#also lawyers are sometimes called ‘blood-suckers’

[doctorsiren]

“The hearts are promises I tend to prefer to break”

[sdaomine]

I am a sucker for Victoria Richter. I would die for Victoria Richter. More Victoria content, please... or Zofia von Hagen. These two really got me hooked! Victoria/Zofia Fic, please? Pretty please?

Sorry that it took this long, I didn't really expect a request like this... This one's based on Vyn's Halloween MR Card (and dear God, bless me for I have sinned just listening to it) and I kinda just *inserted* Victoria there. Hope you like it!

P.S. Victoria de Haspran is a product of my wild, simping imagination of Vyn. You can read about her here.

I'll also put the audio theme for Symphony of the Night here, you might want to listen to it while reading. Adds up to the experience. 

Word Count: 3268

Victoria’s golden pocket watch seemed to tick a tad slower this afternoon. Or perhaps she had been waiting a little too long? Certainly, her impatience did not help. She had always viewed it as a sign of disrespect whenever one shows up late—after all, her fancy yet strict upbringing practically shoved into her mind to never be late on any occasion. And so, to whatever it may be, it was expected of this young miss to always show up on time.

And so was Vilhelm. 

Where on earth could you be, brother dear?

“Your Highness,” called one of the guards, crouching a bit to reach Victoria’s ear. “Twenty minutes past five. Master Vilhelm is still not here,” he said. “Shall we?”

My brother… he was never late. “Please.”

With all grace, Victoria stood on her heels and walked alongside her men, making their way back to where her ride awaited. The garden she had paid a million stellin for was put to waste, but surely her brother could meet her sometime soon?

A quick bow of acknowledgment was all she gave her personal men before she hopped inside the Mercedes-Maybach. The moment she did, a vicious line of thought had occurred in her mind. Vilhelm, she breathed. Could it be...?

No. She cursed herself mentally. It is evil of me to accuse my only brother of committing a transgression I had done so willingly in the past, long ago…

But the pocket watch seemed to be begging for her attention, like some kind of a warning bell—and when Victoria had seen the golden watch stop in its tracks, her guts screamed at her to delay her travel. Svart could wait, and so could their father. Her instincts as Vyn’s elder sibling were never once mistaken, never once ignored. 

She denied the slight tremble in her hand as she banged against the tinted barrier in the vehicle. When it opened, Victoria could only mutter a cold whisper, hoping she would make it on time.

“Vilhelm.” She almost choked upon saying his name. “Vilhelm’s manor.”

**

Surely, her brother had chosen his home well. Maybe it made her a bad sister, being it her first time visiting his home, but how could she, when Vyn had closed his doors and abandoned everything that tied him with Svart, with his blood? Only her sister he had kept close to him, but even Victoria herself never knew where he spent his days until recently… when Vyn introduced you to her.

Oh the sweet, innocent you whom her brother had met a year ago, oblivious to everything that surrounded her. Victoria could not tell if you were too dense for a lawyer or perhaps just a woman too genuine that you never doubted Vyn at all. Though knowing how… manipulative her brother can be, it was not as surprising. Vilhelm would not dare tell you the truth about him, and Victoria only wished she was not late this time.

She knocked gently against the wooden door—knocked gently for the second time, for the third—and when she banged a hard first against it and still received no answer, she had to rely on her last resort.

Her delicate fingers clutched the hem of her dress and hitched the fabric up her thighs. Taking a step back, she mumbled I am sorry, Vilhelm, and knocked the wooden door open with a single, swift kick of her foot. 

**

Quiet steps filled the manor’s entrance; eerie and dreadfully empty were the corridors as she passed by them. Even the lights seemed awfully dim. The evening was a bit chilly, the place no more than an empty house and not one she would call home—though there was one thing that somehow filled her dreadful spirits. 

She did not know that Vyn had put up a portrait of them. As far as she could remember, two paintings, personally commissioned by Vyn himself when they were teenagers back in Svart, hung perfectly on the green-painted walls. Yes, her brother did not cut her off completely; but she thought he was too determined to sever his ties with his family to even place two reminders of it here. Nevertheless, the sight of it sparked joy in her heart.

But that did not stop her from further investigating what lay behind those doors. Was she right about it all along? She did not want to believe it yet, of course. However, the pulsing blood in her veins could only mean one thing…

Twisting the knobs with her slightly trembling hands, Victoria pushed the doors open.

She had anticipated it, and yet… Oh, Vilhelm.

**

“Have I ever mentioned it to you, sister dear…” Still maintaining his composure as the son of a duke, or perhaps, a gentleman—Vyn seemed unfazed by it all. “That I have never witnessed you… petrified like this?”

Blood was all over his long, slender hands. His once immaculate white button-up shirt was stained of it, too. Some were dripping from his lips, his mouth parted at both disgust and satisfaction, and of appetite, even—silver hair disheveled, golden eyes on a darker hue… 

“Ah, Vilhelm,” said Victoria in a lower voice, the hint of surprise still present in her tone. “It seems to me that your fangs were the culprit of the crime. Have you no thoughts of erasing the evidence, at least?” She quietly folded her arms, her eyes still fixated on her brother as he held your body in his arms, bloody and unconscious. Probably even—

“I do not… feel anything at all.” Victoria ran a hand across her neck, desperate to feel something—a throbbing pain, a faint pulse, anything that proves your life. But she could not find anything. No flow of blood within you. Not a speck of anything but a certain coldness, a familiar gloom. A feeling she had grown used to, one she had experienced firsthand, long ago…

One she could never forget, and only her death could make her do so.

“Vilhelm,” she half-gasped. “Vilhelm,” she said in a panicked, low whisper, her fingers gripping tight around her neck, still sensing even a glimmer of life. Victoria rushed to the side of the bed, eyes wide with a glint of fear as her gaze flitted over to you. To your cold, lifeless body.

“Oh… you poor thing…” She gently grazed her fingers over your delicate face, still a paragon of splendor even when you were covered in bright blood. Even when the flesh on your neck was slashed and torn open. You stood no chance against your lover—he who made you believe that he was a broken man who lived a hideous past, a man who needed love, and yet he was the one who gave his all to you. “Vilhelm…”

You saw all the signs, all the flags that raised a crimson hue. But you were genuine and kind; you loved and trusted him so much that you turned the warnings all down. You ignored the way he got possessive, when his grip was becoming too tight on your hand; ignored the way he acted around you when he was but a jealous, jealous man. You had led yourself in this ill fate.

Victoria sat beside him. Beside you. “What were you thinking?” she hissed, reaching out to touch your hand. Vyn remained silent and gave her no response. He was still holding onto you, his features terrifyingly peaceful and content. “Answer me, Vilhelm.”

He let out a hoarse, bitter chuckle. “Ah, the young von Hagen must have had a death wish,” he whispered, more to himself than Victoria. “I should have ended him sooner. It did not have to come to this… I did not want this…”

“You and your passion for killing the von Hagens will not end well for you.”

“It was different with the eldest boy. You of all people know that.”

“And with Austin’s wife?” She glared at the man. “Get yourself together.”

“Marius,” he hissed, his fangs becoming more conspicuous now. Vyn was getting worked up. “That Marius,” he said again in a displeased tone, “had seduced my rose, had snuck his evil deeds into her. Victoria, he was the cause to her wither.” He lightly shook his head. Vyn tightened his embrace on you, his nose now buried against the crook of your blood-stained neck. 

“My dear rose,” he whispered gently to you as if you are all too well to acknowledge him, “why were you to run away with that young fool?”

“She was to what?” Victoria repeated, brows furrowed. “Are you that certain she was to run away with the young von Hagen, Vilhelm?”

“Do you doubt me?” Vyn snapped back. “You dare question me?”

“You do not raise your voice at me,” said Victoria, cold as the winds outside the manor. “I was not the one who decided to foolishly believe that my fiance is to elope with some rich teenager,” she scolded, “what were you thinking, Vilhelm? Have you lost your mind? Foolish man.”

“I will not stop you from your nonsense blabber.”

“Vilhelm,” called his sister. He felt the hairs on his neck rise in a deep chill. Vyn’s hold on you tightened, and tightened more when he heard Victoria say, “I will turn her.”

**

Those five minutes of utter silence seemed like an hour to him. He eyed Victoria as if she had lost her mind suggesting such a thing, only to realize that she was dead serious about it. Vyn had thought about turning you into one of them; of course, it surely crossed his mind—but he denied that possibility over and over. He simply could not let you live centuries, even if it meant spending his entire life with you. A life that long, you would be a witness to all grave things, seeing your loved ones die before your eyes… it would be like making a pact with loneliness.

“I… I cannot let you do that,” he said, almost choking on his words. The vulnerability he had kept for so long was getting in his skin again. “I love her, Victoria. My gentle flower, my ride or die. I cannot let you do as you wish.”

“Ride or die?” Victoria spat, her tone almost hysterical. “She will die before you even reach a quarter of your lifespan. She will grow old, will be sickly. This sweet, gentle rose of yours will wither before you even know it,” she said, the truth of it stinging the man across her. 

The eldest stood abruptly and gripped Vyn’s tense shoulders. “You know who is your ride or die?” she asked, “I am, Vilhelm. I am your ride or die!

“I am your sister, and like you, cursed to this evil blood,” she proclaimed, “when you were but a clueless boy who wept over his owl, an owl he killed himself, I was there, and I did not leave you.” She released her hold of him. Victoria ambled almost mindlessly towards the glass window, sunlight barricaded by a crimson curtain. 

“When Austin’s wife unveiled your dark secret, I was there, and I did not stop you from cutting her neck; and as the eldest von Hagen discovered of your deeds, I helped you burn all the evidence,” she reminisced, her tone warm, content; as if she knew she had done a splendid job of being Vyn’s older sibling. “When… when you took Talia’s life away from her…”

Vyn’s jaw tightened. There was a prick in his heart upon the mention of her name. Talia, his first love. Beautiful, that woman; blessed with wits, her heart the epitome of clarity and kindness. A king’s daughter, but a mere human. 

“Stop,” he commanded. “Stop this nonsense.”

But Victoria had no reason, had no intention to do so. “I saw with my eyes how you sucked her life out of her body until she was pale enough to be even recognized.”

“Did you not hear what I said? Have you gone deaf? I said—”

“And I watched you shelter the hatred in your heart, watched you sink into the trenches of despair, watched you lose yourself—all because you denied me of the chance to even save her!”

“I did not want her to live this life.”

“You should have pondered that before you believed your malicious accusations of your beloved,” said Victoria. “I will turn her. You cannot stop me.”

This time, Vyn carefully removed his hold off you and stood on his feet facing his sister’s back. “And trap her into this sinful life of ours? Walking beneath sunlight with a price to pay, having undesirable urged to suck the blood out of a damned stranger, to live a thousand years of loneliness?”

Victoria turned to face him. “So you would rather let the poor woman pay for your own careless transgression, taking away her life and not having the guts to bring her back?” Her eyes were in a furious glare. “That is quite selfish of you, Vilhelm.”

Vyn’s features turned into an unamused frown. “You did not turn your husband when you killed him three hundred years ago,” he said, rather too calmly. “Victoria, we are the same.”

Victoria instinctively slammed her palms onto her temples. That feeling of dread and regret began flowing through her blood again. The grotesque images of her crime, of a young Victoria murdering her own spouse because of an affair… She gritted her teeth. Vyn knew exactly how to push her buttons. But she cannot lose control; she does not want to hurt her brother. 

“It was… unintentional… I did not mean for that to happen, Vilhelm…” she stammered, seeming to be at a loss for words. The guilt was creeping in slowly into her skin. “It was unintentional.”

“And so was this.” Vyn walked towards her; slow, tentative steps, careful not to provoke her sister. “And so was this, sister dear.” His hands reached to touch her shoulders, easing her. “I am sorry, Victoria.”

“Vilhelm… let me help you.” Victoria took his slender hands in hers and looked into his golden eyes. “You are not alone. You have me, brother. I will not leave you alone,” she said, ever so sincerely. “I am your sister. We only have each other.”

“Victoria…”

“She is precious to me as well,” she told him. “I have grown fond of your beloved, I have grown to care for her, like she was a part of me, too.

“And so, brother… you have to let me help her.” Victoria flitted her gaze on your body, sprawled across the bed before she looked at him again. 

With a smile, she whispered to him, “Rest your faith in me.”

**

You awoke to an unusual feeling, but you could not figure out what it was. 

At first, you feel lighter, energized… you feel a sudden surge of energy deep inside you—like you can do whatever you wanted in just a blink of an eye. It was then followed by a slight sting on your neck, but when your fingertips grazed across the crook of it, there was nothing really unusual there…

Restless. That’s how you feel right now. But despite that, you managed to flutter your eyes open, your sight getting used to the dim, gloomy light of the bed lamp beside you. It was only then that you recognized a silhouette sitting on the couch across you. 

“Vyn?” You tried to lean closer to get a better view. “Vyn, is that you?”

“My rose,” he said in a seductive tone, causing knots down the pit of your stomach. “Ah, you are finally awake. Did you sleep well, darling?” You saw Vyn preparing a glass of water, then the rustle of medicine tablet packaging. 

He realized you were looking intently at him and offered you a gentle smile. “Hm? What is it, love?”

You smile back. Awkwardly rubbing your neck, you told him, “It’s nothing. I just…” You sigh, a funny look on your face before you gaze at the man before you. “I love watching you.”

Vyn shook his head slightly, that seductive smile never leaving his lips. “As do I,” he said, making his way towards the bed, occupying the space beside you. “I suppose I—”

“Hey, doctor.” For some unknown reason, you immediately throw your arms around his neck, burying your face against his chest—oh… Vyn’s shirt is unbuttoned… “I love you.”

For a quick second, you see surprise flash in those golden eyes. Vyn quickly composes himself. “My darling rose,” he whispers to you. His long, cold fingers reach to tilt your chin so you can lose yourself in his eyes. “I too, am in love with you,” he says. “This love...” he begins, his lips at the brink of hesitation, “my love for you is eternal.”

You feel your cheeks burn. They’re probably flushing a deep pink right now, but Vyn wouldn’t tell you that, for certain. 

“My love,” he says again, his voice an octave lower. His lustful gaze sends a thrill down your spine, causing a… wetness to pool between your thighs. “May I kiss you?”

You don’t give yourself the chance to respond. Your hands instantly reach to touch his face, pulling him towards you. You swear to yourself to keep it this way as your affection for him seems to flow even faster. It only takes a few moments for you to hear the hard drumming of a heart—though, you do not know whether it was yours or his.

Your fingers find his disheveled hair as his kisses became more sensual; sloppy, wet kisses that only proved to you how eager, how hungry he was for you. The wetness between your thighs intensified, and soon you find yourself moving to straddle his lap.

A low, breathy groan escaped Vyn’s lips as you grind against his hardness. A surprisingly good yet unfamiliar wave of energy brought tides within you, and you don’t exactly know why you’re like this, but suddenly all your need, all that passion for him that you suppressed, cannot bear to be kept anymore.

And as his hands roam across your exposed skin, moving from your hips down to your sensitive spot between your legs, a soft whimper escapes your lips. 

“Ah, Vyn!” You shut your eyes as he roughly slid the robe off your shoulders, his lips departing yours to leave wet, erotic kisses all over your neck, collarbone... You writhe in his touch when he takes your nipple in his mouth—sucking wildly, like a ravenous animal finally having his first meal. 

“Ah, yes, yes—” You bite your lip to suppress another moan. “Vyn!”

“Mm, that is right, my rose.” He takes your lips again in a French kiss, adding to this heat you’re feeling with him. “Say my name like that, just like that…”

“Dr. Richter… yes,” you breathe, the sensation becoming more and more unbearable. “T-take me… please…”

You are too busy basking in your pleasure that you fail to notice the golden eyes that reveled in your beauty—the man who wallowed the lewd, pretty sounds you made, silently wishing to himself to get to keep you for eternity. To hold you, touch you, kiss you as you stroll through a thousand years—to spend his life with you, and you only.

And as he obeyed your wishes and claimed you for his own, he reminded himself to thank Victoria later. It was because of her that he got to witness the alternate line of it all. It was because of her power that he was able to bring his beloved rose back.

Among all his obsessions… you actually ended up pretty well.

[voiceswithoutlips]

Calico - Chapter One

— pairing: Hybrid ot7 x Human Reader (Female) — genre: hybrid AU , fluff, angst, slow burn (like real slow), eventual smut — word count: 1.8K — Rating: M — warnings: trauma, mention of past abuse. 

Click for Tag List

— chapter summary: 

Y/N runs a animal shelter, Calico was built on a simple principle, to help those who were in need. What will Y/N do when her sanctuary is threatened by an unexpected hybrid?

— A/N: This is going to be a series, I’m just getting back to writing, so I’d really appreciate your input and feedback <3

Ch. 2 Ch. 3 Ch. 3.5 Ch. 4 Ch. 5 Ch. 6

“So do you like your new puppy?” I asked the little girl that was trying to hold a squirming golden retriever pup. She frantically nodded her head. How cute!

“Congratulations on the new addition to your family! We’ll send someone for an inspection soon but I don't see how there can be any problems,” I reassured the parents. They were proudly beaming at their daughter, I doubt they even heard what you said. 

“I’m going to name him Bubbles!” Sana squeaked excitedly as the family left with their new pet. I suppressed a giggle, I was a sucker for cuteness. 

Seeing one of our animals get adopted was the best feeling in the world. Running a shelter was not the easiest thing in the world, grumpy animals, grumpy humans and an abundance of body fluids to clean up but it was rewarding. Calico was a no-kill shelter, a privately owned animal shelter. The upside was that we didn’t have to rely on the government for funding, the downside was the paperwork. Every animal that came to the shelter had to be meticulously checked and catalogued. 

The legalities were another headache. Most animals that came to Calico were rescues. We worked with several animal rights organizations that collected evidence and built cases against the owners. Sometimes we got rescues that weren’t exactly legal so we had to get the evidence and build the case ourselves. That’s why Calico had Song Hwa, a badass lawyer. She was just five feet tall but she could stare down men twice her size. 

“One down, two to go,” Jason said as he plopped down on the couch in your office. He was the head veterinarian at Calico, overseeing the health of the animals. He was also my best friend. 

“We have three potential families visiting tomorrow. How’s Hector doing?” I asked as I stretched in your chair. 

“He’s good but I’m still against the name Hector. He looks more like a Raphael,” Jason said with a frown. Last week one of our animal handlers Shownu found a box near the shelter’s gate. There was a small turtle in it, the poor thing was injured. Jason had to amputate his left hind leg because it was infected. 

“I’m not naming him after a mutant turtle. He’s a one legged turtle from the sea, he’s a pirate and nothing you say will change my mind,” I had named him after Hector Barbosa from Pirates of the Carribean movies after I won the rock paper scissors tournament against Jason. 

“Dorks,” Hana scoffed from the corner. She was the one who dealt with the potential families, showing them around the shelter, doing background checks and whatnot. I was the one who sealed the deal and dealt with the paperwork. I was terrible at social niceties, somehow I always ended up saying the wrong thing and had the worst timing in the history of humanity. 

Before Jason and I could retaliate Moonji burst through the door. “He’s back, Yonu is here,” he was breathless. He must’ve ran here all the way from the gates. Moonji was the other animal handler, he was a retired botanist with a wife and two daughters. 

We all collectively sighed. Yonu was a proud member of Animal Liberation Front, an extremist group or as the government would like to call them “animal rights terrorists”. Once in a blue moon Yonu would drop by without a warning to drop off rescued lab animals, he had a thing against scientists. The problem was that they were illegally acquired so we had to lie on the paperwork. Every time Yonu visited Calico, it was a stress fest for everyone, well everyone except Yonu. 

I reluctantly made my way to the exam room. Yonu was standing there bickering with Song Hwa with a box of rabbits. 

“We are NOT taking in the rabbits unless you tell us where you got them!” Song Hwa put her foot down. 

“It's classified,” Yonu said with a grin. 

“Then take them back,” Song Hwa was staring daggers at him.

“Yonu, you know we need to clear the legal side of things,” I shook my head, he knew how things worked. Usually he would brag about his conquest, giving us in depth details about his adventures. Sometimes he brought back research and documents for evidence.Something didn’t sit right with me. Where did he get the rabbits? Why wouldn’t he tell us?

“Sorry sugar, can’t share the details this time,” I sighed at his nickname. One day Yonu discovered that I didn’t like sugar in my coffee and he decided to start calling me Sugar. He was one annoying bastard. 

Jason was already weighing the rabbits and taking their temperature. No matter what methods Yonu used to ‘rescue’ the animals, we always took them in. Song Hwa always said I was too soft, she didn’t know how wrong she was.

There were seven rabbits in total. All white with long ears and pink noses. They were unusually small. “Yonu did you kidnap kittens?” I frowned as I leaned in to take a closer look. 

“No they are all adult males,” Jason interjected. He was checking them one by one, taking their blood to run tests, checking their limbs for any injuries, it was a routine procedure. 

“Aren’t they too small?” they were.

“Maybe they are like those toy poodles… toy bunnies?” Song Hwa suggested. It could be or maybe their growth was stunted. Either way, I didn’t like it, something was off about this, I just couldn’t put my finger on it. 

Jason was running blood panels in the lab as I took over the paperwork. The rabbits were safely left in a hatch outside in the garden. Yonu had miraculously disappeared as soon as we turned our backs and I was starting to get a headache. 

The rabbits barely showed any movement when they were being examined. They were practically limp in Jason’s hands. They had clearly been abused. I didn’t like the blank look in their eyes. Most of the time if the animal was scared it’d get defensive and lash out, it was a good sign, it meant that it still had its faculties. These rabbits didn’t make a squeak as they were moved to a new place, it was worrying. I just hoped they weren’t too far gone. 

“We have a problem,” Jason said as soon as I entered the lab. He was sitting in front of the computer, double checking the results. 

“This day just keeps getting better,” I murmured as I leaned in to see what he was looking at. Not that I could make any sense of it. 

“One of the rabbits is a hybrid,” did I hear that right?

“Come again?” did he just say what I thought he said?

“We have a hybrid in our hatch,” my heart sank.

The presence of a hybrid posed a threat to Calico. Not because he was dangerous, but because he was stolen. The laws regarding hybrids were still primitive in most countries. They were basically slaves to the system, regarded as sub-human. Hybrids were considered as property, something to be owned. Rare animal hybrids were highly sought after by the wealthy to show off their status. So technically the rabbit hybrid in our hatch belonged to someone, we had no right to keep him here. If his owner found out, they would sue us. If the government found that we were keeping a stolen hybrid they’d shut us down. 

“Let’s just send him to a hybrid shelter,” Shownu huffed. The staff was gathered in your office for an emergency meeting.

“Most of those shelters have terrible conditions. Why not just keep him here, we have license to house hybrids, it's not that big of a deal,” Jason said. 

“Might I remind you that he is stolen. We can’t keep him here, we have a shelter inspection next week,” Song Hwa frowned. 

Few months ago we had decided to expand Calico to accommodate hybrids too, we had enough room to do so. We had constructed a hybrid “enclosure” as per the government guidelines. They had sent us the requirements. … they wanted us to put people in cages. We all collectively agreed that no hybrid will ever be housed in that place. No matter what anyone said, they were still human. 

“We can’t just abandon him, who knows what those lab people did to him,” Hana retaliated and an argument broke out. I knew they loved this place, they all wanted what’s good for the shelter. This wasn’t this first time we had to lie but having a hybrid was different. None of us had ever dealt with a hybrid before, even if we decided to keep him, what then? But I knew I couldn’t hand him over. Calico was built on a simple principle, to help those who were in need. And that rabbit hybrid needed our help. 

“Enough. We took in the animals that Yonu had brought before because they needed help. We’ve lied on the documents and it’s no different this time. That hybrid needs our help, we just need to come up with a plan,” I passed the verdict. Not everyone liked it but I knew they’d never let me down. 

After the stressful day all I wanted to do was curl up on the couch with Jason and watch TV. Our house was on the edge of the property, secluded in the forest. It was a country cottage with a private garden. YouI stopped by the rabbit hatch on my way back. The poor bunnies were all squished together in a corner, scared of the new environment and the open space outside. 

I couldn’t tell which one was the hybrid as I leaned in to take a look. Looking for him was no use. Maybe talking would work. I sat down beside the hatch with a sigh.

“I know you’re there,” I said quietly. “It must’ve been scary huh? Being taken from the lab. Yonu, the man who brought you here, he’s a good person. He only wanted to help. His methods aren’t always ….well savory but his heart was in the right place. Do you know what this place is? It's called Calico, it's a shelter for animals. We take care of animals who need help and find them a new home. 

“This is my sanctuary. Nobody will hurt you here. You don’t have to be scared. You are safe here, I’m going to keep you safe, okay?” One of the rabbits was looking at me, he quickly ducked his head as he caught my gaze. I smiled, he was listening. 

“You must be hungry huh? Rabbits only get veggies and greens, don’t you want to eat pizza, and ice cream, and pancakes, maybe some sashimi…” I rambled on about food, about Calico and the staff, inside the hatch a bunny was listening intently to my stories. 

Next

[children-of-subcon]

yes im very sure! i dont really care about it being complete i just like to read

AUGH I SPENT LIKE TWO HOURS ON THIS AND TUMBLR RELOADED

okok here we go I’m putting ‘em under a cut

I love Frigid by ImmortalCoalecanth, the characterization is great and I’m a sucker for MC teams up with a boss :)

Who Doesn’t Like Hat Kid? by MonsterMonsoon is super fun and WE GET SOME BIRD BONDING TIME YEAHH— I think it’s incomplete but the chapters are somewhat self-contained so it’s not too bad?

Little Deals by Insecuriousity is an unexpected but not unwelcome backstory for the Walrus Captain’s ship, involving a certain ghost ;)

Warm by Skippyin is a unique take on Snatcher’s backstory!

Illiteracy by eggsinsunnyside features Hat Kid not knowing how to read, the perfect excuse for some bonding huehue...

A Little Hatted Borrower by MonsterMonsoon is that borrower fic I mentioned, I love it so much 😭 Sometimes I still go back and reread it even though I know it cuts off right when it picks up hhh

A House Full of Monsters is also by MonsterMonsoon! It’s an AU where the bosses (and some others) are secretly monsters, and also roommates :DD Plenty of found family, although it too is unfinished.

A House That Walks by Drakka is inspired by the last one, but contains violence/blood so be warned.

Into the Lions’ Den by Krekka01 features Hat Kid getting some closure with Empress post-Rush Hour!

la loi, c’est moi by MiniNephthys is hilarious and has some actual lawyer Snatcher which is great :)

The Puppeteer by ZurielWritings23 has Moonjumper, boss fights, and possession, oh my!

Empress’ Revenge, also by ZurielWritings23, includes another very well-written boss fight, plus some momma CC and dadtcher as a treat.

We also have From the Stars by Yacer_Sho, which gives a very creative backstory to Hat Kid and has three whole endings! I won’t spoil anything else ;)

Loopholes by Fruisun is very cute and features Snatcher being a big ol’ tsundere ^^

Christmas in Subcon Forest by DeckofDragons is short and sweet, although it is still June...

I like the characterization in Tired by StellaHope, and it also includes some lovely art at the end!

The Harsh Winter’s Creep by SmugSpecter has a good mix of fluff and angst, and I must admit I‘m also a sucker for protective dadtcher 👀

Quality Time(pieces) by automatonBoy has some cool headcanons and my beloved Snatcher + Hat Kid interactions <3

Rest by DeckofDragons is kind of a sick fic but PLOT TWIST it’s Snatcher who’s sick-ish!!

I’ll save myself some time and recommend the whole series Tales of the Fire Spirits by SilyaBeeodess! It gives the fire spirits some amazing lore which I don’t remember seeing anyone else do before.

Music by DeckofDragons is part of that phase where everyone on Ao3 wrote about Snatchman playing the violin bc of that one artwork lolol

lovely little glass roses by schrodingers_cat is a history of Vanessa, and BEAUTIFULLY written!

gilt edges, traitor hearts by noxes involves a mer AU by MonsterMonsoon, and some Dadjumper!

You’re My BFF by automatonBoy is adorable and we finally get some genuinely nice Moonjumper on this list :D I also absolutely love that one line about Hat Kid being able to tell Snatcher’s general “kid” from his secretly affectionate “kid” hvhjgh ❤️❤️

Bad Place for a Window by Cardigan_Quincy is short, but has some great characterization :)

Captured by DeckofDragons! What’s that? More protective dadtcher? Don’t mind if I do owo

Revenge and a Little Bit More by owlcakes has a similar premise, but DANG it’s long. To summarize, Empress gets REKT lmbo

Reliving An Old Nightmare by Erekio is about Snatcher suddenly finding himself human again... and back in the past. There’s an element of mystery to it, so I won’t say much else, but every chapter is accompanied by illustrations! Erekio has redrawn a few of them here on tumblr :)

Dwellings of the Ancient Gods by Nosferatank is super well written, and involves some Twilight Bell shenanigans :)

Chapter 3: Contractual Obligations by Ina (CosmicKouhai) is part of a larger AU where all the bosses go into their respective Purple Time Rifts with Hat Kid, I think? It’s pretty cool!

Snowcon Forest by ImmortalCoalecanth is AMAZING and I definitely recommend you read it!! It was one of the first things I read for this fandom, and what got me into dadtcher <3

Best in the Business by MysticDoodle is a Mandelorian-inspired AU! (You don’t need to have seen the Mandelorian to enjoy it, I haven’t haha) It’s very creative, and I like the characters so far!

Beware the Frozen Heart by NanixErka is a cool concept, wherin the thing that happens to Anna in Frozen basically happens to Hat Kid D:

Do you think your love could transcend time and space? by twip/twipsai is a soulmate AU with tons of found family and fluff that I‘m sucking up like Rumbi ;w;

Familial Obligations by BumblingBriars is about Snatcher finding Hat Kid as a baby, and raising her :D It indirectly inspired BGDC! But that’s a story for another time, haha.

The Girl And The Ghost by phantomthief_fee is a Beauty and the Beast AU, but with friendship in place of romance! =)

I like the concept of Sinking Feeling by ThunderDragonFruit, and also agree :’( @ Gearsforbreakfast more CC content pls

The Forest is calling (can’t you hear it whisper?) by Kayuri and Mint_Mint features sentient Subcon and OCs turning into canon characters! I’ve never seen something like it before, but it’s written very well 👍

Nothing Special by ToothpasteDragon is based on MonsterMonsoon’s borrower AU so you know I’m gonna eat it up :’)

Also Wrong Place at the Wrong Time by ToothpasteDragon, based on MonsterMonsoon’s monster AU! (There’s a bit of blood in this one)

Recall by Galakii features a time loop, which is cool!

What’s in a Name by Raeolu involves shenanigans with the pronunciation of Hat Kid’s real name. Always a fun one ^^

The Part-Time Puppeteer by Erekio is also pretty funny! It’s based on the puppet AU by Fedoraspooky which I love <3 Aaa musical theatre and theatre in general is my favorite :D

I’ve also been following A Cloak in Time’s Trials by ElectricBlaster, which gives Hat Kid a shipmate for her adventures! It has a large focus on an OC, Cloak Kid, which may not be for everyone, but I like him :)

And FINALLY, be kind (rewind) by fivers, featuring another time loop and four whole dads! Have I mentioned yet that I am also an absolute sucker for found family 👀

(I’d also like to mention that idk if they count as fanfics but I enjoy MysteryMan_17’s AU Concept write-ups :D)

Phew, finally! I probably forgot at least one tbh, if I remember any I’ve forgotten I’ll edit this ^^ AND, absolutely no pressure to any authors of the unfinished fics to complete them! I completely understand losing motivation and/or interest in something, and your mental and physical health are more important than any silly fanfiction ^^

[princesssarcastia]

in any other world (aka four ways veronica mars’ life could have ended up)

because i CANNOT get these ideas out of my head, goddammit.  whatever god gave me the plot bunny gene needs to take it back now.  anyway welcome to my veronica mars kick, 2020 edition. it’s another long one, boys, and readmores are for suckers.

1. just remember me when we used to be friends

them telling other people stories about each other (gia and whats-his-face wait another four weeks to kill carrie; logan is a thousand miles away with the best alibi in the world.  a movie!canon au

Cobb’s paranoia holds out an extra five weeks, and Logan is already on deployment when he and Gia sneak into Carrie Bishop’s home and electrocute her in her bathtub.  A troubled, drugged up starlet’s death is ruled a particularly gruesome suicide, and word doesn’t reach Logan until well after it happens.

Something about it doesn’t sit right with him, no matter that he predicted she’d end up here; something about it itches in the back of his mind, makes him want to reach for a phone he didn’t take with him when he shipped out and pull up a number he hasn’t dialed in nearly ten years.

But that’s ridiculous.  He writes it off as nostalgic product of a reunion he didn’t even go to, that he’s sure she didn’t, either, and gets back to work.  He’ll go brood and break down about Carrie when he’s off duty later, and let one of his squad-mates put a hand on his shoulder, and then move on.

He lets go of, Veronica, I need your help, and ignores the bone-deep certainty that she’d drop everything for that, after years and continents spanned and blood shed.

—

Meeting The Piznarskis is a surreal glimpse into a normal upbringing; the kind no one Veronica knew growing up ever got.   They’re kind, maternal and paternal people who unreservedly love their son and live simple lives.

And they seem to really like Veronica, which is good.  Piz keeps giving her beaming looks whenever his parents turn away, and her heart crawls deeper inside her in shame because all this clearly means so much more to him than it does to her.

She is keeping polite-society smiles on her face and using her tame, Normal Veronica anecdotes to entertain them instead of really opening up.  Is this how everyone is with their in-laws?  

These people will never know me, she thinks distantly as Mrs. Piznarski lays a hand on her arm and smiles as she inquires after her years at Stanford, and it is a comfort because she doesn’t want them to.  Doesn’t want to see their normal bubble pierced by the mud smeared all over her real history.

She starts keeping her polite-society smile on face in the apartment with Piz, too.

He doesn’t seem to notice.

—

She catches the tail end of Bonnie DeVille’s funeral on Hollywood Access at her favorite deli.  The volume is cranked up, probably so the guy at the counter can hear it over the crush of customers during lunch hour.  Which means that Veronica catches every unfortunate second of their coverage, vaguely familiar faces in the crowd drawing her attention back again and again.

Mentally giving up as a way to pass the time, Veronica compares faces to ten year old memories.  

Dick, Gia Goodman, Luke Holderman...some vaguely familiar schmuck...

She doesn’t even realize who she’s looking for until the correspondent mentions that DeVille’s last boyfriend, Logan Echolls, son of the late Aaron Echolls, is not in attendance because his current tour of duty with the Navy started just days before her death.

God, Logan.  Veronica bites back any kind of expression at the thought of Logan learning that his girlfriend committed suicide while high off her mind.  Even the media circus at the funeral is a bitterly familiar echo of what happened when Lynn died.

The thought of him lingers all the way to the front of the line and her brisk walk back to the office, until she finds her hands hovering over keys, debating whether she should look him up. Then one of the partners walks briskly past and she jerks back to reality, where she’s working through the rest of her lunch to keep the edge on the other new hires.

But the impulse lingers, long enough that she resigns herself to ignoring it until  a new obsession seizes that confined part of herself she shut away that first year at Stanford.

—

Veronica refuses to go back to Neptune for the reunion, but after Truman-Mann jumps at the chance to hire her, she splurges on two round-trip tickets to New York for Wallace and Mac, figuring meeting up was the whole reason they were so gung-ho about it in the first place.

She really doesn’t make it out to California very often, let alone Neptune.  After her disastrous freshman year at Hearst, Veronica jumped at every chance to step further away from the crash-and-burn-site.  The only reason she didn’t lose them is because Mac understood that impulse, and Wallace is a better man than everyone she’s ever met.

But god, skype and Facebook and phone calls don’t measure up to the real thing.  Veronica throws her arms around them right there in the airport and fights the inexplicable urge to tear up. 

Something between nostalgia and longing wells in her chest as they sit shoulder to shoulder with her in the back of a cab, chatting about their lives in Neptune.  She crushes it ruthlessly and fires back with tame, hollowed out stories from work and Piz, and smiles all the way through.

Her father was so proud when she told him.  My daughter, the big shot New York lawyer.  Veronica smiled all the way through that, too, and had an extra glass of wine that night where she derided her own inability to put two and two together.

Fortune 500 companies.  Frivolous lawsuits.  Disappear before they ever make it to a courtroom.

She knew exactly what she was doing, going into corporate law.  The smart thing, right thing, the thing that paid her student loans and kept her out of the oh-so-tempting mud surrounding criminal law.  She knew it would be contracts and smug rich people and ruthless competition.

But that didn’t stop her growing guilt—no, not guilt, shame—as she helped further grind the little guy into the dirt.  As she poked holes in probably-legitimate sexual harassment suits and helped companies with more money than they needed break contracts with smaller service industries and...

All that keeps her going in the disgustingly large paycheck she gets every two weeks and the fact that she does corporate law for filthy rich companies, not defense law for filthy rich people. 

(Though that doesn’t stop her from waking up gasping, one night, after dreaming she’s back in that courtroom, with Aaron Echolls’ goddamn face smiling smugly at her as she tears Logan’s and her father’s and her own testimony to pieces, as she gets him out of Lily’s murder and his attempt on her life.  Piz rolls over in his sleep, breathing quietly, and she slips out of bed. )

She and Piz treat them to dinner that night, and she enjoys it once she gets over the childish jealousy that she has to share these two people she adores with Piz, who she also adores, dammit.  

Their apartment has an office/guest bedroom and a separate living room, so when they get back near midnight (we’re way too old to be out this late, Wallace joke-groans, and Piz laughs back) Wallace heads to bed, and Piz does, too, after she waves him off from helping her set up the couch for Mac.

They share a look, and Veronica lets a smile pull her face wide as they have the same thought.  The sheets and pillow get piled up in a chair as Veronica quietly retrieves two beers from the fridge and plops down on the sofa next to Mac. 

“Cheers,” Mac says, clinking her bottle against Veronica’s, and they both take long pulls.

Veronica sighs more heavily than she means to and lets some unknown tension flow out with the air.  After a long, comfortable silence, Mac nudges her with her knee.

“How are you, really?”  Mac asks pointedly.  Veronica lets her head fall against the back of the couch and grumbles.  No, she didn’t miss the glances Mac and Wallace kept sharing all night when they thought she wasn’t looking, but when Wallace went to bed she thought they’d somehow agreed not to pry.

Now she realizes they just decided to be nice and not tag-team her, which is somehow worse.

“I met Piz’s parents a few weeks ago,” Veronica says, still looking at the ceiling, but even as she says it she knows it’s not the right place to start.  A symptom, not the disease.

Mac hums at her, listening but not interrupting, so Veronica takes the chance to start again.  Her head lolls to the side to examine Mac, really pin her with her stare.

“Did you ever imagine you’d end up working at Kane Software?” Veronica asks.

Mac catches her stare and raises her eyebrows, clearly recognizing it for what it is, and pauses to really thing about it.  “You mean, when I was scamming 09ers that deserved it for their money and helping you crack cases like a budding hacktivist?” She says with a wry look.  “No.  But I knew I was going to do something with computers, and terrible reputation of their founding family aside, Kane Software is a pretty good place to do that.”

Now it’s Veronica’s turn to hum noncommittally.

“I never had your sense of justice, though,” Mac continues.  “I just enjoyed getting swept up playing Q to your Bond.”

Silence falls again as Veronica mulls over what to say next.  She’s avoided putting her finger on this feeling for months and months, because new, normal, successful Veronica Mars is not supposed to...to...

To miss sticking her hands in the mud.

“Sometimes I look in the mirror and I don’t recognize myself,” she says finally, forcing herself to keep meeting Mac’s eyes.  To get a second opinion.

“Yeah,” Mac agrees.  “I looked up the kinds of cases Truman-Mann takes when you told me you got the job.” ‘Looked up’ for Mac doesn’t mean ‘googling;’ Veronica grimaces lightly at the implication.  “It was, uh, surprising.”

Veronica turns away when her eyes start to burn with that now-familiar shame, taking another long drink.  “Well, it pays the bills.  Keeps me out of trouble.”  Another drink.  “They tell me if I keep up the good work, I can make junior partner in four years.  Three, even, if I snuff the competition.”

Mac nudges her again and Veronica starts to fiddle with the label on her beer.  “My dad hasn’t worried about me in four years,” she admits softly.  “He’s proud of me, Mac.  Proud that I got out, proud that I don’t ruin people’s lives anymore.”

“Hey,” she says gently, “You didn’t ruin peoples lives.”  Veronica lets her incredulous face speak for her.  “Well, no one who didn’t deserve it,” she amends.

“I ruined his life,” she says sharply.  “I got you and Wallace in trouble, I lost—” she bites that off.  “I wasn’t happy.  I saw dark corners everywhere.  That’s not a healthy way to live, Mac.”

“No,” she agrees.  “But was that because of your cases, or was it leftover from the long string of traumatizing bullshit in high school?”

Veronica takes another drink.  Getting a psychology degree at Stanford was a fun exploration of all the ways the previous four years of her life were fucked to hell, and fucked her to hell.  And she did seriously work on her trust issues, though she stopped short of going to therapy, because that was never gonna happen.

Mac goes in for the kill.  “Are you happy now?”

Veronica, hyper-aware of Piz in their shared bedroom scant feet away, doesn’t reply, and Mac lets her.  But they both know what the answer is.

—

She passes the bar exam with flying colors; a 320 that makes her father beam with pride once she takes the time to explain the scoring rubric to him.  Piz kisses her cheek and brings her flowers when he gets off work.

It takes more effort than she’s willing to admit to ignore the fact that she scored so much higher in criminal law than contract law and civil procedure.

—

It takes her three more months to gather the courage to break things off with Piz.  He’s smart enough to notice that she waited until their shared lease was up, and that leads to a fight more vicious than any they’ve ever had; a final nail the coffin of their relationship.

Apparently she’s cold-hearted, mercenary; unwilling to open up and share her inner life with him.  Unable to commit to anyone.

But if I did that, you never would have loved me, Veronica almost says, biting it back at the very last second because the last thing she needs to release that knowledge for circulation.

She methodically packs up her clothes, the scant few knick-nacks and numerous pictures spread around in a facsimile of personal touches.  Her new apartment was lined up before she even spoke to Piz, who later scathingly rejects her careful offer to pay for half of next month’s rent while he looks for a place.

In the end, it take three days to dismantle their year-and-a-half-long relationship completely.  He’ll certainly get all their mutual acquaintances in the aftermath, who were always more his friends than hers, leaving her with no one but the service people at her regular take out places and a handful of Columbia friends in the city to talk to. 

But as she unloads her things into her new space, all the emotion she can dredge up is a faint relief, and fainter satisfaction at having her own space for the first time in her life.  That’s it.

Cold-hearted.

She pours herself a shot of tequila and knocks it back, in the interest of dislodging any hint of feeling she might be repressing unconsciously.   Fiddles with her phone and considers texting Mac, or Wallace, or her Dad, to let them know—because she’d done this, new address and all, without mentioning a word to them.  She’d even changed her paper subscriptions, but didn’t say a word to the three most important people in her life.

God, at this rate Piz will probably mention it to Wallace before she does.

All another shot gets her is her hands hovering over a keyboard again, still resisting the urge to look Logan up, to investigate he new life in some morbidly curious impulse. 

Kids these days call it Facebook stalking, but back in her day it was just plain old stalking.

And she doesn’t do that anymore.  Right?

—

Veronica channels her excess energy and time in a post-Piz existence into her work, and it earns her a “keep up the good work” from Gayle Buckley.  A nice word from one of the two female senior partners at their firm makes her all warm and fuzzy for the rest of the day.

But that dissipates as she remembers exactly what got her that compliment; playing asshole intimidating lawyer muscle for another “frivolous” sexual harassment suit at a fortune 500 company.

This time, she’s sure the company man did it, but that doesn’t matter in the face of all his money and scary lawyers.  The woman quietly folds for literal hundreds of thousands of dollars less than she should be entitled to.

That earns her another night in, drinking more wine than she really should be on a work night. 

Are you happy now? Mac asks in her head, and Veronica takes another drink.

—

She exchanges nods with the man at the corner store as she lines bottles on the counter; they’re familiar to each other at this point.  It’s late, even for a hard-working New York Lawyer in her late twenties, but she polished off everything two nights ago and somehow can’t face going to sleep sober. 

It’s not until she settles back into her couch with her second drink of the night that ice rushes down her spine in spiraling shivers.  Veronica freezes with the glass halfway to her mouth.

The blood rushes out of her face in a way that makes her feel cold.  An exhausted cold, a mix of expressions she remembers on her Dad and her Mom’s faces growing up.

Her hands shake as she sets it down with a decisive clink on the coffee table.

I will not turn into my mother, Veronica thinks, still reeling with realization.  Not even for Normal.

It’s close to 1:30 here, so everyone in Neptune will be sound asleep; she can’t stomach waking them up for this.  And there’s no one in the city Veronica is comfortable calling up at this hour.

Faintly, she recalls hands hovering over a keyboard, and her chest aches even more. 

If this were a movie, she’d probably go pour out her glass, and the bottles she bought tonight; make some kind of vow.  Sign up for meetings.

Instead, she gets up and collapses into bed as-is, barely remembering to set the alarm on her phone before she does.

—

After that she tentatively reaches out to people from Stanford and Colombia, desperate for connections to ground her and soothe the gaps she only now realizes she’s been filling with alcohol.

Just a few Facebook messages at first, but nearly all of them reach back.  Veronica has a weak moment of tearing up and rereading some of the replies in her inbox after a particularly hard day at Truman-Mann.

In another few weeks, she and a few people from Colombia have mutually coaxed one another into a standing lunch date, risking that relentless workplace competition for a chance at real human connection with people who won’t throw a fit if they have to run out of the restaurant unexpectedly.

She orders water with the meal and laughs for real at least twice.

—

Her last straw is a predictable one.  That final push, the leg stuck out to trip her so she faceplants back into the mud, like she wasn’t two seconds from deep diving into it on purpose.

I need your help, Veronica, one of her friends from Stanford says.  And that, as they say, was that.

—

Lilly laughs in Veronica’s ear as she picks her way through the crowd, for the first time in a long time.

Fleet week.  In New York, not San Francisco, but she laughs back all the same.

His posture is different.  Clearly, there’s something to be said for military training.  But it’s not that he’s standing taller, or with more confidence; despite the presence to him, he seems...lighter, like all that weight on his shoulder finally got shucked off.

It takes him a few minutes to sense her gaze, and she savors them, watching Logan Echolls in the wild.  Satisfying her inner stalker.

Their eyes meet across the crowd, and his face melts into that boyish grin she remembers, softened with age and warm, just for her.  She smiles back, delighted, and waves.

Yeah, she looked up him.  Eventually.

2. bloody knuckles, longing for home

logan, veronica, and weevil gather like fate after aaron echolls gets off for lilly’s murder; and decide to do something about it.  and then flee neptune, because the perfect murder doesn’t exist.

Veronica lets herself into Logan’s room at the Grand with the key she swiped from Duncan before he fled the country.  Steam pools out from the cracked bathroom door, so she drops her back on the couch and heads for it, making no effort to conceal her presence.

His head is bowed between his shoulders, arms tense as he leans against the vanity.  He breathes out sharply, almost a laugh, and doesn’t move.

“Chlamydia, huh,” he says roughly.

“Immunity, huh,” she fires back, but her heart isn’t in it.

“You know he’s staying here?” He asks, still not looking at her, but tension pools in his bare back.  Condensation starts to run in rivulets down the mirror. “He cornered me outside the elevators, earlier.  Threatened to cut me off.  No more mister nice father.”

Her fingers delicately trace one of the myriad scars that cuts across his spine, and then another, and another, and Logan lets her.  She maps out sins of the father visited on the son, and makes a decision.

Aaron Echolls will get his justice in his own way.

“Room 619,” she says, and his head rises.

Their eyes meet in the mirror.

—

Mac does extensive research on the Cayman Islands, just for fun, since Cassidy mentioned his father holds some of his assets there.

Veronica and Weevil go out for a drink.

Logan flirts with the woman on the night shift at the Neptune Grand’s front desk.

Veronica and Weevil and Logan go out for a drink.

Keith and his daughter spend the days between the end of finals and graduation decidedly not talking about it, but he thinks she’s taking it as well as she can.  Almost surprisingly well.  Veronica finds the tickets to New York he has stashed away.

Veronica and Weevil and Logan and Wallace go out for a drink.  It becomes a regular thing, grabbing beers or tequila or whatever they can get their hands on and sitting on a darkening beach every other night or so.  Sometimes the hush of their voices run underneath the waves.  Sometimes silence rings out.

Deputy Leo intercepts a mother and two boys who come into the station to make a witness report, but they can’t seem to find what they’re looking for in a book of the usual suspects.

Wallace forgets a pen in the coffee cup on the desk outside Clarence Wiedman’s office, when he goes to visit his mother at work.

Dick and Logan plan a blowout bash to celebrate graduation at the Grand.

Cliff McCormick brushes up on inheritance law in addition to juggling six other cases.

Logan books a plane to the east coast for after graduation.

—

After the graduation ceremony is over, half their graduating class descends on the Grand, filling the lobby and conference space rented out.  Some of them even make their way to the penthouse, Logan throwing open his door with a flourish.

But something about it just doesn’t feel right.  So Logan, Veronica, Wallace, and Weevil grab drinks and head out the front door, letting everyone see them leave for the beach.  Dick loudly complains to anyone who will listen about how Logan has been doing this every night for two weeks, like he’s got a standing appointment to hang out with narks and gangbangers.

Veronica calls her father and leaves a voicemail, letting him know she’s staying out on the beach with her friends for a while longer, in case he makes it back before she does.

Mac stays in the lobby with Cassidy the whole time.  Kendall Casablancas exits the hotel a little after midnight.

Weevil and Wallace stay out on the beach all night; the Xterra, which they all took together, sharing space for the last time, does not once move.

When housekeeping make their way through the hotel the next morning, there is a do not disturb sign on room 619.  It stays there all day, and night, and day, and night, and day again, and night again, until they start to pass it by automatically.

Veronica and her father leave for New York.  Logan boards a plane.

—

When the news breaks about Aaron Echolls’ death, neither of them are in Neptune.  Logan arranges for a private service in absentia, and sends Cliff McCormick as his representative to the will reading, which the executor of Aaron’s estate takes with more grace than Trina.

His assets are divided evenly between his two children, in addition to the existing trusts tied to age.

Cliff makes a brief stop at a coffee shop on his way back to his office, and says a few words to that computer geek friend of Veronica’s he catches sight of.  He forgets some of his notes on her table when he leaves.

—

Keith Mars comes back to Neptune alone.  The investigation into Aaron Echolls’ death stutters, stalls, stops.  Eventually, a harassed medical examiner admits it’s possible he could have maybe committed suicide.

—

Halfway across the world, a sweet and mischievous little girl named Lilly grows up with a kind, doting father, and an Aunt and Uncle whom she adores, whenever they’re in the country to see her.

Twice every year, her father and Aunt Veronica and Uncle Logan share a toast, even if only by skype.  Once on her Aunt Lilly’s birthday, and once on some day in late may.

3. all things grow

veronica mars, special agent with the fbi and logan lester, english professor, love each other well with the strength of decades, and still impress the hell out of everyone who meets them.  the one where veronica went straight to stanford after the whole cassidy debacle, and never quite lost the knack of investigating but with some distance from the neptune cesspool, learned to do it without ruining lives, her life.

Everyone knows Professor Lester is a jackass—with tenure, so he can’t be reprimanded for it.  But everyone also knows Professor Lester has the best analytical mind in the English department, and all the brightest stars in the Lit program come out of his courses.  He’s not bad to look at, either; the planes of his face are so sharp you just might cut yourself on them, and his eyes are always glittering like he knows something you don’t.  And he really doesn’t dress like a forty-year-old college professor, which doesn’t hurt.

Only the simultaneously lucky and unfortunate bastards who load their schedules up with him, or worse yet, get him as their advisor, ever see those planes soften.

His office is tastefully decorated, for those few English majors who know enough about interior decoration to say so. It’s also surprisingly devoid of books to belong to a man who seemingly memorized every text he’s ever taught. Pulling quotes and passages out of thin air is a particular talent of his.

There’s only one personal touch in the whole room, beyond the probably-expensive furniture: a picture of himself and a blonde woman holding a pit bull, on a beach so clean it can’t be in New York.  In it, her eyes glitter the exact way Professor Lester’s usually do, but his have melted into something infinitely more tender.

Very rarely, at the end of the afternoon or occasional evening class, the particularly observant students notice a blonde woman in a black pantsuit slip into the back, legs extended, ankles and arms crossed. She never says anything.  Just follows Professor Lester’s sharp movements at the front of the room.

None of them are trained to notice the outline of her holster, or the way her gaze actually darts around the room, tracking movement and exits, though it always comes back to rest on Logan.

—

Special Agent Mars is always fun at the Agency’s mixers and dinner parties and fundraisers.  Seeing her out of the sleek suit some of her coworkers suspect she was born in is all the more jarring for her ease in formalwear.  A real chameleon, they murmur, as she flips a switch and becomes more of a tittering socialite than a federal agent.

But the real fun is when she drags her partner with her.  Neither of them wears rings, but then, many agents don’t, so whether they’re married or not is up for debate.  He’s her standing date for every function, though, so in the end it doesn’t matter.

Veronica Mars has a rapier wit. Paired with her degrees in psychology and law and penchant for cataloguing every detail about a person at a glance, it’s safe to say she’s been verbally skinning people up one side and down the other since Quantico.

When her husband opens his mouth, it’s clear he shares her talent for sparring with words.

And watching them talk to each other is like following a tennis match—or perhaps boxing; trading barbs like endearments.

The best times is when some stuffy higher up with more ego than sense tries to glad-hand one of the most promising agents of the decade, and leaves the conversation head three sizes smaller and feeling vaguely emasculated.

—

Veronica learned the hard way in high school not to put too much of herself into her cases; learned to save some for her father, and for Logan, and for her.  But every so often one just stick in her craw and she can’t help sinking her teeth into it.

Her partner is too good to blink when her edges are sharper than usual, but Veronica can tell he notices.

And the man they’re tracking sure as hell does, too.  There’s something magnetic about Special Agent Veronica Mars on your trail, and this asshole is responding to it.  Leaving her...gifts.  Messages at crime scenes.

Verr-onicaaaaaaa, an old demon slithers in one ear and out the other.

When she starts to respond in kind, her supervisor removes her from the case and puts her on unpaid leave.  It’s in New York, though, and Veronica knows herself.  Knows who she is when she looks in the mirror.

Logan kisses the tip of her nose and thanks her for scheduling her crazy after his semester is finished.  They pack together, trading soft looks and touches as they maneuver seamlessly around each other.  Veronica calls Keith.

She silences the voice that sounds like teenage Veronica hissing that she’s running away from the fight.  That’s not her anymore.  And she’s not alone in this; if she didn’t trust her partner she wouldn’t have made it six months in the agency.  If she didn’t trust Logan, she would have died at seventeen.

Their visits to Neptune are rarer than her father would like, but just enough to soothe that part of them both that comes from here, that lives in every McMansion and dark alley and seedy bar and raging club and deserted beach.

Neptune is in their blood.  Veronica wouldn’t wish this place on her worst enemy; but they are akin, she and it. 

While Logan pulls his board and wetsuit out of storage and practically moves onto the beach, she does the usual tour.  Eli’s shop is doing well, and Valentina is adorable in her little oil stained overalls as she helps her father.  Wallace still eats lunch at their table, after all these years, and she smiles reflexively back at him like she did the first day they met.  Mac is still selling her soul to the devil for more money than god, running their software development with an iron fist.

Cliff quirks an eyebrow at her, and drops hints about cases he needs help with like other men his age drop little candies into children’s hands.  She rolls her eyes, but glances over the files anyway, and spends a couple nights taking pictures and video and surprising him with it in court.

It feels...nice.  Nostalgic, but not addictive.  Just some legal favors for an old friend who never failed to scratch her back when she scratched his.

Her forced leave isn’t up yet, and her partner says they’ve hit a frustrating but not definitive dead end back home, so she considers driving to San Diego to drop in on Leo with a pizza, for old time’s sake.

Then the man she was tracking in New York finally shows his face in Neptune.  He followed Veronica back here, to her home.

Oh, if that isn’t the worst, and last, mistake he ever makes.

Her friends, her family, closes ranks.  The town closes like a lobster trap for people stupid enough to come after Veronica Mars on her home turf.  By the time her partner and replacement make it out to the west coast, he’s beaten and bloody and wrapped up in evidence like a Christmas tree in Sheriff Lamb’s lockup.

The Sheriff takes the credit for the arrest; there is no mention of old biker buddies of Eli’s, or information passed along from Cliff and Wallace, or systems infiltrated by Mac. Of tasers and favors.

Veronica is cool as a cucumber when they call to tell her about it, while she’s out to lunch with an old friend.  Her partner is suspicious, but there’s no evidence.  And frankly, he’s not sure even Veronica Mars could have collared this guy without the resources of the Bureau behind her.

Deputy Sacks shakes his head in disbelief that people are still falling for that after all this time.

They go back to New York.  Life goes on.

—

Neither of them went to the ten year reunion, still too fresh off the horrors of high school. 

But they do go to the twenty year reunion, and win the shit out of it.  Not that they care, beyond vague petty satisfaction at the faces of those few people who do.  They leave early, have dinner with Keith, drinks with Wallace and Mac, and fly back to New York the next morning.

Some infinitesimal weight neither of them realized still existed was off their shoulders by the time they touch down in their home of fifteen years.

4. ten stoplights bleeding out

the one where keith mars dies in that plane crash, and veronica mars takes over mars investigations; veronica mars never escapes the insidious pull of neptune; and after ten plus years of money shots and favors, has perfected handing down her own particular brand of justice—and revenge. logan still joins the navy, but always finds his way back to her. 

it’s a story Eli’s heard a thousand times before, living in this town.  a story he’s lived himself, once or twice, though ever since he met Jade he’s done his upmost to keep his nose clean—to be that better version of himself she somehow managed to see in him.

the cops have it all wrong, lazy, corrupt, blaming it on the first brown kid they lay eyes on, planted evidence, ruined lives, etc.

there’s nothing he can do for them.

there’s nothing he can do for them.  But V always did love referrals.

“You need to go see the Sheriff,” Eli tells the kid, still hoping that one day the nickname will catch on just so he can see her expression.  His face crumples in heated confusion, because he just spent twenty minutes laying out how “Sheriff” Lamb was an asshole, but Eli smirks and jerks his head toward his car.  (Car, not bike)

They climb in, and drive to one of the last places in town holding out hope against gentrification—the 09ers he went to high school with would’ve called it seedy.

He still has a key to her offices after that stint working as her secretary for a few months when she was in college—though it’s not the same key.  Veronica Mars is too paranoid to keep the same locks for too long.  Never does catch her changing them out, just reaches in his pocket some days to fiddle with his key ring and fights a smile when his fingers find unfamiliar teeth.

But today, her doors are open.  They chime as Eli guides the kid inside, and gestures toward the old couch still sitting against the wall.

The receptionist’s desk is empty again.  He wonders vaguely what the last one did to earn the brush off.  She never manages to find what she’s looking for in an employee (either herself or her father, Eli’s never figured out which, but either option makes him want to clasp her shoulder).

He raps his knuckles on her office gently and pushes it open without waiting for an answer. 

She looks up sharply, her resting face before she registers his presence that special kind of pinched that means Logan had damn well better be at the end of his current tour of duty.

“Weevil,” she lets out a little breath and some of her tension.  “Long time no see, huh?”

“Yeah, we missed you at dinner last week.”

She shrugs.  “Life of a PI; there’s always another stake-out to ruin your night life.”

“Uh-huh, sure,” he drawls, raising his eyebrows at her.  After a decade and a half of knowing Veronica Mars, he’s more than familiar with her self-destructive tendencies. 

He’s vaguely grateful she’s pulling back from him before she unsheaths her paranoid claws and scratches everyone in reach, even friends like him; but mostly, it puts an ache in his chest that makes him want to hug Jade close and kiss Valentina on the forehead.

“Whatever, vato.  Just because you’re a successful businessman now doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t fight to keep the lights on.”  Her lips twist wryly.

And now he feels sort of bad, because she never charges his referrals full price for her services.   But favors are part of her gig, the way she tells it—keeps her in information and the occasional backup.

“Speaking of,” he starts, and she leans back in her chair and throws her feet up on the desk in a self-satisfied manner, one after the other, “I’ve got a Sheriff Lamb special in the waiting room for you.”

“Let me guess,” she drawls, “rich ‘victim’,” she pairs it with air-quotes, “planted evidence, and a timeline that makes no goddamn sense?”

“Got it in one,” he says tiredly, suddenly exhausted with the never-ending Neptune narrative.

“Send him in,” she says immediately, pulling her legs back and flipping through the one of the endless files that populate her life.

He hesitates at the door; once he hands off the kid, it becomes a case, and Veronica will tune out everything else that matters.  And Eli owes it to her to ask, to give a shit.

“When’s he back?” He asks softly.

Veronica’s hands slow, tension pouring back into her frame.  “Four more weeks,” she answers, clearly unwilling to further the conversation anymore.

“Yeah, well, make sure you remember to drag his ass to dinner with us then.  Valentina misses his stupid impressions.”

She rolls her eyes, and he shakes his head and leans out of the doorway to gesture to the kid, and that’s that.  Veronica Mars is on the case, and somewhere across Neptune, a familiar shiver just went down Don Lamb’s spine.

[conoscenze]

RP PLOTTING CHEAT-SHEET.

Want new-and-exciting plots for your character? Long to reach out to more of your followers, but don’t know where to start? Fear not! Fill out this form and give your RP partners both present and future all the of juicy jumping off points they need to help you get your characters acquainted.

Repost, don’t reblog! Template here.

Mun name: Vera OOC Contact: My IMs are always open for plotting, but I more easily chat on discord, which is this one: ⌞vera in a buttercup⌝#5711 (please send me an IM or an off-anon if you want to send me a request though! Just so I know.)

Who the heck is my muse anyway:

Since I am a multimuse blog, implying that I have more than one muse, I’ll introduce my main gal: Salice Feltracco, aka my so-far most prized OC. Long story short, she’s the protagonist of a novel of mine.

A cynical, stone-faced, generally apathetic and indifferent lawyer who has begun working indipendently since a couple of years; Salice is a woman that comes off as stoic and perhaps even rude, as a result of her bluntness and generally brutal honesty. She doesn’t easily warm up to people, but when she does, her actual interests easily pop out, and they’re of a great variety; insects, 80′s goth fashion and magic being a few of them. The latter is seemingly the most prominent passion, seeing as... she’s a witch! A necromancer, to be exact.

As a necromancer she offers a specific service that grants her a fluid and constant influx of money; in exchange for a payment, she resurrects people’s loved one for a restricted period of time. This sort of process is a fruitful thriving market, effective enough that it managed to pay off her years at university (which were a lot) and that allows her to mantain now a 800$ apartment.

TL;DR she is a wealthy emotionless necromancer with a passion for ants.

Points of interest:

What’s most noticeable about her is her attitude, that comes off as completely uncaring of everything surrounding her. Though she is efficient, her coworkers deem her poise quite strange, especially due to her very short-lived but intense outbursts that sometimes happen. Other than that, her lifestyle, if you don’t know her, appears entirely average.

For friends and alike, it may be peculiar how she so casually gets involved in mindless street fights, and how her schedule is so incredibly busy despite not spending that much time in the office.

What they’ve been up to recently:

My blog doesn’t really follow a plotline; it just goes along a general flows in which some of the muses here are interconnected through an acquaitanceship, exception made for a couple of them. As far as I am concerned, Salice in particular hasn’t gone through any special development, but there are a few interesting relationships & threads I have going on with @carnivorarium​ and @thmaniac​ especially; though in different scenarios and plotlines, Salice has been having some curious interactions with Yamai and Johnny respectively.

As for the casual threads, nothing much! She always works and works and works, between law and necromancy. Sometimes she spends time reading books / watching documentaries about ants or insects.

Where to find them:

Her most common location is, of course, her office---Feltracco & Owen law studies---which she shares with her friend and colleague Allen. There she generally handles work (divorces, mainly) and also spends free time doing crossword puzzles or mindlessly watching videos on her computer.

Other places where you can find her:

the café, not much distant from the apartment complex where the studios are located: she’s there during lunch break and after work, if eventual case files need refinement or if she ought to do more research on her PC while drinking some coffee or eating some random sandwich;

suburbs pubs and nightclubs, where she can hang around lively teenagers and observe them as she drinks and does her own thing, or where she can feel a little alive by engaging in random street fights;

graveyards, which she visits not only for work but also for personal peace of mind;

and finally her apartment, which is the place where she can completely be herself. The latter is usually devoid of visitors, however. If you’re invited there, you can consider yourself a friend.

Current plans:

In the RP world, none whatsoever! Salice for now is as indipendent as a character could get. Aside from the aforementioned thread with Cirque’s character Yamai (which I actually need to figure out where it happens on the “official” blog timeline), there’s no specific arc plans for her, nor for anyone on this blog actually. They each have their own stories & comics & games they’ll possibly be in one day, but in roleplay they don’t have anything written down. Unless someone wishes to help me do that! I do want to notice that here, development comes only and explicitly with interaction between muses.

Desired interactions:

If I might be honest, any interaction is more or less desired. I have a wishlist tag here, but specifically for Salice I don’t exactly have a... specific idea... I just want her to develop all sorts of relationships and want her to experience a various amount of things; I suppose that since she has a more-or-less psychological serious emotional blockage, it’d be fun to have her slowly break that wall of hers down, whether be it romantically or through other emotions.

That, or it’d be fun to explore the grotesque, sadistic, murderous side that there is to her, because as morally grey as she is, to some extent she’s violent. She’s killed before and wouldn’t fear doing it again, plus she very often blackmails and threatens clients of hers that try to pin her on a wall, and considering the street fighting habit it’s no wonder she’d have a blood-oriented side to her character. It’d be fun to see her actually engage someone in a fight (as much as I suck writing that and never tried it---one more reason to desire it!), and it’d be entertaining figuring out how she speaks, thinks as such situation occurs.

Also someone witnessing her doing necromancy real-time? Please? It’d be so fun.

Offered interactions:

Salice is... a lawyer. She specializes but is not limited to divorce and mugging, and considering not a lot of muses around are married, the latter is a good start if you wish to entertain a “professional” plot with her. But as I said she’s not limited to those two types of cases---she accepts about anything, she just specifies due to her low rank as a lawyer.

So if you want to have a lawyer-client thing going on, show up with a problem and she’ll do her best to solve it (she is pricey to some extent though); the more tricky it is, the best it will be. Salice is always a sucker for complex and intriguing situations! Even more if your muse isn’t as innocent as they make themselves out to be!

That said, you can also have another sort of interaciton with her... which is via necromancy. You could be a client needy to reconnect with a deceased person and engage her: all while knowing her in normal daytime life. You don’t know she’s Ms. Necro, she doesn’t know you’re this specific acquaitance, and there’s this weird tension going on until one or both of you discover the deal. Either dig into it, or avoid it entirely!

Interesting situations could come up from a scenario involving her nightlife, which is made of nightclubbing and streetfighting.

Current open post(s):

I have a tag for open starters here! Though they’re mainly one-liners for the sake of vague context (I love when people come up with a random idea ahah), there are some long-ish ones too. I try to vary with muses, but the most prominent one is obviously Salice lol.

Anything else?:

Hm, not that I can think of right now! I do suggest looking through each of the muses’ about pages often, since there are things to keep in mind about them (and I do notice when people don’t read the pages lol I know they’re long but please do it, there’s a lot of vital info) and uhhhh... I’m personally very prone to a terrible thing called laziness. That said, I’m always up for a chat if you’d like!

Tagging: you >:3

[lovelyirony]

American Man, Leave Me Be

Most people were insanely excited about their soulmarks. This meant you had somebody who would love you for forever. This was awesome. It made Tony and Steve not feel like absolute terrible people when they looked at their soulmark. Well, for the most part. 

Steve would stare at his as he was lying down on the street, spitting blood out of his mouth and concentrating on not letting Bucky or Ma know that one of his ribs was probably not doing the thing it was supposed to be doing. (Staying in place.) He saw his American bald eagle, beak open and fierce, eyes glinting, and the claws held a blue circle. He thought it was beautiful. (He could swear it was glowing sometimes, just a flicker.) He knew that everything would be okay. That no matter what, there was someone who had the same thing, and everything would be okay. He would come home and love someone and show them his favorite Andrews Sisters song once he could afford to buy a fancy player. 

Except then he went down in the ocean. So he was lying down again, not spitting out blood, but water, desperately trying to wonder if his soulmate would feel pain or not as he died. (Wondering if Fate just gave him a mark to mess with him.) 

Tony Stark is born with a soulmark already attached to his chest. The eagle is wide, looks like a tattoo an army man would have, and Maria cries at her “ruined” boy. Howard shrugs. He has better things to do than theorize about soulmarks. (If he had paid attention to Tony after that, he would’ve realized that he shared something with Steve Rogers. Tony wonders if that would have changed anything.) 

He hates his soulmark. Tony hates soulmarks. They aren’t scientifically explainable, and his is so...large. He can’t flirt with a girl without her finding out he has a soulmate, and their eyes dim. Or the boy who flirts and then disregards him because “I can’t deal with another guy that comes along.” The only person that has a large soulmark is Rhodey, who he meets in college after Rhodey shows up to orientation in a t-shirt and Tony can see a jet with jet stream on his right arm. 

“I’m going into the Air Force,” Rhodey says, grinning. “Figure that has to be a sign or something.” 

“Nice,” Tony says. He lifts up his shirt. “If we’re going by soulmarks, I’ll exclude myself from a capitalistic society, live in a trailer, and quote Roseanne religiously.” Rhodey laughs, and they become friends. 

Despite how badly he wants to, Tony never covers the soulmark. Why should he? By the time he’s twenty-four, he hasn’t met them. Most, around seventy percent, meet theirs by their twenty-second birthday. Tony thought he met his when Pepper walks into the building with enough fury and words to make his heart skip a beat. (It would never work out.) 

It’s still there in Afghanistan. When some of it gets the little most etched in the reactor. When he understands what the eagle is holding. When he decides that he’s absolutely wrecked for anyone who wants him. 

He doesn’t pay attention to Steve Rogers on first meeting. Clint mutters something that sounds vaguely like “sexual tension,” but Tony just focuses on the suit. Rogers already thinks he’s a giant screw-up, just like Howard, so what’s the point? Besides, he’s not there to prove himself to a blonde guy with some serious adjustment issues. (God, why did SHIELD sign him up for the team? He’s obviously not read--stop it, Tony. You don’t care.) Tony is there because he’s a consultant. 

They start living together. Tony shies away from any interaction outside of doing the lab thing with Bruce, snarking with Clint, and making one-off comments about “why doesn’t Nat kill me already?” (It has to happen at some point, right? Right?) 

He starts getting more comfortable after he sees Steve in the library. He brought some of his favorite books along to New York, or copies at least. Steve is staring at a history book, at everything he’s ever missed. 

“You know, some of this happened less than a year ago,” he says, voice choked with tension and the need to be strong. Tony knows. 

“I know it doesn’t compare to seventy years, but I got kidnapped for three months,” Tony says, nonchalantly. Steve’s head whips around, eyes the picture perfect of guilt. “Oh, don’t pull that face. You were in ice for seventy years. On the bright side, you haven’t witnessed the horror that is ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ by Billy Ray Cyrus. But I can understand a little bit of the gap. It’s terrifying right? Not knowing everything that went on. I bet your’e still amazed by half the things.” Steve nods. 

“It’s like I’ve never lived,” Steve says. “I...read about myself. I’m still mad that someone misspelled my name as ‘Stephen’ and no one corrected it for ten years.” (Tony does not mention that he was the one who corrected it in a long and drawn out legal battle that bears no repeating but this is also why he’s friends with the best lawyer in New York, Jennifer Walters.) 

“You’ll get used to it,” Tony says. “I’ll help you along the way, okay Rogers? Don’t worry, you won’t go through this alone.” He pauses with a wince. “Ugh, I sound like a Hallmark card.” Steve laughs. 

He doesn’t see the soulmark until Tony trips down the stairs because Dum-E was apparently making “distress” sounds. 

“What does my kid want!?” He asks blearily. And Steve sees it. It’s hard not to. It’s big, loud, and gaudy. It’s what he would think Tony Stark would want if he didn’t know what he was actually like. Tony hated large displays of affection that he didn’t authorize. This definitely covered it. 

“Sir, I believe Dum-E dropped his cup, and was upset to find that it slid under the couch,” Jarvis answers. Tony rolls his eyes. 

“He does realize he can’t drink anything, right? And why was he distressed? He loses stuff under the couch all the time. He lost his translator under the couch that one time.” 

“It appears that Steven Rogers has gotten stuck,” Jarvis says, amusedly. Tony stares at Steve, who is wearing a white t-shirt and sweatpants that are too short because the idiot refuses to have nice-fitting clothes and there it is. The eagle. 

“Well.” Steve sits up. There’s the cup. It’s annoyingly neon yellow. “This complicates things, doesn’t it?” 

“Your kid has terrible taste in cups,” Steve answers. “But yeah.” They don’t talk for a couple minutes. “I didn’t think I had a soulmate anymore.” Tony snorts. 

“I thought my soulmate just avoided me at all costs.” 

“I would never do that,” Steve says. “You’re pretty.” 

“Did you just call me ‘pretty’?” Tony says, eyebrows raised. 

“Yes?” Steve says. “What, am I not allowed to say ‘pretty’ anymore?” 

“No, just wasn’t expecting that compliment. Thank you Steve.” Steve nods. “Do you even think that you want me as a soulmate.” 

“Why wouldn’t I?” He says it like it’s so simple and finite. Like it should be honestly simple, they’re soulmates. 

“Steve, I don’t know if you know this, but I’m a bastard. I’m self-sacrificing, I’m selfish, and I have a hard time letting go of things.” 

“You’re talking to a guy who jumped out of a plane alone,” Steve says, snorting. “I think we’re both stubborn and selfish and don’t let go of things easily.” Tony shrugs. That’s actually...accurate. 

This is how Bruce finds them on the couch and then sees the small one and the large one. 

"Well, that explains a lot,” he mutters. 

Tony and Steve actually fit quite well together. They start communicating effectively, and Tony even teases him about the soulmark. “The angry bald eagle isn’t me,” Tony says. Steve rolls his eyes. 

“Oh sure, as if anyone else would’ve picked such an angry looking bird.” 

“Steve, I know for a fact that small-You was made of rage and rage only.” Steve sighs. “You know I’m right!” Steve smiles before pressing a kiss to his soulmate’s hand. Tony is such a sucker for the small things. 

“You’re ridiculous,” Steve says finally. Tony smiles, serving him a plate of bacon, eggs, pancakes, and a bowl of fruit. 

“Finish up breakfast, I want to be early to the press conference so I can make fun of the guy from that Daily Globe page or whatever.” 

They kinda love each other. 

Just a little bit. 

(Not like they’re soulmates or any--OH WAIT) 

@starsandsupernovae thank u 

[queen-of-deans-booty]

Heart- Part 1

Pairing: Dean x Reader

Word Count: 2,383

Warnings: Typical Supernatural violence, language, angst, minor character death, blood, you know the usual

Author’s Note: I do not own anything from Supernatural. All credit goes to their respective owners. If you’re a junkie for this sort of thing, then a tag list is the right thing for you! If you want to be a Queen, I’ll add you to that list too! Any and all comments on these are appreciated. I really want to hear what you guys think about this one!

Feedback is the glue that holds my writing together.

Tags at the bottom

There wasn’t a lot you didn’t believe in. You knew a ton of monsters existed and you killed a shit tone of monsters in your days. The one monster who you didn’t like at all were werewolves. Those dogs were nasty and one bite from them meant you got turned and there was nothing you could do about it.

“How is your ankle doing?” Dean asked.

“Dean, that was a week ago. It has healed by now.” You said with a smile.

“I know, still.” Dean said with a shrug. You giggled and couldn’t help but think he was so damn adorable like that.

“You’re so cute.”

“Hey, I am not cute.” Dean said as if cute was a disgusting word.

“To me, you are.” You said with a smile, your mind wandering to the case you were currently on.

“I am not cute.” Dean grumbled.

“This better not be a fucking werewolf.” You said, helping Dean clean the guns that he was going to be using. The thing with guns, just like everything else, they needed to be taken care of and cleaned. You found it relaxing to do so, knowing what you were doing and also knowing you couldn’t get it wrong.

“Why not? Those monsters are awesome. They’re badass.” Dean said, looking at you.

“One bite from them and you’re basically dead. What if I was one?” You asked.

“Don’t do that to me.” Dean said, shaking his head.

“What if I was a monster? I mean, I may as well be. I’m a freak with now visions who can move shit with her mind.” You said, blowing inside the barrel of the gun to make sure you got everything out.

“No, you’re not a monster. You don’t kill people. You can’t be a hunter and be a monster at the same time.”

“Then what is Gordon?” You asked, thinking of the horrible man who is still, hopefully, locked up.

“Don’t remind me of him.” Dean said with a shake of his head.

“You know, I think there are good monsters out there. Ones that remember what’s it’s like to be human and that know what is right and wrong.” Your mind immediately went to the Trickster but you didn’t know why. He was dead. But why didn’t it feel like it?

“Yeah? Well, we haven’t met any that wanted to just hang out with us.”

“Yet.” You said with a smile, grabbing another gun to clean. Dean chuckled and didn’t say anything else for the rest of time it took Sam to come back from the morgue. This case you got wind of was screaming werewolf to Dean but you hoped it wasn’t.

Sam was checking the morgue to see if the latest victim had his heart missing. Now, multiple monsters go for the heart but until Sam came back from the morgue and give you his opinion on the matter, then you wouldn’t know for sure. You actually didn’t have to wait long because Sam came through the door shortly after.

“So, is this lawyer guy the first heart-free corpse in town?” Dean asked, looking at Sam while he cleaned his guns.

“Actually, it’s the first man. Over the past year, several women have gone missing. Dead bodies all washed up later in the bay, too deteriorated to draw firm conclusions.” Sam said, sitting at the table.

“But no hearts?” You asked.

“No hearts. They were all hookers working Hunter’s Point. Now, cops are trying to keep things under wrap, but they’re looking for a serial killer.”

“What about the lunar cycle?” You asked, scared of the answer.

“Mm-hmm. Yeah, month after month, all the murders happen in the week leading up to the full moon.” Sam said with a sigh.

“Which is this week, right?” Dean asked.

“Right, hence the lawyer.”

“Awesome.” Dean said with a smile.

“No, Dean, this isn’t awesome.” You said with a roll of your eyes.

“Dean, could you be a bigger geek about this?” Sam teased.

“I’m sorry, man, but what about “a human by day, a freak animal killing machine by moonlight” don’t you understand? I mean, werewolves are badass. We haven’t seen one since we were kids.” Dean said, grinning.

“Okay, Sparky. And you know what? After we kill it, we can go to Disneyland.” Sam enhanced the teasing.

“You know what the best part about it is? We already know how to bring these suckers down,” Dean said, holding up a silver bullet. “One of these bad boys right to the heart. So, what’s our next move?”

“We talk to the girl who found the body.” Sam said, getting up again, still in his Fed suit. You nodded and finished up the final touches on the gun and got up, walking over to your bag. You got out your Fed clothes and quickly put them on while Sam was busy reading something on his phone.

Dean did the same but didn’t care if his brother saw anything of Dean. You loved the brothers but they’re closeness sometimes scared you.

Soon, you three were over at the woman’s apartment. Her name was Madison and you heard she was pretty shaken up about it. You knocked on her door and she was the one to open it with a confused look.

“Hi, I’m Agent Wilson and these are my partners Agent Landis and Dante,” You introduced Dean and Sam respectively.

“Come on in,” Madison said, letting you in her apartment. Immediately upon entering, you got a bad vibe through the whole place and saw a bearded man sitting on the couch. Something wasn’t right here. “I don’t understand. I already gave my statement.”

“Right, well, we just need to verify a few things.” Sam said with a smile.

“This is my neighbor, Glen. Glen, these are Agents Wilson, Landis and Dante.” She said, introducing her neighbor. Glen smiled and stood up with a nod.

“Well, I guess I’ll leave you to it.” Glen said, looking at you and the brothers.

“Okay, well, thanks for the casserole.” Madison said with a smile.

“Anytime, just call if you need anything.” Glen said, leaving the apartment.

“He’s sweet. He came over to check on me. Have a seat.” She said with a smile, motioning to her kitchen table. You nodded and walked to the table, taking a seat in between the brothers.

“You must be pretty shaken up. You were Nate Mulligan’s assistant, right?” Sam asked gently.

“Yah, for two years.” She nodded.

‘So, you knew all about him?” Dean asked.

“Probably knew more about him than he did. Nate was… he was nice.” Madison said with a soft smile.

“But…?” Sam asked, expecting a but at the end of the sentence.

“Nothing, really. He had a few scotches in him, and he'd started hitting on anyone in a five-mile radius. You know the type.” Madison said with a few chuckles.

“Yeah, I do actually.” You and Sam both said, looking at Dean who just shrugged, not denying it. You felt his hand on your thigh and you snapped your head to him but he didn’t pay any attention to you.

“Did, uh, did he have any enemies?” Dean asked, serious as can be as he slid his hand further up your thigh.

“What do you mean? It sure looked like an animal attack.”

“No, yeah, we’re just covering all the bases. Anyone that might have had a beef with him? A former client or an ex?” When Dean got dangerously close to the one place that was craving him, you slapped his hand away and he chuckled lowly. You looked at Madison who looked to be in deep thought.

“What is it?” Sam asked, noticing the same thing.

“Well, this is embarrassing, but my ex-boyfriend, Kurt Mueller, after we broke up, he went kind of nuts. He’s… well, he’s kind of been stalking me. He got it in his head that something was going on between Nate and I. He showed up at my office.”

“What happened?” You asked her.

“Kurt got into it with Nate and threw a few punches before security could get a hold of him. I was lucky that I got to keep my job.”

“When was the last time you saw Kurt?” Dean asked.

“A few nights ago. Actually, the night Nate died. We were all grabbing drinks at this bar, and Kurt showed up. Nothing happened but it was like he was watching me. Then he was gone. But, to tell you the truth, he scares me.” She said, worry in her eyes.

You looked at the brothers and you were sharing the same thought that they were. Kurt seemed like a prime suspect in the killings but you didn’t want to be too sure. This place still gave you the bad vibes. After a few more questions, you left her apartment.

“So, what do you guys think?” You asked the brothers.

“Stalker ex-boyfriend? He hates the boss and he was there that night.” Sam said, thinking it over.

“Think he’s our dog-faced boy?” Dean asked as he walked to the Impala.

“Well, it’s a theory.” Sam said with a shrug.

“We’ve had worse.” You said, getting inside the car.

“What do you say we pay Kurt a visit?” Dean said, getting behind the wheel. Once everyone was in, he took off to Kurt’s apartment which you got from Madison. You thought it might be bets to do this at night when you thought he most likely would be out.

Agreeing with you, Dean waiting until nightfall to check out Kurt’s apartment. Once he picked the lock, you walked inside, looking around the neat apartment. Looks could be deceiving so you walked around a bit more going inside the kitchen.

“Anything?” Sam asked from another room. Dean checked the fridge but he sighed when he didn’t see anything worth checking out.

“No, nothing but leftovers and a six-pack.” Dean said, looking at you but you shrugged.

“Check the freezer. Maybe there’s some human hearts behind the Haagen-Dazs or something.” Sam informed.

“Wow, you know the brand of ice cream. Has someone been a bit lonely?” You teased, grinning when Sam rolled his eyes.

“Shut up.” Sam said. Dean chuckled and as he was about to open the freezer, you heard a door open and close, followed by a crash outside. You looked at the brothers and rushed to the sliding door that led to the balcony.

You looked outside and noticed claw marks in the concrete wall, sliding to the ground. You were about to call for Sam and Dean but they beat you to it, seeing what you were seeing. You sighed and didn’t noticed a wolf come in or out so you had no idea where Kurt could be, if it was him, which you weren’t thinking it 100%.

You were about to say something but you three heard a gunshot come from the streets and that is all it took for you to be running out of the building with the brothers. You rushed to the source of the sound but gasped as you saw what was in front of you.

There was a policeman who was dead, his body completely mauled by most likely the werewolf. Damn, you hated these creatures.

“I’ll call 911.” Sam said, taking his phone out. Dean bent down and examined the corpse with a sigh.

“I’d say Kurt’s looking more and more like our Cujo.”

“Dean, if he’s out here, we better check on Madison.” Sam said, worried about the girl you knew he liked. You could always tell when Sam liked a girl. You heard it in his voice when he talked about Jessica and you saw it in his eyes when he met Sarah.

He liked Madison a lot.

You three rushed over to her apartment, it still being the middle of the night. You rushed to her front door and knocked on the door, hoping she was home. Across the hall, Glen opened his door and frowned when he saw you.

“What’s going on?”

“Police business, Glen.” You said, looking at Madison when she opened the door.

“What is it?” She asked, concern on her face.

“Can we talk privately?” Sam asked, noticing Glen still watching them.

“Yeah, of course, come on in.” She said, let you and the Winchesters inside her apartment. She went to the kitchen and immediately got the coffee brewing, thinking you might need it. As good as coffee sounded, you had more pressing matters to deal with.

“Has Kurt been here?” Sam asked as Madison started pouring the coffee.

“Not exactly.” She said gently.

“What does that mean?” You asked.

“Well, he was outside last night. Just… looking. Just looking at me. Has he done something?”

“We’re not really sure, yet.” Sam said truthfully.

“It’s probably nothing, but… we just don’t wanna take any chances. In fact, one of us should probably stay here with you? Just in case he stops by. Where does he work?” Dean suggested. She didn’t seem to reject the idea and you grinned, thinking this was Sam’s opportunity.

“He owns a body shop. I have the address here somewhere.” She said, leaving the room.

“Alright, Sam, you stay here and Dean and I will check out the body shop.” You said, looking at Sam.

“And what if I wanted to stay?” Dean asked, looking at you.

“You want to stay? Fine, don’t be with me. I was kind of feeling a little hot myself but I can always take care of that myself without your help.” You said with a smirk.

“Alright, so you’ll stay?” Dean asked, looking at his brother. You smirked and grinned in triumph. Madison came back and handed you a piece of paper with the address on it.

“Thank you, Madison, Sam will be staying with you, if that’s alright.” You asked. She looked at Sam and had a small smile on her face. She nodded and looked at you with a firmer nod.

“Yeah, that’s fine.” You nodded and smiled, leaving her apartment with Dean.

“So, you were joking about taking care of yourself, right?” Dean asked you as you walked to the car. You smiled and shook your head lightly, not answering him as you got in the car.

The Queens:

@maddieburcham1 @ginamsmith  @mogaruke @whit85-blog @inlovewithbja @spn67-sister @kdfrqqg @jarpadandjensenaremyheroes @roxyspearing @supercalifragilistic26 @mishamigose @cobrakai1967 @essie1876 @wishedworld @crispychrissy @laqueus-ludovicus @nostalgic-uncertainty @jerk-bitch-and-an-angel @potterhead1265 @starswirlblitz @untitled39887 @ta-n-ja @deans-fallen-angel-boy @scarletluvscas @notnaturalanahi @tahbehonest @stay-in--place @dreaminofdean @posiemax @donnaintx @mikey1822 @alexandriajanae4 @li-ssu @just-another-winchester @obsessivecompulsivespn @emoryhemsworth @newtospnfandom @mizzezm @goldenolaf25 @jessikared97

The Dean Beans:

@akshi8278 @mega-mrs-dean-winchester @winchesterandpie @spn-dean-and-sam-winchester @carribear31 @tacklesackles @oreosatmidnight @not-naturalfangirl @missselinakitty @iam-a-cutiepie  @kristendansmith @milo-winchester-4ever @jensenackesl @codyshany316 @pheonyxstorm @helllonearth @juniorhuntersam @pouterpufftrain @ruprecht0420 @shut-ur-face-and-get-in-the-car @carriemichelle2012 @aubreystilinski

Series Rewrite Junkies:

@helllonearth @amyisabellal @deanwnchstr @caseykitten6 @quixoticcat @supernaturalblogging @notmoose45  @crowleysminion @mina22 @tahbehonest @hadleymcallister2177 @destielsangels @spnhybrid @oreosatmidnight @valerieshubin @seninjakitey @flyonlittlewinchester  @aubreystilinski @rocketqueeens @emilygracespellins

[belfromhell]

@flying-toes and @leslipigeonoficial tagged me on this. Why am I doing it? I truly don’t know, but I love their blogs (go and follow them, now!) so I’ll do it with a smile on my face. (Btw sorry if there’s grammatical mistakes, english isn’t my first language).

Ps: @flying-toes is the one of the best persons I’ve met in this page, she’s so funny and sweet all the time! Ilysm girl, thanks for listening and care, ¡te adoro, eres genial!

rules: answer these 85 statements and tag 20 people.

I tag: @rubbersoles19 @fandom-weirdness-for-life @punk-rock-princess-626 @xjustahoneymoon @astronautswife @honeybun-holland @gweniings @mermaid-with-flowers-in-her-hair @s-sun-kissed @petersyoink @havikenhayes @pocketandheart @flylikeajetpack @lawryn-w @allisondra @danceratthestillpoint @tomhollandhollaatme @cassieandra0721 @dorkiustothemax @thebreenutgallery

I love lots of blogs but my memory is just shit so I’ll tag my last 20 followers instead.

the last

1. drink: a very strong lemonade. Basically a lot of lemon juice, a tiny bit of water and almost no sugar. LIKE THE REAL MACHOS.

2. phone call: My mom? I wanted to know how make chicken soup but we ended talking about my new neighbor and her annoying chihuahua. Never got my soup, though.

3. text message: a friend. She’s with her boyfriend’s family so basically she’s having a mental breackdown cause the mom of the boy hates her, lmao.

4. song you listened to: OMG NOOOO HAHAH. “Abrázame muy fuerte” by Juan Gabriel (we miss you mi amor :c).

5. time you cried: last night? I’ll be honest with you guys, I was reading a very emotional fanfic, it’s just science. I couldn’t help it.

6. dated someone twice: My ex, I think. Idk, I’ll date him again soon probably. I’ll use him to get free food and a Netflix account >:v

7. kissed someone and regretted it: LAST MONTH AND SHE’S MY EX LMAO. What can I say? She’s very nice and persuasive o-o

8. been cheated on: Never.

9. lost someone special: My great-grandmother passed away five years ago. I haven’t lost someone special since her, thank God.

10. been depressed: My life consist on been depressed and and angry 24/7

11. gotten drunk and thrown up: Last week. I FINALLY GRADUATED HIGH SCHOOL FUCKERS. (By fuckers I mean my teachers, I love you all okay?)

3 favourite colours

12. Black

13. Blue

14. Red

in the last year have you

15. made new friends: Yep. Some thanks to other friends, some others thanks to my habit of losing important stuff.

16. fallen out of love: No, I still love the same guy, so ???

17. laughed until you cried: Yesterday, my friend’s mother put INTENTIONALLY soap in his eyes.

18. found out someone was talking about you: YES, I WAS WAITING FOR THIS QUESTION. Last month, some girl was talking shit about my whole classroom, just because we are genious and her classmates are total toddlers. It was graduation practice, AND MY PALS AND I WERE CONGRATULATED, NOT YOU SMOL LIL SHIT.

19. met someone who changed you: I’m always making friends. On web sites, on the street, everywere, so I’m always changing cause all of them teach me something everyday, even if they are just being themselves. Watch and learn.

20. found out who your friends are: I’ll just say yes while I keep my eyes shut to avoid cry.

21. kissed someone on your Facebook list: yeah, me and my friends still play 7 Minutes in Heaven, so imagine how that turns out.

general

22. how many of your Facebook friends do you know in real life: I’ve had the same Facebook account for five or six years now, and I’ve being in lots of fandoms. So, to make it short maybe I know five hundred of the three thousand? My school was really big and I’m just a sucker for friends and new people. 

23. do you have any pets: Nop, my last pet was a cat called Noah but she run away. But I have lots of plants, does they count?

24. do you want to change your name: Nop, I’m Karla Belén and that’s how family calls me, but other people call me just Karla or Belén or derivations of those two. My closest friends call me Kiwi or Kabe. My teachers used my last name and all my doctors call me Belito. I love my name cause some people has take their valious time to make nicknames or they call me in a certain way cause maybe a thing I’ve made reminds them of something specific and I’m okay with that, so no, I don’t want to change my name.

25. what did you do for your last birthday: I was at my uncle’s house, the whole day we traveled with my parents to the capital, and when we arrived my aunt had cooked fried chicken. It was very simple but my dad let me drive a little bit and my mom was in a good mood, so it was really cute.

26. what time did you wake up: I stay till one am reading fanfics, so I usually wake at ten or eleven am.

27. what were you doing at midnight last night: Talking with @flying-toes​ about my horrible life decisions.

28. name something you can’t wait for: Start college on September, if they answer my call this Monday. The rest of the MCU movies. Dinner.

29. when was the last time you saw your mom: Five minutes ago? She’s staying with me this days, but nah I don’t care really.

31. what are you listening to right now: I’m watching Parks and Recreation actually, so I’m listening to their voices?

32. have you ever talked to a person named tom: Yes, my friend’s brother is called Tomás, but we call him Tom cause Tomás sounds really pretentious.

33. something that is getting on your nerves: My family, the college applications THAT HAVEN’T BEEN ANSWERED, not having money to waste in shits and stuff.

34. most visited website: AO3, Instagram, and Tumblr.

35. hair color: Black.

36. long or short hair: Both, I like long hair to make braids but I like short hair cause is easy to comb. Now I have it long but that may change next week if I feel like it.

37. do you have a crush on someone: TOM HOLLAND’S GOT MY HEART AND MY SOUL AT THE MOMENT.

38. what do you like about yourself: I’m determined, I like to think that we should all be aware that we are part of a larger project and we must do something about it, but something good, something that helps the rest and make the stay in the planet more enjoyable. I am committed and fight a lot for world problems. I go out to protests and stuff, but I hope to be a politician someday to work for people who are forgotten by people with power.

39. piercings: Nope, just normal earrings holes.

40. blood type: I truly don't know, I think I’m O-, or some weird thing cause the only time i’ve need blood we had to look for a donator cause my family isn't compatible.

41. nickname: Kiwi, Kabe, Belu, Belito, Flaca, Nena.

42. relationship status: Trying to return with my ex but failing.

43. zodiac: Capricorn.

44. pronouns: “she” “her”.

45. favourite tv show: Parks and Recreation, maybe.

46. tattoos: A little moon on my right hip.

47. right or left handed: right.

48. surgery: twice.

50. sport: HA! Noooooo.

51. vacation: My grandparents house is my perfect vacation place.

52. pair of trainers: Converse or Vans? I don’t care about shoes, honestly.

GENERAL

53. eating: I eat everything except for sardines.

54. drinking: I drink everyting.

55. I’m about to: Read some Spideychelle fics?

56. waiting for: UPDATES OF MY FAVORITE FICS. And the damn college card.

57. want: Love.

58. get married: I’m still a baby, but I really want to get married someday.

59. career: I just graduated high school, soy un Bachiller de la República del Ecuador :D, but I want to be a lawyer.

WHICH IS BETTER

60. hugs or kisses: Hugs.

61. lips or eyes: Eyes.

62. shorter or taller: I don’t care, but I prefer taller people cause I’m a little tall and people is dumb about it.

63. older or younger: I don’t care x2. Age it’s just a number, I’m still pretty inmature but I’ve know people of my age that is very responsible and older people that needs to get back to their parents house. 

64. nice arms or nice stomach: Nice heart? I like a nice body, but I don’t care x3 about aparience. If something or someone is cute, I like them. If they have fit bodies is cool, and is also cool if they don’t.

65. hookup or relationship: Relationship.

66. troublemaker or hesitant: TROUBLEMAKER AS FUUUUUCK. I have some strong opinios about delicate stuff and usually I get into trouble defending it.

HAVE YOU EVER:

67. kissed a stranger: Yeah, drunk or high.

68. drank hard liquor: Yeah, since I was fifteen probably.

69. lost glasses/contact lenses: Never, I can’t live without my glasses so I never leave them, at any moment.

70. turned someone down: Never.

71. sex on the first date: Never x2.

73. had your heart broken:It’s still broken but I'm pretending I'm fine reading lots of fanfics and going to the dentist.

74. been arrested: Once but I escaped before they called my parents or asked my name. I’m not proud of it but well...

75. cried when someone died: Yeah.

76. fallen for a friend: Yeah :(((

DO YOU BELIEVE IN:

77. yourself: Sometimes, when I’m sure that things will go okay, and if I’m not I just stay positive.

78. miracles: I don’t know, I’m not a religious person. But I think that sometimes things are meant to be and happens in weird ways that can be considered as miracles.

79. love at first sight: No, that’s bullshit.

80. santa claus: Nop, here in Ecuador we don’t believe in that. It’s something that foreign brought like a comercial thing.  

81. kiss on the first date: It deppends.

82. angels: Maybe.

OTHER:

84. eye colour: Dark brown.

85. favourite movie: El 49. In 1949 a earthquake shake and destroyed my city. Help was sent from all the country and from close countries but it never came. People with power taked those things and made total empires using all the provitions. But my city didn’t give up. People that lost everyting worked harder that ever and the next year the city was reconstructed and since that year we celebrate on February the FFF (Fiesta de las Flores y de las Frutas) that means Flower and Fruit Festival. I love that movie cause reflects all the pain of those poor citizens but the determination of the ambateños (My city is called Ambato, do the math). 

IF YOU GOT TO THE END YOU HAVE A LOT OF FREE TIME. THANKS FOR READING! If you think we have something in common you should send me a message. I’am always willing to talk or listen.

:D

[shockcity]

DD #2 - orbiting planet matt

Rating: T 

Summary: attempts at befriending Matt Murdock fall rather flat.

Category: gen

Warnings: none

*denotes dialogue taken directly from the comics, and in this case all quotes belong to Bendis.

__________________________

1

“Are those for me?” Peter asks, mask turned toward the greasy bag of chili dogs. “It’s not my birthday.”

“It’s not mine either.” Matt grins at him. “Yet here you are.”

Peter climbs down from the flag pole and lands agilely next to the man in red. His stomach is grumbling. The hot dogs are from Joe’s, he thinks. “Joe’s?” he inquires.

“Joe’s,” says Matt. “Only the best.”

Peter is rummaging through the bag cheerfully until he remembers exactly who he’s talking to. He pauses and looks up, and Matt shrugs a little and says, “I need information.”

He’s not surprised, but he is a little hurt.

“Right,” he mutters, pulling up his mask so he can take a large bite of his chili dog. It’s delicious – Matt sure knows how to bribe a guy. “What’s up?”

“Heard you tangled with Mysterio recently,” Matt begins, and they talk shop for a bit as Peter inhales his food and quietly wonders if Matt ever takes a day off.

He’s certainly very dedicated, and Peter admires that dedication; Matt gets the job done. But he’s definitely a lone wolf for good reason, because working with Matt is not anyones idea of fun. Like at all. Ever.

For example: Peter will say, “right, let’s make a plan” and turn around and find Matt already beating on people. Or Peter will try to deescalate a situation – “there’s no need for violence,” he’d say, and instead Matt would be like, “fight me.”

It was exhausting.

And while civilians liked to call Matt the man without fear, most of the superhero community thought he was more like the man without tact.

“Thanks,” Matt says when he’s picked Peter’s brain to his satisfaction. He perches on the edge of the building, ready to swing back to Hell’s Kitchen.

“Hey,” Peter calls out before he can vanish. “I heard about Foggy.”

Matt tenses.

“How is he? How are you?”

Peter waits, and waits. And waits. Matt is silent and still, hanging on the edge of a skyscraper. He doesn’t turn to Peter and say, “yeah, thanks buddy,” or “yeah man, I’m wrecked” like a normal guy.

Instead he says, “I’ll be seeing you,” and disappears.

Peter likes that Matt makes his little blind jokes and knows that he’s a sucker for Joe’s chili dogs. Peter admires the mortal man that jumps off buildings and takes on ninjas and super soldiers and psychopaths. More than once, he’s wanted to be like Daredevil – fearless, honorable, persistent. Peter has known Matt Murdock for years; has fought with him, laughed with him, and mourned with him. He considers Matt his friend.

He just wishes he was sure it was mutual.

________

2

Luke finds Matt using a dumpster to prop himself up as he clutches his ribs. The ninjas are looming at the end of the alley, wary of fighting both Power Man and Daredevil. At least for now, anyway.

“Need help, Murdock? Looks like you could use a hand.”

Luke spends too much time with Danny, and he’s forgotten that Matt doesn’t have a sense of humor.

“What are you doing here?” Matt snaps, straightening with a wheeze. “I had it under control.”

He raises his hands up in mock defense. “I was only asking if you needed help, man.”

“I don’t need your help.”

Luke glares at him, despite the fact Matt won’t see it. “Yeah, alright. You get creamed by those ninjas and I’ll just stand here and watch. No skin off my back.”

“What are you doing here?”

He frowns. “I was looking for a friend…thought maybe we could help each other.”*

“I don’t need your help. Go back to Harlem.”

“Check your tone, man,” Luke warns him, frustrated, but after a moment he sighs. “C'mon, Matt,” he says.

Matt blows him off. “I’m fine. I’ve got this. I don’t come into your city and tell you how to do your job. What are you even doing in Hell’s Kitchen? Damn it!”

The ninjas have decided to attack while they are both distracted, and despite Matt’s snapping, he does need Luke’s help. They make quick work of it and then turn and face each other warily.

“Thanks,” Matt says, because he likes to be frustrating.

Luke looks at him and wishes he could write off Daredevil completely. They never get along – if it’s not Matt going off on Luke it’s Luke going off on Matt. They just don’t mesh. Jessica says it’s because they’re a lot alike. Luke thinks she’s crazy, but he loves her anyway.

“Whatever, man,” he mutters, peeved, and Matt turns and walks away.

Luke doesn’t call him back, even though he wants to. There’s a part of him that wants very much to be friends with Murdock, if only because he admires his strength. He’s not got powers like Luke, and he’s sure as hell not bulletproof, which makes Matt going out there and taking on villains that much more impressive. Luke can respect that.

“Whatever, man,” he says again, but he is talking to no one. Matt is gone.

He bets Murdock hears him anyway.

__________________

3

Danny doesn’t want to deal with Matt tonight. He feels bad for thinking it, but sometimes Matt is just, well…

Matt.

“You eat too much yakisoba.”

FYI, he thinks sarcastically, Daredevil knows private things about the general status of your body and is not afraid to use it.

“Please,” Danny groans. “I’m in pain.”

“You have indigestion, Danny,” Matt points out pitilessly. “Your blood pressure is off the charts. Have you considered eating something outside of the staple diet foods of a college freshman?”

He hates Matt, but he’s also amused by him because life sucks. “Master Izo eats it too,” he argues.

“Izo is also in my kitchen drinking grain alcohol.”

Danny only moans.

Matt sighs and walks out of the living room, leaving him to languish on the sofa. He’s tired of Izo’s stupid mission and Matt’s endless drama with the Hand. He wishes they would lay off Matt for once, and then maybe Matt would lay off him. It’s not very likely though, because he’s pretty sure Matt lives to judge people. Not to say Matt’s a bad guy, he’s just, well…

Matt.

“Here,” he says, startling Danny a little. “Try this.”

In Matt’s hand is a steaming cup of tea. Danny can smell lemon and honey and ginger, and his stomach gurgles hopefully. He takes the cup and sips at it, feeling the warmth travel down his throat and into his upset stomach. He sighs with relief.

“Thanks, Matt,” Danny tells him, smiling.

Matt smiles back.

“Sure,” he says. “But you really need to change your diet.”

He hates Matt so much.

_____________________

4

He left her for last.

It was infuriating and hurtful, and being infuriating and hurtful is something that Matt Murdock is very good at. It’s one of his worst character flaws, for sure.

He also has a lot of weird problems that Jessica just doesn’t have time for, and hang-ups she’s really not sure she wants to know about. But one of the things she doesknow about him, without a doubt, is that he’s freaking nuts.

But that’s not all, and Jessica was in the mood to shit talk, so:

First, there is no reason for all that self-flagellation.

“You need to get over yourself, Murdock,” she’d say. “Or just end it.”

This proved to be counterproductive, because Matt would then just whine about how Jessica was right; he was a horrible person, he didn’t deserve to live… blah blah blah. He wouldn’t even whine in the literal sense and show just a little weakness like a real human. Murdock had perfected the art of silent martyrdom. He lingered in the shadows in the rain on your roof, thinking about sacrifice and justice while regular people did their taxes and ate microwave dinners.

Fucking Matt Murdock.

Second of all, and most importantly – he was obviously crazy and needed help. Jessica liked to think she knew a lot about being fucked up, especially by traumatic shit. She had trust issues, and addictions, and nightmares. People had just really screwed her over in general. So she got Murdock more than most. Life had taken a huge shit on him, no mistake, and it didn’t seem to be getting any better. She felt bad for him, really, she did.

But he was also fucking crazy.

The whole dressing like the devil and beating the crap out of people was the first clue. Second was his extreme self-loathing. Jessica had thought she was self-destructive, but this guy was a mess.

Then there was the mood swings, and the general brooding sadness wafting off of him even on the good days. Murdock just really took the cake in the crazy competition.

Thirdly, lastly, finally:

It was unfair but despite all his flaws, Matt was actually very likable. In a way. Sort of. Jessica thought it was more like magnetism, or gravity (to the unfortunate bastards orbiting Planet Matt, she thought, good luck fuckers, have fun being pelted with comets made up of depression and guilt).  

When out of that scary suit (and holy shit was it fucking scary when he was looming at you in a dark alley threatening you with severe bodily harm), Matt dressed as a fancy, charming, smooth-talking lawyer that was stupidly attractive. She could admit that he wasn’t bad looking without embarrassment, because Jessica wasn’t blind. Unlike some people.

If you were unlucky enough to meet the Matt outside of both suits, then it was absolutely impossible to hate the guy no matter how much you wanted to. Jessica had once asked Nelson about the over-large hoodies and fuzzy socks, and all he’d done was groan.

The fact that Matt was so endearing made it hard to be angry with him.

“Fuck, Murdock!” she was currently screaming. “Everybody knows but me! Everybody fucking knows!”

Luke is standing in the corner looking zen. Matt is unintimidated because fuck him.

“You can’t say, ‘Hey, by the way, Jessica, being that you’re putting your life on the line for me, I think it’s only fair to tell you that I am, in fact, the vigilante known as Daredevil’?”*

“I’m Daredevil,” Matt says.

Jessica curses the day she met his stupid ass because Matt fucking Murdock is a headache she never asked for.

But got anyway. Fuck.

______________

5

There’s a chance she’s making a mistake. She’s got so many complicated exes that whenever she approaches one it’s always bound to go south eventually, so logic says that Natasha should avoid all of them. Or at least the ones she doesn’t work with.

But Matt is different. He’s always been different.

“You’re losing your touch, Murdock,” she jeers, melting out of the shadows as Matt startles. “You – ugh. Really?”

He definitely knew she was there. He’s a terrible actor, and he’s teasing her. This is a good sign, Natasha thinks, because when Matt’s sense of humor is healthy, it means he’s relatively healthy, and when he smiles like that it means he’s genuinely happy to see her. She’s timed this visit right, because sometimes he can’t stand company, and Natasha gets that.

She’s like that too.

“Are you just visiting or is this Fury?”

“Just visiting,” she says. “And maybe a little Fury. He’s not concerned with you right now, but he’s annoying me lately so…. Plus I had some PTO.”

He grins at her. “You know, you’re the only partner I ever really tolerated.”

“I know,” she smiles back.

They go out that night and beat up the low-lifes of Hell’s Kitchen. They dance together, as they’ve always done. His body is lithe and beautiful; twisting and turning in the sky as they swing from one corner to the next in both shadow and moonlight. Natasha loves this. Loves him. She always will.

After they fight, they have wine and leftover Thai on his living room floor in the early hours of the morning.

“Cat got your tongue?” she asks when he is silent for too long.

He hesitates. “I missed you,” he admits. “I missed this.”

She did too. “You could partner up,” she suggests, knowing he’ll refuse. Matt has only ever worked well with Natasha or Elektra. Everyone else expects him to be someone he’s not.

He doesn’t even say no; he just raises his eyebrows.

“'Tasha,” he begins, after shuffling through his noodles a bit. “Do you ever wish you’d stayed in San Francisco?”

“Yes,” she says immediately. “All the time.”

“Even with me?”

Life is unfair. Natasha thinks about how unfair it is and normally she just laughs. No one escapes misery, least of all the Black Widow. She is born for it, thrives in it, expects it wherever she goes. Misery and unfairness are old, old friends.

But when she thinks about what life did to Matt, she’s angry. People don’t get her, don’t understand her desire for solitude and difficulty with feelings. They ask her why she doesn’t care more, and, if they happen to really hate her – how she sleeps at night. They judge. They think she looks for love in all the wrong places. That she can fight well but can self-destruct better.

Everyone that meets Natasha has something to say.

But not Matt. They are ex-lovers. Sometimes they backslide and fall into bed together; sometimes she comes to him and holds him and listens to his soft breathing and steady heartbeat. They separate and join; separate and join. Two halves of a whole.

He is her friend, her confidante, her essential part. They don’t need to see each other everyday, hell, they might meet years from now and still be the same. Still close. Matt is something special to Natasha.

So when people don’t understand him – when they ask him to be a hero, as well as a perfect friend, a perfect spouse, a perfect man – she’s so angry. She’s furious. It’s unfair.

Solve your own problems, she wants to say. Leave him alone.

When they tell Matt that he brings trouble, that he involves them in bad things, that he frustrates them and makes being around him difficult, Natasha wants to beat them. Beat them dead.

So quit, she wants to yell. Why stick around and be unhappy? You’re hurting him. You don’t understand him. Go away.

But also: Don’t go. You’ll kill him if you go.

Sometimes life is unfair, and then sometimes some people just aren’t meant to be happy. Natasha and Matt are cursed with rotten luck. They ruin lives about as much as they save them.

But they love each other.

“Okay?” she asks, sitting on his floor barefoot with the moon as her only light.

“Okay,” he says, with his eyes closed.

___________________

6

Murdock fights like he’s dying. Like he’s been diagnosed with an incurable virus or terminal cancer or some shit. It’s one of those illnesses that makes him rabid before he dies – before he goes cold, turns white, and falls down dead. He’s seen it before. He’s known those men that live on the edge, but they damn well don’t live on it long.

A part of him feels like he’s bleeding out when Murdock pulls this shit.

“Choirboy, you’re so goddamn stupid,” he tells him. His gun is somewhere in the wreckage. The roof had fallen on them and it had gone flying along with the rest of Frank as Murdock tackled him to safety.

“Shut up, Frank. We need to get out of here.”

But Frank isn’t in a hurry. He likes that gun, and he’s gonna find it. He also enjoys doing the exact opposite of what Murdock wants just to piss him off.

“You go then,” he snaps when Murdock insists.

“You know I won’t.”

Frank knows. It’s the same for him. Frank couldn’t leave Murdock in danger even if he tried. Well, at least not in serious danger. They liked to hurt each other, sure, but they’d never go the distance and just end it. The Punisher and Daredevil will probably fight each other until the end of time, if villains or age doesn’t get to them first.

They’ve got a weird thing going on. Or Murdock does, at least. The guy once created his own super team in order to stalk Frank through New York. Then he purposely went into some fucked up cloak-portal to retrieve Frank all so he could arrest him. Then there was the numerous times Murdock pulled his ass out of the fire before or after beating the shit out of him.

But it wasn’t just Murdock. There was that whole Rikers thing, after all. What possessed him to get locked up with his nemesis, Frank will never know. He probably has a brain tumor or something. It’s the only reasonable explanation.

“Red, quit hovering,” he says, pulling his gun out of the rubble triumphantly. “I swear to god I’ll shoot you.”

“You’ll miss,” Murdock goads.

So of course Frank shoots at him, and then they’re fighting again, and he’s pretty sure the villain-of-the-week is bored watching them and has slunk off to bother Spider-Man instead.

Screw ‘em.

He and Murdock have a thing.

____________

7

My name is Ben Urich, he writes. And if I published this story I’d be rich.

How many times has he thought that? How many times has he written it down, thinking of how it would be his big break; how it would get him away from Jonah, and he’d be his own boss finally? Too many times, that’s the goddamn answer. Too many.

Ben’ll sit at his desk at the Bugle and stare at his computer screen and think, all I have to do is write: my name is Ben Urich, and Daredevil is my friend.

But he won’t. He won’t because he owes it to Matt to keep the parts of his life that Ben is allowed to see private. He owes it to Matt to not write the sensational story of their friendship. Of Daredevil. Of Matt’s roller-coaster of a life. Because Matt is his friend, even if it’s not mutual (Matt isn’t very good with people in general, or any sort of interpersonal relationships). So Ben backspaces and looks at his blank pages and writes a column about nothing for a measly 30 grand a year.

“Don’t do that,” Matt says, and takes his full pack of cigarettes and lobs it onto the next roof where it bounces off the edge and falls into a dumpster. Show off.

“If you’re wondering if I’ve heard anything on Fisk, I haven’t,” he tells Matt. “He’s underground, and it looks like he’ll stay that way for a while.”

“He does what you least expect,” Matt argues. “He’ll come out soon. You’ll need to be careful.”

Ben frowns. “Me? Last I heard it was you he was obsessed with killing.”

Matt is tense, but jittery. He’s like a live-wire when Fisk is shadowing him. Ben understands the feeling; he still has nightmares about Elektra.

“He wants me to suffer,” Matt explains. “He won’t just kill me. He wants to hurt me first. That means going after the people I care about.”

My name is Ben Urich, he thinks, mouth falling open. And I will never publish a bad word about my friend.

“Ok, I’ll, um, be careful. If you will.”

Matt smiles at him wryly, and retorts, “quit smoking and I will.”

He won’t. The smoking and the risk-taking will continue because that’s their dynamic. They face danger together.

Ben isn’t a hero; he’s honestly never thought he was anything but a journalist, and a mediocre one at that. But Matt is one of those people that will remain a legend for hundreds of years after he’s gone, and the only way that can happen is if his story is immortalized somehow. Ben can do that. That’s Ben’s job.

My name is Ben Urich, he plans to write, someday. And I’m friends with a real, live, legendary hero. You might know him.

His name is Matt Murdock.

__________________________

8

And then there’s Foggy.

They meet in college and become avocados at law (that’s an inside joke, pick up the autobiography for more information). When Foggy meets Matt the first thing he thinks is, wow, hot roommate. And holy shit he’s blind.

Foggy was kind of a dork in college, admittedly.

Matt isn’t a dork. He is suave, and handsome, and damned smart. He is killer with the ladies, what with his whole young Robert Redford thing going on, and can talk his way into bed with pretty much anyone (Foggy included, because he’s got eyes). For a blind dude, Matt also has an absolutely amazing body. And that ass….

Ok. So. When Foggy isn’t crushing on Matt, he can definitely admit that he’s also a teensy bit jealous.

He regrets that, because it takes two to tango and a lot of the problems he has with Matt aren’t all completely due to Matt’s particular brand of insanity. Foggy has insecurities, ok? And Matt is…

Matt.

But they are the best kind of friends, even when they are fighting. Foggy loves Matt, loves him like a brother, a friend; a platonic life-partner. He wants to grow old with Matt, and honestly can’t even imagine life without him and his masochistic bullshit.

But Foggy has moments where he’s not so sure that Matt feels the same. Moments when he feels useless, lesser – an annoying sidekick in the Daredevil saga. Moments when Matt is too bright for him to even look at. Why would Matt need Foggy? Was Foggy imagining a closeness that wasn’t there? Was he Matt’s best friend too?

Thing is, Matt had never really had a lot of friends. At least not since the accident that took his sight, and certainly not in the years that Foggy has known him. There are things about Matt that make being his friend very hard – some of which are obvious and some only Foggy knows.

It is the privilege of being ‘the best friend’, to know more about Matt than anyone else; which actually makes it easier to put up with Matt’s quirks. There are sucky reasons why Matt is the way he is, and Foggy does his best to know them all and keep them in mind.

Friendship, in particular, is a hard pill for Matt to swallow.

It takes Foggy ages to understand why. In college, he sort of thinks Matt treats people like they are a little bit stupid, and a lot beneath him (with the exception of Foggy, thankfully). After a few months of a very standoffish Matt, Foggy finally wins him over and they become good roommates, good friends, and then best friends. But it took time, and effort (mostly on Foggy’s part).

As their friendship grew, Foggy came to understand that the thing about Matt is that he assumes nothing. He assumes no kindness from strangers, no consideration from his elders, and no affection from his friends. He keeps his distance not because he feels that others aren’t worthy of his company, but because he thinks he is not worthy of theirs. Matt never expects people to love him.

But they did. They do. And Matt asks why, and Foggy says, because that’s just how it works, Matty.

One day Matt will understand this.

Foggy will make sure of it.

In the meantime, all Foggy has to do is stick by his friend. This is harder than it seems, because Matt is definitely the most complicated person he has ever met. His life is one tragedy after another, really, and Matt handles it with varying degrees of mania and depression. Foggy’s cancer, for instance, is hitting Matt pretty hard. It’s not very visible of course, but he knows his best friend, and while he initially worries that this will trigger Matt, it turns out okay in the end. Matt’s actually…doing ok.

Foggy knows it won’t last, but that’s not a problem, because he’s in it for the long haul, and with Matt, chaos is pretty much the rule. Everyone wanting to be friends with Matt should just get ready to be caught in it. No complaining. No take-backs.

Because that’s what happens when you orbit people like they’re planets; you either resign yourself to being on the outside looking in, or you collide, and become something new, and maybe better, than before.

——

+ 1

But Foggy is wrong. What he doesn’t know is that there’s a third option. That planets can orbit things too – that Matt in fact orbits Foggy, because Foggy is a thing called a star, and he is at the center of Matt’s universe.

One day Foggy will understand this.

Matt will make sure of it.