuku had to talk me out of dropping out almost every other day. So, I didn’t take it seriously. After I got hired, they made it very clear the public would never know who I was. I was a spy. Spies don’t have hero names. They have code names. Mine was Helen.”

Dabi almost flinched at the amount of malice in your voice. Your happy mood disappearing fast. But his curiosity weighed heavy on him. “Why Helen?”

You tossed your ball and watched as it bounced off the table and into a cup. “That’s two questions… and that’s also two cups.” You wanted to change the subject, “My two questions are… Do you secretly like Shoto? And Why do you pretend that you don’t secretly love Shoto?”

“Ugh, Shoto’s a fucking brat.”

You strategically decided you were hot and removed the hoodie you had been wearing, leaving you in a tight tank top and a pair of his boxers. “Oh? I thought you liked brats?”

Dabi leaned on the table as he looked you up and down. “You’re playing a dangerous game there.”

“No… I’m playing beer pong. And in case you didn’t notice, I’m winning. Now answer the question.” You were having so much fun teasing him. You felt safe with an entire table in between the two of you. This was one of the first time the two of you had opened up to each other. Sure, it was because you were both drinking and only because you were playing a very juvenile game. But progress it progress.

He rolled his eyes at you as he gripped the ball in his had. “He’s my little brother… I don’t have to like him. I used to hate him actually. In my head he was the reason our dad was so awful to me. He was my replacement, the golden child.” He was quite for a little while. You could tell he didn’t really want to keep going. He was already more vulnerable then usual.

He knew if he wanted you to open up to him, he needed to offer the same courtesy. “Even now, I see the weird relationship they have and it pisses me off. My dad was awful to us, Shoto included. So, it makes me mad that he’s trying all of the sudden to make up for it, and even more mad that Shoto’s letting him.” He finished drinking his beer. “We’ve talked a lot recently and… at the end of the day he’s my baby brother. Sometimes I wonder if I had stuck around if things could have been different for him.” He finally made eye contact with you and sighed, “So to answer your question… I guess I like the kid a little bit.”

You squealed and clapped your hands. “I knew it! It’s almost impossible to not like him. He’s so adorable, and strong, and nice, and smart, and-“

“STOP! First you talk about my dad’s dick, and now you’re raving about how much you love my little brother… I’m literally right here?” His nose scrunched up in disgust. He shot his ball, it bounced off the rim of a cup and your hand was quick to swat it away. “FUCK! How did you even do that?”

“HA! No question for you. I’m too fast. My reflexes are too fast for you!” You giggled before chasing the ball that was now bouncing away towards the kitchen. You were already unsteady due to the alcohol but the second your socked feet hit the tile in the kitchen they slipped out from under you.

“Oof…” You landed hard on your ass. A few moments of silence passed before you rolled over and started laughing. You felt tears streaming down your cheeks and you clutched your stomach. You honestly could say you hadn’t laughed this hard in a long time.

You felt two strong hands lift you up from under your armpits. “Maybe we should call it a night soon. I have a feeling if I don’t stop you now, you’ll hate me tomorrow when your heads in a toilet.”

You wiped the tears from your eyes and laughed even harder. “I WIN!”

He picked you up and turned you to face him. “I know you’re drunk… but you still have three cups left before you win.”

“NoOo I win! You touched me! Your hands my contact with my armpits! Physical contact was made… I WIN!” You started poking him in the chest. “I win. I win. I win. You lose. I win.” You danced in a circle resulting in you falling into his chest.

His arms wrapped around you tightly, “That’s got to be cheating… You fucking wiped out on the kitchen floor. I still had questions I wanted to ask. This is bullshit.” His hand reached down and rubbed circles on the sore spot on your ass.

The alcohol was starting to hit you hard. You leaned into his warmth and could feel drunken slumber start to drag you under. “I’ll make you a deal. You can ask me one question. But you have to do the punishment I decide no matter what.”

He had no idea what you had planned and by the look in your eyes he probably wasn’t going to like it. “Fine. I’ll do it… Why Helen?”

You froze. You knew he was going to ask. You didn’t want to talk about it, but then again you knew he probably didn’t want to talk about his family. You were torn. You wanted to lean closer to him, to absorb his warmth, to let him hold you. But you also wanted to push him away, to stand on your own feet, to show you’re not weak.

His hand came up to cradle the back of your head, holding you to him, deciding for you. You took a shaky breath. “Well I don’t know how much Greek mythology you know… But there was a woman… Helen of Troy. She was supposedly the most beautiful woman in the whole world.” Dabi’s fingers ran through your hair encouraging you to continue. “She had powerful men fighting over her, on their knees begging for her love. She was the reason the Trojan War started. Most people think it was the Trojan horse that lead to victory over Troy… but in reality, it was her. She brought destruction to an entire country… just by being pretty.” You let out a long breath and felt some of the tension in your shoulders start to bleed out. “So, I was Helen. I was a pretty face that brought destruction to men.”

His hand rubbed up and down your spine. “Well they got one thing right… You are beautiful.”

A shaky chuckle left you as you gripped his shirt. “And if we’re being honest… You are more than capable of destroying anyone you wanted to. You’re just a badass, you are a beautiful badass and that’s nothing you should be ashamed of. Wear it like a badge of honor.”

Your next words were barely louder than a whisper, “I’ve done a lot of bad things.” He didn’t say anything, to which you were grateful. He just continued to rub your back. “I have no right to be mad about those articles… because I did those things.”

Dabi leaned away from to make you look at him. “It doesn’t matter what you did, because you did them with good intentions. I’ve done way worse and believe me when I say I did them all for the worst reasons possible.” His thumb brushed against your cheek. “They took advantage of you. They were the one’s giving the orders. They are the ones responsible, and they are the ones who will ultimately pay the price.”

You blinked back your tears. “I just feel so stupid. I believed so much in the hero system, I was so blind to what they were doing. How many of the people that I apprehended were innocent? How many of them just had interesting quirks they wanted to study? How many of them just didn’t agree with the system? How many voices did I silence?”

“You’ll drive yourself crazy if you think like that. People like us fell through the cracks and that’s not our fault.” You just nodded, done talking about it. There was nothing he could say at the moment that would make you feel better. Only time could fix this, if it could even be fixed at all. Dabi squeezed your cheeks together. “Now why don’t you tell me what this punishment is, because you looked really excited about it earlier.”

You nodded and pushed away from him, wiping your tears. “Yeah. Okay…” You took a deep breath pushing the painful thoughts out of your mind. “I want you… to prank call… Shoto…”

He immediately wanted to deny you. To say hell no. But you had just had a raw moment with him, and he had promised. “… Fine.”

He pulled out his phone and scrolled until he saw Experiment #4 and hit dial. What was he supposed to say? He had never done something like this before. Was he supposed to block his number? It was really late would his brother even answer?

You poked his shoulder and mouthed, “Put it on speaker.”

He rolled his eyes but complied. A few rings later and Shoto’s tired voice interrupted his thoughts. “…uh…hello?”

Dabi began to panic. The only thing he could think of were the immature jokes he’d heard when hanging out with Twice. “Your mammas so stupid… When I told her she lost her mind. She went looking for it…”

You lost it. You bent over in silent laughter. Not only at his ridiculous joke, but the look on his face was priceless.

“… My mamma? We have the same mother. It’s a little insensitive to say she lost her mind Touya. Wait is this code? Are you guys okay? Cough if you need help.” You herd rustling in the background. “Izuku get up I think Y/n and my brother need help. He said my mamma’s so stupid, when he told her she lost her mind, she went looking for it. I think it’s code.”

You couldn’t help it you let out a loud laugh, Shoto was as clueless as ever. Izuku took the phone from his boyfriend. “Sounds like a dumb joke to me babe. Hey Dabi… did y/n put you up to this?”

Something about hearing Izuku’s serious voice made Dabi uncomfortable. He sounded like an angry father who had just been woken up but his dumb children. “Uh… yeah…”

“Great tell her she’s hilarious, and next time she wants to wake someone up at three in the morning to call Kacchan.”

The line went dead and Dabi scoffed, “He really is an idiot I swear.”

“As far as I’m *hiccup* concerned all you Todoroki’s are.” You yawned and stretched. Your eye lids were getting heavy.

Dabi scooped you up and you immediately nuzzled into his shoulder. “One for your room, twice for mine.” You had never been in his bed until last night, but his bed was considerably more comfortable than your own. You held up two fingers. “Anything my drunk destroyer of men wants.”

*********************

Tags: tags: @falling4fandoms @wifunozomi @here-in-never-land @whore-for-anime @klecksstorys @aurorahoneybuns @theunknownrandom @insane-without-delirium @frenchsfryys @officiallydarkgeek @neofixcs @music-is-all-i-need @katsuki-bakubabe @unadulteratedtastemakerpoetry@dabislittlemouse@aimee1602 @pinkhatlizzy @kunaigirlx44 @nii-sanfucker@bestgirlb @silver-stardrop @bakubby99

[lunar-wandering]

i don’t wanna fight alone anymore - Chapter 6

The ship goes through a thunderstorm.

Wukong is fine.

(warning: Wukong is kinda like. panicking for most of this chapter, mainly this is based on what I do when anxious but. figured i should warn ya i guess.)

Word Count: 2.4k

Read on Ao3

"Hot chocolate is ready!" MK said, walking into the common room, carrying a tray with 4 mugs of hot chocolate on it. He handed one mug to Mei, then turned to hand another one to Macaque, only for Macaque to turn away, not even reaching for the mug. "....Aren't you going to take it?"

"No." Macaque said, plain and simple, slouching down and back into the couch.

"....Why not?" MK asked.

"I can't drink hot chocolate." Macaque sighed, dramatically sliding down off the couch and onto the floor. "Chocolate is poisonous to monkeys."

"But...." Mei started, turning to look at where Wukong was standing behind the couch. "I'm pretty sure we've all seen Monkey King-"

"I'm immortal, so it doesn't matter." Wukong said, "Give me my drink, if you'd please."

"Here." MK handed the mug of hot chocolate to Wukong, who sipped at it as MK turned back around to bring Macaque's unused mug back to the kitchen. As such, he didn't see the look of brief confusion that flashed over Wukong's face as he sipped the drink again, quickly followed by shock, then a tired resignation. All evidence of that, however, was gone by the time MK returned to the room.

"How do you live without chocolate?" MK asked, as he sat down on the couch, looking down at where Macaque now lay on the ground.

"I manage." He said, his eyes closed. Wukong snorted into his cup.

"That's why he's so bitter." Wukong said, "Can't eat chocolate."

Macaque didn't dignify that comment with a response, his ears twitching before he sat back up, looking like he was concentrating on something. He sighed, standing up and walking towards the door.

"And where are you going?" Mei asked.

"To my room." Macaque said, "There's a thunderstorm coming, and I'd rather not get my hearing destroyed any time soon."

With that, Macaque left the room, the door closing behind him.

"A thunderstorm?" MK asked, "I don't think I've been in a thunderstorm, outside of that time Red Son took over the weather station."

"I've been in a few, while traveling." Mei said, shrugging. "Other than being a bit loud, they're not a big deal, really. The weather station keeps storms from happening in the city, so like you said, I haven't been in one for a while."

"Ha, ha, yeah, wouldn't want the power to get knocked out in such a large city, right?" Wukong said, "I'm sure that would cause chaos."

There was a....strange wobble to his voice as he said it, which prompted MK and Mei to look at him with confusion on their faces.

"Are....you okay?" MK asked, eyeing how tightly Wukong was now gripping his mug. Wukong gave a little laugh.

"I'm just fine, kid." Wukong said, before chugging the rest of his hot chocolate in one go. "I think I'm gonna go check in on Pigsy now, see ya!"

And with that, Wukong turned, walking towards the kitchen. MK and Mei watched him go with equal looks of concern on their faces.

-

The first roll of thunder hit when Wukong was helping Pigsy take a batch of cinnamon buns out of the oven. It was so sudden, that even though he had been tense, expecting it, he very nearly dropped the whole tray.

"Careful, don't want to waste them." Pigsy said, noticing the fumble, before pausing as he registered the expression on Wukong's face. "....You okay?"

"Yep, just fine!" Wukong said, setting the tray down on the counter. "Just wasn't expecting it, that's all!"

"If you say so....." Pigsy said, staring at how Wukong stood, hands behind his back, tense. He could tell that something was up, but-

Before Pigsy could say anything else, another bout of thunder rolled through, and suddenly Wukong was moving, turning and heading towards the doorway.

"I'm going to go check on how Tang is doing!" He called, over his shoulder, before disappearing down the hallway.

-

Tang was sitting in his room, reading one of the many books he'd found in Wukong's house. (He'd stolen them, technically, since Wukong didn't know he'd taken them.)

He faintly heard a bout of thunder-

And then Wukong was there, leaning over his shoulder.

"Watcha reading?" He asked, and Tang barely kept himself from startling out of his chair. He chuckled a little at the other's reaction, before returning his attention to the book. "Wait, isn't this one from my house?"

"They're all from your house." Tang said, recovering from the sudden scare. "I figured I'd get some reading material while we were there."

"I mean, at least someone will read them." Wukong said, "I'm not even sure why I held onto them really, I never actually bothered to read them."

"You didn't- why would you just get books and then not read them?" Tang said, "I mean, this one specifically has such a good plot-"

Wukong sat there, crouched on the edge of Tang's chair, and listened to him rant about how good the book was. In truth, Wukong actually had read all the books. At least 50 times. But he wasn't about to tell him that.

Listening to the ranting was actually a good distraction.

Or at least, it was a good distraction.

Eventually, his mind started wandering again, and all it could keep thinking of was-

A clash of thunder rang out, and Wukong stood up, jumping off of the chair and pacing, trying to look casual as he did so. He didn't think he fully succeeded, if the way Tang paused in his speech and looked at him was any indication.

That wouldn't do. He wouldn't- couldn't let any of the others know-

Tang went to open his mouth, and Wukong was already walking out the door.

"I'm going to go hang out with Sandy!" He said as he left.

Tang watched him leave with a frown on his face.

"I was just gonna ask if he was okay...." He mumbled.

-

So maybe going to Sandy wasn't the best idea right now.

Or, well, at least, it wasn't the best idea considering Wukong actively wanted to hide the fact that anything was wrong. Sandy was the best in the group at picking up on the others emotional states, so Wukong should've known that as soon as he entered the room he'd be asked;

"Are you okay?"

"Yep! Perfectly fine!" Wukong lied, wincing as another clang of thunder boomed outside the ship. As much as some part of him wanted to, he couldn't tell him. He couldn't tell him that the loud sound of thunder sounded all too similar to the sound of rocks falling, crashing, and tumbling their way down a mountain.

Besides, it wasn't entirely a lie, he was fine.

He could deal with this.

So long as he had a distraction.

Which was why, even though Sandy eyed him with a fair amount of suspicion, Wukong stayed around him a little while longer, trying to make small talk about any subject he could think of that Sandy might be knowledgeable about. Cats, tea- literally anything that came to mind.

And it worked- between talking about random subjects, and pacing while rubbing his hands up and down his clothing ( a self comforting gesture, he was unsure when he'd starting doing it, but he sure wasn't going to stop now-), the overbearing panic from the thunder was almost dulled enough for him to forget about it.

....But this strategy wouldn't work forever.

-

They'd all gone to bed.

Everyone was asleep.

They were still in the thunderstorm.

And now, Wukong had no one to talk to.

A loud boom rattled the ship, and Wukong barely stopped himself from whimpering as he leaned against the wall of the hallway. On the one hand, at this point, he just wanted to curl up and cry. But on the other hand, staying still for too long just reminded him of being trapped, unable to move-

Another roll of thunder came through, and Wukong couldn't stop the whimper this time.

Fuck. He couldn't do this, he needed- he needed another distraction, someone else to talk to-

But the others were asleep. There was no way he could wake them up for this, not only would it disturb their sleep, but he'd been doing such a good job of pretending everything was fine, that he was still the strong and powerful Monkey King that defeated Demon Bull King five hundred years ago. He couldn't shatter that image for them. They deserved to believe that they were safe with him there.

He couldn't wake them up. If only someone, maybe Sandy, was still awake, maybe then-

....But there was someone awake.

A mental image of Macaque, sitting on his bed, covering his ears so that they wouldn't be hurt by the loud thunder, unable to sleep from the noise, appeared in Wukong's mind.

Almost immediately he dismissed the idea. He'd already spent at least an hour locked up in a magic barrier with the shadow monkey, outside of general interaction around the others, he wasn't going to actively seek out the other's company for anything else. He still didn't trust him. There was no way he was going to let Macaque know about this.

Another loud crack of thunder quickly made him change his mind.

In only a matter of seconds he stood outside of Macaque's door, debating whether or not he should knock. The choice was made for him as the door swung open, Macaque standing there, looking tired and absolutely done with everything.

"Don't even start." He said, stopping Wukong before he could even open his mouth. "I could hear you panicking from miles away."

"I'm not panicking!" Wukong said, despite the fact that he clearly was, and Macaque sighed-

Before pausing, grabbing hold of his scarf and pulling it up to cover his ears, and that was the only warning Wukong got before-

Another clap of thunder hit, this one closer to the ship than the previous ones, based on how loud it was, and both monkey's cringed. A moment passed, then Macaque slowly let the scarf fall down from his ears, lightly rubbing them in an attempt to stop the ringing.

Wukong continued shaking.

Macaque took one look at him and sighed, before grabbing hold of Wukong's wrist, and dragging him down the hallway.

"Hey- what're you-" Wukong started to protest, trying to pull his wrist out of the other's grip, but Macaque held firm.

"I'm not dealing with this tonight." Macaque grumbled, and Wukong's protests continued, only the fear of possibly waking someone up keeping him from shouting at the other.

At least, until they started approaching MK's room.

Wukong dug his heels into the floor, actually managing to bring Macaque to a complete stop.

"We are not waking up MK." Wukong hissed, trying to level Macaque with a threatening glare, although it was very much ineffective, as another bang of thunder made him start shivering again. Macaque, who had used one hand to pull up his scarf and protect his ears from the noise, rolled his eyes.

"Unfortunately for you, I am not going to tolerate your bullshit." He said, ignoring Wukong's offended gasp. "It's late, my ears are ringing, and right now I honestly couldn't care less about your thunder phobia or whatever. You're going to talk about whatever the hell this is with MK and the others, and I'm going to go back to pressing two pillows over my ears so I don't get hearing damage, okay?"

"No-" Wukong said, but it was too late, as Macaque banged his fist on MK's door. There was a startled yelp, and a crash, and Wukong winced, knowing that his successor had probably just fallen out of his bed. A few seconds passed, and then MK slowly opened the door, tiredly rubbing his eyes.

"Macaque? What's going-" MK started, before noticing Wukong, who was very obviously trying to escape Macaque's grip. "...Monkey King?"

"Uh, hey bud!" Wukong said, smiling nervously even as Macaque sent him a warning glance. "Nothing's wrong, you can go back to bed-"

He was cut off by another boom of thunder, cringing and slightly curling in on himself. Macaque had let go of his hand, in order to better cover his own ears, but somehow the thought of running away was suddenly the furthest thing away in Wukong's mind. MK continued to glance between the both of them with confusion and concern.

"...Are you alright?" MK eventually settled on asking and Wukong-

Wukong finally gave in.

".....No." He said, quietly, looking down at the floor. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Macaque fade into the shadows, probably heading back to his room, but he wasn't really focusing on that right now. "I'm....not okay."

"It's the thunder isn't it." MK said, it wasn't a question, it was a statement, and Wukong nodded silently, still refusing to look MK in the eye. "Do you want to talk about it or-"

"I just need a distraction." Wukong said, "Just, I don't want to think about-"

Another clash of thunder, and MK winced sympathetically as Wukong decided to take a page out of Macaque's book and cover his ears with his scarf. Surprisingly enough, the fabric over his ears did actually help a little, it was almost a bit comforting, really.

MK waited until Wukong had mostly pulled himself back together before speaking again.

"We could play Monkey Mech?" He suggested, "I've got a TV and console in my room-"

Wukong practically rushed past him, entering the room and immediately finding the console and turning it on.

-

MK sighed, setting his controller down on his lap as he glanced at the clock.

4 am in the morning.

(Usually, MK would be a bit concerned over how little sleep he was getting, but-

To be honest, he hadn't been sleeping well the past few nights anyways. What was one more sleepless night?)

"Y'know, arguably, you probably should've gone to Sandy for this." MK said.

"Probably, yeah." Wukong mumbled, before looking over at MK. ".....Can you promise me you won't tell the others about this?"

"...Sure." MK knew that the others had also figured it out already, but if Wukong wanted to pretend that no one knew, well, MK certainly wasn't going to be the one to start digging into that.

That was probably a job that would be best left to Sandy in the long-term.

[gayfrenchtoast]

Okay fine we're doing this. I havent read the books and I'm probably not going to I've only seen the movies so I'm sorry if anything I say is contradictory or has already been stated.

So! Descendants 3 was kinda shit and I dont like it but especially because of the ending because everybody was like "oh yeah island is open and we're all happy with no worries or implications about free villains or people being spiteful about being imprisoned for years!" In fact if anything they joked about those things.

The island is basically its own culture, I can't say how long it's been around, long enough for some almost adult kids to be about and to develop a kind of community.

The Isle is a place of poverty, people are dirty and on the street, eveyone steals from each other and most people don't put much effort into appearance upkeep (personal or of the sourounding area) not because of laziness or being "evil" but because they clearly don't have time or luxury to do such things or possibly even the clean water. Does the Isle have clean water?? How to they get electricity??? Someone tell me!

Another thing that I've noticed is easy to see but is not much explicitly said is the unique style of those on the Isle. As previously stated they don't have much but those who have the most "power" and such on the Isle are the best example of this As they have the most colourful outfits. However these outfits are often made out of patches and ripped things put together, even salvaged things like nets and chains as we can see on thing like Uma and Harry's outfits in D3 they make the best of what they've got and they do fantastic because their outfits are intricate and detailed and just tell you everything you need to know about them. Which is why it's a damn s h a m e when the original VK's ajust their style to be more like Auradon's. That's not an improvement! Be proud of where you came from!! It's like they forgot what it was like being on the Isle in D3!

Moving on, here's something that was touched on in D2 but not enough. Equality. On the Isle there is basically equal opportunity as in saying everything is shit and nome cares what gender and presumably what sexuality you are as long as you can work. Sexism is shown to be almost casual in aurodon from the looks of it, Chad makes sexist comments and litterally none else says anything or seems to see anything wrong with it except Jay who caves to pressure from peers and expectations. He does redeem himself because he's from the isle and he knows you shouldn't give a shit about anyone's gender or anything. If they can do something and ask to be included you give them that opportunity. The sexism is also implied in the way that the rule book has men written specifically in the first place and that it has taken until then for anyone but boys to be allowed on any kind of sports team. We never see it! It seems to be the hetronormative veiw where the boys do sport and girls do cheerleeding and other genders? What other genders? Never heard of that? BAD AURADON!! I bet there's so many trans folk on the island just living their lives, thinking Aurodon is the better place and not knowing that it's a cis het filled nightmare.

Okay no I'm headcannoning now, if their are now a bunch of Isle kids at auradon prep they find it fucking aweful the way all these preppy royals are treating them and make the first LGBT club in Auradon. There is lots of pushback and they get bullied a fuck ton for making themselves the most prominent queer folk in the school until a fight breaks out and the club demand that they should be treated better, taking all the evidence to fairy godmother who is very hesitant because COME ON she's never been that great she is biased to Auradon kids and if putting away those in the Isle is brought up she is all on it, she is jelly spined about doing anything against the royal kids. So the kids are like "Fine, if you won't help us we'll take this to the King himself!" Well mainly the queer mom's of the group (you know the ones I'm talking about) who lead the others and protect the anxious queers as they storm to Ben at his fucking locker and demand an audience because they are being harassed and bullied and none is doing anything. Ben had no idea there was even a LGBT club (too busy ig) and is gassed there is one for a moment before he's like "wait people are harassing you?" So Bisexual King Ben gets his lovely Bi wife and they start coming to club meetings and investing in the pins and stuff the club makes. Most club members are pleased but the queer mom's are apprehensive that this will help until some assholes come to the club to do their usual bullying only to find King and Queen Beast themselves siting there with rainbow bracelets and bi pins and all trying to have a nice old time eating their fucking cupcakes what the fuck are yall doing? The bullying dies down quick once they realise it ain't gonna fly, the other OG VK's that hear about this become members and very protective over their queer children. Did I mention Dizzy and Ceila are a part of the club? They're girlfriend's. Celia is one of the queer moms. Harry becomes one of the biggest protectors over the group as the pan dad. He's been going around snogging everyone and anyone wholl snog him everyone already knew he was queer they just didn't have the balls to try and bully him over it as much as they bullied the lil club members. But now Harry can often be seen in jackets and shit with pan and general queer patches and pins and running around with his gay children yelling "MOVE WE'RE GAY!!" He totally calls them his queer crew. Anyway as a result lots of queer royals start coming out of the woodwork, obvs Lonnie is one of them, and the club eventually serves to bring members of Auradon and the Isle close together.

Where was I? Yada yada auradon expects girls to be pretty princesses and boys to be brave knights or dashing princes. It's shit and should stop being portrayed as good. Moving on!

Food! One of the things we'll established in all movies is that the food of the Isle is shit compared to food of Auradon. The Isle has no fresh fruit which likely means its almost impossible for things to grow there which is fair because again there doesn't seem to be much fresh water and there are always clouds overhead so no sun. Maybe there is some people trying really hard to grow stuff but the general attitude of the Isle seems to be "there is no time for that" and fruits are forgotten so much that the VK's litterally don't knownwhat they are when they come across them. That and anything containing sugar. Actually it's mention by Dizzy and Celia that they enjoy the fact that the cake dosent have dirt or flies so basically food there is terrible. We don't see much food on the Isle but what we do see seems to be beans, eggs, chips and shellfish. Basically protine and carbs that can be easily stored and produced. To be fair beans are kidna good for you but they're likely a sign that if they get any imports from the mainland it is canned stuff. Prison food. There's probably some chef villain that is trying their best to make good food out of the shit but honestly the Isle dwellers should be angry that they've been deprived of good food for so long not happy they're finally been given decency.

Moving on, music! Auradon dosent have nearly as many musical numbers it seems, the Isle songs have a distinct style, to them, the villains that basically "founded" the place were masters of the dramatic songs (with backup or solo) so banging music is basically ingrained in the music's culture, even for battle as we see with the fight between Mal and Uma in D3. Meanwhile Auradon seems to have mainly romance and "I want" songs. Even Audrey's villain song is basically an I want song.

Okay let's talk about the Villains. We've established that the VK's are not inherently bad. However not all of them can be totally good and there are legit OG Villains just kinda chillin on the Isle. They've obviously lost quite a bit of their power, motivation and sanity (isolation will do that to ya as they lost everything and the VKs know no different) but deadass? They were bad guys. You can try to rehabilitate them sure but you've basically just let them free roam, they could make a runner and you wouldn't get the chance. They were also shitty patents which is brushed over/joked about in the interaction between Carlos and...man I feel bad I forgot her name deadass their relationship seemed to come out of nowhere in the second film she didn't seem interested in them at all and friendzoned them multiple times I'm pretty sure Disney did that becaue queer kids were relating to Carlos and headcanoning them as queer (which they deffinatly are) but deadass their mom is an attempted animal murderer and has hurt her child as we can see from how they're afraid of her and her rhetoric and yet it's "haha I'm afraid to meet your ma!" "Me too cus im a dog! Lol!" Fuuuuck offfffff

I think I'm running out of thoughts so here's a last one for now; with the magical barrier down a bunch of magical Villains kids should be coming out for the woodwork. We know Mal has magic basically stored in her so it's is possible, she technically doesn't need the spellbook to do magic it is just inherent to her. So with the diverse range of people from the isle there are deffinatly magic folk in there. Actually if we're following Disney movie law I saw something mentioning Jay being half Genie and yeah! He should be half Genie! Jafar got turned into a Genie he's probably only human because of the barrier! Oh also Ben should be able to go beast on command as long as he had a better beast form than he did in the movies. And give him back the beard and fangs like fuck you he looked so much better

Okay I'm done for now

[sassyangelchild]

Mahiru (MILGRAM) and why I voted her guilty

Okay so I know that Mahiru’s trial time has almost ended but I wanted to share my thoughts on her and her crime. English is not my mother tongue so I may make mistakes, sorry in advance.

At first I thought the same as a lot of people, that her and his boyfriend had problems, she pressured him too much and he killed himself... BUT then I satrted to think, and to find her MV a little suspicious.... what if they weren’t even dating?

Ok hear me out.  I’m not saying they didn’t know each other. But I don’t trust Mahiru’s POV. Yes, the PV can’t lie because it’s extracted from their minds but that only means that we are seeing what Mahiru truly thinks and how she viewed the crime. What she thinks happened and what happened could not be exactly the same. 

Now I’m going to analyze the PV to support my theory. Obviously I can’t know if it’s true, I can’t only speculate since we don’t really know the truth, but I’m going to explain the things that made me reach this conclusion. Some parts I would mark them as pure speculation based in if my theory is true. The translation of the diary is a translation posted in the youtube video comments by 猫黒.

So Mahiru’s story is a 16 day story (the number of entries in her diary that appear in the PV). The first two days Mahiru and the man who is supossed to be her boyfriend don’t even know each other, so we are talking about a 14 days relationship/12 days if we take into account the first day they TALKED for the first time. It’s... quite short.

Day 3 is the first time they even exchange a GLANCE and we don’t even know if the “boyfriend” noticed her lol they locked eyes for a moment but it’s not something so unusual. Mahiru felt it was fate, sure, but we don’t have the boy’s point of view.

It’s not until day 5 they really interact. Day 4 is Mahiru seeing him but she doesn’t even talk with him and he doesn’t approach her either so... he probably didn’t even notice her/didn’t know her. Day 5 she finally is able to talk with him. 

Day 8 Mahiru decides to confess waiting for him outside his work. This is... weird. I mean, they don’t even know each other that much but she is already waiting outside his work? To me this seems like she stalked him since she couldn’t get a hold of him by normal means. The most normal interaction if they were already friends would be to call him or something to hang out, this feels more like Mahiru trying to ensure he can’t avoid her since she knows he has to go to work and go home at some point, it doesn’t seem like he is expecting her to be there and for that reason she is early, to make sure he doen’t go home without encountering her. She even call it an ambush. 

Then she calls it a date but based on what I said above I don’t really think it was, although for Mahiru it was because her mind works like that so it’s not a lie for her. I thinks it’s the same as in day 3, for her it was “destiny” but we don’t have the boy’s point of view. Also a very suspicious thing: she doesn’t tell you the boy accepted the confession. We suposse he must have because from that moment Mahiru is convinced they are dating and tells you that but I don’t think Mahiru is a reliable narrator and if they are really going out, why refuse to say “he said yes”? She just says “Not gonna say. But can’t you tell from my face?”. She avoids telling crearly what was the answer.

 And it’s not only that. The diary entries start to become messier, the lines more broken and the text harder to read around day 8, the confession, until they resemble an anonymous threat letter lol. Why would it get darker when supossedly the guy told her yes? My theory is that things didn’t go as well as Mahiru makes it seem in day8. Maybe in her head she is still convinced that things are going to work out in the end but deep down she knows things are not that good and so the diary becomes more of a mess reflecting that.

Day 10, she seems to thinks they are going out and every time they meet she calls it a date, but I find interesting that she says he doesn’t seems to notice her appearence. You could say he is just that sort of guy but come on, they are at the start of the relationship and he doesn’t seem to look at her or tell her she is pretty? Seems to me like he isn’t even interested in her romantically speaking and probably doesn’t even think they are in a relationship lol

Okay in day 11 they go to the same place. Maybe they really went together (which doesn’t mean he thinks about it like a date, he could thinks about her like a friend or a nice girl without wanting to be in a romantic relationship with her) or maybe, since she already said it’s a place from a movie he really liked they could have meet there by pure chance. I can’t really say without more info.

Day 12, and this is the exact moment where I started to find everthing super suspicious. First Mahiru is totally in love with the guy, she talks constantly about him in the diary, she interprets everything he does or likes as fate or something good blablabla.... then why doesn’t she say more about that day? She has been in her boyfriend’s house for the first time and she says she hardly remembers anything? Are you kidding me? She can’t tell anything about the date? They hang out at his house and she can’t even say something like “wow, he finally made a move, I’m so happy” “wow we talked a lot and I had a lot of fun” “we watched films” “I’m a little sad because he didn’t try anything”..... How can she not have anything to say about such a step in their relationship when she usually talks about the smallest interaction they have? It’s super suspicious. And the weird things don’t end there.

The picture of day 12 shows her in his house but don’t you thinks it’s a little weird? Because the boyfriend is not seen anywhere at all. They even put a mirror in there to show you that he isn’t there. Why put that mirror there if not to show us that yes, he is not there welcoming her, we aren’t seeing him and it’s not because he is in front of her because then he would be reflected in there. And then you start to wonder... And realize all the dates and stuff Mahiru talks about where the boyfriend should be... he is just not there. It’s always Mahiru alone with the exception of one day we would talk later. And it’s not because the photos can only show Mahiru because we’ve seen the hands of the person who sells her coffe in day 2, the dog in day 8 and the hairdresser in day 10 that is even shown in the mirror too. Why is the only person who is not shown in the photos the boyfriend? Because he wasn’t even hanging out with her, she probably stalked him and thought about it like a date. 

Day 14 is the only one where we supossedly see the boyfriend, and in case it really is him it only makes it weirder for him not be in all the other photos. Mahiru is always talking about they going out on dates but she is always shown alone. 

Also she says she “really asked him to come along”. Why do you have to really insist if he is supossed to be your boyfriend who loves movies? Maybe because he doesn’t even know you that well and you are not going out...

Day 15 they go to the shrine to pray for the new year. Again he is not shown in the photo, and considering that is quite common to go to pray at the shrine in new year I think (again) that although they may have seen each other there for real it was not a date although Mahiru probably thinks that it was fate and therefore a date of sorts.

Mahiru’s wish is also weird. Why woul anyone get in their way or why is she thinking they are no going to be together? They supossedly just started going out, why is she so paranoic with him leaving? Maybe because they are not really going out and she fears he is going to get taken by other person since he is technically single.

Day 16, the day before the crime, the last entry we have before the scene where Mahiru wakes up with an horrified look in her face. She says she is in his house waiting with the food ready. Ok lovely but... think about it. First, if it’s a surprise it means he doesn’t know she is in his house so how has she entered? Did he gave her his house keys? That’s a little weird since they aren’t going out for that long, Mahiru dind’t even mention him giving her the keys (nor has she mentioned him doing nothing a boyfriend would do like kissing her or telling her he loves her) so they don’t seem so close yet. She says she has jotted down everything he likes, which makes me think that he hasn’t told her, she has deduced it by... basically oberving him which depending on how has she done it could be stalking. 

Okay now think about it. You are a boy who meets Mahiru. She seems nice, sure, but you aren’t really interested in going out with her. Then one day she is outside your work waiting for you, confesses and you tell her no so you thinks everything is okay. She keeps talking to you so you think “well nothing wrong with that I guess”. One day you return home and she is there. You don’t know how she has entered. She is just there, smiling as if nothing is wrong, with dinner ready. That would scare me to death. 

And the next thing we know is that he is dead. 

I think he freaked out, told her she was creeping him out and that he didn’t want her to keep stalking him, that he dind’t love her... and she snapped.

If we listen to the song she is shown as someone who doesn’t really care about his boyfriend’s thoughts. She thinks his distressed face is cute instead of worrying for why is he making that face in the first place, she calls him knowing she would wake him up, she talks about a “breakup ritual” like it’s something normal when it isn’t and even if they were going out if they are constantly breaking up she should be thinking about which are the reason because that is going to end up being a toxic relationship but she doesn’t seem worried at all... In one line she says  "wonder if you’ll get angry soon" and in other she says  "I’m going to start relying on you if you’re kind to me, so please forgive me, thanks!". That sounds like he stayed friends with her (why wouldn’t he at the start if she haven’t done anything bad to him) and she interpreted as permission to start fantasizing about being more with him and start stalking him. The lyrics make her seem emotionally manipulative “ If you don’t hug me, even our hearts will start drifting apart”, “ Giving you love to the point of pulling you down”,  “ We fought sometimes/I was happy to get hurt/Let’s have matching pain, this sickness is pretty bad/This is a claim of responsibility/From the two of us with matching love”. 

I think some of the lyrics fit quite well my theory of them not being in a real relationship “Wanting to know everything about you, but wanting to die because it can’t come true”.

And lastly don’t forget the interrogations we have seen up until know. They ask Mahiru what she would do to atone for her sin and she says she doesn’t even know if  her actions were a bad thing. She also said to Es that if they are not careful she might fall in love and kill him too. When asked what does she want from her lover she says that she only wants for him to accept her love (meaning his previous “boyfriend” who I think wasn’t in reality her boyfriend did not accept her love, making me believe more in my theory). She is also shown to be quite self centered and selfish, always talking about what she wants without caring about what her partner might feel (when asked what is worse than death she replied not being able to love... girl you killed the guy, I think he has it worse and all you are thinking is like “oh, how bad I killed him because I can’t keep on forcing my love on him”)

To sum up, this are the reasons why I voted Mahiru guilty and I seriously think she was not in a relationship with the guy or at least she has distorted the reality in her mind.

[in-my-feels-probably]

INEFFABLE - Kaz Brekker

Chapter Six

If you would like to read this on Wattpad, it’s on there as well, my @ is in_my_feels_probably and there’s a few visuals and better descriptions and stuff on there. otherwise, enjoy, let me know what you think, and you can check out my masterlist for updates and more. don’t forget to read the prologue, it’s important to the story!

INEFFABLE – Kaz Brekker

ineffable (adj.) too great to be expressed in words, utterly indescribable; too sacred to speak of. 

Chapter Six

It was nightfall by now, and Elham, Kaz and Inej were following the Conductor to his supposed way across the Fold. Jesper was nowhere to be found, and Elham could only imagine what kind of trouble he had gotten to by this point in the night. The moonlight casted over them as they walked, the Conductor leading.

“We're almost there. Just a little further.”

Kaz fell back a bit, causing Elham and Inej to slow, matching his stride. He kept his voice hushed. “Where the hell is Jesper?”

“I should’ve gone with him. Have I ever been wrong? No. Do you ever listen to me? No. And here we are.”

Elham knew she was bold for speaking to Kaz like that, they might have been close, but he was still technically her boss, and more than that, she needed him focused on this job. Making him angry was never a good idea, but she just couldn’t help herself. It was too fun teasing him. She was the only one who could get away with it.

Kaz pretended like he couldn’t hear her, rolling his eyes, walking a little faster. He knew she was right, but he would never admit it. The Conductor approached a sign, barely lit up by his torch. He continued walking past it, but Inej stopped, putting her arm out in front of Elham.

“Landmines.”

Elham stopped, huffing. There was no point in being surprised, she knew this job was going to be the hardest one she ever went on. That didn’t mean she wouldn’t have a slight temper tantrum in Kaz’s direction though, it was just her luck that this would go bad from the beginning.

She almost risked following the Conductor, deciding to not care about the imminent death in the field, when Kaz put his cane out to stop her, giving her a glare. “We’ll wait. Follow the path that you carve.”

“Oh, that sign, it was my idea to keep people away. Can’t be too careful. We’re fine. Come.”

Elham glanced at them, sighing. Might as well. She took off, following the footsteps the Conductor had set, Inej hot on her trail. Kaz stood behind, looking for another way, before realizing there wasn’t one. He sighed, trying to corral the goat closer to him, before slowly following them.

The Fold was a wall, a giant black mass, with eerie groans and high pitched screeches coming from the inside. It was bigger than anything Elham could have imagined, and the pit in her stomach only grew. If nightfall was dark, the only light coming from the moon, she couldn’t imagine how dark and empty the inside of the Fold must be, a void.

Inej was warily glancing around. “It’s one thing hearing about it, but this is--”

“Nothing, compared to what lies within.”

Elham scoffed. “Thank you, Arken, very inspiring.”

The Crows watched Arken slowly crank a handle, watching a dingy train emerge from the edge of the Fold. “There. So, goat, jurda, thank you. Now we’re just waiting on…”

Gunshots emerged on the other side of the field, and Elham turned to see Jesper sprinting in their direction, a crowd of men right on his heels. “Wait for me!”

“They can’t see the train!” The Conductor took the torch from Inej, putting it out in the sand.

Kaz was growing angrier by the second. “Jesper! Get here now!”

“Put out the lantern.”

Elham pulled the pistol off her hip, advancing forward just enough to be able to aim at the men after Jesper. She only had two bullets, and then her gun would be useless. Without her sword, all she would have left is the knife strapped to her thigh. Still, Jesper had to get there, preferably not full of bullet holes.

She began picking off the two closest to him, one bullet missing, hitting the sign next to him, the other lodging itself into another man's thigh. He crumpled to the floor with a cry. “Damn it, Jesper! Hurry the fuck up, I’m out of bullets!”

She dropped the gun, pulling out the knife, ready to use it if she had to. Jesper had stopped now, reading the landmines sign. He picked his pace back up when another gunshot flew over his head. “Oh, wait for me! Don’t you go without me! Wait!”

Elham turned, pulling herself up onto the train, grabbing Jesper’s arm and pulling him in when he got close enough, falling back into one of the seats. “You’re a fucking idiot.”

The men were still advancing, and Inej began pulling the door shut, checking to make sure everything was secure. Elham had stood now, grabbing the sack off Jesper’s shoulder handing it to Arken.

“Please tell me this is 20 pounds of alabaster coal.”

Jesper turned to them. “Slight snag in the plan. Turns out that the kid who was helping me buy the coal, didn’t exactly know how to, uh, buy coal.”

Kaz nodded, unamused. “We know you gambled it away.”

“I lost a little bit of the money...ok I lost all of the money, but I managed to steal twenty pounds of alabaster coal.”

The Conductor looked over the bag. “No, no, no, there’s sixteen pounds!”

Jesper corrected himself, smoothing down his jacket. “Sixteen pounds, of alabaster coal.”

Kaz looked like he was going to have a heart attack, and Elham was fighting herself to not say I told you so. “Can we do it on sixteen?”

“Never been done before?”

Gunshots hit the side of the train, and Arken moved Jesper, placing him into a seat. “Sit here. Never shift your weight.”

Inej slowly sank into a chair, and Kaz violently pulled off his jacket, before motioning to Elham to sit down. She took a seat next to him, and watched Arken pull up his sleeve, seeing cuts along his wrist, like tally marks. Saints, he had crossed that many times?

Inej, knife drawn, said a quick prayer. Elham took a deep breath, getting ready to think of some funny last words, when an explosion went off, followed by the sound of men screaming.

Kaz’s face grew cold. “I thought you said they weren’t real.”

“I said nothing of the sort. I just said I put the sign up myself.” The Conductor hit a few levers, and the train began moving. Kaz glared, leaning back in his seat, and Elham straightened up next to him, exasperatedly laughing. Could this be going any worse?

---

It had been a few minutes, and the train was barreling down, the Conductor checking his watch. The sound of metal clanging got everyone’s attention, and Jesper uneasily sat up. “What was that?”

“I’ve erected a system of timers along the line. Bits of metal hung on poles to keep me apprised of our pace.”

This piqued Kaz’s interest. “How did you know where to put the poles?”

“Physics and engineering account for most of my success. The rest is what we might call divine intervention, what others might call luck.”

Elham scoffed at that. “If there was any divine intervention, I’d be at the bottom of the harbour right now, Saint’s know I deserve it. But here I am, imminent death looming over me. Sounds like bad luck to me, eh Arken?”

“Well, I don’t know about that. I do know that the Fold is thick with volcra, and the tracks are not complete. Coal, please?”

Jesper perked up at that, eyes widening. “I’m sorry, did you say the tracks weren't complete?”

“I said they aren’t complete. And stop moving.”

Elham turned to Kaz, for the first time in the night, feeling actual fear. If she was going to die back there, a gunshot wound, or landmine, then so be it. It would be kinder than anything Heleen had planned for her. But to be ripped apart by volcra, part of a mass grave in the Fold?

Kaz gave her a look, one that said to calm down, don’t lose it. Arken ignored it, telling him to put in more coal. They were running late.

Jesper fidgeted in his seat, panicking, “I'm sorry, can we get back to the bigger issue? We’re on tracks that don’t connect to other tracks?”

“Yes, there’s a gap, but--”

Kaz had lost all patience. “You said you could get us through.”

Jesper was still panicking, now exasperated. “How much of a gap?”

Arken fidgeted with the levers, pushing buttons, and the car lurched forward. “I built slats on the car. They roll into place under the wheels. The turbine generates enough wind to push us all the way to the eastern track. As long as we don’t shift our weight. Now, the noise may attract volcra, but it’s the only way across. There’s a nest nearby, but we’ll be fine. If they haven’t attacked us in--”

A volcra screech was heard in the distance.

“Well now we’ve got a problem.”

“Of fucking course. Because why would this go well? Why would anything be easy? Can’t have anything nice, can we?”

Kaz looked worried now, but he was probably the most calm of the group. “Elham, shut up, Jesper’s gonna go into cardiac arrest if you say things like that. Arken, how do you fight them off?”

“I outrun them, open the throttle and toss in all the coal, which works when there’s twenty pounds of it!”

Elham sucked in a breath. “Jesper, I love you, but if we make it out of this alive, I’m most definitely going to kill you. Sit still!”

The car was slammed into, and a horrifying screech was heard. A pool of blood began pouring in through one of the cracks in the ceiling. Arken looked out the window. “Damn it! The stupid thing impaled itself on the spike.”

Kaz spoke up. “We need to get it off, the others are going to stand on it!”

“More coal!”

“We’re down to fumes! We’ll never make it with this extra weight.” He tossed the bag into the flames, but it did little to the pace.

Jesper was sitting in his chair, staring off. “This is how we die?”

Arken didn’t even look up. “Jesper, grab the groat.”

“I’m not throwing out the goat!”

“Grab the damn goat! It’s not bait, it’s for you! I need you to calm down, hug the goat. Shut the hell up.”

Jesper picked up the goat and held it tight to his chest, Inej groaning and placing her head in her hands.

Another clang, signalling the pace, went off, and Arken paled. “We should have hit that twenty seconds ago. My timings are precise to get us outside. Even twenty seconds behind means the train stops inside the Fold, and that...that means we die. There’s more coming!”

More volcra stacked up on top of the train car, screeching, and Arken scurried back to his chair. “You may want to make your peace!”

Elham turned to Kaz, who was positively out of plans. Inej was praying, Jesper was clutching tightly to the goat.

This was it.

Kaz met her eyes, desperately trying to come up with something to say, something that would possibly be good enough for his last moments with his Crows, with his Valkyrie, when Jesper stood up, the goat still under his arm.

He had this sense of calm to him, face now determined. He stepped forward, heading to the front of the car, the Crows watching him. He suddenly pulled his pistols from their holsters, twirling them around in his hands, before firing up at the ceiling. Volcra screeched, blood spattered, Arken was cowering in the corner, but Jesper persisted, rotating pistols, firing away.

Their pace increased as more and more volcra fell away from the train car, and Jesper holstered his pistols.

Inej glanced around, who had been still in her seat the entire ride. “Are they all dead?”

There was a moment of silence, before a claw burst in through the ceiling, and a volcra’s head pushed its way in. Arken screamed, but Jesper just raised his pistol, chambering a round, and launched it into the volcra’s head. It screeched, before falling off the train as well.

The Crows sat in their seats, stunned faces, before another metal clang went off, signalling the timer again. Arken checked his watch, and suddenly, the inside of the train car was lit up.

They had made it out.

They skidded to a stop at the edge of the Fold. They slowly stood up, making their way out of the train car. Elham wiped at her face, hopping out, turning to Jesper. “I’ve reconsidered. I’m not going to kill you. But pull some shit like that again, and I swear I’ll--”

“Got it, got it. Won’t happen again, love.”

She scoffed at that, speeding up to catch up with Kaz, who was leading them into the city. She muttered to herself. “Yeah, Jesper, sure. And I’m the Queen of the Barrel.”

Kaz raised a brow, glancing at her next to him, before continuing on.

---

A/N - hi, here's another chapter. please check out the authors note chapter, i will be deleting it before i post the next chapter, but i wanted a little feedback. (if you're reading this on tumblr, i didn't post the authors note on here, i'm basically just asking for opinions, critiques, likes, dislikes, ideas, i just want to writ something you all would enjoy better.) feel free to contact me anytime, and thank you for the support!

[5-seconds-of-bucky]

You Are In Love

A/N: Very much based off the song You Are In Love by Taylor Swift, but I don’t know if this classifies as a song fic?? Anyways, here ya go! (Extra points if you can spot the very vague John Mulaney reference)

Summery: In the end, you’re always glad you married each other

Word count: 2.6k+

Warnings: A touch of angst, mild swearing

“Mind if I steal my wife?” Shawn asked the girls standing around you. 

“Ooh, Y/N, looks like someone likes you,” you maid of honor said in a sing-songy voice. 

“Really? Is he cute?” You all laughed as you excused yourself. 

“Where are we going?” you giggled as he tugged you through the sea of tables. 

He stopped abruptly and you almost crashed into him, placing a hand on his suit clad bicep to steady yourself. “Nowhere in particular,” he said with a smile. 

You eyed him suspiciously and he winked in return, taking your hand off his bicep and kissing it before turning around and tugging you forward again. He didn’t stop until you reached a corner in the gigantic room, pulling you in close and swaying slightly to the faint music. 

“We haven’t really had a moment to ourselves tonight,” he commented as you stood there. 

He wasn’t wrong. You tried to keep the guest list down for the celebration, but that’s a hard task when it comes to a wedding. Everyone wanted to talk to you, and it felt like there was barely any time for you to just be with each other. 

“We have to interact with our guests, my dear,” you said as you looked up at him. “We can’t invite them and then completely ignore them.”

“Well yeah, but it’s our wedding. Emphasis on our.” 

“We have all the time in the world.” 

You smile alone could’ve made him melt on the spot. He’d known for a long time that you were the one, but every time you smiled made him even more positive that statement. 

“That we do, however, we only get one wedding day.” 

It was cliche to say, but everything truly was perfect. From the moment he saw you in the white dress to the moment he pulled you into this dimily light corner away from the rest of the party, everything was pure bliss. 

You shook your head, a genuine smile on your face. “I love you.”

“I love you too.” 

There was silence for a minute; nothing needed to be said. It was you and your husband against the world. 

You were glad you married each other. 

--- 

You yawned as you glanced at the clock. 11:48. You wanted to go to bed so bad, but Shawn made you promise you’d stay up until he got out of the shower. He didn’t tell you why but you assumed he wanted to go out and do something. 

It was one of his favorite things to do while you were with him on tour. He loved his team, but sometimes he wanted to go places without anyone else around. With less people on the streets his fame was irrelevant: he was just some guy walking around with his wife late at night.

Your thoughts were interrupted when Shawn walked out of the bathroom, using a towel to dry his hair. He grinned when he saw you half asleep on the bed, and you couldn’t help but smile back. He silently went to his suitcase and tossed a hoodie to you before grabbing one for himself and tossing his towel in the bathroom. 

“Where are we going?” you asked as you took his hand and he led you out of the room. 

“Don’t know yet,” he shrugged, pressing the button for the elevator. “We’ll know when we see it.” 

You gave him a questioning look. “We’re not going to get lost, are we?” 

“Pssh, I would never get us lost.” 

You rolled your eyes. “Uh huh. What about-” 

The ding of the elevator interrupted you and Shawn dragged you in behind him, pulling you into a bone crushing hug. 

“That’s irrelevant.” 

“But-”

He used a hand to push your face into his chest. “Irrelevant!” 

You sighed and hugged him back, too tired to fight back. 

“I think the first thing we’re going to do is get you some caffeine,” he chuckled, loosening his grip the slightest bit. 

“Good idea.” 

You ended up at some random coffee shop down the road. Part of you desperately wanted to go to sleep, the other part wanted to use the time to have Shawn to yourself; a rare moment these days. 

You took your drinks on the go, walking hand in hand around the quiet streets of the city. Except for the occasional joke about something you saw here and there, few words were exchanged between the two of you. The only light came from the soft glow of the street lamps. It was the perfect night for coffee at midnight. 

“What time is our flight tomorrow?” Shawn asked as he stopped to take a seat on a bench, patting the spot next to him for you to sit. 

“Well, technically it’s today and it’s at 5:30, which is in about four and a half hours.” You sat down next to him. 

“You sound like that really annoying kid at sleepovers. ‘Uh, it’s tomorrow now,” he mocked with a dopey face. 

“Shut up.” You punched him playfully in the arm with a giggle. 

“Good lord, why’d we schedule such an early flight? We really should’ve gone to bed.” 

“Really? I didn’t think of that.” 

“You’re the worst.” The smile on his face said the exact opposite; full of adoration for the girl in front of him. 

“What’cha gonna do about it, huh?” 

“I’m gonna do this.” He leaned in and you assumed he wanted a kiss so you closed your eyes and leaned in as well. Your face scrunched in disgust when you felt him lick your cheek. 

“Shawn Mendes,” you sighed, slowly bringing a hand up to wipe your cheek. 

“Yeah?” he asked with a giggle.

You glared at him. “You are absolutely disgusting.” 

“Oh yeah? What’cha gonna do about it?” 

“Nothing because I’m a civilized person.” 

He rolled his eyes playfully. “I’m sorry, your majesty.” 

You nudged him with your shoulder as you laughed. “I love you.” 

“I love you too,” he yawned, stretching his arms up before placing one around your shoulders. 

“That was not smooth at all.”

“Really? I think it was pretty smooth.” 

“We’re married and you have to do the yawn arm stretch to put your arm around me?” 

“No.” He rested his head on your shoulders. “I thought it would be cute.” 

“You’re a dork.” 

He was a dork, but you were glad you married him. 

---

“I got the letter.” You rubbed the piece of paper between your fingers. You had read it at least four times that day and you wanted to read it a fifth, but Shawn called and you couldn’t pass up a chance to actually talk to him. 

“Did you like it?” he asked shyly.

“Of course I liked it, silly!” 

He let out a sigh of relief. He wasn’t even sure why he’d been so nervous about you receiving it in the first place.  

“I miss you.” 

“I miss you too,” he said, flopping down on the bed of the hotel room he was staying in for the night. “However, I must say that I do not miss your cold-ass hands on me.” 

“Liar,” you accused, fake offense in your voice. “You wish these cold-ass hands were on you right now.” 

“That’s debatable.” 

“Okay then. Well, how's the whole international pop-star thing going?” 

“Oh, you know. Just the usual.” 

“Absolutely satisfactory,” you said at the same time. It was a running joke and you weren’t entirely sure where it began. Just one of the many things that made being apart the tiniest bit better. 

You gazed longingly at a picture of the two of you on your honeymoon on your nightstand. “I want to use these cold-ass hands to give you a hug.” 

“I wish they could.”

“Aha! So you do miss these cold-ass hands!” 

“What, no? That’s not what I said.” 

He could be a liar about missing your cold-ass hands, but you were glad you married him. 

---

You could’ve stayed outside all night. It was the perfect temperature, and the only light came from the moon and a kitchen light you left on for when you decided to go back in. 

You were laying on top of Shawn, head in the crook of his neck and hand over his heart. He had a foot on the ground, using it to rock the two of you back and forth in the hammock. 

He had been rambling for a while now, failing to notice how your breathing was slowing down, eyes closed as you stopped trying to fight the exhaustion from the day. 

“I don’t know. What do you think?” he asked.You didn’t answer and he laughed when he looked down and saw you far away in dream land. 

“Hmm, wha’d you say?” You asked, lifting your head up slightly, bumping him in the jaw. 

“Nothing. Go to sleep, it’s late,” he chuckled, slipping the hand that was resting on your back under your shirt and rubbing circles into your side. 

“No, keep talking. I’m just resting my eyes.” You pressed a soft kiss to his jaw. 

“Mmhm. Get some rest, Y/N.” 

You snuggled into his chest, breathing in the faint scent of cologne and laundry detergent. He buried his face in your hair, closing his eyes and allowing himself to be in the moment. It was rare you got a quiet moment like this; just the two of you at home. 

He was glad he married you. 

--- 

“I just feel like you’re never home.” 

“Shawn, what are you talking about?” you sighed. “I’m home all the time.” 

“I haven’t properly seen you in three weeks. Three weeks, Y/N,” Shawn huffed. “This is the first time we’ve had dinner together in three weeks.” 

“That’s not my fault, Shawn.” 

“I came home early multiple times last week and you weren’t here. You were home at 9:30 every day last week. You’re only supposed to work until seven.” His eyes were cold and his movements rigid. Anyone could tell he was mad, but you knew better. Insecurity was creeping in. This wasn’t a fight you should be fighting, but you were going to anyways. 

“I can’t control my workload. If I don’t get stuff done in time, I get fired. Time isn’t subjective. Deadlines exist.” 

“You couldn’t come home on time just one time? One time, Y/N. That’s all I asked.” 

“What, so I could stay until 11:30 the next day? I love you, Shawn, but I can’t do that to myself.” You were already so sick of the fight. The night had started out nice. You had dinner together for the first time in a while but Shawn grumbled about how you were never home under his breath and it only escalated from there. 

“All I’m asking for is a little effort on your end.” There were a lot of things he could’ve said right then, but that was the one he had to go for.

“You really think I don’t care about this relationship?” 

“That’s not what I-”

“I married you, Shawn. I’ve put up with the touring for months on end, the long nights at the studio, the PR stunts, everything. I clean the house, cook dinner for when you get home, leave you notes in the morning because I care; because I love you.” 

Shawn zoned out, your rant becoming a background noise in his brain. He wanted to take the words back the moment he said them. He knew it wasn’t true, life was just frustrating when you didn’t see your wife for weeks on end.  

“I think I’ve put in plenty of effort.” You took a step towards him, but it did little to close the huge space between you. “I’m sorry that my job keeps me over every once and awhile, but I put every ounce of myself into this relationship. You should know that better than anyone.”   

He stared at you, trying to come up with the right words; words that could just fix everything so you could have just one nice night together for once. 

“Are you going to say anything?” you asked, arms crossed and hurt evident in your voice. 

“I didn’t mean it like that.” He ran a hand through his hair, voice having the slightest tone of accusation. He couldn’t think of anything else to say. His eyes were sincere, you could tell, but his lack of words said much more. 

“Okay then,” you said quietly, biting your lip. “When you figure out what to say, let me know.” 

“Okay.” His voice was barely audible, but it spoke volumes. You turned on your heel and walked to the guest bedroom, closing the door softly behind you. Angry as you were, slamming doors wasn’t going to help anything. 

He sighed as you disappeared. You always seemed to be the more rational of the two of you and he never understood how you could deescalate yourself so quickly. 

You could be mad at him all you wanted, as the end of the day, he was still glad he married you. 

---

“Don’t freak out.” 

“Telling me not to freak out is going to make me freak out more.” You were standing in the hallway of your office building, staring at the ceiling and tapping your foot as you waited for Shawn to tell you why he called you so abdamentelly in the middle of the workday. 

“So I’m kinda on my way to the hospital.” 

“Oh my gosh, Shawn, what happened?” Your mind raced with every worst case scenario. The fact that he was calling you should have been some indication that he wasn’t dying, but that did little to ease your worries. 

“I was messing around with Brain and I might’ve maybe twisted my ankle really bad and it swelled up a lot so we’re just going to get it checked out.” 

You breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank the lord.” 

“Why do you sound so happy?”

“You never call me during work. I assumed you were dead or dying.” 

“That’s a little unreasonable.” 

“Shawn!” 

“Sorry.”

“How bad does it hurt?” 

“Like a . . . a six I guess?” 

Is six enough to warrant surgery? 

“I’m not going to be able to get out before my shift ends,” you sighed, leaning your head against the wall as you looked at your watch. “Let me know if you get out before I go home. I’m really sorry, babe.” 

“Hakuna matata. I’ll see you soon.”

“Love you.” 

“Love you too.” 

He was probably the clumsiest person around, but you were still glad you married him. 

---

The remains of Chinese takeout was scattered on the table, long forgotten as you lost yourselves in each other. 

“No, but do you remember when you literally dragged me out at three in the morning and then got us lost so Andrew had to track us down and nearly killed us?” You asked, looking up from where you were laying across his lap.

“That is not what happened. First of all-”

“That is so what happened!” You sat up to give him that ‘you’re insane’ look.  

“You’re crazy, woman.”  

“That’s a strange way to address your wife.” 

“I am a bit of a strange guy.” 

“That’s an understatement.”

“Hey!” He pushed you off of him with a playful smile. “That’s a mean thing to say about your husband.” 

“I am a bit of a mean wife.” 

“That’s an overstatement. I mean, we’ve made it to one year of marriage and I haven’t considered divorce yet. That’s gotta work for something.” 

“Fair enough.” 

“I’m glad I married you, Y/N. Happy anniversary” 

“Happy anniversary, babe. I’m glad I married you too.” 

And it was true. At the end of every day, you were glad you married each other because there could never be anyone better. 

Taglist // add yourself

@fallinallincurls @lonelyreputation @musicalkeys

[razorblade180]

Interdimensional Moms: part 1

Intro <-

Yang:So how we doin this? Drawing straws or... well we actually don’t have straws here so-

Weiss:It’s obvious that you wanna go first.

Blake:Extremely obvious.

Ruby:All over your face.

Yang:Hey now, don’t call me out like that! We all have so much to sort out here. I don’t even know where to begin. Differences could start and stop anywhere for all we really know.

Blake:From what it seems, Beacon itself would have one or two minor changes, but the real changes start after the fall. At least, for you three that is.

Weiss:You saying you’re different?

Blake:Unless you three started going on dates with Jaune at Beacon, then yes, I’m different.

RWY:(They’ve been together that long!?)

Yang:Okay, starting from Beacon...nothing really stands out too much. Jaune and I were just friends. *cringes* Back then, a certain faunus caught my eye.

Blake:Ah...right. I guess that tracks in practically every universe.

RW:Oh yeah it does. You two are joined at the hip.

Yang:Haha, really? Glad to hear it. My Blake and I are best buds! Remnant has never seen such a dynamic duo! Can’t say it didn’t take a lot of time effort after a rough patch. We actually dated in my world.

Blake:Same.

Yang:What!? How long?

Blake:I don’t know, it was pretty on again off again.

Yang:Well for me it was after Haven. Both of us had gotten pretty serious. All the growing we’ve done together and apart had brought us closer. However, Adam unintentionally put a wedge between us. His attempt to change and the problems that came with it were-

Yang stopped midway and saw the confused faces of her otherworldly teammates. They were shocked, confused even. Especially Blake, who looked the most shocked of all.

Yang:Umm did I say something odd?

Blake:Adam, he...isn’t dead?

Yang:Oh, well I guess that’s the start of the major changes then. Blake and I fought Adam at Argus. Stabbed him through the chest and watched him fall down rocks into a river.

Ruby:That lines you with my world. Dude died that day. Like any normal person should.

Yang:Well Adam is anything but fucking normal. Man has the craziest luck. A young women, the winter maiden in fact, she saved his life. She’s not exactly normal either. The maiden, Jacquelyn, ended up sticking by him to see if she could change his ways. This naturally meant we’d run into them again. And that’s how things fell apart.

Blake:What do you mean?

Yang:You were fully committed to seeing if Adam could actually change. I wasn’t, so we constantly butted heads in any situation involving him. Then we would fight about things that had nothing to do with at all. Eventually, we broke it off. We remained on decent terms but I was pretty heartbroken about the disconnect. Enter our lovable blonde idiot. Jaune did everything in his power to cheer me up.

Weiss:Sounds like him. Always such a bleeding heart. That boy just can’t help himself. Let me guess, his kindness and concern made you feel all warm and fuzzy?

Yang:Hehe, guilty. It was more of his willingness to laugh at my puns. Jaune’s always been interesting to talk to. He tries to act cool and calm even though he’s terrible at it, then comes clean right after. Before I knew it I was telling him things I hadn’t talked about with people before. I could tell he looked at me like most guys do, but also genuinely wanted to listen to me. Talk about playing unfair; he got defenseless. Suddenly I was smiling again. Anytime with him was time well spent. Then one day, I kissed him.

Ruby:Happily ever after?

Yang:Not even close! Hahaha!

Weiss:Why do you sound proud?

Yang:It’s funny looking back at it to a certain degree. Gods, I was such a brat. More than a few fights are on me. Between Blake, Raven, and other experiences, my insecurities flared up in ugly ways over nothing. It even got us to break up too. I was officially done with dating. My Ruby was out in an uncomfortable position.

Ruby:I bet! I’d never want you two fighting. Especially in my world. Picking between the person I love and my sister!? I don’t know what will happen.

Yang:I kinda do. *sets up* You’d start dating Jaune because you’ve looked at him since Beacon. The two of you would confide in each other and share a special kind of love, but it would be bittersweet. All because your sister still pines for him and never met to make him leave, and Jaune never says it, but he hates how things fell apart. He’s faithful to you and would never do you wrong, a guy to truly cherish. So... you let him go. Watch him walk back to your sister like you asked, because my happiness was worth that much to you.

Ruby:....

Yang: In my world at least. Honestly it’s still the most amazing thing I’ve seen you do. We must’ve cried over that conversation for hours. I felt so guilty and you only smiled, hugging me tight. Jaune and I had a few more stumbles. Nothing serious though. Eventually we moved in together when the world was saved. You and Oscar got together officially which made me happy. Even made our weddings a competition of who’d make dad bawl his eyes out the most. You won by the way; Raven came back into our family and into dad’s arms. Last but not least I had a baby. Yujin Xiao Long, my fucking pride and joy from above.

Weiss:Wow, that’s a lot.

Blake:What am I doing? Did I marry Sun?

Yang:Yep. You and blondes Blake, I tell ya.

Weiss:Hold the phone! Who am I with!?

Yang:Pretty sure you’re technically single. Buuuut, Neo and your have gotten pretty friendly from what I managed to interrogate out of you.

Weiss:That’s, highly unexpected. For a number of reasons.

Yang:Better believe it. Besides Cinder, a few crazies, and Salem, a few people made something of themselves. Dying sucks after all.

Ruby:You have a dead Cinder?

WBY: You don’t?

Ruby:*crosses arms* Hmph, I’ll wait my turn. Yang, you said you’re the only mother from our team. If Blake and I have been married for quite some time then what, we don’t want kids?

The joyful sunshine from Yang slipped into grayer skies. Her smile faded and it increasingly got harder to look at this Ruby without thinking of her own.

Yang:Are you sure that’s something you wanna know? I’ll tell you, but I didn’t want to bring down the mood with the problems where I from.

Blake:Problems? How big of a problem.

Yang:The biggest we’ve faced. It’s...a lot.

Ruby:Well we’ve listened this far. *takes hand* Lay it on us.

Yang:Pfft, oh boy. So...umm...another secret war came up. One that caused us to leave our friends and family for over a decade.

Weiss:A decade!?

Blake:What gets worse after Salem!? Who tries anything after a grimm queen!?

Yang:So a majority of Remnant was still unaware of her, but a fight like that can only be kept under wraps so tightly. Plenty of people still learned fractions of the truth. A few of those people weren’t exactly nice guys. They idolized her efforts and became her followers that wanted to keep her will alive, starting with taking revenge on the people who defeated her. We were so unaware. So caught up in normalcy. They ambushed us, and I mean everyone. We...we didn’t come out unscathed. Ren was crippled badly. Weiss, you almost your brother. Jaune’s family got hit but thankfully lived. The real casualties were aimed to hurt Ruby.

Ruby:Oh, of course. S-So, either you’re about to say I had no time to start a family, or...

Yang:...

Yang:When I tell you the look you made when you learned what happened to Oscar, to Qrow... that’s the moment it felt like my little sister left forever. Till this day you don’t smile like you used to. Very recently, now that it’s finally over, you’ve started looking better, but those ten years were hell. We choose to go out and fight again, avoiding contact with family. I haven’t had a real opportunity to be in my daughters life.

Ruby:How old is she?

Yang:Sixteen soon. Left her when she was four so you know. *tearing up* I missed everything. Just about anyways. Ironically it was Raven and Adam that helped her through the years with Jaune and Dad. Eventually we came back and ooohh boy was Yujin not thrilled in the slightest. Hehehe. Her right hook is really strong. I only had about a week with her before things got complicated again. *wipes eyes* But it’s okay. We left on good term. Something I definitely don’t feel like I deserve.

Blake:I can’t believe a thing like that would be possible.

Yang:Cults are a huge problem in Remnant now. You’re definitely aware of that. You actually oversee a little group from the shadows to deal with them in secret. An idea you got from experience. Adam works for you and everything. Hate to admit, but he’s become the guy you wanted him to be. Even has a family. I’m grateful to him. He personally kept my girl safe.

Blake:To think I’d hear you say that. Now I know this isn’t my world.

Yang:Don’t get me wrong, I still will hit him if given the chance. My life hasn’t been charmed and sacrifices too great were happening way too many times but it finally has gotten to a point where everyone feels like we’re taking steps towards a better future.

Weiss:Moving forward?

Yang:Yes, I was trying to avoid the phrase but yes Weiss, we’re moving forward. Still... *looks at Ruby*....

Ruby:W-What?

Yang:It’s unreal seeing you like this. My Ruby has become so strong and endured but hasn’t really picked herself up completely. All her tragedy stemmed from the loss of Oscar and Qrow; her last talk with Oscar was fight about kids too. That’s the entire reason she went off alone in the first place. Looking at you I can’t help but question my own choices. If...I just let her stay with Jaune, then maybe-

Ruby:Nope.

Yang:Huh?

Ruby:Look, if I know anything about your world, then it’s gonna be me and I can tell you without a doubt your Ruby doesn’t blame or would consider her own happiness without you. She loved you enough to take the chance to find love again. You really think there’s anything you could’ve done differently at that point. That girl is as stubborn as they come! *smiles* So buck up cowgirl. You deserve it.

A sense of warmth came over Yang as she heard those words. This other Ruby smiled at her with the same love as her own; completely caring about Yang’s feeling before her own. Yang felt so...unburdened. She couldn’t help but cry a little, laughing softly as she did. Who would’ve thought love could transcend worlds? It was so vindicating, therapeutic even.

Yang:Ruby, you’re something else entirely, you know that?

Ruby:It’s my curse. All I ever wanted was normal knees but the world said “no, special eyes!”

Yang:Well I guess I should thank the world then?

Weiss:You said your Ruby is getting better? That’s good. Still, it must be pretty weird looking at Jaune. Can’t imagine how lonely it must feel losing a love twice.

Blake:It never numbs.

Yang:Geez you two, lighten up. We can’t all be depressed. Ruby also didn’t lose Jaune. Actually....there may or may not have been an interesting...arrangement for a brief period of time.

Ruby:Ehhh what?

Yang:Hehehe well, hahaha, ummmm a decade is a very long time without feeling any kind of pleasure in a bleak situation. And you know me, I have to share things with you all my life.

Ruby:OH MY GOD!!!

Blake:*grinning* Yooooo! You loaned out Jaune!?

Weiss:That’s....accurate; in a lot of ways.

Ruby:That’s so scandalous! How could you!?

Yang:I didn’t force it! I gave the option, you said no, then you changed your mind because things got real stressful. Like come on, a decade of death and loneliness.

Ruby:Sigh...yeah. I can see it. Still, it’s so filthy. He’s a married man. What, so I’d just look at you and say “Yang I’m gonna sleep with Jaune, don’t come in the room.”

Yang:....

Ruby:What?

Yang:....Nothing.

Ruby:Bullshit! What is it!?

Yang:*scratches head* Well, I was lonely too, and a week is only so long-

Weiss:Oh so it was a group thing!!?

Ruby:WHAT!?

Yang:Only sometimes!

Ruby:SOMETIMES!?

Blake:HAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! THAT IS AMAZING!

Ruby:Why are you laughing!?

Blake:Because that’s just so extreme, and not, all at the same time. I could totally see that happening.

Weiss:Same. Dang, Jaune slept with sisters. That’s dangerously close to being like your dad.

Ruby:That’s different!

Blake:Is it though?

Yang:Eh, I don’t see the problem. We’re all grown and make choices. Plus I’m the one who guided you through awkward teenage changes. It not like we didn’t share a room for years.

Ruby:That doesn’t make it okay.

Yang:Eh debatable.

Ruby:*red* It isn’t though! How could I do something so bold!? So taboo!?

Weiss:It isn’t like you’re the one who did it. Just a version of you.

Ruby:Not better!

Yang:Awwww it’s okay Ruby. Let’s hug it out. Hehehe *opens arms*

Ruby:Don’t touch me!

Weiss and Blake laugh until their sides hurt as Ruby tries escaping the bear hug that terrorized her. Yang’s world found interesting for sure. Weiss finally decides to help Ruby out.

Weiss:Got a picture of Yujin?

Yang’s eyes lit up and pulled out her scroll. Her team huddled around her and collectively cooed like that parents they are at the sight of a blonde young girl with gorgeous blue eyes with a black combat school graduation cap and gown and a certificate proudly raised up high. If it wasn’t for those eyes and shoulders length hair, they might’ve mistaken her for Yang.

Yang:She’s going to Beacon early because she’s fucking awesome like her mom.

Ruby:I think you mean her aunt?

Yang:I know what I said.

Weiss:I bet she’s just as hardheaded.

Blake:What do you think your kid is up to right now?

Yang: Well...*smiles*

xxxx

The girl in question sat at a work bench with oil on her face and her hands busy tinkering with gauntlets. She looked over at blueprints in a journal. If they were right, then she was definitely doing something wrong. How her mother made something so complex was crazy!

Yujin:Come on Yujin. You can fix a car, making gauntlets into a sword that don’t break should be easy!

Footsteps came up from behind her and a plate stacked with sandwiches. She looked up and smiled at her dad that gave her a wink, then kissed her forehead.

Jaune:Haveing fun, you grease monkey.

Yujin:Jokes on you, I like monkeys. Just a few more attempts and I’ll have the coolest weapon in Remnant. That entrance exam is as good as aced.

Jaune:Not if you don’t have a landing strategy. Tomorrow we’re going on a trip.

Yujin:Does it happen to be near a cliff?

Jaune:Who can say? Rule one of being a huntsman, be prepared for everything.

He ruffled her hair and left, laughing evilly. Yujin could tell he’s been waiting for this day. She pulled out her scroll and searched through a collection of videos labeled “mom” and found a super early one. She hit play and watched her mother give a peace sign to the camera as trees increasingly got closer from below.

Yang:Beacon rules!!!! Wooohooo!

The camera flipped and focused on a familiar blonde flailing through the air like a doll in the distance.

Yang:Oof, hate to be that guy! Wait, that’s vomit boy! Hahah, hope he survives. He owes me shoes. Poor dude. I guess he needs more training in flirting and landing. Wait, eugh I think he barfed again! Hahaha!

Jaune:Stop watching that one!!!!

Yujin:Hahaha but it’s the best one. The ending is priceless.

Jaune: *walks back down*

Yang:Well if he survives this I guess I can off him at least I can offer him mints and company. Fake it to ya make Jaune. Between me and Ruby, at least you’ll look like a player. Heh, nah, I don’t think I can support a bunny onesie.

Yujin and Jaune:*grinning* And then she did! *high-fives* Arc charm, baby!

[starlocked01]

Look Alive, Sunshine

AO3 Link

Dukexiety Week Day 7- Music WC: 1.8K Summary: Remus picks Virgil up from his dorm in the middle of the night to combat an old fear. Content Warning: Swearing, Panicking, references to past suicidal thoughts

@dukexietyweek

A/N: This is actually in the same universe as When Can I See You Again? which is the first dukexiety story I wrote featuring Soul mark timers, lots of miscommunication and drama, and fun. And fight club. If you've liked this week's oneshots, maybe give WCISYA? a try ^_^ Thank you everyone for reading along and sharing this week <3

Despite Remus' progress with Dr. B. and despite over a thousand nights with no incidents, Virgil still could not shake his fear of the Xs. He hadn’t seen them in years, but some nights Virgil stayed up to watch his soul mark countdown the seconds until Remus could reassure him he'd lost sleep for no reason.

Most of the nights when he stayed up watching with growing anxiety, Virgil didn't even try to text Remus. His boyfriend needed the sleep and would just worry when he woke up until Virgil finally rolled out of bed and answered his reassurances. Tonight was too much. Tonight, not even the steady passage of time promising he'd see his soulmate the next day was enough to allay thoughts of horrific unforeseen accidents.

Tonight Virgil texted his soulmate at quarter to two am and watched as the numbers changed without warning.

00:05:17

Five minutes. Virgil gulped and couldn't help but feel like he'd fucked up. He glanced at his phone several times, bewildered by the lack of an answering text, but mostly watched his wrist counting down.

At about the two-minute mark he finally realized he should probably get dressed and grabbed a pair of skinny jeans to struggle into. He struck his foot on the corner of the bed and bit his lip hard to avoid waking up his roommate. Virgil quickly shrugged on his hoodie and shoes before checking his wrist again.

00:00:10

He laughed to himself at the near deja vu feeling, walking over to the window to watch for Remus’ car in the parking lot.

To his surprise, there was a knock at the dorm door instead. Virgil jumped and rushed over to the door, cracking it open just in time to glimpse his soulmate grinning out in the hallway.

"Remus! What are you doing here?" Virgil asked in a hissing whisper, sliding out into the hallway and shutting the door as quietly as possible, "do you know what time it is?"

"Uh yeah, babe. 2 am. You're the one who sent a distress signal, what was I supposed to do?" Remus answered at his normal, too-loud volume, wrapping Virgil in a tight hug before the smaller man could answer or object.

"You coulda just told me you were alright," Virgil grumbled, hugging his soulmate back tighter anyway, "do I want to know how you got in?"

"The desk worker recognized me and let me in. Don't worry, I would only break in if mildly inconvenienced," Remus grinned, starting to pull Virgil with him down the hall, "so why are you up so late? You weren't waiting for me to croak, were you?"

Virgil started to respond but stopped before he got a syllable out. That was what he was technically doing, even if he dreaded that very thing more than anything. "I- don't make it sound like I would ever want that! I just… got worried."

Remus tugged Virgil closer to his side, "I'm okay. And I'm not going anywhere, worrywart." He waved briefly at the night guard and ushered Virgil outside, "c'mon. We're gonna fix this."

"How? You're okay tonight but what about tomorrow? How do I know you're going to be okay every night? What if-" Virgil gulped, not wanting to vocalize his worst fear.

Remus stopped just outside the door and turned to Virgil, "come on, Virgie. I always call when it's a bad day. And I haven't had one in a while."

"Yeah, but what if-"

"If I had a bad day, I'd call. C'mon. We've gotta get your mind off this," Remus murmured, pulling Virgil towards his car.

Virgil huffed but followed Remus easily enough, sliding into the passenger's seat as Remus scanned through a pile of CD cases.

“Oh my god, you still have those?” Virgil asked, a bit surprised to see his old emo collection.

“Of course I do. One of the best your-birthday presents I’ve ever gotten,” Remus giggled and picked the album he’d been looking for, “I get that you get scared. When I die you can listen to The Black Parade and mourn me, but tonight we are gonna Look Alive, Sunshine.” Remus started the car and fed the CD to the center console before backing out of the spot and zooming out of the parking lot.

Virgil hummed happily, giggling as Remus recited the initial traffic report along with Dr. Death-Defying, “I love Danger Days. Remember how you convinced the DJ at Prom to play this song?”

“How could I not? He only did it because of your pouty little baby face back then,” Remus teased, earning himself a smack on the shoulder, “what? He certainly wasn’t doing me any favors.”

“You’re an ass,” Virgil chuckled.

“I’m your ass,” Remus corrected him, headbanging along as he drove.

“So where are we headed, ass of mine?” Virgil asked just over the music, watching as streetlights and neon signs advertising closed stores flashed by.

“Nowhere special,” Remus replied carefully, pretty quickly turning into an empty parking lot and pulling into a space as far from any lights as he can.

“Yeah.. not kidding about that... Is this a bookstore?”

“Bookstore parking lot.”

“Okay, why a bookstore parking lot?”

Remus didn’t answer, just unbuckled and tried to squeeze between the front seats of the car to the back. Virgil watched in amusement until Remus managed to push himself through and got settled in the back.

“C’mon. You do this for me all the time, now it’s your turn.”

Virgil laughed and turned the key to the battery-only position in the ignition and locked the car doors before following Remus, sliding back to the back seat a touch more nimbly. He settled into Remus’ lap and pressed a soft kiss to his cheek.

“Thank you,” he murmured, settling in as Remus wrapped his arms around him and started singing along with the music.

“If that's the best that I could be? Then I'd be another memory. Can I be the only hope for you? Because you're the only hope for me,” Remus sang softly to Virgil, running fingers through his hair.

Virgil sniffed and sang the rest of the verse, “And if we can't find where we belong we'll have to make it on our own. Face all the pain and take it on because the only hope for me is you alone,” he tried to relax and let Remus’ presence reassure him that neither of them was going anywhere without the other, “is it weird to say I wish you were around more often?”

Remus stopped humming along with the music to hug Virgil tighter, “not weird at all, V. You’ll graduate soon and we can move in together. Then you’ll really be sick of me.” he smiled and kissed Virgil’s hair, “we’re so close to forever, love.”

Virgil sighed and began to sing along again a few songs later, “we can leave this world, leave it all behind. We can steal this car if your folks don't mind. We can live forever if you've got the time,” he buried his face in Remus’ chest, almost wishing they could just start driving tonight and never looking back.

“My pretty little heart attack in black hair dye,” Remus giggled, “you gotta finish school first so I can just kick Roman and Remy out.”

Virgil laughed at that, “as if you’d ever kick your brother out.”

“Easier done than said. I’ve lived with that asshole for far too long already,” Remus replied pointedly, “you know, we can work out transportation if you would perhaps consider moving off campus next semester.”

Virgil sat there silent in consideration. The only thing really stopping him from agreeing was the wall of anxieties over moving in with his boyfriend and living off-campus and paying rent and having to find a job in between homework and classes. It was a lot to figure out, not even considering the implications of actually moving in with his boyfriend. What if Remus did something crazy like suggesting they get married? What if everything changed and he didn’t like it or get used to it? What if nothing changed and he still woke up at 2 in the morning from dreams of Xs despite falling asleep in Remus’ arms? What if-

“Virgil- where’s your head, Stormcloud?” Virgil’s thoughts were interrupted by the question and a soft steady tapping on the back of his neck.

Virgil sighed and shook his head, “sorry. It got away from me. I kinda want this moment to last forever. It’s safe and predictable.”

“An abandoned parking lot is not life, sweetheart. Trust me, I love how safe this is. I love holding you and knowing nothing can happen to you while we’re here. But life doesn’t happen in safety. We can face it together, we always will. But we do have to go out and face it eventually,” Remus spoke softly, letting his voice mingle with the music.

“You’re here now. You’re here and real and not going anywhere. That should be enough. Why isn’t it enough?” Virgil asked in a small voice.

“Because you care. Your love isn’t limited to this moment,” Remus laughed softly, “your love has saved me before, so don’t you dare try to limit it now.”

“I- oh wow, Rem, I am so sorry,” Virgil caught himself and sighed, “I think I get it now.”

“Oh? Figure something out?” Remus asked quietly, continuing to tap on Virgil to the beat.

“I haven’t been trusting your love. I’m an asshole,” Virgil shook his head, “ of course I won’t wake up and find Xs. You love me. I’m so dumb for not trusting that because of course you’re not going anywhere.”

Remus chuckled, “now you’re getting it, V. I know you can’t help worrying, but you’ll at least let me prove it when the worries get too much?”

Virgil sat up carefully, “I didn’t want to bother you with it before. Goodness knows we both need the sleep, but I think next time, I’ll just reach out like tonight.”

Remus smiled and pulled Virgil back down, “you said it yourself. We need sleep. So sleep, mister. We’re not going anywhere until morning.”

Virgil laughed and feebly tried to push away, “nooo not in the car! At least let's go find a bed.”

“Aww but that’s no fun… unless..”

“Sleep. It’s nearly 3 am. We are gonna find a bed, either mine or yours, and go to sleep.”

“Boo,” Remus pouted but reached to unlock the car, not trusting his ability to climb back upfront.

“Love you too, boo,” Virgil grinned and leaned down to kiss Remus properly, quickly getting lost in the contact. Remus pulled him close, willing to spend the rest of the night that way until the second to last track of the album began and his speakers started blaring a distorted version of the American anthem. They broke apart, laughing together at the awkward background music. Then they managed to kiss the whole way through Vampire Money before climbing out of the back seat and back upfront.

“Alright. Let’s go home. Maybe I can convince you to make it home better from there,” Remus grinned and started up the car again, driving off towards the apartment as the CD restarted the album from the beginning.

[whats-rambled-rambled]

Smoke & Mirrors - part 5

Neil x Reader

Chapter 5: Blue blood

(see chapter 4, 3, 2, 1)

summary: everything should be easier from now on, right?

warnings:  language, alcohol mention, 18+

author’s note: I know part 5 was supposed to be a finale. 

It’s not.

This is just where the story took me, and I think splitting it this way is going to pay out in the end.

song for this chapter: Laurel - Blue Blood

Anyway, enjoy! And let me know what you think, please?

-----

You stared at your boss, trying to wrap your mind around everything you’d just heard.

“Does that technically make me--?

“An assistant squad leader, yes,” said The Protagonist. “At least for the time being.“

He didn’t need to say anything else - you were well aware he meant it could go both ways from now on.

You nodded, glancing to your left at Neil.

“As long as it’s not an assistant to the squad leader...” you said and shrugged, trying to keep a straight face while Neil snorted loudly at your comment. You exchanged quick looks and you finally allowed a small smile to appear on your lips. It felt good to catch him off guard for once, and him getting a reference was a nice surprise as well.

“What’s so funny?” the boss asked, eyeing you warily.

Just as you opened your mouth to apologize, Neil collected himself enough to let out a long musing sigh.

“Ah, one could dream.”

You let out an exasperated huff and kicked him in the ankle, stifling a giggle. Fucking hell, you didn’t know what had gotten into you. Or him, for that matter, almost choking with laughter at your reaction.

TP must have been thinking the same because his eyes darted between both of you from under a raised brow. He cleared his throat.

“Are you two done?” he asked, and something in his tone made you straighten in your seats instantly as if you were two misbehaving kids in the principal’s office. “I need the first drafts from you by tomorrow noon.”

“Of course. Thank you, sir,” you said, internally cursing at yourself for losing your cool.

Your boss shook his head slowly and you could swear his usual polite expression cracked for a split second, revealing a glimpse of a smug smile hiding in a corner of his lips.

“Now go, before I change my mind.”

You grabbed the documents from the desk and mumbled a quick goodbye on your way out.

Neil followed you closely, his sparkling eyes showing no remorse for what had just happened.

“Would be easier if you still despised me, wouldn’t it,” he teased as he closed the door behind you.

You groaned and smacked his arm with the papers.

“What makes you think that I don’t?”

“Oh please,” he let out a throaty chuckle and sent you a roguish smile. The way he seemed to be almost obnoxiously confident in how this combo worked on you drove you mad every time. Not that he was wrong, it simply didn’t help the case he was trying to make. “Meet me at my place later?”

You gaped at him. “Can’t we use the conference room?” you asked and started walking down the empty corridor, hoping that being on the move would help your clearly malfunctioning mind.

Neil matched your pace. “It’s gonna take hours and the chairs there are far from comfortable.”

“Who would’ve thought you have such a sensitive ass,” you snickered and narrowed your eyes. “Admit it, you’re just looking for an excuse to lure me to bed.”

You stopped by the elevators. Neil hummed as he reached out to press a button to call one to your floor.

He leaned your way slightly and lowered his voice. “I think we’ve already established that we don’t really need a bed for that.”

...fair point. 

You swallowed with effort, turning his way. He was looking at you with an amused expression on his face, but you saw the way his gaze darkened under your stare. You could be annoyed with him being inappropriate all you wanted, but you had to admit - it was kind of reassuring how some things stayed the same after the recent events.

“Promise to behave?”

Neil raised a brow and a corner of his lips twitched.

“Only if you do.”

“Deal,” you said and walked into the elevator, nodding in a greeting to a couple of agents inside.

As the door closed with a small hiss, you caught a playful twinkle in the blue eyes.

“And only till we finish preparing that draft.”

His voice could be the prime example of corporate professionalism, and that one out-of-context line was obviously not enough to send an elbow to his ribs without raising suspicious looks from your colleagues.

...but you did it anyway.

---------

The time in Neil’s apartment could be counted by the emptied cups of coffee, the amount of scratched ideas, or the number of times you caught each other glancing at one another. And when you finally got close to cracking the case of planning that temporal pincer movement, it was already late in the evening, and you were glad you’d spent the last couple of hours on a comfy sofa instead of one of those god awful chairs in the conference room.

Neil kept his promise and was surprisingly easy to work with. His take on things, not yet tainted by years in the field, provided many fresh ideas, while your experience allowed you to catch and assess any potential risks on the fly. The way he paid attention to your words and cared about your feedback made you feel heard and appreciated, and that was something you weren’t quite used to. You didn’t have too much time to muse over it though, because there were still some parts of the plan you had to go through and the exhaustion was slowly catching up to you, making you less and less productive with every passing minute.

You crumbled a piece of paper in your fist and groaned, tossing it on top of a small pile of paper balls on the floor. As you moved your hand to your face to pinch the bridge of your nose, you noticed red and blue smudges from permanent markers covering your palm. Fucking hell. Choosing to rest your forehead on your knuckles instead, you closed your eyes and exhaled slowly, gathering your thoughts. You heard Neil standing up and moving to the kitchen. Seems like he needed a break as well.

A moment of silence was abruptly interrupted by the clanking of glassware. You raised your head and stretched your arms, only then realizing how stiff you felt after so many hours curled in one spot. Just as you got up, Neil came back with two glasses of what seemed to be a whiskey.

“Drinks?” you asked, puzzled. Anything with caffeine would be more fitting with your current state, especially since you were not done with the work yet.

Neil smiled as he handed you the glass.

“Thought we could take five minutes off to celebrate.” Seeing your perplexed face, he beamed a bit wider. “...your promotion?”

You laughed at your own confusion. Right. Shrugging lightly, you stirred your glass.

“Oh, it only means I got stuck with you, and I don’t know if it’s a thing to celebrate,” you said, holding back a mischievous grin.

Neil rolled his eyes and let out an amused sigh. “Drown your sorrows then.”

“That I can do,” you arched a brow and chuckled. “Cheers!”

The glasses clinked and you met Neil’s glance with something new shining from under the usual playfulness. He noticed the curiosity in your stare and smirked as he took a sip of his drink, sitting down on a sofa.

“You know what else we could use those five minutes for?” he asked casually, leaning back on the pillows with a roguish smile you knew too well.

You looked him up and down slowly, hoping the whiskey would help with the sudden dryness inside your mouth. That slightly unbuttoned navy shirt with rolled-up sleeves and the way he spread his legs made you weak. You mustered all the self control your tired brain could scramble before speaking again, the lit-up eyes being any indication of the effect he had on you.

“It’s closer to four now, I’m afraid.”

Neil put down his glass on a coffee table and knitted his brows together, pretending to run a short calculation in his mind.

“Ample.”

You downed your drink and teased, “Is it now?” as you placed the empty glass next to his.

“We’ll figure something out,” he said and reached out for your hand, pulling you to him before you could say anything else. As you fell on him with a quiet yelp, Neil wrapped one arm around your waist, securing you on his lap.

A faint protest about the draft not being finished got stuck in your throat. Captivated by the look in his eyes, it dawned on you that it was the first time you were so close, now without the rage boiling in your veins, without the danger of someone walking in on you; just you and him, focused on each other, too awestruck to make the next move.

You brushed a wild strand from his forehead and your fingers traveled further through his hair. Neil’s forehead creased, his jaw went slack and he searched your gaze, trying to figure out your intentions. As your eyes wandered around his features, your fingertips followed them unhurriedly. Grazing lightly against the eyebrows, gliding over the cheekbones, trailing along the sharp jawline till his breath hitched and his lips parted ever so slightly. You noticed how longing his stare became and you smiled softly. Was he always so gorgeous?

Leaning in and cupping his face in your hands, you could feel him tense for a split second, but as soon as you pressed your forehead to his, the arm wrapped around your waist pulled you closer to him and Neil exhaled slowly. He lifted his hand from your lap and his long fingers combed your hair and slid down, rubbing your neck gently.

You closed your eyes and let out a small sigh, relaxing under his touch, under the heat of his body. Breathing in the scent of his cologne, both arousing and grounding at the same time. Tilting your head, you nuzzled his nose and you could feel his brows furrowing as he followed your motion, stroking your nose up and down slowly. Tenderly. Brushing his lips with your fingertips, you lost yourself in this moment. In the warmth spreading through you. In the way your breaths intertwined.

Your hands traced back to his jaw and you felt it clenching in response.

Neil’s hand left your neck and you opened your eyes, only to notice his conflicted expression. And a glimpse of sadness tainting the blue irises. Seeing the confused look on your face, he palmed over your hand on his cheek, pulling it away hesitantly.

“We should get back to work,” he said, avoiding your gaze, his voice raspy and hollow.

The heart sank in your chest as you sprung from his lap. Of course.

“Yeah, right, sure,” you mumbled, suddenly feeling lightheaded, with the cold sweat slowly drenching the back of your shirt and the pulse pounding heavily in your ears.

You were such an idiot. Should have known better. You were never gonna learn, huh?

Gritting your teeth, you grabbed the markers and a fresh stack of papers and sat down on the floor at the far end of the coffee table, trying to ignore the enigmatic stare being sent your way.

Neil let out a deep sigh and reached out for his unfinished drink. As he put down the empty glass, he shook his head, looking somewhat defeated.

You cleared your throat and resumed where you'd left off, determined to get over the last details of the operation as soon as possible. Luckily, focusing on the work numbed down the crippling embarrassment. At least for the time being.

And although the initial flow was nowhere to be found, the plan was ready and bulletproof in a little over an hour. The presentation was finished. And so were you. Or at least that’s how you felt, collecting various blueprints and schematics covering most of the flat areas within your reach. 

You looked around, checking one last time if everything was ready to submit.

“Guess that’s it,” you said and started gathering your things, getting ready to leave. 

Neil followed you to the hall and watched as you put on the coat.

“Listen, I...” 

Holding your breath, you turned his way. Waiting for his next words.

Meanwhile, he struggled to find them, and a frustrated frown clouded his features.

“...let me at least call you a cab?”

The void in your chest grew an inch. Right.

“I’ll take a walk.” Your mouth contorted in a weak attempt to smile. “See you tomorrow, blondie,” you said dryly and walked out of the apartment, nauseous and desperate to get some fresh air.

How silly of you to think that it could be about anything other than sex. 

That’s what you get for being willing to open up.

Yet another painful reminder that you weren’t a relationship material. 

You exhaled shakily as your legs carried you to the only place able to stop your mind from spiraling.

Aim and pull the trigger. 

Repeat.

Simple.

(next chapter->)