#and ive broken both of them can they get some slack

[redstainedsocks]

Wrong

I've had this half-written in my docs for a long while, under the heading "doorstep collapse" so I think it was for a prompt or whump event but I don't remember which one...

Normal story this time, not the AU!

Content: sick fic, fainting, delirious whumpee, hospital setting, use of sedatives, reference to noncon drug use, mentioned death threat and manner of death, overwhelmed caretaker

[Masterlist]

One or two of the team had taken to sleeping at the office at a time so that Zach was never there alone. Archer wanted to stay every night, always eager to be nearby in case something happened, but he’d been convinced to go home at least one out of every three nights.

He’d spent last night at home, sleeping guiltily in his own soft bed, miles and miles from where his best friend was holed up in a sparse, grey room that was as far from homely as Archer could imagine. Though he knew for Zach it was probably the most comfort he’d had in years, which made Archer feel even worse.

He’d slept well at home, exhausted from late nights and stress, but he would much rather have been here. The pull out couch in the break room was lumpy and not long enough for his tall frame but he still preferred it these days. Zach was just down the hall and it soothed a tightness in Archer’s chest to be close by. To know he could walk down the corridor and lay eyes on the person he thought he’d lost.

He was still untangling his own mix of grief and disbelief, but he knew it was easier to bear the guilt of having left Zach with his kidnappers if he was at least around to make sure it didn’t happen again; if he could be there to help Zach feel safe now.

It was easier not to have to examine his emotions and thoughts at all, if he was so exhausted that he couldn’t think straight.

Zach had gone to bed a couple of hours ago and he had sat up flicking through paperwork, trying to keep busy even as his eyes itched with tiredness. His ‘bed’ was made up ready for the night but he was sprawled on top of it, putting off the moment of sleep until he could close his eyes and be instantly drawn under.

He was surprised to hear a soft knock at the door, tentative, the sound of someone off balance slumping on the other side. Maybe Zach couldn’t sleep either? Maybe he’d finally had a nightmare and come for company—something none of them had seen him do yet.

“It’s open,” he said, half sitting up.

The door swung inward and Zach teetered on the threshold. His eyes roved across the room, landing on Archer but darting away again.

“Zach?” Archer was up and off the bed in an instant, but paused a meter or so away, as Zach looked flighty and liable to flinch at any contact.

“Ar-cher.”

“Yeah?”

“I think,” Zach spoke and it was slurred and he clung to the doorframe. “I think something is wrong.”

Archer barely had time to react before Zach’s eyes rolled backward and his body crumpled underneath him. Archer caught him just before his head hit the floor.

Time was standing still and moving too fast all at once. The ambulance had taken what felt like hours to arrive, while Archer sat there cradling Zach—delirious, feverish, burning up and shaking like a leaf.

The private hospital they were in now was clean, clinical, and calm. Quiet. Discrete. It was a good place to keep Zach hidden and secure, but being there still set his teeth on edge. He paced the corridor-like waiting room back and forth, glad that no one told him to stop. The team had all been called; Sasha had been the one who turned up and stayed. She was a quiet, steady presence. And though he could tell from the line of her tense muscles that she was as worried as he was, she let him be the one to fall apart while she held it together.

Zach had a fever, something was infected. The doctors just couldn’t find where or what. They hadn’t been allowed to see him. Yet. Archer hoped that would change soon.

He rubbed his face tiredly. “I should get more coffee.”

“I think coffee is the last thing you need,” Sasha replied, calmly. “Come sit down.”

He glanced at her and shook his head. He needed to be moving, doing. “If he—” Archer couldn’t even bring himself to say it. “After everything, if this is too much for his body to handle…”

“Nothing is going to happen, the doctors are gonna fix it.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Don’t I?” She levelled him with a look that could surely make a mountain bow down and grovel.

“How didn’t we notice something was wrong?”

“He doesn’t let us near him, not really.”

Finally, he slumped into a seat beside her. “I should’ve watched out for him more carefully, checked he was okay. I should’ve… I owe him. We just… we can’t let him down again, we have to do better.”

“Archer, we’re doing everything we can,” she said gently.

“It’s not enough!” He snapped. “We abandoned him! We just left him there and now we can’t even take care of him? Can’t even tell what he needs?”

“Montgomery Archer, sit. Back. Down,” she hissed.

He hadn’t even realised he was standing. He looked down at her, the unfairness still burning through him, how could she not care? Until he saw her face, eyes glistening, and realised the strength of will it was taking for her to hold it together.

“This is a goddamn hospital and this is not the time,” she said, squeezing her hands between her knees. “We thought he was dead, and there’s shit all we can do about it now. You can have a breakdown about it later, but not now, not like this.”

He took a seat, sheepishly. “Sorry. I… seeing him collapse like that has me all churned up.”

“Don’t apologise, you big oaf. Just breathe, and know they’re doing everything they can, and give yourself some damn slack while you’re at it.” She sniffed and turned away.

He scooted down in his chair and leaned against her shoulder, glad she didn't shrug him off, and relieved not to be alone.

*

They were finally allowed in the room once Zach was stabilised. Allowed in because, in the doctor’s words… Zach was resistant. Archer hadn’t really understood the implications of that, his mind taken up with thoughts of he’s fine, he’s alive, they’ve got it under control.

But now… he could see what they meant. Zach was fighting the sedative, semi-conscious and struggling, suffering. He couldn’t really move, but his eyes were open and he was frightened, terrified, but so obviously not-really-here, either. Whatever had happened these past two years Zach had built up some tolerance to the drugs they’d given him and it was heart-breaking; seeing him foggy but alert, unsure of where he was and unable—but so desperate—for something he couldn't name or do.

“See if you can get him to remain calm, he needs to rest,” the doctor said, arms crossed in concern as his eyes roved over Zach’s prone form. “We can’t try him on anything else until this one is out of his system but even then… He’s been asking for someone, we assumed, well, it might be you?”

Archer nodded, cleared his throat. ‘Right, yeah. He knows me, I can—I’ll do what I can. Anything I should be careful of?”

“Just mind the IV line, and call us in if he gets more agitated or anything changes.”

“Okay, I’ve got this. Thank you, Doctor.”

He did not have this. Not even a little bit. He felt completely out of his depth. He loved Zach like a brother, had loved him and mourned him, and now… felt like he barely knew him. What qualified him to take care of Zach like this? He wrung his hands and stepped closer as Sasha sidled around to the other side of the bed. Zach’s eyes tried to track her, and lost her somewhere along the way. His breathing sped up again, bloodshot eyes wide and aimlessly roving as his fingers twitched on the bed sheets.

“Please, please,” Zach murmured. Whispered, almost. It was slurred but unmistakable.

Sasha gave Archer a look, and nodded to the bed. He shook his head. She raised her eyebrows and crossed her arms and they stared each other down.

I can’t do this. He hoped she understood what his look implied.

Her answering look seemed to say you’re not even trying.

He threw his hands up in defeat and stepped closer. Zach’s eyes landed on Archer’s face and he twitched feebly, shivering in his sparse hospital bed.

“‘M good, I’ll be good, please.”

Archer leaned against the bed, trying to look reassuring, confident. “Yeah, you’re doing really well, okay? We’ve got you, nothing to worry about.”

Zach’s hand jerked and his mouth opened and closed before he whined. “Hurts.”

“I know, buddy, I know.” He looked at Sasha who nodded, so he took Zach’s hand and lightly squeezed. “It’s alright.”

“Please, you promised. Promised.”

That took Archer by surprise and he sucked in a breath, biting his tongue.” I know, I-I said nothing else bad would happen to you, I didn’t know this would happen…”

There was a frustrated look on Zach’s face and his eyes filled with tears, his head flopped a little, side to side. “You promised.”

Archer did the only thing he could think of, he squeezed Zach’s hand tighter and dragged the chair by the bed closer so he could sit and be a calming presence. He wouldn’t abandon Zach, not again, no matter how much Zach yelled and cried at him, broken-hearted though it made him to know he’d let Zach down another time.

“I’ll do whatever--ever you want. Sir, please,” Zach’s voice cracked and he mumbled into incoherence, all in a pleading, painfully placating tone.

Archer’s eyes shot up and he met Sasha’s across the bed, looking as concerned as he did as realisation dawned on them both. Zach wasn’t here.

“Where do you think you are, Zach?” she asked quietly.

Zach--who had flinched at sound of his own name--whimpered. “Can’t--don’t know.”

“You’re safe, we’re here, me and Sasha, and the team has our back. You’re in hospital,” Archer said.

Zach looked at him, clearly, finally. “Promise? Keep your word, like you promised?”

“What did I promise you?” It was a calculated risk to play into whatever Zach thought he was seeing, but he needed to know, didn’t he?

“You said… said you wouldn’t lemme die like this. Not like this. A bullet, you promised, not--not sick, not slowly.”

Archer couldn’t breathe, he blinked furiously to try to keep the tears at bay. “I promise, no-one is dying, not here. Not like this.”

Zach breathed out and tears ran down his cheeks as he closed his eyes and rested his head heavily on the pillows. “Promise. And I’ll be good.”

It seemed to be enough to make Zach settle, and he fell into a fitful doze. Sasha brushed hair back from his forehead and checked the lines in the IV on his right hand. Archer brought Zach’s left hand to his face and kissed the back of his wrist, rubbed his thumb in a circle and then laid it down on the sheets and sat back to bury his face in his own hands.

He jumped when Sasha touched his shoulder and scrubbed hastily at his eyes. “We don’t leave him, one of us stays with him until he’s himself again,” he said, voice thick. “We can’t let him get lost in his own head.”

“I’ll get us something to eat,” she said. “We’ll see him through this.” She left quietly, slipping out the door with graceful ease so they kept their privacy.

He nodded. They would. But really… what could they do in the face of all this?

“What the hell did they do to you?” he whispered to the quiet room.

Zach was too far gone to answer.

@haro-whumps @whumpthisway @hurting-fictional-people @lonesome--hunter @crowned-avery @extrabitterbrain @firewheeesky @outofangband

[secretsniper3]

Part 3: Well Hung

My Master was right to lock my pussy behind a wall of steel, I constantly woke up to find my hands caressing the fluid that would run around the belt, my need evident and throbbing clear to me but in my belt there was nothing I could do but roll over and go back to sleep. 8am, my usual routine is stopped right out the gate by my belt, clearly meant to skip it Im greeted by my Master in the doorway, I stand completely naked save the belt locked to my hips. He steps towards me and tell me to not bother getting dressed, and puts a latex hood over my head, my hair black now (did he dye my hair overnight?) pushing through the hood to form my ponytail as he laces me into my latex face. Arms placed behind my back im cuffed in place and a posture collar locked around my neck with a leash attached. Following the leash im led into the main hall of my Masters home and I see something new, something that wasnt there last night. My Master clearly worked through the night to complete this device, largest device Iv ever seen he takes me into the middle and unleashes me. Locking a chain to my posture collar more restraints are added all over my body, my upper and lower arms get binders locked on with chains, wrists too, Waist gets 1 and thighs, shins and ankles for their own. unlocking my hands from behind my back my Master steps back, marvelling at his work.

Holding a large remote he presses a button and all the slack in my chains vanish, held tight by the chains my actions are clearly not mine to decide. Spinning a dial Im lifted into the air 3 feet, and pivot forward, my arms move behind my back and meet elbow to elbow as my knees bend back and my feet meet my hands and Im amazing this device can pull you so smoothly. Stepping towards me and raising me up to meet his gaze my Master places his hand on my cheek and with a smile moves to remove my chastity belt, with my wet sex exposed to him, fluid running faster and harder with each passing second he takes a deep breath, savouring my scent as I try meekly to move my hands a little lower to cup my pussy. My Master simply puts a finger on my labia to draw a instant reaction from my body, a gasp and a moan follow as he rubs up and down my lips carefully with a smile on his face. My focus is broken by a knock at the door, my Master going to answer I see a woman standing there talking to my Master. She is a tall woman, the high heels helping with that, a long, black latex dress drapes down her slender thighs as she gazes over at me. Ruby red lips and beautiful blue hair running freely down her back, closing the door my Master leads the woman to me and says aloud, “this is the Slave i was telling you about.” the woman's eyes widen, her red lips part and my eyes are drawn to them as she speaks, “for how long can i play?” “how long are you in town for?” my Master responds with a chuckle.

Licking her lips making them shine flawlessly as my Master takes a seat infront of me, the woman circles around, like a bird of prey having found its next meal she scans my entire body with a hunger in her eyes that sends a shiver down my spine. A touch of her finger ends the shiver before it reaches my sex, all my focus is on that 1 finger, tracing its way over my limbs, seemingly scaring my flesh with its burning hot touch Im sure to melt no matter what this woman does, eyes flying to my Master as he sits with a drink in hand with his eyes glued to mine. My pussy making its need known to all in the room as the puddle that was small moments ago grows larger by the second as the finger moves down my waist and over my smooth, firm ass and down my thigh. Clit throbbing as my pussy spasms at the sensory overload at just a mere finger I hear my Master say aloud “im keeping her in denial for now, think you can make her pussy even hotter than it already is, you be my guest.” All I hear behind me is the hum of a hungry animal as the finger loops over my thigh and scratches up the inside, drawing a line in my skin leading right to my puffy lips. Right there, just a little bit further!

Pain strikes my pussy as her hand comes down on my lips, a shriek of surprise and pain bursts from my lips as my pussy shakes in the aftermath. Finger still moving, painfully slow Im met with another wet slap to my pussy, and then just as suddenly a finger dives deep into my pussy. My gasp of pain elevates into a gasp of joy and bliss, my drooling pussy is getting action and I cant believe it! The finger withdraws with a wet pop as I hear her laughter behind me.

“Come now my dear, youd think id really let you cum when your Master wants your pussy denied of such pleasures?” thrusting a finger inside again for a moment before removing it a second time I know she is, quite literally pushing my buttons as her finger presses the only button that counts. The button that stands out, big and red and throbbing with need, a simple glancing touch is all it took to get my body right to the very tip of the edge a simple breeze would push me over, my eyes shooting into my skull as my brain tries desperately to comprehend what I just experienced. She waits till I have calmed down enough then repeats the glancing brush, sending me back to the peak. Looking ahead my Masters chair is empty, looking around for him I hear him laugh behind me as I hear him give the succubus something, what could he have given her. I am greeted with a smile on his face as he looks at me on his way back to his seat.

“Enjoy the ride, Slave.” is all Master says as my urethra is jabbed with something long and hard, my juices serving to lubricate it so it slides in easily as she proceeds to sound me. The pain quickly being overtaken by pleasure as Im fucked in a hole I never considered fucking before, but shes watching me. Pulling it out before I crest the ridge of pleasure Im left to moan and beg for release, my Master stands and grabs a blindfold and a spider gag, taking away my vision and ability to speak he takes great pleasure in my loss of senses. I dont need eyes to know hes hard, and hell probably use me sooner or later.

My clit still throbbing dangerously close to the edge the woman starts to caress it with, what is that sensation? oh god no! its a brush, she circles around my inner labia with the bristles of the thin brush and I cant stop her at all, she eases the head of the brush against my clits hood and it slips between them, rubbing my clit at its very core removing it the second before I would otherwise cum hard! This torture would carry on for some time of painfully hard denials at the last second before my Master pushes a button and flips me over in the air.

My breasts now facing the roof and the device that holds me begins to pull my neck up, rising to meet the demand my mouth presses into the woman's pussy. She is done playing with my cunt, now Im to play with hers, and she isnt forbidden to cum so within minutes of my talented tongues assault on her my face is glazed with her juices but she still holds strong. Clearly seeking more from my mouth she presses down and my tongue dives in deep, tasting the woman's pussy as her cum drools into my mouth and down my throat. Her warm folds locked around my mouth as she grinds my face into her pussy, cumming again and again.

“shes very talented with her tongue, and her pussy wont stop shaking, i can see her clit from here!” she says with orgasmic bliss in her voice

“i know how to break a slave” My Master replies, and he isnt wrong. Im broken, his plaything to do with what he wants.

The woman stops grinding into my open mouth and my face is coated in a thick layer of her juices, I start to think its over as my Master takes my mouth for his own use. Driving his hard cock down my throat my tongue naturally wraps around the shaft as I accept my Masters meat in my throat, thrust after thrust Im rewarded with a hot burst that flows quickly down my throat. Removing my blindfold Im treated to a sight I havent seen in a long time, my Masters cock inside a pussy. pumping in and out, oh how I wish it was my cunt he was plowing as he thrusts harder into the woman and her back arches in erotic bliss, my Masters hand gripping her blue hair as he continues to fuck her to orgasm. Im treated to a first class show as my Master and the woman continue thrusting into eachother, orgasm after orgasm they wont stop taunting me. The woman constantly bragging about how good it feels to cum knowing my pussy is denied and having my clit throb making it all the worse!

So there I hang, fixed in the middle of the room watching my Master and the woman fuck to orgasm over and over again, I cant even look away, their moans, their screams, flooding my ears and my pussy with need! They finally stop their exhibition match at my expense and my Master reveals my new belt, it has a long slick metal dildo where my asshole would sit, and another thinner pole for my urethra, nothing for my needy box though. I moan helplessly as they both set to lock my body back in its cage. Flipping me over and standing me upright, the woman gives me a deep kiss, tasting her own juices on my lips as her tongue fucks mine with gusto and my Master escorts her to the door. I manage to make out “we should do this again soon” as they kiss on the cheek and she leaves me to my denial with my Master.

Locking my feet in ballet heels before removing my restraints I am left to wobble on jelly legs as my arms are locked in a strict reverse prayer binder with elbows meeting in the small of my back, he says this is just beginning and at that thought my pussy clenches a little. A corset around my waist to make breathing more difficult when combined with my latex mask and posture collar, blindfolded once more Im left in the dark as my neck gets yanked and I lurch forward in my toe crushing boots. Stepping forward a few paces Im forced to my knees as Im pulled over and down, my Masters got a hard cock again and its my life's mission to sate its lust as I take it in my mouth and down my throat. My Master not even helping me as my latex coated head bobs up and down on his member and he cums down my throat. Pulling me back he takes in my appearance. “you look amazing if i do say so myself.” he says with a smile, I can hear his joy in his words as he stands me back up and turns me around and with another yank, Im walking again.

Hard to focus on where hes leading me to, he keeps rearranging things while I sleep and my inserts are only adding to my frustration. The pain in my feet far from over as the inserts inside me are fixed to the belt, every step making them sway side to side inside me, though not enough to make me cum, I cant cum from anal or he wouldn't have put 1 in my ass. Continuing to lead me into a room he fixes me in place and pushes a tube in my mouth, unscrewing my urethra and pushing a tube up into my bladder. Pressing a few buttons Im forced to walk forward as he laughs beside me. Its a treadmill! With no way to get off as Im completely secure and forced to march on in silent obedience. Unable to draw breath through the tube my nose is uncovered and fluid pours down the tube and into my mouth, Im hesitant at first but my Master commands me to drink and so I do it since it is “your lunch after all” he said as he turns and leaves me to your walk. the fluid running into my mouth periodically consists of oatmeal, vitamins and minerals and 3 types of aphrodisiacs. Every step hurts my poor enslaved feet and legs but what could I do besides walk on the path my Master has set for me?

2 hours later my breathing is ragged and hoarse as my Master returns to stop my walking, unhooking me and leading me back to the lounge he lays me down and frees my toes from their prison. I moan as the boots slide off. Removing my belt from my waist he sits me down in the bathroom and tells me to relieve myself. following his command I do as Im told and he cleans up after me, reapplying my belt with little resistance as Im exhausted now and very tired from my walk, he leads me back to my room and lays me down, releasing my arms and removing my corset and latex hood he rolls me over and with a kiss on my forehead I drop straight to sleep. He pats my ass knowing that my pussy is safe behind that wall of cold steel and goes to set up the house for the party tomorrow, knowing I will be asleep the rest of the day and through the night. My Master always knows how to put me to sleep.

[kinkykinard]

Four Minutes - Epilogue

Fandom: 9-1-1. Pairing: Buddie. Word Count: 2212. Genre: angst. Rating: Teen+. Summary: Eddie has a choice to make after nearly losing Buck in the explosion.  Spoilers for 2x17 and 2x18. Warning(s): mentions of Buck’s injuries, minor medical details. Note: Back by popular demand, the thrilling conclusion to my first ever Buddie fic.  Beta’d by @starshiphufflebadger​.  AO3 link here.  Part 1 link here.

Four minutes was nothing in the grand scheme of things.

It had passed in the blink of an eye compared to what had followed, and as he sat beside Buck’s bed keeping silent vigil, Eddie was reminded of just how bad he was at waiting.  Perhaps more accurately, how bad he was at knowing when to stop waiting.  

He’d almost lost Buck earlier that night.  He’d watched the truck get thrown up into the air and consumed by flames, looked on as Buck was ejected from the cab only to be stopped before he could roll too far as the ladder pinned him at the ankle.  He’d heard the blast, Buck’s screaming, the exhausted whimpers of agony and the frighteningly quiet staccato of Buck’s tired heart as he’d assessed him afterward.  Eddie had tasted blood when his anxiety had threatened to overwhelm him and he’d bitten his cheek to stop the tears that stung his eyes.

Eddie had waited.  He’d waited for the rest of the team to arrive and accompany him into the hospital even though he’d wanted nothing more than to chase the trauma team through the sliding doors, to cling onto the stretcher and not let Buck out of his sight.  He’d waited for news from the OR, a cup of bitter, burnt coffee cooling in his hand as the ticking of the clock on the wall nearly drove him mad.  He’d waited, albeit feeling a little less wound up than he had before, after the surgeon had come to tell them Buck was going to pull through.  He’d waited as Buck woke up in recovery, alone, and was transferred to a private room for observation.  He’d waited as everyone else went in to see Buck, just for a moment, to wish him well until Buck was so tired out he fell into a deep sleep.

With everyone gone, Eddie made his way into Buck’s room.  The nurse that came by to check Buck’s vitals shortly after Eddie had settled into a chair next to Buck’s bed looked like she wanted to shoo him off, but for whatever reason she thought better of it and left him to his vigil.  He settled into the hard plastic chair next to the bed and knotted his fingers in his lap to quell the desperate urge to reach out and hold Buck’s hand.

As Buck slept, snoring softly, Eddie watched the saline in the IV bag over Buck’s bed drip slowly into the drip chamber, his mind far away.  He thought about the last time he’d waited on something and about how much it had cost him.  He’d waited for weeks to let Shannon back into Christopher’s life.  He’d pushed her away, compartmentalized his feelings, avoided the difficult conversations.  In the end, by the time he’d decided he was ready to face her, to face the future, she’d had enough of the waiting.  She’d moved on without him, or perhaps in spite of him.

And then she’d died right in front of him.

But it was different with Buck.  It was different, and it had the potential to wind up being far worse.  With Shannon, Eddie had gotten his feelings out, had left things in her hands, had tried, and while it hadn’t absolved him of all of the hurt he’d caused her in the past, it had given him some measure of closure.  With Buck, though, he hadn’t said a word.  He hadn’t even hinted that he had anything more than platonic feelings for him.  He’d never given himself the chance - given Buck the chance - to pursue anything.

And then Buck had nearly died right in front of him.

His PTSD reared its ugly head at the reminder; the thought that it was all happening again was a wake-up call that threatened to pitch him into a panic attack.  Eddie gritted his teeth, staring determinedly ahead, knowing that if he so much as blinked he would see Shannon’s lifeless body; of Buck’s body in her place.  He fought to keep his breathing steady, glancing up at the monitor screen over Buck’s bed to help himself focus.  It was hypnotizing watching the rhythmic dance of waveforms on Buck’s ECG as they appeared and disappeared again, and eventually Eddie felt himself settle a little bit.  

Buck was okay.  He had a long road to recovery ahead of him, but he was okay, and Eddie was determined to be there for him, to walk that path with him.  Eddie took a deep breath and ran a hand through his hair, turning his attention back to Buck.  Buck’s features were slack, his lips slightly parted as he slept off the anaesthetic.  He was breathing steadily and Eddie tried to breathe with him as a new and different but no less frightening set of emotions filled him.  

Eddie’s heart nearly stopped as Buck made a soft groaning noise.  He jumped to his feet, planting his hands on the railing beside Buck’s bed, waiting for him to wake up.  He wanted - needed - Buck to know he wasn’t alone.  Eddie hated how long he’d been forced to stand back before running in to help Buck back at the scene and he wasn’t going to let another moment go by with Buck feeling like there was no one there when he needed them.

Eddie waited tensely for a few moments, his gaze fixed on Buck, but nothing changed.  Buck was still asleep, clearly having made the noise unconsciously.  Eddie sagged, relieved that he could put off the conversation he needed to have for just a little bit longer.  He’d made up his mind, he was going to tell Buck, but it didn’t mean he was comfortable with the notion just yet.  He’d never been particularly good at being vulnerable, and opening himself up to anyone, even Buck, was terrifying.

After a few minutes passed without any change in Buck’s condition, Eddie sat back down, shifting the chair slightly so he was closer to the bed.  He leaned forward, resting his forehead against the cool metal of the bed rail, closing his eyes.  He was pleasantly surprised that instead of the horror show he was expecting to play out in his mind, there were some happy memories instead.  The first time he’d seen Buck laugh the day they’d pulled the live grenade charge out of a man’s leg.  It was the first time he’d seen Buck’s vulnerability, too.  Sure, he could feel it rolling off the guy in waves with how threatened he’d been by Eddie’s mere presence at first, but the look they’d exchanged just before Eddie had grasped the ordnance to remove it had spoken volumes.

“Eddie?”

Eddie’s head snapped up at the sound of his name on Buck’s lips.  He met the other man’s confused expression with a small smile, leaning in to help Buck focus through the morphine fog.

“Hey, welcome back,” Eddie said softly.  “How’re you feeling?”

“Fuzzy,” Buck replied, slurring slightly.

Eddie chuckled, reaching out before he could stop himself to fix the neckline of Buck’s gown where it had come undone and was sagging.  He thought it might’ve been his imagination, but he could have sworn Buck had relaxed back into the bed a fraction as Eddie’s fingers brushed his shoulder.  Emboldened by Buck’s apparent trust, Eddie reached for Buck’s hand, giving it a squeeze.  Buck smiled, his eyes drifting closed.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Buck murmured.

The words held so much meaning, but Eddie wasn’t ready to let himself hope that he was reading it correctly.

“There’s nowhere I’d rather be more than here right now,” Eddie assured him.  “You scared the hell out of me.”

“Sorry.”

Eddie shook his head, still floored by Buck’s selflessness even though it was already one of the things he loved most about the other man.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Eddie chided him gently.  “It wasn’t your fault.  I’m just glad you’re okay.”

Buck blinked a couple of times to clear his vision, glancing down at his splinted leg.  He wiggled his toes, wincing as it caused pain to flare in his ankle.

“Mostly okay, anyway,” Buck amended.

As Buck turned to meet Eddie’s gaze, Eddie felt an uncomfortable swell in his vulnerability.  He was looking for an excuse, any excuse, to look away when the IV pump next to the bed sounded an alarm, startling both of them.  Taking the chance to break eye contact, Eddie let go of Buck’s hand and stood, popping open the infusion chamber on the pump and carefully tapping at a single small air bubble that had been obscuring the sensor.  The pump fell silent again and Eddie closed the chamber back up, deciding to stay standing because it made him feel a little less claustrophobic.

Hazarding a glance down, Eddie found Buck watching him.  Buck’s expression was thoughtful, calculating but blunted by the lingering cobwebs of the anaesthesia and pain medication.  Out of the corner of his eye, Eddie saw Buck’s hand come up; a sign for him to take it again.  Eddie chewed his lip for a moment before relenting and taking a seat again, reaching out once more for Buck’s hand.

“Are you okay?”  Buck asked.

Eddie shook his head, smiling a little incredulously.

“You had a ladder truck dropped on  your ankle a few hours ago and you’re asking if I’m okay,” he reiterated.

Buck shrugged, squeezing Eddie’s hand, stroking a thumb over the back of it.

“I can tell something’s on your mind,” Buck explained lightly.  “My leg may be broken, but my empathy still works.  What’s going on?”

Eddie set his jaw, glancing away for a moment again to strengthen his resolve.  He wasn’t sure he could look at Buck when he said it.  He didn’t think he could bear being face to face if Buck didn’t return his feelings.  Reflecting back on everything that had happened that night, though, he borrowed strength from Buck’s show of courage, will, and resilience.

“This, all of it, scared me so badly because I didn’t know if you were going to make it, and that I wouldn’t get the chance to tell you,” Eddie said in a rush, his words nearly garbled by his haste to say them before his determination dried up.  He hadn’t planned on leading with an outright confession when he finally found the courage to admit his feelings, but he’d been too shaken by nearly losing Buck to wait a moment longer or pussyfoot around.  “I love you.”

For a moment, the only sound in the room was the suddenly faster chirping of Buck’s heart monitor.  Eddie frowned, concerned by the new onset of tachycardia, his mind combing through possible causes for it - pain, pulmonary embolism, anaphylactic reaction to one of his medications.  Buck squeezed his hand again, insistently, and Eddie forced himself to look Buck in the eye.

“You served multiple tours in an active war zone, you rappel down cliffs, you run into burning buildings when everyone else is running out,” Buck said, a quiet incredulity weighing on his words.  “But you were afraid to tell me you love me?”

Eddie’s entire world nearly crashed down at that moment as Buck’s glaringly obvious failure to return the sentiment hung in the air between them.  His own heart rate skyrocketed and a strong feeling of fight-or-flight gripped him.  Buck’s soft, wordless noise of disbelief did nothing to help his nerves.

“Eddie,” Buck said so softly that Eddie thought he might crack.  “I love you, too.”

Eddie couldn’t hear anything over the rush of his own heartbeat in  his ears for a moment as Buck’s words registered.  It took him several long seconds to process what just happened and when he did, he could barely believe it.  

“Yeah?”  He asked, his voice reedy, strained.

Buck chuckled, propping himself on an elbow in an attempt to get closer to Eddie.

“Yeah,” he assured him emphatically.  “Yeah.”

The tears came then and Eddie had not been expecting them.  Relief wasn’t something he was used to crying over, but he hadn’t realized until that moment the enormity of the weight that had been on his shoulders as he’d carried those words unsaid around with him.  He laughed softly, almost slightly hysterically, and let out a long, shaky breath.

“Come here,” Buck said gently, patting the bed beside him.

Eddie didn’t need to be asked twice.  He stood, letting go of Buck’s hand just long enough to drop the bed rail before perching himself on the edge of the mattress.  Buck’s palm landed on his thigh, its weight warm and grounding, and Eddie covered it with a hand of his own.  They sat in a companionable silence for a while, Buck’s eyes fluttering closed as the exhaustion from the day’s events caught up with him and Eddie watching him closely, memorizing his face, the moment, replacing the fear and anxiety from earlier with something decidedly better.  

“Glad we had this talk,” Buck said thickly a while later, his head lolling as the morphine reared its head again.  

Eddie chuckled, reaching out to tuck Buck’s blankets in around him to keep him comfortable while he slept.  He reached up, brushing a loose curl away from Buck’s forehead, trailing his fingertips down Buck’s cheek, cupping his face gently.

“Me too.”

[fandomsilhouette]

meet me halfway (i hope you’ll stay) part iv

Riposte, parry, advance, slay, watch the fencers fight today. Pull the mask down, keep it tight, one of them will win the fight this very night the darkness shutters, then off the butterfly will flutter onto wristbands and broken hearts, secrets and counterparts that fall apart, don’t start this fight they cannot win, for they don’t know who they have been. 

Happy @felinettenovember​, y’all! This is actually the last of the angst arc, and the last two days of the month will come towards a resolution and cathartic fluff; luckily, the nonlinear timeline means that you’ve read the character development before today’s instigating catalytic event, so we can move directly into the healing. I wrote this entirely on @musicfren​‘s support and baby cousin’s hype (she doesn’t know, but I love talking to her, it gives me so much energy to create), and I hope you feel it in the story. 

Part 1 here. Part 2 here. Part 3 here. Part 4 below. Part 5-6 coming.

Marinette splays out in the playground grass and tucks into his side, and Felix curls up around her near-protectively, except they both know which one is the dreamer, which one is the doer. Felix always argues it doesn’t make sense to assign identities so unilaterally, that both of them dream and both of them do, and Marinette scrunches her nose and says he’s ruining the aesthetic of the ideal, and that they do pick roles in contexts even if they switch later, and she yanks on her ponytail if he agitates her enough. Felix thinks it’s pretty cute and doesn’t let up until she pouts at him in that crinkled nose, scrunched eyebrows kind of way.

She’s making that face now, half annoyed, half wholeheartedly upset, tracking Chat Noir as he races gleefully across the nearby skyline.

“Not a fan of our resident alley cat?” Felix teases, bumping into her shoulder with his head. Her expression sharpens, more pronounced in its disgust, and she shakes her head against the grass until stray leaves are caught up in her hair. Felix laughs and picks them out, one by one. “Why not, then?”

“He’s a bad partner. It shows.” Marinette speaks in clipped tones and impatient, twitchy gestures, like there’s more she has to say and is tamping down the impulse, vicious and unforgiving with her own self.  

“Partnerships take two, though,” he comments idly, “It’s Ladybug’s fault just as much as his.”

Marinette is already scrambling backwards, rolling out of his arms the way she’s never done before. “What? Why would it be? Chat Noir is no hero. Chat Noir is the one who doesn’t keep his word. Chat Noir is the one who doesn’t show up, who doesn’t plan or lead or even follow. He’s a hero under his own agenda and no other, and that’s nothing more than a little boy with eyes too big for his heart and greed bigger than any akuma.” She’s panting as she comes to a stop, shocked to find herself no longer speaking, as if there was more she kept saying that never managed to make it past her vocal chords, a screeching halt directed by long earned muscle memory and desperation.

She’s pushing to her feet, agitated, pacing, so Felix stumbles up to match her. “Ladybug does too much.” He leans back against the tree they’ve been lazing under and crosses his arms to look at her.

“How could a hero possibly do too much.” It’s not a question when she asks and she makes sure he knows it.

“It’s-- Paris is going to collapse one day!”

“Of course it is!”

“So why won’t she just let it?!”

“Why would she?!”

They’re matching each other tone for tone, tomb for tomb, step for angry forward step until they manage to notice where they are, find themselves in each other’s space, crowded in by the anger and frustration.

“...she needs to let Paris crash.” Felix waits, expecting an interruption, but Marinette has settled back down onto her heels and is waiting for him to explain. “She keeps picking up all the slack, carrying a weight that’s not hers,” and at that Marinette huffs a wry agreement, so Felix feels encouraged to keep going. “And as long as she does, no one in the city is ever going to learn to bear their share of responsibility. She’s going to break under the pressure, and as long as the city isn’t prepared, they’re not going to handle it, Marinette, they’re going to break. We need to practice, we need a controlled crash, we-- we’re going to destroy ourselves because some little girl thought she needed to do everything on her own power, like some kind of control freak--”

Marinette snaps. “You would know about that, wouldn’t you! You have no idea the way--” her words dry up in her throat, and Felix crows about this evident proof that she has nothing of substance to say at all, now that she’s finding herself speechless.

“You’re right, I would know about that, because I’ve lived it, you’ve seen me! And I had to learn to fall and get back up on my own, I never stopped until everyone around me stopped cleaning up my messes all the time! And I never learned to trust anyone until I learned to let go, and I felt so. Much. Better. Ladybug should try it,” Felix adds snidely, just because he knows it’ll rile her up.

It does.

“How! How can she try it, when you fell and left a crater with a wreckage diameter the size of your personal bubble of three whole people, and had your mother and your teachers and me. Who do-- does Ladybug have, who’ll hold her hand when she scrambles back up? Hers would level the city and ripple through the country from there and there’s no one around to pick up the pieces.”

“That’s why she has to do it now!” Felix doesn’t realize he’s shouting until he is, and he doesn’t know how to stop. He wants to, he wants to, he wants to; he remembers being the kind of person who shouted and feels the pressure of all the work he’s put in to be better, live up to someone else’s standard of good, and scrabbles for purchase on this improved self.

“That’s why she can’t!” Marinette isn’t yelling. She’s heartbroken, and it’s clear across her face, and Felix cannot find the piece that makes this puzzle make sense. She’s never even been akumatized.

“You have no idea the way Ladybug has destroyed civilians.”

She recoils, struck. Her voice is quiet when she speaks. “Don’t I, though?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

And then: “Okay. You’re right, I’m sorry, please--” Marinette is reaching out for his hand, hurt and humiliated and hating the way she might lose the only support she has left. “Please don’t go.”

But Felix has remembered how much work it is to be the kind of good that someone else decides is valuable, constantly stretching and straining to clear their expectation of good, right, kind. He slips into the same scowling boy he used to be and finds an old chest of tools tucked up against a wall lined with new weapons in his arsenal of cruelty and self-protection. He takes one, and fires.

“You don’t know how to be sorry. Not about this.” He shakes her hand off and stalks away. Felix was so used to holding onto Marinette, gripping her hand or leaning on her shoulder or tucking an arm around her waist, that walking through the places they used to haunt without her feels lost, untethered, like he’s drifting through a graveyard of corpses that have yet to pass away. It feels like he’s come home.

Ladybug spends the night on rooftops, avoiding streetlights and windowsills and her own tempestuous thoughts, trying to flee faster than the burnout can catch up to her and make its home in her body, swinging from one place to another hoping to catch enough height to clear the bar for a city’s expectation to be good, right, kind. The city’s expectations to be a hero, just like she’s always lived up to, always will so long as there’s nothing below her to fall onto. So long as there’s something left to lose.

They don’t look at each other for a week, and avoid each other altogether when cold winter falls and they settle into break. 

[secretsniper2]

Part 3: Well Hung

My Master was right to lock my pussy behind a wall of steel, I constantly woke up to find my hands caressing the fluid that would run around the belt, my need evident and throbbing clear to me but in my belt there was nothing I could do but roll over and go back to sleep. 8am, my usual routine is stopped right out the gate by my belt, clearly meant to skip it Im greeted by my Master in the doorway, I stand completely naked save the belt locked to my hips. He steps towards me and tell me to not bother getting dressed, and puts a latex hood over my head, my hair black now (did he dye my hair overnight?) pushing through the hood to form my ponytail as he laces me into my latex face. Arms placed behind my back im cuffed in place and a posture collar locked around my neck with a leash attached. Following the leash im led into the main hall of my Masters home and I see something new, something that wasnt there last night. My Master clearly worked through the night to complete this device, largest device Iv ever seen he takes me into the middle and unleashes me. Locking a chain to my posture collar more restraints are added all over my body, my upper and lower arms get binders locked on with chains, wrists too, Waist gets 1 and thighs, shins and ankles for their own. unlocking my hands from behind my back my Master steps back, marvelling at his work.

Holding a large remote he presses a button and all the slack in my chains vanish, held tight by the chains my actions are clearly not mine to decide. Spinning a dial Im lifted into the air 3 feet, and pivot forward, my arms move behind my back and meet elbow to elbow as my knees bend back and my feet meet my hands and Im amazing this device can pull you so smoothly. Stepping towards me and raising me up to meet his gaze my Master places his hand on my cheek and with a smile moves to remove my chastity belt, with my wet sex exposed to him, fluid running faster and harder with each passing second he takes a deep breath, savouring my scent as I try meekly to move my hands a little lower to cup my pussy. My Master simply puts a finger on my labia to draw a instant reaction from my body, a gasp and a moan follow as he rubs up and down my lips carefully with a smile on his face. My focus is broken by a knock at the door, my Master going to answer I see a woman standing there talking to my Master. She is a tall woman, the high heels helping with that, a long, black latex dress drapes down her slender thighs as she gazes over at me. Ruby red lips and beautiful blue hair running freely down her back, closing the door my Master leads the woman to me and says aloud, “this is the Slave i was telling you about.” the womans eyes widen, her red lips part and my eyes are drawn to them as she speaks, “for how long can i play?” “how long are you in town for?” my Master responds with a chuckle.

Licking her lips making them shine flawlessly as my Master takes a seat infront of me, the woman circles around, like a bird of prey having found its next meal she scans my entire body with a hunger in her eyes that sends a shiver down my spine. A touch of her finger ends the shiver before it reaches my sex, all my focus is on that 1 finger, tracing its way over my limbs, seemingly scaring my flesh with its burning hot touch Im sure to melt no matter what this woman does, eyes flying to my Master as he sits with a drink in hand with his eyes glued to mine. My pussy making its need known to all in the room as the puddle that was small moments ago grows larger by the second as the finger moves down my waist and over my smooth, firm ass and down my thigh. Clit throbbing as my pussy spasms at the sensory overload at just a mere finger I hear my Master say aloud “im keeping her in denial for now, think you can make her pussy even hotter than it already is, you be my guest.” All I hear behind me is the hum of a hungry animal as the finger loops over my thigh and scratches up the inside, drawing a line in my skin leading right to my puffy lips. Right there, just a little bit further!

Pain strikes my pussy as her hand comes down on my lips, a shriek of surprise and pain bursts from my lips as my pussy shakes in the aftermath. Finger still moving, painfully slow Im met with another wet slap to my pussy, and then just as suddenly a finger dives deep into my pussy. My gasp of pain elevates into a gasp of joy and bliss, my drooling pussy is getting action and I cant believe it! The finger withdraws with a wet pop as I hear her laughter behind me.

“Come now my dear, youd think id really let you cum when your Master wants your pussy denied of such pleasures?” thrusting a finger inside again for a moment before removing it a second time I know she is, quite literally pushing my buttons as her finger presses the only button that counts. The button that stands out, big and red and throbbing with need, a simple glancing touch is all it took to get my body right to the very tip of the edge a simple breeze would push me over, my eyes shooting into my skull as my brain tries desperately to comprehend what I just experienced. She waits till I have calmed down enough then repeats the glancing brush, sending me back to the peak. Looking ahead my Masters chair is empty, looking around for him I hear him laugh behind me as I hear him give the succubus something, what could he have given her. I am greeted with a smile on his face as he looks at me on his way back to his seat.

“Enjoy the ride, Slave.” is all Master says as my urethra is jabbed with something long and hard, my juices serving to lubricate it so it slides in easily as she proceeds to sound me. The pain quickly being overtaken by pleasure as Im fucked in a hole I never considered fucking before, but shes watching me. Pulling it out before I crest the ridge of pleasure Im left to moan and beg for release, my Master stands and grabs a blindfold and a spider gag, taking away my vision and ability to speak he takes great pleasure in my loss of senses. I don't need eyes to know hes hard, and hell probably use me sooner or later.

My clit still throbbing dangerously close to the edge the woman starts to caress it with, what is that sensation? oh god no! its a brush, she circles around my inner labia with the bristles of the thin brush and I cant stop her at all, she eases the head of the brush against my clits hood and it slips between them, rubbing my clit at its very core removing it the second before I would otherwise cum hard! This torture would carry on for some time of painfully hard denials at the last second before my Master pushes a button and flips me over in the air.

My breasts now facing the roof and the device that holds me begins to pull my neck up, rising to meet the demand my mouth presses into the womans pussy. She is done playing with my cunt, now Im to play with hers, and she isnt forbidden to cum so within minutes of my talented tongues assault on her my face is glazed with her juices but she still holds strong. Clearly seeking more from my mouth she presses down and my tongue dives in deep, tasting the womans pussy as her cum drools into my mouth and down my throat. Her warm folds locked around my mouth as she grinds my face into her pussy, cumming again and again.

“shes very talented with her tongue, and her pussy wont stop shaking, i can see her clit from here!” she says with orgasmic bliss in her voice

“i know how to break a slave” My Master replies, and he isnt wrong. Im broken, his plaything to do with what he wants.

The woman stops grinding into my open mouth and my face is coated in a thick layer of her juices, I start to think its over as my Master takes my mouth for his own use. Driving his hard cock down my throat my tongue naturally wraps around the shaft as I accept my Masters meat in my throat, thrust after thrust Im rewarded with a hot burst that flows quickly down my throat. Removing my blindfold Im treated to a sight I haven't seen in a long time, my Masters cock inside a pussy. pumping in and out, oh how I wish it was my cunt he was plowing as he thrusts harder into the woman and her back arches in erotic bliss, my Masters hand gripping her blue hair as he continues to fuck her to orgasm. Im treated to a first class show as my Master and the woman continue thrusting into each other, orgasm after orgasm they wont stop taunting me. The woman constantly bragging about how good it feels to cum knowing my pussy is denied and having my clit throb making it all the worse!

So there I hang, fixed in the middle of the room watching my Master and the woman fuck to orgasm over and over again, I cant even look away, their moans, their screams, flooding my ears and my pussy with need! They finally stop their exhibition match at my expense and my Master reveals my new belt, it has a long slick metal dildo where my asshole would sit, and another thinner pole for my urethra, nothing for my needy box though. I moan helplessly as they both set to lock my body back in its cage. Flipping me over and standing me upright, the woman gives me a deep kiss, tasting her own juices on my lips as her tongue fucks mine with gusto and my Master escorts her to the door. I manage to make out “we should do this again soon” as they kiss on the cheek and she leaves me to my denial with my Master.

Locking my feet in ballet heels before removing my restraints I am left to wobble on jelly legs as my arms are locked in a strict reverse prayer binder with elbows meeting in the small of my back, he says this is just beginning and at that thought my pussy clenches a little. A corset around my waist to make breathing more difficult when combined with my latex mask and posture collar, blindfolded once more Im left in the dark as my neck gets yanked and I lurch forward in my toe crushing boots. Stepping forward a few paces Im forced to my knees as Im pulled over and down, my Masters got a hard cock again and its my life's mission to sate its lust as I take it in my mouth and down my throat. My Master not even helping me as my latex coated head bobs up and down on his member and he cums down my throat. Pulling me back he takes in my appearance. “you look amazing if i do say so myself.” he says with a smile, I can hear his joy in his words as he stands me back up and turns me around and with another yank, Im walking again.

Hard to focus on where hes leading me to, he keeps rearranging things while I sleep and my inserts are only adding to my frustration. The pain in my feet far from over as the inserts inside me are fixed to the belt, every step making them sway side to side inside me, though not enough to make me cum, I cant cum from anal or he wouldn't have put 1 in my ass. Continuing to lead me into a room he fixes me in place and pushes a tube in my mouth, unscrewing my urethra and pushing a tube up into my bladder. Pressing a few buttons Im forced to walk forward as he laughs beside me. Its a treadmill! With no way to get off as Im completely secure and forced to march on in silent obedience. Unable to draw breath through the tube my nose is uncovered and fluid pours down the tube and into my mouth, Im hesitant at first but my Master commands me to drink and so I do it since it is “your lunch after all” he said as he turns and leaves me to your walk. the fluid running into my mouth periodically consists of oatmeat, vitamins and minerals and 3 types of aphrodisiacs. Every step hurts my poor enslaved feet and legs but what could I do besides walk on the path my Master has set for me?

2 hours later my breathing is ragged and hoarse as my Master returns to stop my walking, unhooking me and leading me back to the lounge he lays me down and frees my toes from their prison. I moan as the boots slide off. Removing my belt from my waist he sits me down in the bathroom and tells me to relieve myself. following his command I do as Im told and he cleans up after me, reapplying my belt with little resistance as Im exhausted now and very tired from my walk, he leads me back to my room and lays me down, releasing my arms and removing my corset and latex hood he rolls me over and with a kiss on my forehead I drop straight to sleep. He pats my ass knowing that my pussy is safe behind that wall of cold steel and goes to set up the house for the party tomorrow, knowing I will be asleep the rest of the day and through the night. My Master always knows how to put me to sleep.

[elai-okonma]

Chapter 7. Legion II

IM SO SORRY FOR THE WAIT, IVE BEEN SICK >.<

Word count: 1,234

Celestial Realm

  “W-what?? What the actual fuck are you talking about?!” You shriek.

  Michael snorts, “Exactly what I just said, MC. Once again, not so good with the listening.” He says with a vindictive smile.

  “Why do you want to make a pact with me, for?!” 

  “Because, after our meeting at The Teiten I decided to do a little digging up on who you are, and I gotta say, I was intrigued by what I found out.” 

  You become a little worried by this. What exactly did you find out about you?? That you’re a Demon fucker lover?? Because oh boy that was going to be an interesting and awkward conversation. You clear your throat, about to speak up when the Archangel does it for you.

  “I found out that you are a descendant of Lilith! MC, why didn’t you tell me?!”

  You release a breath you didn't realize you were holding. So that’s what he’s talking about.

  “Well I mean, I didn’t think my lineage was of any importance?? I was human before I died.  I wasn’t born an Angel.”

  “Even so,” Michel presses on, “you have Angelic blood flowing through you, and so, I’d like to form a pact with you. If anyone is worthy of Angelic power with this high of a caliber, it’s you MC.”

  You remember the stories you’ve heard about Lilith from the brothers. Even though you didn’t know her, you knew she was someone of high status. Michael must really be serious to make this offer, then. He’s not just some common Angel, and he not only wants to make a pact with you, he wants to grant you some of his power, as well?? You want to ask him what his ulterior motive is, but you decide against it. 

  Meanwhile, your two besties haven’t said a single word. They were just watching this exchange go down, and you were sure you’ve never seen their eyes so huge. 

  “LET’S DO IT.” you say before Michael can get another word in.

  He loves your determination and he would be lying if he said he didn’t want to see how far he could take it. Take you. It takes a lot of energy, both physical and mental, to have such a gift bestowed upon someone. And it doesn’t come for free, either. There's always a price to pay, though it was nothing like making pacts with Demons. No soul to be tortured for all eternity... No,  to make a pact with an Archangel would mean to be…

  “HOLD UP.” Elai says, eyes still big as saucers. 

“What, Elai?? What is there to think about??” you comment.

The two Angel’s take you aside and whisper: 

 “There’s PLENTY to think about, MC! Do you know what Michael is asking of you-”

 “I DON’T CARE WHAT HE’S ASKING OF ME, I WANT TO GO BACK TO MY DEMONS, I WANT TO GO BACK TO THE DEVILDOM, I NEED THEM TO KNOW THAT I’M OK.” you hiss at your friend. 

  As if on cue, Michael steps up and asks one more time:

  “MC, please?? Will you form a fact with me??”

  “Yes.”

  Kyo and Elai turn and walk away. You didn't know it yet, but your stubbornness was going to cost you. Your Angel’s had tried to warn you, but you refused to listen, and when the time was right, you were going to find out exactly what it meant to form a fact with an Archangel.  

  “Then it is done.” Michael says with a satisfied smile. 

“When do we start??” you say without hesitation. 

  Oh how Michael loved the look on your face. He knew he made the right decision by choosing you. You looked so delectable to him, he could hardly stand it. 

  “Right now. I don't want to waste a single moment. You’re going to have a rough journey, MC. I hope you’re prepared for what is coming, and what lies ahead.” 

The Archangel is serious now, and for a second you almost think about changing your mind. Almost. From what you’ve heard about him, you knew he was a serious person, but the look in his eyes right at this moment has you wanting to decline his offer. No. You have to do whatever it takes to be with your Demons, no matter the cost. You already agreed to fall for them, there couldn't be a bigger price to pay. Or so you thought…

  Michael steps closer to you now, and your heart starts racing. He’s so intense, you think to yourself. It reminds you of Lucifer. There’s something hidden in his stare, and suddenly your nerves are screaming at you to get away. Stand tall, MC. He wouldn’t do anything to harm you, and even if he did, I doubt anything could compare to the feeling of dying. 

  As he leans in, he whispers something into your ear, and before you could form the words to reply, his lips are on yours. Your eyes are blown wide open as the Archangel kisses you, hands coming up to cup your face. You wanted to push him away but with his mouth roaming over yours, it felt like you were melting. No, literally. It was hot, too hot. Your body was burning from the inside, and you wanted to scream out but Michael held you against him. There was nowhere to go as all the nerve endings in your body felt like they were being shredded. WHAT IS THIS?? WHAT’S GOING ON?! You scream internally.

  Just when you thought you couldn’t take it anymore, Michael lets his grip on you loosen and you immediately throw your head back and scream out. A scream so intense that it literally shook the Heavens, as a blinding blue light shot out of your mouth. The Archangel lets go of you and steps back. You feel your body lift off the ground, your skin vibrating and your throat raw as the scream continues to rip from you. 

  You thought your jaw would break, you thought your eyes would melt out of your skull from the heat, your neck and back couldn’t hold this backwards position anymore. You just wanted it all to end. Then, as your vision started to black out, you felt your body give in, going slack as you fell into Michaels arms. 

  Elai and Kyo come sprinting in, shouting and rushing to your side. 

  “MC?? MC!!” 

  The noises sounded distant, echoing off the marble walls. In a hazy moment you thought about the Demon brothers. Lucifer, Mammon, Leviathan, Satan, Asmodeus, Beelzebub, and Belphegor. You were doing this for them. No matter what it costs me… You call out to them in the darkness.

  “MC??...” it was Lucifer’s voice, “w-what, what i-is this??...”

  Your eyes shoot open as you suck in air, sitting straight up. You were sweating, and your jaw was in more pain than when Belphie had tortured and abused you. You were afraid to speak, almost certain your jaw was broken. Fuck, the pain. It’s too much… You feel the same heat as before, except this time it's soothing. Your mouth starts to water as the pain in your jaw slowly subsides. When you feel the warmth fading away you attempt to speak:

  “W-w-w-what…” You mumble, but you were shaking too much to continue. 

  That was all you could get out before you fell back to the ground and passed out. 

[druid-for-hire]

UNSWAYED PT. IV

(pt. i) (pt. ii) (pt. iii) (pt. v) (epilogue) (askblog)

this update consists of a bit of the trek back to hadestown and the workers’ revolution that lasts the summer until persephone’s return in the fall, and being granted the chance to leave at last--to leave for real.

thank you so so much to all my friends @supercantaloupe​, @unholy-boi​ (who helped write the Riots sect), @damondaunnodyke​, & @s-aint-elmo

persephone has left again and sets to repairing the world up Top after the hurricane, now that she’s helped the lovers.

orpheus and eurydice are... on the exodus from the Beyond. it’s a long road--it’s a long walk. takes a week or two.

kampê slinks into the shadows and hides, bitter, among the smokestacks. she hurts and she fears. hades will come for her, she knows, but she knows this place far better than he--that man barely checks up (hence how her grip on the place has gotten out of control), hasn’t been there for all of the rearrangements and updates in centuries. she knows where to hide. he will not find her in her domain. this is her darkness.

the imagery of the Exodus is very much akin to/inspired by the same Exodus of the movie Prince of Egypt. u kno that one?

looks like this, yeah, but like... obviously without the fish, because the walls aren’t made of ocean in this au, they’re just rock

and orpheus and eurydice leading the pack, shadowed looks of determination on their faces

again: this is where Promises (But Sadder) happens

as eurydice takes orpheus back to the main parts of hadestown, she notices too many things: his legs tremble, his hands shake, he breathes just barely too hard and clears his throat and coughs too much; and as they talk about the small things to fill some of the quiet, orpheus asks “what’d you say?” too often

(it’s hearing damage babey!)

of course, no one is spared from the hardships of hadestown. but she... does not like seeing those scars on orpheus

this long walk is also the time they tell each other everything that happened to them since they last saw each other

reminder: orpheus is still weak & kinda sick! and it’s a long walking journey. and everyone’s tired. sometimes they all sit down and camp for the “night” or something. 

the beyond’s not been kind to him; he’s pale as a corpse, with sunken eyes and hollow cheeks, looks as dead as he feels

(really, all the other workers from the Beyond don’t look much better)

it’s kind of a spooky sight when they stop for a few hours and he lays down to take a rest. the state he’s in...

and eurydice is a fairly good singer--nowhere near on orpheus’ (former) level, but good, and she probably sings him small tunes here and there just for the two of them, to relax and comfort and what have you

@axolotlbeans: at some point they stop for the “night” and orpheus collapses; eurydice, who’d been singing, gathers him in her arms and says, "Orpheus, you're shivering; is it cold or fear?"

and he interrupts her, burying his face into her neck and softly rasps "Just keep singing" in the smallest, weakest voice 

when they arrive. it is... a lot.

the long train of people is... heavily distracting. and they seem to come out of nowhere--a lot of hadestown wasn’t even aware there was a Beyond ‘till orpheus got banished, and then they didn’t know the name or what it was, just that he got banished somewhere. even the foremen turn to see; everyone’s sort of like. uh. what the hell is going on? and work sort of stalls out a little bit

eurydice and orpheus go straight to hades and present their demands to let them go. let them all go. blah blah blah some other stuff it probably sounds fairer than that, i don’t have the brain energy to outline all their demands specifically

by the slightly edited words of my good friend supercanteloupe:

let us go, eurydice demands, and hades just laughs, jailbirds like themselves don’t get their freedom so easily. get back to work, songbird, and don’t let the foreman know you’ve been slacking. and all of the rest of you... you’d better return before you’re made to return.

they go, but they’re not done, not by a long shot.

they don’t go back to work.

orpheus cannot sing, but he is still a poet, and the workers have their voices too

the bristling unrest of Hadestown begins to develop into protests, and the protests turn into riots.

orpheus can craft all the words eurydice needs to say with her spirited and powerful voice, to hit every point to cause uprisings and to stab every point to whittle hades down

hades notices things are beginning to go wrong. machine malfunctions, damaged, outright broken; strikes, sit-ins. rolling blackouts. eurydice and orpheus come back and back, with more and more workers, the ones they led out from the beyond and the ones from the factories and mines, always to demand: let us go. 

and hades grows only more calloused and bitter. you failed your test, you don't get second chances. Players who break the rules are banned from play. 

and every time they turn back, back to their increased workloads and their stricter overseers and their hope now stretching thin, and their anger growing more

ok back to me writing: but enough pushing, and even the overseers are beginning to turn.

the furies, infamous guardswomen and union busters, are doing their best to do damage control. and they are fierce. they are vicious, nearly (but not quite) as bad as kampê, and there are three of them--but then there are only three of them, and they cannot possibly control every single instance of revolt when the ball gets rolling

eurydice and orpheus are now the leaders of rebellion, and both of them are marked for banishment. they have to run from god-king hades and stay out of the unrelenting sights of the Furies.

(and this also means they can’t work or the foremen still on hades’ side might turn em in. so they catch a break and a nap, finally, jesus christ)

but.

there is trouble (For hades) in the fact that kampê has practically gone missing. no matter how many are sent to the Beyond, now there is no one to stop them from just... making the trip back. sure. it takes a long time. about a week or so of walking, but they just... come back.

hades takes notice. hades visits the Beyond for the first time in so long and tries to find her, to no avail. the Beyond is far changed than when he last saw it and he does not have the time to spend to find her--he cannot step away from his children for more than a few hours, lest something go wrong again. this is just another inconvenience on his long, long list.

@lookoutitsregan: “they're legally allowed to leave after 15 minutes”

orpheus and eurydice will be dealt with by himself, and so they run--avoid him as much as they can, hide under his radar

by the words of unholy-boi: hades will not let go of his empire so easily. the building pressure only makes him clench his fists tighter, bend his back further, push further to his own breaking point (and towards everyone else’s). 

he’s more likely to go down screaming that he isn’t, more likely to cling hard and furious to his city, push his workers into the dirt and further lose persephone in the process, the further this goes, the more against him, the more likely he is to furiously, dangerously fight back. 

as summer turns late, hadestown doesn’t soften like hades may have had it for persephone in years long since past, hadestown turns from city to warzone

ok back to me again

for the songbirds: there’s the riots and them narrowly escaping hades like all the damn time while he pushes everyone else to their limits

and yet they refuse to be pushed and usurp their foremen as fast as he reinstates things

revolutions usually have unifying symbols of a sort, and the many isolated revolts do eventually coalesce into this all being an outright revolution--a workers’ movement, if you will.

the red carnation. though they don’t have it, they all remember seeing in orpheus’ hand before he was banished--the one solid sliver of the aboveground anyone saw in a long time

@s-aint-elmo: the red carnation becomes their symbol--though they don’t have it, they paint it in hidden alleyways and abandoned factory walls. they have red paper flowers and red cloth tucked into pockets and tool belts

or the red of some banner that waves in the acrid smoke-wind of hadestown’s false air fronts

flowers, painted and made and substituted, are cropping up all over hadestown, and in increasingly more obvious spots. life is blooming in the underground for the first time in so long

OH ALSO, another fun layer of symbolism with the red cloths:

in the staging of actual hadestown, when orpheus sings "and they're gonna bend their branches down and lay their fruit upon the ground; the almond and the apple, the sugar and the maple" the ensemble is on the tables, reaching over eurydice like tree branches in a sort of ^ formation; on "almond" and "apple," the first two layers pull out and dangle white cloth, but on "sugar from the maple," the dude at the top dangles a red one and drops it into eurydice's hands

so there’s that!

also being the bounty of spring above...... rejecting the underworld. some shit like that

in a musical there’d definitely be a sort of revolution song

like uhhh... Why We Build the Wall II. it’s Different this time. it’s not about the circular logic of the wall, it’s about rebelling against the order hades has set for them

There’s so many lines that can be drawn from elsewhere in the musical to be inserted into this

Why do we build the wall, my brothers, my sisters?

He said the wall would bring us peace, the wall would keep out the enemy.

mister hades set us free to work ourselves into the ground. a lot of souls have gotta die to make the underworld go round.

why are we digging out own graves for a living, if we're free tell me why we can't even stand upright?

some sort of rebellion/callback against “who are you to think that you can hold your head up higher than your fellow man?”

i’m gonna count to three, and then i’ll raise my head, singin’, one, two--!

(except they probably finish the count in this one)

also, because i am weak for really great chords being belted out by a big chorus and hearing every voice part slot together, because this is a revolution song with lots of people i think it should have that

everybody 👏knows 👏the 👏walls 👏have 👏ears 👏

thank u supercanteloupe & s-aint-elmo for ur additions on this

the fates’ voices still carry on the wind, hadestown’s false air fronts of stale and acrid air, but orpheus and eurydice have since learned to turn their backs to it

ALSO? Flags

with the revolution coming to span A Really Big Chunk of hadestown, most likely more than half, there’d probably be people putting up flags and banners

i’m just like, inspired by the imagery of the flag raisings in wwii and post-9/11, and also i’m thinking of les mis/french revolution in general not gonna lie

sure, the Furies are union-busters and come after any sign of revolution, but every revolution is a fight against something. there’s always blood spilled, what different is this one?

they can’t be everywhere at once and they’re not like the Fates--they get tired, they’re not omnipresent and omniscient, the people are not powerless

the flag is supposed to attract attention, the point is to be loud

and by god, they are screaming

this is what a steel mill looks like at night. hadestown was sort of already in a hazy blaze, but combo this with a revolution in its midst, with fighting and fire, and... well, it’s a mess

and through all the flames are the carnations blooming, painted and carved on walls and smokestacks and pathways

(it’s very poetic)

(tumblr will kill this post if i link to the source directly, so. photo taken by DragonWolfACe @ deviantart)

hermes still ferries on the train, but the schedule is all out of whack thanks to the strikes and riots turning the systems upside down. he witnesses plenty of the mess that hadestown has fallen into, and the fight the songbirds are fighting

he relays as much news as he can to persephone

(thanks @damondaunnodyke​ for helping write this bit w/ seph)

persephone... worries

she already snuck underground to help them once and a hurricane ravaged the Top for her absence. the songbirds have escaped, and now have to fight this fight for themselves--she can’t go back down to help them, because she has to bring the summertime to the Top, and she refuses to be the cause of another storm

so she’s stuck aboveground. 

and she’s uhh. stressing. drinking. worrying.

everyone can tell there’s something off, but she doesn’t want to dwell on it, insisting that everyone else should just focus on the good times. let me tell ya something that my mama said to me...

she tries to not stress--there’s nothing she can do right now, why worry, you know? unless she wants to get more gray hairs than she’s already got

but during one of those celebrations she almost says “let the poet bless this round!” before catching herself, remembering that she’s... not there

a lot of people give her a glance; why’d she stop?

but she picks herself back up again, only a moment's falter, and just toasts to life and summer

the end of summer.

the revolution rages on. it’s not calmed down--the very opposite, in fact, more ferocious than ever

(and thanks unholy-boi for basically writing this bit for me HBGFHG)

persephone knows something is wrong when the train isn’t early--isn’t on time, but in fact late to pick her up. the summer has stretched on longer than it should, and in some ways, that is just as dangerous as the winter going on for too long

hades has been getting ready to bring her home. it takes browbeating and strongarming to get the trains running, far too late for his liking.

at last the train comes for her, and when it is hermes who offers his hand to bring her onboard, she knows that things in the underworld are bad--an inferno, dangerous if not dire, and she wonders if the songbirds are still alive, or if they’ve gone and the revolution still rages without them

hades aches for his wife, but he dares not step away from hadestown for a moment. he’s become obsessed and absolutely determined to quell, to crush this rebellion

hades is breaking, but refuses to bend, hades has refrains where he refuses to sing but slips into poetry and catches himself halfway through, hades is breaking, he puts in people he believes he can trust and they turn on him out of desperation, hades is running out of places to desperately hold and he is breaking. hadestown is oblivion. hades is wearing a crown that mangled his head.

persephone steps off of the train, and is taken aback by the state hadestown is in

 the people feel her breeze in, and it is some relief, but the can’t tell how this will change things. if it’ll make things worse, if it’ll make it better

people ask for her aid; but she’s too busy looking around, trying to find the songbirds (after getting confirmation that they’re still alive) who are still hiding

and she finds them. she sees orpheus and eurydice (orpheus, who hades so clearly saw himself in, and eurydice, who she sees herself in) still fighting, still in love.

she sees hades’ mercilessness to the boy he sees himself in. she sees eurydice’s unending determination (in contrast to her own grown apathy) 

and she’s reminded of times before. song or no song.

she decides that this cannot keep going, and hades will keep going farther and farther until he fucking self-destructs at the end of his fall and she wants to catch him before that happens

hades raises his fist against his people, persephone takes his hand and she starts singing. the old song. holding his hand. protecting the people. 

la, la la la, la la la 

and he realizes what he’s doing, as music swells, as the rest of hadestown, quietly, starts to join her in singing. as her warmth, her natural warmth, surrounds him, and he smells flowers and feels pollen and sunlight, and he--

well, the ice around his heart starts to crack, and the iron starts to melt

she catches him before he breaks

His Kiss, the Riot is... different

more emotionally charged, i think, because of the fight he’s been fighting for so long, so fiercely and ardently. he’s much more emotionally compromised, stressed and strung out and now everything’s been turned on his head

he can’t just let them go, but he can’t make them stay. he definitely cannot make them stay. and if the songbirds leave, they will take almost all of hadestown with them

it’s not like... Hellfire Notre Dame levels of dramatic. it’s still quiet, dark, and brooding, but hades is. more of a mess, really

but he comes to his conclusion all the same

that’s about all i got on this. i just wanted to make a note. i thought it was important

the task is given: they can walk, but eurydice must walk in front, and orpheus must follow behind. she must not turn behind to see if orpheus is following--if he has not collapsed, and she will not be able to hear if he has. if she turns, she may return above, but her lover will return to hadestown. 

it’s given to eurydice instead because while she might be harder to instill doubt in, she’s as much susceptible to loneliness as any other. she may have been alone for so long, but she is desperate to not be alone again. and orpheus is still weak--still sick, and she fears he might give out before they reach the top, as much as he assures her he’ll be fine

and if they fail, well, they keep the poet, who was damned to hell anyway--a sentence is stronger than a contract

(Also, this is now Wait For Me III (the first being Orpheus on the way to Hadestown; second being Eurydice trying to find Orpheus; this is the third) and it is HUGE and GRAND, as the climax of the revolution. just as big, if not bigger than the bway version’s

(tho as per usual it’s tinged with sadness because of the circumstances, and the fact that, if this were staged, orpheus would be the only one not singing)

and then... doubt comes in

eurydice walks the path to the surface

hermes' warnings echo in her head, all the same he gave to orpheus in the normal timeline

it's cold

the fates badger her and bleed into her thoughts, systematically unwinding her confidence as she marches on through the dark

one foot after the other, she tells herself

after so long of turning her back to the wind, to the fates, she has learned to keep her head on straight

orpheus is not sturdy, especially now, but he is not so weak to fail on a walk like this--long, but simple, and upon even ground

he is there, she tells herself. he is strong enough to keep up.

his heart is strong enough. it has to be.

hades lied to everyone in the underground--hades lied to make hadestown, she thinks

hades...

just this once--

she chooses to believe he didn't lie to her.

(pt. i) (pt. ii) (pt. iii) (pt. v) (epilogue) (askblog)

bonus:

[whumpywhumper]

Soup

So @0idril0 authorized me to go ahead and post the next section of her Nico series which I wrote :) It is original author approved  

Continued from: here

Tagging: @castielamigos-whump-side-blog @captivity-whump @kungpao-giffy @doityourselfbombs @comfy-whumpee @gonna-feel-that-tomorrow @whumptywhumpdump @whumpitywhumpwhump @walkingchemicalfire @genesissane @imagination1reality0 @voidwhump

*** 

Sorina hummed while she worked, kneading the bread to go with her slowly simmering bone broth. She’d roasted the chicken before carefully separating the meat from the bones, adding them to her already chopped vegetables and water. 

The rest of the pack house was quiet. She’d woken a few hours after her fainting spell-and hadn’t that been embarrassing-to being warm and comfortable. Cocooned in sheets and a quilt she didn’t recognize, surrounded by the scent of soap and safety. It took her a moment  to recall where she was, but, as soon as she had, she crept from the room into the darkened hallway. Open doors revealed no one in the extra rooms, and absolutely no bedding on them. 

On silent feet (and she felt a flutter in her stomach when she realized Evan probably removed her shoes), she stole into the living room and found Kristy and her friends. Moonlight spilled over their sleeping forms, giving its soft illuminescence to the room. She had to smile at them, even in spite of the circumstances that made them do it, because it was just too fuckin’ cute. 

Kristy and Brian were on a pallet on the floor, every spare blanket, pillow, and cushion in the middle of the living room. The sucubi had braided her hair to sleep, taming her normally riotous curls, and the end of the braid was curled in Brian’s fingers, where he’d apparently fallen asleep playing with it. 

They were curled toward each other, his other arm under his head, like he’d been leaning on it to get a better look at her while they talked. Kristy’s face was slack with sleep, arms held crossed over her chest like she had since she was little. Their blanket was bunched around her, barely covering Brian, but it was obvious that she hadn’t just stolen them. 

Sorina shook her head, amused. I wonder how long that’s been going on. 

Clint had stretched himself out on the couch, one of his hands laying across Nico’s forearm like he couldn’t bear to not touch him even in sleep. The corners of her lips turned down, and she huffed the ghost of a sigh. She needed the full story. 

Propped in a chair next to Nico was Evan, his head tipped back and neck stretched at an awkward angle. His mouth was open, and every slight inhale drew out a small snore. In his lap was a clipboard, full of papers with times, medication names, and stats carefully listed. He clutched a damp rag in one hand, the other dangling to the side, a pencil underneath the chair from where it had dropped through sleep numb fingers. 

She smiled, letting her eyes soften and reached toward him, letting her magic soothe the worry lines from inbetween his brows. He needed to sleep. There was a lot of responsibility on him, he couldn’t afford to be so out of it. 

Stepping forward, around her sleeping sister and her unrealized paramour, her hand crept into Evan’s hair. The graying strands were soft under her fingers, but she didn’t linger. Gently, she tipped his head forward so that he wouldn’t wake with a crick in his neck. The exhausted man didn’t stir, only letting out a small snuffle of air as he settled in. 

They were all so tired, absolutely drained of energy, and all due to one poor victim of a crime she didn’t fully understand. Said victim looked like he was finally asleep. Actually resting instead of the delirious half-conscious state he had been in previously. His chest rose and fell rhythmically, the wet wheeze still audible, but he wasn’t panicked, and the rapid eye movement and twitching was gone. 

Leaning over the arm of the couch, she checked on Nico, touching the back of her hand to his forehead. The sweltering heat from before had lessened. Now, it was no longer the heat of a desert dune midday, but it was still warm, like she was holding her hand too close to a candle. 

Checking the clipboard in Evan’s lap, she saw that his last medication was listed about 2:15 a.m. Barely twenty minutes before. Evan must have fallen asleep fast and hard. 

Turning back, she brushed her hand through his hair softly, like her mother used to do when she was sick, and noticed it was cleaner than before. Evaluating him further, she noticed that his bandages were fresh and clean. They’d bathed him, apparently, the speckles and smears of blood that had been present across his skin washed clean. 

A curl of satisfaction unfurled itself in her belly,  hopeful that her work had actually made a difference to saving his life. He certainly looked stronger, and there’s no way he would have tolerated a bath in the state he was when she arrived. 

Settling on the arm of the lounger, she curled her hand against Nico’s fingers, mindful of the broken and misaligned bones. His fingers twitched, but he didn’t stir. 

Looking past the ulcerated wounds on his face and neck, Sorina noted his pale complexion, more than just blood loss and lack of sunlight. His blue eyes as he’d panicked while she worked and examined him called out to her, and she couldn’t help but be reminded of her little brother. That name still rang in her head like the biggest of bells in a church steeple. 

Nico. 

She wiped at a tear that tried to form in her eye, recalling her own brother’s cherubic cheeks and curly black hair. How both of them had looked so much like their mother that her father joked that when they were older people would think they were triplets. 

Viciously, Sorina chased away the image of them both laying still and unmoving on the asphalt, blood pooling across the black surface as she’d tried to get up and get away from the men with guns. Her face throbbing as she pushed her way into running, hands cut to shreds on glass. 

I don’t want to think about that. Stop it.

She took a deep breath, exhaling her pain as she laid Nico’s hand back to his stomach. Her Nico was dead and gone, but this one still needed help. The IV bag that Evan had set up would have fluids to keep him hydrated, but the injured man still needed nutrients. Everything he could get packed into a medium he could keep down. Plus, everyone else would need to eat too. 

So, a few hours later, Sorina found herself in a strange kitchen kneading dough. A red, plaid apron was wrapped around her, protecting her clothes from flour streaks. The kitchen was surprisingly well stocked, and she hadn’t found any difficulty in finding any ingredient she needed. 

Once it was closer to actual morning, she would make some real breakfast food, but the soup she was making had a majority of the nutrients Nico would need while being easy enough on his stomach to keep it down. Plus, she was making enough of it to last for days. 

She’d checked on Nico every fifteen minutes while she worked, making sure that he was still sleeping and stable. She had the feeling that Evan wouldn’t be very happy that he’d fallen asleep, but Nico was safe, and he needed the sleep. 

While she was separating the dough for its last rising, a strangled snort and the quiet thump of something on the carpet made her turn around. Wiping her hands on the apron, she went into the living room to find Evan leaning over Nico. His clipboard was on the floor, probably escaped when he shifted in his sleep, but it was ignored now. The beast master’s fingers were on the boy’s throat, checking his pulse and the tight wind of his shoulders relaxed as he found it.

“He’s alright, Evan,” she said softly, not wanting to wake the others. 

Surprised, he jumped and twirled on her, eyes flashing red for just a split second before he recognized her. He put a hand to his chest, breathing heavily as he leaned over his knees. “God, you scared the shit out of me,” he whispered. 

“Sorry,” a grin stretched her face and made her eyes crinkle. “I’ve been checking on him every fifteen minutes for the last two hours. I haven’t noticed any change.” 

Straightening, Evan signed, rolling his neck and running a hand through his hair. “Thank you, I didn’t mean to fall asleep. Here I was berating Brian for leaving him alone, and I went and did the same thing.” 

Sorina shook her head, coming further into the room to put a hand on his shoulder. “You needed the sleep, don’t beat yourself up. Nothing’s happened.” 

“But it could have.” 

“Anything could happen, but it didn’t,” she said firmly, cutting off that line of thought. It wouldn’t serve any of them. “Why don’t you check him over, soothe some of your worries, and I’ll bring you some tea.” 

He nodded, rubbing at the bags under his eyes and displacing his glasses before leaning back over Nico. 

When she came back, she held a steaming cup of tea in one hand, and a bowl of the chicken bone broth in the other. The broth was carefully strained with no heavy seasonings, but it still smelled wonderful to her. 

Evan was busy administering something to Nico through his IV port, but he tilted his head in question toward the bowl, eyebrow raised. 

“Figured he needs all of the liquids and nutrients he can get, especially if those are pain meds and antibiotics you’re giving him. It’s easy on the stomach, homemade, I think he can handle it just fine.” 

“Yeah, that sounds fine. You said homemade?” 

He sounded surprised, and she felt a wave of dry amusement. “Not all twenty first century women shun the kitchen,” she said, mock sternly. 

“My mistake,” Evan laughed, blushing sweetly. If she wanted, she could probably see the yellow, golden shivers of happiness twisting around the edges of his aura. But she was tired, and she wanted to look at the smile lines around the corners of his mouth more. 

Evan moved out of her way, taking the tea from her with a grateful smile. She settled on the arm of the lounger again, carefully setting the bowl on the side table so that she could spread a towel across Nico’s chest and neck. 

“Would you mind grabbing one of those small pillows, Evan?” She whispered, pointing at one of the ones that had escaped Brian and Kristy’s nest. 

Handing it to her, he settled back in his chair, watching her carefully. Sorina didn’t mind the scrutiny, it was far beyond her first time helping someone sick eat. 

Cradling Nico’s head in one of her small hands, she brought him up slightly, rubbing her thumb across his skin. Eyelids crinkling, Nico stirred, stiffening as he came closer to consciousness. “Hush, Cola,” she murmured, “it’s okay, just need to get some food in you, yeah?” 

Nico didn’t offer any protest when she slipped the pillow behind his head, blue eyes opening slightly to gaze glassily around the room. He didn’t seem to really focus on anything, but she started to feel the waves of fear building. 

Her heart cracked at that, and she shushed him again, rubbing her thumb across the middle of his forehead, “it’s okay, just some broth, nothing to be scared of.” 

No answer was forthcoming, but she saw his lips move slightly with unintelligible words. Steadying herself, she grabbed the bowl, dipping the spoon inside before blowing on the hot liquid. Testing it first, she didn’t want to burn Nico, she finally brought the spoon to his mouth. 

A cut off whimper made her pause, but Nico didn’t pull away, opening his mouth obediently at the feel of metal against his lips. Sorina took a quick breath, feeling her eyes widen slightly. She didn’t know what that meant exactly, but she could guess. 

Shuddering, she pushed her horror away. He needed this, she couldn’t get in his way. It wasn’t time to catalogue everything that had been done to him. 

Pouring droplets of the broth into his mouth, she murmured to him, “Drink, little bear.” 

His chapped and dry mouth worked slightly, letting the liquid slide down his throat. Sorina sighed when he didn’t choke or cough, bringing more liquid to his mouth quickly to take advantage of his limited strength. 

Apparently she was too fast, and he choked on a scared whine, face turning away from her. A low rumble to her side made her jerk, spilling a few hot drops of soup over her thumb. Clint raised his head, hair muzzy and eyelids sleep heavy, but the wolf’s yellow eyes locked on to her in an instant. Lip curling, she saw his incisors elongate, and she bopped him on the nose with the spoon.   

He flinched, startled, crossing his eyes to look at the spoon held threateningly in front of his face. “Knock it off, Rover, don’t make me spill this.” 

Evan snorted, slurping at his tea in an obvious effort not to laugh at his friend. She felt oddly accomplished. 

Clint grumbled, but his teeth returned to normal as he sat himself up, rubbing at his face. “What time is it?” 

“Same time it was yesterday,” she answered, bringing another spoonful to Nico’s mouth and getting him to swallow a few more drops. 

“Hardy har har,” Clint scowled, watching her feed his mate. 

Evan took pity on the barely awake werewolf. “It’s a little after five, we’re just trying to get something on his stomach for the new round of meds.” 

Yawning, Clint nodded, his shoulders slumping as he looked Nico over. He turned to Sorina, and the naked gratitude in his face made part of her anger at him crack. “Thank you, thank you so much for helpin’ him.” 

“My pleasure,” she acknowledged, concentrating on feeding Nico the broth. “Get some more sleep, Clint. The stronger you are, the more the bond can work to help him heal.” 

“Yes ma’am.” He laid back down, hand coming back to brush against Nico as he closed his eyes. 

Cutting her gaze over to Evan, she saw the lingering fatigue in how he slumped over his cup of tea. Gazing into the cooling liquid with a blank face. “You should go lay down, Evan, get a few more hours of sleep. He’s got his meds, and I’m wide awake. Still making bread in the kitchen, and I’ll have breakfast ready before his next dose is due. I’ll wake you up if anything changes.” 

Evan sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose and taking his glasses off. “You’re right. Thank you, Selene.” Getting to his feet with a heavy slouch, he set his tea aside and grabbed a blanket from the back of the couch. The other end of the sectional couch was empty, and he sprawled out on it easily. It only took a few minutes before she heard the sound of soft snores. 

Sorina helped Nico with a few more mouthfuls of broth, gently wiping his face of the drips that escaped his mouth. His eyelashes, what remained of them, fluttered against his cheeks as he ran out of energy. 

She set the bowl to the side, it was nearly empty anyway, and reached out to brush his hair back from his forehead. Humming, she settled him with soft touches, words starting to fall out of her mouth in a simple melody. One her mother sang to them when they were going to sleep. 

One she’d sung to Nico when he had nightmares, and kept singing as Kristy came into her life. When she got to the refrain, she trailed off, pressing a kiss to her fingers and placing it on Nico’s forehead. 

His eyelids fluttered, and he leaned into her touch. “Th..ks..’Rina,” he murmured, barely audible, barely intelligible, before sighing into sleep. 

She froze. Wide eyed. Breath caught in her throat. 

[pasteljeon]

Kura’s Ultimate BTS Fic Rec List - PART 1

Long overdue, here I present to you (part one of) the ultimate list (in no particular order) of authors & fics I’ve read and collected since joining Tumblr. These are people I admire, and whose works I find are beautifully, artistically written. Split into 3 parts bc tumblr said no to me and my fat list. 

Please do check them out and their entire masterlists when you get the chance, this is just a list of my absolute favourites from them! 

[Please also note most of these are rated m.]

Happy reading!

➢ Updated: 05.05.2019

♡ - Super Saiyan Highly Recommended

Author: @happy-meo

Masquerade I : 4/4 ↠ To secretly relieve your stress about your single life and your hard times at work, you cave and decide to give this mysteriously alluring club a chance. At Club Masquerade, you can indulge in your fantasies and indulge in who you really want to be without strings attached. So when you waltz in and realize you’re not exactly sure what you want, two of their best hosts swoop in and are more than willing to help you figure it out… But it seems you’re not the only one keeping secrets in your office.

     → Pairing: Jimin/Reader/Hoseok | Smut, fluff, mild angst

Masquerade II: Welcome to Burlesque & Balls : 8/8 ↠ Being the receptionist of Club Masquerade and working as a barista wasn’t quite enough to make your ends meet comfortably, so when a new place opens up nearby that’s looking for attractive females to perform in a neo-Burlesque club, you jumped at the chance for a new job and a chance to do something more than sitting behind a desk or counter. But just like your financial status, your love life wasn’t all too great either. When it seemed like all hope was lost, fate had other plans for you. Unexpected suitors waltzed into your life in various ways, and unbeknownst to each of them, you play the field, hoping to overcome your fears and finally find Mr. Right among them… But it seems you’re not the only one keeping secrets. 

     → Pairing: Jimin/Reader/Taehyung | Smut, fluff, mild angst

Masquerade III : 7/7 ↠ With Club Masquerade’s original hosts “graduating” one at a time, it’s up to the newcomers to pick up the slack and keep the customers happy. And who better to take the reins than the notorious Red Mask’s prodigy, Jeon Jungkook. But things become a bit difficult when you come into the picture, with your desire to do research on the rules of love and dating through your experience with your host. Will Jungkook be able to satisfy your curiosities… or will someone else?

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader/Mystery BTS member | Smut, fluff, mild angst

Masquerade IV: The Dark Side : 6/6 ↠ You were never lucky in love. Through disastrous dates, consistent unrequited crushes, and broken relationships, you’ve constantly been searching for someone to give you genuine love and romance. And through it all, one person had remained your constant shoulder to lean on. Although you had never seen his face, he had given you a sense of confidence and a place of comfort in Club Masquerade. The more times you’ve failed in love though, the more you realized that may be no one would ever choose you. However, one fateful encounter, thanks to your dog, made you want to hope one more time. Did fate bring you to the one who would finally end your streak of being broken-hearted? Or had the right guy been with you all along?

     → Pairing: Jin/Reader/Taehyung | Smut, fluff, mild angst

“First Meetings” Series : 7/7 ↠ How you first met them. | Fluff

Namjoon | Jin | Taehyung :“Sunflower Boy” | J-Hope : “Sun & Moon” | Jungkook : “Picture Perfect” | Yoongi : “Infires” | Jimin : “Flights & Fate”

Hug Me : 1/1 ↠ You and Hoseok were married, but the married life you thought you would be living is nonexistent now. You two were like strangers living in the same house. You knew his heart was no longer yours, but you still loved him. When the end of your marriage was near, you made him promise to stay with you for just one more month. One month was all you needed to finally let him go.

Sequel - Forgive Me : 1/1 ↠ How can one gain forgiveness from someone who is no longer in a position to give it? How can one be forgiven if they refuse to forgive themselves? How can one move forward to the future… if the past was so much better?

     → Pairing: Hoseok/Reader | Angst

Author: @jungk0oksthighs

Jealous : 2/2 ↠ domestic au

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader | Smut

Withdrawal : 1/1 ↠ Yoongi had been your brother’s supplier for years, you were familiar with his name and reputation but never cared enough to meet the man who was indirectly tearing your family apart. That was until your brother got himself into trouble, real trouble, and you found yourself on Yoongi’s doorstep with a very tempting offer. If he cleared your brother’s debts he would get the one thing he never even knew he wanted. You.

     → Pairing: Yoongi/Reader | Smut, angst, dark themes | druglord au

Infidelity : 1/1 ↠ You and Jin had been divorced for a year but you’re forced to see each other when your son is found cheating on a test. After being called into school you both agree to make more of an effort being civil with each other, but it’s not long before history repeats itself. Family dinners turn into stolen kisses and ruffled bedsheets, but there’s one problem with your new arrangement. Jin’s wife.

     → Pairing: Jin/Reader | Smut, angst, infidelity

Author: @floralseokjin ♡ 

Of the Sol : 1/1 ↠ A runaway, you’re not accustomed to the way the kind village that took you in live their life—worshipping and celebrating the dragons’ descendants. A story you only ever thought was legend, is that of real life, and you’ve fallen in love with one of this century’s dragon kin. The baker’s son, Kim Seokjin.; or alternatively, Seokjin is hiding a gold dragon dick under all that clothing…

     → Pairing: Jin/Reader | Smut, fluff | dragon!jin

The Devil Wears Armani : 5/5 ↠ You never imagined accidentally attempting to sell your soul to the devil would lead to this…

     → Pairing: Jin/Reader | Smut, fluff, mild angst | devil!jin, devil au

Memoirs of a Mistake : 16/16 ↠ A series of hook ups with Kim Seokjin, the college’s biggest fuckboy…

     → Pairing: Jin/Reader | Smut | college au, fwb au

Sequel - Lostmyhead : 1/1 ↠ Kim Seokjin is the worst thing you’ve ever done, quite literally. Hooking up with him—continuously, for months, is something you regret doing. Mainly because you now have a boyfriend and have seen the error of your ways (mistake!). However, even then, you can’t seem to escape him…or say no for that matter…;or alternatively, Jin somehow convinces you and Yoongi to have a threesome with him…

Pairing: Jin/Reader/Yoongi | Smut

Final - Crystallised : 3/7 ↠ Six weeks, that’s all it takes to forget about the threesome you shared with your boyfriend, Yoongi, and your past…fuckbuddy, Seokjin. After all, it’s no big deal. Yoongi and you are doing better than ever, there’s no reason to regret such a night shared. That is until you hear some gossip in the library one day, and then slowly, little by little, everything starts to fall apart… Can you begin to make sense out of all this confusion, or is it too late?

Pairing: Jin/Reader/Yoongi | Smut, fluff, angst | love triangle au

Best of Me : 1/1 ↠  Jimin has been in love with you, his best friend, since as long as he can remember. Struggling with his feelings he makes a terrible mistake, but maybe there’s a silver lining…? Maybe he can make you see what’s right in front of you…

     → Pairing: Jimin/Reader ft. Hoseok | Smut, angst | unrequited love au, cheating au, f2l au

Sleepy ♡ : 1/1 ↠ Jungkook’s never too sleepy for sex.

      → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader | Smut, fluff | domestic au

Author: @avveh

The Secrets Trilogy ♡ : 3/3 ↠ Park Jimin is the office’s oddball. Meek and quiet as a mouse, you never assume too much of him. Your mistake.

     → Pairing: Jimin/Reader | Smut, angst

Room for Dessert : 4/4 ↠ A boring company dinner gets a little bit spicy when you notice the tension between you and your table’s waiter.

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader | Smut, light angst | waiter!jungkook

Author: @sodoyouknowbts

One Night Stand : 12/12 ↠ A one night stand with Kim Taehyung turns into something you never would’ve expected.

     → Pairing: Taehyung/Reader | Smut, fluff | arranged marriage au

Autumn Night : 1/1 ↠ You attend an event to support Namjoon, who is the keynote speaker for the night. You can’t help but feel insecure about the attention and the advances he is receiving from the girls he lectures. You attempt to leave the event early, but he stops you, intent on reminding you exactly what you mean to him.

     → Pairing: Namjoon/Reader | Smut, fluff

Timelines : 8/8 ↠ Jin is a time traveler, trying to get a grip of his ability. He can’t quite figure out why he keeps travelling to times and moments with you.

     → Pairing: Jin/Reader | Fluff | time traveller au, soulmates au

Author: @army-author ♡

Puppy Loving : 1/1 ↠ Cuddling wouldn’t be complete without Min Holly, Yoongi’s dog, getting in your way.

     → Pairing: Yoongi/Reader | Fluff

Sequel - Puppy Bites Don’t Hurt Much : 1/1 ↠ When you and Yoongi fall out, Min Holly’s on a mission to make things right again.

Final - Pitter Patter of Tiny Paws : 1/1 ↠ Min Holly’s family is gaining a new member.

Mutual Muses : 1/1 ↠ After helping a young busker one Christmas, he goes on to earn fame and fortune. But he hasn’t forgotten you, or your kind deed.

     → Pairing: Jimin/Reader | Fluff | heir au

One Minute under the Mistletoe : 1/1 ↠ You say you don’t want to get back together with Taehyung, but your friends and the mistletoe above your head say otherwise...

     → Pairing: Taehyung/Reader | Fluff | boarding school au

Author: @dovechim ♡

Miss Communication : 1/1 ↠ Poly relationships can be complicated. Especially one where there’s an established hierarchy, and someone decides to break the rules. In a series of miscommunications between your boyfriends, you find yourself being the conveyor of peace, and something else that isn’t quite what you expected.

     → Pairing: Namkook/Reader | Smut, fluff | domestic au

Reset : 1/1 ↠ We are made of the pieces of what we remember, and we hold in ourselves the hopes and fears of those who love us. As long as there are memories to call our own, there can be no true loss. But Park Jimin has no such privilege.

     → Pairing: Jimin/Reader | Smut, angst | college au

A Serpent’s Flower (co-written w/ @jimlingss) : 2/2 ↠ The wizarding community has learned from its past mistakes, sure, but that doesn’t mean that house rivalries aren’t still an issue. What transpires between you and a certain Park Jimin seems to go far beyond just house enmity though - it’s downright personal, and one might even say you go out of your way to torment him. But when a love potion goes awry, it may just force you to walk in his shoes.

     → Pairing: Jimin/Reader | Fluff, smut | hogwarts au, hufflepuff!jimin, slytherin!reader, e2l au

Sequel - Sowing a Sapling ♡ (co-written w/ @jimlingss) : 2/2 ↠ What no one told you about ‘Happily Ever After’s’: the next day, you’ll still have to wake up and go about your life as per normal, because life isn’t a fairytale. You thought you had the rest of your life figured out: settling down happily with Jimin, ruling over all of Hogwarts with an iron fist as the Potions Master, and maybe, in the very distant future, starting a family of your own. But life, as usual, decides to throw a wrench in your plans. With a baby on the way and your husband insistently refusing all attempts at initiating sex, the arrival of a gorgeous new student teacher spells disaster for your marriage. If getting married to Park Jimin was the happiest day of your lfie, what does it say about the rest of your life?

Discipline and Punish : 1/1 ↠ When your brat of a boyfriend shows up unexpectedly at your workplace, you decide you have to teach him a lesson.

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader | Smut | sub jungkook

Edge : 1/1 ↠ Babyboy!Jungkook 

Songbird : 1/1 ↠ Vocal line basically takes turns breeding you. 

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Jimin/Jin/Taehyung/Reader | breeding au

Dark Side of the Moon : 1/1 + 4/4 drabbles ↠ Falling in love at first sight is cliche, not until it happens to you on a dark night in a lonely alley. But you’re only human, while Park Jimin is Alpha of his pack; it could never work out. so you resort to pining for him like a wolf howling at the moon, but when Jimin goes feral, that’s when everything changes.

     → Pairing: Jimin/Reader | Smut, fluff | werewolf au

The Airport Couple ♡ (co-written w/ @jimlingss) : 2/2 (1): The P[ass]enger from Hell ↠ As a TSA agent, you expect your job to be relatively easy, most passengers these days follow the rules to the T in order to avoid prolonging their custom checks. But not a certain Park Jimin, who seems to have a problem understanding what 100ml is, or the very simple fact that gadgets must be taken out of the bag, and bomb jokes are strictly off limits. Frequent traveller Park Jimin is your nemesis, but darn is he a cute one.

     → Pairing: Jimin/Reader | Smut, fluff | frequent traveller!jimin, tsa agent!reader

(2): Park Jimin’s Cock[pit] ↠ Talk about Angry Birds, and most people would immediately think of the mobile game app. But within your circle of friends, it stands for something else. It’s synonymous with Park Jimin, one of the most talented pilots from your batch who also just happens to have anger issues, or in other words, air rage. He is your best friend, but when you get teamed up with him as his co-pilot, you can only pray things don’t go south ... literally.

Pairing: Jimin/Reader | Smut, fluff | pilot au

Author: @jungblue

Hidden Stars : 5/5 ↠ It started out simple, but when your feelings start to grow for the idol who isn’t allowed to date, things get complicated.

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader ft. Yoongi | Smut, angst | idolverse

The T-Shirt Thief : 1/1 ↠ In the midst of your loneliness due to Taehyung’s absence, you decide that you need a distraction, which somehow manifests itself as going over to his apartment and stealing a t-shirt or two… or three…

     → Pairing: Taehyung/Reader | Smut, Fluff | idolverse

I Hate You, I Love You ♡ : 5/5 ↠ You hated him at seven, warmed up to him at twelve, and liked him at fifteen. Now the two of you are twenty years old and inseparable best friends… and you’re absolutely in love with him; he’s in love too—just not with you.

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader | Smut, angst | cheating au, best friends au

The Devil’s Change Up : 1/1 ↠ Majoring in athletic training means you have mandatory observation hours to perform with every single sports team at your school throughout the year, and so far it’s been going pretty great. However, when regrets from your past cause your rotation with the baseball team to become a little rocky, there’s one star pitcher who says that he can make it all better.

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader | Smut | college au, baseball player!jungkook

Author: @kittae

Carnal Cupidity ♡ : 1/1 ↠ Things are a little tense in your relationship with your boyfriend, an alpha wolf and leader of his own pack. After another fight, you’ve had just about enough and decide to take matters into your own hands when his heat approaches. Your methods, however, prove to be more effective than intended…

     → Pairing: Taehyung/Reader | Smut, fluff | werewolf au

Anemia : 2/2 ↠ Jungkook is a bored and thirsty vampire, desperate for something new, something fresh. And let there just be a new girl at his favorite stripclub. You.

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader | Smut | vampire au

Heavy Petting : 1/1 ↠ Your boyfriend is not just a cat hybrid, he’s also very needy! When you come home from work and you expect him to be all over you, you’re fairly disappointed to find he prefers a nap over some well-deserved quality time. You’ll make sure to pay him back for that.

     → Pairing: Jimin/Reader | Smut, fluff | hybrid au | sub jimin

Author: @gimmesumsuga ♡

Sweeter than Sweet ♡ : 80/? ↠ You never would have expected someone like Park Jimin to notice you.  As handsome and beguiling as he is deadly, you’re enthralled from the very moment you meet.  Addicted to his kiss and his bite, Jimin opens up your eyes to a whole new world of love, lust and seduction.

     → Pairing: Jimin/Reader/Yoongi | Smut, fluff | vampire au

See You ♡ : 2/2 ↠ The one where Taehyung notices you at a concert, and can’t help but want to see you again.

     → Pairing: Taehyung/Reader | Smut, fluff | idolverse

Orectic : 1/1 ↠ The one where you’re a hybrid in heat, and Hobi helps you out.

     → Pairing: Hoseok/Reader | Smut, fluff | hybrid au

Turn it Up : 1/1 ↠ The one where Jimin takes care of you - and you take care of him.

     → Pairing: Jimin/Reader | Smut, fluff | sub jimin

Author: @hobibliophile

Blue Blooded : 2/2 ↠ You’ve been happily married to Crown Prince Seokjin for months now. Or so it would appear to the public. What only you and the palace staff know your shameful secret: you never consummated your marriage.

     → Pairing: Jin/Reader | Smut, fluff | royalty au, prince!jin

Not what it looks like : 1/1 ↠ You run into the campus clown Taehyung when he’s in a weird situation but it’s really not what it looks like. Turns out, Taehyung is not what he looks like either.

     → Pairing: Taehyung/Reader | Fluff | college au

Try Hard ♡ : 2/2 ↠ Yoongi asks you to help him photograph the university rugby team, and you’re reluctant until you see Jeon Jungkook in uniform. Damn.

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader | Smut, fluff | college au, rugby player!jungkook

Author: @inktae ♡

Blue Orchids ♡ : 1/1 + 2/2 drabbles ↠ Hanahaki disease au, soulmate au

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader | Angst | unrequited love au

The Blue Notebooks : 1/1 ↠ Time travel au

     → Pairing: Jimin/Reader | Angst

The Raindrop Prelude : 1/1 ↠ Pianist au

     → Pairing: Yoongi/Reader | Fluff, angst

Author: @jincherie ♡

Silly Kitty : 2/2 ↠ When your friend Jungkook asks you for a favour you aren’t quite expecting it to end with you taking home the handsome cat hybrid he found in an alley.

     → Pairing: Jin/Reader | Fluff | hybrid au

Timid ♡ : 1/1 + 2/2 drabbles ↠ Jimin was by far the cutest person you’d ever seen, but he always seemed to avoid you, dodging activities and events that included you. That changes when his home is compromised and he finds himself staying with you while it’s being repaired.

     → Pairing: Jimin/Reader | Fluff | hybrid au

Butterfingers : 1/1 ↠ He had you at the first pebble he gave you.

     → Pairing: Namjoon/Reader | Fluff | hybrid au, teacher au

Wanted ♡ : 6/6 ↠ You were a deserter, a renegade, a wanted “criminal”. It was never in your plans to crash land on that planet, and it most certainly wasn’t in your plans to fall in love with it’s handsome ruler.

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader | Smut, fluff | space au, alien au, soulmate au

A Well Oiled Machine : 2/2 ↠ Your life takes a bit of a turn when you stumble upon an android in pieces, hidden in an alleyway in an area known for its shadows and debauchery. Taking him home to fix him might have been the best decision you’d ever made, but perhaps there was a little more to the android JK01-97 than you’d initially thought.

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader | Smut, fluff | robot au, futuristic au, sub jungkook

Under the Bridge : 1/1 ↠ Your life takes a turn for the better one night when you find a bun under the bridge.

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader | Smut, fluff | hybrid au

Tentacledipity : 4/7 ↠ This tale starts, as any good fiction does, with a girl crash landing on a foreign planet. And, like any good fiction, it follows a theme of serendipitous happening, and tentacles. Behold, serendipity and tentacles— or dare we call it…. tentacledipity.

     → Pairing: Jimin/Reader | Smut, fluff | wanted au, alien au, space au, soulmate au

Author: @gukyi ♡

Start Anew : 1/1 ↠ It’s been five years since you left your hometown, vowing never to return, but a simple invitation to a Christmas party and a yearning to know whether or not you’re truly over the heartbreak you left behind has you wondering if, maybe, the Christmas spirit and promise of a new beginning can change your mind.

     → Pairing: Jin/Reader | Fluff, angst | exes au

I’ll give you my heart : 1/1 ↠ Gift exchanges are cool. gift exchanges with your ceo-slash-best friend Min Yoongi are less cool, because what the hell are you supposed to get the man that already has everything?

     → Pairing: Yoongi/Reader | Fluff | ceo au, f2l au, christmas au

Heart is where the home is : 1/1 ↠ When you woke up this morning, you didn’t really picture yourself falling in love with the attractive, well-read traveller sitting next to you on the plane, but a missed connection and an alarming amount of hand-holding later, you find that you both get a lot more than what you paid for.

     → Pairing: Taehyung/Reader | Fluff, smut | airport au, s2l au

Pen Pals : 1/1 ↠ To put it simply, pretending to be Jungkook’s pen pal when you were both eight just so he wouldn’t be disappointed was a bad idea, because now he’s in love with them. or, well, you, he just doesn’t know it

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader | Smut, fluff | high school au, f2l au

Love, Guaranteed : 1/1 ↠ With the celestial ball quickly approaching, Kim Taehyung is horrified to find out that you, his best friend, are dateless. to remedy this, he initiates The Match Project, a matchmaking service designed to find the most optimal date. to you, it’s an opportunity to meet someone else so you can stop pining after your clueless best friend. To him, it’s an opportunity to finally, once and for all, tell you how he feels.

     → Pairing: Taehyung/Reader | Fluff, mild angst | f2l au, hogwarts au

Author: @the95liner

Watch Me, Watch You : 3/3 ↠ “Mr. Park, I currently have a 4.0 (A/N: this means 85%+ btw to all the non-american readers) in all my classes of the last four years of my university career, I have one friend, no boyfriend and I haven’t had sex in more than six months. All because I can’t find time to spare for these things since I’m continuously working on assignments, essays and studying for upcoming midterms. I am a hundred percent serious with you right now when I plead for you to give me a second chance or at least consider raising my mark to a decent grade.—”

     → Pairing: Jimin/Reader | Smut, fluff, angst | college au, TA!jimin, camboy!jimin

We don’t talk anymore : 1/1 ↠ Ever since he had seen you play the piano for your music class, he’d been inspired by the complete look of tranquility that conquered your features as your fingered danced across the keyboard. He had made that tranquility his soul purpose of drawing. He dreamt of capturing that expression and gifting it to you.

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader | Angst, fluff | best friends au, artist!jungkook

Author: @tayegi ♡

What am I to you? : 1/1 ↠ Idolverse, amnesia au.

     → Pairing: Yoongi/Reader | Angst

Cobalt and Charcoal : 1/1 ↠ Soulmate au.

     → Pairing: Yoongi/Reader ft. Jungkook | Angst, smut

The Golden Boy ♡ : 3/3 + 1/1 drabbles ↠ medical (?) au, fwb au, childhood friends au.

     → Pairing: Taehyung/Reader | Angst, smut | arranged marriage au, unrequited love au

In Bloom ♡ : 3/3 ↠ Werewolf au.

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader | Smut, angst 

Roommates ♡ : 3/3 ↠ Roommates au, f2l au.

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader | Smut, angst 

Equilibrium pt. 1, Polyamory ♡ : 14/14 ↠ Loosely based on Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader/Jimin | Smut, angst

New Rules ♡ : 12/? ↠ Fratboy!Jungkook.

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader | Smut, angst | college au, fwb au

Elements ♡ : 24/? ↠ Circle of magic au, boarding school au.

     → Pairing: OT7 (?)/Reader | Fluff, angst, mystery | magic au

Author: @namjoonchronicles

Iris : 2/2 ↠ Jungkook made it clear to you, who is chasing who. His inability to show PDA made you question your worth. Until one day, you’ve finally had enough.

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader | Angst | idolverse

Good Guy : 1/1 ↠ Having a baby with namjoon is your lifelong dream, but medical conditions don’t make that possible anytime soon. what happens when your ex boyfriend being a single dad, comes into your life? How will Namjoon handle his jealousy?

     → Pairing: Namjoon/Reader ft. Chanyeol | Angst, fluff | domestic au

Author: @bwitten

Learning Curve : 1/1 ↠ Switch!Jungkook. Pwp.

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader | Smut

Author: @mrsmon

Little Lights : 1/1 ↠ Angst.

     → Pairing: Namjoon/Reader

Heartbreak : 1/1 ↠ Angst.

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader

Author: @taesthetes ♡

Imbroglio ♡ : 1/1 ↠ The first impression is always important. But so is the second.

     → Pairing: Jimin/Reader | Fluff | office au, intern au

The Universe of Us ♡ : 1/1 ↠ The story of Icarus tells of a naive being who loved the sun and flew too close, leading to his untimely descent into the ocean. But what the tale didn’t speak of was how the sun and the moon fell in love with him, too. And with the pull of the tides due to the attraction of the sun and the moon, he tosses and turns, torn between two entities.So if Kim Taehyung embodies the sun, then Jeon Jungkook is the moon.And you are Icarus. 

     → Pairing: Taehyung/Reader ft. Jungkook | Fluff, angst | fantasy au, slice of life au

Law and Order: BTS (collab w/ @milknotes) : 3/7 ↠ In the Bighit justice system, romance-based offenses are considered especially heinous. In Seoul, the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad known as the Bangtan Police Unit. These are their stories. From scandalizing traffic tickets to cuffing criminals, the seven cops must navigate their way through the dangerous streets of bad pick up lines, stealing of hearts, and a whole lot of doughnuts.

     → Pairing: series of one-shots; each member x reader | Fluff | police au

Gauche : 1/1 ↠ Waking up to a one night stand doesn’t seem as great as it did last night.

     → Pairing: Jimin/Reader | Fluff | morning after au, college au

Author: @dreamscript

Grow : 1/1 ↠ He’s rude, like his feral plants.

     → Pairing: Yoongi/Reader | Fluff | fantasy au

Office Visits : 1/1 ↠ Yoongi has a daddy kink.

     → Pairing: Yoongi/Reader | Smut | pwp, mafia au

Sunshine : 1/1 ↠ And no, he doesn’t wash off the ink, even when you draw a huge dick on his forehead and the teachers give him dirty looks.

     → Pairing: Hoseok/Reader | Fluff | high school au

Picture Perfect : 1/1 ↠ Yoongi’s searching for perfection. He meets you.

     → Pairing: Yoongi/Reader | Fluff, angst | artist au

Author: @imaginethisbts

Territory : 2/2 + 2/2 drabbles ↠ Dogboy Tae gets extremely possessive when “that time of the month” rolls around and find’s it hard to control his natural instincts and his dominating nature during the monthly occurrence.  

     → Pairing: Taehyung/Reader | Smut | pwp, dogboy!taehyung, hybrid au

Shameless : 1/1 ↠ Taehyung’s the new guy in town, just trying to make some friends. And when Jungkook invites him to a party, he thinks he’s finally gotten a good opportunity to meet some new people. But what he doesn’t expect is witnessing his new friend Jungkook and his girlfriend, you, getting it on in front of him, and all of the other guys, at this so-called party.  

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader ft. Taehyung | Smut | pwp

It takes two to make a thing go right ♡ : 2/2 ↠ What’s better than one dogboy lover? Two dogboy lovers. But when Tae and Jungkook seem unusually clingy, it can only mean one thing. That time of the month has snuck up on you and your dogboy lovers do not want to share.  

     → Pairing: Taehyung/Reader, Jungkook/Reader | Smut | pwp, hybrid au, dogboy!taehyung, dogboy!jungkook

Author: @kainks

Orange Tulips ♡ : 1/1 ↠ You’d remember Jungkook with every life you lived. Only he’d never remember you, never recall how your fates were written in the stars since the beginning of time. 

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader | Angst, smut | soulmate au, reincarnation au

Complete : 1/1 ↠ Jungkook. Staff room sex. Feelings revealed.

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader | Smut | idolverse

Midnight Suck : 4/? ↠ You had seen him drain the life out of someone, there was no way he could leave you alone now.

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader | Smut, fluff | vampire au, soulmates au

Author @imsarabum

I won’t stop you ♡ : 30/30 ↠ You drive to your boss‘ house with the intention of returning his wallet he left at the office. You feel uneasy, seeing his manor for the first time - Jungkook also feels uneasy, but for reasons that you could never begin to imagine.

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader | Smut, angst | vampire au

I need you : 1/1 ↠ You and Taehyung are in love with each other, but have never made your relationship official. Taehyung gets too drunk and ends up making out with another girl - and Jungkook lets you know everything the next morning.  

     → Pairing: Taehyung/Reader | Angst | college au

Author: @yoonia

Undo ♡ : 1/1 + 7/7 drabbles ↠ You were his soulmate, that part he knew well. Until one day he didn’t want you anymore. He couldn’t, when all he could see from you was light and all he felt within himself was darkness. Your love has gone cold as he retreated from you, burying himself deep in the dark. But what happened when Yoongi had to watch you start over with somebody else, when Yoongi let his selfishness gain control on him of you.

     → Pairing: Yoongi/Reader | Angst, smut | exes au, slice of life au

Over Again : 3/3 ↠ Sometimes all we need is closure from the past to be able to move on.

     → Pairing: Jimin/Reader | Angst | pianist!jimin, artist!reader

Author: @nchu

Private : 1/1 ↠ A glimpse of something private, something that should have remained unknown to your eyes and suddenly the boy you had believed was innocent had become a man practically reeking of testosterone. 

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader | Smut | idolverse

Cheat ♡ : 1/1 ↠ infidelity au.

     → Pairing: Yoongi/Reader | Angst | idolverse

Author: @ellieljade

Apologies : 1/1 ↠ After a fight, Taehyung can’t bring himself to apologize to his girlfriend until he realizes that she might have moved on. If he wants her he needs to go get her.

     → Pairing: Taehyung/Reader | Angst, smut | idolverse

Only Mine ♡ : 1/1 ↠ When you realized your boyfriend was cheating you didn’t expect the waiter you chose for retaliation to become so important to you. Now that you are engaged it is time for you to finally declare who is the one you belong with.

     → Pairing: Hoseok/Reader | Angst, smut | waiter!hoseok

This is how you lose her : 7/7 ↠ A series of short one shots focusing on the moment or choice that will lead to the end of a relationship.  

     → Pairing: each member has an individual chapter | Angst

Author: @noona-la-la-la

Unexpected : 8/8 + 1/1 bonus chapter ↠ An attempt to make Yoongi jealous goes to far - but his reaction is unexpected.

     → Pairing: Yoongi/Reader ft. Taehyung | Smut, angst 

Nursemaid : 1/1 ↠ Jimin’s crush comes over to his house to help him out after he suffers an injury that leaves him with limited use of both hands.

     → Pairing: Jimin/Reader | Smut | college au

Author: @winetae ♡

Love me, love me ♡ : 1/1 ↠ Legally speaking, Jimin is yours - the shiny collar clasped around his neck and the adoption papers attest this. But behind closed doors, Jimin makes sure you understand that he isn’t anyone’s bitch.

     → Pairing: Jimin/Reader | Smut | hybrid au

Nudes, not flowers : 2/2 ↠ You’re not supposed to fall for Jung Hoseok and his repertoire of awful pick-up lines - but you do. The problem is: he’s afraid of commitment, and bolts at the idea of settling down. After that, you decide to stay far away from fuckboys, but his friend decides to test your new found resolutions.

     → Pairing: Hoseok/Reader, Jungkook/Reader | Smut, angst | fuckboi au, college au

Sequel - Tessellate : 2/? ↠ Triangles are supposed to be the strongest and most stable of geometric shapes. You wonder how true this statement is if applied to real life situations. The way you see it: triangles aren’t a reliable structure for relationships, especially if the parties you’re involved with find commitment to be a foreign concept.

→ Pairing: Hoseok/Reader, Jungkook/Reader | Smut, angst | fuckboi au, college au

What you did last summer ♡ : 1/1 ↠ Yoongi was fine with a lot of things - you maxing out his credit cards to buy ridiculously expensive items of clothing that you never wore more than once, you taking out his newest ride for a spin without permission, you spending an extra thirty minutes on your hair and makeup when he was running late for a dinner function. What he was not okay with, however, was sharing your pussy with barely-out-of-college boys who are incapable of going five seconds without creaming their pants. No, that was where he drew the line.

     → Pairing: Yoongi/Reader ft. OT6 | Smut | trophy wife au

Hearts on Fire : 2/2 ↠ Your boyfriend is a dragon. Or so he claims.

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader | Smut, fluff | dragon!jungkook

All that is Gold : 1/1 ↠ As a college student struggling to make ends meet, Taehyung resorts to a less than ethical method to satisfy his appetite for expensive treats. The last thing he wants is for you to find out how he acquires the Gucci in his closet ... however this proves to be difficult when you are his roommate.

     → Pairing: Taehyung/Reader ft. Female OC | Smut, angst | roommate au, college au, sugar baby au

Author: @minsvga

Lifetimes : 1/1 ↠ You spent almost four lifetimes with the love of your life, hopelessly and happily in love with each other - until you lost him, somewhere in the complex webs of reincarnation. It had been almost two hundred years since then and you hadn’t seen him since, with nothing left of him but his memory.  

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader | Smut, angst | reincarnation au, soulmates au, high school au

Inked ♡ : 1/1 ↠ You woke up to an empty bed, groggy and awake and looking for his warmth under the blankets. But all that was left was a letter taped to the desk, the pungent tang of alcohol, and his cologne. He was gone.  

     → Pairing: Yoongi/Reader | Angst, smut | best friends au, musician!yoongi 

Author: @joonbird

Breakfast in Bed ♡ : 1/1 ↠ Min Yoongi, a grumpy Ikea employee, is wondering who you are and why exactly you’re sleeping in the display bed at his Ikea. 

     → Pairing: Yoongi/Reader | Fluff, smut, humour | ikea employee!yoongi

King Cobra : 1/1 ↠ Yoongi, the zodiac snake hybrid, requests an evening with you - and asks dog hybrid Taehyung to join.

     → Pairing: Yoongi/Reader ft. Taehyung | Smut | hybrid au

Comfort Inn Ending : 7/7 ↠ It was you who Jungkook gave his heart to - that is, until the day you broke it. And it is you now, hoping that some faultlines can be repaired, and that some broken hearts can be put back together again.  

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader | Angst, smut | infidelity au, idolverse

Author: @kookingtae

The Switch ♡ : 1/1 ↠ You think you’re getting a normal Christmas present from your boyfriend Hoseok, but what he doesn’t tell you is that your gift includes a special power he and the rest of the boys have, enabling them to switch off between one another… during sex.

     → Pairing: Hoseok/Reader ft. OT6 | Smut

True Feelings : 1/1 ↠ You and Jimin have been best friends since before you could remember, but one night could change everything.

     → Pairing: Jimin/Reader | Smut, fluff | best friends au, f2l au

Author: @kimvtae *** She no longer writes for this fandom, but please give her works love regardless!

All’s Fair ♡ : 1/1 ↠ They say soul mates get their marks on the same day, and you’ve been dating Taehyung for almost four years now, but it isn’t his name that shows up on your wrist. It’s Jeon Jungkook’s, also known as your least favorite person in the world.

     → Pairing: Taehyung/Reader/Jungkook | Smut | college au, soulmates au

Diamond in the Rough : 2/2 ↠ When a business heir from Busan, Jeon Jungkook, meets you, a poor girl from Daegu, he doesn’t expect to fall as quickly as he does. He’s been told for his entire life to avoid Daegu, a town riddled with gangs and a history of a brutal murder in Busan, but he can’t stay away from you, even when he’s warned that you’re not good enough for him.

      → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader | Angst, smut 

Fall for You : 3/3 + 2/2 drabbles ↠ You hate a lot of things about Jeon Jungkook; you hate his arrogance, his repuation, and his pet name for you to name a few. But most of all, you hate how right it feels for you to fall into his arms, and how easy it is to fall for him.

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader | Smut, angst | fuckboi au, college au

Dangerous ♡ : 1/1 ↠ Control is all about trust.

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader | Smut | sub!jungkook

Author: @jimlingss 

The seven kinds of love ♡ : 1/1 ↠ Love - an intense feeling of deep affection.

     → Pairing: OT7/Reader | Fluff, angst

Service Series : 7/7 + 3/3 drabbles ↠ Do you need a service in the area of love? Look below and maybe you’ll find something you’re looking for!

     → Pairing: each member has a chapter | Fluff 

Azure Blue : 2/2 ↠ Fairy au.

     → Pairing: Jimin/Reader | Fluff, mild angst

Author: @chiminiemoans ♡

Slight Changes ♡ : 7/? ↠ Taehyung gets caught.

     → Pairing: Taehyung/Reader ft. Jimin | Smut, angst | idolverse, infidelity au

Oblivious : 1/1 ↠ It’s normal for you and Jungkook to bicker all the time, your friends describing your friendship like a cat-dog relationship, but your arguments are only getting worse progressively and you don’t understand why.   

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader | Smut, light angst | best friends au, f2l au

Employee Perks : 1/1 ↠ Sure, the employee perks at your job were bonuses, life insurance, sick leave, health benefits etc. etc., but the best employee perk of all was working with a man known as Jeon Jungkook.  

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader | Smut, angst | retail au

Appetence : 1/1 ↠ Jungkook fulfills one of your fantasies.

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader | Smut | idolverse

Author: @submissive-bangtan ♡

Sloppy Savvy : 1/1 ↠ You dominate JK and Yoongi in a passionate threesome.

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader/Yoongi | Smut | sub!jungkook, sub!yoongi

Trophy Boyfriend ♡ : 1/1 ↠ He’s accomplished. He’s sexy. He is the perfect subordinate. But something about your new secretary seems off. Yoongi wouldn’t be the first spy in your company.

     → Pairing: Yoongi/Reader | Smut, action | business au, ceo au, e2l au, sub!yoongi

Snowdrop : 1/1 ↠ The first thing you do after moving in together and setting up the bedroom is attending to Valentine’s joys in the sheets.

     → Pairing: Yoongi/Reader | Smut, fluff | sub!yoongi, domestic au

Boss Witch ♡ : 4/4 ↠ A mighty sorceress turns her apprentice Jimin into a pain-loving baby boy.

     → Pairing: Jimin/Reader | Smut, angst | witch au, sub!jimin

Fuckin’ Wembley : 1/1 ↠ You take care of a pliant, blindfolded Yoongi before BTS’ concert in London.

     → Pairing: Yoongi/Reader | Smut | idolverse, sub!yoongi  

Author: @dat-town

Bed warm, hearts cold ♡ : 2/2 ↠ “I wanted darkness… I wanted him.”  

     → Pairing: Yoongi/Reader | Angst | greek mythology au, hades!yoongi

Beautiful & Stupid : 2/2 ↠ Didn’t you know? Beauty can get you cursed.  

     → Pairing: Jungkook/Reader | Angst | percy jackson au

*wipes sweat* whew. this took me 4 days to format sksjd. part 2 and 3 will be out soon! in the meantime, please check these awesome authors out!

[autoclavesarchived]

dead sea | the magnus archives (ao3)

a character study of martin & depression

Martin wakes up, and doesn’t want to. This is always how it starts—the creeping fog, the wretched emptiness, the realization that he can no longer find a single reason to go through the motions of living again. It’s a slow descent. He can feel himself slipping back into that bad place again, and he is both aggressor and spectator in his passivity. On these days, he doesn’t think he can be a person even if he wants to.

(It had started the previous evening when the sun sank down. It’s so lonely out at nightfall. To look outside and see nothing else, only pinpricks of solitary light in the distance, to be the only known quantity in a sea of darkened glass. It was like the slow fade into night had bled something loose inside him.)

That had been a different kind of void, though. Less illness, more sadness, a sheet of blunt-edged melancholia. This raw, record-scratch morning is far less quantifiable and infinitely worse.

Radio static in his head. He is in so many pieces. It’s hard to keep himself together when the sun has fallen right off the edge of the world and his body now feels like the unwanted inhabitant of a car crash; no, nothing quite so violent and screaming as that. A haunted house, maybe. A muffled crime scene before its investigation.

Somewhere in the middle of this glitching mindscape, a person that Martin would like to believe is his real self cries for it to stop. This self is still alive, just—inaccessible. Quietly pigeonholed into the attic, quarantined under floorboards like a bad secret. Is there a way back home? Is there a way back to you? he thinks, blindly. There is no answer, or at least, none that he can hear. Depression, in its slow and imperceptible way, continues to take up residence inside of him.

It seems so unreasonable, but he can’t bear to even lift his head. He’s just so tired.

Outside is a riotous spring, green and pink and yellow. Last fall, when the cold set in and winter rusted shut its grip around them, he’d wanted it to be spring so badly that he would have given up anything to see it happen. A hand, an eye. A lung, even. The nights had been so long and aching then. Now, the days are, too. Outside is spring and Martin is acutely aware that it is passing him by.

Time distorts strangely when he’s like this. He wakes from the blink of a sleep-sick nap to find the sun burning too high above him, and the door creaking open; a rattle of keys being set down, plastic grocery bags rustling onto the kitchen counter, and Jon’s quick footsteps walking down the hallway.

“Martin?” he hears Jon call. “Martin? I’ve got the shopping but we should really see if—”

Their bedroom door opens, the noise of it interrupting whatever he had been about to say. It’s a little darker in here with the blinds half-turned, but not dark enough that he wouldn’t be able to see Martin lying curled on the bed.

“Martin?” he repeats, more quizzically this time.

“Jon,” Martin says. His voice is raspy from disuse, so he tries again. “Jon. Hello.”

Jon draws nearer. “Is this a bad day?” He is windswept and smells like sunlight, like the springtime he’d just been outside in, and Martin can hardly bear to look at him for envy of what he wants to be. What he couldn’t be if he tried because he is barely a person right now. But that isn’t Jon’s fault, he reminds himself very carefully. Jon is trying to take care of him. (His expression has not changed in the slightest after seeing Martin motionless on the bed, all the blankets pulled up despite how mild the day is, and he is silently thankful for it. He knows what a miserable picture this must make.)

“Yeah,” he manages. “Do you—can you… come here? Please.”

“Of course.” There’s a sweep of air, and the bed dips; Jon sliding in between the sheets unquestioningly at his appeal even though the day is in its prime and it’s only Martin’s brain being irrational and happiness-deprived.

It takes a minute, but they shift so that they’re facing each other, bodies only a few inches apart on the mattress. Martin can feel the difference of a second presence and the warmth it exudes. He can feel himself reaching for it, too, with his half-starved self. A puzzle piece, or a stray bracket looped inwards.

“Can I touch you?”

Martin nods. He desperately wants Jon to touch him. He needs to be reminded that he’s real, and that he hasn’t just made this up in his mind as a respite from the echoing wasteland of the sadness. Jon is real, and that means Martin is more than a single lonely blot on the horizon.

“Okay,” Jon whispers, and doesn’t ask anything more of him. Soon enough, Martin feels hands skim the backs of his wrists, glide up his forearms and across his shoulders. They trace the pattern of freckles on his chest, forwards and backwards. Light, undemanding touches, so quintessentially Jon in their repetitive familiarity. Eventually, he pulls him closer so that their bodies are pressed against each other in a sort of half-hug: Martin’s head tucked into the bend of Jon’s chin, one of Jon’s legs draped over his hip, their torsos a single warm line from collarbone to stomach. Jon is normally so much smaller than him, and all rangy and bird-boned to boot, but when he gets like this, his presence is expansive, comforting. Martin feels lazily enveloped in it. The whole bed smells like Jon now, aftershave and rooibos tea and something citrusy—oranges, maybe.

He lies carefully still in familiar arms, and he thinks he should feel something more about this. He thinks he should feel happier, or more grateful. It’s not that he’s not, exactly, more that he’s just… temporarily divorced from it. As if he’s looking at the feeling, or the implication of it, from a point very distant at the edge of the sky. There’s something in the way that makes it hard to directly feel anything. He is looking at the happiness of someone else’s body, and then back down at the happiness-shaped imprint on his own. The place where happiness is supposed to be, but isn’t, right now.

He tells Jon this. “I think I should feel something about this. I think I should feel something about you right now. It isn’t right that I don’t.”

(He just feels so hollow. He didn’t know absence could take up so much space inside a person. Right now, he is a tenant in his own head.)

“You don’t owe me anything, Martin,” Jon says, the steady vibration of words in his throat humming through the top of Martin’s skull. That sensation, the intimacy of it, is the closest Martin thinks he has gotten to feeling something today.

“I love you. You don’t have to answer that right now, but I just wanted you to know. When you come back, I’ll tell you again. As many times as you want.” The light stretches and slants as Jon speaks.

Martin is sometimes afraid that there is no back. There is no returning. It really does seem like this is all there is, this static on a broken loop and his mind slowing like the drip of a hospital IV. If that is true, then it’s not Jon, or even the feeling of happiness that is unreal; Martin is the imposter here. The magic trick, the illusion, the Eurydice caught between person and not. There is nowhere to go back to, because the emptiness is the only part of him that means anything.

(“I love you,” Jon had tried, over and over, achingly, the first time it happened, and finally Martin had screamed at him, “I love you can’t solve this, Jon!” They’d had a long conversation that night about love and illness and how sometimes he was so numb he could die from it. Since then, Jon only says the words because they are true, not as if they could save Martin. It might seem uncaring to anyone else, but it works for the both of them.)

I love you, Jon says now, like a fact, and Martin wants to say it back, he really does.

The figure in his head, the one that he has to believe he can go back to, tries to say it. But even in the isolation of his own mind, it only comes out as a faint I really loved you, you know. He doesn’t mean for it to mangle like that, the past tense of it softly mocking. He still loves Jon—that much is not an illusion. That much is also a fact. It’s the apathy again, leaching the feeling out of his actions and his speech. There is an I love you- shaped wound on his self and it is one he cannot quite reconcile with the love he knows he has for Jon. I really loved you, you know. And the version of me that loves you, that can love you, is still out there. Just not here. There’s all this untethered, inaccessible love here, Jon. I want to be able to feel it for you.

Jon falls asleep for a while after that. He’s still clutching at Martin, the weight and anchor of his body a welcome warmth. Martin stays awake, so he looks at Jon to fill the time.

Jon is rendered looser when he drowses. He’s more inexact somehow, edges less sharply defined and face slack, unreserved. It isn’t that he withholds on purpose, and especially not from Martin, but his defense mechanisms forget to reset themselves in sleep. It’s part of why sleeping next to him is an almost unbearable closeness all by itself—a reminder that he is trusted enough to see this. Martin reaches out with a hand, and is nearly startled when it brushes Jon’s face. He’d expected it to go right through him, for some reason. He isn’t sure whether he’d imagined himself or Jon to be the insubstantial one in this scenario, but in any case, his hand finds solid skin.

He touches his fill of Jon’s angular cheeks and cradled shoulders and pinned dark hair. He’s so beautiful, all of him. Aftershave and rooibos and oranges; it feels like a foreign landscape, but Martin is determined. He is relearning the things that make up Jon the way a man deprived of senses does.

When Jon wakes up—in fits and starts, squinting at the sun that is now slouching golden across the room—Martin embraces him and very quietly says that he’ll start putting the groceries away.

So they get out of bed together, even though Martin feels like he hasn’t walked in weeks. He lifts the bags off the counter to sit down and sort through them on the floor. It is the most human thing he’s done today.

Sorting is a quiet, menial sort of task that doesn’t require much thought, which is good, because his head is still weighted down with buzzing. He sits in the sunlight and lets the rice and orzo and tinned olives and fruit pass through his hands as he puts them on the shelves, thinking, our food, our sunlit kitchen, this is the home we have made. (I really loved you, you know. He can’t change the tense of it yet so he just repeats that word, love, until he can pretend to forget the context of it. No past, no future, just love, said like it would replace the emptiness.)

Afterwards, Jon makes them baked pasta with three different kinds of cheese. Evening paints the length of him glorious and blue. As Martin watches, he shreds thyme and basil and mixes breadcrumbs to cover the top layer the way Martin likes best; Jon, who is reasonably talented at yet notoriously opposed to the idea of cooking, does all this without batting an eye. Martin is sure he will feel something about this, too, later.

[iphoenixrising]

For 800 Followers!  Broken Trust: Continued

So. SO. The original Broken Trust was pretty traumatic, but I got so many wonderful comments on the post that I did write a second part. Just a warning tho, the previous part to the story contained a suicide attempt.  Here’s the aftermath.

A bit of a warning: one of my babes cried when she read this. It will hit your feels.

**

Raven and Gar stand behind Cassie when they firmly tell the Batfamily no, none of them can come to the Tower right now.

Nightwing and the Red Hood exchange a look while B is the usual silent and stoic, the darkness of the Cave behind them.

“Wonder Girl,” N hold up placating hands palms up, noticing the way Gar doesn’t look directly at the camera, and Rave is almost completely hidden by her cloak. He gets the impression of things not good. “We only heard Red Robin is in critical condition! Can you tell us anything about what happened if at least one of us can’t come see him?”

The family of detectives can pick out all the tells.

“My hands are tied until he wakes up,” the de-facto leader of the Titans goes with, as diplomatically as possible, “right now he’s being monitored twenty-four seven while he’s comatose–”

Because Kon and Bart won’t leave him alone for a second.

“–and we’re taking care of him–”

As we have been since he finally called out to us for the fun time against the League of Assassins in Gotham.

“–I’ll keep you updated with the latest news.”

“Comatose?” All three Bats on the screen echo with different pitches to their voices.

The sigh coming out of her is just on the edge of her patience.

“How?” Dick chokes out, “what the hell happened to him?”

Cassie just stares back, lips pursed.

“That ain’t good ‘nough, y’ feel me here?” The Red Hood’s helmet is turned toward the screen, arms crossed over his chest, “Baby Bird’s a Bat first n’ foremost–”

“Not in the last few years,” Cassie counters gently, firmly, “and the last instructions he gave us? Back when there were assassins all over your city? It was to keep the Bats out of his business. I’m only calling because–”

The Batman holds up a hand, “Wonder Girl, I’m grateful you did. But. I’m still Tim’s mentor and the only legal family he has. I’m asking you, please at least let me in the Tower to see him.”

“Batman,” and she massages the bridge of her nose, “I can’t. Not until he wakes up and tells me what he wants. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

She looks at the screen again, “please don’t try to force this. Gar’s family still owns Titans Tower, and I will authorize the security system to activate if you try anything. If–” her breath hitches, “when Tim wakes up, I’ll let you know.”

Gar finally seems to be able to move, stepping around Cassie to grin half-heartedly down at the camera. “You heard it from here. We’ll keep in touch. Tower, outtie.” And flips the button to cut the feed.

**

The monitor beeps steadily, the only comforting thing in the room.

Kon doesn’t need the soft noise to assure himself Tim is still alive.

He can hear it through his Robin’s chest.

For the last seventy-odd hours, he’s been sitting, laying, floating right in this spot next to the medical bed where his best friend is stretched out, comatose. He’s only takes short breaks to run to the bathroom.

The team keeps close tabs on them, bringing him food, someone always trying to stop by and stick around to keep him company.

(He knows what they’re trying to do.)

Food makes appearances and things get tucked away in the niches of the room. Tablets, books, a half-done knitting project, old school Playstation hooked up to the television, origami cranes all over the place.

The team is worried about both of them, and Kon still hadn’t told everyone what really happened out there, how he came to be flying madly in the Tower, sobbing while he carried Tim’s body, limp and still, blood everywhere. They’re worried because Kon’s been exhibiting signs of shock, white as a ghost, and quietly crying while Raven, BB, Cassie, and Miguel sprinted into action, getting their former Robin into the medical bay and working fast to try saving his life.

Kid Flash had watched from behind his working teammates, holding Kon tightly in both arms to keep the super on his feet, eyes wide when he catches glimpses of Tim’s slack, white face, blood on the pillow, on gloved hands, making everything more red than the old Robin tunic.

Since then, Kon’s been a wreck, unable to talk about it without breaking down, his immeasurable strength utterly useless in the face of whatever had happened to Tim.

(Raven and Gar went into the Safe Room of the Tower to talk it out, wondering if Luthor had some tech still hidden in their Superboy, if it was just like the time he’d broken Tim’s arm–)

So, the Titans absolutely close ranks, stay on edge, monitoring, waiting, watching, trying to be there for their teammate, trying to console him when Kon admitted he couldn’t stop Tim in time, he couldn’t stop him, didn’t know what he was going to do until it was too fucking late–

It’s enough to put the pieces together without forcing Superboy to come out and say it directly, keeping the pressure in the room for if...when Tim finally woke up.

New Protocols start appearing in the database the very next hour.

**

When he comes to, his mouth is so dry and his head is killing him.

Seriously.

The familiar room in the Tower’s Med Bay is soothing at least, not like he wants to be caught by the Joker right now or anything because that? Would not be conducive to Good Morning, Robin.

His senses gradually come back online, and turning his head on the pillow is just short of agonizing.

Conner Kent, Superboy, is sitting by the bed, head in his hands, shoulders shaking gently and Tim Drake’s eyes go wide, all the pain in his head forgotten when he sees his Superboy look up with red, watery eyes.

Tim shoots up in bed, can’t look away, can’t focus on the pain rolling down his spine with the movement.

“Kon?” Is a whisper, a broken sound, “Kon is it really you?”

Because fuck, he’s going to cry too, isn’t he?

(Oh yeah. Yeah, he is.)

“Tim! Oh my God, you’re awake! Tim, you’re awake!” The super barely has enough time to get to his feet before Tim Drake launches himself out of the medical bed, wires and IVs be damned, hurling himself straight at the red S shield against the black t-shirt.

Just like he expects, Conner Kent, Kon-El, Superboy, his best fucking friend–

–catches him.

Kon’s knees give out and they’re on the floor, sobbing against each other, Tim’s arms tight around him, holding on like he thought Kon would disappear the second he let him go, and all Tim is saying sounds vaguely like, “you’re alive, you’re alive! How the hell are you alive?!” where his face is buried in the side of Kon’s throat.

The camera are apparently working just fine because KF is in that room in the two seconds it took for Tim to launch himself out of bed and send the two sprawling all over the floor, ripped out wires all over them.

The speedster, his own eyes wet with relief, is gentle when he kneels next to them, when he touches Kon’s shoulder and lays a hand softly to the center of Tim’s back.

Bart’s mouth opens, ready to say something smarmy to cover up the emotions, something like, “hey, hey. Almost dead guys have to be in bed,” when Tim’s watery eyes are looking up at him and his expression is utterly fucking broken.

“Bart?” Cracks in Tim’s hitching chest, his eyes wide and wet and spilling over, and hands shaking but moving so fast to reach out and grip Bart’s shoulder. “Bart, you...Oh my God, you too! You’re back? You’re alive! You’re both alive.”

He has every intention of leaping up to throw both arms around Kid Flash as well, to bring him down and hold on to both of them forever, but when he tries to stand this time, his legs won’t hold his weight.

It’s only because the two of them are so super that he doesn’t go falling back down to the ground, both muscling a shoulder under his arms, sliding free hands around his waist. This time it’s Tim’s shoulders shaking while he bites down on his lower lip hard and tries to stop his eyes from spilling the fuck over, tries to keep the sobs trapped in the center of his chest where it won’t come out.

(Because he’s Robin, and that shit doesn’t happen…

And yet, here we are.)

He totally fails, and now they’re never going to let him live it down.

Bart darts across the room, viciously slams the intercom and yells for everyone to get to the Med Bay because their bird is awake, and someone needs to come down and put his damn IVs back in!

Then he’s hot-footing it back across the room, sliding on his knees to be right on Tim’s empty side, squirreling both arms under Tim’s since Kon’s is around his shoulders.

“I can’t believe it,” Tim sobs against the side of Kon’s face, wrapped in both of them. “I can’t...I can’t–”

“Tim, my bro,” Bart frees a hand to wipe across his eyes, “that’s our line. For fuck’s sake, you’ve been a coma for days. Do you have any idea how worried everyone is? Cassie is might literally punch you hard enough to break your head open again.”

“After you’re okay,” Kon’s voice is muffled and watery against his shoulder.

“After you’re okay,” Bart parrots back, “you asshole, you stupid, stupid asshole.”

“Asshole,” Kon chokes out, “how could you be so fucking stupid? Why didn’t you call me? Why...why didn’t–”

“You were dead. Both of you were dead, Kon. How could I have–”

And it’s a whoa moment right there.

Something very not crash.

“Tim what are you talking about? We’ve been back almost–”

With a terrible feeling in his gut, Kon cuts right in, “what’s the last thing you remember?”

With wide eyes, the super grabs both of Tim’s shoulders, “Tim. What the last thing you remember?”

“I...I moved to Blüdhaven. Because Steph. Steph...and you and you right after my dad,” He falters, pulling back, being Robin, trying to keep it the hell together.

(But he was literally the only one left standing. Just him and Dick and B, but that still didn’t make it better, didn’t make the pain go away, didn’t fill the void, didn’t bring them back.)

“What?” Kon mumbles, numb, not realizing his grip has gotten tighter and tighter until Tim flinches in his hold and Bart is pushing the center of his chest.

It takes a minute. A very long minute for him to breathe because Kon has such a bad feeling about where this might be going.

It takes Bart just a few more seconds than Kon. “Tim, Stephanie Brown isn’t dead. She’s alive.”

“Wh-what?” And even if his head is starting to hurt again, even if the nausea is building, he can push it all away with that sentence, with someone else he loved apparently alive. “She’s–she’s what now?”

Bart and Kon are looking at him intently from both sides, noticing how his expression crumbles, his shoulders slumping in shock, his eyes are blown wide, and he’s pulling back from them both, looking pale and unsteady.

Unconsciously, they tighten their grips around him, ready to catch, ready to hold him up, ready to be what he needed.

(It’s time to stop running.)

When Cassie slides almost past the door to the Med Bay, beating Gar literally by a hair, the small leopard gets with the program and leaps over her shoulder effortlessly transforming so they come to the three idiots on the floor.

“What the hell are you doing? Why isn’t Tim in bed?”

“Totes pulled out your IVs, man,” Gar tisks at him, the trembly kind of relieved to see one of his besties, a good teammate, a good leader, look up at him again instead of unmoving and unnaturally still. “Rave’s gonna get moody, right? No one wants to see that.”

He and Cassie are gentle, keeping in mind he’s the only one on the team that could get this fucked up and not die, while they get him back to bed.

Their resident supernatural specialist and part-time nurse comes in more serenely than her teammates, eyes warm when she spots Tim’s dazed eyes just watching them reinsert his IV and put patches back on his chest, a tube under his nose.

Looking up at Cassie, sees her I’m relieved you aren’t dead expression and just smiles dopily up at her (he can’t help a flash of awkward because, well, he’d kissed his best friend’s girl – they thought he’d been dead at the time, but...wait, does it still count?). His brain is fuzzy with the crazy emotional rollercoaster since he’d woken up and see his best friends alive, is still reeling a little bit from Steph. It makes him literally itch to get back to Gotham even if he’s sinking further down into the softer-than-it-should-feel medical bed with most the team scrambling around them.

He glances up when he catches Raven injecting something in his IV, smiles at her too.

But, it’s fine. He’s going to stay long enough to let them take care of him because he doesn’t have to go back to Blüdhaven and that shitty hovel he’d been holding up in after things went so, so wrong. Bruce had taken them training, had worked with Dick to bring Tim back from a terrible edge.

The three of them were working better together, and he’s staying at the Manor instead of his...his parent’s house or the Carriage House where he’d passed the heck right out more than once in his tenure as Robin.

Things are finally better.

And now? Now that he’s got Conner and Bart back, now that he can head back to Gotham and Steph...his Steph will be alive–

He’ll have cases to work and school to eventually go back to, or at least the GED test to take. He’ll have Gotham, dirty and dingy, corrupt and cold and cruel while being a beacon to the best and brightest and the dreamers and the innocent. He’ll have the Cave and his room down the hall from Bruce. He’ll sign the paperwork to change his last name–

(Drake-Wayne, who would have thought?)

–and try to make friends with Damian, again.

When it gets too much, he can come back to the New Teen Titans, and work it out with his team.

Life? Life is finally going his way.

(And if he doesn’t remember anything from before clearly enough to explain how he got hurt, well, that’ll wait until he wakes up.)

*Note: I imagine Tim’s memory is stuck on the One Year Later arc where after Tim, Bruce, and Dick went on some kind of training journey and afterwards, he comes back to reform the New Teen Titans, Cass is in the wind, probably not even Black Bat yet, and he’s sporting a red and black suit. It’s after he tried to clone Bart and Kon? I’m a little fuzzy on how the events fall, so I’m pretty much making it up as I go along :D

[pocketramblr]

actually never mind i had to write that wack dfo iida thing so uhhh here its on ao3 too now

The asphalt pressed into the side of his face, rough, imprinting little mountains and valleys in his cheeks. If his glasses hadn’t already flown off his face when he’d slammed into the ground, they probably would be straining or broken anyway.

Footsteps, heavy and clanking like metal. 

Tenya squinted, and with another grating sound, a foot landed within his limit sight. The toe guard glinted in the light, and spikes were added to the side. He tried to look up the leg, but he was limited to looking out the side of his eyes, and it all disappeared into black.

The voice was clear as spit, though, when the man broke the silence with an audible sneer. “Fake. Fake, they’re all fake, and neither you nor your brother could see you really are too.” 

The boy wants to yell again, to hiss something back, to continue to defend his family, but there is not much left to defend. He’s the one locked in place on the ground, he’s the one the killer is leaning over with one of those swords.

He’s used to moving fast, thinking fast, you have to in order to react when running. So he sees the villain tense up, the movement in his legs, the whisper of a rush as a blade is brought down on his-

“No!”

There’s a sudden gust of air that stings Tenya’s eyes, and when he opens them, there’s no one standing in front of him.

Just bare pavement.

Then the crash, the thunk of a body hitting something once, twice, no time to even scream.

Tenya’s heart beats once in the terrifying silence, then twice, before it’s broken by more footsteps. These are lighter, quicker, and he barely sees the simple dress shoes before the interloper is shifting, slacks too dark to see very well, kneeling beside him. 

“Tenya? Tenya?” The voice asks, and he can’t make out if it should be familiar or not. Whoever it was, was calling him his given name- oh, wait, his hero name too, as far as he had one.

“Manual?” He tried, but that wasn’t right. “Midoriya?”

“No, no Tenya- don’t worry, are you hurt anywhere else?” The stranger seems to be tall, a suit with no tie, a head with no face, or maybe Tenya’s eyesight is just even worse in this dim alleyway. Before he can look closer, a hand moves in front of his vision, brushes against his forehead, his hair. “Can you breathe?”

“Breathe?” Tenya echoed, then frowned. Yes, he could without problem. “Yes- No, no i’m not hurt much more. It’s just, Stain’s quirk, it paralyzed me and I don’t know how to get out. Who are you?”

The other didn’t answer for a moment, then sighed. “You’ll be fine, remember that, Tenya? You’ll go to sleep now, wake up safe in a hospital, healed up.”

Before Tenya could protest it, the hand on his head pushed tighter, and everything went black.

- - -

Tenya fell to sleep under the order he inputted, and he could breathe a sigh of relief as his vitals appeared, looking normal enough.

No injury would stick, he’d be fine. His younger son wouldn’t lapse like Tensei had last week.

He pulled off the headset with his ungloved free hand, blinking to readjust to the harsh lights of the hospital lab after the darkened experience peering into Simulation Mark Nine through the VR screens.

The father put the headset down on the table in front of him, then pulled of the black glove from his lead hand he’d worn to control the Simil-him’s actions.

Then, taking one more breath to steel himself, he turned back to the bedtank where Tenya- the one that wasn’t a simulation- lay. The boy was the same height, same navy color to his hair, same young face in sleep. But his hair was longer, his skin paler, body thinner than the version he dreamed himself into inside of Simil 9.

He wondered, for a moment, if his face would feel anything like it had in the simulation, to hold it in his hand for a moment, just a press, just a brush of hair.

Shaking his head, he forced himself back closer to his son. To the breathing tubes in his nose, the pads and wires stuck to his forehead, the iv lines in his arms, the metal bracers on his calves. All suspended under the nearly translucent bacta. 

He put one hand on the glass of the tank, and looked through Tenya’s charts here, now, present, reality.

They matched what he’d seen earlier, thank everything.

“Don’t worry.” He whispered to the silent room, to the son who’d never been outside of it. “I’ll find it, and you’ll both be fine.” If he tilted his head up just a bit, he’d be able to see the tank on the other side of this one, with Tensei in it. “I promise.”

He’d promised fifteen years ago, when Tenya was born, twenty five years ago, when he’d built this room, thirty five years ago, when his brother died of the same strange ailment that plagued his sons.

Why, he sometimes wondered, was he the only one to escape in his family?

Better not to think about that too long though, too much like giving up, and he wouldn’t give up.

He needed to keep working on the cure, yes, but there was something else bothering him- what that strange villain had said when towering over Tenya.

For one, no one should have been able to harm him like that- what had happened with Tensei was a reaction to the physical breakdown of his body, an explanation that fit inside the program and to Tenya.

If Tenya’s fear and pain from just knowing about that had triggered something so dangerous in Simil 9, well, there was a deeper problem.

The fact that Simil 9 had built up a world of superheroes based off the dreams of a five-year-old Tensei had been cute, once, but now their father had just seen the proof of supervillains there too. That was dangerous, and he couldn’t even get a good look into it from inside the VR, what with his Simil-him having been damaged six years ago, the last time he’d tried to peak and see.

The Doctor had said it was a glitch with some updates to the Shield Tech they used, and he’d just nodded along, feeling the urge to go back to the medical research.

The Doctor who had worked at Shield Tech with Shield and Yagi for years before leaving to work for him instead, in exchange for some space in the Simil 9 servers to run a few models and his own experiments.

The Doctor who had access to the world, the Simil-people, the fact that that vigilante had acknowledged it was all fake, the fact that the Doctor hadn’t fixed the Simil-him yet, in years, the fact that both sons’ safety had been jeopardized in what was supposed to be their safehaven...

The angry father’s eyebrows pressed together, lips set in a thin line, and he stormed out to give his subordinate a call- and a few demands.

[drawingsanddrabbles]

Two Bros, Sitting in the Candlelight

Happy timkon week! So today was free day and I can’t make desicions to save my life, so I had @timdrakeothy help me pick prompts. So today’s prompts were picked from the extra prompts on @timkonweek2019‘s page: Wingfic and Romantic Dinner

ao3

betaed by @breadmould/Tanya on discord (sorry if you have a tumblr and I didn’t link it it wasn’t in your discord description)

~~~

To say Tim was uncomfortable would be an understatement. However, it was really unfortunate that he was, because Jordan was a really nice girl. She was pretty and sweet and funny. 

But Tim was moulting, and he couldn't stand the itch anymore. 

"'Scuse me, Jordan. I'll be right back, just need to powder my nose." He said and hurried to the bathroom. 

Tim made it to the bathroom but unfortunately wasn't able to lock the door. People, there were people everywhere. People who were rich and therefore, knew who he was and God that itching on his back hurt, he wanted to just rub his back up and down on one of the fancily textured walls until his old feathers came out. But he couldn't. He had Tim Drake's reputation to consider. 

He'd planned this date with Jordan before he'd been in a battle with Klarion where the asshole had cursed him to grow wings. He'd already cancelled on Jordan more than once due to hero things, so he hadn't cancelled this date. He'd figured that the wings wouldn't be seen and it was a first date anyway, no way Tim's shirt would be coming off. Also, if he'd cancelled Jordan might have thought that Tim wasn't interested, and that wasn't even remotely true. 

It was hard enough to find someone to date who actually seemed to like him, much less someone who could distract the media. And ever since Tam and Steph had started dating Tim hadn't had anyone for the rumor mill to latch onto. Jordan didn't mind any of that. 

Pretty, funny, smart, and she wasn't scared of the media. Really, what else could a guy want? Well, besides a superhero, but frankly those were hard to find. 

So Jordan didn't know about his latest magic mishap, which was all good and well and wouldn't have been a problem had Tim not fought Klarion during moulting season. 

At least it wasn't mating season. That would have been a nightmare. 

Tim dashed into a stall and unbuttoned his shirt as quickly as he could, trying to reach down to his wings, which flexed when his back muscles did.

No, no, no… come on…. He couldn't reach. 

He couldn't rub his back against the stall, there were people here. He couldn't find anything to help him reach, and last time he had scratched his back with a batarang it had… ended badly. 

He pulled out his phone. Dick was in Bludhaven and wouldn't be able to get to Metropolis in time, Cass, Bruce, and Damian weren’t even in the country. Duke couldn't get here from Gotham either. 

Steph and Tam, however, were both in Metropolis with Tim on the W/E business he was, but might have been busy doing…. what they do together. 

Steph, help

Im moulting

Steph

Steph this isnt funny

Steph answer please

Steph clearly still hadn't seen his text. He waited a full minute. 

Time for the cavalry. Bart had taken a trip to the future with Wally, which meant: Conner. Tim just hoped that Conner wasn't busy.

Conner help

The response was almost instant. What's up dude?

Im moulting

You're… what?

Dude i just need ur help

Tim's phone started ringing and Tim cut the call. 

Im on a date and i need a way out, one that doesnt make me look like a jerk. Eduardos, Peach and Devon

Now please

The itching was becoming unbearable. He'd make it up to Jordan, he would. 

He heard a boom and someone outside his stall said: "Must be Superman, I hope everything's alright."

Where are you?

Bathroom. 

Come out, ive got an excuse

Eduardo's was a high class establishment. Mainly for business deals, rich people, and romantic dinners. Candles lit the tables, flowers decorated as centerpieces. It was one of those restaurants where any talking was done in hushed voices simply because no one wanted to break the illusion. 

Jordan looked beautiful. Tim felt even more guilty as he sat back down. "So," Tim said when he returned, "you were saying about your major?"

"Right!" Jordan hummed. She opened her mouth to continue her story about how she chose Metropolis University for her biotech degree when Ivy was a more prestigious school when there was a commotion outside the restaurant. 

"What on earth…?" Jordan asked as Tim turned his head to the entrance as he saw Kon push his way through the waiters and ushers shouting Tim's name. 

"Mr Drake-Wayne! Mr. Drake-Wayne, Simmons will be so glad I found you! I know you said you didn't want to be disturbed-" Conner ran up to him, fake-panting. He'd decided to dress up for the occasion it seemed, a loose tie over a button down shirt and slacks that he no doubt stole from Clark's closet. His large glasses were askew on his face. Tim raised a hand to stop the security that was called to escort Kon out. "There's been an issue, you know, with the-" He shot a suspicious look at Jordan and lowered his voice, "-project. I know you want to finish your date but this is… you know." 

Tim held in a laugh at how Kon's eyes were sparkling. He was clearly enjoying this too much. "Of course, I'll come right away. Jordan, I sincerely apologize but-"

"No, it's alright Tim. We'll reschedule, I understand."

Tim patting himself for a pen and Kon produced one from somewhere along with a sticky note. "Order whatever you want, I'll pay-"

"Um, Mr. Wayne sir, we don't take… IOUs…" the Matre ‘D said but Tim shoved it into his hand. "My phone number is on there too, I'll pay for whatever her bill is. Excuse me-" 

"Sir-!" The Matre ‘D tried to say but Tim was already rushing out of the restaurant with Kon, apologizing to Jordan as he did. 

As soon as they made it out of Eduardo's, Kon was giggling. They turned the corner into an alley and Tim slipped off his jacket. "Thank you." He laid his back against the brick and began scratching it against there, not caring what dirt that got on his stupid expensive shirt, sighing as he felt the old feathers begin to losen. He shot an accusing glance at Kon who was grinning stupidly. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

Kon was clearly amused. "Moulting, huh?"

"Apparently." Tim grit out as he tried to rub his back a little harder, trying to knock loose some of the feathers. One was sticking him painfully just on the underside of his wings. 

"Here," Kon immediately pulled Tim into his arms and took off. Tim didn't hear the boom when they reached high enough in the air but he was sure there was one. 

Tim yelped as Kon's TTK pressed against his wings uncomfortably, but within less than a minute they were in Lois and Clark's apartment. 

Tim wanted to ask Kon how living with them and Jon was going but he was more distracted by his wings. As soon as Tim touched ground, he ripped off his shirt, buttons flying. Tim looked around for some type of back scratcher or something when he felt Kon's TTK begin ruffling through his feathers, scratching like nails on his skin but soft through the pinfeathers. 

Jon's mouth dropped open. "Tim has wings!" He shouted, jumping up from the couch as Tim sagged slightly under the TTK. That felt good. 

"Mm, a little to the right-yeah right there." He hummed, going a little weak at the knees because of the relief.

Tim stretched his wings, shaking them slightly and old feathers fell to the floor. Jon gasped as he bent down to pick them up. 

"Wow! What happened?" He asked. 

"Thanks for now, Kon." Tim said, pushing himself out of Conner's grasp. 

"Tim's cursed for-" he turned to Tim, "how long?"

"A month." Tim grumbled. 

"To have wings. But why are you… shedding?"

"Moulting. Birds do it to grow in new feathers and get rid of old ones." Tim corrected. "And according to the ornithologist I went to-" 

"Bird scientist." Kon whispered to Jon who nodded sagely. 

"-this month is moulting time for North American robins."

"Don't robins have red feathers though?" Jon asked, twirling one of Tim's between his fingers. 

"Adults and only during mating season. Most of the rest of the year they're spotted." Tim said. "God, I'm starving, you guys have anything to eat?"

"We were just about to order pizza when you texted." Kon said, closing the window behind him.  Tim folded his shirt in his hands and bent down to pick up the rest of his feathers from the floor. "Lois and Clark are in Hub this weekend."

"Can you fly?" Jon asked, skipping behind Tim as he went to go sit on the couch. "Do you have any other bird characteristics? If I pull out one of your feathers does it hurt like when you pull out a nose hair or when you break a bone? Not that I would know because I've never broken a bone but Damian says it hurts so-"

"Hey Squirt! What do you want on your pizza? Tim's treat!"

Tim raised an eyebrow at Kon, who sat in the kitchen, leaning against a countertop. The phone against his ear. "Pepperoni and barbeque chicken!" Jon chirped beside Tim.

"My treat?"

"Well, I did just save you in a rather spectacular display of acting, if I do say so myself. I say I deserve payment for my performance. Be lucky I only demand pizza."

"And ice cream!" Jon added. 

"And ice cream."

Tim rolled his eyes and dug out his wallet. "Fine. But we get Hawaiian."

Kon glared at him and was probably about to say something about it when the pizza place picked up. "-Yes hello, I'd like to order two large pizzas…One double cheese with mushrooms and the other pepperoni and barbeque chicken." Tim walked over to give Kon his credit card. "Yes, I'm sure I don't want anything else-" Tim punched his arm and Kon laughed, floating out of his reach. "Yes, I've got the credit card right here- Ow! Fine. Three large pizzas, make the third Hawaiian, you freak." The last bit was directed at Tim who made a rude gesture at him and Kon laughed again. 

~~~

Jon fell asleep around ten, ice cream sundae half eaten. He snored, face lying on Kon's thigh. Kon's fingers scratched through Tim's feathers as they watched Wendy. Kon had been slowly introducing it to Jon, well the more PG13 aspects, and Jon was just as obsessed as his older brother. 

"Right there." Tim said, and Kon's TTK dug into his wings, pulling out the old feather. Kon put it in the small pile accumulating on the table. "Jeez, how much can you shed?"

"Moult." Tim corrected. "And apparently moulting season is about five weeks for robins. I'll have a little bit every day or so."

"I guess that means no more dates with… what's her name?"

"Jordan." Tim mumbled relaxing as the TTK spread out over his shoulders, massaging them some. "Yeah, I guess not. It's really unfortunate. I really liked this one."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, and Eduardo's is like, a three week wait. Even for Waynes." Tim said as he ripped off the crust of his pizza. Kon took it from him and munched on it as Tim ate the rest of it.

"Aw, are you sad because you didn't get a candlelit dinner?" Kon teased.

Tim rolled his eyes. "Yeah well, it's not like I get to relax like that often." 

"Ew!" Kon jumped and glanced down at Jon who was drooling onto his pants. Kon poked him hard. "Okay, Jonno. Time for bed." 

"No…" Jon whined as his eyes blinked open. "I'm awake! I'm awake!."

"Nope. Come on, I already let you stay up an hour later than Lois does. Brush your teeth and get under the covers. I'm gonna come check in a moment."

Jon whined about it but he sulked off to the bathroom anyway. Kon paused the TV and began cleaning up. 

"Hey you want to stay the night? Lois and Clark won't mind." Kon asked as he shoved the empty pizza boxes in the garbage. 

"Yeah, I think so," Tim said, toying with his phone. 

"What were you even going to do with Jody-?" 

"Jordan."

"-Like, you've got wings, dude." 

"I wasn't planning on taking off my shirt, dude." Tim said, placing lids back on their containers of half melted ice cream. "It was the first date."

Kon snorted. "Sure you weren't."

Tim rolled his eyes. "Is a nice dinner and a goodnight kiss not enough for you?"

"Sure, but only if I get a walk in the park with it."

Tim stood and walked into the kitchen, tubs of ice cream in each hand. He put them in the freezer. "You're such an ass."

"And you're such a romantic."

"So?" Tim asked. He leaned against the fridge as he watched Kon wrap the stray pieces of pizza in tin foil and put them away for leftovers. "What's wrong with that? I never get anything nice and fairy-tale-like in my real life."

"Being cursed with magic wings isn't fairy-tale-like enough for you?" 

Tim rolled his eyes. "You know what I meant. Sometimes it’s just nice to be pampered, you know?"

Kon made a face that Tim couldn't read and shook his head. "I'm going to check on Jon. You can borrow my pajamas. You know where they are. Feel free to shower and stuff if you want."

Tim decided to take a shower. The day had been long, and his feathers felt a little grimy. After a thorough shower and a dry towel (a clump of pin-feathers stuck to the towel as he dried his back, but that seemed to be all of the moulting he had left for the day), he borrowed a pair of Kon’s pajama pants, deciding not to wear a shirt because of the wings and headed back out into the living room. 

Kon had a stupid smile on his face. Tim frowned. “What...?” He asked suspiciously. 

“I have a surprise for you.” 

Tim raised an eyebrow. Kon held out a hand. Tim laughed at him but took it, and Kon flew back out the window and up to the roof. And yeah, the cheesiness made Tim laugh but nothing could have possibly prepared him for what he saw on the roof. 

Small electric tea-lights speckled the roof, surrounding a blanket on which soder-floats in wine glasses had been settled. 

“What…?” Tim was giggling uncontrollably now. “What is this?”

“Well, you said that you missed having candlelit dinners and relaxing and stuff. I figured, well we already ate dinner but there’s always room for ice cream. And we didn’t have any candles but Clark and Lois had-”

“Oh, Conner you’re such a dork.” Tim laughed, clutching his belly. 

Kon grinned at him. “So you like it?”

Tim fell onto the blanket. He looked up at the sky and then rolled over, careful not to upset his drink. “Conner, this is the nicest but dorkiest thing anyone has ever done for me.”

Kon sat next to him, petting his pinfeathers gently. Tim raised an eyebrow at him. “They’re so soft.” Kon said defensively. 

Tim snorted. “I think I’m done shedding-”

“Moulting.” Kon corrected with an easy smile. 

“-yes, for today. Thank you for everything you did for me tonight.”

“Of course.” Kon said softly. “It’s what bros do. Plus it was fun.”

“Yeah, I guess it was, in a way.” Tim shrugged, sitting up. He and Kon were so close. The electric candlelight flickered shadows across Kon’s face. And maybe it was how late it was, or that Tim was missing out on his date with Jordan, but he bent over and pressed his lips to Kon’s. 

And Kon didn’t kiss back. Tim pulled away, startled and flushed. He’d thought-Had he read Kon wrong? Had-?

“Candlelit dinner and a goodnight kiss, huh?” Conner breathed. 

Tim blinked. 

“Your version of a first date sucks.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because I'd much rather another kiss than a walk in the park,” Kon pulled Tim closer, “but your shirt’s already off, so really, who's version does that make this?” Kon waggled his eyebrows.

Tim rolled his eyes and pushed Kon away, pelting an electric candle at him. He held in a laugh as he said back: “You’re such an ass,” and in return, Kon kissed him again.

[sugarandspace]

Waiting

AO3

Catarina arrived fast, a Shadowhunter escorting her to Alec’s office after she’d portalled outside of the Institute. The normally calm warlock appeared shocked as she saw Magnus trashing on the floor.

“What happened?” She asked, landing on her knees next to Alec on the floor, her hands spread in the air over Magnus’ body, light blue magic scanning him.

“I-” Alec started but found his words stuck in his throat. He cleared his voice and tried to focus. “We were talking and he collapsed. He said something but it was not in a language that I know. His nose started to bleed, and then he was coughing up blood too.”

“His body is resisting the unfamiliar magic,” Catarina said, placing her hands on Magnus’ chest. “How long has he had symptoms?”

“Symptoms?” Alec asked dumbly. Magnus hadn’t had any symptoms before this.

“Yes,” Catarina said, pushing magic into her friend, but it looked like it was only making the trashing more violent. “Headaches, nosebleeds, nausea - symptoms like that.”

“I don’t know,” Alec said helplessly. “He hasn’t told me.”

“Magnus,” she said, her tone chastising before she turned her attention to Alec. “I have no other choice but to get the magic out of him. His body is resisting it to the point that it’s impossible to fix the situation and have him keep the powers.”

“Will that save him?”

“It depends on how much damage has already happened,” Catarina said, her words making Alec’s panic spike up. A hopeful, naive part of him had hoped that Catarina would arrive and use her powers and everything would be okay again. “But if I don’t remove Lorenzo’s magic it’s only going to get worse.”

Alec nodded, watching as instead of pushing her magic into Magnus’ body, it started to look like Catarina was pulling something from it. Wisps of yellow magic rose from Magnus’ chest, his back arching up in the process. The trashing stopped, and as the last bits of magic left the body and disappeared into the air, Magnus’ body went completely slack.

Alec’s hands flew to Magnus’ neck immediately, fingers searching for a pulse that he found. The pulse was weak but it was there, and Alec sighed from relief.

“When will he wake up?” Alec asked, looking at Catarina.

“There’s no way of knowing for sure,” Catarina said, turning her attention from Magnus to Alec. There was something in her expression that made Alec feel wary. “Since his state was caused by an unfamiliar magic, healing him with my magic isn’t an option and we need to let his body recover the mundane way. He’ll wake up when he’s healed enough. That is -”

“What?” Alec asked, hating the way Catarina trailed off and turned her attention back to Magnus, her expression solemn. It made dread crawl up Alec’s spine.

“That is, if he’ll wake up,” Catarina finished.

“No,” Alec said, his voice weak as he shook his head in denial. “No, no, no. He has to wake up. Has to. He can’t- he can’t die Catarina.”

“I know,” Catarina said, turning to look at Alec again. And Alec knew that she did know, was one of the few who actually could understand how Alec was feeling.

They were quiet for a while after that, their attention on Magnus. A million thoughts were going through Alec’s mind, and he knew that it was probably the same for Catarina.

“We need to take him to my room,” Alec said eventually, realising that lying on the floor couldn’t be comfortable - no matter if Magnus could actually feel it or not.  

“He’ll need mundane medicine, some fluids and a heart monitor, in case…” Catarina trailed off and Alec understood. He didn’t want to hear the words in case something goes wrong either.  

“The Institute infirmary then,” Alec said, knowing that a mundane hospital was out of question. Before Catarina could say anything, Alec slipped his arms underneath Magnus’ body, one arm supporting his back and  the other hooked under his knees. He lifted his boyfriend up from the ground, adjusting his arms when he stood up. Magnus head hung to the side unnaturally, and Alec shifted so that it was resting against his shoulder instead. The familiar feeling of soft breaths against his neck brought tears to Alec’s eyes when he thought back to the same morning when he had woken up with the warlock draped over his body, peacefully asleep as Alec had slipped out from under him so that he could bring Magnus breakfast to bed.

That morning felt so far away right now.

Catarina walked in front of him, opening the office door to Alec as they started to walk towards the infirmary. There was a small crowd of Shadowhunters lingering outside of the office, everyone curious to know what had happened in Alec’s office that had caused him to call for a medic and for Catarina Loss to enter the room a moment later. Alec paid no mind to them, walking past them briskly and ignoring the stares he could feel on his back.

When they got to the infirmary, Alec found a room that wasn’t occupied and laid Magnus down on the bed, Catarina walking to the other side of it. She waved her hand and the blood was gone from Magnus’ face, the magic taking away the slightly smudged makeup as well. Another wave and the hair that had been sticking up to every direction after all the trashing Magnus’ body has gone through on the floor was falling down his forehead as straight strands that Alec knew to be soft to the touch.

“I thought you said he couldn’t handle magic?” Alec asked.

“This kind of magic is okay because it’s only superficial. I can’t put any magic inside his body,” Catarina explained and Alec nodded in understanding.

Catarina waved her hands for the third time, the bloody clothes Magnus was wearing replaced by comfortable ones, a blanket finding is way over Magnus’ body. The clothes he was wearing before appeared into the small table next to the bed, neatly folded.

“What can I do?” Alec asked, watching as Catarina started hooking Magnus into an IV. He wanted to help, to do something useful.

“I’m afraid there isn’t anything we can do,” Catarina said. “After I connect him into the heart monitor and start the IV for fluids, all we can do is wait, give his body time to recover on its own.”

And that’s what Alec did.

He took a chair from the corner of the room and moved it next to Magnus’ bed, taking Magnus’ hand that wasn’t connected to the IV and held it. Instead of bringing comfort it felt wrong, because unlike usually when Alec reached for Magnus’ hand, this time Magnus wasn’t returning the hold. It only eased Alec’s mind when he slid his hand a bit further, two of his fingers resting over the veins on Magnus’ wrist, feeling the steady beat of Magnus’ heart.

Catarina stayed for a while, first doing what she could to help Magnus and then just sitting on the other side of the end. They didn’t talk, but the silence wasn’t uncomfortable either. They both had too much in their minds to focus on polite small talk.

After a while Catarina had to leave, saying that she had pick Madzie up from a babysitter. She promised to come back later, and Alec promised to let her know if anything changed while she was gone.

Alec wasn’t really surprised when only a couple minutes after Catarina had left, his sister entered the room.

“How is he?” Izzy asked, laying a hand on Alec’s shoulder.

“Not great,” Alec said, keeping his eyes on Magnus. “Catarina took Lorenzo’s magic from his body but he’s still healing from the damage it caused.”

“And how are you feeling?” Izzy asked, her hand squeezing Alec’s shoulder gently.

Alec didn’t have the answer for that, his words getting stuck in his throat. He settled for shaking his head and taking in a shuddering breath.

“Alec…”

“She said- ” Alec said but his voice broke before he could continue. “Catarina said that he might not wake up.”

Alec heard Izzy’s shocked gasp but he didn’t look at her, instead he fixed his eyes to the floor as the tears started to fall. He didn’t try to keep them in, knowing that Izzy wouldn’t judge him.

“Oh Alec…” Izzy put her hand on Alec’s hair, combing through it as Alec leaned to her hip. It was clear that Izzy didn’t have words for the situation either, but Alec didn’t mind. He was pretty sure that the only words that could bring him comfort right now would be ones coming from the mouth of his boyfriend.

Alec calmed down after a while, a numb feeling replacing pain. He was desperate for Magnus to wake up, and felt helpless when there wasn’t anything he could do to help him.

Izzy stayed with him for a while, their silence only broken by the steady beeping of the heart monitor. Eventually she got a message, and told Alec that she needed to go.

“I can take these to get washed,” Izzy said, looking at the pile of clothes on the table. Magnus’ vest was on top of the pile, the blood stains visible. Izzy probably thought that it would be better if Alec didn’t need to keep looking at the bloody clothes.

Alec nodded, barely paying attention to what his sister had said. He looked as Izzy took the pile into her arms and started to leave the room. That’s when he remembered.

“No!” Alec said suddenly, his loud voice startling Izzy who was not expecting such a reaction. “Wait.”

Alec stood up from the chair and walked around to where Izzy was standing. He took Magnus’ pants from the bottom of the pile, his hand going for his pocket. Alec removed Magnus’ phone and sat it on the table, and then he checked the other pocket.

He knew he would find it.

He studied the charm in his hands, the corners and some of the details slightly worn. Alec could easily imagine Magnus running his fingers over them.

Alec knew that Magnus carried the charm with him, had occasionally seen a peek of it when Magnus had thought that Alec wasn’t looking. It was something Magnus hadn’t told him, and Alec saw no reason to let his boyfriend know that he knew. But it warmed Alec’s heart to know that his silly little gift meant so much to Magnus, and he loved the idea that whenever Magnus went, he carried a piece of Alec with him.

“What is that?” Izzy asked, reminding Alec of where he was and what had happened.

“It’s a Japanese charm,” Alec explained, showing the item to Izzy. “It’s called Omamori and it’s supposed to bring luck and protection to its owner.”

Luck and protection. Magnus hadn’t had a lot of either recently.

“Did you give it to him?” Izzy asked, guessing right.

“I did,” Alec said, a fond smile taking over his face as he thought back to when he had given it to Magnus. “You should have seen his face. He was so surprised.”

“That was such a thoughtful gift,” Izzy said. “I can see why he carried it with him.”

“Yeah,” Alec said, trailing off as he walked next to Magnus again. He took Magnus’ hand and placed the Omamori onto it, putting the fingers into a loose fist so that it was almost like Magnus was holding it.

Even if the charm had run out of protection and luck, it was still clearly something that brought Magnus comfort. And even thought Magnus wasn’t in a conscious state right now, Alec wanted to hope that maybe Magnus would feel the presence of the charm through his unconsciousness. Alec kissed the back of Magnus’ palm before placing the hand back on the bed.

“Let me know if there’s anything I can do,” Izzy said from behind him. “Don’t worry about the Institute, we’ll keep it running. There are more important things for you to worry about.”

“Thank you Izzy,” Alec said, turning to look at his sister.

Izzy gave him a small smile and replied. “You don’t need to thank me.”  

After that she left, and Alec was alone with Magnus again, waiting.  

There might not have been much he could do, but he could be there for Magnus, whenever he would wake up. Because he was going to wake up, Alec was sure of it. There wasn’t a version of future where Magnus wasn’t alive.

Magnus was his world.  

[enigmatist17]

Hard Truths (Spiderman Noir and Spider-Family)(1)

As you can tell by now, Noir is my fav and I always torture my favs :’)

Yet, being in the world he is, Noir probably had seen/has seen some terrible stuff, it being the 30′s and all. 

Spider-Fam needs to give this guy a hug or 6.

Traveling to the universe belonging to Peter Benjamin Parker, or Noir as the ones he called the Spider-Family named him, was always disorienting. The black and white world was hard to traverse, even harder when they had to hide their bright color.

“I hope he’s alright.” Peni Parker sighed after a few hours had passed. The Spider-Family had traveled to the world after not having heard from Noir for over a week.

“Hey, Noir can always handle himself.” Peter B. assured her, swinging alongside the large mech as they followed the coordinates from Noir’s wristband. She only let out a sigh, her worry evident as they finally narrowed in on an unassuming brick building. Thankfully the streets were empty, Gwen swinging down to read the lists of plaques, eyes landing on the one declaring Private Eye.

“Fourth floor.” She murmured into her communicator, the group easily and quickly making their way to the said floor. Most of the office spaces sat empty, which seemed for the best as bullet holes could be seen all over various walls, leading up to an office at the end of the hallway.

SPIDERMAN, PRIVATE EYE

With a look, Gwen reached for the handle, only for the door to open without effort.

“Doesn’t look forced.” She muttered, Peter beside her frowning as the four entered the office cautiously. The stench of vomit hit them first, Peni recoiling while Miles coughed. Peter just steeled himself, Porker on his shoulder seeming nonplussed by the smell.

“Spread out and search.” Peter shook his head, heading with Porker to a room to the right. Peni followed Gwen and Miles to the left, the various rooms they came across in states of disarray.

“Found him!” Peter called out from his side, the younger spiders quickly hurrying to his side. Noir was passed out cold in a bathtub that had seen better days, some leftover vomit surrounding the drain. The man was shaking, his face almost snow white when Porker pulled off the rest of his mask, cheeks a dark grey from fever undoubtedly.

“Shit, we need to get him out of here.” Peter cursed, Porker moving over to SP//DR and Peter B. could lift the unconscious detective up and out of the tub. “Someone get a portal open.” Gwen had a portal up and running in seconds, Miles fretting beside her as Noir was carried through quickly. Aunt May’s home was mere feet away, Porker bounding up to the door and knocking quickly.

“Yes yes, give me a moment, I’ll be right...oh my god what happened?” May’s jaw went slack, not expecting to see a very pale and unconscious Noir being carried by Peni and Peter. B. She ushered them inside quickly, not even flinching when Noir seemed to come to, only to vomit heavily all over the front entryway.

“Oh that is nasty.” Porker groaned, Noir letting out a dazed noise as he weakly forced his eyes open.

“No no sweetheart, don’t force yourself.” May soothed, running a hand through Noir’s black hair. This seemed to satisfy the man, grey eyes sliding shut as he was taken to be showered. He showed signs of malnutrition and dehydration, cheeks still flushed after he was dried off and dressed in some spare clothes.

“I can get my mom to help us out.” Miles offered, May nodding as she could only treat so much. The youngest Spiderman was gone out of the window in moments, Gwen accompanying him as May tried to get Noir to drink something.

“Come on dear, it will help you I promise.” She murmured, watching as it seemed to take all of Noir’s strength to open his mouth. “There you are.” He only took a few sips before closing his mouth, mumbling something before falling back asleep. Miles’ mother, having grown accustomed to seeing the other Spiders’, went about treating Noir immediately, her gloves making the man shiver at each touch. An IV was hooked up, giving him some fluids while she checked the rest of his vitals.

“I cannot say for sure, but he seems to have pneumonia or at least the tail end of it.” She shook her head, the others looking at each other worriedly. “You may want to go and see if you have been infected.”

“Later, will he be alright?” Gwen asked, crossing her arms. “I’ve never seen him so...weak.”

“He will live, but he cannot return to his...home until he is fully healed. I will see about getting him a vaccine, as he is very lucky he did not die.” She explained, her gaze softening at the looks of guilt she could see pass their faces. “You couldn’t have known..”

“We went a whole week without checking in on him.” Porker frowned, which was uncharacteristic for the cartoonish pig.

“You still couldn’t have known.” The doctor repeated, awkwardly yet gently placing her hand on his head. Porker sighed but knew she was right, the doctor leaving after an hour with a promise to return.

Why wasn’t he dead?

Peter Benjamin knew death was on his doorstep when he woke up sick a week ago. Pneumonia, it had been going around and he had tried to stay clear of it. Yet, despite his efforts, he failed. In two days he was sluggish, barely able to fight battles and save those who needed it. In four he was unable to get out of the office without stumbling, barely able to breathe and see straight. By six he was unconscious, knowing he was going to die in his bathroom alone. Die in a monochrome world without those he considered family. He wanted to reach them, he really did, but his wristband had taken some damage and stopped working. So he dreamed of colors, of lively worlds with his lively family, knowing he would die eventually.

He did not expect to wake up in a soft bed, the sun shining into a room that was covered in soft yellows.

Ah, Aunt May’s house.

Something beeped beside him, Noir squinting as he saw some sort of strange device attached to a tube in his arm. His first instinct was to rip it out, but Noir found his arms weighed a ton each. Admitting defeat he fell back onto his pillow, wondering what had happened.

“Noir? Are you awake?” The soft voice roused Noir, who didn’t even realize his eyes had closed. Peni was by his side by the time he opened his eyes, big eyes shining with worry and hope.

“M here…” He slurred weakly, feeling her take his hand and give it a squeeze. Ah, she was just too innocent.

“I thought you were never going to wake up.” She gushed, some tears gathering at the edge of her eyes. “Why didn’t you call us?”

“Tried...didn’ want ta...go alone…” He muttered, wanting nothing more in the world than to comfort her. Peni frowned, using her free hand to retrieve his wristband. It only took a look to see that it was indeed broken, the girl letting out a choked sound.

“Oh my gosh, you could have…” Peter wasn’t expecting the crushing hug, letting out a weak cough as he felt some tears staining his shirt. “I’m so so sorry!”

“Not..yer fault…” He sighed, forcing his arms to loosely drape around the girl. “Just…got sick is...is all.”

“You were really sick!” She insisted, carefully sitting up to give him some space to breathe. “We should have been there for you!”

“You are now...sweet thing.” He smiled softly, a genuine smile despite the pain he was still in. Peni couldn’t help but return the gesture, knowing Peter almost never smiled. It was much easier for Noir to drift off a few minutes later, Peni now securely tucked into his side as he rested. It appeared to have been some time when he woke next, the room dark save for the lamp in the far corner. Peter Porker, mainly referred to by Ham, was reading an oversized book. He seemed to sense Peter had awoken, lowering the book with a wave.

“Hey pal, how ya feeling?” The pig watched as Noir took a look around, slowly sitting upright.

“Better.” He sighed, voice still raspy. A weight on his side revealed Peni, the Japenese girl fast asleep while hugging his left arm close to her.

“Kid has barely left your side.” Ham shook his head, a small smile on his face. Ham and Noir had come to a sort of understanding. While technically Noir was the most out of reach when it came to anything more advanced than the thirties, Ham’s world was a mix of both the past and the future. The old-timey comedy never failed to get a faint grin or soft chuckle from Noir. In return, Noir taught Ham when it was time to joke, and when it was time to hold back and remain silent. Not once did either think they would make friends of each other, yet now it was hard to imagine.

“A heart like that is what you see on a sunrise, nothing more.” Noir gently tucked some hair from the sleeping girls face, Ham tilting his head in confusion.

“What the heck does that mean?”

“Nothing...it means nothing.” The detective shook his head, his friend just giving him a look.

“You gotta lighten up, we’re all here for ya.” Peter coughed slightly, reaching for the glasses on his bedside table. The room coming into sharp focus made him wince at first, Ham taking the opportunity to move closer to the sick man.  

“I know you are, yet…” His shoulders slumped, gaze cast solely on Peni. “I can’t get attached, the city has no soul for man nor child.”

“Come on bud, Peni is a tough fighter.”

“She is still a child...I have had too many children die in my arms.” Ham felt his blood run cold, Noir’s voice flat and emotionless. “I am afraid that everytime you all visit my home, she may not leave it. Or Miles. Or Gwen.”

“Jesus, how long have you been keeping this to yourself?” Ham blinked, realizing very quickly this was entering territory he had no clue how to handle.

“That’s why my wristband broke...I broke it.” Peter didn’t realize how much the simple confession would make him feel, though that was replaced with guilt. He felt the familiar weight of Ham on his leg, the one he called friend giving him a pitying look.

“Bud...you have to tell us this stuff.” Porker pat Peter’s exposed hand like it was made of glass. “Did you get sick on purpose?”

“No, I tried my best not to.” He shook his head. “If I’m leaving this world, it’ll be with the moon screaming and the gunfire blazing.”

“Right...still, this isn’t healthy.”

“I suppose not,” Peter replied simply. “Then again, I’ve never had someone else to show me there are other ways, not until…”

“We met.” Noir nodded, Peni muttering something as she shifted in her sleep. The adoration and love for a child he barely knew, yet knew her more than anyone else, was plain to see in those grey eyes.

“Get some sleep Peter, we’ll have a lot to talk about.” Ham gently urged, surprised at how easily Peter complied with him. ‘Trust me, she is in the safest place in any multiverse.”

“That I wouldn’t doubt.” Peter nodded, letting out a short chuckle as he lay back down. His heavy eyelids closed, and soon he was fast asleep, gently drawing Peni close.

“Aw jeeze Peter…” Ham shook his head, turning the lamp off before leaving the room. It was going to be a very long couple of weeks...

[chubbyooo]

Blurred Lines Chapter 29 - The Temple of Exar Kun

we’re really getting into it now with the next chapter, switching away from Kavaraa and over to Terri and Lusari 

Terri and Lusari arrive at the temple of Exar Kun and are met with some interesting challenges

Terri shivered as her boots crunched against the dead leaves on the forest floor, night had fallen on Yavin IV but they were pressing on wary of pursuers on their tail. They’d had to ditch the speeders when the jungle to too dense for safe travel and as a result had resorted to walking. Her feet ached so bad it felt like they’d been walking for hours but they had to get to this lake thing soon they were almost done.

From her right she heard the calm voice of Lusari “that was close huh” Terri turned to look at her, she was smiling at her seemingly catching on to her discomfort 

Terri played with her hair, embarrassed she’d been found out “yeah it was kinda scary” she muttered avoiding eye contact, she hadn’t been able to shake the fight with the togruta from her mind. She had no idea if her words had been lies or truth, it seemed like they told the truth but the story seemed so farfetched. She didn’t know what to believe but she at least knew she could trust Lusi.

Lusari chuckled looking away for a second “yeah you don’t know the half of it, that commander may have killed me today if The Lady didn’t protect me” Terri gasped, the idea of Lusari nearly dying was not one she wanted to think about and the Lady truly was powerful if she could stop the alliance commander in her tracks. Lusari frowned for a second “that does bring up a point though” she paused looking to her bag “the commander had some very harsh words for the Lady it seems like they had a pretty intense rivalry. Apparently she was the one who trapped the lady away in something called a mind prison” Terri was left slack jawed for a few seconds before she composed herself

“no wonder she’s been following us were they arch enemies” Terri had wondered why she was so persistent this made a lot more sense if they’d been rivals

Before they could discuss it any more they heard her echoed voice from Lusari’s bag “I’m afraid so Kyradia and I have had a rather complicated history and not all of it paints me in the most positive light” as the Lady spoke the holocron rose out of the bag surrounded by a humming red energy and began floating at eye level

Lusari’s lips tightened as she spoke “you referred to her as apprentice?” Terri stepped back, now she understood Lusari’s tone they were basically like temporary apprentices right but the Lady couldn’t do something like that to them right?

An echoed sigh came from the holocron “yes but our falling out wasn’t my fault trust me” that was reassuring at least a little “it was the classic apprentice decides she’s had enough of being an apprentice so tries to take down the master” Terri’s body relaxed as she heard that, she had no intention of betrayal she would just be content with repaying the favour.

Lusari didn’t look so convinced “so you were trapped in a mind prison? just for that” she put her hands on her hips and stopping the consistent pace they’d been making towards the temple

Another exasperated sigh echoed around them “trust me the details are very complicated but she did far worse than me” Lusi’s frown softened a little “do you know how she got the togruta on her side” Terri broke out of her shock suddenly The Lady did had a good point

Terri put her hand on Lusi’s shoulder “I do actually she totally manipulated the togruta forcing her to join the commander she told me herself.” 

The Lady let out a laugh “that’s the same as the account I have” with that Lusari’s expression dropped and she let out a long sigh

She looked up to The Lady slumping her shoulders “I’m sorry my Lady I was just worried something was up” she paused lowering her head “I’m sorry for accusing you that was wrong of me” Terri thought Lusi was probably right to check though she shouldn’t feel so bad.

The holocron lowered a bit to meet Lusari’s eyes ‘it’s ok Lusari from the outside it does sound bad but I assure you I have no intention of repeating past mistakes and don’t worry I wouldn’t let any harm come to either of you” Lusari let out a half smile and stood back up

“thanks my Lady, we shouldn’t wait around any longer they are probably still after us” Lusari’s confident tone returned as she strode forward as Terri stumbled to keep up

The voice echoed as the holocron hovered next to them “I think I’ll stay out of that dingy bag from now on, this new found power is more than enough to suffice” Lusari and Terri nodded as they continued on towards the temple, Terri’s feet still hurt

A few hours later and they could see breaks starting to form in the trees where moonlight shined in and with that both Lusari and Terri began to rush a little faster aware of how long they’d been walking. Soon the towering trees turned into small foliage as they burst out the forest and were met with a beautiful sight. In front of them they saw shining black temple towering into the sky until it just touched the bottom of the clouds, in the middle of it’s four peaks was a huge statue seemingly of Exar kun. Beneath the temple lay an island of some form of black sooty structure maybe basalt. Surrounding the island was a shimmering lake with what seemed like little stepping stones dotted throughout the water.

Terri felt unable to move as she took in the wonderful sight in front of her “wow” she paused “it’s...” she couldn’t think of a word to describe all of what she saw

“stunning” Lusari stood next to her seemingly in a similar state of awe. Terri felt Lusari’s hand take her’s as they stared at the sight in front of them, it was definitely unique maybe that’s what Terri would miss about this experience the sense of adventure

They stood there for a few more seconds before they heard the Lady’s voice from behind them “The Temple of Exar Kun, the fallen jedi who the Massassi viewed as their new god” she paused for a second “then suddenly the Massassi all died I think I can guess who’s fault that was” Terri was broken out of her trance as she heard about the Massassi that was truly awful

“that’s horrible” Terri exclaimed turning to the holocron

The holocron floated up to them “quite well unfortunately sith commonly will do anything to gain more power” she had a point there but there was always a line and this guy definitely crossed it “I’d watch out while in there and avoid the tomb in my experience tombs of sith lords usually house a spirit of some kind” Terri felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, after the encounter with the crazy togruta ghost she’d had enough of ghosts for a lifetime, the thought of facing another more powerful one was rather unsettling 

“um are we g-gonna run into him” Terri was hoping to hide her fear but she clearly had failed

“as long as we don’t disturb the actual tomb we should be fine, we’re just here for the potent force energy” Terri nodded, she had theorised that’s why they were here. “and before we forget Lusari could you set up the beacon for the escape shuttle” Lusari nodded getting out a contraption Terri didn’t recognise, she knew they would make a quick escape but had never really got how. She supposed it was the quickest way available, she just hoped the mercenaries ships were well equipped to deal with force users.

Lusari finished unfolding the beacon and flipped a switch “there we go they should’ve received the ping and i can message them when we are ready to escape” Lusari walked back over to them with a smile

the Lady seemed to pause in thought for a moment before she spoke up “I would advise Terri handles that side of things you may be too busy with the ritual” Lusari nodded with looking very serious for a moment and passed the comm to Terri, that probably would be more efficient all Terri would be doing is lookout duty and maybe slowing down the commander. Terri wasn’t sure if either duty was less busy but one was definitely more important to their plan. The Lady turned to look at the lake “I’m sure by now you’ve noticed the stepping stones” Terri had wondered about them, they looked a bit precarious she’d have to look down when crossing

Lusari tilted her head looking at the stones “I had wondered about that are you sure there’s no other way to cross” Lusi could probably think up some clever scheme

The Lady continued “I doubt it I believe it was built like this very purposefully the water is almost definitely unsafe and it’s extremely difficult to fly that close to the temple” Terri smiled to herself, the audacity of some sith to build such monuments how was it possible they were that far up their own butts, she let a small giggle by accident trying to hide it with her hand.

Lusari gave her a quick smirk before she started walkimg towards the first stone “well no time like the present” she bent her knees and jumped to the first stone. Looking back to them with her head held high “huh these things ain’t that far apart actually” she gestured for them to come forward, The Lady slowly floated towards her but Terri looked at the floor for a second she’d never been that acrobatic and didn’t want to embarrass herself. Come on you can do it she told herself, she summed up her courage, bent her knees and jumped to the stone next to Lusari’s wobbling a bit but none the less finding her footing

“huh you’re right easy” Terri said with a smile keeping her eyes firmly on the stones

“alright let’s do this one at a time” Lusari steadied herself as Terri nodded back. Lusari went for another jump and crossed a few at once with impressive strides as she reached the last however she began to teeter on the edge looking like she was about to fall in. Terri put up her hand and reached out with the force pulling her back from falling, Lusari turned around and awkwardly mouthed the word “thanks” to her. They continued to jump from stone to stone and after about ten minutes were reaching the mid-way point at which point the stones began to open up with multiple routes

“hey look an easy bit” Terri chirped as Lusari jumped to the right stone. They could probably make some good time if she took the other route, she jumped to the left stone and tuned to see where the next one was. As she did she felt a shift beneath her feet and the stone began to sink, oh no it was sinking fast she had to jump somewhere quick hopefully Lusari had moved from the stone she was on. She jumped to the right stone but as she jumped saw Lusari was still there, oh no she was gonna knock her off as he feet landed on it however she felt herself caught by Lusari who instinctively grabbed her and after a small wobble they were both balanced on the stone.

It was pretty cramped but they were both ok “woah hold your horses Terri I’m still here” she could feel Lusari’s breath on her face as they held each other to avoid falling

Terri’s face went a deep shade of dark green “sorry my stone kinda sunk” this was so awkward why couldn’t she just have waited

Lusari smiled at her “oh ok that makes more sense, at least i caught you” Terri couldn’t make eye contact she was so embarrassed. Lusari moved in and whispered “by the way I totally agree” Terri looked at her confused

“huh what do you mean” Terri wobbled back a bit but Lusari caught her back phew that was close, Terri held Lusari’s shoulders trying to steady herself

Lusari grinned and whispered “these sith lords egos must weigh their heads down right”

Terri couldn’t help but snort with laughter “Lusi stoop you’re gonna make me fall in” Lusari smirked as she began shimmying around the stone

“well that’s payback for nearly making me fall in Terr” Terri grinned that seemed fair, Lusari looked towards the next stone and steadied Terri 

“Ok I’m gonna jump now make sure not to fall alright” Terri nodded tensing up ready to balance herself. Lusari jumped and Terri wobbled waving her arms before feeling a force pushing her back on to the stone

the holocron passed by as the Lady said “you’re welcome, I couldn’t bare to watch that any longer” Terri looked away embarrassed and played with her hair, she just wasn’t very dexterous that’s all. They continued to jump from stone to stone now wary that some would sink and eventually they made it to the island and the temple entrance

Lusari sat down as she stared at the temple “oh my god I can’t even imagine doing that again” Terri definitely agreed sitting down next to her breathing heavily, talk about a workout

The Lady floated in front of them and spoke up “well hopefully once the ritual is complete you wont have to” what a relief that was stressful enough

Lusari lay on her back for a second “are you excited for it to be complete my Lady” 

“oh yes my dear I cannot wait to feel a breeze on my face again It’s been far too long” Terri knew it she had a hunch they were restoring her physical from but was never completely sure.

“well trust me you wouldn’t enjoy how tired we are right now” Lusari had a point they’d been up for nearly a day there was defiantly upsides and downsides

“quite” The lady turned back to the temple “time is of the essence lets go” Lusari and Terri nodded and they headed towards the entrance

As they entered the temple Terri could see it was made out of a black shiny substance possibly obsidian or some form of darker marble, it seemed studded with a type of gem Terri wished she had her geology guide to identify them but whatever they were they seemed rare. The walls were etched with ancient sith language, she didn’t know too much of it but the gist seemed to be protective rites on the temple. Terri was surprised however when they entered the main chamber and there were no side passages

She looked around the large circular chamber “is this it?” she had expected a maze of tunnels they’d have to trekk through

The Lady sighed as she said “for what we’re doing here yes but if you want to get lost in the catacombs searching for Exar Kun be my guest” Terri pursed her lips, yeah that was fair she should’ve guessed

“do we perform the ritual here or somewhere else” Terri wanted to make sure to cover all bases she could  

Lusari turned to Terri a calm look in her eyes “here should do” she paused looking away for a second “this ritual is gonna be quite different to the previous two” Terri tilted her head she guessed that made sense

“different how” Terri wasn’t trying to pry she just wanted to be sure

Lusari looked away which seemed odd to Terri “well it’s gonna be a lot longer and it’s uh” she paused taking a deep breath

Terri held her hand “go ahead tell me I can take it” she wasn’t sure about that but they’d come this far they had to try

“it’s gonna hurt me” Terri gasped blinking in shock “The Lady says that this ritual is extremely powerful so some excess force energy will uh divert into me, it’s gonna hurt a lot but it’s necessary and I’ve made my peace with it” Terri looked at the floor for a second

“ok just uh promise you’ll be ok” she tried to keep her cool, she knew this wasn’t gonna be easy, but she just couldn’t help worrying

Lusari held up her pinky finger with a smile “pinky promise” Terri took her pinky and pulled Lusari in for a hug holding her tightly

“I’m holding you to that” she said feeling a wetness around her eyes. They held each other in the hug for a few seconds before letting go, Terri wiped her eyes and composed herself “I’m uh gonna go check the perimeter you be careful” Terri turned to leave

Before she did she heard the Lady’s voice call out “don’t worry Terri I’ll look after Lusari” that was at least reassuring...