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chatonne-rousse · 3 years

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Be Bold, Be Kind, Be Brave

This is one akuma whose intentions are good. After all, who couldn't use an extra dose of courage to overcome fear?

A superhero whose identity will be immediately revealed in the process, for one.

When an akuma causes several secrets to come to light all at once, our heroes will need to drum up some courage to face their fears - and each other.

But what's waiting after that looks like it might be a dream come true. It'll just take a bit of bravery and a lot of heart. Piece of cake.

***

Only eight days late and several dollars short, I’m wishing @jennagrinsoverml a happy belated birthday with this gift, written just for her. ILY, my friend!

Read it on Ao3 here.

***

Ladybug has to give Courageous some credit: she's a rarity, an akuma born of selfless means. A teenager who hadn't mustered the courage to stand up for a younger student being bullied at school, she'd been so ashamed, so angry with herself, that Hawkmoth had found an easy target to ply with honeyed words and promises.

Her power isn't even a terrible one. The beam of light she shoots from her right hand simply causes the person it strikes to relive the last encounter they had when their bravery failed them, this time with courage aplenty. It's admirable, really.

Admirable, but terrifying nonethless.

(The fear of Chat Noir finding out her identity is deep and dark and often floats to the surface of her nightmares with blue eyes and white hair and a drowned, ruined world. He cannot know. The cost is too high.)

"Whatever you do," she calls to her partner, frantic and scared, "don't let her hit you! Please, Chat!"

She hears the desperation in her own voice, and the look on his face conveys that he certainly does. He nods solemnly.

"I'll do my best, My Lady."

She nods back, and off they go into the fray.

For well over an hour, they fight Courageous through parks and plazas, sidewalks and thoroughfares. All around them, the people of Paris have squared their shoulders, lifted their chins, and braved conversations big and small with people only they could see.

Ladybug has to smile as she hears a young man confidently ask for a raise and watches his eyes light up at the response.

That smile fades when she remembers once again that the last time her courage had failed her was just as they were dismissed for lunch break, when she'd tried to invite Adrien to a movie that weekend. His eyes had been so kind as he'd waited for her to gather her words properly, and somehow that had just made it harder.

Then Lila had "accidentally" tripped and knocked into her, sending her to the floor. The memory of Adrien's hand reaching out to her to help her up, those same kind, patient eyes locked on hers, makes Ladybug's cheeks heat even now. But after she was upright again, after Lila had stalked off because no one seemed to care that she "probably would need surgery now because her arthritis would flare", Nino had reminded Adrien about the gig he was DJing on Friday and Alya had led her away to show her something on her phone.

Just like that, her opportunity was gone.

And that would be fine, honestly. Marinette was used to moments of stuttering and botched declarations when it came to Adrien.

But if she's hit by Courageous, Chat Noir - plus the citizens of Paris, Hawkmoth, everyone - will hear Ladybug try to ask Adrien Agreste on a date, and that will be a disaster of epic proportions.

"Ladybug, look out!"

Chat's body slams into hers, sending them rolling on the sidewalk just as a beam of magical light zips over their heads. In a flash, Chat Noir bundles her in his arms and vaults them to the rooftop above, making sure she's steady on her feet once they land.

"Thank you, Ki-" The words die in her throat when she sees over her partner's shoulder that Courageous has followed them.

Chat turns, his baton at the ready, while Ladybug reaches for her yo-yo, but neither is quick enough to stop the akuma's beam from finally finding one of its main targets.

"I'm sorry, Bug," he murmurs as his eyes glaze over.

Using her yo-yo as a spinning shield, Ladybug drags her partner behind the nearest chimney stack just as he begins to speak.

Panic sets in as her mind screams at her over the hum of her yo-yo, the akuma's laughter, her partner's voice.

I can't just leave him!

"Father, may I come in?"

Oh no, oh no, oh no. I can't hear this!

"Yes, Nathalie said she penciled me into your schedule for noon."

Nathalie?

Ladybug's gaze snaps to her partner, yo-yo still spinning to deflect beams of light. She's surprised to find Chat Noir's head bowed in deference, though his eyes shine with a confident gleam.

"I requested this appointment to ask you again if I could attend the event with my friends tomorrow evening. I've already completed my assignments for school and the homework from my Mandarin tutor."

Mandarin tutor? What?!

"Yes, Father, I'm aware that you don't care for Nino, but..."

The panicked scream in her mind gives up any attempt at coherence; by this point, it's no more than a muddled loop of Nathalie, Mandarin, Nino, Father.

Ladybug feints to the left to avoid being hit by the akuma as a mix of terror and adrenaline floods her system. She leaps forward, leaving Chat behind the chimney in the hope that she can engage the akuma just long enough to get her partner back and finally, finally finish this off.

She knows too much already. The cat has bolted straight out of the bag and is running loose on this rooftop beneath her feet, a distraction she can't handle right now.

On hero autopilot, she hurdles one beam after another, then tucks and rolls and pops up to roundhouse kick Courageous in the chest, sending her flying.

She hears the akuma's "oof" just as Chat Noir's jubilant voice rings out from behind the chimney.

"Thank you, Father! Thank you so much!"

She can hear his grin in those simple words, the sheer joy in being given permission to leave the house. Everyone in their class knows what a tight leash Gabriel Agreste keeps on his son. It breaks her heart every time she thinks of it. In fact, she's successfully fought for his release from that marble prison on more than one occasion! So yes, she'd already known with all the clues in place, but there was truly no mistaking it now: that was Adrien talking to his father.

Because Adrien is Chat Noir.

Her heart cracks. Oh, Chaton.

Suddenly, the akuma's progress in clambering to her feet is impeded by the whoosh and subsequent metallic thunk of Chat's overhand swing with his baton.

Relief floods her heart at the return of her partner. No matter who he is, Chat Noir is her other half, and Ladybug is never quite herself without him.

"Maybe we could use a little extra luck, My Lady!" Chat winks at her over his shoulder before facing the akuma again.

"Yes! Right! You bet!"

Get it together, Marinette, she thinks. Her face heats and she scampers away to the safety of the chimney stack where Chat was hidden to call for her lucky charm.

A red and black spotted can opener drops into her hands and she looks at it in confusion. "What am I supposed to do with this?" she grumbles, looking around frantically but seeing nothing to help her decipher how to use the lucky charm.

She takes a deep breath, peeks out from behind the bricks, and promptly takes a light beam to the face.

No, no, no, no!

It feels vaguely like having a water balloon popped on her head, a chill of sensation dripping down her spine and rippling through her nerves. It's a small mercy that being hit by an akuma rarely hurts physically. Her vision swims like a mirage in the desert, the familiar courtyard at school coalescing from vapor around her.

The last thing she sees is her partner's stricken face.

The last thing she hears is the akuma cackling.

"Heylo! Who! I mean," she takes a deep breath, a rush of confidence tingling along her nerves. "Hey, Adrien!" She smiles and gives him a little wave.

His grin takes her breath away. "Hi, Marinette! How are you?"

"I'm great!"

You can do it, you can do it!, her heart sings, and miraculously, her brain listens. Her smile turns coy. She taps her lip with her index finger. Her pulse pounds a bolstering tattoo in her ears. Go for it, girl!

"But I could be better."

Adrien's smile drops a fraction. "Are you okay? Is there something I can do?"

With another deep breath, she squares her shoulders and looks him in the eyes, her very cells imbued with a courage unparalleled even when she's wearing spots. She could do anything, anything, right now, but she has her mind set on accomplishing one thing and one thing only.

"You could join me for a movie on Saturday."

"I could...?" His brows furrow, but his grin grows slowly, bright but incredulous. "Are you asking me....?" He blinks, takes two shallow breaths. "Do you mean just the two of us?"

She nods decisively. "A date."

You did it. You did it! A veritable party erupts in the back of her mind, radiant relief spreading to her fingertips. It feels so good to finally break through her anxiety and fear and ask him that simple question that felt like an impossible task just a few hours ago.

Thankfully, he doesn't keep her waiting. The answer is in his eyes, anyway. "I would love to," he breathes, cheeks pink and smile dazzling.

"Really?" Marinette squeaks, and now it's his turn to nod.

"I'll be there even if I have to sneak out." Adrien reaches for her hand and gives it a little squeeze. "We'll talk about it later today, okay?"

She nods again, her chest so full of emotion she can barely breathe. Not only did she ask him, but he said yes!

Suddenly, blue sky fills her vision and she regains awareness to the sound of a scuffle on the other side of the chimney stack. Ladybug tentatively gets to her feet, reaching for her yo-yo and setting it spinning immediately. This time there's no peeking around the corner; she bursts from behind the bricks on the offensive, ready to finish the fight.

What she finds is Courageous struggling under Chat's baton, twisted up like a pretzel and unable to move for the steel-toed boot resting across her shoulders.

"Just in time, LB!" Chat crows triumphantly. He tosses her a bracelet emblazoned with the words Be Bold, Be Kind, Be Brave that currently pulses with Hawkmoth's dark energy.

In moments, the bracelet is broken, the akuma is freed and purified, and a confused teenager sits where Courageous was restrained a moment ago.

Chat docks his baton at his back and looks at his partner with the softest eyes she's ever seen, a tiny, equally soft smile playing at his lips.

Her heart sighs. Adrien. That's Adrien, and he knows.

The lucky charm sits heavy in her palm. Abject fear makes her hope against hope that she won't remember his identity when she casts her miraculous cure, just as her heart longs to hold on to the knowledge that her precious partner is the boy of her deepest desires, and maybe, maybe they really can have it all.

With a deep breath, she throws the unused can opener into the air, watching magical ladybugs and healing light burst forth and spread throughout the city. She waits, holding her breath, but when pink light swirls around them, the only affect it has is the healing of the twinge in her ankle from when she fell mid-fight.

She looks up, and her partner's eyes say it all.

He remembers, too.

Even as fear grips her heart, radiant joy shines from his face as his grin spreads. It scrunches his eyes behind the mask and pinkens his cheeks, delight seeming to glow from his pores. Ladybug has never seen her partner so happy. That elation is a balm to her soul, and she can't help but smile right along with him.

Ladybug turns to the akuma victim and holds out her hand, offering the bracelet back to her. "I really like that inscription" she says, pointing at the now-silver bracelet as the girl fixes it back on her wrist.

She smiles shyly at the two heroes. "I wish I had the courage to do more. I wish I was brave like you."

"We get scared sometimes, too. Everyone does," Ladybug starts, before her partner nudges her shoulder with his elbow.

"Speak for yourself, Bugaboo. This cat has no fear." Chat Noir throws her an exaggerated wink, and the girl laughs. "But real talk, anyone can be a hero in their own way. Little things, big stuff...you're stronger than you think, I promise. Cat's honor."

She nods. "Thank you for, you know, saving me and everything." Glancing at the street below, she gestures toward the edge of the roof. "Would it be too much trouble to get me back down there?"

"Not at all," Ladybug replies with a smile. Calling on her own courage, she looks at her partner and takes a deep breath. Here goes nothing, she thinks. "The usual spot in five? Or less, I guess, since it...doesn't matter now," she says with a shrug that she hopes looks nonchalant.

And there's that smile that shines like the summer sun. He gives her a jaunty salute. "I'll be there with bells on," he says, tapping the bell at his throat and making it jingle.

Ladybug just shakes her head and giggles.

A few minutes later, when she lands beside Chat Noir on their familiar rooftop, her earrings are beeping a frantic rhythm, signaling mere seconds before she detransforms. Instinct has her looking around the roof, ready to dart behind anything she can use to hide.

Before she can move, Chat steps toward her and quietly asks, "Marinette?"

Her transformation dissolves in a wave of pink light, and she hears him gasp as she catches Tikki gently in her palms. Marinette takes her time retrieving a macaron from her purse to feed her kwami, deliberately moving slowly in an attempt to get herself under control before she looks up at her partner. He knows, and he's thrilled, and that's amazing, but it feels like the entire world will change when their gazes finally meet, and she's just not ready yet.

"I, um...I didn't use my cataclysm, so I can stay transformed if you'd prefer, but..." he trails off.

There's something in his voice that finally makes her look at him. Just like when he talked to his father under the akuma's control, his head is bowed slightly, but instead of confidence, this time his eyes are bright with nervous hope.

Marinette understands both the nerves and the hope, and she'll joke with her partner until the end of time about who's in charge, but it feels wrong for either Chat or Adrien to look at her with uneasy deference.

And that's what she thinks of as courage wells in her chest. Her brave, steadfast partner, the other half of their unstoppable team, the boy with terrible timing who can still make her laugh, her best friend whom she loves so fiercely, should never feel he has to approach her in fear.

"Oh, Minou," she breathes. "Of course, go ahead. I...I already know."

He nods and stands a little straighter, and with a whisper and a flash of green, Chat's magical leather is replaced with denim and cotton poplin.

Predictably, her brain is short-circuiting, hollering in panic and terror, but even as her heart pounds wildly in her chest, it whispers quietly, gently, that this is her partner. Her silly kitty. Her dearest friend. He just happens to look like Adrien Agreste at the moment.

(Okay, this is going to take some getting used to.)

Tikki flies off to join Plagg nearby, while Marinette sits down on the roof with her knees pulled to her chest. She pats the space to her right and Adrien settles in cross-legged next to her.

He's the first to break the silence. "I'm sorry, Marinette. I shouldn't have gotten hit. I shouldn't have let you get hit. I know this wasn't what you wanted, and-"

"No, no, don't apologize," she interrupts, shaking her head. "It happens. It's...not the first time." Marinette sighs and closes her eyes, suddenly feeling a lot less courageous in the face of this world-bending change now that they're in their civilian clothes and it's Adrien apologizing to her. She presses her forehead to her knees and tries to imagine the boy beside her in magical leather and cat ears. It only helps a little, but it's enough. "We, um-" she pauses, licks her lips. "We have a lot to talk about. I just don't know if I'm ready for...all of it."

Adrien is silent for an uncomfortably long moment. "Yeah. We do." She hears him take a deep breath that shakes a bit on the exhale and turns her head a fraction to peek at him. His eyes are on the distant horizon. "I...think I understand some things now."

Abruptly, he turns toward her, a little smile tilting the corners of his mouth when he his eyes meet hers. Fear tells her to look away, but she tamps it down and holds his gaze. His smile widens.

"May I ask you something, Marinette?"

She nods.

"When you came up to me at lunch today, were you...planning to ask me on a date?"

Her pulse pounds in her ears. She could give in to fear, say no and brush it off like Chat had misheard her when she was under the akuma's spell. But suddenly her heartbeat seems to drum, "be bold, be kind, be brave," over and over again, and just as the smile begins to slip from his face, she finds the nerve to nod again.

Just like on the other rooftop a few minutes ago, his face lights up like the first rays of sun after a week of rain, shining splendid even in the early afternoon light.

"Am I--" he whispers, his breath hitching though his joy never dims, "Am I the boy?"

Be bold, be kind, be brave.

She calls on her Ladybug courage and nods once more.

His breath catches again and his eyes fill with tears that he brushes away quickly.

Clarity dawns all of a sudden, sweeping her fears to the corners of her mind to be dealt with later. She understood Chat Noir being happy to know his partner's identity, his excitement in finding out his Lady was his friend, too. But this is so much more. Beside her sits Adrien, wiping tears of joy from his eyes at the knowledge that Marinette is in love with him. This might just be a dream coming true on a random rooftop on a random Thursday afternoon.

"Chaton," she breathes, stretching her legs in front of her and placing a hand on his knee.

His hand covers hers, and she meets his gaze, words caught in her throat at the intensity in his eyes.

"I have a confession to make." He rubs the back of his neck with his free hand and takes a deep breath. "I think everyone in Paris knows that Chat Noir is in love with Ladybug. I...know you know." He shrugs as his smile turns a little helpless. "But no one knows that I might have a little tiny bit of a huge crush on Marinette Dupain-Cheng, too."

"Kid, don't lie to your girlfriend. You know very well that I knew, because I've been telling you forever!" Plagg calls from somewhere behind them. Tikki hushes him loudly.

"Okay, he's not wrong," Adrien says, huffing out a combination of a laugh and a sigh. I'm just very stupid, apparently."

"Hey, don't talk that way about my partner." Marinette bumps his shoulder with hers. "I have a teeny, tiny, huge crush on him, too, you know, and I don't appreciate your tone."

Adrien's surprised laugh rings out across the rooftop, filling her heart with so much love she can barely breathe with the force of it. She could listen to that laugh for the rest of her life. She hopes she'll have that chance.

He brushes tears from his eyes again as his laughter subsides, his grin still shining bright. "I'm so happy it's you, Marinette. Beyond happy." He turns her hand beneath his and threads his fingers through hers. "Honestly, there's no one else I would rather have as my partner."

"Me too, Minou," she murmurs, squeezing his hand lightly as incredulous joy sings through her veins.

Tikki's little voice pipes up nearby. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but it's almost time to go back to class."

Adrien lets go of her hand to fish for his phone and curses under his breath when he sees the time. "She's right, My Lady. Could we meet up this evening? I know we have, um...a lot of things to talk about."

Marinette nods. It feels like she's done a lot of that in the last few minutes.

When Adrien stands, he offers his hand to help her up. Just like in the courtyard at lunch, his eyes are patient and kind, but now they shine with something more. She lets him pull her to her feet, then wraps her arms around his waist in a tight hug.

His soft exhale at her ear as he melts against her makes her smile, scrunching up his white overshirt under her cheek. Her senses are filled with him, and she's surprised to realize that it's a feeling of comfort and safety instead of the usual panic.

Maybe loving Adrien and being loved in return will be easier than it seemed all this time. Her fears seem so silly when his arms are wrapped around her shoulders and his head rests on top of hers - a perfect fit.

Even the nightmarish terror of Chat Blanc is diminished. Adrien never told anyone her identity; he knew because he himself was Chat Noir, and there's no way in the world that Chat would hurt his Lady, nor would Adrien ever harm Marinette on purpose. She must have misunderstood. He must have misunderstood. He was an akuma, after all. She sighs into Adrien's shirt. She can never allow that terrible timeline to occur, but whatever happens after this, they'll face it together. Stronger. She'll make sure of it.

"Do you think my father will let me go to Nino's gig in real life?" he asks quietly.

The sad note in his voice breaks her heart. She squeezes him tighter.

"I don't know, Kitty. Do you think we'll be having a movie date on Saturday?"

He leans back abruptly, though his hands still grip her shoulders. "Of course! I'll be there if I have to sneak out!"

Marinette boops his nose, laughing when his eyes cross. "I think that's your answer for Friday night, too."

Suddenly she's in his arms again, this time lifted off the ground and spinning. She can't help but giggle.

"I knew I was in love with a genius!" he cries, jubilant. He sets her down and plants a kiss in the middle of her forehead before calling for Plagg to transform him.

When he turns his masked face back to her, it's like the world is different. She can easily see the brilliant green of Adrien's eyes in Chat's glowing sclerae. The blending of two of her favorite people into one extraordinary boy who - oh my goodness - just said he loves her gives her a shot of courage even before she suits up again.

"You missed, beau gosse."

His eyes widen comically. "I....what?"

Marinette smiles and calls for her transformation, then taps her lips with her gloved fingers. "You kissed me, but you missed."

The sly gleam in his eyes makes her breathing speed up.

"First of all, I would ask before I did that," Chat says, sticking out his thumb before raising his clawed index finger. "Second, I thought I'd save our first kiss for Saturday. Seems like a great way to end our first date, doesn't it?"

Our first date. A tingle runs down her spine. She likes the sound of that.

"I guess I can wait." Her smile turns cheeky. "But it'll be our third--"

"Ah, ah, ah," Chat cuts her off with a grin. He extends his thumb again. "First of all, I don't remember either of those."

Ladybug rolls her eyes, still smiling.

"And second," he says, his voice pitching lower and making her heart skip a beat, "it will be Marinette and Adrien's first kiss."

Oh, this boy, she thinks as her heart soars.

She bites her lip to keep from giggling. "I suppose you're right, even though we both know we're the same people."

Chat gives her a deadpan look. "Just let me have this, Bug."

She bursts into laughter and reaches for her yo-yo, delighting in watching a grin light her partner's face.

"I really am looking forward to Saturday," he says, unhooking his baton from his back. He reaches for her hand and gives it a gentle squeeze. "We'll talk about it later today, okay?"

She nods and watches him vault off toward home.

The wind against her face is exhilarating as she swings back to the bakery. It's amazing how one revelation seems to have changed everything. Even the zip of her yo-yo through the air sounds different to her ears now that she knows, now that he knows.

Marinette detransforms as she touches down on the terrace and sinks into her pink-striped chair while Tikki phases through the hatch into her room in search of food. A quick check of her phone tells her that she has ten minutes before she has to go back to school.

School. One more thing that's going to be different.

Before nerves can creep in, she thinks of Chat Noir and his beaming joy at learning the identity of his beloved partner. That was Adrien. She thinks of the comfort of being wrapped in Adrien's arms, his scent, his warmth. That was Chat Noir.

And when she sits down in class behind him in a few short minutes, that boy with the soft smile and shining eyes will look like Adrien, but now he's so much more.

Marinette stands up from her chair with a lighter heart than she can remember having in a long, long time. She's suddenly looking forward to the second half of the day, even more excited for Nino's event tomorrow night, and positively thrilled that she has a date with Adrien - who is Chat Noir! - on Saturday.

There's so much to experience, so many memories to be made. It feels a bit like a dream. It feels more than a bit scary. But it's going to be great.

It's just going to take a little courage.

She's got this.

#miraculous ladybug #ml fan fiction #identity reveal #adrien agreste #marinette dupain-cheng #ml fic #ml fanfic #adrienette #my writing #happy birthday jenna!#the real power move is posting this on an episode premiere day #thanks for reading it anyway

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descendantofthesparrow · 3 years

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Finale - Rewrite - POYW - Harry Hook x reader - part 7 - Beast

It had taken a bit to get from the castle to the dorms but now you, Celia, and Uma sat in Audrey’s room as Mal and Evie searched the campus for any clues for where the possessed princess might be. Uma was on Audrey’s bed reading her diary while you lay across her legs, playing with the fishnet wrapped around Uma’s waist.

Celia was digging through Audrey’s jewelry as Mal and Evie turned to the room, both looking exhausted from their run around campus “she’s nowhere on campus” Evie breathed, leaning on the vanity as she caught her breath.

“Found her diary,” Uma said distracted as she continued to flip through the private pages. You had told her of Audrey’s struggles before but seeing them on paper was a bit of a heartache, wow her grandmother really was a bitch. “and damn did you ruin her life” Uma chuckled, setting down the diary and giving Mal a sharp smile

Mal just looked sad at the notion, yes, she might have originally not cared about running someone's life (Audrey and Uma being examples of her old cruelty) but knowing first hand from Audrey’s own diary that she had ruined her life made her feel terrible “did you find anything that we don’t already know or?” Mal asked dryly, trying to brush off her feelings so they could get this mission done.

“she hangs out at fairy cottage” Uma closed the book and tossed it aside, patting your leg as it hit your head. “you know? Where flora, fauna, and Merryweather hid her mom from your mom?” Uma teased, laughing a bit as Mal rolled her eyes.

“ha-ha, yeah yeah, do you think that’s where we'll find her?” Mal laughed dryly and looked down at you, as out of all the vks you were the one who was around Audrey the most.

“Maybe, she does hang out there a lot, and it’s very secluded, deep in the enchanted woods and way past Auroria castle, it’ll be past midnight by the time we get there” you muttered, picking at your nails. Mal nodded, it would be their best bet.

“Then let's head back to Evie's and wait for the boys, then we’ll head for Auroria immediately, we’re short on time as it is” Mal pushed you up from your spot on Uma’s legs and let you grab Uma, who was being very stubborn, wanting to stay on Audrey’s very comfortable bed.

Evie turned and gave a disapproving look to the thieving Celia, who had one of Audrey’s gaudy blue songbird tiaras on and multiple other pieces of jewelry. “First off, those don’t suit you at all, second, the bling stays here” Evie snorted as Celia pouted at her.

“But she’s bad!” Celia wined, shoulders slumping as Evie reached out and took the tiara off her head.

“And Dizzy made better jewelry when she was seven, now come on, put them away and I’ll get you some styling jewelry after this is all over, I’ll ever take you to the bayou.” Celia perked up a bit at that and started to take off Audreys stuff, rushing after the others with Evie after she set the last bracelet down.

“Ben!” Carlos called out for the lost king, looking around every turn in the search for their dear friend. Jay called out for him as well, Gil attempting to use his tracking skills for any footprints that might lead them to Ben, Harry trailing behind with Hadie as the five boys searched for the King.

Carlos sighed, calling Dude back to him and sitting down on a rock, pulling out a scrap of Ben’s clothing for Dude to smell and track. “come on, nothing?” Gil perked up and almost skipped over to a blueberry bush, picking some off and moving aside for Hadie as the older vk looked especially curious at the bush.

“Are these blueberries?” Hadie asked, picking one off and tossing it in his mouth, his eyes comically sparkling as the taste. Gil chuckled and picked off a handful for the god and poured it into his hands, Hadie devouring them in seconds.

“ya know” Jay chuckled walking up next to Gil and picking off a berry or two “that is the same face Mal makes when she eats strawberries” Carlos turned and laughed, nodding along.

“It is! Ya know, I always thought you and Mal had some similarities, I guess your dad being, well, your dad, solidifies that eh?” Hadie just shrugged, distracted by the delicious blue-purple fruit.

“soooo, how long have you known about you and Mal being siblings?” Gil asked, once again Hadie just shrugged.

“uh, I guess when Maleficent dropped her off at dads door” Hadie muttered rubbing his lips free from the stain of the fruit. "so, around 19 years I guess” Gil hummed and nodded, picking a couple more blueberries and popping them in his mouth, Dude and Harry walking around looking for Ben still.

Harry looked down as Dude pawed at his boot and then nodded, realizing Dude had picked up a scent. “Pup!” Carlos looked up at Harry, then silently cursed to himself, why did he still respond to that dumb nickname Harry had given him when he was 7. “Dude found somethin’ !” Carlos stood and ran after Harry, who was already trailing Dude as the dog went off the main trail and went deeper into the forest.

Gil, Jay, and Hadie quickly followed, not realizing there were eyes on them as they resumed their search for the king.

The girls arrived at Evie's cottage, which luckily wasn’t far from Auradon prep especially with the bikes, and hopped off their vehicles, Uma whistling in appreciation for the quaint home “nice place” Uma muttered, smirking a bit as Evie grinned at her.

“I got a good deal” she chuckled, taking her key out and unlocking the back patio doors, the five girls walking in and getting comfortable. Celia suddenly stopped as she noticed light snores coming from the parlor and tiptoed in, gasping a bit as she locked her eyes onto the twins and Dizzy, all three sound asleep.

Dizzy seemed to be having a nightmare, and Celia quickly calmed it with a long blanket and soothing words, Evie smiling at the two as (y/n) made sure the twins were okay. Mal walked into the living room and sighed with relief, all the other vks were still here, asleep, but here. Claudine, Colin, and Ginny were huddled up on the couch with Ginny as the main pillow, Colin on her legs as Claudine took her chest, and Diego was sound asleep in Carlos’ favorite armchair with the leg rest popped out.

Uma turned as sudden loud snoring came from the room just off the kitchen, Uma, Mal, and Evie quickly walked towards it only to find Doug on the ground in a crumpled mess, some tubes of fabric rolled out across from him. He must’ve been cleaning up when the sleeping spell washed over the house. “uh, who’s the dude?” Uma asked, Evie pushing past her and kneeling next to him.

“Doug, my boyfriend” Evie placed her hand on his head and checked for any injuries, sighing in relief when she found none, he might be sore from sleeping on the hard tile of her workroom but otherwise he’d be fine. “let's see if this works, Mal” Mal perked up, raising her brow “go get the yellow bubbling potion in the thin and long glass tube that’s at the top of the cabinet above the refrigerator,” Mal grumbled and turned, calling out for (y/n), since she couldn’t reach that spot; might as well get some help with it. Damn her 5’2 height.

Uma raised her brow in curiosity as Evie sat Doug up to get ready to administer the potion “uh, what potion?”

“Some anti-sleep spell potion I made a while ago” Evie smiled at Uma, and Uma paused a bit, suddenly fearing the once thought to be a simple fashion forward prissy isle princess “I made it from some of the poison from Maleficent’s spindle on the needle, should reverse the spell on Doug. I know Mal said there’s not a lot that can reverse the curse of the scepter but there’s no harm in trying” Mal and (y/n) returned with the bubbling yellow potion and Mal handed it to Evie. Evie popped off the cork and poured it down the sleeping Doug’s throat.

Evie clasped her hands together and prayed to whatever gods were listening that it worked. And it did, because a few moments later Doug's eyes fluttered open and he smiled softly at Evie “thank goodness for your potion-making skills” he rasped, leaning in to hug Evie as she squealed and pounced on him.

Uma laughed a bit and turned to give the two some privacy as Evie quickly caught Doug up to speed, (y/n) and Mal following close behind. Uma paused as she looked directly at the unpackaged Jane cake.

You met her gaze then looked at the cake, then sighed “well, it's gonna go bad if we don’t” you gestured to the cake and Uma practically skipped towards it “just leave a slice for Jane at least” Uma nodded, grabbing a knife and cutting herself a sizable piece, Celia running into the room to get on the cake action.

“I hope they find Ben” Mal muttered, sitting at the kitchen window counter and leaning on her hands, eyes downcast in worry for her boyfriend.

“I’m sure they’ll find him Mal” you comforted, rubbing her shoulder and offering her some cake. “have some faith in them”

Carlos called for Ben as Dude let them deeper into the forest, the dog pausing ever so often and then leading them in a new direction. “Ben!!” Carlos yelled out, spinning in a circle to get his voice to reach father as Dude sniffed at a large claw/shoe print.

Dude shook his head and turned to look at Carlos ‘I found a print! Smells like Ben and-something really really smelly! Even worse than Jay's power shakes!’ Carlos snorted and walked up to Dude to look at the print, yelping as a large stone statue leaped from the brush next to him, swiping at his face but thankfully missing.

“holy shit!” Carlos yelled, picking up Dude and running back towards Jay, the stone statue close behind. Jay’s eyes widened as he got a good look at the beast. It was one of the marble lion statues from Auradon prep!

The boys turned on their heels and ran, Hadie taking a small chance and creating a fireball in his hand then throwing it at the statue, grinning as it blasted the beast into pieces. But it was replaced with two more that lept from the brush just behind him. “fuck!” Hadie yelled bolting after the others.

…

Ben opened his blackened eyes to the sound of screams…familiar screams. He lept up from his shady spot under a tree and bolted towards the sounds. His friends! His friends were in danger! He slid to a stop on all fours and let out a pitiful whine as he watched Harry, Gil, Jay, Carlos, and Hadie run away from the marble beasts chasing them, Hadie taking quick shots at them but unfortunately missing.

Ben let out a low growl as several more marble beasts went to attack his friends, he arched back on his heels and went to pounce but stopped. He saw his horrific reflection in a small puddle next to him, beastly matted hair, black eyes, sharp fangs, dark curling horns, paws with claws the size of his face, he had also grown several times bigger than his human size.

He was a monster, he sank back, watching his friends with watery eyes as they attempted to fight against the beasts. Ben let out a pained roar as one of the beasts jumped at Harry and sliced into his shoulder, the pirate falling to the ground in agonizing pain as Harry screamed out. Blood poured from his shoulder and Ben steeled himself.

They were his friends, they were being hurt, they cared about Ben.

They wouldn’t fear him, and they would never hurt him.

He had to be brave, for them. As their king and friend.

Ben leaped out of the brush, letting out a mighty roar and slamming into two marble beasts, the stone crumbling under his claws in an instant. He whirled around and jumped towards Harry, slamming into the beast about to clamp its jaws around Harry’s throat and tossing it away. Ben let out a terrifying roar, one that echoed out throughout the forest.

“Beasty?” Harry weakly asked from below him, hand clamped on his heavily bleeding shoulder. Ben looked down at him and let out a cooing whine, looking back up and growling as another two statues came near him. Ben reared up and slashed at the beasts, the marble crumbling under his strength.

“Go Ben!” Carlos yelled from next to Jay, who stared slack-jawed at beast Ben. “you got this! Kick their butts!” Ben grinned at Carlos’ encouragement and did quick work of the last two beasts, swiping and destroying them under his jaw and claws.

Gil and Carlos cheered for Ben as Jay stared in awe, Hadie bolting towards Ben and sliding underneath him to attend to Harry. Ben backed away and nudged at the slowly becoming unresponsive Harry. “shit” Hadie curse, patting Harry’s face to wake him “come on Hook, don’t pass out on us”

Carlos, Gil, and Jay ran closer to the three, Jay grabbing onto Ben’s collar just in case he got afraid of their reactions and tried to run. But thankfully that was the last thing on Ben’s mind as he looked down at Harry.

“Harry come on dude” Gil whispered, taking off his bandana and soaking up the blood as Harry’s eyes fluttered “(y/n)s gonna kill me if i-woah!” suddenly Ben was sprayed with water, his body glowing a soft periwinkle as he shrunk down to his normal size and his horns, paws, claws, and fangs reduced with it.

Ben shook his head and looked around, eyes widening as he spotted Jane holding a long water gun, probably half full with enchanted lake water. “Jane!” he called, waving her over to Harry. “help him! the water can help!” Jane hurried over and gasped as she saw the badly wounded Harry. She kneeled next to him and gently sprayed the water onto this shoulder, the slices glowing the same blue as Ben had and closing up, the blood disappearing as the water ran over it.

Harry slowly regain consciousness and groaned, sitting up with the help of Ben and Hadie. “wha-Beastie boy? How did yeh?” Ben just nodded at Jane then quickly explained what had happened to him.

“Audrey, no, Maleficent cursed me to become my worst fear, an unlovable beast like my father, but the water” Ben nodded at Jane again, who was being hugged by Gil “turned me back, it breaks spells and can drastically reverse curses but-“ Ben gestured to himself, still mostly furry and fanged “-only mostly, we’ll have to defeat Maleficent to fully remove the curse” Harry just nodded, still out of it slightly and stood on wobbly legs, he had lost a bit of blood so it would be a minute before he didn’t feel dizzy anymore.

“Let's head back to Evie's place, they’re waiting on us,” Gil said, pushing Jane to Carlos for the younger vk to take her as Gil and Jay helped Harry get situated to move out. “and We’re running out of time” Ben nodded and followed after his friends, Hadie trailing just behind them, eyeing the marble statues that had been destroyed by him and Ben.

Mal stepped behind Celia's chair, looking at Uma slightly unsure before she decided to just go for it “Thank you, Uma. That was a really good idea” Uma turned to her with raised brows, confused on why Mal was talking to her willingly “searching Audreys room, now we have an idea of the right track” Uma frowned and glanced at you, who shrugged and continued to eat one of your snacks that you had hidden at Evie's just in case.

“Is there an insult in there or something that I missed?” Uma asked with a mouthful of cake, Mal shook her head, sincere in her words.

“no, no insult, I just…wanted to thank you.”

Audrey, no, Maleficent clicked her tongue in frustration, slowly her weak little failure of a daughter and her ‘friends’ were figuring out where she had gone and were getting closer to beating her…if only little Malsy didn’t have that blasted ember, it was the only thing next to the wand that could defeat the scepter and reverse the possession spell she had placed upon the daughter of Aurora.

“On the right track,” Maleficent said through Audrey, glaring down at the image on her scepter as Mal sat across from Uma, getting a plate of cake for herself “you won't be going anywhere” Maleficent looked up and smirked at Chad, who looked as if he was five seconds from peeing his pants. “how about we mess em up a little?” Chad looked at her fearfully and attempted to suggest something less…evil. Which made Maleficent angry.

“I say we go back to my place and binge-watch some tv?” Chad suggested, his eyes wide with terror “huh? Or maybe order some stuff online?” Maleficent/Audrey tilted her head with a smirk, somehow that translating to ‘yeah let’s do that instead’ to Chad “yeah? Yeah!” Maleficent/Audrey flicked her hand down and Chad followed it, his body glowing a soft green as he went to his knees. “no?! um-what about pizza?” Maleficent/Audrey flicked her hand out and Chad fell on his ass, his back facing an open closet…which gave Maleficent/Audrey an idea “okay, you don’t like Pizza, salad! Sa-“ Chad stopped as he looked towards the front door of the little cottage the two were in, eyes widening as he looked at “Audrey’s” shadow.

Except it wasn’t Audrey’s shadow anymore, once with long hair and a crown perched on her head, was now a taller older figure, with curling horns protruding from its head. Even Chad wasn’t dumb enough to not figure it out. He looked from the shadow to Audrey as discreetly as he could, clenching his jaw as he noticed Audrey’s usual honey brown eyes were turning a vivid green, similar to Mal's eyes.

He went to stand and attempt to take the scepter from his possessed friend but Maleficent blasted him back with a wave of her scepter and Chad was in the closet, the lock sliding shut with another wave.

He started to bang on the door, pleading for Audrey to fight the spell that had taken hold. Maleficent only laughed, there was no saving Audrey now, by the time her daughter and her friends got here, it would already be too late.

Maleficent turned and disappeared into a swirl of green smoke, she had a much better place to execute her evil plans than in this old hideout the good fairies once hid the princess Aurora.

Mal chewed her lip as she watched Uma from across the dining table, Uma ignoring her as she enjoyed another piece of Jane’s cake. “Okay I know I’ve been feeding you sugar for the past three years but slow down you’re gonna give yourself a sugar crash and stomach ache” you joked as you pulled the almost empty plate away from Uma, laughing as she glared and pulled it back.

“Fuck you let me have my sugar,” Uma said in a teasingly angry tone, a smile on her face as you tried to take the plate again “take the plate and I stab you”

“Stab me and I’ll turn you into calamari” you shot back, snickering as Uma rolled her eyes.

“That’s squid dumbass, I’m an octopus.” you held your hands up and sighed, leaning back in your chair and looking outside to keep an eye out for the boys.

“Hey, Uma?” Mal asked nervously, playing with her piece of cake as Uma looked at her with wary eyes “I um…I wanted to apologize” Uma looked genuinely shocked at that, sharing a look with you before looking back at Mal apprehensively, unsure of what Mal was going to say.

“I-I was a bitch of a kid” Uma snorted at that, going back to her cake as Mal continued to talk “I really was a bitch to you specifically, the…shrimp incident, the harassment after that, I treated you like dirt even before all that and I really want you do know that I regret it all, im sorry for the way I was and how I was so cruel to you, I know we were raised to be like that but still, I feel awful about it”

Uma glanced up at Mal, her face giving away nothing. Mal sighed, pushing a lock of hair behind her ear “im not expecting your forgiveness or anything like that, I don’t expect your friendship, just because I apologized doesn’t automatically mean you should forgive or forget about the way I hurt you. So I understand if, after today, we never speak again” Mal smiled at Uma and looked down at her piece of cake, seeming as if a weight had finally been lifted off her chest.

Uma stared at her for a moment before nodding and pushing around a piece of cake with her fork “You were right (y/n)…she has changed” Uma muttered, pushing down a smile as Mal perked up at that and looked at her confused.

“(y/n) talked about me?” Mal asked, looking at (y/n) with shocked eyes “Why would you talk about me?” you shrugged and grabbed your bottle of root beer, keeping your eyes on the outside.

“Told her ‘bout you going to therapy n stuff and how you are actually doing better than just saying it and not changing at all” you hummed, sipping at your soda and sighing. “in my world, the movie you was a whole ass bitch and the writers didn’t develop your character properly at all, treated everyone like shit, including Ben…weird thought but what if we’re in the third movie right now?”

Uma and Mal shared a look of ‘ah right forgot she’s from another dimension where we’re fictional characters’ “that’s possible, but please don’t even mention that again I do not want to implode” Mal snarked, laughing a bit as you flipped her off without looking.

You froze as the hum of magic suddenly pulsed around you, a dome of blue magic that shimmered with green and pink surrounded the house like an airtight cage, sealing the doors and windows. “What the fuck!?” Mal yelled out, standing from her chair and rushing towards the windows, yelping as the dome pushed her back from them “It's Audrey, she trapped us!”

“Celia!” Uma yelled out for the young vk, the aforementioned girl rushing in just after that with a panicked look, running into Uma’s arms and burying herself into Uma’s side.

“What’s going on!” Evie yelled as she ran in from the living room, Doug just behind her with wide fearful eyes as he looked at the magic dome blocking the windows and doors.

“Audrey trapped us, Mal do you got a spell or something for this!?” you grunted as you slammed your shoulder into the patio doors, rubbing it as pain flared from a particularly hard smack.

Mal froze for a moment, trying to figure out a quick spell to get out of the castle when one finally came to mind “please work” Mal pleaded to herself, holding her hands out “You’ve caused my friends pain and fear/we’ve had enough, now disappear!” Mal went a twinge of pain run through her, mostly hitting her head as her hands sparked light blue with magic but nothing else happened “shit! I don’t think I can, I don’t have access to my magic anymore” Mal pressed her palm to her head as Uma looked down at her necklace, the ember within glowing along with her shell.

“What?!” you screeched, backing away from the door as the glass started to crack from the dome pressing on it “But you used a spell on the knights?!”

“I don’t know?! I think I connected to the ember or something?!” Mal grabbed onto Evie as the windows creaked with effort “what is she trying to do, kill us?!” Evie winced as the windows cracked, whelp, that’s fun, and hundreds of dollars down the drain to get those fixed.

Uma’s mind went back to when she and Mal had combined their magic to defeat the knights, and then remembered Mal had cast a spell with her, through the ember! Mal was right, she had connected with the ember! Uma stepped up to Mal, holding out her hand for Mal to take. Mal just looked at her confused and scared.

“Together,” Uma said forcefully, shaking her hand a bit to encourage Mal to take it “like with the knights, our magic together can overpower it.” Mal looked relieved at the idea and took Uma’s hand, the ember blazing bright blue as she did and their hands glowed teal-blue. Uma and Mal nodded at each other once before turning towards the patio doors, focusing on the dome just outside.

Uma’s eyes glowed turquoise as Mal’s glowed yellow, and her hair moved like fire once again. “You’ve caused our friends pain and fear/we’ve had enough, now disappear!” Uma squinted as the ember and her shell burst out in a bright show of light and another glow burst out from her and Mal’s conjoined hands and flowed out towards the rest of the house and the patio doors. The dome shattered with the burst and they were free. Uma and Mal’s hands dropped and separated, the ember within Uma’s necklace dimming from its lost connection with Mal.

Both Uma and Mal let out a slow breath, their shoulders dropping in relief as the tenseness from being trapped released. “you did it” Evie breathed out, looking relieved that her doors or windows didn’t shatter

“Nice, now get me the hell outta here” you grumbled, moving to push the doors open and gasping as you saw the boys running towards the house, with both Ben and Jane. “It’s the boys!”

The other girls followed you and Mal ran to Ben, Uma colliding with Gil as you ran into Harry's arms, slowing down as you noticed his sluggishness. “Harry” you breathed, gently squeezing his torso before pulling back to examine him “what’s wrong, did you get hurt?”

He just nodded, stumbling a bit as his supports named Gil and Jay had gone to make sure the rest of the girls were okay “aye, Audrey sent some stone statues at us, one of ‘em got me pretty good, it’s mostly healed though, Jane had some enchanted lake water” you nodded at Jane in thanks and she nodded back, leaning on Gil’s arm as he introduced her to Uma properly.

Uma caught your gaze and gasped, seeing the slices on Harry's shoulder as he pulled his hand away. She raced over to him and laid her hand on top of the shallow cuts and muttered a healing spell, focusing on the rips in the fabric of his shirt and jacket as well. A moment later Harry was fully healed and his clothes were fixed as well, he also looked as if he had renewed energy. He pulled Uma into a hug and thanked her, the sea witch nodding and patting his arm to tell him to let her go.

Mal was making sure Ben was okay, pursing her lips at his fuzzy face and fangs “Are you okay?” she asked concerned, knowing one of his greatest fears was turning into a beast. Ben smiled and shrugged.

“I am now” he hummed, giving Mal a reassuring pat on the arm “hey it’s okay, I was scared at first but-I’m not now, I’m not a beast, Im just” he gestured to himself “fluffy” Mal looked unconvinced but let it go, they didn’t have time to argue over Ben brushing his problems away when they were clearly important.

Ben looked over to Uma, looking slightly surprised to see her “Now where the hell have you been?” Uma just looked sheepish as Gil and Harry pouted at her. “wait lemme guess” Ben pointed at you as you snuck behind Harry “(y/n)s been hiding you at your request?”

“How in the hell did you guess that?” Uma said surprised, her eyes wide. Ben just shrugged.

“I know (y/n) and that is exactly something she would do, and knowing you from Harry and Gil, that is also something you would do” Uma turned to her boys, slightly surprised they seemed to talk about her that much. Harry and Gil just shrugged as Mal turned Ben’s attention to her.

“okay, so Uma found a clue in Audrey’s diary” Ben looked at Uma slightly disappointed that she had gone into Audrey’s private life like that but Mal quickly turned his attention to her again “I know I know, we’ll both apologize to her after this is all over, but now we think she may be in Fairy cottage, the one her mom was hidden in when she was a kid, do you have any idea where it may be?” Ben nodded, wringing his hands a bit.

“yeah, she took me there every fairy godmothers day…speaking of FG’s where is FG?” Mal, Evie, (y/n), Jay, Celia, Carlos, and Hadie all looked uncomfortable at that.

“uh, she got turned to stone” Hadie muttered, kicking away a stone at Jane and Ben’s shocked looks. “we were trying to get the wand and I suppose Audrey found out and stopped us before she could get it.” Ben nodded solemnly turning back to Mal, who gave him a sad smile. Ben took a deep breath and went into king mode, turning to Doug and Gil.

“Doug, Gil” the two looked up slightly surprised at his authoritative tone “go with Jane, find FG, I know she stone right now but knowing her exact location would be good” Mal went to say she was at the museum but stopped as Ben continued to talk “then get the wand just in case, Jane should be able to access it” He looked to Jane for confirmation and she nodded, looking sure she could control its magic this time around. “and if we do fail in defeating the scepter, you’ll be our last hope.” everyone nodded, the tension rising in the area as you all realized you were all heading into a final battle situation, where the stakes were high and death was probable. “good luck, take the bikes if you need to” at that Carlos opened the garage to reveal Harry and Gil’s new motorbikes, to which Gil and Jane climbed on his and Harry quietly threatened Doug to not ruin his.

Soon the three were off into the setting sun, Mal biting her lip as she remembered Beasts words on the deal ‘return the scepter and the crown to the museum at sunrise, or the barrier will be closed for good’

Ben intertwined their hands, seeming to know what Mal was thinking about, she gave him a watery smile and they turned to go back into Evie's place for a moment to make a quick plan with everyone before they all headed out.

-end of p7-

part 7 yall!!!! hoped you liked it!!! i really like how the beast ben part turned out along with Mals apology and the scene just after that :3

permtaglist!

@queer-cosette @sephiralorange @lunanight2012

@daughter-of-the-stars11 @musicarose @random-thoughts-003

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@thecaptainsgingersnap @jatp-rules-my-life @verboetoperee

@saryguerrero

rewrite taglist

@harriyanna @disneyfan50

#Descendents #descendants #disney descendants #harry hook #harry hook descendants #harry hook x reader #harry hook imagine #rewrite #part of your world #shuffle playlist #d3 rewrite #interlude #finale

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inadaydream99 · 3 years

Text

Safe

A/N - Hey! This is just something I’ve been slowly working on for a while now. I thought I’d post this while I’m working on requests and also because I think I’m finally happy enough with how it’s turned out ☺️

It’s amazing how something you usually find so causal and comforting now suddenly puts you on edge. Never before had you felt so uncomfortable being so close in proximity to your best friend Juyeon. The way his arm is linked through yours, his fingers drawing delicate swirls along your forearm as you sit closely together in the dark room, the only light coming from the tv.

Subtle skin-ship is something that Juyeon has done since you’ve know him, a mindless habit he has that, although you’ve never bought up with him, makes you feel safe.

Except for right now. And it’s all Younghoon and Chanhee’s fault.

If they hadn’t teased you about your feelings for Juyeon, or so they adamantly believe, you never would have thought so deeply about every little ounce of contact or interaction between you and your best friend. To put it plainly, you’re insecure because of their opinions.

It’s evident you feel tense, the hairs on your arms raised as goosebumps appear in the wake of the patterns he draws. You’re hyperaware of Juyeon’s fingers as they softly trail along your skin but you’re sure he’s none the wiser to your reaction. From your peripheral vision you can see his wide eyes focused onto the movie playing out on the tv in front of you. You, however, couldn’t care less what was going on, the characters so dull and one dimensional and the plot was so confusing that you didn’t want to even try to keep up with it.

You gasp when out of the blue the scene takes a turn for the more romantic, shifting awkwardly and clearing your throat as you shuffle away from Juyeon a little. You were definitely not expecting for the two main characters to suddenly begin ripping each others clothes off in the animalistic fashion they are; growls and gritted teeth chewing away at the other in an attempt to have an interesting twist on the classic passionate love scene.

You shyly gaze to look at Juyeon, his hands now calmly placed in his lap, having drawn away from you when you’d moved. He’s still fixated on the screen, his expression unreadable and his lips etched in a firm line. You can tell he’s suppressing the awkwardness he feels, judging from the way he gulps. Not that that provides you with any more comfort as you flicker your gaze briefly back to the tv to see that it’s only getting more and more intense.

“I-” you begin, your face growing hot as the moans from the tv begin at the exact same time you decide to speak. “I’m going to get another drink.” You squeak, head bowed low as you hurriedly stand from the sofa and rush away into the safety of the kitchen.

For the first time Juyeon’s focus isn’t on the tv, instead his gaze follows you as you get away. He had no idea the movie he’d chosen to watch had a scene of such nature and the fact that it had so clearly made you uncomfortable worried him.

Closing the fridge and frantically opening the can of soda, you quickly chug as much as you can to calm your nerves. You know you’ve made it too obvious now, Juyeon’s bound to have realised how affected you are and yet, you are really hoping he hasn’t.

Why did you have to let Younghoon and Chanhee get into your head like this! It’s not like they know how you or Juyeon feel about each other. You can think of plenty of friends that have loads of skin-ship, theirs being one of them. And you refuse to admit that Juyeon could feel anything for you that isn’t platonic, so where’s the issue with being close?

“Are you ok (Y/N)?” You jump out of your dizzying thoughts, standing bolt upright as your shocked eyes land on Juyeon’s concerned gaze.

“I’m fine, really.” You meekly smile, “That scene just caught me off guard.” You let out an awkward chuckle afterwards. Neither of you are sure where to look, a silence settling between you that leaves you unsure of what to say next.

You’re not sure how you would describe the feeling you have towards Juyeon in this moment; alien-like possibly? Whatever it is, you know something is off between you. You can tell from the way he’s hardly able to look at you, his eyes constantly flickering back and forth between you and the floor.

Just as you notice Juyeon is about to speak up a sudden burst of noise interrupts. It makes you jump as you hear voices echo around you and the sound of the front door slamming shut a second afterwards.

“If I was trying you never would have won.” Eric rolls his eyes, his comment falling on Jaehyun’s deaf ears as he laughs the youngers jealous comment off. It’s apparent that they’ve gotten into some lighthearted dispute between them on their way back home, not that you can keep your mind focused onto their sassy comments.

You do notice, however, that you find yourself unable to wipe the dazed-like look from your face as you watch them both causally stroll into the kitchen where you and Juyeon are stood and begin opening cupboards, retrieving drinks and snacks without batting an eyelid at you both.

It’s not until their talking simmers down that Jaehyun notices you, his brows instantly furrowing in confusion as he eyes your tense posture.

“What’s going on here?” He tilts his head, gaining Eric’s attention from his phone screen as he leans up on the counter next to him.

“We were just watching a movie.” Juyeon responds quickly and it comes out sounding like an excuse when reality is it’s true.

“In the kitchen?” A devilishly cheeky smirk appears on Jaehyun’s face. “Where there’s no tv?” He adds, an amused laugh escaping him.

“No, in there.” Juyeon points to the living room behind him, his expression the complete opposite of his friend’s.

“Why’s it so awkward between you then?” Your attention flickers to Eric as he narrows his eyes in suspicion. You can sense that he’s sussing things out, and knowing that he is usually quite quick to catch onto these sorts of things, it’s only a matter of time before he blurts something you don’t want to hear.

You cast an unsure gaze to Juyeon, hoping he gets the message from you to quickly turn the conversation away from yourselves.

“We were just having an argument.” Your eyes almost pop out of your head with how wide they go at his sudden excuse. That was definitely not what you were thinking he’d come up with, but really you should have known better than to put Juyeon under pressure like that. It’s never turned out well previously. The only response you can give is a forced laugh, hoping you’ll simply come across as flustered.

You watch Jaehyun and Eric exchange glances before the former speaks up.

“Okayyyy, we’ll leave you to it then.” Jaehyun pushes himself off from leaning back against the counter, making his way out of the kitchen. Eric instantly follows without a word; quite unusual for him, but you do notice the sly wink he sends in Juyeon’s direction as he walks past.

You’re officially dumbfounded. As is Juyeon, judging by the way he creases his brows at Eric in response.

“They definitely think there’s something else going on between us, don’t they.” Juyeon rocks back and forth on his feet, hands stuffed into his jean pockets as you notice him trying to suppress the deep blush that begins to creep up his face.

“Probably.” You shrug. “But there’s not, right?” You shoot your friend a questioning gaze, silence once again settling between you. You instantly regret asking that, your hands becoming more and more clammy as the silent seconds pass.

“It feels like everyone thinks we’re secretly dating though. Just yesterday I had Sangyeon asking me about us.” Ah Sangyeon and his love of love, it always brings a smile to your face whenever you see him get excited by the prospect of it.

It’s incredibly endearing how much of a hopeless romantic he is. You even remember when he “accidentally” made Changmin and Eric kiss as forfeit at the last game night just because he finds it so amusing. And you love that about him. Except when it concerns you and Juyeon.

Instead, it makes you feel somewhat queasy… not in the repulsive way that most people associate the feeling with. But, rather, in a stomach twisting, heartbeat racing, head spinning, euphoric way.

“Pft, that’s ridiculous!” You awkwardly chuckle. Now you’re just as flushed as each other. “I had the same thing with Younghoon and Chanhee too.” You add, hoping that if you keep the conversation going then you won’t focus so much on how hot the room has become.

What you don’t notice, while you begin to ramble away about how persistently annoying that had been, is how Juyeon’s whole demeanour changes. He’s no longer feeling timid about sharing how he truly feels about you because now he can see that you feel the same.

“Is it though?” You freeze upon hearing Juyeon’s question, forced smile falling off your face. “Is it ridiculous?” He repeats for clarity.

You notice how his tone, despite being soft, is serious. His expression matching and his eyes now intently staring into yours.

It’s like being in a trance. You can see him moving closer to you and his arm reaching out to touch yours. But you can’t seem to break away from his stare.

“N-no.” You breath. “It’s not.”

You mimic the warm smile that slowly stretches across Juyeon’s face at your confession, simultaneously noticing the little patterns that he draws on your arm with the pad of this thumb. You instantly relax. Just knowing that he’s not scared is all you need.

“Ew! What were they watching!” You hear Eric shout in disgust, Jaehyun’s laughter following after. They must have seen the scene paused on the tv.

“Maybe we should get out of here before they tease us.” Juyeon suggests, grabbing your hand in his with an elated grin when you nod in agreement.

It’s safe to say that from then on neither of you had to worry about any more accusations from your friends. Although, the incessant teasing and pestering might not go way anytime soon.

#the boyz fluff #the boyz oneshots #the boyz drabbles #the boyz x reader #the boyz imagines #the boyz scenarios #the boyz juyeon #tbz fluff #tbz x reader #tbz oneshots #tbz juyeon #kpop fluff #kpop x reader #kpop scenarios #kpop imagines #kpop oneshots #kpop drabbles

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silhouetteofacedar · 3 years

Text

Fox Mulder, Closet Romantic Ch. 1: A Revelatory Papercut

AO3 Link - MSR, rating pending

It all started with a paper cut.

Actually, that’s not entirely true.

Fox Mulder had seen this coming from a long way off. Years, really. He knew in the back of his mind that his growing attachment to Dana Scully would eventually entangle him beyond hope of release; that his fondness and respect for her would deepen to the point of devotion. That his attraction to her would ripen into a passion that he could neither act on nor contain. He’s been in free-fall since the day they met, and is only just now hitting the ground.

It isn’t a matter of if, but when.

And the when happens to be Thursday, February twelfth, 1998, at eleven twenty-nine A.M, when Special Agent Dana Scully sits opposite him at their desk, leafing through a sheaf of papers, and slices her index finger on one.

“Shit,” she mutters, observing the droplet of blood gathering outside the cut and reflexively popping her finger into her mouth.

Mulder, slouching over his own stack of documents, looks up at her in surprise at her utterance and promptly falls in love. Hard.

The sensation rolling through his body reminds him of going to a shitty carnival on the Vineyard one summer when he was eleven. He has a distinct physical recollection of riding a rickety old rollercoaster that had no business operating with human passengers, anticipation building with the climb of the car on the tracks. He can still feel the euphoria of cresting the rise and dropping down the other side, a vortex of giddiness twisting in his stomach.

Only now he is experiencing this as a thirty-six year old federal agent in an office chair, across a cluttered desk from the most beautiful, resilient, and achingly unattainable woman he’s ever known.

“You okay, Mulder?” Scully asks, rising from her chair and crossing the room to fetch their first aid kit from a cabinet. “You look a little flushed.”

“Hypoglycemia,” he says quickly, then mentally kicking himself because she’s a goddamn doctor and knows better than him what the symptoms of severe low blood sugar are. Symptoms he certainly doesn’t have. “I skipped breakfast.”

“Uh huh,” she replies absently, wrapping a bandage around her fingertip. “Well, once we finish this report we can go to lunch.”

He wants to take a bite out of her. Instead he picks up a pen and watches letters and numerals swim across the page in front of him.

He’s finally, absolutely in love with Scully. And he has no idea what to do about it.

Mulder stays late at the office that night, tossing pencils upwards at the ceiling before realizing Scully will notice them tomorrow and know he wasn’t buried in research or catching up on paperwork like he claimed.

Falling in love is pretty inconvenient, which is probably why he put it off for so long. He had overlooked his growing feelings in much the same way he’d ignored a hairline crack forming in one of his favorite mugs a few months ago. He kept using the mug until one day he found coffee seeping out the bottom of the cup and onto his newspaper, soaking the pages together. He had foolishly thought the crack would hold, and felt stupid for being even momentarily surprised.

He spins lazily in his office chair, listening to the bolts squeak.

In reality, he has only two clear options.

One: he could sit back and do nothing. Pine for her quietly, nurse an ache in his chest so deep that it cuts him in half right down the middle. Sleep alone on his sofa until he draws his last breath, never uttering a word to her because she deserves more than him, deserves better than he could ever provide.

But he knows and respects her. After everything that’s been taken away from Scully, the last thing he wants to do is deny her agency or choice. And because he’s an asshole, he desperately, selfishly hopes that she chooses him.

So that leads to option two: do… something.

This is where he falters; he hasn’t wooed a woman in years. And if he thinks on it, his last two relationships were fairly heavily driven by the female participant; almost as though he were just along for the ride.

But Scully is different; Scully challenges him, excites him, brings him peace. She keeps him in line while simultaneously setting him free. Sometimes she even smiles at his jokes. He’s never had the privilege of someone else’s trust and confidence in that way before.

Mulder doesn’t know if she wants him the way he wants her. Hell, it seems impossible for anyone to want another person that much, but here he is, chewing on the eraser end of a #2 pencil, ready to upset the entire balance of his professional and personal life on the off chance she might.

It’s worth a shot. She’s worth a shot.

He only hopes he’s worth one in return.

#I'm not posting at midnight wtf???#anyway yeah #my fic #FMCR #Fox Mulder Closet Romantic #xfiles #txf fic #Season 5 canon divergence #msr

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feral-dumbass · 4 years

Text

I Love Playin’ With Fire

Chris Evans/ Female Reader

Summary: As “punishment”, Chris makes you wear a vibrator that he can control with his phone, but not before you can convince him to fuck you first.

Includes: Cum Play, Panty ripping, Dirty talk, Unprotected Sex, Use of vibrator, Exhibitionism towards the end

Words: 2,632

A/N: Obviously this is RPF smut. If it’s not your cup of tea, I’ll probably be uploading a Bucky fic later today to make up for it. I don’t think I’ll write a lot of RPF, but we’ll see what Evans does and how much of a whore I’ll be for it. Title credit to The Runaways. Tagging my hype men @babybluestan and @gagmebucky

Masterlist

“You know I was thinking.” Chris strokes his fingers through his beard. An absentminded tick when he’s lost in thought. You glance up from getting ready for the day. You strut toward him, traipsing around in your lavender underwear. You’re hoping Chris will get handsy if you wear a sundress today.

He’s sitting up in bed, the latest philosophy book face down on the covers in his lap.

Your eyes travel down to his bare tattooed chest. His already massive bicep thickens as he reaches up to stroke his beard. Okay, maybe you can convince him to stay home on this lazy day with no clothes in sight. You walk over to him and kiss him. His lips are warm and a little wet against your own. A shiver of anticipation runs down your spin. You pull back only a little so your lips lightly brush against his as you speak.

“What were you thinking?” You lower your voice until it hits that soft, sultry tone that drives him mad.

He gets momentarily distracted. Staring at your lips, he pushes the book aside. his chest rumbles as he hums. “I was thinking-” his voice is a sexy deep tone and his pink tongue swipes across his full lower lip “-no underwear for you today.” He must have looked up from his book while you were laying out your daisy sundress.

A grin slowly spreads across your face. “No.”

“No?” His facial expression morphes into one of shock. Chris didn’t even know that word was in your vocabulary when it came to him. You slip out of his reach as he grabs for you. The pads of his fingertips barely brush the lace of your lavender panties.

“Make me.” You bolt out of the room. The word in Chris’s mouth stops short at the sight. You’re running down the hallway when you hear him scrambling out of bed. The slap of his footsteps echo down the hallway.

You turn the corner, ready to make him run in circles, when you trip over one of Dodger’s dozens of toys. You don’t know whether to be grateful or disappointed that your fit ass hell husband is here to catch you before you fall on your ass.

He hefts you against his chest. Your feet barely touch the floor as he carries you to the couch. Images of your knees to your chest, Chris’s heavy strokes make you tremble as they flash through your mind. Your feet plant on the ground and he pushes you over the armrest. Face against the seat cushion and lace covered ass up in the air, You should have known. An ass man at heart, Chris will do anything to get you in this position.

A heavy hand lands down hard on your ass. You gasp at the sting of his wedding ring. His hands are broad and strong. You’ve learned during your many spankings just how strong he is. More than once you’ve woken up with giant red handprints covering you ass. You’ll feel that one for the rest of the day. He gropes you ass, trying to massage the pain away. You try to buck away from his big hand. Chris hums and digs his thick fingers harder into your ass cheek. You cry out.

“You had to run away, huh? Couldn’t just be a good girl and say yes, sir.” How can Chris’ voice get deeper? That should be illegal. Your eyes roll back. Pussy throbbing at the sound of his low voice. “And to think, I was gonna let you have my cock before we go to brunch.” His hand leaves your ass finally. You feel the ghost light caress of his fingers against your slit. Your wetness seeping through the thin fabric. He groans, his fingers press harder into your pussy. Labias separating against the lace, he runs his fingers over your entrance to clit and back. “You always this wet for me, horny girl?”

“Y-yes.” You whimper at the dip of his fingertip into your entrance before it’s gone again.

“Change of plans. That new vibrator you begged for? You’re wearing it the whole day. You think this pretty pussy can handle that or have you taken my cock too many times in the past twenty four hours?” A chill runs down your spine at the thought. Chris using an app that controlled a vibrator in you is in your top fantasies. You two have been fucking non-stop for the past day, you might be ovulating now that you think about it. You guys have to take a break to be adults.You have to get groceries and planned to stop for brunch on the way. Your thoughts are interrupted as Chris traces feathery patterns against you pussy. He can feel your pussy clench down at nothing. Devious bastard circles your entrance.

“No, I can handle it. P-please.” You arch your back, trying to get Chris to press down harder. His other hand lightly pops your other ass cheek in warning.

“Of course, you can. That’s why I married you. You’re confident in what you can handle and you have a great ass ” He plasters his chest against your back and kisses your cheek. Crushing you against the couch before he’s back up in a flash.

“Don’t you wanna-” You swallow “Don’t you wanna feel my wet pussy around your fat cock first though?”

Chris chuckles. “Nice try.”

“C’mon, think about the vibrator nicely fitting in my tight cunt with your cum helping it slide in.”

“Honey, you’re soaking my fingers. I think you’ll be fine.”

“Please.” You turn your head over your shoulder to look at him. Pouting as you bat your eyelashes. “I want your big dick. Wanna feel your cum leak as you turn the intensity up on the vibrator.”

His groans, eyes fluttering shut. He takes a few minutes to think about the dilemma. He breathes in through his nose, beefy chest rising, before he lets the air out through his mouth. His eyes a dark shade of his normal blue now. His touch leaves you. Slit aching, you whine.

“Chris.” Voice wavering in that perfect bratty tone. “Please.”

“Maybe we should stop at the sex store to get you a gag because I know I just did not hear my good girl not take no for an answer. Gotta admit you got a pretty way with words, baby.” He holds on to the lace right where it's covering your slit. Twists it and pulls, the rip echoes in your brain as you gasp out. He knows the lavender ones are your favorite pair. Your pouting for a different reason now as you glare at him. He rolls his eyes.

“Oh, cut it out. You’re getting my fucking cock.” The intimidating bulge in his boxers teases you, right up against your smeared in wetness slit. He rocks his hips back and forth, just to see you squirm.

“Please hurry up.” You wiggle against his crotch. His hand pins your lower back into the couch, ceasing your gyrating. Other hand reaching for his boxers.

“You may be very god damn persistent, but at least, you’re using your manners. That should get you something, right?” Not that you can see, but he pulls out his girthy cock.

Your pussy easily accepts him. By now, his dick has carved out its place in your channel. If Chris took his eyes off the cute face you make on the first slide and bothered looking down, he would have seen your cunt gaping for him. He lives for the stuttering gasp of his name. It’ll be tough for the vibrator to beat the feel of his cock. He lets a moan slip out. Your cunt spasming at the sound.

It doesn’t take long for Chris to pick up the pace. Your hip bones running into the edge of the couch at each smack. He should not already have you fisting the couch cushions this early on. You don’t know how he does it. Cock rubbing against the sensitive skin of your channel. You carry the full weight of it. The idea of staying naked and being a cocksleeve for your husband sounds all the more enticing right now. Screw food. You can eat ramen for a couple more days, right?

“So happy I married this tight pussy. Best choice I’ve ever made.” Chris’ fingers circle around the skin stretched around his cock. Look, he loves your brain. Absolutely loves hearing your thoughts. Would drop anything to hear one of your TED talks on how important representation is in media. However, you’re at your horniest when Chris talks down to you. Like you’re just a hole to fill. One of his personal toys. You clench down just at the thought as his fingers slide through your wetness to your clit. He grinds down on it mercilessly.

You throw your head back. Elbows leaning on the cushion underneath you. Chris takes this chance to run his fingers through your hair, tugging at the ends.

“How’s this cock feel, baby?”

“So big.” His angle is already perfect, but then he’s angling changes. Hips smacking down into your ass. You’re not a very religious person, but you think you catch a glimpse of heaven. It takes a minute for your brain to process that the water droplets falling to the couch are yours. How much more of his dick can you take? He’s literally fucking you to tears.

“Awe, honey.” He coos as Chris catches a tear on the rough pad of his thumb. “You’re so pretty when you cry.” He licks the tear off his thumb as his thrusts become more erratic.

His fingers absolutely terrorize your swollen clit when you cum on his cock. Hips trying to buck away from the insurmountable pleasure, you groan into the cushions. Your jaw is gonna hurt when you’re done clenching your teeth.

At the feel of your tight pussy milking his cock, he taps out. Coming in you for the upteenth time this week. Muscles tense as he fills you to the brim. Some cum already leaking out around the base of his cock. He distracts himself by groping your ass. Not like that really helps. He finishes cumming before he hauls your body back up. Giant hand wrapped around your upper arm as he quickly guides your doe legs back to the bedroom.

“You’re still wearing the vibrator today. Don’t think your tight ass got you out of it.”

“That’s why I married you.” You mock, letting yourself fall back onto the covers of your bed as Chris goes for the dresser.

“That’s cute. I’m gonna make you cum while you give the clerk my credit card.” He wouldn’t but that’s a hot scenario. The drawer barely snaps shut before he’s grabbing for his phone.

“What are you doing with that?” You ask about his phone as big hands wrap underneath your knees and bring them to your chest.

“Gotta test the product before I look like a douche in public when the vibrator doesn’t work.”

“Oh, carry on, then. I thought you were gonna film putting the vibrator in me.” Chris blinks as he processes your words. He glances at his phone and back at you, doing a double take. “Maybe next time.”

“I’m gonna hold you to that.” Chris rubs the back of your thighs, letting you take over holding the back of your knees, before he’s grabbing the thin pink toy. He pauses when he gets a good look at your cunt. “Jesus fucking Christ.” Your pussy is absolutely filthy. Cum covers your puffy entrance and labias. He’s never had this short of a refractory period as blood rushes back to his cock. He runs the widest part of the vibrator through the mess. “God damnit.” He groans, running it back and forth. Your pussy just swallows the bulk of it whole so god damn easy with his cum as lube. The on/off button rests against your mound. Chris can’t help himself. He leans down to lick a stripe up your slit, helping to clean you about it.

You shout out, still in shock at the feel of his tongue, when the motor rotates within you. Chris’ jaw drops open, his finger still holding the app open at the highest setting.

“It works.” You finally get to breathe as he slides the vibrations off.

You’re on edge. You have been since you felt the powerful motor at its worst. Being this turned on all the time has to be bad for your health.

You haven’t felt anything since then. Thighs tensing everytime Chris picks up his phone to check the fucking weather. Even your sundress is too hot as Chris just sits on the holy grail of control. Nothing. Zip. Nada the whole drive. You should have made him pull over and tear the phone out of his pocket, but time is a bitch. He pulls into the parking lot as you count down from twenty. He parks the car and you pull up your sticky hair in a huff. He notices your ministrations and raises an eyebrow at you, peaking over his sunglasses before he gets out of the car.

Yeah, sure, smug son of a bitch, let’s put a vibrator against your prostate and see how well you can lift an eyebrow. You stew a little less when he opens your car door.

“What are you thinking about getting?” You stew even less when he opens the front door for you.

“I don’t- really, Chris?” As soon as you step foot in the restaurant, low vibrations start inside you. A shit eating grin spreads across his face as he lifts his sunglasses onto the top of his head, following you inside.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He says right before he asks for a table.

The low vibrations are a lot stronger when you’re seated at the patio. Eyes wide as you zone out. Chris tries to hold in a laugh and fails miserably.

Turning your attention back to him, you flip him off. He doesn’t even act surprised. His eyes crinkling from grinning so hard, he slides his thumb up on the app controller.

The motor picks up, making you feel more of an intense vibration. “Jesus Christ.” Your hips rock forward and you cross your ankles. “Nope.” Squeezing your legs together makes the vibrator worse. You have to uncross them as you slam your fist on the table, making the silverware jump. “I hate you.”

“Love you, too, babe.” Cocky bastard leans his head in his hands. Two fingers running over his bottom row of teeth before biting them as his thumb slides even further up.

Both of your hands move to the edges of the table, knuckles straining against the metal. “I-I’m divorcing you. Fuck.” You grit through your teeth, already feeling close from the thrill of it all.

“Are you gonna wear the same thing to sign the divorce papers ‘cause that sounds kind of hot actually.” He leans back, relaxing. His long legs stretching out into your space. He shouldn’t have any more room to slide his thumb up the screen. How does he have more room to slide his thumb up? The vibrations become even worse.

You lift a shaky middle finger back up. “Fuck-” you gasp as you cum around the toy “you.” Walls clenching around the toy, the vibrations prolong your orgasm. Heaven or hell. You don’t know. The only thing you do know is that this just became your favorite toy.

Chris looks at you through his long eyelashes as you try to keep it together. A welcoming cool breeze carries his warm cologne through the air as sweat beads at your temple.

He’s nice enough to turn down the intensity to the lowest setting as you order. Possible plans of revenge already running through your head.

#uh yeah lmao #I got an editor so that's pretty cool #she has no fucking interest in Marvel or CE so idk how much i'll ask her to edit #not to point out my mistakes but I miss whole ass words???#Anyways-#Chris Evans #chris evans smut #chris evans/ reader #chris evans/ y/n #chris evans x y/n #chris evans/ you #chris evans x you #chris evans x reader #chris evans imagine #chris evans fanfiction #my writing

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valdomarx · 3 years

Text

Saving Grace

When the test flight of a new experimental spacecraft goes wrong, Sheppard ends up lost in hyperspace. Injured and alone, his subconscious mind summons up a familiar face to keep him company.

Stargate: Atlantis, Sheppard/McKay. 6k words, rated T.

Contains Shep whump, happy ending, and gratuitous descriptions of astronomical phenomena.

Sheppard comes to with a lancing headache and vise around his chest. An alarm is blaring. He takes in his environment: he’s in an unfamiliar cockpit. Whatever he’s flying, the inertial dampeners have cut out and he’s pulling several Gs, the forces pushing him against his seat and making his head swim.

He blinks woozy eyes and stares out the window. Streaks of color whip past him in a confusing and rapid swirl. A strange thrum vibrates the ship. This doesn’t look like space.

Shit. That’s because he’s not in space. He’s in hyperspace.

This is not good.

“It’ll be a cakewalk!” McKay gestures animatedly. “A quick trip across the solar system to warm our new baby up, then kick in the hyperdrive. It’ll catapult you to the Triian system, and you can turn around and gate back. Easy.”

“Catapult?” Sheppard raises an eyebrow. “I don’t love the sound of that.”

But McKay isn’t listening. He and Zelenka are deep in conversation about hyperspace and its effects on the particle/wave duality of light. The rapidly rising volume of their voices suggests this is an argument they’ve had before.

They’re both fussing over the control panel for their latest pride and joy, a cobbled-together prototype spacecraft which is a hybrid between a puddle jumper and a X-302 fighter. It’s taken them months to build the A-305, based off the miniature hyperdrive McKay designed while he was temporarily almost-ascended. They’ve poked and tweaked and run every simulation they can think of, but sooner or later the ship will need to be taken on a real test flight.

Just as well Atlantis has the galaxy’s best fighter pilot for a military commander, Wier had said with a smile. She’d wished him luck on the A-305’s maiden voyage and told him to come home safe.

Stay safe. Stay alive.

Right.

Through the fog in his head, Sheppard focuses on his first problem. The spinning of the ship is making it impossible to think, and he needs to be clear headed to find his way out of this. He needs control of his ship.

With a wince he connects to the ship’s neural interface. It isn’t as seamless as operating a puddle jumper, but the principle is the same. McKay and Zelenka had done their best to replicate the Ancient interface, but their best approximation was still a long way off. Using it adds to the sharp spike of pain in his skull, but he needs to know what he’s dealing with.

The ship’s interface blinks into existence behind his eyes. The sensors scream out incomprehensible reams of data. He silences them. The alarm is still blaring. Silence that as well.

Now. Here. Positioning and guidance systems. This data is a jumbled mess too, and most of the navigation functions are offline. But thrusters are up. That’s good. He can at least stop this spin.

In the corner of his mind, the power system whines needily. It’s one of a dozen systems competing for his attention and it will have to wait. He pushes it aside.

Thrusters. Fire them, hard. Counteract the spin.

The ship jerks and he is slammed into the side of his seat. It pushes the air from his lungs, but gradually the colors outside the window slow their nausea-inducing swirl.

The world rights itself. The G forces release their iron-tight grip on his chest. The ship is stationary.

Now, at least, he can think and he can breathe. He can call for a rescue.

He taps his radio and calls out to Atlantis. No reply. He tries the ship’s communication system. No luck there either. The radio plays back nothing but static.

Ok. Communications are down. He’ll need to fix that, but first he needs to find out where he is. He opens the hyperspace location system and searches for a beacon.

Silence stares back at him.

He searches further, pushing the sensors to their maximum. There must be a signal he can lock onto somewhere.

He finds nothing. Not even empty space. Nothing but the strange, pulsating colors of the uncharted depths of hyperspace.

Damn it. He’s lost.

“I’m telling you,” McKay is, once again, waving his hands around with great enthusiasm, “you have no idea how hyperspace works. It’s not like navigating through normal space.”

Sheppard is sat in the commissary on the Daedalus, overhearing Ronon wind up McKay and trying not to show his amusement.

“I thought it was like an ocean current?” Ronon asks innocently.

“What? No! It’s nothing like that.” McKay gestures with a fork. “It’s more like… You know when you carry something heavy through the forest?”

“Like a body?”

“God, how does your mind work? But right, sure, you’re dragging the lifeless corpse of your defeated enemy through the forest. And as you go, you’re crushing bushes and leaves beneath your feet, right? You’re making a trail.”

“I don’t leave tracks.”

“Oh, sure, Mr I’m-a-big-tough-guy-yet-somehow-I-can-move-silently-through-dense-foliage.” McKay scowls and Sheppard hides a smile behind a forkful of mashed potatoes. “The point is, when a ship moves through hyperspace it leaves behind a trail. When another ship follows the first, it reinforces the trail. Over time, that builds up a network of paths through hyperspace.”

“And that’s how we know which direction to go in right now?” Ronan looks out the window, where the hyperspace currents wrap around the ship.

“Exactly. Over time, we’ve laid out beacons along these paths. They allow us to jump from one part of the galaxy to another, but only along the predetermined routes. If we were to head away from the path, eventually we’d be too far away from the beacons to orient ourselves. We’d end up lost forever in hyperspace.” He shudders, and Sheppard can see the millions of horrible scenarios playing through his head.

“Huh.” Ronon puts his feet up on the table. “If I get lost in the forest, I orient myself by the sun.”

“Unfortunately for your rustic wisdom, that’s not very helpful when you’re outside the normal planes of space and time.”

Ronon gets a glint in his eye and goes in for the kill. “But aren’t there lots of stars out there? And the sun on Atlantis rises in the east, right? So you could pick a star, and head toward it, and that way would be east.”

McKay turns a worrying shade of purple. He gapes. “That is just. On so many levels, that is so unbelievably wrong, I can’t even fathom how you would -” He takes a huge gulp of air. “THAT IS NOT HOW ANY OF THIS WORKS.”

Sheppard does not panic. He reminds himself that the first thing to do when you’re lost is to retrace your steps. How did he end up here?

He remembers prepping the A-305 for the test flight. He remembers heading away from Atlantis and deeper into the solar system. He remembers firing up the hyperspace drive.

He remembers the drive spinning up. He remembers a whirring noise. He remembers the pop as the ship made the hyperspace jump.

And then… There had been a spark. A crackle of electricity, here in the cockpit. A bolt of lightning had shot out from one of the rear hatches and struck the control panel.

There had been a terrible screeching sound, and a series of bangs as various components fried out and died. Then a bang louder than the others that sent him reeling. That must have been the drive pod blowing.

He remembers the force of the explosion smacking his head on the console. Then only blackness.

Gingerly, he touches his forehead. His fingers come away wet with blood.

That explains the headache.

He needs to figure out where he is but the data coming from the sensors doesn’t make any sense. He opens the interface again and looks through data on the craft’s position, speed, structural integrity. Anything that could orient him in the nothingness.

The reams of data start to blur together. His eyes are drooping and it’s getting hard to focus. He forces himself to look at each number in turn, but he can’t make heads or tails of any of it. The chilling ache of helplessness starts to crawl up his spine.

“Why don’t you let me take a look at that?”

Sheppard whips his head round. Perched on the edge of the console, flicking through a tablet, is McKay.

He rubs his eyes, but McKay is still there. He didn’t think he was this far gone.

“You’re not really here,” he gasps. Maintaining some grip on what is real and what is not has never been more vital.

McKay tilts his head and smirks, and it’s such a familiar movement that it makes something in Sheppard’s chest loosen. “Of course I’m not here. I’m light-years away in Atlantis, worrying about you.”

“Then what-?”

“You’re lost. Your ship is damaged. You’re alone. And you have a pretty severe concussion.” McKay ticks off items on his fingers. “Your subconscious figured you could use some help. So it called me.”

Sheppard blinks. “You're imaginary?”

McKay shrugs. “I’m a creation of your mind. You knew you needed help, so you summoned up the one person you knew could get you out of this.”

“And that’s you, is it?”

McKay radiates smugness. “It’s ok, Sheppard. You can admit that I am not only the smartest person you know, but also the most inventive. And, frankly, the most handsome as well.” He flicks his hair back in an affected manner. It's awkward as hell.

Sheppard rubs his aching temples. “Lucky me."

He'd known McKay was going to be a pain in his ass since the day they met.

He'd spent three years in Antarctica. It was nice there. Quiet. No one to get in his business or hold him to any obligations.

And then he'd come to Atlantis, and everything had changed.

Now he has a team to protect and more responsibility than any person should have to deal with. Teyla and Ronon, Weir and Lorne, even Beckett, they have all become indelible fixtures in his life.

And then there's McKay. Brash, arrogant, and perhaps the only person in the expedition who has worse people skills than he does. McKay, whose endless chattering and whining has become the cosmic background radiation of his life. He's gotten so used to it that being without it feels like he's missing a part of himself.

“What we need is a reference point to lock onto.” McKay is pacing, as much as is possible, around the tiny cockpit. He’s making Sheppard nervous.

“There’s nothing out there. I've tried to pick up a beacon signal, but it’s no use this far from the hyperspace lanes. The more time passes, the further I drift.”

“Ah ah ah.” McKay snaps his fingers. “So we can’t find a beacon. But maybe we can find something else to use as a marker. We just need a point in normal space to orient ourselves around.”

“But we’re cut off from normal space.”

McKay shakes his head. “Not completely. Hyperspace is orthogonal to normal space, not entirely separate from it.”

Sheppard has only the loosest idea what that means.

“So you should be able to…” McKay starts futzing around with his tablet again. He can’t actually be doing anything, because he isn’t real and neither is the tablet, but his mind apparently can’t conceive of McKay without having him poking at some piece of electronic equipment. “Try the radar.”

“The radar? But radio waves don’t carry through hyperspace.”

McKay beams. “They do if the source is strong enough.”

“But that’s -”

“Are you seriously arguing with yourself right now? You know I’m right! On some subconscious level, you clearly realize that this makes sense. So do you want to bicker, or do you want to get out of here?”

“Fine! Jeez. I’ll try the radar, but it’s not going to work.”

McKay raises an eyebrow, like he’s about to say wanna bet? Sheppard clamps the headphones over his ears.

Using the neural interface, the radar signal comes through as auditory information. He hears the rumbling of the radiation coming from his spacecraft, and the pings of neutrinos twisting past at super high velocities. So far so unhelpful.

And then… there’s something… And then it’s gone again. Sheppard strains his ears, reaching out with his mind to extend the range of the radar. There’s nothing, only horrible blankness. And then - there it is again.

A faint, very low pulse. Beating like a heart, every second. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Steady. Consistent. A fixed point.

Sheppard lets out a breath. He’s found a pulsar.

He’d barely been paying attention when McKay had brought it up. He’d been more interested in flicking through the dog-eared copy of Golfer’s Digest he’d borrowed from Lorne.

“See! Right here! Pulsar J0056-87.” McKay gestures him over, vibrating with excitement.

Sheppard rolls his eyes but stands all the same. McKay’s been on at him to join him for a night of stargazing since he found an Ancient telescope stashed away in a lab somewhere. Apparently, even with their elaborate technology, there were still some Ancients who enjoyed looking at the stars with glass lenses for some reason. Bunch of damn hipsters.

But the night was warm and clear, and for once there was no imminent threat of invasion. McKay had dragged him along to one of the distant piers and set up while Sheppard had busied himself with a beer and a magazine.

“Look!” He lets McKay manhandle him into position in front of the telescope eyepiece. “See that?”

He peers through the glass and sees a blurry outline of something like a star. But it flashes, on and off, on and off, like a strobe light.

“It’s the collapsed core of a massive star,” McKay says, all expressive gestures, “and it's spinning so fast it's emitting beams of electromagnetic radiation from its poles as it turns, like a lighthouse. That’s why it seems to flash, and that means it can be used like a yardstick for the galaxy. It’s the only one we’ve found in Pegasus.”

Sheppard grunts, says, “Thrilling,” and goes back to his beer.

“We’re going to get you out of here, Sheppard.” McKay sounds confident, but McKay always sounds confident. Sheppard has learned to temper his expectations.

“Ok. I've located the pulsar. Can we use its location to extrapolate the coordinates for Atlantis?”

McKay pulls a face. “That would require triangulation - we’d need at least three fixed points for that. We’ve only got one point to work from.”

“So how does that help? We’re still lost.” A churning mixture of anger and anxiety rolls in his chest.

“You have to head toward the pulsar.” McKay nods decisively.

“Oh, what a great idea, I’m so glad I have you here for inspiration. I’m lost in hyperspace, so let’s go even further out. Let’s go deeper into the unknown. Let’s throw all of my eggs into this one strobing basket. Brilliant plan, McKay!”

“And what’s the alternative? Sit here and wait to die?”

“Protocol states that I should stay where I am. Preserve my position. Give a rescue team the best chance to find me.”

“And that’s all well and good in normal space, but we’re not in normal space, are we? There’s no maps here. There’s no way for a ship to track us. They can’t rescue you if they can’t find you.” Sheppard glares at him. McKay pouts back. “Since when have you given a shit about protocol anyway?”

Sheppard grimaces and checks the thrusters. He can at least see how much fuel he’s got left.

He reaches into the interface with his mind.

FUEL DEPLETED, a warning flashes. REFUEL IMMEDIATELY.

“Ahh.” McKay looks apologetic. “I was worried about that. I guess when the hyperdrive blew it took the fuel containment with it.”

Sheppard stares out at the rippling nothingness.

Great.

Sheppard has faced death many times.

There was a time when he would have been fine with this. Going out in the line of duty, he figured that was more or less inevitable given the choices he makes.

But things are different now. There are people counting on him. There are people who care about him.

There are people he cares about too. He doesn't know exactly when they became so important to him. But how does know he doesn't want to die without seeing them again.

He considers his options. He doesn’t have many.

“If I follow the pulsar, I’ll drop out of hyperspace halfway across the galaxy.”

McKay looks at him like he’s stupid. “Yes. That’s rather the point.”

“But the team will be mounting a rescue. I need to stay near to where they left me.”

“That won’t work!” McKay waves his arms in the air. “Even if they find a way to enter hyperspace at exactly the same point you did, and even if they could recreate the accident that sent you here, we’ve still drifted too far to be in communications range. They’ll never find us.”

“What’s your suggestion then? Throw myself at the nearest shiny thing and hope it magically leads me home?”

McKay stops his pacing and kneels in front of Sheppard. He takes his hand. It’s weirdly warm.

“What do you think I’m doing right now? Back on Atlantis?”

Sheppard shifts in his seat and takes his hand back. “I’m sure you’re trying to find me.”

“Ya think?” McKay goes quiet, and that’s so unexpected it rattles Sheppard more than the threat of imminent death.

“This is my fault,” McKay says, standing and turning away. “The jumper hyperdrive was my creation. It’s my fault it failed, and it’s my fault you’re lost.”

“I don’t believe that.” Sheppard waves a dismissive hand. “I’m a test pilot. It’s literally my job to fly experimental vehicles. There’s always a risk. I know that, and if you’re part of me then you know that too.”

McKay turns to give him a sad half-smile. “Yeah. I know you think that. But you also know me - the real me - well enough to know that I’m never going to forgive myself if we lose you.”

That hits a little too close to home. He shoves down the swell of emotion closing up his throat and tries for flippant. “So what? I don’t want you to feel bad, and I don’t want to die here. But pointing my ship to a point in space and hoping you’ll know to find me there? How’s that supposed to work?”

“I know how you think, Sheppard. I know how hyperspace works. I know that your ship has been damaged and that you’re lost. I also know you’ll be able to locate the pulsar. And I know you’ll head toward it. I’ll be waiting for you there.”

“It was months ago that you told me about that pulsar. And I was barely even listening to you at the time! How do you know you’ll remember?”

McKay fixes him with a steady gaze. “I’ll remember.”

Here’s what really happened: McKay invites him to the pier for stargazing. The night is so clear that the stars of Pegasus blanket the sky. The air smells of salt from the sea and the crackling of ozone from the shield generators.

Sheppard pretends to flick through his magazine as he watches McKay set up the telescope. He watches the way his hands dance over components. He listens to him mumbling to himself about which piece goes where.

And then the telescope is ready, and McKay begins searching the sky. Sheppard watches his face as he scrunches up his eyes to focus on the eyepiece. He pretends to drink his beer and he observes.

He’s beautiful like this, Sheppard thinks. Give McKay a puzzle, or a mystery, or an unknown, and he simply expands his mind to meet it. Once he’s solved the problem, then he’ll snap back into his defensive egotistical genius mode. But in the moment just before that - when he sees the solution in front of him, when a new piece of understanding begins to take shape - then McKay glows.

“Ohh,” McKay breathes, face still hovering over the telescope. “Would you look at that. A pulsar, right here in Pegasus.”

Sheppard takes a swig of beer and pretends not to be interested.

It’s one of his favorite memories of Atlantis.

“Even if I wanted to follow your crazy plan,” Sheppard begins.

“Your crazy plan, technically,” McKay interrupts. He gestures to himself. “Figment of your imagination, remember?”

“Even if I wanted to follow this crazy plan, then. Thrusters are out because I used the last of the fuel to stop the spin. The hyperdrive is fried. How am I supposed to maneuver anywhere?”

McKay raises an eyebrow and taps meaningfully on the oxygen gauge. “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

“The life support? Oh yes, that’s brilliant. Let’s vent the last of my oxygen into space. I always wanted to try death by hypoxia.”

“Venting gases from the ship will create thrust,” McKay says, and he truly must be a fantasy because the real McKay never speaks with such patience. “We don’t need much. Just enough to overcome inertia and start us moving in the right direction. No friction in hyperspace.”

“Even if I vented half the oxygen and got moving, I’d still need to jump out of hyperspace.”

“Oh no no no no no no,” McKay wags his finger, and that’s more familiar. “With the drive in the state it’s in, we will not be jumping out of hyperspace. We will be falling out of hyperspace, like a stone through a pond.”

“That doesn’t sound great.”

“It’s not! But it’s your only option, so hop to.”

Sheppard scowls. “How am I supposed to fix the hyperdrive? You’ve been working on it for months, and you barely got it functioning.”

McKay gives him a look. “You’ve spent years looking over my shoulder. You know how to bypass secondary systems and reroute power to the drive.”

“I do?”

“You do.”

Sheppard finds a spanner tucked under his chair. He grasps it and turns to face the panels full of incomprehensible wiring behind them.

Time to get to work.

McKay and Zelenka are bickering again.

“Your simulations are not only wrong, but reckless as well! You can’t patch primary power cables like that. Unless, of course, you actually intend to blow the prototype up.”

McKay snorts. “Don’t be so timid, Zelenka! The power conduits don’t need to carry that much power long-term. We’re talking a short-term bypass here, not a permanent solution.”

Sheppard focuses on flying the jumper and ignores the voices coming from behind him. He considers closing the bulkhead between the front and rear compartments, but then he’d only have to listen to McKay ranting later.

“A short-term solution which could explode at any moment isn’t viable!”

“Please, it’ll be fine. We only need to avoid patching into the main power distribution node. The hardware for primary and secondary power systems aren’t so different. They’re interchangeable if you’re careful enough.”

“Your desire for glory is outweighing your common sense, McKay.”

“And your petty jealousy is unappealing, Zelenka!”

Sheppard puts on his headphones and tunes out the arguing with the mellow sound of Johnny Cash.

“That’s good.” McKay puts a hand on his shoulder. It feels real. It feels nice. “That should channel all of the remaining power to the hyperdrive, give it enough juice for one last wheeze.”

Sheppard stares at the mass of cabling. He’s been going by instinct: cut here, patch there. He should have learned more about how the puddle jumpers work, and about hyperdrives. But he’s gotten lazy. He’s gotten used to having McKay around for things like this.

“It’ll be fine.” McKay is not known for his generosity regarding the work of others, so Sheppard can only assume he’s done the wiring correctly.

But something is bothering him. “Even if we manage to drop out of hyperspace -”

“When,” McKay corrects, “not if.”

“- And even if you are, somehow, miraculously aware of where I’m heading -”

“I am.”

“How are you going to get there? That pulsar is in the middle of nowhere.”

“Don’t worry.” McKay smiles blithely. “There’s a stargate nearby.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because you know, Sheppard. You’ve seen it.”

It feels like decades ago. It was when they had first arrived in Atlantis and they’d been desperately searching for ZPMs. He sits in the control chair and brings up a map of the galaxy in the vain hope it will show the location of a power source.

The room darkens and lights blink on overhead. From where he sits, he can see the Pegasus galaxy from end to end: stars and black holes, planets and comets, all represented in delicate, dancing lights. He searches for power sources and finds nothing.

But there, in a far corner of one of the galaxy’s spiral arms, is a single light flashing on and off, on and off. He notices it out of the corner of his eye, a flashing oddity. Interesting, but not helpful in their current search.

He puts it out of his mind. But as he does so, he notes a label next to the flashing light. The third planet orbiting that flashing star has a stargate.

“You’ve got quite the memory, Sheppard.” McKay is looking at him… oddly. Softly. It’s unnerving.

“Could have been mensa,” he says, unraveling the tension with a smirk.

Predictably, that sends McKay into a rant. “Oh, you just love to bring that up, huh, your great big IQ to go with your great big guns, and you know what else is sure to be huge -”

The power system chooses that moment to scream back to life with a warning klaxon.

WARNING, it says, POWER LEVELS FALLING. LIFE SUPPORT FAILURE IMMINENT.

Right. Time's up.

“If we’re going to do this, we need to do it now,” McKay says. He chews at his lip nervously.

Watching him, a strange serenity washes over Sheppard. Live or die, right or wrong, he is out of options. Time to make a choice.

He locates the pulsar. He prepares to vent the life support. He opens a seal on the opposite side of the ship, and he releases the airlock safety control.

There’s an explosive rush of gas from the vents, and he's slammed into his seat. He punches the airlock shut switch as quickly as he can, hoping he didn't waste too much air.

“Hey!” McKay whoops. “It’s working!”

The ship is moving, sailing through hyperspace and toward the pulsar. He sighs, and takes a moment. At least now he has a destination. It’s better than floating lost.

Then he looks down at his oxygen supply.

OXYGEN LEVELS AT 10% AND FALLING, the system says. DANGER OF PILOT HYPOXIA.

Huh. He should be worried about that, but it seems so far away. It can’t be that important.

There's a rushing in his ears that sounds the roar of the ocean.

He leans back with a smile.

It's the sound of home.

“Sheppard. Sheppard!”

He comes to again with McKay shaking him.

“Don’t you dare pass out on me now.”

“‘M tired.”

“I know. That’s the oxygen deprivation. But you need to hold on a little bit longer. You need to activate the hyperdrive once we’re close enough to the pulsar.”

“He’s not…” His words are slurring. It’s hard to move his tongue. “They’re not going to find me.”

“Yes they are,” McKay’s voice has an edge to it he hasn’t heard before. “Teyla is going to be calling up every contact she’s ever made. She’ll find someone on the nearest planet, and she’ll get us safe passage. And if she runs into any problems, Ronon is going to intimidate the hell out of the entire system until they help. Beckett is on board a rescue jumper right now preparing his medical kit, ready to treat you as soon as they find you. Wier is going to approve the mission in a heartbeat, even though it sounds insane, because she’d sacrifice all of the jumpers and half the city to save you.”

Sheppard blinks. McKay’s face swims before him.

“And I… Sheppard, you already know this, but I am going to move space and time itself to find you. I’m not going to take no for an answer, and I’ll bend the damn laws of physics themselves if I have to. When you drop out of hyperspace, I’ll be waiting there for you.”

McKay’s voice is further and further away. It sounds nice, what he’s saying, but it’s like it’s carrying on the wind across a great crevasse.

“You’ve saved us all so many times, Sheppard. For once, let us save you.”

He wants to believe that. He wants his team to rescue him. He doesn’t want to die here, alone.

But he isn't thinking straight. This whole plan hinges on McKay remembering a conversation from months ago. It’s madness.

“McKay… Rodney… He doesn’t know,” Sheppard croaks. He’s too tired to feel ashamed of how weak he sounds. “He doesn’t know that I listened to him that night. He doesn’t know that I always listen to him. He doesn’t know that..." he breaks off. "I never told him.”

McKay takes his face in his hands and kisses him. It’s so unexpected that it shocks him awake again, enough to register McKay's lips against his own and his fingers tangling in his hair. It’s like a jolt of lightning, like being raised from the dead.

“I know, John,” McKay says, pulling back and looking him dead in the eye. “I’ve always known.”

He points down at the hyperspace activation button.

“Now come home.”

Sheppard summons the last of his strength to raise his arm. It’s like wading through concrete. One last task, he thinks, and then I can rest.

He presses the button.

There’s a ripping sound, a whirl of lights, and then there’s only blackness.

He wakes up to the familiar surroundings of the infirmary: the bustle of doctors moving around, the distant sound of the ocean.

And frowning down at his laptop, McKay, sitting hunched in a chair by his bed.

The breath Sheppard lets out feels like a great weight lifting from his chest.

"Hey," he says. His voice is raspy and everything hurts. "What happened?"

McKay scrambles to his feet. "Sheppard." His face is guilt-stricken. "Carson!" he calls. "He's awake."

Soon enough, the whole team is crammed into the infirmary.

"We had to search the entire pulsar system to find you," Elizabeth explains. "By the time we got to you, your ship had been without power and oxygen for several minutes. Carson worked very hard to get you breathing again on the trip home. You gave us quite the scare."

That would be why his lungs ached.

"It is good to see you awake, John." Teyla bows her head. "I hope you will join me for tea when you are feeling better."

Ronon snorts. "Or come down to the gym for a sparring session if you want a real challenge. I'll be waiting." He grins.

Elizabeth looks around and smiles. "We're all very glad to have you back." She glances at McKay, huddled quietly in the corner. "Even Rodney. He's been here since we brought you in." She gives him a tight nod and turns to leave, guiding Beckett, Teyla and Ronon with her.

Sheppard looks at McKay expectantly.

McKay pushes his laptop aside. He takes a deep breath and straightens himself up like he's heading into battle.

"I'm sorry, Sheppard." He's not quite meeting his eyes. "I sent you out in that ship, and I told you the drive was ready. It's my fault you were stranded. You must be angry, and I'll understand if you want me off the team."

Sheppard raises an eyebrow. "Did I just hear an actual apology? From you?" He breaks into a grin. "My head injury must be worse than I thought."

"Way to ruin the moment, you ass." McKay leans over to punch him in the shoulder, which hurts, but McKay is smiling now so it's worth it. "I'm trying to bare my soul here."

"Well put it away. I'm not angry, and I don't want you to go anywhere." He looks at McKay's fingers twitching anxiously on the bedspread. In a moment of wild abandon, he takes his hand in his own and gives it a squeeze. "I knew you'd find me."

"Oh. Uhh. Really?" McKay is staring down at their joined hands, but he doesn't let go. The tips of his ears go very pink. "That's very. Uhh. I'm touched by your. Uhh. Your faith in me."

The moment stretches, and Sheppard wonders if he's supposed to say something else. Then McKay fidgets, and the moment passes.

"How did you figure it all out, anyway? I saw the state of the A-305. Getting that wreck out of hyperspace can't have been easy."

Sheppard rests back against the pillow. He feels bathed in warm light. "I had some help," he mumbles as sleep begins to take him, "from a very good friend."

It's a week before Sheppard is well enough to be released from the infirmary. He's still a little shaky, but Beckett says he'll be fit for active duty soon enough.

He makes the most of his new-found freedom and tells McKay to join him on the east pier that night, and to bring the telescope. He trades a month's worth of rations for enough meat for a couple of turkey sandwiches and some beers. He figures he at least owes McKay dinner.

When he arrives, McKay already has the telescope set up. A few lonely clouds drift through the night sky, but the stars overhead glow all the same.The lights of the city twinkle, the spires reaching up into the dark sky.

"Will you find it for me?" he asks.

"Find what?"

“You know what.” He gestures at the stars and gives him a smile, which McKay haltingly returns, and he lays out their dinner as McKay tweaks dials on the telescope. It doesn’t take long.

'Here." McKay waves him over, and he looks through the eyepiece to see it once more: blinking in the night, steady like a heartbeat, constant and true. The pulsar.

Sheppard lets out a breath and something soft uncoils in his chest as he looks at it. "That's our star," he says, moving to sit on the pier with his legs dangling over the edge.

"Our star?" McKay joins him. He sits close by, and he radiates warmth in the cool night air. "You're a romantic at heart."

"I guess I am." He can't resist a grin. "It needs a better name though. 'J0056-87' doesn't have much of a ring to it."

As he sounds out each number, McKay's eyes keep dropping to his lips. He leans closer. So does McKay.

"We could always rename it," McKay suggests. There are only a few scant inches between them, and his voice is low.

Sheppard lets this drag out, a shiver of anticipation running up his back. "Any ideas?"

"We could name it after me." McKay grins too. "I mean, as the foremost astrophysicist in not one but two galaxies, it seems only apt -"

Sheppard interrupts what he's sure would be a lengthy recap of McKay's skills and career by kissing him.

Judging by the way McKay kisses him back like he's been starving for it, hands running through his hair and trying to pull him even closer, that was a good call.

It’s dizzying and overwhelming, and it’s also the most natural thing in the world. When they break apart, McKay’s lips are red and kiss-swollen. It’s a sight Sheppard could get used to.

“I’m really glad you made it back to us,” McKay says, chewing his lip.

Sheppard takes his hand. “I had to make it home,” he says, quietly. It’s like leaping headfirst into an abyss, but knowing that someone is there to catch you at the bottom. “Everything I care about is here.”

#stargate atlantis #mcshep #john sheppard #rodney mckay #my writing #i had so much fun writing this #i am living my most self-indulgent life this 2021

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forthehpfanboys · 4 years

Text

Intact

Pair: George Weasley x Reader; he/him.

Summary: Life goes to hell when your mother, who happens to be Bellatrix LeStrange AND a Death Eater, finds out you joined the Order of the Phoenix with your boyfriend.

Warnings: Swearing, child abuse?, I guess it's more like assault? Dark, probably graphic??

Notes: 100/10 on this one. Honestly it was fun to write-

~DO NOT REPOST ANYWHERE~

You knew the moment you stepped into the house she knew and it wasn’t a good thing. The house was borderline destroyed from the glass shattered on the floor from the ‘family portrait’ on the floor to the burn marks across walls. Your shoes crunched as you walked across the remains of the crystal chandler that's been in the house for generations. You entered the living room and was immediately struck with a spell that had your black slamming into the wall.

"You rat! You sniveling, useless, pathetic little rodent!” Her hoarse voice revealed how long she’d been screaming. She kicked the coffee table in the center of the room off to the side. “I should've known!" your mother screamed, her wand tightening in her hand. Her arm stayed stretched out, showing her lack of hesitance and empathy toward you. "You were always so ungrateful! So unbelievably selfish!" You held your head in your hands. A headache was throbbing beside your temples- you must've really hit your head on the wall- and her screaming was not helping it out at all. Her yells echoed in the house, almost shaking the shattered windows of the living room.

"What are you going on about?" you asked, finally raising your head to look at her. Her makeup was messy, her hair was an actual rats nest and her eyes were darker than you've ever seen. She looked insane, more so than usual.

"Don't act like you don't know! You betrayed the Dark Lord for that.. That boy!" Bellatrix screeched out, making long steps across the shard covered carpet to corner you. "Honestly! A Weasley, (Y/n)! A blimey, no good for nothing blood traitor! I raised you better than that!"

You stared at her with wide eyes. She knew. Oh, of course she knew who you were sneaking out almost every night to see! She probably found out herself or maybe Draco tattled, that coward. It didn’t matter how she knew, she knew you were with a Weasley, sneaking out almost every night to see him, the other Weasleys and the Order.

"Raised me? I'm sorry, raised me?!" You genuinely had to laugh at that. "You can not take credit for how I came out! You didn't raise me! No, no even close! You dropped me off at the Malfoys like a stray dog.” You didn’t even flinch when she jabbed her wand right under your chin, a sneer growing on her features.

You tried to ignore how much it hurt to be ditched by your own mother, forced to swivel and basically praise the Malfoys for taking in someone like you. You were nothing compared to Draco. Everyone wanted a compliant son like Draco, but no, you had to be different, see your mother for how she really was. You could remember when she showed up one random day after graduating your 4th year, claiming she loved you, missed you, how times got too tough to have a baby boy around the house. The thought now made you sick. She didn’t care about you for fourteen years, but suddenly she does. Since then, life has been hell. Except around George.

“I should’ve left you on the streets.” Her voice was barely a whisper as she grabbed your shoulder. Her unusually sharp nails seemed to phase right through your shirt. “I should’ve drowned you in a river, I should’ve given you to the Dark Lord himself.” Her nails dug deeper into your skin, puncturing it, leading to small droplets of red to seep into the cotton of your shirt. Your pain must’ve made itself known because she smirked and tossed her head back in loud laughter that made your temples throb again. “I should’ve killed you myself.” She pulled away from you, stepping back a few paces before turning swiftly to face you once again. She did a curtsy, not taking her eyes off you.

“Clearly, there’s a lot we both should’ve done.” Your voice cracked as you pulled out your own wand from your pocket, holding it tightly. You stepped forward a few spaces and bowed, understanding what she wanted. She wanted you to suffer. She casted a spell before you could even blink, her laugh echoed in the house again.

“Crucio!”

Your body slammed against the wall a second time, except this time, it felt like your heart was actually going to stop. It felt like every nerve was being ripped in half one by one, like you were being burned alive but drowning in an icy river at the same time. You physically couldn’t stop the scream of pure agony that ripped from your throat.

You crashed to the floor as your muscles tensed up. The spell lifted before another scream could fly from your lips, giving your now aching muscles a break. You curled into a tight ball, your knees to your chest, as your.. ‘Mother’ let out yet another cackling laugh. Honestly, you weren’t sure she ever stopped.

“What’s wrong, (Y/n)? Too much for you? Maybe I should just call you Weasley. You’re just as pathetic and dimwitted as they are.” She giggled, bouncing on her feet, before doing a spin. “Oh, I do love your scream though.”

You were trying to blink through the tears and ignore the way your gut was twisting itself up. You officially envied anyone who said crap about Longbottom's parents- they didn’t deserve this. Through the tears, your eyes landed on your wand, just in arms reach. With a shaky, weak hand, you reached for it, an equally shaky breath leaving your lips when your fingertips grazed across the wood. It was so close. that was, until a heal came to rest into the back of your hand.

“Oh, I’m sorry, my insane rambling is too boring for you, is it?” Bellatrix spat out. She lowered herself onto one knee, putting testing her weight against the bones in your skin. You sucked in a breath, your eyes squinting shut. While she was down there, she decided to go on a tangent on how her life was so difficult, how she couldn’t have her love with her, whoever the fuck that was, and how she was a good mother.

“You’re such a bitch.” You whispered out. While the witch was so worried about your hand and spitting all over your face with her sob story, you’d managed to grab your wand. You threw a punch, right to her crooked grin. The punch wasn’t your strongest, but it gave you enough leeway to wiggle your hand free and aim your wand at her, casting stupefy to throw her back. Before she could do anything else, you booked it out the door, running as fast as you could. You didn’t look behind you when she started screaming again.

“Ingrate! Go run off to those pathetic blood-traitors! You deserve to be with your own kind! A bunch of filthy low-lives!”

You rounded the corner and apparated to where you knew they would be, where you’d be safe. With a crisp pop, you were in front of the door of none other than Sirius’ Black’s home. You didn’t bother knocking, you didn’t need too. You stumbled into the house, effectively cutting off everyone’s casual conversation in the living room. You ignored Molly’s gentle calls and Remus trying to see if you were ok. You just sprinted up the stairs, calling for your boyfriend.

You didn’t even realize you were crying until your body collided with George’s, his arm wrapping tightly around your waist while the other went straight to your hair. He rocked your back and forth, his voice whispering everything was going to be ok in your ear. You didn’t even notice the crowd forming behind you.

“Cupcake, I’m going to need you to tell me what happened, ok?” He gently pulled you from his chest, his hands cupping your wet cheeks to wipe away your tears.

“She knows. Someone told her- or- or she followed us but she knows and-” You took in a shaky breath, being gently dragged back into a hug by the ginger. You couldn’t see it, but George, while never usually one to jump to violence, was close to throwing hands.

“LeStrange?” He asked, wanting clarification over who the ‘she’ actually was. When you nodded into his chest, his arms tightened around you. “Ok,’ he whispered, “ok, how about we go assess the damage, hmm?” He guided you down the hall, ignoring the questions about what happened, and taking you straight to the clean bathroom.

George shut the door once you were sitting on the edge of the bathtub. He wasn’t quite sure if he was more heartbroken over the fact that you were shaking, struggling to breath and bouncing your leg rapidly or pissed that she dared to lay a hand on you. He knelt in front of you, a sad smile across his lips as he rubbed your knees. “What did she do, love?”

You told him about the wrecked house, the yelling, the headache, the tiny scabs on your shoulder and how she fucking stood on your hand. You left out the curse, worried he’d actually go over there himself and hex the daylights out of her. No one would admit it but any Weasley could easily go from lovable dorks to murderous slayers in 3.4 seconds if provoked correctly.

“Can I see your shoulder? I want to make sure it won’t get infected with whatever she carries.” His fingers gently pulled at the hem of your shirt, his eyes staring into yours as he waited for your approval. You suddenly found it hard to speak. He wasn’t gentle all the time, but when he was, it always stole your breath.

When you finally nodded and raised your arms, he slipped your shirt over your head. The fabric slipped from his grasp as he stared at your bare chest, shoulders and arms. You could see every emotion flickering past his irises- worry, sadness, anger.

“What?” You followed his gaze. Along your chest, stomach and shoulders, a bright red pattern of welts had formed. How you didn’t notice, you weren’t sure, but now that you were looking at them, they started throbbing. The marks seemed to mimic lightning bolts, but rounder, breaking apart and covering your body, but they all started at one spot. An angry lopsided organic shape stood out below your right peck, just on your rib cage- that was where the spell hit. The marks didn’t stop at your shoulders, or your neck. They traveled down to your very fingertips and a few made themselves known just along your jaw and across your cheek.

“(Y/n),” His use of your first name unnerved you, “what aren’t you telling me?” George’s hand reached out to gently touch where the bitch’s spell hit you while his eyes flicked up to yours. You stayed quiet, your chest shaking as you took in another nervous breath. You licked your lips, thinking over your next words carefully.

“She may have used the Cruciatus Curse on me.” You looked down at your hands, fiddling with your fingers. You heard him take a sharp breath. He whispered a quick ‘can you give me a moment?’ before walking out of the bathroom. You heard his heavy footsteps travel down the hall before a door slammed open, rattling the mirror hanging on the bathroom wall.

“Freddie, I’m going to fucking lose it!” George’s voice carried easily through the hallway, causing you to jump. “No, I will not calm down! Shut up and listen!” The younger twin never spoke to his brother like that. “The crucio curse, Fred! The fucking, the, you know! For- I swear-” The door to the shared room slammed shut, the rattling mirror doing it’s thing again as you sat awkwardly in the bathroom alone. George kept going on and on about stuff you could no longer make out, but you could assume they were death threats sworn to come true.

After about 2 minutes, George came back, Fred trailing right behind him, a baggy Irish themed quidditch shirt and a pair of red sweatpants in his arms. George set the clothes down while Fred looked at the marks.

“Bloody hell.” Fred sat down next to you. “Do they still hurt?” He let out a sigh of relief when you shook your head no. “Thank Merlin for that.”

While Fred was chatting away, George had knelt in front of you again, his hand on the ball joint of your shoulder, his wand in his other hand. He whispered a quick healing curse on the five scabs before handing you the Irish t-shirt.

“You ok?” George asked once the shirt was on. His hands had come back to your knees at some point and you weren’t quite sure when, but you appreciated the familiar warmth.

“I don’t know. “ Your eyes were cast downward at the marks across your forearms and wrist, your eyebrows furrowed in frustration. “I… Don’t you think they’re.. Meeeh?” You raised your arms a little, referring to the scars.

“Really?” The red-head trouble makers asked in unison, causing you to turn between them a few times.

“What?”

“Sunshine.” George spoke up from the floor, his hands twiddling together as he got your attention. He smiled a little when your eyes looked down into his. “Remember Umbridge?”

“Of course I do. I was there- I left with you guys-”

“Hush, I’m trying to be inspirational.” His words cause you to grin and snort. “Well, then you must remember the quill.” He brought his hand into your view, showing what he thought was oh so important he told you to hush. The scars from the quill were still there, only faded, but still extra pale against his normal tone. “You could hardly see ours anymore, love.”

You reached out for his hand hesitating, but in the end, you were running your fingers across the skin, noting the change in textures. You turned to Fred, who flashed you the same grin and held his hand up, revealing the same scars.

“Right..” You smiled, turning back to the twin you called yours. “They fade but-”

“-let you tell stories that strengthen you.” The twins finished, a wider smile on both of their faces. Fred stood up, ruffling your hair before heading out of the bathroom. George stood up after handing you the sweats.

“I’ll let you get dressed here, cupcake. Come on back to the room whenever you're ready.” George planted a kiss to your cheek before planting one swift one to your lips and heading out of the bathroom, shutting the door softly behind him.

“What would Molly say?” You asked, changing your pants and confirming the scars did run down to your ankles.

“After what you went through? She wouldn’t have the heart to make you stay anywhere else.” George called through the door before walking down the hallway to his room. You splashed some cold water on your face, hoping to wash away some of the trauma today would leave behind.

Once your face was dry, you walked from the bathroom, to the shared room with the twins. You didn’t bother knocking once again, knowing you were more welcomed here than anywhere else. You plopped yourself on the bed, besides your boyfriend and snuggled into his side. Sure today would leave scars, mental and physical, but as George’s arms wrapped around you, you realized he was all you would need to stay intact in the end.

And yeah, George did keep his promise for revenge in the end.

#george weasley x male reader #george weasley imagine #george weasley #hp imagine #hp x reader #x male reader #male reader #fred weasley #Ronny Writes #fic #hp male fic #hp fic

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kozumekenza · 3 years

Text

house of memories :: seven

:: kageyama tobio x f!reader :: playlist :: masterlist ::

:: taglist: closed :: wc: 1.7k ::

the last you had heard of kageyama tobio, he was following his grandfather’s footsteps and leaving you behind to join the syndicate. a chance meeting throws him back into your life, along with all of the memories.

tw: mafia elements, profanity, kidnapping, gun and knife violence, knives, gunshot and knife wounds

You have never seen Kageyama Tobio cry, but right now, there are tears in his eyes.

The cold steel of the gun makes you whimper. Never in your life have you ever been in a situation like this. Hell, you’ve never even imagined you would be in a situation like this. All you can do is stay still in Hajime’s grip and pray that he won’t pull the trigger. Kageyama is looking back and forth between you and Oikawa, seemingly looking for a way out.

In your heart, you know there isn’t one.

Somebody will die here tonight. Would it be too self-sacrificing to say that you wish it is you? Kageyama would never allow it, but between you and him, he’s the one who is worth more. When you have to put a price on life, his wins.

You watch Kageyama carefully. His right hand is slowly drifting towards his back, subtle enough that neither Oikawa nor Hajime have noticed. He must have his gun, right? He’s looking straight at you, his eyes more emotional than you’ve ever seen them. What is his plan here? If he pulls the gun, Hajime will definitely shoot you.

Think, y/n. Think.

Hajime had knocked away the gun you had, but you can’t recall if he took it or left it on the floor. There’s a high chance that he has another sort of weapon on him, maybe a knife or something. With the way he’s caging you, there isn’t an easy way to try to grab for something; your hands are trapped at your sides. Plus, with the gun against your head, you don’t want to risk anything.

Four things happen at once.

Kageyama grabs his gun from the back of his jeans and simultaneously pops the safety off and points it at Oikawa.

Hajime loosens his grip on you and points his gun at Kageyama.

Oikawa shoots at Kageyama, who ducks.

And finally, something solid slides across the floor and hits your foot.

Kageyama’s switchblade.

With Hajime momentarily distracted, Oikawa shooting at Kageyama, and Kageyama ducking and trying to shoot back, you duck down to the floor and reach for the knife, flicking it open and stabbing behind you. You know you’ve met your mark when Hajime’s grip loosens completely and he falls back, clutching his abdomen.

There’s a gunshot, a shout, and Kageyama slumps to the floor.

---

There’s a particular memory you have, of a summer in high school, Kageyama teaching you how to use and care for the switchblade. You were more interested in tricks than any practical uses, but you remember one topic that you thoroughly enjoyed.

Throwing.

The way the knife spins through the air, slicing before it hits the target, mesmerizes you. When you brought it up to Kageyama, you never thought learning would be pragmatic. It was supposed to be a party trick; something you could show off at a darts board at a bar, something you could impress people with if you were drunk enough.

Nevertheless, he taught you, and you picked it up with ease. It was simple, at least for you. Something that required less brain power than studying for a test, something that required a routine that stayed the same every time. The only things that ever changed would be your target, the distance, and the weight of the knife.

Luckily for you, the same knife you had grown up practicing with is the same one that’s currently in your hand.

It’s like second nature to you; like the back of your hand, the curve of Kageyama’s jaw, the distinct smell of the grass in the summer after a heavy rain back home.

Before Kageyama has even hit the ground, the knife is out of your hand, spinning, spinning, spinning towards your target.

You don’t think you made a noise when you threw, but Oikawa must have a sixth sense for this sort of thing, because he turns and locks his wide eyes with yours as the knife arcs through the air and embeds itself deep within his chest.

You don’t have the time to think about whether or not you just committed murder; your only concern now is getting Kageyama and getting the hell out of here. He’s still conscious when you dash over to him, and you scramble out of your t-shirt to press it to the wound. Nearly identical to the one he had stumbled into the penthouse with that night, you worry about him surviving another gunshot wound to the same area.

Carefully, you support his weight and stagger to his Artura. When he’s safely secured in the passenger seat, you dial Miwa and set off towards the penthouse.

---

Miwa meets you in the garage; Kiyoko’s already with her. Kiyoko takes Kageyama upstairs as Miwa pulls you into a hug. You’ve been missing for over twelve hours, it’s now five in the morning, she says. You follow her upstairs where she wrestles you into bed with food and a glass of water. You put up quite the fight; you’re exhausted and could pass out at any moment, but Kageyama is your only concern.

She stays until you’ve finally given up, sleep pulling you under.

---

When you wake again, the sun is setting. You’ve slept the day away. You’re alone in Miwa’s room, and you bolt out of bed. Kageyama must be better by now, surely someone would’ve woken you up if something was wrong. When you reach his room, the door is open. He’s sitting up, Miwa in a chair at his bedside. Tears are falling from your eyes as you cross the short distance, carefully wrapping your arms around him.

“Thank God, you’re alright.”

“I could say the same for you.” His voice is scratchy, but you’ve never been so glad to hear him speak. You hear Miwa push her chair back and leave, pulling the door closed behind her.

You pull away from Kageyama, instead sliding under the covers next to him. “I thought I told you not to do anything stupid.”

He chuckles, a small grin on his face. “Nothing is stupid when it comes to you.”

“You literally walked straight into a gun.”

“To come get you.”

“Not the point.”

He sighs. “Well, it all worked out, didn’t it?”

“I guess.” You bury yourself in his chest, mindful of his injury, before you remember the promise you made to yourself while kidnapped. “Tobio?” Your voice is soft.

“Yes?”

“I love you.”

“I love you too, y/n.”

---

Kageyama makes a full recovery, as do you. There are many mental hurdles to tackle as you become more and more immersed in Kageyama’s business, but with Miwa and Kageyama by your side, you feel like you can take on anything. You move out of your apartment and into the penthouse when you graduate with your bachelor’s degree, although you’ve practically been living at the penthouse anyway. It all ends up working out regardless; Hana and Ushijima are engaged and bought a house together.

You get into your medical school of choice and begin working under Kiyoko for the time being. She teaches you things that medical school won’t; things specific to your role in Kageyama’s life.

Kageyama is content for you to remain on the sidelines, simply watching, but you disagree. When you graduate from medical school, you want to share some of Kageyama’s burden; you want to become his partner in everything. He concedes eventually, grumbling something about how “all the women in his life are happy to throw themselves in the way of danger.” You and Miwa laugh; because really, did he expect anything less from you? Kageyama’s only caveat is that you learn how to protect yourself, something you’re happy to oblige. Miwa provides lessons, and you learn quickly. Everything from hand-to-hand combat to how to shoot a gun is covered.

The nostalgia of being with Kageyama makes itself known every day, but you wouldn’t have it any other way.

---

“Stop moving.”

“I’m not moving.”

“I’m going to get mascara in your eye if you don’t stop.”

You sigh. “I don’t know why you’re putting it on anyway, I’m just going to cry it off.”

Miwa grins, holding up the tube. “It’s waterproof.”

The door swings open, Hana dashing through. “You look so, so gorgeous, y/n. I’m so happy for you.”

“Thanks, Hana.”

The door opens again, this time Ushijima and Miya Atsumu walk through. Ushijima stops to talk to Hana while Atsumu strides towards you. In the years since the two of you were first introduced, it’s become somewhat of a running joke for Atsumu to flirt with you just to piss off Kageyama.

Miwa steps back to let you look in the mirror and Atsumu steps closer, placing his hands on your shoulders. “Y’know, y/n, it’s not too late to be with me instead.”

You roll your eyes and slap his hands off. “I do have a knife on me.”

He just winks. “Even better.”

After the finishing touches are put in place, the ceremony begins. It’s an elaborate thing; far out of your comfort zone, but something that has to be done for appearances. Kageyama wasn’t too pleased about the extravagance either, which is why you two had said your vows in secret weeks ago, with only Miwa as witness.

He’s grinning and crying when you meet him at the altar. “Hello, wife.”

“Hello, husband.”

The ceremony is long and you’re relieved when it’s finally over. The relief doesn’t last for long though because you’re quickly shuffled to the reception, another over-the-top event with too many people. At the earliest chance, you tug Kageyama by his suit-clad arm and into the hallway.

You groan when you’re finally alone. “Why did we have to do all this, again?”

He shrugs. “Not sure. I need a drink. Or something.”

Grinning, you lift a flask from where you’d hid it under your large dress. “Something like this?”

“Perfect.”

After you’ve both drained the flask of its contents, you sigh. “Can we just leave?”

“I don’t see why not. It’s our wedding anyway.”

“Great, let’s go.”

Later, when you’re both exhausted and cuddled up beneath the sheets, you lean in and press a kiss to Kageyama’s cheek.

“I love you, Tobio.”

“And I love you, y/n.”

taglist: @lilith412426 @itoshibaby @wallywaffle @princess-sunshyn @zukoslosthishonor @fatal-impact @kageyamakock

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owletstarlet · 3 years

Text

water, sunlight (tender mercy)

“You’re full,” the spirit insists, eyes round and steady. “This will help.”

(also known as, owlet’s ill-advised spin on hanahaki. CW for Natsume’s Terrible Childhood, as well as a bit of a CW for symptoms of Vague Anime Illness during this our extended plague year.)

Ao3 link in the notes.

***

Four days.

He was twelve years old.

Twelve years old, and about to look after his aunt and uncle’s house during their long weekend trip north. He didn’t mind, had looked forward to it, honestly; he’d be on school break himself, and the quiet of the empty house had sounded more than appealing.

His cousin, two years older, had been tasked with leaving the spare key where Takashi could find it, under the potted yuzu tree on the porch.

Except she never did.

He tried and failed to find an unlatched window to shimmy through. He’d had enough change on him for a payphone, but the name and number of the hotel had been scrawled down on a pad left in the kitchen.

He contemplated the police station, next. But by now, so late in the day, his guardians would have reached their destination hours away. He’d head off the potential fallout from troubling them; they weren’t the warmest of people but Takashi was provided for, didn’t mind his school, and he hadn’t managed to step out of line just yet.

Four days couldn’t be so long, surely.

But then he’d misjudged some things. Namely, how much food that pocketful of change could get him at the hundred-yen shop, how cold it could still get at night even in early March, and how no 24-hour convenience store or café would let him in for long to warm up if he couldn’t pay for anything.

And it hadn’t been that bad, all things considered—the park he’d stayed overnight in was near enough to people’s homes that the larger youkai steered clear, and then on that last night when a chilly rain had driven him indoors the lady from the convenience store gave him a bento she’d been prepared to toss out, even heated it up for him.

And when his aunt and uncle returned to him dozing off on the porch, all it took was a quick lie about having locked himself out that morning and they were none the wiser to the whole ordeal. He even got to keep the food money, having tucked it away into his pillowcase the night before they’d left.

And yes, it’d been uncomfortable, and inconvenient. But definitely not worth waking up in a frigid sweat over, four years later.

It’s not just the once, either.

He’s otherwise had a nice week; there’d been a school trip to the botanical garden for everyone in their year. Touko had sent Takashi along with cranberry muffins for everyone to share on the train, and Nishimura hadn’t stopped rapturously singing their praises for the rest of the day. They’d made a sort of competition out comparing their mandatory sketches of the different plants to see whose bush clover was the very worst, and bickered a bit over what the prize ought to be while Sasada, their de-facto judge, just rolled her eyes at them and told them they ought to at least try. Takashi had dozed off for most of the train ride back, a dreamless nap, while Kitamoto and Taki took it upon themselves to steer him by the shoulders back from the train station to the bus stop. Takashi had let himself be led, in a pleasant twilit daze, all the way back to the Fujiwaras’ front door.

He woke up crying out, that night, heart hurling itself against a chest that felt brittle and thin.

***

Three days later finds Takashi crouched in the moss of a little forest clearing, riding out the wave of dizziness as a name swirls through the air above him. Its owner gives him a smile as it sinks through their skin—no flickers of Reiko this time, no associated memory for Takashi to absorb in turn. And there isn’t always, that’s not unusual, but what is unusual is the way they lean forward towards him once the process is complete, to place a cool finger right between his eyes. Once Takashi stops seeing double, he thinks hazily that the youkai looks rather like an heirloom doll—glossy straight hair, round apple-cheeks, blush-pink kimono—but their mouth is pinched, as if in passing concern.

“You’re full,” they tell him.

Takashi just blinks at them.

“Care to elaborate?” Beside him, Sensei’s eyes narrow. “Or don’t. We were just leaving.”

“You’re full,” the spirit insists, eyes round and steady. “This will help.”

They slide their fingers downwards across his face, his neck, to rest at the hollow of his throat. Takashi feels the pop, the sudden chill sinking through his flesh.

Sensei forces his way between them, then, poking at Takashi’s skin with his paw. “What was that?” he demands.

“A nudge,” the ayakashi says, simply. Seconds later, they’ve vanished.

***

Takashi doesn’t notice straightaway. He’s bleary-eyed and yawning through his Civics assignment after dinner, but he’d returned a name just hours before, so it doesn’t exactly raise an alarm bell. Neither does the tickle in the back of his throat, not when the weather’s chilly and half the school is sneezy and runny-nosed at the moment. He drinks the honeyed tea Touko brings him and has all but forgotten about it as he climbs into his futon that night.

He’s twelve years old. He wishes he’d taken a coat, before they’d left.

Touko offers, in the morning, to keep him home from school; he’d been coughing last night, loud enough that the sound carried down the hall. But Takashi can’t remember it, the only apparent trace of it in the persistent tickle that has him clearing his throat every now and then, so he accepts a mask and a thermos of tea and her pat to his cheek, then leaves as usual.

He’s not feeling truly dreadful until lunch the following day; throat prickling, chest too tight, stomach roiling too much to handle more than a few bites of rice. Nishimura walks him home, looping their arms together and resolutely waving off Takashi’s worry that he’ll just get him sick, too. They stop twice, Takashi left winded and red-faced from the deeper, heavier coughs that had begun just hours before.

Touko makes him tea again that night, when he feels bolstered enough to make his way back down to the kitchen for okayu that hurts to swallow. But the thick cup slips from his fingers seconds after she presses is into his hand. It cracks into three neat pieces when it hits the floor, its contents splattering his socks and the toes of Touko’s slippers.

He’s barely opened his mouth to apologize—

Cracked porcelain. Scalded fingers going red. Heartbeat in his throat.

He was seven years old.

“I—”

Whatever he was about to say is snatched away by a low, deep cough, colliding with the sudden urge to be sick.

He manages to keep his dinner down, just barely, after some not-so-deep breaths through his nose over the toilet he’d bolted to. But he’s leaning over anyways, moments later, hacking and spitting and something just beneath his sternum rips itself free.

He peers into the water, at the white scraggly thing, half curled in on itself, that he’s somehow just choked up.

He blinks, flushes it down. Heads straight up to bed, dazed, wondering with a sudden icy pinprick of fear just what he’d been about to say to Touko.

He wakes again that night, throat searing, the sight of blistered fingers and tea-darkened wood floors burned into the backs of his eyelids.

Sensei’s eyes narrow. “A chrysanthemum?” He prods at the damp crumpled thing lying on Takashi’s pillowcase, this one’s petals shot through with burgundy.

Takashi stares at it, knees drawn up beneath his chin, chest aching like something’s been torn loose from him.

***

Two nights later and he’s curled on his side, cheek pressed against the cool whorls of wood where Sensei had deposited him on the doorstep of the Yatsuhara Temple. Hauling himself upright to reach the doorbell is beyond him. He gets a shaky fist up to knock, somehow, unsure who will answer the door. Tanuma had said something about his dad and a business trip, maybe, but the details are like water through a sieve in his mind.

Nothing happens. He’s at the bottom of a lake, pushed down and down and when the sound of a doorbell drifts through his ears a nebulous moment later, it’s beyond him to wonder just how on earth Sensei managed to do that.

He senses the light of the opened door through shuttered eyes. A sharp intake of breath, a dull thunk of knees dropping to the floor beside him that he feels more than hears.

“Natsume?” Tanuma’s voice has gone low with fright, one tentative hand on his shoulder and another, seconds later, lighting on his forehead. It makes his skin prickle, and he feels his face screw up.

“Wh—is he hurt?”

“He asked to come here,” Sensei says, obliquely.

Takashi finds a thready sliver of his voice then, opens one eye to Tanuma’s face washed bloodless by the porch light, gaping at him. “Sorry,” he starts, but the word ends jagged on a cough.

And another, and another, and then he’s spitting mouthful after cloying mouthful of bruised petals into his own shaking fingers.

Before he’s opened his streaming eyes he feels cool hands uncover his mouth, a thumb swiping across his chin.

“What…what is this?”

***

Takashi has no real awareness of how he got inside, or even what room he’s in; just that they’re on the floor, that Tanuma’s got him gathered up in his arms.

He tries to lay him out flat, but an odd, reedy sound shakes loose from Takashi’s throat and he feeels his own fingers scrabbling at Tanuma’s sleeve. Tanuma stops halfway to the floor, a panicked question in his eyes, holding Takashi in place awkwardly half-cradled against his chest.

“Hurts,” Takashi manages, breathlessly, by way of explanation. He can’t elaborate. He watches frantic, imploring eyes flick to Sensei instead.

“He’s cursed.” Takashi can’t see him but there’s an edge to his voice. “Some busybody got it into their head that they were doing him a favor. Now he’s choking up flowers every minute or so, as if that’s at all useful. He’s got a soggy little garden in there now.” Takashi feels a paw prodding his ribs. “You could see them, couldn’t you? Out on the doorstep.”

Tanuma nods, slowly, and Takashi watches a dozen questions flit through his eyes. But he must see that Takashi can’t spare the breath for the answers, so instead he says, “How do we stop it?”

Sensei sighs. “Seems like it’ll resolve itself, sooner or later. The brat’s just selective about his audience for it. And your house was closer than the Taki girl’s, so here we are.”

“‘M sorry,” Takashi repeats, through a wheeze. “B-but Touko-san and Shigeru-san, they can’t…” It’s true, and it’s urgent, but the words escape his grasp like slippery minnows so all he can do is look up, dazed and panting as though he’d sprinted here.

“…maybe you shouldn’t be talking right now.” And with that, Takashi feels himself being gently turned and positioned so his back is against Tanuma’s chest.

“That’s the trouble, isn’t it,” Sensei mutters, even as Takashi’s pressing both hands over his mouth again while his chest, or his stomach, or some elusive in-between place, has begun to turn itself inside out again.

His fingers come away cupping a tattered flower, yellow now with splotches of red that stain his skin where the petals touch, and Tanuma sucks in a breath.

“What’s happening to you?”

He finds out, soon enough.

***

A water bottle with a cracked lid. His homeroom teacher, her kind face taut as she asked him to open his bento. He’d figured if he tucked himself in the corner and let it sit on the edge of the desk, nobody would ask. He was dizzy, his limbs felt like they might evaporate into the stuffy air. He wondered if she’d let him put his head down until the period ended.

He was thirteen years old.

Sensei rolled in an empty wastebasket, at some point. Takashi’s got his arms locked around it, head lolling halfway inside it. Tanuma hadn’t interrupted, hasn’t said a word other than the whispered assurances beside his ear every time something rips inside him, leaving him hacking and teary-eyed and trying not to whimper. The words, when they come, are drawn out like some unspooling thread, from the dustiest corners of his mind that he never looks at too closely.

Knees pulled up to his chest in the dark, perched on a musty stack of futons. Clutching at his stinging cheek, ears pricked for heavy, meandering footsteps.

He was eight years old.

Tanuma started tracing slow circles into his shoulder, at some point, while he spits bits of himself into the wastebasket.

“If you can stand, I can—my bed…”

“Doubtful,” Sensei says. He’s pressed lengthwise against Takashi’s thigh.

Scraped arms wrapped tight around a branch that feels weak, precarious in the breeze. The creature gazing up at him, amused, blackened blood on its lips. Thunder rolling in, far off still but the air already thick and charged.

He was ten years old.

It takes a bit of time to come back to himself, to slip back into his body from the spaces between. It’s not over, he knows, but Tanuma’s pressing a glass of water into his hands now, helping lift it to his lips when it’s clear his fingers have all but gone wooden.

The long look Tanuma gives him once he’s set the glass aside makes Takashi feel pinned down like an insect to a corkboard. It’s an odd crooked angle to look up at him from; the side of Takashi’s head is braced against his collarbone. But Tanuma’s jaw is locked, and his eyes are red and wet, seem like they have been for awhile but Takashi doesn’t have the presence of mind to recall when that had started.

He’s carding back Takashi’s damp fringe while Takashi wishes he could just squirm away, fingers endlessly careful even as his voice turns steely.

“It isn’t right.”

Takashi pushes the “sorry” out on a wheeze; it feels like an exercise in futility when there’s that itching promise behind his ribs of more to come, that stopping it would be like trying to swim straight up a waterfall.

Tanuma shakes his head, fingers coming to rest on Takashi’s cheek, where there must be dried-up spittle and bits of plant matter and blood coating the skin.

“It’s not—“ he starts to say, then lets out an unsteady breath. “It’s not what you’re telling me. I mean. That’s not right, either. And you shouldn’t ever believe it was. But you…” he trails off again, like he’s trying to parse out the proper words, and Takashi’s suspended, hovering right on the edge of something vast and formless and ready to snap him right up.

“These things…” he waves his hand vaguely at the wastebasket. “You never would’ve told me any of this, if that spirit hadn’t forced you, would you.” It’s not a question, but it’s not an indictment. Takashi says nothing.

“You shouldn’t have had to,” he continues, softly. “Ever, if you didn’t want to. It should have been your call.”

The sound that escapes Takashi’s mouth then is a bitten-off, ugly thing. He’s not sure when his eyes closed, but he feels the careful pads of thumbs swiping away the at the hollows beneath them.

“I meant that, but I didn’t mean to make you cry.” A pause, and Tanuma’s pinched face finally swims back into view above him. “You should try to finish the water, okay?”

He does, but there’s the sensation of tacks pressed into his throat when he swallows.

A sound of shuffling, then Sensei’s poking his knee. He’s dragged in a cushion that Takashi thinks came from the sitting room. “Just put him down here, if he can take it,” he huffs. “It looks like you’ve been trying to cradle a cooked noodle for the past hour.”

He ends up on his side with his cheek squashed against the cushion, a scent of stale incense clinging to the fabric, Sensei firmly sandwiched between his stomach and his arm.

Tanuma sits cross-legged in front of him, one hand resting on Takashi’s upper arm. His eyes are still puffy but he looks thoughtful, now.

“You know that Jizo altar in the garden?” he asks.

Takashi blinks, manages a nod.

“So, um. Yesterday I was out there sweeping and pulling the weeds around it, and I went around the back side and there was a swallow’s nest… I mean, I think that’s what it was, it looked like it was more mud than sticks and it was wedged up where the wall meets the roof.”

“Too early in the year for swallows, isn’t it.” Sensei’s voice is muffled by Takashi’s forearm.

“I thought so too. I haven’t seen any out there yet, but Dad said I could use his camera to try to get some photos anyways. He’ll put them in the monthly newsletter. And I’d like to get up there to see if there are any eggs inside, but…”

“It’d make a decent snack, if there were,” Sensei drawls. Takashi can’t muster much force, but he manages to flick Sensei in the ear hard enough to elicit an indignant squawk.

“I’m a little afraid that the swallows are gonna come back while I’m there and give me a hard time about it,” Kaname says, a rueful quirk to his lips.

“D-do swallows even…” Takashi has to stop halfway through to muster the breath, to gulp hard past prickling that’s morphed into burning. “Would they attack people?”

Sensei’s head pops up then, chin resting on Takashi’s arm. “Hah. If they do, I hope you record it.”

Tanuma’s hand migrates to the top of Sensei’s head. “Well you could just come see for yourself,” he says, fingers seeking out the spots around the bases of the ears Sensei likes best. “I was going to ask Natsume if he wanted to help get the photo. Once you’re feeling up to it,” he adds, to Takashi. Takashi manages a bare nod.

“Oh, and,” he goes on, with a considering glance towards the darkened window, “I’d thought it’d probably be a good idea to put a box on the ground underneath, with some newspaper inside? In case it falls.”

Takashi can feel another cough mounting behind his sternum, the wrongness clamoring to wrench itself free; knows he’s about to be swallowed up by another place and time. His lips twitch anyway.

“Kind of you.” The breath behind the words is rattling oddly, and judging by the tightness around Tanuma’s eyes, he doesn’t miss it.

“Well, I mean,” Tanuma says, after a beat of silence, with a thin smile of his own. “It’s probably pretty bad luck to let a bunch of of baby birds die right beside a Jizo, or bad form at least, but. Thanks. You can help with that too, if you want.”

Before Takashi can answer, the words have fallen straight out of his head and bled through the floor. And he’s tipping backwards, down, down until he’s nine years old again.

A bus stop in the rain, a rapidly darkening sky. His aunt was an hour and a half late, now. He’d just walk, if he knew the way.

Hungry yellow eyes, glinting out from between the bush and a vending machine.

***

Tanuma’s not there when Takashi wakes. He doesn’t remember falling asleep. But the sheets on Tanuma’s bed smell like his uniform, tatami and detergent and incense. The curtain’s closed, but he can see the light peeking through the edges.

He doesn’t try to sit up. His chest feels scraped hollow and his brain skitters away from the thought of the mouthfuls of blood that had come up with the flowers. Sensei’s nowhere to be seen.

He’s staring at the ceiling lamp, drifting, when Tanuma appears in the doorway with a tray in hand. He opts not to flick the light on, setting the tray down to lean over the bed and draw the curtain halfway back. Takashi doesn’t need to ask if he got any sleep at all, not when he looks for all the world like he got punched in both eyes. But his smile had been real and relieved when he’d seen that Takashi was awake.

“I brought tea,” he says, perching on the edge of the bed. “But you’ll probably want water first, right?”

He does—he ends up chugging down two-thirds of the offered bottle like he’s dying, one of Tanuma’s hands behind his head and the other steadying his elbow, until Tanuma gently pries it from his fingers to keep him from being sick.

“Where’s Sensei?” he asks moment later, in a sandpaper voice, while Tanuma helps prop him up on the headboard.

“He said something about going back to the Fujiwaras’, pretending to be you long enough to come down for breakfast and tell them you were headed here for the day.”

Takashi grimaces, and the look Tanuma gives him is sympathetic and only slightly amused. “It’s better than making them worry, right? I’m glad it’s not a school day, anyways.”

They’re silent for a moment, after that, while Tanuma pours him the tea. Takashi smells lemon and honey. He stares down at the cup warming his chilled fingers, watches the steam curling towards his face. It’s good, but he feels torn open, still, like the whole of him is an exposed nerve.

“I—”

“If you’re trying to apologize, please don’t,” Tanuma says, abruptly, meeting his eyes. “You already did. A lot.”

“Oh.” He takes a sip of tea, not sure what else to do.

“Sorry. Just. You didn’t need to, is all. None of that was my business, if you didn’t want it to be. I told you that.” Takashi watches his jaw clench and unclench. “It just…made me. Really angry, at some people I’ve never met.”

“You don’t need to be,” Takashi murmurs, more to the blankets on his lap than to Tanuma. “It’s, um. It was long enough ago that who knows how much of it I was even remembering right.” He shrugs, and the movement makes his ribs ache. “And the Fujiwaras are kind, anyways. I’m lucky.”

Maybe it’s the wrong thing to say, because Tanuma’s face does something odd. Then his cup is taken out of his hands, and there are arms wrapped around his back, and a face buried in his hair. He’s shaking. Maybe they both are. Takashi goes still for all of two seconds before his arms are coming up too, of their own accord, and he’s clinging right back like his life depends on it. Like he could sink right through Tanuma’s skin, if he could just hold on tight enough. He’d be alright with that, he thinks. He’s lucky in more ways than one.

Beside them, the tea grows cold, dappled light falling across their knees.

***

#not great but i’m tired of looking at it #about the illness cw it’s a lot of coughing so 🙃#which makes everyone and their dog anxious right now #natsume's book of friends #natsume yuujinchou #tanunatsu #tanuma kaname #natsume takashi #cw child abuse #cw illness #owlet's fanfic #natsume yuujinchou fanfiction

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obx-adventures · 4 years

Text

The Introverted Twin

Summary - Being John B’s bookish twin isn’t easy. Especially with my best friend, Pope, being weird about me getting closer with JJ.

Warnings - Smut at the end

A/N - I have tried to tag everyone who has reblogged at least one of the chapters. If you don’t want to be tagged, just let me know. If anyone wants to be added to the taglist, let me know. Thank you everyone for being so into this series!

Catch up here: Ch 1, Ch 2, Ch 3, Ch 4, Ch 5

——

Chapter 6

“JJ! I know you’re here! Answer the damn door!”

I jolt awake at the banging on the bedroom window and it takes me a few moments to recognize my brother’s voice. JJ is sitting on the edge of the bed frozen in place. I reach out and grab his hand. When he looks down at me, I see how nervous he is. I’m reminded that the Pogues are his only real family and being with me puts that in jeopardy.

“JJ, it’s going to be ok. I’ll talk to him.” I glance out the window and see my brother walking to the front of the house. Once he can’t see into the bedroom anymore, I sit up and put on my shirt. As I climb past JJ to get out of his bed, I kiss the top of his head. “I promise I won’t let you lose your best friend.”

I fix my hair quickly and open the front door. My brother stares me down as I step outside and close the door. I remember the conversation he had with JJ and I feel my anger rising too.

“John B, what are you doing here?” I cross my arms over my chest and glare at him.

“I came to see if JJ knew where you were. But I guess you were here with him. All night.” I can’t stop my eyes from rolling at the implication.

“JB, stop. I left you a note that I was ok and would be back in the morning. You couldn’t wait for me?”

“Y/N, you have never disappeared like this before. I was worried about you…” Guilt washes over me as I take in his face. He has huge bags under his eyes and looks like he didn’t sleep at all last night. But I can’t let him know that he’s wearing me down already. We have too many things to hash out.

“You were worried about me or worried that JJ was with me?”

“About you! First you freak out yesterday and bolt, then I find out from Sarah that you went to talk to her when you wouldn’t talk to me, and then I see the van outside and find your note. None of this is like you!” He’s right. Everything I did yesterday after we docked back at our pier was out of character.

“Calm down, I’m really ok.” I hold out my arms and spin in a circle to show him I was completely fine. “See? Not a scratch on me. I just needed some space.”

“From me?” I can’t ignore the hurt in my twin’s voice. In this moment, I remember that John B and I are the only family we have left. Our mom left when we were little, and our dad has been gone for almost a year. It’s just the two of us and we’ve grown to rely on each other.

“Yes, I saw how you were getting worked up after we got back from the marsh and I didn’t even know what I was feeling in that moment. How could I talk to you about something so important when I didn’t understand myself? You said Sarah told you I went to see her? Did she tell you what we talked about?”

“No, she wouldn’t tell me anything. She just said that you needed to talk through some stuff.” His frustration is evident, and I have to stop myself from smiling at the pouty look he has.

“I did. I needed to figure out how I feel.”

“How you feel about JJ?”

“Yes, John B, how I feel about JJ. And how JJ feels about me. And how Pope and you fit into all of that. I didn’t mean to scare you. Honestly, I’m sorry that I did. I just… damnit, this is all stuff that will change our whole little world and it freaked me out.”

“Yea, I’m pretty freaked too. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.”

“So you could try to scare me away from JJ? Like you tried to scare him away from me?”

“He told you?” he asks sheepishly. He looks down and won’t make eye contact with me as he waits for my response.

“Yes. How could you say those things to him, JB? You know that his dad has told him at every opportunity that he is worthless and won’t amount to anything. How could you pile on like that? He’s your best fucking friend.”

“I didn’t say he’s worthless!” His anger is back now that he’s reminded about part of the reason he’s here. He can tell me all he wants that he was trying to find me, but I know him well enough to know that he was planning on having it out with JJ. “And you’re right, he is my best friend. But as my best friend, I know him really well and I know how he is with girls. I can’t let you be one of the girls he tosses to the side when he’s had enough.”

“All the girls that he ‘tosses to the side’ are Tourons or girls he barely knows. We’ve been friends since 3rd grade, just like you two have. I know we’ve never been as close, but he’s defended me when I was picked on for being the nerdy kid that doesn’t surf. He saw me get stood up last year and wanted to go beat the shit out of that guy. He cares about me, he always has.”

“But Y/N –” I hold up my hand to interrupt my brother. I will not let him tell me what’s best for me.

“No, John B! You do not get a say in this. Did I give you shit when you started dating Sarah?”

“That was different,” he responds stubbornly.

“Why?” My eyebrows raise as I await whatever bullshit explanation he tries to give me.

“Because Sarah isn’t –” I stop him again. I also will not let him try to make JJ out to be the bad guy.

“Stop. Sarah cheated on her boyfriend with you. I knew Kie hated her, too. But did I give you shit like everyone else? No, I didn’t. So, I need you to return the favor here.”

“I’m not trying to give you shit, I’m trying to protect you.” His shoulders sag after he tells me this and I realize he doesn’t understand why JJ is so important to me.

“Do you know how difficult it is for me every day? I have never been good at making friends, I’ve never fit in. Do you remember all our birthday parties when we were little? Everyone was there for you. JJ was the only one who ever even got me a present. I was invisible to everyone else. Thankfully I found Pope so I don’t feel so alone every day. But with JJ, it’s more than that. He makes me feel alive, John B.”

“You make me feel alive too, Sunshine.” I jump at JJ’s voice and wonder how long he’s been standing there. “Dude, I get that I don’t have the best history here. I’m not even pissed about what you said yesterday. I just need you to see that this is different. I’m in for as long as Y/N wants me here. I don’t want to hold her back from her dreams, I just want to be a part of it. If that means waiting here for her, fine. If she’ll let me come with her, even better. Like I told her yesterday, I’m in. 100%.”

John B starts pacing while he thinks through everything he’s just heard. I go over to JJ and bring him in for a tight hug. He gives me a quick kiss and I know that he’s thanking me for defending him to my brother.

“Did you have sex with her?” John B asks.

“JB!” I am mortified and livid that JB would think he’s entitled to ask that question.

“Y/N, it’s fine. No, we didn’t have sex. I’m not going to tell you anything else because that’s none of your business.”

“You shouldn’t have told him anything.” JJ chuckles as he pulls me in close to him.

“He needs to know this isn’t my usual bullshit, Sunshine.”

“Is that why –” JJ cuts me off before I can finish my question. He must have known I would think this was why he stopped us last night.

“No, he had nothing to do with that.” He leaves it at that and looks back at my twin. “JB, are we good?”

“He makes you feel alive?” John B asks me.

“Yes.”

“And you actually care about her? You don’t just want to mack on her?” I roll my eyes at John B while he waits for JJ to answer him.

“Yes, absolutely.” John B looks back and forth between us and finally let’s out a resigned sigh.

“We’re good… I’m sorry for being a dick yesterday. And, Y/N, I’m sorry for –”

“Being a macho asshole?”

“Yea, that.” We both break into a smile and John B comes forward to hug me and JJ. “But JJ, I was serious yesterday. You hurt her and I’ll beat your ass.”

“Whatever, JB. Ready to go home?” After he nods, I turn to JJ and smile when I think about our date tonight. “What time for tonight?”

“I’ll pick you up at 6.” He gives me a quick kiss and pats my butt when I turn towards the van. I look back at him and he winks at me, causing both of us to laugh. I kiss him again, but the kiss is cut short by John B honking the horn. I flip him off as I go in for one more kiss just to bother him.

The ride back to the Chateau is quiet, my thoughts stuck on what JJ may have planned for our date. So I shouldn’t have been surprised when John B slams on the brakes after I yell out. We are in front of Heyward’s and I just saw Pope walk outside.

“JB, give me 5 minutes. I need to try to talk to Pope.” I’m already half way out the door before John B understands why I yelled.

“Good luck, I’ll wait down the street.”

I wipe my suddenly sweaty hands on my shorts and walk over to the dock. Pope hasn’t seen me yet, so I take a minute to think through what I want to say.

“Pope, can we talk for a minute?” He freezes at the sound of my voice but doesn’t turn around. “Please, Pope.”

He finally turns to face me, and I can see that this past week has been hard for him. He looks like he’s barely slept and has lost a couple pounds. I feel terrible for my best friend and incredibly guilty about what I need to tell him.

“I can’t do this right now, Y/N. I’m already late for deliveries and my pop will flip if I’m not gone in like 30 seconds.”

“Please just talk to me. I could come with you on your deliveries.”

“No, that’s not... no.” Pope won’t look at me but is shaking his head quickly to shut down this idea.

“But I miss you, Pope. And there is something I need to talk to you about. It’s really important.”

“You better get your ass on that boat!” Heyward yells at his son.

“Look, Y/N, I’ll try to come by tomorrow. Ok?” He doesn’t wait for my response before he jumps on the boat and starts the engine.

----

“Y/N, JJ’s here!”

Sarah gives me a gentle squeeze on my shoulders to calm me before she put the finishing touches on my hair. When we got back to the Chateau earlier, Sarah was here waiting. She looked nervously between me and John B to try to figure out if we were ok. I pulled her into a hug and asked her to help me get ready for my date. She took the assignment very seriously and has spent the rest of the day perfecting my look.

Before Sarah lets me leave my room, she forces me to stand in front of my mirror to admire her handiwork. I gasp when I finally see the finished product. Dressing up and wearing makeup is not me but Sarah has found a way to make it natural. My makeup is subtle but makes my eyes sparkle. The dress that she picked out highlights my curves and looks great with my tan skin. My hair is down, and my normally wild curls are tamed.

“Wow, Sarah,” I whisper as I turn to give her a kiss on the cheek. “Thank you. Do you think JJ will like it?”

“Are you kidding me? He is going to drool when he sees you!” Sarah laughs and opens my bedroom door.

I walk out to the living room and the boys don’t see me right away. I get a chance to study the way JJ is nervously fidgeting with his lighter. He has a button up shirt on and styled his hair. He looks up and his jaw drops as he takes in my appearance. John B notices JJ’s response and turns to look at me. My anxiety ticks up at their silence. Thankfully, Sarah steps in to break the silence.

“So, JJ, where are you guys going?” It takes JJ a moment to respond, his gaze still focused on me.

“Umm… I... I can’t tell you. It’s a surprise.” I raise my eyebrows to silently ask for a hint, causing JJ to grin. “Nope, can’t tell you, Sunshine. You’ll just have to wait.”

“Y/N, can I talk to you for a second?” I tear my eyes from JJ to furrow my brows at my brother. But I follow him to the kitchen and find him pacing nervously.

“JB, what’s wrong? I place both hands on his shoulders to get him to stop and look at me.

“Are you sure about this?” I roll my eyes at my brother, give him a kiss on the cheek, and go back to the living room.

“Ready, J?” He nods as I take his hand but he doesn’t walk with me.

“John B, I promise –”

“Nope, we’re not doing this, J. Let’s go.” I pull him with me outside and link my arm with his when we get off the porch.

We walk to the beach and JJ guides me to an area that I’ve never been to. After walking in comfortable silence for a little bit, JJ gently reaches over and covers my eyes. He turns us away from the water and leads me for another minute. When he removes his hand from my eyes, I am speechless. He has laid out a picnic for us with all my favorite things – a blanket that I always cuddle under on movie nights is spread out on the sand, candles that Kie gave me last year for my birthday holding the blanket in place, a picnic basket that my dad used to use when we went out on family adventures is sitting in the middle, and my favorite classical music piece is playing through the speaker. I instantly remember how much JJ pays attention to little details and all of my anxiety disappears.

“JJ, this is… wow.” I give him a quick kiss and he leads me over to sit down on the blanket. “I’ve never even listened to Clair de Lune around you guys. How did you know?”

JJ smiles at me and tucks one of my curls behind my ear. “You were so pissed when you found out it was in Twilight. We were 12, I think, and Ms Lana gave you the Twilight movie set for your birthday. JB put the first one on as a joke since he knew you would hate it. Pope talked you into watching it with us and you stormed away when they started talking about Clair de Lune and John B yelled ‘Oh come on, it’s your favorite!’ I’ve listened to it every once in a while since then after I get into it with my dad. It helps calm me down.”

I’m shocked into silence. I watch JJ unpack the picnic basket and am in awe of the beautiful boy in front of me. I tear my gaze from him to see what he brought for us and am confused when I see the assortment of food. JJ sees the look on my face and worries that he did something wrong. I offer him a reassuring smile and ask what’s for dinner.

“We have grilled cheese sandwiches, yours has that weird cheese you like so much and tomatoes. I still don’t get why you like tomatoes on there but whatever. I have your favorite chips and peanut butter filled pretzels. I also got strawberry lemonade and mixed it with real strawberries like they do at the Wreck. And vodka to add in if you want since you don’t like beer. I know it isn’t fancy, but I thought this was more you and all of these are your favorites.”

“JJ… this is perfect. You’re perfect.” I smile when I see him blush. How did I get so lucky to have such a sweet and caring guy?

We eat in comfortable silence and JJ chuckles when I moan in satisfaction after taking a bite of my grilled cheese. I decide to add some vodka to my strawberry lemonade to calm my nerves. After JJ finishes eating, he lays down on the blanket and looks up at the stars. A little later I join him, resting my head on his chest. JJ points out different planets and constellations as I trace the different constellation patterns on his forearm. We lay like this for a while and I feel myself drifting off as he plays with my hair.

“What are you thinking about, Sunshine?”

“How happy I am right now. You?”

“Mhm, I wish we could stay here, like this, forever. Dance with me?”

“Seriously, J?” I sit up and study his face.

“Please, I wanted to take you to that dance last year but that asshole asked you first. That was one of the reasons I wanted to kill him when he stood you up.”

I stand up and pull him with me. As I wrap my arms around his neck, he places one hand on my waist and selects a song on his phone. After he puts his phone away, he pulls me flush against his body and we start to sway to the opening notes of Ed Sheeran’s Perfect.

“This is my favorite love song,” I tell JJ as I rest my head on his chest.

“I know, you told me last summer.”

“Really? When?”

“We all went out on the Pogue and I decided to sit with you instead of swim. You quietly asked me if I didn’t want to get in because I didn’t want everyone else to see my bruises from my dad. But I didn’t answer you and instead of pushing it, you turned up the music and held my hand. A little later, Perfect came on and you told me you loved it because it is about wanting a life and future with someone instead of the chase or just one night with someone.”

“I can’t believe you remember that, JJ.”

“I remember everything,” he whispers to me.

——

“Did you have a good time tonight, Sunshine?” JJ asks me as we walk up the steps of the porch at the Chateau.

“Absolutely, JJ. Everything was perfect.”

JJ steps closer to me and rests a hand on my cheek. He leans in and kisses me gently.

“I love you, Y/N. I should have said it yesterday but I was scared.”

I take JJ by the hand and lead him inside the house and into my bedroom. I lock my door behind us and wordlessly guide him to sit on the edge of the bed. I straddle his lap and crush my lips to his.

JJ’s left hand wraps around my waist while his right settles on the back of my neck. He tangles his fingers in my hair as he pulls me as close as possible to him. This kiss is carnal and hungry. We pour every ounce of emotion into the kiss and I begin to feel lightheaded. I pull back to catch my breath but JJ’s hand in my hair only allows me to move back an inch. He looks at me with lust filled eyes before he squeezes them shut and takes a few steadying breaths.

“Sunshine, I should go.”

“J, stay... please... You can’t tell me that you love me and then leave.” I lean down and brush my lips along his jawline then nibble gently on his earlobe. “Stay...”

JJ moans and grips my waist tightly with both hands when I start kissing his neck. I run my hands down to his waist band and skim my fingertips along the top of his shorts. His hands move down to my bare thighs and I’m so damn thankful Sarah forced me into a dress.

“You’re killing me...” JJ groans as he tilts his head to give me better access. I smile against his skin knowing that I’ve won him over. I start unbuttoning his shirt and kiss back up to his lips.

When our lips connect, JJ takes control. He moves his hands roughly up and I shiver when he traces along the lace of my bikini panties. His insistent fingers press into my ass and pull my hips closer to his. I thread my fingers into his hair and gently tug as I slowly grind my core on the ridge of his growing erection.

Keeping one hand on my ass, he brings the other up to cup my breast and uses his index finger and thumb to tease my nipple over my clothes, eliciting a moan. He moves the hand on my breast to my back and finds my zipper, hesitating until I whisper please, trying not to break the kiss. He slowly unzips my dress and runs his finger pads back up my now exposed back. He roughly grips the dress straps with both hands and pulls my dress down to expose my chest. I climb off his lap quickly to remove my dress completely and his normally ocean blue eyes are dark with desire as my dress pools around my feet. He rakes his eyes over my body and licks his lips as he takes in the sight of my matching red lacy bra and panties set. He reaches out to pull me back to straddle his lap again and my skin tingles everywhere he touches me. He roughly cups both of my breasts and pulls down the lace to gain better access to my nipples with his nimble fingers.

Instead of returning his lips to mine, he kisses down my neck as he teases and tweaks both nipples. My breath hitches and I revel in all the different sensations. When his mouth reaches my breast, he releases one nipple from his fingers but quickly encircles it with his tongue while his free hand moves to my back to make quick work of the clasp. Instead of returning that hand to my breast, he slides it down my back and firmly grabs my ass. With one hand on my ass, the other on my breast, and his mouth on my other nipple, he drives me wild and my panties are soon soaked.

I release my grip on his hair and move my hands down his chiseled torso to unbutton his shorts. Because my body is pressed so closely to his, I can only brush my thumb over the head of his penis but this is enough make him moan. He quickly flips me over to lay down on my back and he removes his shirt and shorts before joining me on my bed. His boxer briefs and my panties are our only remaining clothes as he settles between my legs.

He switches his mouth to my other nipple as I slip my hand under his waist band to grip his erection. I marvel at the feel of his silky skin as I move my hand slowly up and down his length. He bites down on my nipple causing my hand to tighten around him and his other hand grips the back of my thigh.

He moves lower as he kisses down my belly and licks along my pelvis, trailing his tongue under the hem of my panties. He settles between my legs, kisses me over my panties, and runs his tongue over my covered folds while I grip his shoulders.

With his index finger, he moves the fabric to the side and swipes his tongue again. I groan at the sensation and tighten my grip on his shoulders while he slowly inserts one finger. His tongue laves along my clit as he moves his finger in and out. When he adds another finger, I gasp and feel my body tightening. I start to feel lightheaded and my hips buck. He rests his free arm over my stomach to keep me in place and increases the speed of his tongue and fingers. My breathing speeds up as I feel my body explode. I moan his name over and over as I ride my high.

He crawls up my body with a satisfied grin on his face and brushes his lips on my forehead as I come back down to reality.

“Close your eyes, Sunshine.”

“But why? What about you?”

“Tonight was for you.”

“JJ -” He silences me with a gentle kiss as he cups my cheek.

“I told you, I’m in no rush. This, us, it’s different, too important to blow through all the stages at once.”

“Will you stay?”

“Are you going to steal all the blankets again?” He shows me my favorite JJ grin as he cuddles in next to me.

“I love you, JJ.”

“I love you too, Sunshine.”

Ch 7

Taglist: @agirlwholovescoffee @obxlife @meaganjm @kaelyn-lobrutto24 @velyssaraptor @http-cherries @prejudic3 @love-youu-softly @rudyismymanperiod @justcallmesams @celestialmaybank @yasminesameh @chaoticbisous @liloddcora @obx-snippets @xx-randomshit-xx17 @thepanmermaid @rudysdiaries @cinnamonandspice1994 @sexualparkour @lasnaro

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musicfren · 4 years

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the presents they measured (the presence she treasured) part 2

HOLY CAKES y’all! 5000 words and infinity pages later, me and @nottesilhouette have finally finished part two of our blind date fluff fiesta (part 1 here) Notte wrote a really big portion of this and deserve so, so much credit for it. She’s an amazing writer <3 Meanwhile I contributed all the many italics :P Happy @felinettenovember y’all!

“Adrien.”

“Felix.”

“I should have known.”

The class presses closer like onlookers at a street brawl, hemming them in. Felix glares at his infuriatingly pretty adversary from across the flimsy classroom table. So here stood the pretender, the imitation, the counterfeit who thinks he can outdo Felix in this game of grandiose. The air between them is taught as a heartstring, dangerously close to snapping, causing irreparable damage to the function of one of their hearts, and it’s a toss-up whose is going to make it out intact.

Felix steels himself. He is not going to lose, and he is not going to break.

At last, Adrien breaks the sharp silence. “So, why are we here?”

And then, from the back of the crowd, a malicious, irritated voice rings out, punctuated with the crisp pop of a bubblegum snapping.

“This has to stop now,” says Chloe, nose red from allergies, immaculate hair ruined by the rushing crowds. She plucks confetti from her hair, crinkling her nose, and dusts ash from her jacket disdainfully, still reeking of cherry blossom candle wax.

“Whatever it is that you’re going through, everyone else is sick of it and we are putting an end to it NOW!”

Felix and Adrien push back in perfect unison:

“But no one’s won yet!”

“How will we know who won?”

Half the class gave them a deadpan look. The other half, less subtle, just outright glared. Chloe checks her nails, and then flinches when she notices one is chipped. She hadn’t even noticed it chipping in the midst of all the chaos, which goes to show exactly how out of hand this has gotten. It needs to get back in hand, and that hand needs a manicure!

“Okay, listen up, you walnuts.” (This was clearly becoming a popular insult around the school) “Cuh-learly this nonsense isn’t going to stop until one of you meatheads gets handed a trophy and told by your daddy you did a good job. So, as surrogate daddy for the day, I am officially announcing the Grande Bataille pour Marinette. SABRINA!”

Sabrina scampers over with a flustered “yes, Chloe!” and a cascade of papers from the stack she carries under one arm. After several seconds of fumbling, she proudly produces an enormous poster, nearly as tall as she is.

“The rules are simple.” (They aren’t.) “You’ll each get a series of clues about something to do with Marinette. What chocolate she likes or something, I don’t care. Anyway, you’ll go where the clue tells you and do your little dance or whatever, and whichever of you gets to the end first will be set up on a blind date with Marinette. Then you can drown her in these stupid roses for all I care. Not my problem”

Felix looks from Chloe to Adrien. Adrien looks from Felix to Chloe. Chloe glares them both down in equal measure. They quail and nod, despite having absolutely no clue what this game is or how it works, because it seems like a good time to get out of that room. But whatever it is, the game is about to begin.

Chloe greets them with an irritated huff in the middle of central park. It’s a calm, sunny day, far too cheerful for the occasion. Felix arrives late, having almost gotten lost on the way twice and sprinting the rest of the way. Adrien chuckles as Felix skids to a halt, panting, already not off to a good start. Felix glares back, but if he has a response it’s lost among his sputtering gasps.

Chloe taps one irritated foot against the grass. Clearly she doesn’t want to be here any longer than she needs to be.

“Late already, I see. Whatever, lets just get on with this.”

Felix, still barely able to breath, raises a hand to tell her wait, but Chloe seems to have no interest in having this take any longer than necessary. With the air of someone picking up a particularly disgusting piece of laundry, she pulls out a sheet of paper with two fingers.

“What is… Marinette's… favorite color?”

Felix’s eyes go wide. They’re going to start with something this simple? And so quickly? This is less a test of knowledge than of reflexes! Oh no... he has to answer now, right now, before Adrien answers first. Okay, um... It was obviously green of course, everyone knew that. It was green right? Right...?

The gifts she got were green. And she hangs out with Chat Noir, right? Marinette had said so often that he was her favorite hero, and she definitely likes black but she says it’s not a real color, and Felix was starting to get dizzy with the lack of oxygen to his brain, and the world was spinning, and he needed to answer right now, and--

No time to think. With all the scarce air left in his lungs, Felix croaks out “Green!”

Adrien looks at him with baffled incredulity. “...Dude, it’s literally pink, have you ever seen her?”

Oh, bother.

Chloe claps with such immense lack of enthusiasm, Felix thinks she might fall asleep right there.

“Bravo, bravo. Adrien, you get a five minute head start. Felix, not gonna lie, that was pretty stupid, I’ll tell you when you can go. Next clue is just in front of Marinette’s bakery. You do know the way there I hope?”

Adrien gives a mock salute and sprints off, leaving Felix to forlornly watch his hopes vanish into the distance.

Despite having more time, more breath, and a considerably higher morale on his side, Adrien manages to arrive at the bakery exactly as Felix does. Silently, he curses his sense of direction. Of course he knew where Marinette’s bakery was. Of course he did. He just… had a moment of confusion during which he needed to look up the bakery by name because he didn’t have the address saved anywhere on his phone. That was all.

Felix is far too out of breath to focus on anything other than remaining alive. He trots weakly up to Sabrina who stands outside the bakery doors, a large official-looking binder tucked under one arm.

“Oh, you’re here. Good.” She flips through her binder intently without looking at them. They wait in tense silence as she searches for the correct page. The wind tosses Felix’s hair into a disheveled mess.

Adrien gives him a wry nudge “Maybe you should take the time to study. You seem to be a little shaky on your basics.”

“Maybe you should learn how to see, Adrien, or did you miss the fact that the bakery is literally in full view of the park?”

“...touché”

“Ah!” At long last, Sabrina has found the appropriate page. With a small, self-satisfied smile, she thumbs the edge of the page and looks up at them.

“Which class does Marinette enjoy the most?”

Felix, by this point, has lost all sense of coherency. What does enjoy even mean, anymore? Well, Felix certainly isn’t enjoying this game he was losing. Losing, losing… What is Marinette good at? That’s got to be something she enjoys, right?

...what isn’t Marinette good at? Felix drifts in his thoughts, flashing through memories of her bright enthusiasm, the flush riding high on her cheeks in every class, the way she chews her pencil when she thinks and the scribbles on her arms, every word a work of art in her hands. The only time he’s ever seen her sink into her seat, hide her face in her hands, turn pallid and pale is…

Gosh, she’s just good at everything isn’t she?

“Everything except physics!” Felix blurts out before his exhausted mind can catch up to him. Sabrina looks at him in bewilderment, finger hovering above her binder. Is he serious? she thinks, mouth starting to hang open in question. Then, five whole seconds after Felix’s brain has crashed over the barricade and careened into the valley below, Adrien’s brain slowly sputters to life.

“Um… I have art with her third period! So… probably that one!”

Sabrina’s gaping mouth hangs a little lower. “What?!” She manages through a wheeze.

Felix jolts. “Wait!!! I thought the question is which is she best at, can I answer again?!”

“...unfortunately, despite having completely awful reasoning, Adrien has gotten the question right. He will progress to Marinette’s favorite fabric store five minutes before you will.”

Felix sulks. Adrien smirks, and looks up the directions on his phone first this time.

It’s awkward standing there with Sabrina waiting for the seconds to tick by. She’s typing away rapidly on her phone, not even acknowledging Felix’s presence, glancing around idly at anything but him. Felix is still trying to work out Adrien’s reasoning. Is that her favorite class because he’s in it? Did they mean which experience does she most enjoy, or which subject? Does Adrien know something Felix doesn’t, about who Marinette likes spending time with, or is he just too sheltered to consider how Marinette exists outside of when she’s with Adrien?

Four minutes and thirteen seconds into his wait, she glances up and then her eyes blow wide. Her typing speeds up more than Felix thought was humanly possible, and her mouth purses into a thin line, her skin pale and clammy despite the unusually warm day. There is an absolute cacophony of text notifications that makes his head spin. At last, she looks up at Felix.

“Okay, go.”

“...what?”

“Go!” She waves a frantically dismissive hand as if that explains things any further.

“Um… okay?” Says Felix, glancing at the watch that still visibly has time left on it. He’s not about to waste one of his precious seconds though, and bolts off towards where he hopes the fabric store is. Time is wasting.

Besides. Sabrina looked about ready to murder him if it got him out of there.

Sabrina watches him go, glancing anxiously from her phone to the bakery window, and calls the class. There’s been a situation.

Marinette is thinking of going for a walk (it is a beautifully calm, sunny day after all) when she spots Sabrina outside the bakery window. Chloe’s friend-turned-servant-turned-friend-again has always been awkward around her, ever since the day Marinette had (temporarily) convinced her to stand up for herself. Still, Marinette thinks it might be nice to have someone to spend the day with, and waves to Sabrina before hurrying out the door.

Sabrina meets her at the door with a “Hi, Marinette!” so aggressive they both nearly fall over backwards.

“H… hey, Sabrina!” She says with an awkward smile. “Um… what brings you around here?”

She’s trying to look over Sabrina’s shoulder, maybe see if anyone came with her, but Sabrina almost instantly slides to block her view.

“Just! Going for a walk! Do you want to… walk… together?”

“I was going to, but you seem to be blocking the door?”

“Oh… yeah…” Sabrina looks over her shoulder and does not move.

“Um…”

About ten seconds of awkward silence later, Sabrina’s wall across the doorframe abruptly vanishes, as she practically yanks Marinette outside. “Come! Walk! Let's do that, where do you want to go?”

Baffled, Marinette takes a minute just to blink in the new light. “I… was planning on going to the park.” She figures that, with the rare beautiful, warm, clear day in December, it would be a good chance to people-watch and sketch ideas in her notebook for new outfits.

“NO!” It’s the most vehement Marinette has ever seen Sabrina and Marinette recoils from the suggestion immediately, not wanting anything that makes her friend uncomfortable. Even if the word friend applies loosely here.

“...or we could just… visit downtown for a bit?”

If Sabrina had it her way, the two of them would go straight up to Marinette’s room and stay there straight up until the date rolled around. Since she doesn’t get to have that, this seems like an acceptable compromise. Downtown is plenty big enough. Right?

Ten minutes later, and it’s too late to stop Marinette from going to her favorite store. To buy fabric.

Sabrina whimpers quietly and sends a few more texts.

By the time Felix gets to the store, Adrien has already answered and slipped out the door. Felix catches him smirking a few steps away from the storefront, but something about it looks off, a little strange. He looks haunted, stricken behind his smugness.

Felix bursts into the store and spots Juleka, and immediately blurts out: “Did Adrien get it right?!”

She shakes her head and ducks behind her bangs, and mumbles, “He said she likes to look pretty. And make other people pretty.”

So Adrien has incurred his first five minute penalty.

...and he’s still ahead!!! Felix growls, and decides on a new strategy. It must be more efficient to focus on getting the answer right than getting it fast at this point, because another five minute delay is irreparable, but a two or three minute delay might still be recoverable. He waits impatiently for the question, but Juleka is engrossed in her texts.

As soon as he opens his mouth to demand fair play, Juleka grabs his arm and yanks him forcibly behind a mannequin. “Why did Marinette start designing for fashion?�� she hisses in his ear, pulling him abruptly away and into a new aisle. Felix’s heart leaps to his throat. He can feel a jumble of incoherent words clamoring to burst out. He swallows them, and they taste like bile.

No. He needs a right answer, right now.

It’s hard to think, though, with the way Juleka keeps shoving him around, even going so far as to kick him behind his knees, sending him crashing to the floor in a heap. She makes up for it by helping him back up later, but does it count if she’s the one that put him there, and then held him there for long minutes by kicking at him again when he pushed himself upright?!

Finally, he manages to gasp out between one move and another, “Because… clothes are a representation of who you are, and there are too many people with no choices except the same hyper-idealized body types and colors, and Marinette wants to make them feel at home in their own skin.” He says it all in one rushed, nerve-wracking breath, and forgets to breathe altogether when Juleka nods. It’s his first correct answer. He did it. He did it.

And yet Juleka still doesn’t let him go, her vice-like grip on his wrist not letting up at all. Precious seconds are getting lost, and she wont. Let. Go.

Finally, finally Juleka seems to get the divine signal she had been waiting for, because she hisses the next location in his ear and shoves him through the door. And then, immediately after he steps outside, the worst happens.

Marinette figures, being downtown already, she’ll take the opportunity to pick up the order of fabric she’d placed, since the confirmation email came in this morning. It’ll save her a trip tomorrow, at least.

Sabrina seems to despise this shop with a vengeance, whining and pulling on Marinette’s sleeve to go anywhere else, but it’s Marinette’s favorite. All the complaints only make Marinette more determined to show Sabrina why this one is so good.

Stepping in, Marinette makes her way cheerfully to the counter, where she strikes up a conversation with the now-familiar cashier. The two of them strike up a grand campaign to show Sabrina around the store, making the redhead cringe and quiver with every new section of the store. Her eyes seem hunted, constantly flicking back and forth looking for predators, seeming to track something Marinette never quite manages to catch.

At one point, Marinette swears she sees Sabrina mouthing the name Juleka, and the word run on multiple occasions. But that would be super weird, so she assumes she’s just imagined it.

Finally, Marinette steps up to the counter to package up the fabrics she’d ordered, plus a few odds and ends she noticed as they had walked around that she liked. There is, behind her, a mad patter of steps and then the chime of the door opening, but by the time Marinette turns to look, the door is swinging empty back and forth.

And then the akuma alarms go off.

Luckily, it’s Mister Pigeon, because apparently the lure of a sunny day was too much for him to resist feeding his pigeons.

Unluckily, this is going to set Felix back ages in the competition.

Still, he does enjoy getting to talk comfortably with Ladybug, since the fight is so repetitive. They’ve both done this a thousand times, and the motions of defeating him feel like slipping into well-worn pyjamas.

“So what’s been bugging you, ma coccinelle?” Her shoulders are tense, movements awkward. He knows her well enough to know it isn’t the akuma that’s causing this stress.

She grimaces. “...this fight is nothing compared to the one in my civilian life.” She shoots him an exhausted grin, and his heart aches at the sight of it. He tries for reassuring and winces as his words fall flat.

“Oh, dear. What’s going on? Certainly nothing a hero like you can’t handle,” he winks, and then flinches away from a barrage of pigeon excrement and his own awkwardness.

“...you ever think about how nice it would feel to have two people love you so much they’d fight over you?”

This, he’s familiar with. Perhaps not the same way, but he’s loved something like that. Loves someone like that. “I’d imagine you’d enjoy them trying to outdo each other for you, putting so much effort into pleasing you, yes?”

Ladybug slips into a corner and calls for her Lucky Charm, then turns to answer him. “You’d think, but this is neither lucky NOR charming. I… I feel like a prize. I don’t even know if these people know me at all, or anything about what matters to me. I thought I’d like having secret admirers, but it feels like more of a mask than ours.” She looks at him fondly through a slew of pigeon feathers. “At least I know who you are, Chaton, even if I don’t know what your name is.”

He has nothing to say to that, so turns to tackle the villain with particular aggression, slapping sharp beaks and sharp talons away from her so she can focus, and so she can keep talking.

“I don’t know. I just want it to end. I want to matter to somebody, I want to be their priority, y’know? I don’t want big gifts that seem more focused on outdoing the last and an audience for my every reaction-- honestly, they’re worse than the press!!” He catches her shooing away a stray reporter, and grins. She grins back. “It’s like I’m the prize at a gladiator fight, and I’m not sure if I’m the woman he marries or the meat the lion gets, and I’m not sure which is better.”

That last line, paired with her sweet, soft grin is what breaks him. Quietly, he answers. “I’m… not sure there is a better.”

She tosses him the akumatized object and he catches it with claws covered with cataclysm. It crumbles in his grip, and he grins weakly as her yo-yo shoots out to catch the corrupted butterfly.

“Yeah, exactly!! I’m glad you know that, even if they don’t. My… my classmates said they’d take care of it for me, so hopefully it’ll be over soon. I’ll be glad when I can stop performing my adoration for these presents that I don’t even really like anymore.”

“You'd rather have someone just be present, huh.”

“...yeah.” Her earrings give off their last warning beeps, and she startles. “I’ve gotta go, Chaton, but… thank you for listening! You… don’t always say much and I know we don’t know a lot about each other, but I know that… you might not know my favorite color, or whatever, but you know the things that matter to me. The things that make me who I am, that drive me. We have the rest of our lives to learn those things.” Impulsively, she kisses her cheek and then swings away before Chat can respond, leaving him gaping useless at the skyline for a solid minute.

When he comes back to himself, he chuckles quietly, and then decides he has enough time on his ring (and enough selfishness in him) to jump through the city as Chat Noir, which brings him to the Farmer’s Market much more quickly than Felix ever would’ve made it on foot.

Adrien, between navigating downtown on his own for the first time and the akuma attack, arrives at quite the same time as Felix, and glowers miserably at his rival for having caught up.

Maybe Ladybug’s luck was rubbing off on Felix after all.

They meet Luka behind a stall of hand pressed apple juice and apple tarts and some very distracted candied apples that Felix eyes, tempted, before focusing on their clue.

…Luka looks at them solemnly for a long moment, and then plays a deep, rich chord. He pauses for a second to let it ring out before playing another, deeper, even richer chord.

No one dares interrupt. Nodding, satisfied, Luka begins playing a melody. It’s staccato, plucky, but gradually shifts into a neatly balanced harmony, before ending on a final, unimaginably rich chord that rings out into the silence. Then he simply looks at them, calmly, expectantly. Clearly neither Adrien nor Felix have worked out what the heck this is supposed to be.

At long last, Adrien ventures to ask, “Um...what’s the clue?” “The answer. Is within. The question.” Says Luka without pause.

Felix, with more emphasis, asks again. Luka, now very grave, responds: “Be wise. And be true. To your love.”

Felix looks at Adrien. Adrien looks at Felix. Luka looks contemplatively at an apple, and then wanders a little ways off following a bird. Adrien and Felix chase after him, and ask as one with great urgency: “What’s the clue?”

Luka lets out the infinitely mournful sigh of misunderstood artists everywhere. “...fine. The question, since you two clearly didn’t understand the first three times, is: what does Marinette want most from her future?”

There is a long pause as both boys try to work out how they were supposed to understand this from any of the previously given information. Then, collecting themselves, they both answer in a rush, tripping over each other to be the first to answer.

“A fashion designer, with three kids and a gerbil!”

Felix is still talking as Adrien finishes, and feels three sizes too big in his skin as he keeps talking, awkward and gangly and ridiculous. “She wants… the ability to be independent and self-sustaining without losing her passion for loving and caring for others.” Then, absentmindedly, he adds, “also, pretty fashion.”

Another painfully long pause. Then Luka abruptly plays a sharp, twangy chord, so loud and sudden that the two boys jump.

“Good job, Felix!” He says, nodding approvingly “Sometimes the song isn’t just about the melody. You get a five minute head start.”

The blue-haired boy leans against a nearby stall and, satisfied, plays a contemplative chord. Then another. Then another. Felix watches him, confused, trying to determine the hidden message until Luka interjects “Four minutes”, and sends Felix scampering off.

He almost gets to the edge of the market before a thought occurs to him and he backtracks for a moment. Marinette had mentioned once the way she had finally, for the first time, eaten a candied apple she liked and fell in love with it, and the ones he’d noticed at the stall are the same gourmet brand she had loved. She had rambled to him for twenty minutes about how cutting the apple into slices had improved the balance of flavors so well, and why had she never thought of that before, and how the caramel was creamy and soft and sweet without being overpowering or brittle or sticky, and how creative the flavor combinations were.

Felix grabs s’mores, which was her favorite, and toffee-dark chocolate, which she had wanted to try but didn’t get to.

Getting this for her is worth losing his lead.

Then he nearly jumps out of his own skin and bones when he notices Marinette just a few steps away, peering at another stall, and panics for a second, but Sabrina (who is by now very frazzled) rushes after Marinette and reminds her that she needs to get home and changed soon, and didn’t she want to pick up some red bean paste before that? Better hurry!!!

Marinette, for the first time all day, doesn’t protest. Felix takes the fastest route to her house, in case her red bean paste excursion goes more quickly than he expects.

In front of her house again, they meet Nino, who is looking uncharacteristically serious.

The question he asks knocks Felix off balance, and by the time he even begins to get his wits around him, Adrien has caught up and Nino is posing the question to him, too.

“What is Marinette most afraid of in a relationship?”

Adrien answers first. “She’s worried she won’t end up with me.” Nino looks at him for a long moment, and then clearly makes a decision. Adrien is asked to elaborate, and he doesn’t hesitate before adding that “Marinette wants someone who’s kind like her, and who knows the little details about her. She’s afraid to be with someone who doesn’t pay attention to her because it shows they don’t care, and she doesn’t want someone who drags her down with heavy, loaded conversations.”

Felix’s heart sinks. Is that true? Has Adrien won before Felix ever even got to attempt the question? His heart rate spikes until Nino, very carefully, says: “It’s Felix’s turn to answer. Whoever is closer wins, unless we decide you’re both tied, in which case you’re you’ll get a chance to answer again.”

“...shouldn’t you have explained that first?!”

Nino shrinks and smiles nervously, scratching the back of his neck. “Uh… haha… oops?”

Felix decides it’s more important to answer. Nino will still be around to traumatize later, after all. He takes another moment, savoring the sensation to have time to think for the first time all day. Recalling the conversation with Ladybug from earlier, Felix realizes that Marinette and Ladybug are similar in a lot of ways. They’re strong, they care so much about the people they love, and maybe they’re both absolutely terrified of being seen as an idol or a pretty face, a trophy or a derivative of their history, or a doormat for their kindness and compassion. They don’t care about knowing something that they can tell someone else between casual conversations through the rest of their lives. They’re worried that they’ll get in a relationship and not be seen, and not be heard.

He says so.

Nino nods, and points Felix towards the park.

He won? He won!!! He--

...he gets to go on a date with Marinette.

Felix is slammed with the realization that he hasn’t won now. He… he knows Marinette, and he knows her well, and that’s not something he thought he would get to be able to say today. It’s more than winning or losing, all of a sudden. It’s friendship.

And, with a little luck and a lot of patience, maybe it’ll be more.

Adrien suddenly bursts in on his revelry. “It’s not fair! That was a stupid question, how was anyone supposed to know that?”

The taller boy steps towards Felix, towering over him. Felix takes an involuntary step back.

“You didn’t deserve to win. She likes me!” Spittle is flying from Adrien's face, his precious model-coiffed blond hair hanging ragged over his face. Felix starts to back away, or point out that he had, in fact, known the answer by asking Marinette questions about herself and listening when she talked, and putting the pieces together, but a kernel of compassion grows in his stomach.

“She does like you. That’s why she’s your friend. And if she likes you more than that, I know she’ll let you know.”

Adrien is looking at him silently, aghast as to how he could have been wrong. Then he storms off, muttering something about lawyers. Felix chooses not to gloat, because there’s nothing to gloat about. He hopes Adrien can get to know Marinette well, too. She’s worth the effort. He knows that now.

He meets Marinette at the park, where the rest of the class has been setting up a picnic date. It’s gorgeous, with soft blankets laid out, pillows strewn across the edges of the blankets bordering a feast of their favorite foods. Candles flicker on nearby benches and fairy lights are strewn up through the trees, and it’s a miracle the weather has cooperated the entire day, honestly.

“You would not BELIEVE what I had to get through to get here,” he starts, knowing how much Marinette loves a good story.

“I’m… Alya just told me what shenanigans had happened today, because I wouldn’t stop asking why Sabrina was having a nervous breakdown by the end of the day. How’d you get that last question right, anyways?” She laughs, somehow bright and awkward at the same time. “I’m not even sure I know the answer!”

Felix feels a blush blooming across his skin. “Well, I thought-- y’know-- it’s just that--” Marinette interrupts him with a hand over his, and he swallows. “...you just… reminded me of someone I know.”

“That’s a pretty special someone you’ve got there.”

“...there’s a pretty special someone I’ve got right here, too.”

They take a minute to eat, and snuggle into each other, and bask in the moment, the warmth of each other and the brisk sharpness of windchill and the twinkling lights of all the love (and maybe desperate frustration) their friends have poured into making this happen.

Hours pass like that, half in comfortable silence, half in excited, rambling chatter. When the wind picks up, Marinette glances at her long-discarded coat and curls up tighter against Felix. He slips his hands into his gloves and holds her tight.

They’re dozing off like that, half asleep in each other’s arms, when Marinette breaks the silence, eyes still closed, mumbling against his shoulder.

“I guess it’s not much of a blind date anymore, but…” She leans in and kisses his cheek, ghosting over the still-warm presence of Ladybug’s kiss. “...I’m glad it was you here.”

#felinette november #felinette #felinette month 2020 #miraculous ladybug #too many italics #guys #she's not a prize #he is so smitten he will discover her deepest fears #and that's valid of him #meanwhile: Adrien's a jackass #and luka's a beautiful space creature #and chloe is a mean girls girl #and every single word is in italics #and the plot don't stop

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bunny-bts · 3 years

Text

Never Want To Hurt You Pt II

Author: Idk how long or short this part will be to be honest lol

Warnings: same as previous chapter part I , add injury and accident, coma, polygamy?, Cheating

Pairings: I think this has taken a turn for future Jimkook x reader

It had been weeks since you had came back and since your birthday at dinner you and Taeyhung hadn't spoken much. You've known each other for your entire lives so there was nothing of you haven't been through, and yes you have been pissed at each other before but this was different. You had been walking around giving each other cold shoulders, certain everyone noticed. He had tried to speak to you and talk it out once he noticed you had gone out several times with Jimin and JK and was noticing things heat up between the three of you more and more. You shared a bedroom with him, again, something you had done more than enough to be used to and didn't mind. Only now the two of you weren't snuggled up like any other time, you were sleeping back to back and sharing a bed with Taeyhung with him not protectively holding you was not something you liked. You hadn't paid attention but the two makneas didn't like it either, that you weren't sleeping with them, or that they would be relieved to know you slept so distantly.

"I'm going to go potty, I'll meet you out there," you laugh as you walk out of the theater screening room with the maknaes and turn toward the restroom as they buy slices of pizza and drinks at concession then go outside. Today you decided to all match each other and wear print tops that you had found while window shopping, it was fun and so cute you thought.

They go out and find a table up against a fence to sit while you all eat and they wait on you. You weren't there right now so they could drop a facade they had going on as of late. Jimin, with a friendly smile although faker than tits in California as it was, throws a elbow on Jungkook's shoulder, "back off," he forces a chuckle. "Why? Why don't you make me?" Jungkook returns the same smile. "It's been six weeks, it's time one of us made a move, don't you think?" "I agree," the youngest smirks. "We can't just race over and bombard her, she will get nervous. How should we do it?" He adds. "Hmm, good point....it seems little Kookie is growing up," Jimin teases. "I'm a grown man, I assure you," Jungkook growls through gritted teeth and a toothy smile. "Are you now? You have a ponytail-" "she will need something to hang onto," Jungkook winks, "she's coming, be cool." He smiles at you and waves to show you where they are. "Oh it's funny because of irony-," Jimin starts as he waves and smiles at you too. "Yes, I know it is asking a lot Jimin, but please try your best," Jungkook straightens out his jean jacket as you approach. "oh and Jimin..." "Yeah?" "Don't fall" "What?" Jimin asks before being pushed off of the table he sat on top of. Before he is able to retaliate you're there and giggling.

"Jimin, poor thing," you giggle and offer him a hand up. "You're always falling, sit on the seat," you advise as you sit on the seat attached to the table and lean your back on the table itself, grabbing the soda they had gotten you from it and taking a sip.

"Y/N, ya~, sit on my lap. Seat is uncomfortable," Jungkook grabs your waist and sits you on his lap. He wasn't wrong, it was one of the picnic tables you see at playgrounds, metal with bar patterns. "Aww, so sweet thankyou Kook, haha~ people will think we are together" "maybe~," he laughs and sends Jimin a glance as he places a hand on your thigh and starts rubbing your leg. Jimin is still smiling but you can't see or hear him really growl behind his lips, he casually moves Jungkook's hand and places his on your thigh. "We really like you Jagi," he says sweetly, leaning in a bit. "I really like you both too, I have two thighs," you giggle and glance down, the youngest man easily takes the hint and places his hand on your other. "Oh, she is naughty," Jimin laughs as they both with their thumbs. The three of you definitely look really touchy, maybe like a polygamous couple. This was different, you hadn't had anyone fawn over you the way these two did and shit did you like it. It is quiet for some moments, you all just eat and relax. At some point you start playing with their fingers.

"Jagi~, what are you doing Aien?" You feel Jungkook's breath against your ear.

"Do you like our hands?" Jimin's is against your other.

"Yes," you say simply, probably blushing and trying to play it off with a smirk, "you have really pretty fingers," you stop abruptly and stand. "We should go, it's getting late"

"Yeah, hold our hands princess," they both reach out and grab one of your hands and the journey home begins. At some point you all have to cross the street so you have to let go and run but a rogue out of control car spins around and hits you.

"Y/N!!"

The time couldn't pass any slower for the two of them when you're brought to the hospital. You're in critical condition so they aren't allowed to see you and are left waiting on the others to come.

"What. Happened?" They find themselves slammed against the walls with Taeyhung having a firm grip on thier throats and unable to breathe as they are pretty sure that with the way Tae's nose is flaring there may as well be smoke.

"Tae! Let them go! You're going to kill them," Namjoon and Jin rush behind him and fight to pull him off.

"I WANT ANSWERS"

"You're going to get them, let them....regain color...," Namjoon soothes one friend as he looks to the other two. "What happened guys?"

The two youngest explain and Taeyhung excuses everyone else to go after several hours pass. Reluctantly they go and tell Taeyhung, Jimin and Jungkook to keep them updated. Which they do, they find themselves there for three days once you get admitted into the hospital, they all stay by your side and the other guys pop in time to time to visit as well but JK and Jimin weren't allowed to stay overnight. Taeyhung was literally the only thing you had remotely close to family by the hospital's definition since your aunt was no longer around.

"Now may I speak?" He asks you, he was alone with you at the moment and you had been in a coma. "I have been trying to explain....," He pulls a chair by your bed and strokes your baby hairs, "I know that you're mad about our birthday......I know you told me that you liked me and I know I hurt your feelings.....I did it because.....I never want to hurt you....," He leans in and kisses your forehead. "Please wake up soon.....you have changed. So much....," He glances at your fine 'baby hairs', "I remember when you looked like a peach," he giggles.

"You hurt her feelings so you wouldn't hurt her?" Jungkook says from the door.

"You wouldn't understand, Jungkook."

"Try me."

"Why are you back already?" Tae gets up and goes over to the other side of the room. "What's that?" He points with his head to Jungkook's hand. "Squish mellow....," Jungkook replies and takes the seat that his friend had just had.

"I promised I would never hurt her again"

Jungkook simply looks at him with a raised brow, "you know.....you know why she and I get along so well? Everyone treats us like children, and we aren't. Taeyhung, when she wakes up, I am going to ask her to be my girl and I would like your blessing....," He receives no answer, only Taeyhung standing and walking out. Maybe that was his way of avoiding giving a answer, or maybe he was just telling Jungkook to watch you for a while because he hadn't been able to sleep. He goes to the hotel room he had gotten basically across the street from the hospital, the room he had specifically requested was directly across from yours.

Flopping on the bad he closes his eyes.

"Taeyhung, sit down baby. This is Y/N," his mother smiles at him, holding a blanket in her arms with a baby inside it. "Want to hold her baby?" "Yes," he giggles. "Okay, you have to sit down and be very still first," his mom instructs, smiling back over her shoulder at your parents. He hops into a chair and sits as still and motionless as he can and your dad is trying his very best to hold back laughter. You cry before his mom can hand him over to you, only to stop when your aunt steps forward and takes you. He laughs and soon your aunt is handing you to him and showing him how to be gentle and hold your head. He holds you just fine for a moment, then you stretch and he accidentally drops you. His mom dives to the floor just barely catching you. "She's alright," she announces.

Tae shoots up, sitting bolt right again unable to sleep. He realizes that he is pouring sweat then looks around before getting up and walking past the giant window. He stops and moves the blinds, seeing you, in the bed at the hospital across from him and still in a coma. He sighs and takes a shower before trying sleep again.

"Y/N? What are you doing?" He stops short. You were peering around a corner into the kitchen where your dad sat sobbing. He comes up behind you to watch, "why is he crying?" "I don't know.....Oppa...," You step out so your dad can see you. "Y/N.....come here," your dad calls you over. You look to Tae who shrugs before going over to him. It was almost three in the morning, why was your dad like this? "Nae salang...." "Yes?" He watches the man smile at you, holding your waist. "You are twelve now, you're going to be trying many new things in just a few years, listen closely." You nod. "Your mother and I are no more-" "Why?" "Because I don't want to hurt you nae salang, understand?" You shake your head no. "You will be living with your aunty, here, for the time being," he kisses your forehead and gets up, he kisses your aunt on the lips by the door on the way out. Leaving you standing there very confused and Tae who is a little older and more versed on the world wide eyed in shock.

He finds himself tossing around and punches the pillow.

"Tae!! Tae!! Tae!!" He turns to see you running towards him outside of the school grounds. You jump into his arms, and he catches you. You had been gone the last eight months to stay with your mom in the states but it was finally summer which means you had months to be together. "Tae, I heard there is going to be a dance?" "Yeah, tommorow night, why?" "Well~," you swing his hand and bite your lip and he sees that happy twinkle in your eye. "Well?" "Ask me~, fine~, Kim Taeyhung, please go with me to the dance?" ".........No," that was it, that was the moment. "No?" "No, the dance is for a girl that you like and you're my sister basically so no," he lies because he remembers the night your dad was crying and he now being about to graduate understood your dad's reasoning. He didn't want to show feelings for you to someday accidentally hurt you, he had remembered what happened when you were born.

He couldn't do it, sleep was out of the question. He walks to the window to see that you still hadn't woken up. He leans his head on the glass and bangs his fist on it. Jungkook was holding the stuffed animal and leaning in, saying something to you then he smiles and uses the animal like a pillow, lying down next to you. Tae slides to the floor unable to stop the tears, "I....I never want to hurt you!"

Meanwhile in your room, JK was leaning over, "I got you a Squish mellow....ladies like those, right? But I'm going to use it like a pillow first, okay?" He giggles and lays down beside you.

"Still hasn't woken up?" Jimin strolls in, to be answered with the shake of a head. He comes to sit by the bed. "Why did you have to get her one of those?" He responds to Jungkook's confused expression by pulling another Squishmellow from inside his trench coat and tucking it under your arm, kissing your forehead. "I was thinking......you can ask her to be your girl....."

"I was thinking too......." "Yeah?" "Why don't we both ask her?" "Wouldn't that make you and I-" "Not necessarily, it would just mean that we would both protect her. If we had just kept holding her hands, she wouldn't be here....," Jimin nods in agreement. "So, we are going to ask her to be our girl"

"We should ask Taeyhung first"

"I did?"

"and?"

"I don't know, he didn't say anything,....Jimin..."

"Hmm?" Jimin glances over at him, he had been looking to his feet. One was tapping anxiously.

"I miss her...."

"Me too...."

#bts #bts fic #bts jimim #jimin x you #jimin x y/n #jimin x reader #park jimin #kim taeyhung #taeyhung x reader #bts x reader #bts taeyhung #junkook #bts jungkook #jungkook x reader #jungkook x v #jungkook x jimin

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dustedmagazine · 3 years

Text

Dust, Volume 7, Number 8

Big Thief

Our August collection of short reviews contains more big names than usual with singles from Big Thief and Dry Cleaning, a digital compilation from Thou, live music from Obits and a side project from members of the Bats and the Clean. Never fear, there are obscurities as well, including an improv guitar player even Bill Meyer had hardly heard of, a Norwegian emo artist in love with Texas and a death metal outfit verging into psychedelia. Our writers, this time including Tim Clarke, Bill Meyer, Jennifer Kelly, Ian Mathers, Chris Liberato and Jonathan Shaw, like what they like, big or small, hyped or unknown. We hope you’ll like some of it, too.

Marc Barreca — The Sleeper Awakes (Scissor Tail)

The Sleeper Wakes by Marc Barreca

Odd connections abound here. One might not expect the usually acoustic-oriented Scissor Tail Recordings to make a vinyl reissue of an electronic ambient music cassette from 1986, any more than one would expect its maker to currently earn his crust as a bankruptcy judge. So, let’s just shed those expectations and get to listening. Unlike so many lower profile electronic recordings from the 1980s, which seemed targeted for a space next to the cash register of a new age bookstore, this album offers a profusion of mysteries that compound the closer you listen to them. It’s not at all obvious what sounds Barreca fed into his Akai sampler. Japanese folk music? Church chimes? A log drum jam? Tugboat engines? One hears hints of such sounds, but they’ve been warped and dredged in a thin coat of murk, so that the predominant experience is one of feeling like you’re dreaming, even if your eyes are wide open.

Bill Meyer

Big Thief — “Little Things” / “Sparrow” (4AD)

Little Things/Sparrow by Big Thief

Who knows how much more music Big Thief might have released in the last 18 months if the pandemic hadn’t tripped them up? Given the creative momentum generated by 2019’s UFOF and Two Hands, it’s fair to assume the band have plenty of music waiting in the wings. “Little Things” and “Sparrow” arrive with no sign of a new album on the horizon, so are probably being released to promote Big Thief’s upcoming US and European tour. Both songs clock in at around five minutes and handle musical repetition in different satisfying ways. Reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac’s “Everything,” but hyped up on caffeine, “Little Things” feels like an exciting new direction for the band. It cycles through its whirlpooling, modulated acoustic guitar over and over, the frantic little sequence of chords never changing; the interest comes from the ways in which the rest of the instruments bob and weave in the ever-shifting, psychedelic mix. “Sparrow” is a more traditional Big Thief song, sparse and sad. Its melancholic sway is enlivened by some beautiful wavering vocal harmonies as Adrianne Lenker paints a picture of a Garden of Eden populated by sparrows, owls and eagles, culminating in Adam blaming Eve for humankind’s fall from grace.

Tim Clarke

Simão Costa — Beat Without Byte: (Un)Learning Machine (Cipsela)

Beat With Out Byte by Simão Costa

Piano preparation often makes use of modest resources — bolts and combs, strings or maybe just a raincoat tossed into the instrument’s innards. By contrast, Simão Costa’s set-up looks like took all of the entries in a robotics assembly competition and set them to work agitating a snarl of cables that met the pirated telecommunication requirements for an especially crowded favela. But whether it’s twitching motors or Costa’s own hands doing the work, the sounds that come out of his sound remarkably rich and cohesive. He stirs drifting hums, metallic sonorities, and stomping rhythms into a bracingly immediate sonic onslaught.

Bill Meyer

Cots — Disturbing Body (Boiled)

Disturbing Body by Cots

Disturbing Body is the low-key debut album by Montreal-based musician Steph Yates, who enlisted Sandro Perri to produce. Where the songs are pared back to mostly just vocals and peppy major-seventh chords on nylon-string guitar — such as “Bitter Part of the Fruit” and “Midnight at the Station” — comparisons with bossa-nova classics such as “The Girl From Ipanema” inevitably arise. Where the tempo is slower, the chord voicings are less sun-dappled, and Perri’s arrangements call upon a wider palette of instrumental colors, the songs venture into more interesting terrain, calling to mind a less haunted Broadcast. There’s an eerie sway to the opening title track, backed by rich piano chords and clattering cymbal textures. Fender Rhodes and the light clack of a rhythm track give “Inertia of a Dream” an uneasy momentum. And forlorn trumpet, percussion and piano situate “Last Sip” at closing time in a forgotten jazz club. There’s something evasive yet subtly intoxicating at work here, the album’s ten songs breezing past in half an hour, leaving plenty of unanswered questions in their wake.

Tim Clarke

Dry Cleaning — “Bug Eggs” / “Tony Speaks!” (4AD)

Bug Eggs/Tony Speaks! by Dry Cleaning

A few months on from the release of their excellent debut album, New Long Leg, Dry Cleaning have put out two more songs from the same sessions, which are featured as bonus tracks on the Japanese edition. For a band whose unique appeal is mostly attributed to Florence Shaw’s surreal lyrics and deadpan delivery, it’s heartening to hear further evidence that it’s the complete cocktail of musical ingredients — Shaw plus Tom Dowse’s inventive guitar, Lewis Maynard’s satisfyingly thick bass, and Nick Buxton’s driving drums — that alchemizes into their winning sound. The verse guitar chords of “Bug Eggs” are naggingly similar to New Long Leg’s “More Big Birds,” while the instrumental chorus has a yearning feel akin to album highlight “Her Hippo.” Maynard’s bass tone on “Tony Speaks!” is absolutely filthy, swallowing up most of the mix until Dowse’s guitar bares its teeth in a swarm of squalling wah-wah, while Shaw’s lyrics muse upon the decline of heavy industry, the environment, and crisps.

Tim Clarke

Flight Mode — TX, ’98 (Sound As Language)

TX, '98 by Flight Mode

In 1998, well before he started Little Hands of Asphalt, Sjur Lyseid spent a year in Texas at the height of the emo wave, skateboarding and going to house shows and listening to the Get Up Kids. TX, ’98 is the Norwegian’s tribute to that coming of age experience, the giddy euphorias of mid-teenage freedom filtered through bittersweet subsequent experience. “Sixteen” is the banger, all crunchy, twitchy exhilarating guitars and vulnerable pop tunefulness, its clangor breaking for wistful reminiscence, but “Fossil Fuel” waxes lyrical, its guitar riffs splintering into radiant shards, its lyrics capturing those youthful years when anything seems possible and also, somehow, the later recognition that perhaps it isn’t. It’s an interesting tension between the now-is-everything hedonism of adolescence and the rueful remembering of adulthood, encapsulate in a chorus that goes, “Well wait and see if there’s no more history/and just defend the present tense.”

Jennifer Kelly

Drew Gardner— S-T (Eiderdown Records)

S/T by Drew Gardner

Drew Gardner has been popping up all over lately, on Elkhorn’s snowed in acoustic jam Storm Sessions and the electrified follow-up Sun Cycle and as one of Jeffrey Alexander’s Heavy Lidders. Here, it’s just him and his guitar plus a like-minded rhythm section (that’s Ryan Jewell on drums and Garcia Peoples’ Andy Cush on bass), spinning off dreamy, folk-into-interstellar-journeys like “Calyx” and “Kelp Highway.” Gardner puts some muscle into some of his grooves, running close to Chris Forsyth’s wide-angle electric boogie in “Bird Food.” “The Road to Eastern Garden,” though, is pure limpid transcendence, Buddhist monastery bells jangling as Gardner’s warm, inquiring melodic line intersects with rubbery bends on bass. Give this one a little time to sit, but don’t miss it.

Jennifer Kelly

Hearth — Melt (Clean Feed)

Melt by Hearth

This pan-European quartet’s name suggests domesticity, but the fact that none of its members lives in the country of their birth probably says more about the breadth of their music. The closest geographic point of reference for the sounds that pianist Kaja Draksler, trumpeter Susana Santos Silva, and saxophonists Ada Rave and Mette Rasmussen’s make together would be Chicago’s south side. Their dynamic blend of angular structures, extended instrumental techniques, and obscurely theatrical enactments brings to mind the Art Ensemble of Chicago, even though the sounds on this concert-length recording rarely echo the AEC’s. But it is similarly charged with mystery and collective identity.

Bill Meyer

Klaus Lang / Konus Quartett — Drei Allmenden (Cubus)

youtube

Drei Allmenden (translation: Three Commons) treats the act of commission as an opportunity to create common cause. For composer and keyboardist Klaus Lang, this is a chance to push back against a long trend of separation and stratification, with musicians bound to realize the composer’s whim, no matter the cost. Invoking works from the 16th century, he penned something simple, flexible and open to embellishment. Then he pitched in with Konus Quartett, a Swiss saxophone ensemble, to get the job done. The three-part piece, which lasts 43 sublime minutes, amply rewards the submersion of ego. Lang’s slowly morphing harmonium drones and Konus’ long reed tones sound like one instrument, enriched by tendrils of sound that rise up and then sink back into the music’s body.

Bill Meyer

Lynch, Moore, Riley — Secant / Tangent (dx/dy)

Secant | Tangent by Sue Lynch, N.O. Moore, Crystabel Riley

Electric guitarist N.O. Moore is barely known in these parts. I’ve only heard him on one album with Eddie Prévost a couple years back, and the other two musicians, not at all. But on the strength of this robust performance, which was recorded at London’s Icklectick venue, it would be a loss to keep it that way. They combine acoustic sounds with electronics, courtesy of guitar effects and amplification, in an exceedingly natural fashion. Each musician also gets into the other’s business in ways that correspond to the one spicy suggestion made by one cook that elevates another’s dish to the next level. Susan Lynch’s clarinet and flute compliment Moore’s radiophonic/feedback sounds like two flashes of lightning illuminating the same dark cloud, and her vigorously pecking saxophone attack mixes with Crystabel’s cascading beats like idiosyncratically tuned drums. This is one of the first albums to be released on Moore’s dx/dy label; keep your eye out for more.

Bill Meyer

Maco Sica / Hamid Drake Tatsu Aoki & Thymme Jones—Ourania (Feeding Tube)

OURANIA by Mako Sica / Hamid Drake featuring Tatsu Aoki & Thymme Jones

Ourania is named for the muse associated with astronomy in Greek mythology, and the album has an aim for the stars quality. In 2020, Chicago’s Mako Sica lost not only the chance to play concerts, but one third of its number. Core members Brent Fuscaldo (electric bass, voice, harmonica, percussion) and Przemyslaw Krys Drazek (electric trumpet, electric guitar, mandolin) could have just hunkered down with their respective TV sets. Instead, they booked themselves three other musicians who make rising above circumstances a core practice. The duo convened at Electrical Audio with Hamid Drake (drums, percussion, Tatsu Aoki (upright bass, shamisen), and Thymme Jones (piano, organ, balloon, trumpet, voice, recorder, percussion), rolled tape for a couple hours, and walked out with this album. The 85 minute-long recording (edited to about half that length on vinyl, but the LP comes with a download card) exudes a vibe of calm, even beatitude, with twin trumpets and Fuscaldo’s echo-laden, nearly word-free vocals weaving though a sequence of patient grooves like migrational birds on the glide.

Bill Meyer

Mar Caribe — Hymn of the Mar Caribe (Mar Caribe)

Hymn of the Mar Caribe b/w Rondo for Unemployment by mar caribe

Some musicians burn to make something new; others generate attention-getting sounds designed to maximize the potential of their other earning activities; and others, well, they just want you to sway along with their version of the good sounds. Mar Caribe falls into that last category. This Chicago-based instrumental ensemble has spent most of the last decade maintaining a robust performance schedule, and it would seem that recording is pretty much an afterthought; a photo of the test pressing for this 7” was posted in May 2019, but the release show didn’t happen until August 2021. Sure, COVID can be blamed for part of the delay, but one suspects that mostly, these guys just want to play, and they didn’t bother to stuff the singles in the sleeves until they knew when they’d next be leaning over a merch table. The titular suspends anthemic brass and pedal steel over a swinging double bass cadence, and if there was a moment during the night when the band invited the audience to pledge allegiance to their favorite drink, this is what they’d be playing while they asked. Guitars lead on the flip side, whose busy twists and turns belie the implied laziness of the title, “Rondo For Unemployment.”

Bill Meyer

Mint Julep — In a Deep and Dreamless Sleep (Western Vinyl)

In A Deep And Dreamless Sleep by Mint Julep

These songs traverse a hazy, dreamlike space, diffusing dance beats, dream-y vocals and synth pulses into inchoate sensation that nonetheless retains enough rhythmic propulsion to keep your heart rate up. “A Rising Sun” filters jangly guitar and bass through a sizzle of static, letting tambourine thump gently somewhere off camera, as voices soothe and reassure. “Mirage” pounds a four-on-the-floor, but quietly, angelically, like a disco visited through astral projection or maybe a really rave-y iteration of heaven. There’s an ominous undercurrent to “Longshore Drift,” in its growly, sub-bass-y hum, but glittering bits of synth sprinkle over like fairy dust. This is indefinitely gorgeous stuff, ethereal but surprisingly energizing. Dance or drift, take your pick.

Jennifer Kelly

Monocot — Directions We Know (Feeding Tube)

Direction We Know by Monocot

Directions We Know is an LP of free-form freak-outs generated by an instrumental duo that includes one musician who you might expect to perpetuate such a ruckus, and one that you might not. The more likely character is drummer Jayson Gerycz, who may be known for keeping time with the Cloud Nothings, but has shown a willingness to wax colorizing in the company of Anthony Pasquarosa, Jen Powers and Matthew Rolin. The happy surprise is Rosali Middleman, whose singer-songwriter efforts have kept her guitar playing firmly in service of her songs. She doesn’t exactly abandon lyricism in Monocot, but the tunes serve as launching ramps for exuberant lunges into the realm of voltage-saturated sound. On “Ruby Throated,” the first of the record’s four extended jams, Middleman lofts rippling peals over a near-boil of drums and churning loops. By the time you get to “Multidimensional Solutions,” the last and longest track, her wah-wah-dipped streams of sound have taken on a blackened quality, as though her overheating tubes have burned every note.

Bill Meyer

Obits — Die at the Zoo (Outer Battery)

Die At The Zoo by Obits

Few aughts rock bands held more promise than Obits. The four-piece headed by Hot Snakes’ Rick Froberg and Edsel’s Sohrab Habibion emerged in 2005 with a stinging, stripped-back, blues-touched sound. Froberg’s feral snarl rode a surfy, twitchy amplified onslaught, that was, by 2012 a finely tuned machine. I caught one of the live shows following Moody, Standard and Poor at small club in Northampton the same year this was recorded (so small that I was sitting on a couch next to Froberg, oblivious, for 20 minutes before the show), and what struck me was how well the band played together. The records sound chaotic, and that was certainly there in performance, but the cuts and stops were perfect, the surfy instrumental breaks (“New August”) absolutely in tune. At the time this set was recorded in the Brisbane punk landmark known as the Zoo, the band was near the peak of its considerable powers—and regrettably near the end of its run. Die at the Zoo is reasonably well recorded, rough enough to capture the band’s raucous energy, skilled enough so you can understand the words and hear all the parts. It hits all the highlights, blistering early cuts like “Widow of My Dreams,” and “Pine On,” the blues cover “Milk Cow Blues,” and later, slightly more melodic ragers like “Everything Looks Better in the Morning” and “You Gotta Lose.” The guitar work is particularly sharp throughout, its straight-on chug breaking into fiery blues licks and surfy whammy explosions. It’s a poignant reminder of a time when American rock bands played ferocious shows halfway across the world (or anywhere) as a matter of course and a fitting eulogy for Obits.

Jennifer Kelly

A Place To Bury Strangers — Hologram (Dedstrange)

Hologram EP by A Place To Bury Strangers

A Place To Bury Strangers returns with a new rhythm section and renewed focus on the elements that made its version of revivalism the loudest if not brashest of the New York aughties. Sarah and John Fedowitz on drums and bass join Oliver Ackerman on the five track EP Hologram which is the most concise and vital APTBS release for a while. For all the criticism of copyism thrown at the band since their early days, APTBS has always been as much about Ackerman’s production skills and feel for texture as musical originality and the songs on Hologram sound fantastic at volume. Beneath the sonic onslaught of fuzz and reverb, not a brick is misplaced in this intricately constructed sonic wall. True “I Might Have” is pure Jesus & Mary Chain and “In My Hive” a Wax Trax take on Spector but Hologram is an endorphin rush of guitar driven noise bound to make one forget the world, if only for a while.

Andrew Forell

Praises — EP4 (Hand Drawn Dracula)

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Jesse Crowe’s work as Praises has been ongoing since 2014, but has shifted in tone, instrumentation and emphasis since then. While the first two EPs have more of a full, rock band feel, the third one and 2018’s full-length In This Year: Ten of Swords took things in a more electronic, sometimes industrial direction. It was an even better fit for the rest, probing creativity evident in Praises’ work, and 3/4s of the new EP4 are in a pleasingly similar vein. The echoing, ringing denunciations of “We Let Go” and “A World on Fire” are fine examples of Praises’ existing strengths, but the opening “Apples for My Love” is immediately captivating in a very different way. Gauzy and rapturous, it’s a reverie that keeps the satisfying textural detail of the other songs but turns them to different ends. It’s not something that was missing from Crowe’s work before — again, the other tracks here are also very good — but a reminder that what Praises has shown before is not the extent of what they can do.

Ian Mathers

The Sundae Painters — The First SP Single (Leather Jacket)

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“This is a supergroup, is it not?” someone asked the Sundae Painters bassist Paul Kean on social media last year, to which he responded, “Some may choose that title. We prefer superglue.” Kaye Woodward, his wife and longtime bandmate in both The Bats and Minisnap, takes the lead vocal on “Thin Air,” one of the pair of A-sides found on their new band’s debut seven-inch. From the outset, Kean’s unmistakable bass playing and Hamish Kilgour’s (The Clean/Mad Scene) drumming lock into a psychedelic march, with the other instruments weaving like kites above, vying for position on the same breeze. “You fight your way down/You fight your way up/You wait for the dust to settle,” Woodward sings. A few gentle strums cut their way through the parade, and a guitar calls out gull-like from above, before everything trails off as if something potent has just kicked in. On the flip side, “Aversion” has an old friend-like familiarity to it, soundwise (if not lengthwise) sitting somewhere between VU’s “The Gift” and “Sister Ray.” Things begin a little stand-offish, though, like you’ve interrupted a guitar pontificating to a rapt audience — it turns its head to look you over, falling momentarily silent, before picking right back up where it left off. Kilgour’s spoken vocals join the conversation, as the song builds towards a groovy kind of fever pitch. “You look a little stoned,” he says, before responding to his own observation. “Well me I’m a little bit groggy/But it ain’t too foggy/I can see some way of getting out of here.” By this point, both guitars (played by Woodward and Tall Dwarfs’ Alec Bathgate) are full-on screeching and howling, and as the song sputters to a sudden finish, our man’s left waiting for someone to buy him “a ride out the gate.”

Chris Liberato

Thou — Hightower (Self-released)

Hightower by Thou

Hightower is the latest in a string of digital compilations from Thou, most of which collect songs that have been previously released on small-batch splits, 7” records and other hyper-obscure media that briefly circulated through the metal underground. You might be tempted to pronounce that a cynical cash-grab, but Thou has posted Hightower (along with previous compilations, like Algiers, Oakland and Blessings of the Highest Order, a killer collection of Nirvana covers) on their official Bandcamp page as a name-yo’-price download. Thanks, band. Beyond convenience, Hightower has an additional, if a sort of inside-baseball, attraction. The band has re-recorded a few of its older songs with its latest, three-guitar line-up. Longtime listeners will recognize “Smoke Pigs” and “Fucking Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean,” which already sounded terrifyingly massive back in 2008 and 2007, respectively. The expanded instrumentation, new arrangements and better production give the songs even more power and depth, all the way down to the bottom of the effing ocean. Yikes. And there are a few additional touches, like K.C. Stafford’s clean vocals on “Fucking Chained…,” which provide an effective complement to Bryan Funck’s inimitably scabrous howl. Rarely has being pummeled and feeling bummed out been so vivifying.

Jonathan Shaw

Tropical Fuck Storm — Deep States (Joyful Noise)

Deep States by Tropical Fuck Storm

Fueled by exasperation as much as anger, the new album by Melbourne’s Tropical Fuck Storm rounds on the myriad ways in which the world has become a “Bumma Sanger” as leader Gareth Liddiard puts it on the eponymous song about COVID lockdown. A roiling meld of psychedelic garage garnished with elements of hip hop and electronic noise it’s close in method and mood if not sound to another Australian provocateur JG Thirwell whose Foetus project girded maximalist surfaces with rigid discipline. If the Tropical Fuck Storm sought to mirror current conditions, they succeed but lack of clarity in both production and intent makes Deep States a frustrating experience. Backing vocals from Fiona Kitschin (bass), Erica Dunn (keys and guitar) and Lauren Hammel (drums) leaven Liddiard’s blokey pronouncements and there are some good sounds and biting words but the band’s determination to overelaborate and underdevelop musical ideas makes this album seem like a lost opportunity.

Andrew Forell

Marta Warelis / Carlos “Zingaro” / Helena Espvall /Marcelo dos Reis — Turquoise Dream (JACC)

Turquoise Dream by Marta Warelis, Carlos "Zíngaro", Helena Espvall, Marcelo dos Reis

Turquoise Dream documents an example of an encounter that is a mainstay of avant-garde jazz festivals, in which out of towners mix it up locals that they may or may not know. This particular concert, which took place at the Jazz ao Centro Festival in 2019, is one such encounter that deserves to live past the night when it transpired. It featured three stringed instrument players who live in Portugal and a Polish pianist who is based in Holland. But they don’t sound like strangers at all. Violinist Zingaro, cellist Espvall, and guitarist dos Reis blend like flashes of sunlight reflecting off of waves, adding up to a sound that is bright and ever-changing. Warelis, who is equally resourceful with her head under the lid of her piano as she is at the keyboard, adding fleet but substantial responses to her hosts’ quicksilver interactions. The result is music that is resolutely abstract but closely engaged.

Bill Meyer

Wharflurch — Psychedelic Realms ov Hell (Gurgling Gore)

PSYCHEDELIC REALMS OV HELL by Wharflurch

Wharflurch is just plain fun to say — but there are at least two ways in which the name also makes sense for the band that has chosen it: it has a bilious, nauseous quality that matches the vibe of the pustulent death metal you’ll hear on Psychedelic Realms ov Hell; and if you separate the words, you can conjure a sodden, rotten wooden structure, swaying vertiginously over a marshy expanse of water, which is filled with alligators and decaying organic material. Imagine that sway, and that stink, and then imagine yourself collapsing into the viscous fluid, soon to be gator chow. Sounds like Florida, and that’s exactly from whence Wharflurch has emerged. Which also makes sense. Is Wharflurch’s music “psychedelic”? Depends on what you hear in that word. If you want to see hippies dancing ecstatically on a verdant, sun-drenched stretch of Golden Gate Park, then no. But if you have spent any time in the warped, dementedly distorted spaces that psychedelics can open (less happily perhaps, but very powerfully), then yes. Wharflurch likes to accent its meaty riffs and muscular thumps with weird flutters and electronic effects that frequently have a gastric, flatulent quality to them. The saturated and sickly pinks and greens on the album art do a pretty good job of capturing the music’s tones. So do the song titles: “Stoned Ape Apocalypse,” “Bog Body Boletus,” “Phantasmagorical Fumes.” Still game? I’m sorry. But I’ll also be standing right there next to you, on that wobbly, lurching wharf, watching the gators swim near.

Jonathan Shaw

Whisper Room — Lunokhod (Midira Records)

Lunokhod by Whisper Room

That the title of Whisper Room’s fifth album is taken from Soviet lunar rovers makes a certain sense, given how potentially frustrating it might have been for the trio to be working at such a distance. Generally their other records are recorded live, in one room, seeing Aidan Baker (guitar), Jakob Thiesen (drums) and Neil Wiernik (bass) exploring simultaneously, hitting whatever junctions of psychedelic/shoegazing/motorik sound come to them. With Baker in Berlin and travel understandably limiited, this time they recorded their parts separately, layering them together (and bringing in sound designer Scott Deathe to add the kind of pedal processing their sound engineer normally does live). The result certainly sounds as collaborative as ever, seven seamless tracks making up nearly an hour that makes the journey from the friendly, clattering percussion of “Lunokhod01” to the centrifugal ambience of “Lunokhod07” feel perfectly natural. Even though it explores just as much inner and outer space as Whisper Room ever have, there’s something very approachable about Lunokhod that makes it one of their best.

Ian Mathers

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quicksilversquared · 4 years

Text

The Felix Fiasco: Chapter 1

AU of the episode Felix

Instead of cutting off what his father was going to say, Adrien inadvertently let Mr. Agreste out himself as Hawkmoth. With some help from a friend- and some surprise visiting family members- and a bit of luck, Paris might just find itself one supervillain down by the end of the day.

links in the reblog

When Mr. Agreste had told Adrien that he had something important to tell him, Adrien had been excited. He was pretty sure that he knew exactly what his father was going to say- after all, he had seen Mr. Agreste and Nathalie looking really close lately, and they really looked like they were headed for a relationship. It would be hard and awkward for his father to admit that he was moving on, of course, so Adrien wanted to be as supportive as possible. Maybe he could make it easier for his father if he told him that he had already noticed and was fine with it, but- well, Mr. Agreste didn't like people interrupting him, or presuming what he was going to say.

So Adrien bit his tongue instead, keeping himself from interrupting and upsetting his father. Only seconds later, he was regretting that.

He listened in absolute horror as his father admitted that he had always known where Adrien's mom was, that she was in a secret chamber under the house after falling into a magically induced coma. His stomach twisted in dread as his father hastened to assure him that she was stable, and definitely still alive, and that he had a plan in place to get her awake again.

He had a sinking feeling that he knew where this was going. Adrien didn't- he didn't want to believe it, he wanted it to mean something else, anything else, this couldn't be happening, a roaring was starting up in his ears-

"I am Hawkmoth, and I want to get the Miraculous to change the timeline," Mr. Agreste told him, his eyes sliding up towards the window. "So that your mother wouldn't fall into the coma at all. Nathalie thought that I ought to tell you, since things have been dragging on with Ladybug and Chat Noir. That's quite annoying, but- well, I digress. I know that the city has been painting me as a villain, but I assure you-"

Adrien couldn't hear him anymore. The roaring in his ears had drowned everything else out, and his heart was racing, pounding get-away get-away get-away.

So Adrien scrambled to his feet and bolted.

From inside of the courtyard, he could slam the button to unlock the gates, flinging himself through them and slamming the gate behind him again with a deafening clang so that his father would be slowed down. Adrien could hear Mr. Agreste yelling after him, sounding furious and worried all at once, but he couldn't make out the words. His head was spinning, thoughts racing through his mind too fast for him to make any sense of them.

He- he had to get away. Who knew what his father had planned? Why- why would he tell Adrien about his supervillainry now? Was he going to try to get Adrien to come to his side, to help him somehow? He couldn't be forced into that, he couldn't, he couldn't-

And so he ran.

Marinette had just stepped outside to go meet up with the rest of her classmates when the first car horn made her pause. More horns and squealing tires and shouts had her stepping back towards the door, even as her eyes scanned the surroundings for anything out of place. Sounds like that could really only mean one thing in Paris: an akuma.

But she wasn't hearing maniac laughter or any sort of gloating akuma announcing their name, or seeing any flashes of light that would also indicate an akuma. Marinette frowned in confusion and stepped forward to take a closer look, but a flash of movement caught her attention and her eyes locked on the figure racing recklessly through the park, nearly getting hit by a skateboarder. The near-miss and subsequent yell didn't even seem to register with them.

With a jolt, Marinette realized that she recognized that figure. It was Adrien, and he was clearly in distress.

Well. So much for the class getting together to come up with an idea to make Adrien feel better on the anniversary of his mom's disappearance. Clearly it was already a bit late for that.

Her heart jumped into her throat as Adrien continued his outright sprint out of the park and straight into the road. Tires squealed- thankfully people had gotten really good at being alert while driving and stopping quickly thanks to the akuma attacks, at least Hawkmoth and his akumas were good for something- but Adrien didn't even seem to notice as he raced blindly across the street, towards the sidewalk on the other side of the bakery. Marinette sprung into action at once, zipping around the bakery and catching Adrien around the waist to stop him, planting her feet as she did so that he wouldn't knock her over.

"No," Adrien gasped, blindly fighting against her hold. "No, no, let me go, don't bring me back there, let me go-"

"I'm not bringing you back anywhere," Marinette promised, but she could tell that Adrien hadn't heard her at all. "Adrien, listen to me, I'm not taking you anywhere. It's Marinette, you're safe. Please."

"No!" Adrien was scrabbling now, and Marinette winced as she felt his nails digging in to her skin, scratching her. "No- he has Mom, I have to get away before he makes me help him-"

People were starting to stop and stare. Marinette winced- ugh, some of them were getting phones out, what was their problem?- and then squared her shoulders as best she could. She needed to get Adrien off of the street and into privacy, and she needed to do it now.

So she loosened her grip, adjusting her stance quickly before Adrien could take off, and hoisted Adrien over her shoulder before straightening up. He was still thrashing and kicking- she was going to have some major bruises later, but Future Marinette could worry about that- but she could stumble back around the front of the bakery to their side door. Tikki quickly phased out of her purse and through the door, popping it open, and Marinette ducked in. Almost as soon as the door closed, Adrien stiffened, apparently knocked out of his blind panic, and his frantic fighting slowed to a stop.

Well. Apparently the smell of baking bread and spices had been just what Adrien needed to knock him out of his panic-fueled blindness.

"Back with us?" Marinette asked, letting Adrien slip back down to the floor feet-first. She held on until she was sure that he wasn't just going to collapse to the floor. "Adrien?"

Adrien managed a nod. "I- yeah."

"Let's go upstairs," Marinette suggested. The hallway wasn't exactly equipped for a breakdown, after all. She kept an eye out for butterflies. "Can you manage?"

"Yeah," Adrien tried, taking a step towards the stairs. His legs nearly buckled under him, and Marinette rushed to support him. "I'm sorry, I just-"

"Don't apologize," Marinette told him at once. Based on his state right now, she was guessing that Adrien had just had a huge shock. Being unsteady like this was to be expected, really. "We'll get there eventually. Just.. don't step backwards. Or lean backwards."

Adrien nodded, sharp and jerky. "Right."

"Adrien?" Mrs. Cheng ducked into the back hallway, her eyes wide as she took in his state. Marinette guessed that she had probably seen them through the window. "Dear, are you- Marinette, can you take him back to the staff break room, maybe? It will be easier than trying to go upstairs. And we just added a new couch in there, so it's plenty cozy. I can ask the other staff to stay out for the time being."

Marinette nodded, changing direction at once. She really didn't want to go up the stairs with Adrien liable to collapse at any moment. "Good idea."

"I don't want to inconvenience anyone," Adrien protested, his voice thin. Mrs. Cheng was by his side at once.

"It's fine, dear, really," she told him. "None of them would be having their breaks soon anyway, they all took them earlier. All they might be popping in for would be a cup of tea or something between batches, but they usually don't." She placed a hand on Adrien's other shoulder, steering them forward into the main kitchen of the bakery and then immediately off into the small side room at the front. "Here. It's not the most private place in the house, granted, but..."

"It'll do," Marinette finished quietly. She squeezed Adrien's hand, but he was clutching her hand so tightly that she doubted that it would even register. "Uh, I don't suppose we have any blankets down here?"

Mrs. Cheng worried her lip, glancing back towards the front of the shop. "No, but..."

"I'll be fine," Adrien repeated, sounding very not-fine. "I don't need a blanket."

"If you change your mind, just let Tom know," Mrs. Cheng told them. She glanced backwards again, then perked up. "Actually, perfect timing, he's got more bread to bring up front. I'll just ask him to cover for a few minutes while I grab a blanket. It'll be a few minutes, thought."

Marinette nodded in understanding, already steering Adrien towards the couch. He was starting to shake again, and she was really concerned. What on earth had happened for him to get this upset? It was really unusual.

The door shut behind Mrs. Cheng, and Marinette got Adrien down on the couch. He curled up against her side at once, clearly seeking out contact, and she could only hug him close. Another minute passed while he clung to her, muffled sounds from the bakery- sheet trays clattering, indistinct conversation, oven doors opening and shutting, feet crossing the floor and back again- coming through the closed door. They were closer than they ever had been before- not a surprise, really, because Adrien was practically wrapped around Marinette- but she wouldn't let herself focus on it.

Adrien was there, and he was hurting.

"It's my father," Adrien murmured into her shoulder at last, his voice thick with tears. "He's my father, and he has mom, and- Marinette, what am I supposed to do?"

"Wait, back up," Marinette said, frowning. She- well, she was officially lost. Adrien's father had his mom, but- but wasn't she missing? How did Mr. Agreste have his wife and yet have an active police investigation going on? That just didn't make sense. "I feel like I'm missing something here."

Adrien lifted his head, teary green eyes staring into her own. "Father, he- he's Hawkmoth. What do I do?"

Well, crap.

Adrien managed to tell her the rest of the story- or, rather, the rest of what he knew, what little Mr. Agreste had told him before he ran off- between sniffles, wiping his face on his sleeve until Marinette got up long enough to snag a box of tissues, the trash can, and a clean hand towel. Her mom ducked back in briefly, dropping off a fuzzy blanket that Marinette promptly wrapped Adrien up in, tucking in the corners so that he was bundled up nice and warm.

The whole story- Mr. Agreste being Hawkmoth, and trying to save Mrs. Agreste, who had apparently fallen into a magically induced coma after using the Peacock for- well, something. Adrien hadn't exactly stuck around to listen to all of the details.

Marinette couldn't blame him. Having everything dumped on him- because Marinette didn't doubt that it was dumped, considering that tactful was pretty much the last word she would ever use to describe Mr. Agreste- all at once would have been absolutely overwhelming, and considering how awful Hawkmoth had been, especially of late... well, what reaction was Mr. Agreste hoping to get from his son? Surely he hadn't thought that Adrien would just immediately hop on board.

"And the thing is, I had totally been looking forward to whatever he was going to say," Adrien said, breaking the silence. His head had come to rest against hers. "Like, he was there and kneeling on the ground with me, and I thought that- well, he and Nathalie have seemed really close lately and I thought that maybe that he was going to tell me that he was actually doing the healthy thing and moving on from Mom with Nathalie and maybe we could start moving towards being a family again. But no, he just up and tells me that he's a supervillain, surprise, and he's actually known where Mom was this entire time, and- oh, he's not close to Nathalie because he's moving on, he's close because she's his supervillain assistant, I bet! There's no way-" he paused to blow his nose-" no way that she isn't Mayura. I just know it."

...if it weren't for the fact that Adrien was hurting so badly, Marinette would be thrilled by all of this new information. She was Ladybug after all, and finding out who Hawkmoth was...well, it was what they had wanted from the start. She and Chat Noir would be able to do something about the root of the problem then, instead of just fighting every akuma that appeared and being resigned to the fact that there would be another akuma coming along again, and another, and another, and another, an endless stream. Finding out Hawkmoth's identity-it was what they had wanted.

But it was hurting Adrien. Instead of being excited like she should be about the break in the case... well, Marinette was too worried about what would happen to Adrien and how the whole thing would impact him.

There would be no way for her and Chat Noir to take down Hawkmoth and finish things without hurting Adrien. At this point, well, it would just be a matter of trying to minimize the hurt.

"I'm sorry, Adrien," Marinette murmured. She would have pulled him closer, but she had already pulled him as close as he could be. Instead, she turned her head so that her forehead was pressed against the side of his face. "My family will be here for you, I can promise that. And all of us at school. You're not alone."

Adrien just nodded. They fell quiet again, just sitting together and listening to the bakery sounds. After a couple minutes, though, Marinette frowned. There was an unfamiliar voice getting closer, accompanied by her mom.

It- it wasn't Nathalie, she thought. The voice wasn't quite as businesslike and emotionless, and surely her mom would know better than to let Mr. Agreste or Nathalie in without asking first. Marinette lifted her head, listening more closely as the voices got clearer.

"We saw news about my nephew nearly getting run over by a dozen cars, so of course I had to investigate," the other woman's voice was saying, sharp and taut. There was a vein of worry running though, easy enough to pick out even from where they were. "It took a little bit to work our way through traffic and figure out where he had gone. I do apologize for crashing in, but..."

"No, that's fine," Mrs. Cheng assured her. The voices were nearly at the door, and Marinette glanced over at Adrien. He was wiping his eyes, turning to stare at the door. There was a spark of interest in his eyes, hope and eagerness battling their way past the shock and betrayal and misery. "I can understand being concerned. I certainly would be, if I saw that happen with my daughter." They were at the door now, and Marinette watched as her mom reached out and knocked before opening it up and sticking her head in. "Adrien? Your aunt and cousin are here, do you want to see them?"

Marinette turned to Adrien, ready to step in if he was about to try to go along just to make other people happy, regardless of his own wishes. But he looked willing enough, so she didn't have to step in when he nodded.

As soon as Mrs. Cheng stepped to the side, Adrien's aunt swished into the room. As soon as she did, Marinette stared.

She- she looked just like Adrien's mom. Like, exactly.

Uh.

"Adrien, darling," his aunt exclaimed, swooping down on Adrien to hug him. Marinette ended up jostled a little to the side, but she didn't care about that. Behind Adrien's aunt, his cousin wandered in, looking somewhat concerned. Mrs. Cheng exchanged a look and a wave with Marinette before she retreated, closing the door to the break room behind her. The room was a bit cramped now, not meant for four people plus the couch and the table. "Felix and I saw you running away from the mansion and we wanted to come check on you. What happened?"

Adrien exchanged a look with Marinette, and in a heartbeat, Marinette understood his expression. He wanted to tell them- presumably he was confident enough that his aunt didn't already know about his father's less-than-fabulous side gig, but, well, telling them here and now...

Something told Marinette that Adrien's aunt might not have the quietest of reactions when finding out the news about her sister and brother-in-law, and- well, there were enough people around in the bakery that could overhear.

"Should we go upstairs to our living room, maybe?" Marinette suggested. She squeezed Adrien's hand. "If you can get up there now?"

"I think so, yeah," Adrien agreed. He managed to get to his feet, his struggle mostly- as far as Marinette could tell- because of the blanket still wrapped around him. "Let's get upstairs, and then I can talk."

Unsurprisingly, Amèlie Graham de Vanily was not happy to hear about who was behind Hawkmoth's mask. She was also not thrilled to learn that he had known where her twin sister was all of this time and hadn't bothered to let anyone else know, and she was furious to hear Adrien recount the number of times his father had endangered him as Hawkmoth, both indirectly when he just happened to be in the area and directly, with akumas that were hell-bent on targeting Adrien directly.

Surprisingly, she wanted to do something about it. Herself. Even though it would be dangerous, Marinette had warned, and hard to do. After all, Ladybug and Chat Noir had been fighting Hawkmoth and Mayura and their supervillains for ages now, and they hadn't had nearly as much luck as they might have hoped. So wouldn't it make sense to pass the information on to them, and let them deal with the situation?

Amèlie wasn't convinced.

"He has my sister," she insisted again, clearly determined. "Maybe the two of us haven't always seen eye-to-eye on everything- and I never did like Gabriel, there's always been something off about him- but I'm not going to let him dishonor her memory like this. If there's a chance that something that can be done to save her- if the superheroes have more information about magic than Gabriel does- then we need to get her out and be able to ask them. If she's past saving- well, it would be kinder to lay her to rest, then. It's heartbreaking, of course, to lose anyone, but dragging it out instead of letting them pass on...well, that's not kind to anyone."

Marinette looked from her to Felix, who looked far more like a lost kid than he had before. Something- the fact that they were dressed in black, that she had caught a murmur about missing a funeral as they headed up the stairs, that Amèlie's husband hadn't been mentioned at all- told her that Amèlie was speaking from experience.

"So we should get more information, if we can," Amèlie continued. She was tapping her chin with a finger, clearly already in planning mode. Marinette recognized that expression well, since Ladybug wore it all the time when she was coming up with a Plan. "Adrien, clearly he was willing to tell you more- but I can tell that you aren't exactly in a state to try to pry. So if we switch you and Felix- only if the two of you are willing, darlings."

To Marinette's surprise, Felix nodded at once. "I can do that. It'll be easy."

Adrien looked more hesitant. "But if he figures it out- he has magic powers, Felix, it's dangerous!"

"I can play a part as necessary." Felix told them. His lost look had been replaced by determination and- oh, Marinette recognized that look. It was the same kind of look that she had seen Chloe give her mom, that eagerness to help and please a parent to get their approval. At least Amèlie seemed more receptive than Audrey Bourgeois. "And if Mom wants me to try to find out what happened with Aunt Emilie, then I will."

Amèlie nodded, pleased. "And Adrien? I know that you've been through a shock, but..."

"But time is important." Adrien let out a shaky breath, and his fingers clung to Marinette tightly for a moment. "I- I can do it. For Mom. And if we switch, it'll be Felix who has the hard job, anyway."

"I can manage. I was in the theater club- well, before." Another flash of Felix's miserable expression from earlier crossed his face before it fell back into his neutral expression. "While we switch clothes, you can catch me up on how to act like you. That's the most important part when playing a character."

Amèlie giggled. "I thought you hated theater club, darling. You always complained that it was a waste of time."

"Yes, well." An embarrassed expression flashed across his face. "It serves its purpose."

"You can use my room to switch clothes," Marinette offered. She gestured towards the stairs. "Since our bathroom is a bit cramped."

Felix nodded, rising at once. "Fantastic. Mom, can I borrow...?"

Amèlie nodded, digging in her purse at once and passing over a small bag. "Of course. Be thorough, of course, but the faster of a turnaround we can have, the better. And I'm going to go talk to Gerald so that he doesn't tip off Gabriel and Nathalie. With any luck, he hasn't already reached out."

Marinette winced at the thought. They were so close to finding out everything about Hawkmoth. To have their plan derailed by Adrien's well-meaning bodyguard...

As Amèlie headed back downstairs, Adrien and Felix headed up to her room. Marinette had a moment to wince- she hadn't cleaned up her Adrien posters at all, that wasn't going to look good and something told her that Felix was the sort to notice and comment about something like that- and then she forcefully pushed the thought away, trying to put her Ladybug hat on and focus on what needed to be done.

Obviously, she wanted to reach out to Master Fu and let him know. They would probably want a team of superheroes for the final stand-off, for sure, but question now was which ones. The Snake would definitely be helpful, in case anything went wrong, and maybe the Fox for illusions, and the Turtle for protection, and the Bee- well, she might pick someone other than Chloe, because if Chloe got to be part of the final battle when she had done nothing to deserve the honor of wielding a Miraculous, especially considering how she had bullied Marc and Nathaniel about their comic only two days ago, she would be insufferable. Marinette could see Chloe now, bragging about how she was special enough to help defeat Hawkmoth and all of the rest of them were just lame-o civilians.

Chloe should never have been a superhero in the first place, and the only reason why Marinette had kept going back to her was because Chloe had experience with using the Miraculous and the Bee's powers, and it was hard to think of a new person to use the Bee when they were under a time crunch. But now...

Adrien probably wouldn't want to be involved, since it was his father that they were going up against and he might not be able to go in for the hit. But his aunt and cousin seemed like they would happily go to bat for him (or at least Amèlie would go to bat for her sister, and Felix would do anything if it made his mom happy, which...well, it seemed to amount to the same thing in the end), so maybe she could consider them as potential Bees. But she also didn't know them very well, and had only spent maybe ten minutes with them max. There was a danger there, a risk that Marinette wasn't sure if she wanted to take. Both Graham de Vanilys were a bit unpredictable and hard to read at times, which, well…

Maybe it would be better if she tapped her own mom instead.

Deciding that she could probably wait to decide for sure until after Felix finished his information-finding mission, Marinette pulled out her phone instead, drafting her text to Master Fu several times before deciding that it was good enough as it was. She hit send just as Amèlie entered the room, looking pleased.

"Gerald let me know that Gabriel instructed him to take a detour to try to find Adrien instead of dropping us off at the house first," she told Marinette. "And since Adrien seemed so upset, he figured that he wouldn't say anything yet without finding out the why. So I asked him not to let Gabriel know at all, and we would explain later." She smiled, triumphant as she dropped gracefully onto the couch. "It's perfect, really. Gerald seems like he's far more loyal to Adrien than to Gabriel, so he's willing to work with us. Once we have Felix go over in Adrien's place, Nathalie will text Gerald and we can come in like normal, not suspicious at all."

Marinette still had some concerns. Sure, Gabriel Agreste was an absentee parent at best, sure, but Adrien and Felix were cousins. Just because Mr. Agreste rarely saw his son in person didn't mean that he wouldn't recognize that there was something off. If Adrien and Felix hadn't seen each other in- well, it sounded like it had been a couple years- even if they somehow managed to look similar enough to fool Mr. Agreste, there were bound to be some behavioral differences.

"I hope the boys can work fast," Amèlie commented, glancing upwards. "I do worry that the longer we spend getting set up, the more suspicious Gabriel will be. And with something like this... well, he's already bound to be on edge."

Almost on cue, the trapdoor up above swung open and Adrien and Felix came down. Marinette turned around to see how their swap had gone, and then her jaw dropped.

Had- had they swapped at all? Because if they had, that was insane.

"One would think that you two had been practicing or something," Amèlie said with a laugh. She accepted her bag back from "Adrien", glancing in before zipping it shut and tucking it in her purse. "Your makeup skills are amazing. Even I can't tell the difference, except- Adrien, you have a little powder on your collar." She reached forward towards "Felix", brushing off a few specks before considering them. "Very good."

Marinette could only squeak. They had swapped, then. Clearly she didn't need to worry about Mr. Agreste immediately noticing something was off just by sight, because she had seen Adrien every day at school (...and in heavily-inspected pictures on her wall every day, school day or no) and had thought that they hadn't actually swapped at all, which, uh...

(She wasn't saying that she knew Adrien's face better than his own father, just... well, she actually saw him and paid attention to him more than his own father.)

"I'd like to try to steal the Miraculous, if I get the opportunity," Felix said, straightening his sleeve cuff in a very un-Adrien-like manner. Adrien bumped his cousin's arm, giving him a Look, and Felix stopped at once. "I'm very good at slight-of-hand, so I feel like it wouldn't be an impossibility."

Marinette blinked. "Uh..."

"What is the Miraculous, do we know? And where does he wear it?" Felix's gaze slid from Adrien to Marinette, then back. "Or is all of that entirely a mystery?"

"The Butterfly Miraculous is a brooch," Marinette told him, even though she still had some serious concerns. "But, uh..."

"He wears it under his tie," Adrien told Felix. He was frowning. "But it would be really hard for you to get without being suspicious. Even if he thinks that you're me, he's going to be really protective of it. And it's not like you have a Miraculous to protect yourself if he catches on!"

"I would only try if I saw a good opportunity," Felix assured him. "I am not about to take unnecessary risks. After all, you have Ladybug and Chat Noir to take care of the supervillains once you let them know who is cowering behind those masks. But I do like a challenge, so it's just something to keep in mind."

His mom just sighed, clearly used to Felix's attitude. "All right, as long as you make sure not to try any big gambles. Boys, I think it's time that we head out, so that Mr. Agreste doesn't get any more suspicious about Adrien's absence than he no doubt already is. Marinette, it was nice meeting you, and hopefully we'll get to see you again before Felix and I head back to London. Thank you for keeping Adrien safe."

"Of course," Marinette said, about to shoot a soft look at Adrien before thinking better of it. It would just be weird when Adrien and Felix were dressed up as each other. "Good luck, you guys. Stay safe. And Adrien, let me know how it goes. If you want to come over again, our door is open."

Adrien smiled, small and soft as Amèlie ushered both him and Felix towards the door. "Thanks, Marinette."

With one last wave, they were out, the door swinging shut behind them. Marinette let out a long breath, practically collapsing back onto the couch. That- that had been a lot to take in.

And from the sounds of it, the information that Adrien had gotten before he had bolted had only been the tip of the iceberg. There would be more coming soon, as long as Felix was successful, and that promised to be practically as overwhelming as this discovery had been.

Yikes.

After a moment, Marinette forced herself to her feet, getting up and going over to the window to watch the scene below, just in time to see the small group exit through their side door. Tikki floated up by Marinette's shoulder, watching them go. Felix, dressed as Adrien, headed back through the park, the picture of composure. On the sidewalk, Amèlie and Adrien were headed into the bakery, buying pastries to give Felix a little time before they showed up.

"I think that we should be ready to go over to the mansion," Tikki said after a moment. "And be ready to claim the Butterfly right away, if they manage to get the Miraculous like Felix wanted to. Adrien's aunt and cousin seemed nice enough, but they have just recently gone through a loss and they might not be thinking clearly. If they give in to temptation..."

"Right." Marinette turned away from the window, looking at her kwami again. She would have to text the rest of the class and let them know that they couldn't make it after all. "But the likelihood that Felix will actually get the Miraculous? I mean, there'd pretty much have to be the perfect conditions for him to even get close, right?"

"Honestly?" Tikki glanced out the window again, watching Felix walk away. "Not really. But with a little help…." She turned to Marinette, determination in her eyes. "Let's go over to the little park across from Adrien's house, and I'll go in. With a little luck- with a little help- they might just be able to pull this off."

#Miraculous Ladybug #Adrien Agreste #marinette dupain cheng #Felix #episode rewrite #chapter 1 of 2 #my writing

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