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alwaysmarveling · 3 years

Text

Call Me Back

Pairing: Wanda Maximoff x reader

Warnings: death, a small sexual innuendo, and lots of commas and long sentences

Word Count: 3.4k

Summary: You and Wanda promised each other you would always call to check in, and Wanda’s going to do her best to keep that promise, no matter what.

The first time you met Wanda was… well, when was the first time you met Wanda? Was it when wisps of red flashed in front of your eyes, projecting images so horrific and lifelike that you all but collapsed in a heartbeat? Or was it when she stepped forward to shake your hand timidly, grief and determination filling the witch as she promised to make up for it?

“I- I wouldn’t have done it if I… we were just trying…”

“Don’t worry about it,” you had told her with a smile before confiding in her about your own missteps, how you’d wreaked havoc on all of New York with your powers of body modification after your own parents died, how Fury finally got the Avengers to catch you, and how they quickly became your new family.

“You mean they really almost burned the kitchen down trying to make you a birthday cake?” The brunette giggled later that night as you recounted the story of your sixteenth birthday, the two of you sitting comfortably beside each other on the living room sofa.

“Yup. And when Nat showed up with an ice cream cake fifteen minutes later to find smoke in the living room, Sam told me she freaked on everyone.”

“Excuse me, Y/N, I did not do any ‘freaking.’ God, is that what you teenagers are calling it now?” The two of you erupted into laughter, and the redhead could do nothing more than shake her head, a smirk playing on her lips no matter how hard she tried to conceal it.

---

Much like Nat and Steve predicted, the two of you became fast friends. You sat next to each other on movie nights, sang karaoke in your room when you thought everyone else was asleep (if they weren’t awake when you started, they certainly were once you were thirty seconds into Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody”), and, much to Steve’s dismay, when you finally became confident with your ability to grow wings on your back, snuck out regularly for late-night flights around the compound.

But you also insisted on being there for Wanda’s training sessions, even if it meant you had to wake up an hour earlier. You cradled the witch in your arms when she woke up night after night with an aching hole in her heart before you eventually insisted you guys just share a room. And you promised her, above everything else, that when you went out for anything, whether it be a quick grocery run or a month-long mission, you’d let her know you were okay.

You knew the promise she pleaded you to make was a result of the anxiety she suffered. She’d lost everyone she cared about; if a simple text or call was enough to put her at ease, you’d do it in a heartbeat.

---

“Wanda,” you’d whispered, the teen immediately sitting up straight when she’d heard the cracks in your voice. “I- I don’t know what to do. I’m safe, but...” She told you to stay there, don’t move, she’d be there in minutes. And, with your brain unable to function enough to think of any other option, you listened.

Her heart broke at the sight of you, your arms wrapped tightly around yourself and your head hung, you feet occasionally kicking the wet sidewalk. The neon sign of the restaurant your date had promised to meet you at illuminated one side of your face, allowing her to see the tears that you had tried but failed so desperately to hold in. But the witch didn’t let you see her emotions, instead whisking you away from the unfamiliar section of the city, brushing the tears off of your cheeks and bringing you to the twenty-four-hour diner for milkshakes. She made a fool of herself in front of the waitstaff until tears flowed from your eyes once again, but this time, the crystalline drops rolled down your raised cheeks, aching from smiling too hard.

When you had a panic attack during training because you couldn’t get one of your body modification attempts to reverse—”Wanda, I cannot be stuck with claws for hands, I can’t!”—she refused to let you hang up until the steady sounds of her own breathing calmed you down, the sharp nails receding and making way for the soft pads of your very human fingertips.

And when she called you after the mission in Lagos, you worked tirelessly to complete your own solo mission as soon as you could. You returned to the tower to find her holed up in the bedroom, news broadcasts playing nonstop on the television to remind her of the horrors she’d committed; accident or not, she told you, she needed to hold herself accountable. You simply shook your head at her, holding out your hand without another word. She didn’t take it at first.

“You can’t fix it, Y/N. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called you.” She was expecting you to fight her back on it, yell at her and demand that she take your hand, or perhaps you’d go the complete opposite direction and leave her alone, let her be swallowed by guilt and anguish, rip open old wounds and form new ones as she thought of how she tore apart families that were probably much like her own. You did neither.

Wanda’s green eyes remained fixed on your outstretched hand. You stayed silent, one eyebrow cocked as if daring her to see what would happen should she choose not to take it. It was only then that she realized, for once in her life, the person she most loved wasn’t leaving; the support she so desperately needed wouldn’t be yanked away from her when it was mere centimeters from her grasp.

So she rested her fingers in the palm of your hand, and you pulled her out to the balcony where the two of you had spent night after night watching the stars instead of sleeping, making up funny names for each of them and rolling in fits of laughter that only came to those delirious and sleep-deprived enough to understand just what was so funny. Except, this time, instead of dropping into the oversized beanbag chair that was the usual spot of your stargazing shenanigans, she watched curiously as you removed your shirt. Her mouth dropped as you closed your eyes and allowed the white feathers to emerge from beside the ridges of your spine. Although it was a process she’d seen several times before, your modifications had never ceased to amaze her, and your angel-like wings had always been her favorite. The witch admired the additions as you allowed them to flap slowly, once, twice, before turning back to her.

“Let’s go,” you finally spoke, the order gentle but leaving no room for negotiation.

“Where are we going?”

“Away.” That was enough for the brunette, who squeezed your hand before following your lead. She allowed you to guide her through the maze of clouds and couldn’t help but smile softly as the sun’s rays hit your face at just the right angle. You wore the exhaustion from your recent mission on your face, and streaks of dirt covered the bruises that she was sure littered your body. But she was content, in awe, because you were you. You didn’t put up walls to hide your scars from the world, didn’t use passive-aggressiveness to hide the passion that burned in your heart. At the end of the day, you were good, purely and truly good. You were an angel; even the sun knew it.

What Wanda didn’t realize, but what you taught her that night, as she sat surrounded by sunflowers, the moon, thousands of gleaming stars, and the tickle of your feathers as your wing pulled her close to you, was that she was one too.

“I’m glad you called me,” you whispered, your eyes not leaving the open sky as you pointed out a particularly bright spot. “I’m gonna call that one… Philip. He looks regal, real proud. Look at him, so much brighter than the others, and he knows it too.” The witch breathed out a soft chuckle, stroking her fingers over your feathers as she responded.

“I’m glad I called you too. And I think Philip is a good name for him. What about that one?”

“Hmm… Walter? He’s a bit more serious, I think. But you see the one next to him?” You waited until you got a nod from the girl before continuing. “That’s his sister. She makes sure he has fun, even when he says he doesn’t want to. But you name her, Wands. Naming stars is a two-person job, you know.” She squeezed the elbow that you nudged her with before giving in.

“Alright… that’s Delia. And, yeah, she’s the best. The life of the party. Walter keeps her grounded, though,” Wanda added, to which you agreed to with a hum. You two fell quiet after that, enjoying the comfortable silence and looking up at the twinkling lights, some of them gaining names and stories, others waiting to be named another night.

“Wanda?”

“Yeah?”

“You call me if you ever need me, okay? I know we started this with me calling you, but I’m here for you too.” The witch met your eyes with a firm bob of her head, but you continued, desperate to make sure she understood. “And if I don’t pick up at first, you call me back, okay? Call me until I respond, promise?”

“I promise,” Wanda soothed gently. “I will.”

“Okay, good, good. Because,” Wanda felt a brush of your feathers against her upper arm as you fluttered your wings, slightly agitated, “because I think I love you. I mean, um, I know. I know I love you. I love you. Yeah, I-” Wanda shut you up with a kiss, her lips pressed urgently against yours. And if you hadn’t lost your breath from your rambling or your declaration of love to the girl of your dreams, then you most definitely lost it as your lips melted into hers, in the comforting warmth of her palm against your cheek, and in the words that left her mouth as you finally pulled apart, breathless.

“I will, Y/N, I promise. Because I love you too.”

---

People thought you were inseparable before you started dating, but they all realized how wrong they were after that night. The two twin beds quickly became a queen-sized mattress, sideline support during training sessions became fierce yet playful spars, and the private giggles you guys shared grew tenfold. Fury wasn’t exactly happy that his unofficial daughter was now dating, but he was pleased by how efficiently the two of you worked together, which led you to this moment, the two of you covering the Quinjet while waiting for the rest of the Avengers to finish their business inside the massive Hydra base. With Wanda covering the ground and you in the sky, flying with the white-feathered wings that Wanda loved so dearly, the two of you held off the swarms of Hydra agents relatively well. With a small break in between incoming agents, Wanda looked up to check on you, but she was a moment too late. Before she could even think to warn you, the pure feathers she loved to brush her fingers through fell from the sky, the white stained with red, your screams ripping through her eardrums.

No one, including Wanda, had time to think as she exploded with a new rage, one that hadn’t run through her in years. One that she hoped she would never experience again, but here she was. And there you were.

While you were held in the air by her signature red mist, the opposing agents fell to the ground. She didn’t care about their screams, only yours. And with them all dealt with, she could turn to you, rushing you both into the Quinjet and yelling for the other Avengers to get back here, now.

But her efforts were futile. She could press down on the wounds all she wanted, beg for you to come back until her voice was nothing more than a whisper, but nothing would work. You were gone the instant the missile had hit you, and as much as Wanda wanted to deny the truth, she knew it just as much as your other teammates did when they rushed onto the Quinjet. You were gone before you could say a single goodbye.

---

The first time Wanda called was from your shared bedroom. She dialed your number before tracing the pillow where your head would have laid, running her fingers over the cartoon carrots that covered the comforter. The yellow bedding set was a gag gift Tony had gotten the two of you when you got your new bed.

“You know, since I figure the two of you will be going at it like rabbits,” he winked before getting immediately smacked in the back of the head by Steve.

“They will be doing no such thing,” the supersoldier had chastised him with a roll of his eyes. “God, Stark, sometimes I forget you have a brain when you say such stupid things.”

But you loved it, telling Wanda, “The carrots remind me of you, Bunny.” And how could she return the present when you were being so sweet about it? But the sheets didn’t make her smile in the same way they once did because you were gone. No one was there to tease her about the way her nose wiggled much like the little white fluffy creatures or promise to get her carrots from the market the next day.

The call went to voicemail, and as bittersweet as it was, Wanda savored it because it was you. Your voice. But the beep came far too soon, and your turn was done. So she spoke.

“Y/N, hey, it’s me, Wanda. I, um, I love you. I’ll always love you, yeah?” The witch put the phone down, thinking that was all she could bear to say as the lump in her throat ballooned in size and hot tears filled her eyes. But just before time was up, her hand shot up to press the device against her ear again. “Call me back, milaya.”

---

The second time Wanda called was from the balcony. The brunette eyed the sparkling diamonds that filled the sky, wondering how you could be gone when, the last time she was here, you were right there beside her, laughing over the boys’ latest shenanigans and Ned, the newly named star.

Now, the beanbag chair felt too big, too empty without another person sitting next to her. Without you. So she dialed your number, the only number she bothered to learn by heart, and waited for the dulcet tones of your voice. As the dial tone rang, she ran one hand over the white feather that laid gingerly in her lap. Natasha had given it to her along with several others a few days after your death. Each of the team members had one to remember you by, but the spy had picked out the biggest and most brilliant ones to give to Wanda.

“I know how much her wings meant to you-” Natasha stiffened as Wanda threw her arms around her. But the witch didn’t care, her tears soaking the redhead’s shirt as she tried to find the words to thank her. She couldn’t, but it was okay. Natasha knew anyway. Wanda had little time to reflect on the memory before her face brightened at the sound of your voice.

“Hi, this is Y/N-

“And her girlfriend, Wanda! She’s taken, so don’t even think about it, you jerk!” Wanda smiled slightly at your jubilant laughter, remembering how you’d pushed her away for interrupting you.

“I’m not available right now, but leave me your name, number, and message and I’ll call you back as soon as I can, okay? Talk to you soon.” The witch’s eyes closed slightly as the greeting ended with a spell of your giggles before it was interrupted by that damn beep. God, how she hated that beep. Nevertheless, she took a breath and spoke out into the clear night sky, looking up at the stars as she did so.

“Hi, lyubov moya, it’s me. Wanda. I’m calling you back, just like you told me to. I’m not okay. I need you. I love you.” Her breath caught in her throat, forcing her to pause for a moment, but she forced herself to keep going a second later. “Sam and Bucky did the stupidest thing today. Nat and Steve were all over their asses. You should’ve seen it. I miss you. Please, call me back. I’ll tell you all about it.”

---

The last time Wanda called was from the sunflower field. The two of you hadn’t been here since the night you told her you loved her. In fact, it took Wanda several hours to find it since she hadn’t been paying much attention to the route the first time you came.

Once again, the night was clear, the stars lighting up the dark canvas with their radiance. She missed the feeling of your wing wrapped around her, of your presence next to her. But she had one of your feathers in her fingers and your voice in her ear, and to ask for more would be greedy, right?

“Hi, angel. It’s Wanda. I’m calling you back to leave a message, but I can’t do it again after this because I don’t want your voicemail to fill up, okay? I’m sorry, I know I’m being selfish, but I need to be able to hear your voice, so I can’t let it fill up. But I haven’t forgotten you, I promise I haven’t. I never will. I’m still-” Wanda swallowed, a fighting effort to calm the waver in her voice. “I’m still not okay, but I’m trying. For you. But I’m not okay, I need you to call me back. I’ve named one up there Halia, but her twin sister needs a name. And naming stars is a two-person job, you know.” The witch sniffed once as the corner of her lip curved up slightly, remembering the playfulness in your voice when you’d first said the line. “Call me back, Y/N, please.”

With the message over, Wanda clutched the phone to her chest, her breaths becoming faster and shallower as she closed her eyes, trying to accept the knowledge that it’d be the last time she’d ever leave a message, the knowledge that she was really losing you… the knowledge that she already lost you.

---

Months went by. Wanda wasn’t sure how they did, but they did. The first sign of it was the first Halloween without you, as she saw the other couples dressing up in matching costumes that you would’ve loved, costumes you would’ve pointed out to Wanda with an excited bounce and told her you’d have to wear next year. The next was Thanksgiving, when Wanda ran through the list of everything she was thankful for and came up short when she thought about the people she still had left. And then it was Christmas, and Valentine’s Day, and the first day of summer.

And while Wanda did her best to move on, she always found herself under the stars, dialing your number. She sat on the balcony, in the sunflower field, wherever she could see the sky, and she listened to your voice telling her that you’d call her back as soon as you could, always forcing herself to hang up a second before the beep could cut you off. Wanda named every other star she saw, leaving the ones in between for you and hoping that you’d approve of the names she chose.

“I’m naming that one Angel for you, Y/N,” Wanda murmured. “It’s even brighter than Philip. It’s the brightest star in the sky. I know you think it’s silly to name things after people, but this one’s just special, so you’re gonna have to make an exception, okay?” The brunette’s lips stopped moving, but her eyes stayed wide open as she watched the star as if, if she watched it long enough, studied it hard enough, you would materialize from its luminescence. As if you would come back to her. But when you didn’t, she finally allowed her watering eyes to rest, her eyelids drooping to surround her in darkness.

“I’m not okay, Y/N.” The witch’s voice was softer than it had ever been, more tired. But this time, there was no one to whisk her off and make her forget the heaviness of it all. “I need you so badly. I love you so much. I always will. But, please, angel, call me back.”

#wanda maximoff x reader #wanda maximoff x fem!reader #wanda maximoff x you #wanda maximoff imagine #wanda maximoff #avengers x reader #marvel #mcu #I wrote something #alwaysmarveling

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luci-in-trenchcoats · 3 years

Text

I Don’t Like Myself Today

Summary: Dean finds the reader upset about a book but it turns out, it has nothing to do with the book and everything to do with what they think they deserve...

Pairing: Dean x reader

Word Count: 1,400ish

Warnings: language, brief mentioned nudity, self-image issues

A/N: Enjoy!

_____

You were sat staring at your computer screen, swallowing thickly. You did it again and once more, the wetness on the edge of your eyes receding for the moment. After a few seconds you reminded yourself to breathe, take a deep breath, even if your skin felt tight and there was the threat of a headache in your temples. It was simply the congestion though and it’d pass quickly.

You swallowed once more, the threat of tears averted for the moment, just in time too as Dean walked into the bedroom.

“Whatcha doing?” he asked as he ducked into the master bathroom.

“Paying bills. Balancing the checkbook,” you said, going back to your credit card tab you had open on the computer and hitting submit. You logged it down in your spreadsheet, Dean walking out naked and whistling as he ducked behind you and over to the closet.

“You want to get takeout? I don’t feel like running to the grocery store. It’s nearly seven already.”

“Sure,” you said, Dean exiting the closet in his flannel pajama pants and a hoodie. “What’d you have in mind?”

“Pizza?”

“Wasn’t there that new Mexican place you wanted to check out? It had fried something?”

“The fried chalupas? Yeah. Let’s try that,” he said. He pulled up a menu on his phone, laying back on the bed and scrolling as you checked off items in your spreadsheet. “I’m gonna get the nachos, these battered chalupa gimmick things, a few tacos and quesadillas?”

“Sounds good,” you said. He was quiet a few minutes before the bed creaked and you knew he was sat up.

“How’d we do this month?” he asked.

“We have two hundred extra for savings,” you said.

“Sweet. I told you that Costco membership would pay for itself,” he said. “Maybe we can take a little trip with what we’ve been saving up when the weather gets nicer.”

“Yeah, that’d be nice,” you said, stretching in your chair. “How long til the food gets here?”

“Forty minutes,” he said. “I gotta drive to pick it up.”

“If you want to be a real babe, you could maybe make-”

“I’m making brownies, don’t you worry,” he said, ruffling your head. “We got box mix?”

“Yeah. Oh and put the crumbled up Oreos in this time. That was real good,” you said.

“Care to supervise?” he asked with a smirk.

“I want to clean up the file a bit and take a shower quick after work all day. But I will definitely sit on the couch eating that entire tray with you later.”

“Alright,” he said, humming as he headed for the door. “There’s a clean black shirt of mine on the counter in the bathroom if you’re so inclined…”

“I’m always inclined,” you said. You smiled and went back to your spreadsheet, frowning once you’d heard Dean leave. You went to Amazon and moved the book out of the cart, deleting it and ordering more of Dean’s granola bars he liked instead.

You added it to your spreadsheet, backing out the number in one column, adding it in another. You sighed and slammed the computer shut.

You were halfway undressed in the bathroom when you caught your face in the mirror. You looked ready to cry. You swallowed when you heard Dean outside of the door, the thing opening after a moment. Dean smiled but you knew he wasn’t exactly happy.

“Why didn’t you buy that book you wanted, sweetheart?”

“I didn’t want it after all. It doesn’t have great reviews on other sites,” you said, putting your back to him.

“You know the thing about this spreadsheet being a shared document? I can see the changes you make. Like you not spending any of your fun money and then calling it savings. The book was seven dollars, Y/N.”

“I didn’t want the stupid book, Dean.”

“It’s been in the cart for two weeks. We can afford it. Are you stressed out about money?”

“No. I make plenty and you make plenty at the construction place and-”

“You barely let me give you a box of chocolate for Valentine’s when you got me a whole bunch of car stuff that was ten times the cost and-”

“I don’t need a book. There’s plenty of books around here. Geez. Stop analyzing every little thing. You’re not a hunter anymore.”

“Yeah and I didn’t notice it as much before cause you never used the Charlie card and you used your fakes and I got it. But you won’t spend seven dollars on a book. You got mad at a five dollar box of chocolates. You-”

“I would rather you put that money towards a vacation,” you said.

“You’d rather it not be spent on you. I mean how many times have I seen you saying I want a new winter jacket and then you wear your same old one that’s been stitched more times than I have.”

“What do you want me to say, Dean. Just come out and say it.”

“Why don’t you think you deserve to spend money on yourself? Even seven dollars, even when it’s in the budget. I just want to know what’s going on sweetheart.”

“I don’t need-”

“I know you. What’s-”

“I don’t like me,” you spat out. “I don’t and today’s not great and I’m not buying something stupid for myself when we could use that money on something more important.”

“The most important thing in the world to me is you.”

“I don’t want to fight, Dean.”

“Neither do I,” he said. He walked over slowly and rested his hands on your arms, sliding down them to pull them around his back. You breathed deeply into his shirt, his arms trapping you in a warm embrace. “I like you.”

“I know you do, De. I have a hard time...it’s hard to buy something nice for yourself when you don’t like yourself that day.”

“New rule. You spend your fun money every month and if you don’t, I’m just gonna buy stuff for you with it.”

“It’s not that simple,” you said, Dean’s chin resting on your shoulder.

“I know. But it’s a start. You don’t have a problem spending money, just on you you do. So, forget about deserving or not deserving. Cause you do, even days you don’t like you. But days you don’t, tell me. Please. I promise extra cuddles.”

“I’ll try.”

“That’s all I ask,” he said. “Now take your shower, relax, and when you get out, I’ll be back with the food, alright?”

“Okay,” you said.

“I love you.”

“I love you too,” you said. He kissed your cheek and you gave him a half smile. “Careful driving.”

“Be back soon sweetheart.”

You were just putting the brownies in the oven an hour later when Dean walked in with a takeout bag. He frowned and you held up your hands.

“Baking relaxes me,” you said.

“You’re lucky I know that’s true,” he said. He set the bag down at the counter, smiling as he reached into his coat pocket. He took out a book and turned it around, holding it out to you.

“You got this from that bookstore next door,” you said, smiling and taking it from him. “Dean…”

“Only six dollars there too,” he said with a chuckle.

“I’m sorry I am this way,” you said as he washed up. He hit off the water and dried his hands, cocking his head.

“Sorry? I thought I already told you, I really really like you, just the way you are. I’d like it if you liked you too cause she’s pretty awesome but I will like for us both on the bad days just like you do on mine.”

“You got all domestic, Dean,” you said, setting book down and giving him a hug.

“And I love it,” he said, giving you a kiss. “Come on, sweetheart. Eat up while it’s hot.”

________

#spn #supernatural #dean winchester #dean x reader #dean winchester x reader #spn fanfic #dean winchester fanfic #supernatural fanfic #dean x #dean winchester x you #dean x you #dean fanfic #dean one shot #comfort fic

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flautistsandpeonies · 3 years

Text

You ever think about how dirty Jiang Fengmian got done?

You’re a sect heir to what is supposed to be the most “free” sect of all the great sects. Expression, play, and ingenuity are literally built into your teachings, and all of a sudden your father wants to set you up into an arranged marriage.

You meet your perspective betrothed, and you don’t like the way she conducts herself. You tell her and your family multiple times that you don’t think that you two would be an appropriate match for one another. Your betrothed, however, wants to marry you- it doesn’t matter what you think apparently- and her family starts pressuring you into marrying their third daughter. You try to hold out and keep denying, but then your best friends want to get married and travel the world together so you are left all alone to fight an entire sect and your father’s wishes by yourself.

Needless to say, you find yourself getting married to the Violet Spider.

So, Yu Ziyuan moves to Lotus Pier and one of the first things she decides is that she doesn’t like her new home and has an entire pavilion built to cater to her needs and brings a bunch of people from her natal sect sect and barring Jiang from the premises.

There are Jiang disciples that have lived in Lotus Pier long than Yu Ziyuan that can no longer access a part of their home because their new madam forbade them from coming there.

She also decides that she isn’t going to take on your family name. She refuses to take the mantle of Madam Jiang and wants to be called Madam Yu despite the fact that she is the one that wanted the marriage in the first place.

Thirdly, she refuses to take care of the household of the Jiang sect. Instead of doing her duties as the Madam of Lotus Pier she would rather go on night hunts and she’s barely home.

So, now you probably have to not only take care of duties as sect leader, you also have to take care of the household cause your wife is almost never home.

Despite all this, you manage to perform your marital duties and you have your first child together! A baby girl who was born frail and with a weak constitution. You decide to name her Jiang Yanli.

Your wife informs you that since she and Jin GuangShan’s wife Madam Jin were the bestest of friends since childhood and made a promise that their first born children would marry one day, your daughter is now in an arranged marriage with the heir to the Jin sect.

With that, you no longer have a sect heir as men do not marry into the woman’s family. You’ve simply had a child to further the Jin sect rather than your own.

Since that’s done, you end up performing your marital duties again, and three years later you end up with a boy this time! You decide to name him Jiang Cheng.

Life is pretty normal, your wife is still never home, Yanli, while not good in cultivation seems to enjoy cooking, and you get your son three puppies to play with.

Four years later, you get the news that your best friends are now dead from a night-hunt and their little boy, just a few days older than your son is missing.

You spend five years looking for Wei Ying and miraculously find him eating the trashed rinds from people who bought watermelon. You buy him food and clothes and bring him back to Lotus Pier where you find your son playing with his puppies, Princess, Jasmine, and Love.

At the sight of them, Wei Ying starts screaming and crying, he’s shaking and sweating and doesn’t seem to be able to perceive the world around him. You see it’s a panic attack induced by the dogs, so you pick him to get him from the same level as the animals and try to calm him down.

Since you doubt the panic attack will be a one time thing, you decide that the best course of action is to send the dogs away. This devastates your son as he really loved his furry friends, so you decide to replace his animal friends with Wei Ying and set them up in the same room.

All this infuriates your wife, and she starts to accuse you of having an affair with your best friend. She accuses you of not loving your son, of being unfaithful, and having a bastard son from a woman who has been dead for five years.

There is a new normal in life with Wei Ying at Lotus Pier. While Yu Ziyuan still night-hunts alot, when she’s home she’s constantly accuses you of favoring Wei Ying over your own son, and claims that Wei Ying is your bastard. Yu Ziyuan has also taken zidian and whips Wei Ying with the spiritual weapon whenever she wants. Some days you come home late at night and find Wei Ying trapped in your family’s ancestral hall kneeling for hours.

Your wife has taken a spiritual tool that has been passed down the Jiang family for generations and she uses it to whip the child of your two best friends. She traps him in the ancestral hall, without medical attention, for hours, until you let him out late at night.

Your wife constantly tells your son that you don’t love him, that you wish Wei Ying was your legitimate heir, that he will never meet your expectations.She berates your daughter for her hobbies and looks down on her. Wei Ying gets whipped for simple things such as not wearing a shirt on a hot summer’s day.

Life passes on like this. Before you know it, you are sending your son and Wei Ying off to the Cloud recesses for study. Three months later, you are called to the mountain headquarters because your head disciples beat up the Jin heir.

Lan Qiren tells you that Jin ZiXuan disparaged your daughter in front of every eligible male in the cultivation world. You understand being betrothed to someone you don’t love, but Yanli didn’t cause the arrangement and even if Jin ZIXuan didn’t want to marry her didn’t mean he didn’t have to talk down about her to any other boy who you could possibly try to set her with. So, with that, you get Jin GuangShan to recede the arrangement and you take Wei Ying home.

I wonder if you will be able to find your daughter a husband after every heir that studied at the cloud recesses heard about how weak in beauty, smarts, and cultivation she was.

For the next two years, you deal with the new normal and your wife cursing you for ending your daughter engagement.

The Wens host an archery competition and then weeks later demand your heirs and disciples as hostages. They demand an heir so you are forced to send your son. Wei Ying volunteers and your wife accuses you of favoring Wei Ying despite the fact that Jiang Cheng really has no choice in the matter.

One month later, your son and disciples come home from a near death experience with a deformed beast and second Wen heir. You are informed that your head disciple stayed behind so you go to retrieve him and find that he and the second jade of Lan killed a hundreds year old beast.

Wei Ying is suffering from an infection from a brand, arrow wound, and a lack of spiritual power and stays in a coma for an entire week. As soon as he wakes, you congratulate him on this rare feet.

Your son is now saying that Wei Ying should have let the sect heirs to two other major sects die and and you try to make him see why that sort of mind set is wrong.

It probably reminds you of being a teenager and almost dying on a night hunt due to Lan Qiren unchangingly following his sect rules, and the only reason you are currently alive is because your friend CangSe SanRen saved your life.

Your wife bursts in and again accuses you of favoring Wei Ying. She claims that you don’t love your son again because she is his mother. It’s the same old argument and she storms out as angry as she came in.

Days go by and you and your wife are still arguing. It gets so bad that you leave your home to go appeal to the man who ordered your son to be a hostage to give you their swords back. You fail.

You’re going home when you find your son and Wei Ying tied together with zidian on a boat. Your son tells you the Wen sect is attacking and that your wife is fighting the core melting hand. You send the boys away; you tell your son to be well, and tell Wei Ying to look after him.

You go home to fight for you sect.

Your core is melted.

You are killed.

Your home is burned to the group.

All your disciples are killed.

All your treasures all stolen.

YunmengJiang is now the Wen Sect Supervisory Office of Yunmeng.

JC Stans Don’t Clown on my Post - Madam Yu Stans Don’t Clown on my Post

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startanewdream · 3 years

Text

Shotgun wedding

Harry and Ginny will have a quick wedding, though not for the reasons people would expect.

@constancezin this silly piece of family fluff in a Jily Lives AU is for you 😘

Read on AO3 or below the cut:

___________________

The ring seems to sparkle even if the two diamonds there are really tiny - or maybe it’s just the fact that Ginny can’t help but look at it every now and then.

It doesn’t seem real yet. They are engaged, she and Harry.

It’s a little bit silly, because it’s not like anyone is actually surprised by their engagement. They’ve been dating steadily for four years now, surviving the long-distance relationship of her in Hogwarts and him on Auror training, then the mismatched turns when she was training for Holyhead Harpies and he was a Junior Auror and their time together was limited. And they live together.

Still, ever since she began her career as Quidditch Player, there was not a game where a reporter didn’t question her when she and Harry would tie the knot. She always ignored any question about her personal life - even learning that her Bat Bogey Hex didn’t seem to discourage people from asking. It was the only annoying thing in their lives.

It was no wonder that Harry had taken her on a short trip to a faraway place before kneeling in front of her - all classic like probably his dad had told him - and asking her if she would give him the huge honour of marrying him. Ginny had laughed happily - she hadn’t realized she wanted to properly marry him until that point - and had hugged and kissed him and assured him she very much would like to marry him.

After the celebration, when they were lying together in bed and Harry was playing with her hair absently (in a way that GInny feel they would still be like together sixty years in the future), they had talked about how they both wanted a quick wedding. Two weeks at most. A small wedding, only for family and close friends, in two weeks.

As far as Ginny gives a thought about it, the reporters can find out they have married when her new uniform says Potter instead of Weasley.

And fortunately for her, planning a wedding in two-weeks seems easy when she has the help of her future father-in-law.

‘Finally!’, James sings when she and Harry apparate in the Potter’s house. James was clearly expecting them in the porch. ‘So?’, he looks from one to another, his hand passing nervously in his receding hair.

In answer, Ginny beams and raises her hand, showing the ring there.

‘YES!’, James cries, and then he is hugging them both, almost lifting them up in the air, and Harry laughs amusedly.

‘Come on, Dad’, he says, when James lets them go. ‘You are embarrassing me. It’s like you didn’t think she would accept.

‘Maybe he thought I had more sense’, Ginny teases, winking at James.

‘You dated me for years now, it’s obvious you don’t have’, Harry answers playfully, kissing her forehead, and Ginny sees James is beaming at them, his eyes almost teary. He looks like he is stopping himself from swooning at them.

‘This is like the happiest day ever’, he declares, opening the door to inviting them in. ‘Come on, Lily is - well, maybe we should tell you together -’

‘You mean we should tell her the news?’, Harry asks, sounding confused. Then he smiles. ‘Let’s hope Mum is not as surprised as you’.

They find Lily sitting in the living room and Ginny sees she is knitting, singing to herself with a soft smile on her lips; Ginny had never seen her knitting anything before. It makes her think of her own mother.

She thinks there is something else different with Lily since the last time she saw her, more than two weeks ago; Lily has always been pretty, but today there seem to be something shining in her, as if she has an aura around her, like Fleur sometimes has.

It’s ethereally beautiful.

‘Harry, Ginny!’, she cries when she sees them, leaving the knitting aside and raising to greet them. James is at her side instantly, supporting Lily as if she needs help, though for what Ginny can see Lily looks perfect well. ‘I would ask, but James’ cry could be heard in France. Come here, Ginny, let me see it!’

Ginny smiles, approaching Lily with her hand already raised.

‘Oh, it’s really beautiful!’, Lily says, looking at the ring. Then she hugs Ginny warmly. ‘I am so happy for you two!’

‘Yeah, yeah, we are all very happy’, James says, waving his hand dismissively. ‘Now, the important thing, have you thought about dates?’

‘Oh, yes’, Harry smirks. ‘Two weeks from now’.

‘What?’, James looks nervous. ‘Harry - we can’t rush perfection, a big party in two weeks... there are places to see and I have thirteen options of buffet for you two to choose -’

‘We just want a small celebration, really’, Ginny explains, watching the smile freeze in James’ face.

‘Yeah, we are already in the spotlight too much’, adds Harry, coming at her side and embracing Ginny. ‘We want something more intimate, just our closest friends. We thought of something at the Burrow, it’s spring so -’

‘But - fireworks and one thousand red roses and the Weird Sisters singing -’

‘James’, Lily interrupts him. ‘That’s their wedding, not yours’.

‘Oh, yeah, true’, James nods, still looking crestfallen. ‘I guess I can take only the basics of my wedding planner’.

‘You have a wedding planner?’, asks Ginny, not bothering to hide her chuckle. Harry rolls his eyes.

‘Don’t ask, but I think he keeps one since we first kissed’, he says. ‘Well, as long as you can organize in two weeks, we will accept your help’.

‘Hang on’, Lily looks from one to another, raising her eyebrows. ‘Why the rush?’

Harry shrugs.

‘It’s no rush, we just don’t want to feed gossip’.

‘There doesn’t seem to be much sense in a long engagement’, Ginny agrees. ‘A quick wedding, hopefully without any reporter knowing’.

‘And is there any reason for all the secret?’, Lily asks, exchanging a knowing look with James, who also raises his eyebrows, his mouth now open in an ‘oh’, clearly understanding what’s on Lily’s mind.

‘Yeah’, Harry says slowly. ‘I mean -’, he points at his own scar. ‘I don’t want paparazzi at our wedding’.

James and Lily breath out together, as if they are relieved at something, and Harry throws a confused look at Ginny, who giggles.

‘They thought we were having a shotgun wedding’, she explains amusedly. ‘You know, as if you had knocked me up’.

Harry laughs now too.

‘People can marry just because they are in love, you know?’, he says playfully. ‘Don’t worry, no one will be pregnant at the wedding’.

He turns to his parents, obviously expecting them to share the joke, but neither James or Lily are laughing. Now that Ginny looks at them, she sees they have the same expression: a mix of happiness and embarrassment, with a touch of pride in themselves.

There is something different there, that she knows. Ginny frowns, trying to the understand - there is the fact that Lily is glowing for some reason, and the way James seems overprotective of his wife and how their hands are clasped together in front of Lily’s belly.

Also, Lily’s cleavage seems really great, now she notices it.

‘OH!’, she exclaims without controlling herself. ‘Don’t tell me -’

Lily nods, grinning more than ever, with a sparkle of mischief that it suddenly makes sense for Ginny, considering what Lily is carrying right now. Or who she married.

‘Congratulations!’, she says, letting go of Harry’s hand to hug again both Lily and James. ‘Oh, God, this is so amazing!’

‘Gin?’, Harry asks, bewildered, looking from one to another. ‘What’s going on?’

Lily and James exchange an overjoyed look.

‘Well - we have some news too’, James says, his voice shaking with undeniable satisfaction. ‘You are going to be a big brother’.

Harry just blinks.

‘How?’

‘Harry’, Ginny calls him, coming again at his side, but he doesn’t seem to notice her for once. He looks so lost that Ginny takes pity on him, so she says gently: ‘Your parents are having a baby’.

‘But - how?’

‘Oh, James!’, Ginny laughs now. ‘I thought you gave Harry the talk’.

James nods, looking at Harry with evident amusement. ‘The usual way, Harry. It was not an immaculate conception, you know’.

‘But -’, Harry still looks like he is not understanding a word of what they are saying. ‘You - you two are old’.

‘So kind’, James notes, rolling his eyes.

‘Your parents are barely in their forties, Harry’, Ginny remembers, but that doesn’t seem to clarify anything for him.

‘Old’, he repeats. ‘They couldn’t have - you know - made a baby’.

That makes Lily let out a sparkling laugh.

‘You are so innocent, Harry’, she says fondly.

‘I am pretty sure we could have’, James says confidently. ‘In fact, we already did. Six months from now you will have a little sister or a little brother’.

Harry gasps.

‘I will?’, he almost smiles, until he blinks fastly. ‘Wait, you really are three months pregnant?’

Lily nods, beaming once more. Harry is frowning.

‘So - three months ago - that trip to Italy -’

‘We did tell you it was like a second honeymoon’, James reminds him shamelessly.

‘But I thought you would do old people stuff - visit museums and cathedrals -’

‘We did all of it’, James shrugs. ‘And at night - some glasses of wine -’

‘We didn’t need much wine’, Lily says teasingly, turning to James and winking at him. He smiles mischievously, kissing her softly in the lips - and then, when they seem to deepen the kiss, Harry coughs loudly.

‘Ok, I get it, you two have a … life’.

‘I think you meant sex life’, Ginny can’t help but tease, making him look at her with his eyes narrowed. She just blinks innocently. ‘Come on, you still didn’t say anything about it’.

‘About what?’

‘The fact you are going to be an older brother’.

‘Oh - I didn’t think about it - I -’

Harry seems lost at words. James and Lily exchange a look.

‘Maybe we should have broken into him slowly?’, she whispers to him.

‘I don’t know, I was an only kid too’.

‘We should have started by saying we will always love him and that love only multiplies, not - ’

‘He is twenty-one, Lily, he knows it by now -’

‘Harry’, Ginny calls him again. ‘You are scaring your parents’.

‘I - I just -’, Harry bits his lips, looking nervously at his parents, before meeting Ginny’s gaze that he seems to deem as safer. ‘I don’t know how to be a brother’.

‘Oh, Harry’, Lily sighs, looking at him with fondness. ‘You are going to be an amazing brother, we are sure of it’.

‘Besides’, Ginny notes. ‘You have been taking care of my brother for ten years now, a baby will be much easier’.

‘Oh, yes’, James agrees. ‘Changing diapers, you’re going to love it’.

‘Teaching things’, says Lily, shaking her head at James, though she has a smile on her lips. ‘Helping learn to walk. Hearing the first words. Seeing him or her growing up’.

‘Training for the future’, James adds, winking at Ginny, who blushes and rolls her eyes.

‘Get a grip, you two. Your baby can’t wait a few years until we think about turning them into an aunt or uncle’.

‘As long as it doesn’t take you too much -’

‘Unlike others, I think we will plan it’, Ginny notes, raising her eyebrows and, just as she expected, they both blush. She laughs. ‘I can’t believe you two had another unplanned kid’.

‘We did plan’, Lily says with dignity. ‘We just had planned for twenty years ago, but there was this dark lord problem -’

‘Mum?’, Harry asks very softly, drawing all their attention. ‘Am I really going to be a brother?’

There are tears shining in his green eyes. Lily looks at him tenderly, her own green eyes sparkling too, and she opens her arms.

‘Yes, son’, she whispers, and then Harry is hugging her. James comes to their side, his hand on Harry’s shoulder, and Ginny feels happiness flooding her at the sight of them together.

It’s - or it will officially be in two weeks - her family too.

Perhaps they seem to think so, because Lily opens her eyes, her hand motioning to her, and Ginny hugs them too.

‘Now’, James says when they break away, wiping away his tears. ‘Let’s plan your wedding, shall we?’

‘It’s good we are having a quick wedding’, Ginny teases. ‘Imagine how outrageous it would be if we took longer’.

‘The mother-in-law pregnant? Oh, very scandalous!’, James agrees, grinning. ‘I’ll be back with the wedding planner, just a moment!’

‘The second good thing is that Dad will have to keep things modest’, Harry notes, sitting right next to Ginny.

‘Ha!’, James laughs. ‘You wish. I have things rented for years just waiting for the right moment’.

Harry throws a look at Ginny that seems to say ‘What did I tell you?’, but she just grins. She never expected anything less of James Potter.

‘So -’, she begins, turning to Lily, who is back at knitting what Ginny thinks it will be a baby bootie. ‘Did you think about names yet?’

_____________

Suggestions of names will be accepted by James and Lily 😉 😂

#Jily Lives #jily lives is a happier world #jily fanfiction #Hinny fanfiction #Eyes glistening #Jily #Hinny #Potter family #t: fanfiction

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weepylucifer · 3 years

Text

Tosses another dinluke at you. This one’s about caring for each other

Luke awakens from uneasy sleep filled with nightmares, and immediately can tell that today is going to be terrible.

The occasional phantom pain in his wrist, that he can take. The old, flaring ache, the strange feeling that the hand is still there, which somehow makes both wearing and not wearing the prosthetic feel uncomfortable - well, it’s a drag, but it’s only one part of his body. With meditation to aid him, he finds he can usually sequester it off, away from the rest of him, and go through his day more or less like normal. But sometimes, each and every scar caused by the Force lightning clamors in pain, especially when he’s been dreaming about how he got them. This is the worst, because he hasn’t found a good way to cope with it yet. He can’t make the pain stop, and it’s driving him up the walls.

There’s no way he can teach his padawan like this.

Fortunately, Grogu’s father is visiting, and will probably be more than happy to entertain the kid for a day.

Luke hasn’t gotten the measure of the Mandalorian yet. He talks little, projects an aura of intimidation, being covered in armor all over like that, but he seems very attached to his child, so attached that Luke reckoned upon getting Grogu that breaking their bond would do a lot more harm than good. He’s come over for a few visits to far, and he practically curls over Grogu like a loth-cat over its young. But Luke doesn’t exactly know anything about him besides that.

Also, it’s dawned on Luke that he knows nothing about Mandalorians. He knows Boba Fett is one, but that’s pretty much it.

So he’s not exactly comfortable admitting his plight to the man. What if he perceives it as weakness? So when he emerges from his bedroom to greet him, he is brief, almost curt, making himself speak through the pain.

“I’m sorry, but there’ll be no lesson today. Can you just watch Grogu for me? I’m... something else has come up.”

The Mandalorian looks... like an expressionless helmet on a suit of armor. But his voice betrays some surprise when he says, “Um, yeah. Sure. Not a problem.”

He’s justified in his surprise; Luke has never cancelled Grogu’s lessons before. “Thanks,” Luke says and repeats, “Sorry this is on such short notice.”

The last thing he sees before beating his retreat back to his room is Grogu cooing and reaching a little hand out towards him in concern, doubtlessly feeling in the Force that something is amiss with Luke. He closes the door but can still hear the Mandalorian reassuring the kid to the best of his ability, “Sorry, buddy, your bajuri seems to be busy. No floating stuff today.”

Grogu emits the sad coo again.

“Hey, it’s okay. Wanna go to the pond and look for frogs?”

...

“We can take the Phoenix over there.”

A happy squeak tells Luke that the plan has met approval.

“You like flying with the jetpack, huh? Yeah, me too.”

Their voices recede, Grogu babbling happily and his father talking back pretending to understand him, and then the temple is silent. It dawns on Luke that the Mandalorian is attractive, the juxtaposition between the gleaming armored fighter and the father so gentle with his kid intriguing. The thought is brutally cut short by another sharp flash of searing pain.

He whines and flings himself onto his bed, curling up and tugging at his hair with both hands, hoping beyond reason that the pain in his scalp will distract him from the pain in his everywhere else.

Luke has been trying on and off to meditate or at least nap for several hours, when he hears a knock at the door. It can only be Mando.

“Um. Master Jedi?”

The Mandalorian has never asked Luke’s name, maybe he reckons Luke goes by his self-assumed title, just like he seems perfectly comfortable going by Mando. Yes?, Luke wants to ask, but he’s scared it’ll come out an undignified whimper.

“I made some dinner for the kid,” the Mandalorian continues. Is it dinner already? “I thought maybe you’d want some, so I’ll leave it out here.”

Luke blinks at the door. He wasn’t expecting this.

“I don’t know if you’ll like it, it’s, ah. Aruetiise usually find our cooking too spicy. So I made some bread to go with it, it. Helps. With the spice. I used some stuff from your storage for it, hope that’s okay.”

The silence persists.

“Putting it down now. Okay. Good luck with your... Jedi business.”

There’s a sound of, indeed, something being placed on the floor, then footsteps walking away.

Luke opens the door. There is a tray of food waiting for him. An amazingly delicious smell wafts from it and his stomach growls loudly, reminding him that he hasn’t eaten today.

So this man can cook. This man baked bread for him. Luke tries to imagine him, in the kitchen, doing that. Maybe he put Luke’s apron on over the armor. The thought makes him giggle for the first time today. Truly Grogu’s father is full of surprises.

It’s already getting dark out when Luke carries his empty plate back to the temple’s little kitchen. He finds Mando there with Grogu on his lap, as always in complete armor, simply watching as Grogu plays with a small silver ball.

Luke clears his throat. “Hi,” he says eloquently and carries his plate to the sink.

The Mandalorian nods in greeting. “All done in there?”

“Not exactly.” Somehow, Luke can feel Mando refocus on him, even through the helmet. He knows he must look rumpled, his hair mussed, his face drawn, and using one of his robes as a shawl. He wishes he had the ability to suffer more attractively, or at least the energy to make himself up a bit.

He sighs and sits down at the table with them. Somehow he feels like, as fair payment for the meal, the Mandalorian deserves his honesty in return. “Full disclosure, I wasn’t doing... Jedi stuff in my room. I just... I’m unwell.”

“Oh.” For some reason, Mando’s head tilts towards Grogu. It becomes apparent why when he asks, “Anything catching?”

“No. No, Grogu will be fine.” Luke folds his hands on the tabletop. Well, he’s already at it being honest. “Do you ever get the feeling of... old scars, hurting again? Like they’re new?”

“Your hand?” the Mandalorian asks. Ah, of course, he’s perceptive, he’s noticed the fake hand.

“Not just the hand. Everywhere. All over.” Luke grits his teeth as his nerves alight again along the lightning patterns. Maker, he hates this. It’s like the shrivelled old prune continues to torture him from beyond the grave.

“All over?” Mando repeats. The helmet’s modulator dulls emotion, but Luke guesses it’s concern he hears.

“Yeah. Look.” Following a sudden impulse, he gets up and shucks his robe, unbuttons his shirt and slips that off too. “Here, see?” He turns himself this way and that, catching the warm lamplight. “And yes, they go all the way down.”

Helmet or no, he can hear the Mandalorian’s breath catch. His hand, the one that’s not keeping Grogu from tumbling off his lap, twitches... rises... reaches out... Luke keeps himself very still. For a breath or two, he thinks that if the Mandalorian were to touch him, trace the lightning bolts on his torso with his gloved hand, then he might feel better. Might be soothed.

The hand is lowered to the table again as if embarrassed. Luke lets out his breath and tries not to slump in disappointment. “I’ve never seen scarring like that before,” the Mandalorian says. “And I’ve seen my fair share.”

“Force lightning,” Luke explains, before remembering that his companion knows nothing about the Force. “A Sith torture technique.”

“You were tortured?” Mando asks, then amends, “You don’t have to tell me.”

Luke sits back down, hugging his knees to his chest. “Pffft. It’s not like I’m not already thinking about it.” He rubs his hands down his arms at another shiver of pain. “The Emperor did this. When I went to confront him on the second Death Star.”

“It was you on the Death Star?” the Mandalorian asks.

“Yeah. The Emperor wanted me to join the dark side. I refused. I had no idea he’d just start frying me with lightning. I had no idea this was something the Force could even do.”

“But then you... killed the Emperor?” The Mandalorian is clearly guessing, and Luke finds himself astonished that there’s someone out there still who doesn’t know the whole Luke Skywalker Saga.

“I did not,” he says. “My father killed the Emperor. All I did was lie on the ground and be tortured.” He picks at his wrist where the synthetic skin joins the organic. “I’m not even bitter about that. It ended up saving my father’s soul. But sometimes, I have nightmares about it, you know? And in those dreams, my father... doesn’t help me. He just stands and stares at me and that’s worse than the pain. Because, when it actually happened, there was... a moment when I thought he wouldn’t do anything. He wouldn’t care and he’d watch me die. For a moment there, I lost hope, and that’s the worst of it really, knowing that about myself.”

“Why was... your father on the Death Star?” the Mandalorian asks, and huh, apparently he hasn’t heard about the Luke-and-Vader-connection either.

“It’s a long story,” Luke says, because it is, and he’s tired. His scars still hurt, not in these sudden flashes anymore, but as a pulsing, bone-deep, constant ache. But his chest feels a bit lighter for having talked about it.

The Mandalorian now gestures at said chest, instead of asking for the story again. “Can you take painkillers for those?”

Luke shakes his head. “They don’t help much. The pain’s in here.” He taps his temple. “I’ve just been trying to sleep it off, but it hurts too much to get to sleep.”

Mando hisses out a breath, and Luke is by this point fairly certain he’s commiserating. “Phew. Sounds like you need a drink.”

This makes Luke laugh, and he appreciates that. “You know, I’d love a drink, actually.”

After Grogu is put to bed, Luke gets a glass of spotchka and Mando’s company (he tilts the helmet off just far enough to free his mouth in quick, almost furtive gestures and takes tiny sips). His head’s starting to feel pleasantly swimmy when he says, “You know, I’ve just bared all my troubles to you - well, not all, but some, and pretty hefty ones - and yet I know... three facts about you, maybe.”

“Hmm. Yeah, that doesn’t seem fair,” the Mandalorian says amusedly. “What would you like to know?”

“Your name would be a good start,” Luke suggests.

The way the Mandalorian fidgets with his glass, he looks almost flustered. “Ah... Din. Din Djarin.”

“Luke Skywalker.” Luke grins and reaches across the table, ignoring the pinpricks of pain up his arm, to grip Mando’s - Din’s - hand. “It’s nice to have met you, Din Djarin.”

-----

In the following months, these flare-ups return occasionally, but none in such intensity. Luke knows that it’s only a matter of time, though. He’s beginning to suspect that this might stay with him forever. But he’s not as horrified at the prospect as he once was, after talking about it to Din and being neither judged nor pitied. After Din didn’t look at him worried like Leia, or attempted clumsily to walk on eggshells around the topic like Han, and didn’t think less of Luke, and didn’t act like Luke’s admittance to his issues tarnished some sort of larger-than-life image of the glowing Jedi hero. How odd it is to think of a future that has someone in it he can rely on in such an uncomplicated manner. He hasn’t had anyone in his life to rely on - or dared to think of himself as needing this - since... well, since Aunt Beru, probably.

During these months, Grogu has steadily progressed in his studies. Din has visited the temple with some regularity, but Luke has yet to get used to him. How could he, when there’s so much new and exciting to discover about Din still? He finds himself looking forward to these visits, and missing Din when absent, almost as much as Grogu does. Din can only ever stay a few days at once, and Departure Day is a sad one for all two inhabitants of the makeshift Jedi school. (Luke’s not sure what Din does when he’s not here. It can’t be so important, right? Surely not more important than spending time with Grogu? Than talking to Luke?)

This time, though, when Din shows up at the agreed-upon time, it’s weird. He speaks even less than usual, he seems to retreat into his armor even more, he opts to sleep in his ship instead of one of the many empty bedrooms in the temple that Luke has yet to fill with more students. And he barely holds or even touches Grogu, and that tips Luke off. These other observations he could chalk up to paranoia and his own desire to coax Din out of his (figurative!) shell. But that last one tells him that something is off.

Grogu can feel it too, and confusion and worry is seeping off of him into the Force. Luke tries to calm him and get him to sleep, but in the morning, Grogu’s still a bit anxious, and their collective worry mounts when breakfast passes by and Din fails to emerge from his ship. The two of them are reflecting their worry back off each other, and it’s getting aggravating, so Luke gets up and resolves to investigate.

“Okay, Grogu, can you go in the garden and play with Artoo? I’ll go look what’s up with your dad.”

Grogu immediately calms now that he knows the matter is being taken care of, and it warms Luke’s heart to see how much the kid has grown to trust him.

He gains entrance to the ship - it’s not the same one that Grogu has shared memories of with him, but similar enough in layout. The cockpit is empty, so he descends down a narrow ladder into what probably passes for crew quarters here. Peering around a corner, he finds Din hunkered down with his back against the durasteel wall, his threadbare cape wrapped around him as a blanket. He hasn’t noticed Luke come in yet, and that’s wrong in and of itself, and he’s shivering so hard it makes his beskar rattle slightly. As Luke lays eyes on him, he breaks into a horrid wet cough beneath the helmet, the modulator rendering it rasping and metallic.

Okay, something must be done.

“Din?” Luke asks, peeking his head out into open view. “It’s Luke, I’m in here now. You sound like my dad, kriffing-- how long has it been like this?”

Din’s head whips around in Luke’s direction, and he probably only doesn’t flinch because he’s trained to not flinch at things. “I’m fine,” he claims - outrageously lying - and tries to drag himself to his feet, hands bracing against the wall behind him.

Luke is already rushing to his side. “No, no, just stay down. There, that’s right, just sit. Are you wounded? Sick?”

Din tilts his head back against the wall. “Not wounded.”

“Well, that’s... good.” Luke squats next to him, unsure how to proceed. In the Force, he can feel exhaustion and pain radiating off of Din, but that doesn’t tell him what exactly is wrong. He tries to touch his wrist and, of course, meets beskar.

“Din, I realize this might be a... big ask, but can you remove your helmet so I can check your temperature?”

A stuttering sigh comes out through the modulator. “I don’t...”

“I’ll close my eyes,” Luke hurries to add. “It’ll just be for a few seconds. Oh, oh I have a blindfold back at the temple! I can run back and get it.”

Din shakes his head. “It’s okay. You’ve seen it before.” He reaches a shaking hand up and with a hiss, the locks on the helmet disengage. He slides it up and off and Luke takes in his face. It’s flushed, his hair matted and sweaty, his eyes bleary, and yet. It’s as attractive as Luke remembers.

Shaking these thoughts off, because there certainly are more important things now, Luke reaches out and puts his ungloved hand on Din’s forehead.

“You’re burning up,” he hisses. “I’m taking you back to the temple, I have medicine there.”

He’s already in the process of wrapping an arm around Din’s torso to help him up when Din shakes his head. “No. Gotta stay here.” His speech is washed out, his eyes glassy, and Luke’s concerned he’s not talking sense.

“You’ll be more comfortable at the temple.”

Din tries to brush him off with alarmingly feeble hands. “No. The kid.”

Ah. “I don’t think Grogu can catch anything off of you. Different species and all that.”

“You don’t know.”

Well, strictly speaking, Luke doesn’t. Yoda never mentioned anything like that. For a moment, Luke looks around the room, but his old mentor’s ghost is unhelpfully absent. He settles for promising, “I’ll make sure he keeps his distance.”

Din shakes his head again. “Kid’s going to...” He’s interrupted by another coughing fit. “...try to heal me. Don’t want him to overdo it.”

Even miserably sick, Din’s first concern is for the child. It makes something warm swell in Luke’s chest, and he realizes with no small start that Oh, this might be something a lot more than attraction he’s dealing with.

It doesn’t matter now. “I’ll make sure Grogu doesn’t overtax himself then. I’m his teacher, it’s what I’m here for.” Not at home to any more protests, Luke uses the Force to help him lift Din up in his arms. “Try to have a little faith in me, okay?”

“I’m fine here on my own,” Din insists.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Luke says distractedly as he starts off towards the exit ramp, bridal-carrying a whole Mandalorian warrior.

Din is not cooperative, doing his damndest to make himself a dead weight. “I’m Mand’alor,” he mutters, eyes half-closed. “I don’t have to take that tone from you.”

Luke doesn’t know what that word means. Maybe it’s a special type of Mandalorian. He’ll ask later, if he remembers. “Right now, you’re sick, that’s all,” he says, taking them at a brisk pace back to the temple. “You need attention.”

Din’s answer is a displeased groan. “My own damn fault for taking off the helmet.”

In the moment, Luke wonders if he means that in a metaphysical sort of way, like he’s being punished by the ancient Mando gods for his heresy. He’ll later discover that it’s much more prosaic than that: Din has worn the helmet since he was a child, and it’s protected him amiably against any airborne diseases. Now that he’s decided to start taking if off occasionally amongst other people, his immune system is being thrown into a panic by all these new unfiltered things to be breathed in, and he has prompty caught some kind of space flu.

For now, he gets Din into bed, armor and all, and heads for the ‘fresher and the aid kit he stashed there.

Din is burning.

Din is glacier-cold.

He sleeps irregularly in this soft bed he doesn’t recognize, and wakes himself with fits of coughing. He gropes for lucidity and gives up on it again in intervals. At some point, someone took his helmet - no, he remembers taking it off, or was that a dream? He has a memory of being carried in somebody’s arms, but who would carry him in full beskar? Who would care to? He’s not on his ship and he’s not alone and this is wrong. He’s been sick before, even with the helmet: from infected wounds or bad food or bad water or being out in harsh weather too long during a job. He’s always ridden it out by himself, if he was too far off to stumble his way back to the covert. But this isn’t the covert - that’s long gone, isn’t it? - and someone is here.

The person, at some point, helps him sit up and removes his armor, and Din would panic - does - but the person’s hands on him are gentle, and there’s some voice telling him that “It’s just to make you more comfortable, I’m putting it right next to the bed, I’m not taking it away, see? It’s right here waiting for you” and he’s too exhausted to put up a fight, and why would they lie? If they wanted the beskar for themselves they would’ve killed him already. But the person doesn’t. The person gives him water when he’s coughed his throat raw. The person drapes a blanket over him, which he shucks off during the hot spells only to grope for it again during the cold ones. The person puts a hand on his forehead and it’s even more cool and soothing than the damp cloth they also provide.

At some point, the person puts something in the bed with him - some alive thing, some small and fussy thing, some important thing with small green claws and wide moon eyes and large ears that are the softest thing that Din’s ever touched. He reaches out for it on instinct, just to pet the downy white hairs on its little head, and the person’s voice says from somewhere far above, “Okay, Grogu, I promised your father to take this slow. We’ll do this gradually, so you don’t tire yourself. You understand? Small healing. Easy.”

The small and precious thing makes a displeased sound, and Din wants to soothe it again. The voice replies, “I know how you feel, I know you want to fix it all right now, but I promised, okay? Your father will be very disappointed in me if we don’t do this just like he’d have it. And we don’t want that, hm?”

Din hears a coo close to his ear, feels a tiny, three-clawed hand touching him, and then there’s a sudden warmth spreading in his chest, not like the clammy heat of the fever but different, pleasant. Suddenly it seems easier to lie back and get some real, truly restful sleep, and this he does.

This instance repeats several more times, over days, until there is a point at which Din wakes - still sore, shaky, and with his muscles aching from having trembled so much - but with the fever broken and his head clear enough to string a coherent thought together.

He’s vaguely aware of a warbling voice a short distance away that he can’t quite yet discern. The room is dim, with only a singular lamp by his bedside spreading a warm light. There is a window above the bed but no light is coming in. It must be late in the evening - Grogu’s bedtime, is what Din’s inner alarm clock tells him without fail. And indeed, when he raises his head, he spots a small crib across the room that can only be Grogu’s, and Luke is there, rocking it in gentle motions. It is him who’s doing the crooning - singing Grogu to sleep, Din realizes abruptly. As he focuses, the lullaby slowly starts to make some sense: it’s in Bocce, which Din is about as conversant in as Tusken. He’s actually heard the tune before; it’s a nonsensical little ditty that settlers on Tatooine sing to their children.

He stretches out an arm and points a shaky finger at Luke.

“Hick,” he accuses, his voice gritty like he gargled a mouthful of sand.

Luke spins around, his blue eyes widening. “If you’re trying to insinuate that only sand-encrusted, desert-dwelling hicks speak Bocce,” he says, “then you are correct.” He smiles. “It’s good to see you back with us.”

“You’re from Tatooine,” Din says, and wonders why this is so important to him. Maybe it’s because learning things about Luke is like putting a puzzle together. There’s somehow a whole bunch of people that Luke is - he’s fascinating, he’s vexing, he’s confusing, and Din has no idea why he’s this interested in the first place. Well, he does have some clue, but it’s best not dwelled upon. Luke has his Creed and his life, Din has his wholly different Creed and life, and it’s not like the interest can be mutual anyway.

Or can it? Luke seems to have been here for days, watching him heal. Din’s mind veers away from phrases like “nursing” and “caring for” because, well, it implies a needing and a being needed that’s not usually extant for him. He takes care of himself, mostly, that is how it’s been for years. Decades...

Luke nods. “Anchorhead represent. Go Womp Rats.”

Din wrinkles his nose. “Anchorhead? There’s nothing there.”

“You’re telling me! Come talk to me about it when you’ve lived there for nineteen years.” He crosses the room to come perch on the edge of Din’s bed. “Which you won’t, you’re the king of Mandalore.”

Oh, shit. Yeah. He’s probably missing a council meeting right now. Wait. “Who told you?”

“You talked a lot when you were feverish.” Luke passes a hand over Din’s brow. He’s done that before, but it’s very different now that Din is awake for it. “It seems to have broken.”

“You had the kid heal me,” Din surmises. He can’t waste breath right now on wondering what else he said to Luke, when the fever had him. “I told you not to do that.”

“I had him heal you slowly, step by step, so he wouldn’t exhaust himself. Just a little every day,” Luke explains.

“He okay now?”

“He’s-” Luke begins to answer, then stops himself. A truly mischievous smile spreads on his lips. “Prince Grogu is resting, your highness. But yes, your majesty, he’s perfectly fine and healthy.”

“Stop.” Din swats a hand at him. “Not... ‘majesty’. We don’t even do that. It’s just ‘Alor. Actually, it’s just Din.”

Luke dodges his hand and almost falls back onto the bed, laughing. “Oh, dear. Please, your worship, accept this humble Jedi’s apology--”

“I mean it, stop--” He probably sounds petulant. He can’t bring himself to care.

Luke’s smile gentles. So do his eyes, impossibly blue. Huh. He’s beautiful. “I’m just teasing you,” he says, beautifully. “I know this doesn’t change anything here. Just another facet of the man I’ve been getting to know.”

“Ah. So you’ve been.” Din clears his throat. That feels awful, as it is still very dry. “Getting to know me. Huh?”

Does this qualify as flirting? This is probably awful. Din’s not good at this. And anyway, it’s still unclear if Luke is actually--???

The softest pair of lips in the galaxy (the galaxy!!!) is on his forehead. Din’s chest implodes. He can feel Luke’s smile on his skin. He’s never felt anything like it before. How is this happening? He’s most likely still sick, and this is a fever dream.

“I’d like to get to know much more of you,” Luke says, withdrawing, still smiling, his eyes like sun-streaked oceans. Din has no breath in his chest.

He delays his reaction two seconds too long, and Luke’s expression begins to falter. “I’m... sorry, you’ve just recovered, and here I am putting... this on you.” He gestures broadly at himself in his entirety. “I... hold on, I’ll go get you, um, a glass of water or something...”

Din would like a glass of water. He would not like Luke to leave. The latter wins out. “Wait.” He grasps Luke’s wrist before he can get up. “I didn’t mean... I would, um. Like to get to know you also.”

Luke stills, his face a turmoil of emotion. How is this the same man who looked so utterly serene to the point of expressionlessness when they first met?

Din figures it’s way past time he made a move. Luke’s already gone and bared himself so much. It’s only fair that he meet him halfway, Din thinks and kisses him.

#dinluke #skydalorian #hurt/comfort #sickfic #this one's about two guys who don't normally have people finding themselves having someone #it got longer than expected!#did i give din djarin the corner virus by accident #big yikes #posts by me

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queenmolina · 3 years

Text

bobby was in the system

i’m going into detail about how i imagine it just because that’s what anon asked me to do - if you think this might be upsetting then i advise you to stop reading here <3

i’m going to preempt this with some disclaimers

- i’m british so my pov of the system will be wrong, i’m not even going to try and translate it

- i’m not picking out sad/tragic things to be deliberately upsetting for the sake of an angsty backstory, this is just genuinely how i choose to imagine it happening

- this is a compilation of my friend and i semi-projecting onto our shared comfort character. im more than happy to share this because i really like this take for bobby, but please be sensitive in any comments you might make in (more for other people’s sake - im comfortable to discuss any of the content)

bobby doesn’t remember his parents. he lived with them for a time and from what people have told him, they were a really happy family. his mom was a therapist and his dad was an author. there are photos of the two of them smiling happily at the camera - some even had a small, baby-faced bobby bouncing on their knee, though they called him robin. it’s on all of his certificates, all of the documents. his name is robin. it doesn’t feel right

when he’s three, bobby’s parents pass. he thinks it must have been some kind of accident - to take them both in one go - but he doesn’t get offered any explanation. he’s almost immediately fostered into a family but there’s so many kids there that it’s basically a foster home. he’s one of the youngest and is immediately babied by all of the older kids which is where he starts to be selective about physical affection/contact with other people

he stays there until he’s six. all of the kids there get moved about when their ‘parents’ (it’s what the kids were told to call them but it never really applied) decided they actually weren’t cut out to look after a dozen children and threw in the towel

six year olds are a bit middle of the range in terms of how quickly people foster/adopt them but bobby’s gained a bit of a reputation for being ‘tricky to manage’ because he’s so fussy - he’s not fussy, he just wants people to stop mollycoddling him and give him some peace and quiet. he stays in a foster home for a year until eventually a couple take him in. but it doesn’t last long - they say bobby acts out and all of a sudden he’s back on the front step with his shopping bag of possessions and they’re passing ‘robin’ back as though he’s a library book and not a child

from the ages of eight to twelve, he gets passed back and forth from one place to the next. some are better than others, obviously. there’s the malone’s where the only other kid is their 17 year old biological daughter who thankfully doesnt much care for ambushing bobby like some of the others had. there’s the harper’s where bobby’s surprised they even passed the social worker visit because the house is a tip - but the carers are nice and he has his own room. there’s the vegaro’s who he even allows himself to hug when he had to leave. the rest of them aren’t even worth remembering. they never lasts, even the nice ones always go wrong. he’s back in the foster home every time he begins to get settled

when he’s twelve, the rate at which he gets fostered slows again. he sidles along with the older kids who seem to have given up hope and spend their days causing trouble or sneaking out of the home just because they can. bobby doesn’t go with them for a few months - until he realises that it’s fine. no one will care if he disappears for a few hours. will they even care if he doesn’t come back at all?

on his thirteenth birthday, one of the carers helps him gather his stuff from his bunk and shove it all into a bag. he’s fed up of trying to find a real home so when a woman shows up to take him, he doesn’t even try for a smile

it’s his aunt. his biological family. she has the same soft features as his mother in the photos and the same dark, pin-straight hair. somehow it manages to hurt more when she wrinkles her nose at his attempts of a conversation

her husband is nice. jerry, his name is. a portly man with a receding hairline and a frequent habit for offering bobby a sip of his beer. he’s not related to bobby by blood but it’s nice to feel like someone’s on his side

his aunt hates him. she doesn’t say it out loud - not when bobby’s in the room - but he sees how she looks at him. he hears her arguing with jerry about him sometimes and saying nasty things about his mother too. she and jerry seem to fall out a lot

she leaves one day. and doesn’t come back.

for once, bobby doesn’t get sent back to the foster home. if anything, he feels more welcomed once his aunt had gone. he and jerry feel like family - a little strained but bobby thinks that must be how all families feel. they watch tv together and even share hobbies. jerry even bought him a guitar, something brand new and for bobby and not second hand. bobby was worried he would have to give it back when the time came for him to return to the home but that wasn’t something to worry about right now. he meets jerry’s friends and family and for once, bobby feel like he has a family of his own

this is also the longest he’s ever stayed at one school. he thinks he might be making friends (he can call them friends this time, they’re not allies. they’re friends)

when he’s fifteen, jerry passes. he hadn’t been very well, it had been getting worse. bobby had seen that it was coming and had half-packed a bag before it had even happened

his new friends from school come to the funeral and sit with him on the front row of pews. alex - who was a foot taller than the rest of them - cowers a little from all of the attention. luke pulls at his sleeves and collar, clearly uncomfortable in the fancy get up, but he offers a sad smile whenever bobby catches his eye. reggie isn’t sure what to make of the whole thing but he can see that bobby’s upset and their shoulders knock together whenever reggie wants to remind him he’s not alone. at one point, bobby even takes reggies hand in his. he would be embarrassed or uncomfortable at the contact except he’s lost his family and he’s probably going to lose his friends too

instead of going back to the group home, he’s asked to move in with jerry’s mother, althea

she has a pretty big house and a garage which she converts into a space for bobby to hang out. he’s still unused to having his own room so to have two feels a little overwhelming. he invites his friends over to fill the space and when luke asks to start a band, bobby allows him to convert the garage into a makeshift studio. althea doesn’t mind, in fact she encourages it.

bobby isn’t the best at putting his thoughts into words but he can put them into action so when the boys start having trouble at home, he makes one thing very clear: the studio is their home. the studio belongs to all of them and if they ever need a place to stay, they should stay here. this is their home, where they’re loved and looked after. bobby tells them this in fewer words but he hopes they understand

(he’s not sure why the boys are so upset about their home lives - bobby would do anything to be with his parents. that is until he sees alex stifling hot tears or luke choking up over his test results or reggie knocking on his bedroom window at two am, desperate to escape the noise. then he gets it)

luke moves in and bobby starts carting his dinners to the studio to eat. althea pretends not to notice that there’s another boys clothes in her laundry loads and just starts doubling bobby’s food portion to make sure they both get enough

then it goes wrong. and bobby loses another family.

althea teaches him things to keep him distracted. she shows him how to knit, teaches him more tagalog, more recipes. it does nothing to make him feel better but he could never tell her that. he’s grateful for every moment she spends with him. she didn’t owe him anything and yet she took him in. the least he could do is try to smile and forget about his boys for a moment. for her.

she’s the one that encourages him to keep creating music, to make them a legacy they can be remembered by. it doesn’t work out that way in the end and she’s the only person that understands how the guilt weighs him down quite so much

years later, when he’s told that he’s going to be a father, his first thought is to run. he can barely cope with being responsible for himself, let alone another person. but it wasn’t his choice, she was going to have the baby. he was going to be a father

carrie is three when her mother leaves. it feels like another cruel twist of fate, like a knife in his gut. he always wondered when it would be his turn to go. he’s 29 and maybe he should’ve gone 26 years ago with his parents, or 14 years ago with jerry, or 12 years ago with his boys. but he would not let carrie have his struggles. so he cries to althea alone and puts on a brave face for his daughter

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1a-imagines · 4 years

Text

Where the land and ocean meet

(Merman!Izuku x reader)

Type: sickeningly sweet fluff.

Overview: From the moment he watched you stumble onto his beach he was enamoured by you. The more he watched you the more he fell in love and when your worlds accidently collide he only falls deeper.. and so do you.

A/n: This is day 5 of the Izumonth collab! You can find the announcement post here. I hope you enjoy!!!

You climbed down the steps of the cliff, taking caution not to slip. They were old and crumbling, steps created by nature and not man.

Your eyebrows knitted together, lips pressing into a thin line as you took on one step at a time. Sadly, they were the only way down to your little, secret, beach so you had no other option but to brave them anytime you wanted privacy.

Ever since your family had moved up onto the hills, away from the town, you had been exploring a lot more. Eventually stumbling across this private beach. It was hidden by the cliff, the sand receding into a small cave-like structure. It was peaceful, your very own pirate cove. You had been coming here almost every day since you had moved.

You had yet to tell your family about this discovery. You wanted to enjoy the solitude for a while longer before telling them about it. You were sure as soon as you told them they would also be down here every day, therefore breaking the peaceful aspect of your hidden treasure. You had thought about never telling them a few times but they would most likely find it eventually anyway.

Especially because you keep disappearing everyday for hours at a time. Someday you would have to come clean, but today was not that day. You lay down your blanket, the sun at a perfect point for it to shine directly on the beach. The heat tickled at your skin making you hum, it felt like a thousand warm kisses. You threw your bag down next to you and got comfortable.

You skimmed through a new book you had bought, though you only made it a few pages in before the idea of a nap hit you. With the sound of gentle waves rolling against the shore, the feeling of the sun caressing your exposed skin, and nobody around to disturb you, it was the perfect condition to catch up on sleep.

You pushed the book aside, making sure to lather sunscreen over your skin for the second time that day. The cold gel made you shiver, but it was still better than waking up to a nasty sunburn.

You rolled onto your stomach, using your arms as a makeshift pillow, and before you knew it you were falling into a blissful slumber.

---

“What are you doing!” The brunette asked, eyes widening, as her friend dove into the water, swimming towards shore, right where the human was.

“I just want to get a closer look! They’re asleep so this might be my only chance!” He replied.

He had been observing you almost every day since you started showing up at the beach. Usually, it was where he would come to relax, but now you had come to claim the beach as your own, unaware you had stolen his hangout from him.

Not that he was complaining, he had found himself admiring you from afar. He enjoyed watching you from behind the rocks, observing your habits, listening to you sing to yourself, and watching as you splashed in the shallow ends of the water.

He was completely enamoured by you. You were a beautiful mystery to him, and he would do anything to get a closer look.

This was the first time he had seen you fall asleep on the beach and he didn’t want to miss the opportunity. He wanted to poke around those human objects you always brought with you. Sometimes he would find you laughing or smiling, even talking! To that rectangle you were always holding. Humans were so strange, you would never catch him talking to kelp, or corals! Maybe the rectangle was a new species of land animal?

His curiosity got the better of him and despite the warnings from his friend he kept swimming forward. Her cries of worry drowning out as his eyes focused on you.

He halted once he reached a cluster of rocks by the side of the beach. He was close enough to see you better, your chest was rising and falling at a steady pace, the sun bounced off your skin in a way that made you look like you were glowing. He had never been so close to you before, his tail wagged beneath the water in a giddy manner, he could even see the grains of sand that stuck onto your feet.

He took time to admire you again, a small lopsided grin spreading across his face, accompanied by grand blush. You looked so relaxed, he could only see one side of your face but your expression was so soft, he wondered if you were dreaming of anything.

Seeing your eyes closed gave him more confidence to move forward. His tail pushed him through the water, the sand started to rise as he reached the shallow end. He pulled himself from the water using his hands, his tail dragging behind him like a dead fish.

His torso made it onto the and but he made sure his tail didn't leave the water so he wouldn’t dry up. You were so close now, he could've reached out an arm and caressed your soft skin. The thought sent tingles down his spine.

Despite knowing his friend was likely having a panic attack from behind the rocks, he pulled himself closer once again, his face finally coming up next to yours. A small part of his brain told him to go back, you could wake up any second and see him, but his body didn't comply.

He couldn't focus on the fact that this was reckless, that if Uraraka told anyone about this he would be in a lot of trouble. All he could focus on was you.

He lay beside you, head resting on his bicep as he listened to your gentle breaths. His irises traced over your face, soaking in every detail. The way your lashes brushed against your cheeks, how soft your parted lips looked. You were even more beautiful up close.

He was so deep in thought, he hadn’t realised his hand had come up to brush, stray, strands of hair from your face. His feather-like touch brushed against your skin and he felt sparks rush through his body at the contact. So many weeks of watching you from afar and falling deeper in love with you.

It had all come to this moment. If only your eyes were open, he would give anything to see your sparkling irises up close. He sighed, dreaming of what it would be like to stare into your eyes.

It's true when they say be careful what you wish for, your eyes slowly fluttered open. He wanted to admire them, they were gorgeous, shining more than anything he could have ever imagined.

But panic overtook him and without a second to lose he dived back into the water, the ocean acting as a blanket of protection.

He swam back to his friend, heart racing in his chest. He couldn’t believe that had just happened!! You saw him! Your eyes met! His head finally poked out from the water when he reached the rocks, turning back to you.

You had turned over onto your side, your breathing still steady. He sighed in relief, you had gone back to sleep.

“You got really lucky there…” Uraraka shook her head, she couldn’t understand what had gotten into him. He was a naturally curious person, but that was so reckless!! Her heart was still in her throat, and seeing him laying down next to the human, was he not thinking at all?! If anyone found out about this he would be put in lockdown. Never allowed to leave their kingdom again.

“Yeah..” He muttered, he noted the worry in his friend’s eyes and looked down. “Sorry.”

“It’s ok. Let’s just go.” She said as she turned away, she paused for a second, not daring to look back at him. “I don’t think you should come back here anymore... For your own safety. I won't tell anyone what you did.. just, please, never do it again. You know the consequences.” She said before diving into the water.

His blood went cold. Never see you again?... Could he really live with that? He turned back to your figure curled up on the sand. He watched you longingly. Maybe Uraraka was right... These feelings were getting stronger everyday, he was becoming attached to you, a human, and he didn’t even know your name.

Maybe it was best he didn’t come back. If you found out about him, his kind, who knows what you would do. That's why merfolk had these rules in place. Any merpeople found getting too close to the shores would be put under temporary lockdown, break the rules more than once and it would be permanent. By doing this he was putting his whole species at risk. He couldn't be selfish like that. No matter how much he would miss you, his first love. He had to let go. With one last glance, followed by a sigh, he dove into the water and followed Uraraka back home.

---

Warm..

Why did he feel so warm? He forced his heavy eyelids open. A goan bubbled in his throat as the sun blinded him. The noises of yelling seagulls and crashing waves filled his ears. Was he on a beach?

His brain raced as he tried to remember what had happened. He remembered going to hunt for food with his group, a shark attacked them… he used himself as bait to distract it so the others could swim away to safety. It fell for the bait and chased him for what felt like hours, he swam as fast as he could, Echoed thoughts of dying entered his memory. After all, not many of his people went up against a shark and lived to tell the tale. He remembered swimming closer to the shore, hoping the shark would be dissuaded from following him into shallow waters.

He had almost reached shore but as he looked back to see if the shark was still there he swam head first into a rock, and everything went black. There were no memories left after that, just black, a feeling of cold and then another of warmth.

"Are you awake now?" A melodic voice asked from beside him. He turned his head only to be met with your worried eyes. His heart leaped into his throat, he wanted to reply but the words got caught. His mouth went dry, eyes widening as he struggled to decide how to feel about the situation..

Should he panic that a human had seen him? Or be happy that the human was you?

It had been weeks since he had last seen you, staying true to his words and keeping away. It pained him so much, his heart constantly tugged him in your direction, but he had to fight himself every step of the way. He had to keep his people safe.

But now, here you were! Talking to him!! You had seen him! All those weeks of torture seemed pointless now! Izuku rushed to push himself up from the sand but his body rejected the quick movement, pain striking through his head, he let out another groan. Your hand placed onto his chest and pushed him back down. "Be careful, you're hurt." You scolded softly.

When he lay back down his head didn’t hit the sand as he intended, but instead something that was a lot softer. He turned to see the strange material you always lay down on, it was folded over a few times, and he had to admit, it was quite comfortable. He felt the waves rolling against his tail, he wondered if you were the reason his gills were still being fed water or if it was just by pure chance.

Despite being intrigued by the soft object beneath, he couldn't forget about you. His heartbeat quickened again upon meeting your eyes. He gulped. You looked surprisingly calm for a human meeting a merman for the first time. He always figured if you two ever happened to meet you would be all over the place, questions spewing from your mouth as you paced back and forth.

You saw his eyebrows knit together, he probably had a lot of questions. You weren't even sure if this creature would be able to understand your language. Technically he was half human, so it was worth a shot. "I found you here, knocked out on the beach, I think the shore washed you up, you had a few cuts on you, but other than being knocked unconscious and a bump on your head, you're ok."

You smiled and he felt hypnotized. That smile he had admired from afar for so many months, the smile he had missed every day he was away, he was finally able to see it up close. It was as if fate was rewarding him for taking on a shark.

Your eyes were beautiful too. He had spent most of his time noting every single detail about you, but seeing you up close gave him a whole new perspective. You were even more gorgeous than he had thought.

"You're not… surprised?" He asked. You giggle as if he had said something funny. "I was at first, but you've been knocked out for about 3 hours now. I had time to process it while I was waiting for you to wake up."

3 hours? He had been unconscious that long? He was going to be in so much trouble when he got back home. As much as he knew he should leave this beach right now and never return. He couldn't find it in himself to want to move. Not because he was in too much pain, but because this was the first time he was able to speak to you.

The human who had captured his interest as well as his heart was right in front of him, taking care of him, smiling at him. Maybe he was dead after all and this was just his version of heaven. He smiled at the way the sun hit your face. You were an angel roaming the sandy shores. "You stayed here with me that long? Thank you!"

"Well, I couldn't just leave you washed up on shore alone now could I? Besides, the chance to talk to a real mermaid! No way would anyone pass that up!" You chuckled.

Midoriya sat up. His head still stinging from the pain, he felt a little dizzy but overall ok. Merfolk tended to heal pretty fast, by tomorrow this injury would be completely gone, so there was no need to worry.

He bit back a smile. He was just as excited as you were. Maybe it was selfish but he trusted his instincts, you didn't seem like a bad person at all, he had observed you for months, even if you had never had a conversation, he knew you. He was there when you helped that crab out of the plastic it had gotten stuck in and when you went around picking up all the washed up trash on the beach. He knew you were a kindhearted person, he wouldn't have fallen in love with you otherwise.

Without realising he let out a dreamy sigh, his eyes trailing down your body, not in a sexual way, more out of curiosity. His eyes landed on your legs, they were on show as usual. He smiled, they looked so weird! You had two of them and those weird things attached to the bottom. Toes? He recalled.

You smiled at his reaction to your legs, lifting one up for him to see. "I guess seeing them must be unusual for you?" He nodded. He used his hands to pull himself forward, his tail dragging behind him, staying in the water. He didn't touch them since he didn't know what kinds of boundaries humans had. Merfolks tails were pretty sensitive, only to be touched by a mate! Maybe it was the same for humans and their legs?

"They look so complicated, there's two of them and they look like they have so many parts. It's like having two tails with ten extra tiny fins on the bottom." His eyes sparkled as he got to admire them up close. You laughed at his analogue, wiggling your toes for his own entertainment. "I suppose that's one way to look at it."

He sat back up until he was level with your face. It felt like the closer he got the prettier you became. To test this theory he absentmindedly brought his face close to yours. You shrank away from him, averting your gaze from him. Maybe it was normal for merfolk to inspect people like this? Or maybe he was just curious about seeing a human for the first time. You didn't want to push him away and hurt his feelings but feeling the tip of his nose against your cheek made your nose scrunch up. You could smell the salty ocean water on his skin.

He pulled back a little, noticing your body language. you turned back to him now you had some space. You looked into his emerald eyes, they shone like jewels underneath the sun's light. He was very good looking, no doubt, but that didn't make the close proximity less awkward.

"So- uh. Do you have a home?" You asked, your voice wavering. Thankfully he sat back, leaving your personal bubble alone. He looked out to the sea and nodded. He did have a home, and if he wanted to stop his family and friends from getting worried he would have to leave soon. They might think the shark had killed him and pronounce him dead. He didn't want to put his mom through that.

"It's getting a bit late and you should probably get back home before the sun sets." You warned him, you had already been here for hours while taking care of him. Your family were going to start getting worried too. So much for your daily relaxing beach day.

Instead it had become ‘nearly fainting upon finding an unconscious mermaid on your beach’ day. You chuckled as you remembered the feeling of your legs giving out from under you and collapsing into the sand. You had never felt so many emotions in one go, doubt, shock, worry, confusion. What a day it had been. You were sure no one would believe you if you told them what happened, not that you were planning on telling anyone anyway. You didn’t feel like being laughed at or mocked.

Despite the sun sinking below the horizon, both of you had yet to make a move to leave. Instead you opted for sitting in an awkward silence as you waited for something to happen. Each of you desperately wanted the other to ask them to stay. You wanted to know more about him and merfolk, to understand this phenomenon. And he wanted to stay so he could get to know the human he had fallen so hopelessly in love with.

He bit his lip, couldn't let you go, not now he finally had you back! "I'll come back!!" He blurted out without thinking. His hands quickly came up to cover his mouth. He couldn't believe he had just said that! What made him think you'd even want him back?! You didn't know who he was! Now he sounded desperate and creepy! Why did he have to be so stupid. Not to mention how frowned upon it was by his people! What if he had just put them all at risk!

"Really!?" He watched as your eyes lit up with joy. You looked ecstatic. His heart melted seeing how happy he had made you, his worry slowly faded. That smile was because of him, and it felt really good knowing that. He nodded, he couldn't find it in his heart to take it back after seeing you smile. His head turned away, the thought of this becoming a regular thing had made the blood rush to his cheeks.

"I'll be here again tomorrow then! I'm here almost everyday." You didn't need to tell him that, he already knew your schedule, not that you could have possibly known that. "I'll see you tomorrow then!" He smiled with a nod, though, still, made no movements to leave. He sat admiring you for a few seconds longer before hesitantly turning and crawling back into the water.

He had to remind himself that this wasn't the last he would see of you. He would see you tomorrow, he would get to talk to you, see you smile again. Once he was far enough out he dove into the water and swam away. He resurfaced by the same rocks he always used to admire you from behind and looked back to see you waving at him. He brought his hand out of the water and gave you a small wave in return, his face sporting a love struck grin.

Before he knew it, the days were flying by and turning into weeks, then months. No matter how tedious the journey to the beach got, he never missed a day. Even if he could only be with you for 30 minutes, he took whatever he was given with a smile. Every second with you was worth it. He lay awake at night, on the sandy ocean bed, thinking about you. How you talked for hours and it never felt awkward, how one time made you laugh so hard you snorted. You were so embarrassed but he thought it was the cutest noise in the world.

He even loved those moments you both lay in silence, listening to the waves crash onto the shore, and watching the sunset, as seagulls danced in the sky. He remembered one time, you lay so close to him your hand accidentally brushed against his. It sent electricity through his body, just like the first time his hand made contact with your skin. It was too bad you pulled away before he could intertwine his fingers with yours.

He continuously convinced himself he definitely would have taken your hand in that moment had you not pulled away so quick.

His tail flopped against the waters edge, you sat beside him, eyes sparkling with passion as you explained to him about the concept of art and photography. “Capturing a single moment in time forever?” he repeated with a hum, bringing a hand up to his chin in thought. He thought over the concept, sometimes they would carve pictures into rocks but it was a hard and grueling task so not many people took to the hobby.

You used your phone to snap a picture of him before turning the device to his eyes. He gasped, grabbing the phone from you so he could get a closer look. “Whoa! That’s me!?” his lips parted, “.. Do I really look like that?” He tilted his head, one cheek puffing out. You giggled, there probably weren’t mirrors in the ocean. Was this the first time he’s been himself? “What’s with that expression?”

He shrugged, tilting the phone in his hand as if it would make him look better. “I’ve only seen myself in the reflection of the ocean, but the ripples make it hard to get a clear image.." he leaned closer to the phone, eyes narrowing, "My eyes are really big...” He muttered, pressing his fingers to his eyelid. You snatched the phone from him, He wasn’t about to get insecure on your watch. “Well, I happen to think you have beautiful eyes.”

He sucked in a harsh breath, his cheeks dusting pink. “Y-You do?” He asked, his voice wavering as he spoke.

You nodded. “By human standards, you’re very good looking. So don’t be putting yourself down!” You scolded him softly while putting your phone away. His fingers dug into the sand, the grains lodging underneath his fingernails. Hearing you say he was good looking, that you thought he had beautiful eyes, his heart couldn't take it. His clenched up in his chest, stripping him from breath. He gulped, hoping you wouldn’t see how hot his face had gotten.

“Oh! I actually wanted to ask you something!” You turned to him, eyes wide with curiosity. He nodded, urging you to go on as his hands played with the sand. “Well, Ever since i’ve met you you’ve been able to understand me. How come? You say you’ve never met another human? So how can you speak the same language?”

He shifted in his spot to get comfier, hoping to relax his tense body. Your compliments were still ringing in his ears, boosting his ego. “Well, from what’s been told from generation to generation, merfolk came first, humans evolved from us. I’m not the first merperson to talk to a human, there have been many. At one point, almost all merfolk were doing it, we were all friends! We learned your languages so we could communicate better! But that… was a long time ago.” He frowned, a shadow sweeping across his eyes. “Things went bad, our people started being hunted, disappearing never to return, those humans wanted to hurt us. Now we have rules in place, we’re not allowed near humans, we hide our existence, which is easy since humans have only discovered about twenty percent of the ocean.”

“You’re not allowed near humans!?” You repeated, jaw dropping in the process. Izuku let out a breathy laugh, though there wasn’t much humour to it. “Yeah… everyone at home always tells me I have a dangerous curiosity. I guess they’re right since technically… I shouldn’t be here..” He looked down at his tail splashing in the water, his eyes remained distant for a moment before he shook his head. “Even if it's frowned upon, I don't regret the time we've spent together, In fact, I treasure ever second.” He smiled, looking into your eyes so you knew he wasn't lying.

You turned your head away from him, unable to fight the smile coming onto your lips. “I’m Glad you don’t, my life has been so much better since i’ve met you and i’m not just saying that because you’re a magical, unknown creature from the depth of the ocean.” You joked and he giggled. “Even if you were a human like me… It wouldn’t change a thing. I like you for who you are, you make me happy.” You admitted with a red cheek. Now it was his turn to hide his face, his cheeks pushed up into a smile. “You make me happy too.” He replied, the giddy feeling in his chest made his tail wiggle with joy.

Everyday he spent with you felt like he was on cloud nine. He got to admire every little detail about you, how your eyes sparkled when you talked about something that you were passionate about, how your nose crinkled at things you didn’t like, how you mimicked him without even realising it by splashing your feet in the water next to his tail. He loved hearing about human culture too, something his people had become greatly disconnected with. He was surprised to know about all the creations humans have made over the years. He was slightly jealous you had so many machines to help you do tasks with ease.

You brought him human food and he brought you ocean treasures. He shared just as much about his people as you did about yours. He trusted you, You had both created this unspoken bond together. He was falling deeper and deeper in love. His connection with you rivaled that of the ocean, if he was ever given the chance he would leave the sea behind and choose to be with you in a heartbeat.

The sun began to set over the horizon, leaving a painted reflection on the water's surface. Like everyday, before you both left, you sat and watched the sun set. It was silent, peaceful, not a word spoken between you two as you found comfort in each other's presence. The familiar sounds of waves crashing against rocks and seagulls yelling from the skies were enough for you both, you didn’t need to speak.

Izuku turned to you. Catching the way the orange glow of the sun reflected on your skin, how your hair danced in the gentle breeze. There was a content smile on your face making his heart leap into his throat. He wondered if one day he would be able to look at you and not feel like his heart way about to implode.

He wasn’t sure what overcame him but the need to confess his feelings grew stronger the more he stared at you. Maybe it was the serenity? Or maybe it was how breathtaking you looked? It just felt like the right moment. He cleared his throat, ready to speak. “Y/n.. I. u-uh-” When you turned to him his body froze, words lodged into his throat. His breathing became rapid and choppy, his hands gathering sweat.

“Yeah? What's up? Are you ok?” You tilted your head, worried about this strange behaviour. He looked like he was about to pass out, or throw up, maybe both?

He suddenly shook his head and with the speed of a cheetah he crawled forward and dove into the water. “Nevermind!! I’ll see you tomorrow!!” He yelled not leaving any room for you to reply as he began swimming away as fast as his tail could manage, not daring to look back. When he submerged under water he slapped his palm against his forehead, teeth gritted together. “I’m such an idiot.”

The next day, he swam back towards the beach like he was in a marathon, he was desperate to apologise for his weird behaviour yesterday but his friends had started prying into where he was rushing off to. Out of all the days for them to get nosey and interrogate him, it had to be the day he was going to apologise to you. He was worried you might be upset at him for rushing off yesterday, and now he was going to be late too!? He could only hope that you would wait for him.

Izuku looked back a few times to make sure they weren't following him. He wasn't the best liar in the world. He'd never had to lie to them before, so he wasn't sure he had convinced them that he wasn't doing anything special. He told them he was just going for a swim with the dolphins, but they didn't look convinced, his body language gave him away.

He hated lying to them, it felt awful! But he knew they wouldn't understand your situation. You were safe to be around, there was no danger. Upon his second visit to the beach you promised not to tell anyone, in fact, you had no interest in telling others about your find. You knew what humans were capable of and you promised to protect him from any harm. You cared about him and he trusted you with his life.

But the others would never see it that way.

As the waters got shallower he moved up to the surface, eventually his head poked out, locks of green hair being pulled down by the water, covering his eyes like soaked curtains. He remembered the first time he had poked his head from the water in front of you. You laughed, claiming he reminded you of a "wet dog." Whatever that was.

Using his hand to brush his hair back from his face he noticed the vacant beach. There was nothing but foot imprints left in the sand. He slowly sunk back into the water until it was just under his eyes. "I missed her…" his words creating bubbles in the water.

He turned to leave, but he noticed your bag was there, partially hidden behind a rock. He swam forward towards the shore. The footprints looked like they trailed around the cliffside, disappearing once they reached the rocks. He dove back into the water, much like a dolphin, and swam around the rocky terrain. He resurfaced to see if there were any signs of you.

He sighed in relief once he saw you. You hadn't left early after all. You stood at the edge of an abandoned pier. Most of the wood was chipped away as if someone had taken a hammer to it. It creaked with every movement you made. Though you didn't pay any attention to it.

You turned upon seeing the green hair poking from the water. You waved, getting ready to turn and run off the pier. He sighed, at least you didn’t seem upset with him about yesterday.

You barely finished taking one step, when the wood beneath your feet cracked. Your sporadic movements didn't agree with the feeble pier. It felt like it happened in slow motion, your body fell, disappearing into the void of water below.

He didn't have time to think or react, his body dove forward as soon as your body fell. His heart sunk along with your limp figure, his hands outstretched as if that would get him to you faster. A cloud of red enveloped your head, mixing in the blue of the water. He would have panicked if not for all the adrenaline coursing through his veins. All that mattered was getting you back to safety.

He finally grabbed you, his arms looping under yours as he pulled you back up to the surface. When you hit the open air, you didn't make any movement, your body floating lifelessly in his arms.

He shook his head, the worst case scenarios started eating at his anxieties. He had to get you back to the beach. He moved you behind him, pressing you onto his back and looping your arms around his neck. He grasped your wrists tightly as he shredded through the water with the strength of a speed boat.

In a matter of minutes you were back at the beach. He placed your body safely onto the sand before he pressed his ear to your lips, there was no breath. With no hesitation he placed his lips onto yours, the water filling your air way came back up, filling his mouth. What a nasty feeling it was, but if it was to save you then he would ignore it. He pulled away and spat out the water onto the sand beside him.

He was in no way good at healing, especially not humans! He could only thank Poseidon that he was graced with the ability to use water magic, it may have just saved you.

His calloused hand pressed against your cheek, turning your limp head to him. "Y/n.. please.. please, wake up." He pleaded helplessly. You let out a cough, excess water dropless leaving your airways. You were breathing again, but your eyes didn't open.

The red blotch of sand under your head brought attention back to the other problem. "Oh god.." he looked around, his stomach was churning. He had to stop the bleeding!

His eyes darted around for a solution, eventually landing on your bag. He used his arms to drag himself towards it. He began rummaging through for anything he could use to stop the bleeding.

He found a spare shirt, he let out a breath of relief, this would stop the bleeding for now. He took the material and ripped it apart into strips, hoping you wouldn't be mad at him for destroying your shirt, but it was for a good cause. He moved back over to you, his hand cradled your head, holding it up. It was only a small wound, thankfully, it wouldn't kill you as long as he stopped the bleeding. He examined it, he didn't want to bandage it without cleaning it first. He grabbed your bag again, and found a water bottle. He remembered you telling him about how humans didn't like salty water. He didn't really understand why but it was probably a safer bet to clean it using your human water than his ocean water.

He tipped the bottle over the wound, water washing over the cut, drenching your hair in the process. After he was sure it was clean enough he bandaged it up with the cloth, making sure it was secure.

Even after he was done, he never let you go. Rather, he held you tighter. One hand cradling your injured head as the other arm went around your waist. He rocked you gently, holding you against his chest. He was breathless, his mouth was dry as his heart thumped against his ribcage. He was more scared now than when that shark chased him all those months ago. The panic of losing you was worse than anything he had ever felt, and losing you to the very place he called home no less. It sent shivers down his spine.

You let out a groan, your arms shifting in his hold. He looked down and his eyes met yours. You winced in pain as you moved. "Careful, don't move too much. I've got you." He brushed hair from your face. Your half lidded eyes looked up at him, dazed and confused. "What happened?"

"That pier you were on broke. You fell into the ocean, must have hit your head on the way down too. You almost drowned." He explained, his face twisting into worry again.

To utter shock, you smiled despite the obvious pain in your eyes. "You saved me?"

"O-of course I did!" He exasperated as if it were the most stupid question anyone has ever asked him. He felt your hand come up and brush through his damp hair, much like he had done to yours a moment ago. "I guess we're even now then." You chuckled, he always made such a big deal of repaying you for helping him when he was washed up. Being out of the water for too long would have dried up his gills, and that would have suffocated him to death. You had saved his life, and now, he had saved yours.

"Ow, shit, this really hurts." You pressed your fingers to the cloth around your head. Izuku helped you sit up, steadying you when you swayed, you had lost a lot of blood, he was worried you might not make it home on your own. "You should really go to the housepetal." He was only trying to help but when you laughed at the suggestion, his shoulders deflated.

"I think you mean hospital." You corrected him. "Oh." He giggled along with you, finally understanding. "But you're right, I should. I'm just not sure I can make it up the cliff right now. I feel so light headed."

He shuffled closer, despite you sitting up just fine on your own, he was ready to catch you if necessary. He was not going to let anymore harm come to you.

"Is there any water left?" You asked him, he reached over for the bottle that he had used to clean your wound. There was a little less than half left. He gave it to you and you hastily drank it all down.

Once finished you let out a satisfied gasp before discarding the bottle into your bag again. "Feel better?"

"Not yet. Soon." You replied, tilting your head forwards as if it would help get the blood back to your head any quicker. He watched your movement, his tail gently splashing against the water's edge to stop himself from drying up.

His eyes skimmed the back of your head, where the wound was. His mind went back to seeing your lifeless body sinking into the ocean's darkness as a cloud of red engulfed you. It was something he never wanted to see again, though the memory was well carved into his brain at this point.

He hated to admit it, but for a second it crossed his mind that you might have died. That he hadn't been quick enough to save you. Holding your limp, unbreathing body in his arms had shaken him to his core.

You hand accidently grazed against his on the sand, pulling him out of his swirling thoughts. It was just like that day a few weeks ago, when your hands brushed against his for the first time, but this time he didn't hold back. You went to pull your hand away but his larger hands encased it, pulling it back towards him. You gasped as your hand was snatched from you, his skin felt so smooth against yours.

He looked deep into your eyes. "I have something to say." He'd never looked so serious before. You gulped, nodding for him to go on.

He inhaled through his nose, his fingers subconsciously squeezing yours. “Before you found me washed up on shore.. I used to come here everyday." He started, pausing for a second but you didn't make any reactions, just waited for him to go on.

"My friends and I used to spend a lot of time here but then we had to go away since a human found our cove, but I found that-... I couldn't leave. I was so enamoured by you, and... I slowly started to fall in love." He heard you sucking in a breath. "Then, I finally got to know you, I fell more in love than ever before! Seeing you almost drown, thinking about what would've happened if I hadn't been there. It made me realise…" he looked away, out at the vast ocean that separated his world from yours. "What we're doing right now, seeing each other everyday, it might not last forever."

He hated admitting it outloud, he could hear his heart breaking it two at the thought of being torn away from you again. Thoughts of you moving away, someone else finding this beach and ruining your secret space, one of you could get hurt, he could be put in lockdown. There were so many possibilities that were running through his head. "I just wanted to tell you how I felt. I want you to know how much you really mean to me. I'm in love with you. So whatever happens in the future. Please, always remember that."

"You think too much." You whispered without missing a beat, your expression unreadable through his eyes. "We're always going to find a way to be together, no matter how long it takes. We'll always find our way back." You whispered, your fingers shifting in hand to intertwine with his.

"How do you know that?" He asked, his eyes were full of doubt but you seemed so sure of yourself. You pulled on his hand, yanking him forward until his nose brushed against yours.

"Because I love you too."

His eyes widened, he sucked in a breath as your lips moved closer to his. He could hear his heartbeat echoing through his ears like the beating of a drum. Your lips finally made contact with his. He inhaled through his nose, your lips were so soft, softer than he could ever imagine them to be. His lips quivered under yours, shaky breaths exhaling from his nose. He tried to keep up with your moving lips despite the lack of expertise. You smiled into it, putting a hand onto the back of his head,patting down his hair and like putty in your hands, he relaxed.

You finally pulled back to see his flushed face. He brought up a hand to his lips? pressing his finger tips to them. "A.. kiss?" He breathed out, looking at you with half lidded eyes. He smiled, shuffling closer so he could sit side by side with you on the beach. His arm came to your shoulder as you curled into his side.

You were right. As long as you loved each other, there was nothing that could tear you apart. You would always find your way back, and you would always have a shared home where the ocean and the land met.

Bonus:

Izuku kept pressing his fingers to his lips, eyebrows knitting together. "You really haven't had a kiss before have you?"

He shook his head, "Well, merpeople show affection in other ways is all.. but that kiss felt so good.. I wonder why we don't do it more often?" Even if he was speaking out loud it felt like that last part was a question meant for himself.

You tilted your head, "Well, what do you guys do to show affection?" You asked, curiosity getting the better of you.

He smiled and turned to you, genuinely happy that you had taken an interest in his species. "I can show you if you want!!" You nodded, curious to see what he would do.

He moved closer to your face, aiming for your cheek. His tongue rolled from his mouth and as it got dangerously close to your skin your leaned back, face turning red. "AHH! WAIT! NEVERMIND! I DON'T WANT TO KNOW-"

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lucientelrunya · 3 years

Text

Like a lonely house pt 2

Chaotic me deciced to switch back to present tense (already edited part one) and I'm still quite clueless how to tag. But it gave me so much joy to see people enjoy my little idea.

Please feel free to point out any mistakes you spot, I'm always trying to improve my writing and stop myself from agonizing over every sentence and constantly rewrite everything...

I think Zhang Rishan might be a tad bit dramatic in this part, but I hope you enjoy this anyway :)

The blackness and cotton in his head only slowly recede, permeated by the sound of muffled voices Zhang Rishan knows. The voices carry an urgency, an impalpable sense of importance that drags him back to consciousness with a sudden harshness. Still it takes more effort than it should to blink his eyes open and for a moment he is confused why there is a stone ceiling above him and why little white flakes are clinging to his lashes. He rubs at his eyes, his movement sluggish and his arm feels heavy, a dull ache that causes the memories to come rushing back. The strange tomb, the force controlling him, the ritual, the pool - Ba Ye. It’s not a dream - nightmare? - or at least not all of it and he sits up way too quickly for his body to adjust. Thankfully someone grabs his shoulders - again - to keep him upright.

It takes Zhang Rishan another long moment to blink away the black spots and recognize Luo Que beside him, offering him an already open bottle of water, which is considerate and much appreciated. He really needs to drink something, at least to get the taste of copper and something he can’t even begin to describe out of his mouth. The strange pale liquid has dried all over his skin and clothes like some sort of clay, cracking and peeling off in flakes and powdery dust when he moves. He opts to ignore it for now, content with getting it off his lips and out of his eyes.

Luo Que doesn’t say anything and patiently waits for him to gulp down most of the bottle before he sits back again, letting go of Zhang Rishan’s shoulders and looking at him with a barely there question in his eyes. And, yeah, Zhang Rishan would like to know what’s going on here himself, thank you very much. With his vision mostly free of black spots and blurring edges he dares to look around him, having already spotted Zhang Qiling’s black clad legs next to him from the corner of his eye. He is lying on a sleeping bag right next to him, with Huo Daofu examining him quietly and unhurriedly.

And Zhang Rishan’s brain is still mushy enough to take a long moment to truly comprehend what he is looking at when he finds the source of the voices. Liu Sang and Pangzi arguing is not some rare occurrence (as he has learned in the last two days), although it's not really arguing and more of a friendly stage of bickering, but Liu Sang and Wang Pangzi arguing with Ba Ye is not normal, not in the least. So it really hasn’t been a dream or his imagination.

An illusion then, maybe? A hallucination, like the meteorite inside the tomb and Er Ye getting back his dead wife? Maybe he is still in the pool and all of this is just a hallucination? But back then the whole fake world had frozen once Ba Ye had started to doubt and Zhang Rishan is absolutely doubting the possibility of this being real. It feels too much like Er Ye’s illusion of getting Yatou back and Zhang Rishan has lived long enough to know that there is no way to truly bring a dead person back to life.

No one freezes and no one vanishes, not even when he puts his hand on his arm to push a thumb into the wound beneath the bandages and elicits a spark of pain that is absolutely and undeniably real. It quickly vanishes again, his body cataloguing it under ‘inconvenient but not life threatening’ and opting to ignore it like he had been trained. But it leaves Zhang Rishan fairly confident in his assumption that this is not an illusion.

He must have been staring, lost in his contemplation of what is real and what isn’t, because suddenly Ba Ye is turning towards him, a look of relief flashing over his face. “Lieutenant! You are awake! Please, please tell these people who I am!” He sounds worried but also a little irritated and whiny, and so much like the Ba Ye Zhang Rishan remembers. For a moment he allows himself to just watch Ba Ye come over and squat down in front of him. He had obviously tried to wipe his glasses off on his equally stained scarf resulting in smudged pale lines all over his glasses and his face.

And he has to fight the urge to reach out and touch, to convince himself that Ba Ye is real, because he has been dead and gone for almost 80 years. Even if they never found his body, even if he had been hidden somewhere by Qiu De Kao for whatever reason there is just no way for him to be alive right now, alive and the same, he is no Zhang, he has no qilin blood.

Wu Xie kneeling down beside him, half on Zhang Qiling’s sleeping bag, breaks the moment. “You know him” and although it’s not a question Zhang Rishan nods. He glances at Wu Xie, who looks worried but also curious and intrigued, always drawn to mysteries. Pangzi and Liu Sang come over, too, placing themselves behind Ba Ye like they are prepared to grab and restrain him if he tries anything, but they look at Zhang Rishan. With at least 5 pairs of expectant eyes on him, probably six, he has to squish the feeling of vulnerability and helplessness that wants to crawl out and drape itself all over him. Instead he consciously straightens his back, squares his shoulders and shifts to sit cross-legged.

He has no idea what’s going on here, no idea how to tell Ba Ye where or rather when he is now (because right now he can’t fight the acceptance that this is a living, breathing Ba Ye who just hasn’t aged a day) or what happened in the pool or if everything did really happen like he thinks. If that being had been there, in the pool and had granted him a wish he hadn’t ever put into words, had made a fleeting thought into a new reality. Each of them is looking at him like he has all the answers and he hates that he is sitting here on the floor of a dimly lit cave, on a sleeping bag someone else has rolled out for him, with bandages around his arms and feeling so utterly helpless. He can’t suppress the bitter thought that Fo Ye would have known what to do.

Taking a deep breath he decides to start with what he is sure of, which is the answer to Wu Xie’s “You know him”. “I do know this man, his name is Qi Tiezui, also known as Ba Ye”, and the name and the title should mean something to at least Wu Xie and maybe Huo Daofu, even if they obviously don’t recognize him from old photos. Maybe because they never paid attention to those pictures, which are faded and grainy compared to what even the simplest smartphone camera is able to capture nowadays or maybe because Ba Ye looks like he took a mud bath. Maybe both.

On to the second thing he is quite certain of: “As to what happened, I’m not really sure myself. As soon as I entered the tomb some force took over my body and I suppose Zhang Qiling's as well and we came to this cave to enact some kind of blood sacrifice ritual for whatever deity they are worshipping here.” No need to point out he had been meant to be the sacrifice, that bit is quite obvious, although he is not sure why Zhang Qiling is the one still unconscious then. “There was chanting, but I wasn’t able to understand it”, he adds, which makes Liu Sang nod at him. “Yeah, I heard you through the wall, but wasn’t able to identify the words either.”

Zhang Rishan considers asking why they hadn’t followed them into the cave and tried to stop the whole thing, if only to give him a little more time to try and find words for what happened after that, but he doesn’t have to voice his question. “Yeah, almost broke my damn nose trying to follow you two through that convenient little magic wall that suddenly turned into a real wall after you two went through, and we couldn’t find a mechanism or another entry or hear anything. Imagine our immense joy at hearing this idiot here say there’s ‘eerie chanting’!” Pangzi grumbles and there is no need for him to add that the use of some explosives had been on the table. Or had they used explosives?

“Did you blow a hole into the wall?” Zhang Rishan asks, eyeing a pile of broken stone in the vicinity of the wall, but Pangzi shakes his head. “Nah, I wanted to, but then the ground started to shake and - poof - the entrance was back and actually visible.” It takes Zhang Rishan another moment to realize the rubble is what’s left of the statue he had only glimpsed upon entering the cave. Had the earthquake destroyed it? Had it even been an earthquake?

Wu Xie humms beside him, following his line of sight for a moment before he points to the wall behind the rubble. “There are some murals depicting locals worshipping a deity that I have never seen before. But it seems to be for protection against droughts or bad harvests, your garden-variety-harvest-god to ensure plenty of food and the likes. Nothing that can bring dead people back to life.” Ah, right back to the burning question.

Ba Ye sputters quite helplessly at that. “Dead? What do you mean dead? Do I look dead to you? Lieutenant, what is going on here, who are these people?” Considering that Ba Ye’s face is still mostly covered in white it wouldn’t be that unreasonable to mistake him for a ghost. But beneath that he doesn’t look dead or like a walking corpse, he looks just like Zhang Rishan remembers him, just like the last time he had seen him before he had vanished. And he still has no idea how to tell Ba Ye that everyone he knows is dead. Well, everyone except Zhang Rishan.

“I’m Wu Xie, this is Wang Pangzi, Liu Sang, Luo Que and behind me are Huo Daofu and Zhang Qiling.” Wu Xie blindly pats Zhang Qiling’s lower leg when he says his name, his eyes never leaving Ba Ye’s face, gauging his reaction to two familiar family names. And Ba Ye doesn’t disappoint, confusion clearly written all over his face. He is mouthing ‘Wu’ and ‘Huo’ while his eyes scan Wu Xie’s face before he looks at Zhang Rishan with a mixture of confusion, incomprehension and helplessness.

“He is Wu Laogou’s grandson”, Zhang Rishan says softly, because their relation is the most obvious to emphasize how much time has passed and the most obvious in terms of resemblance, Ba Ye must have seen that. And Zhang Rishan holds his gaze until Ba Ye looks down, takes a deep breath, closes his mouth and lets himself plop back down to sit on the ground, his whole body curling inwards. This would be a lot to take in for everybody and Zhang Rishan would like to give Ba Ye a moment to compose himself without everyone else staring at him. There are things he hasn’t told them yet, but he is still not sure how to put any of that into words.

“Did the murals say anything about something being confined here?” Zhang Rishan asks Wu Xie, who just looks puzzled. “Confined? What do you mean?” And he really has to try and put it into words, there is no way around it, is there? He takes another deep breath through his nose. “For the ceremony I was kneeling in that pool and when the tremors started I fell into whatever liquid is in there, and it was like - like there was something in there with me. Like it was a living thing with a consciousness and whatever we did in that ceremony it set that thing free.” He can already feel some doubtful looks but nobody starts to interrupt him and Wu Xie actually nods thoughtfully like he can imagine that, so he continues: “It was communicating with me, not with words, more like with feelings and impressions,” and he just waits for Huo Daofu to interrupt him, to say something about blood loss and hallucinations, but he doesn’t, he just doesn’t - “It made very clear that it had been imprisoned here for whatever purpose and that it was just so very thankful that I set it free.”

Everyone is quiet, mulling over those words. There are still so many questions, like who or what had controlled them to enact this ceremony? Had it been the imprisoned being? Or something else? But why? And who had sealed the tomb? And why?

“So you set some ancient being free and someone from your past turns up. What if he is no human but that being in the shape of someone it saw while it was inside your mind?” Liu Sang questions, looking at Ba Ye thoughtfully who stops his calculations to stare back incredulously. “What? First I’m dead, now I’m some preternatural being? Let me tell you, I’m just a fortune teller!” He acts and sounds just like Ba Ye, but Liu Sang has a point, that being had looked into his mind, had probably had access to all his thoughts and memories. It makes his head hurt even thinking about it.

Pangzi and Liu Sang start bickering about how to test that theory, to find out if someone is human and it only gets more chaotic when Zhang Qiling wakes up and Wu Xie starts worrying over him, asking him how he feels and if he is alright while Huo Daofu tries to rule out a concussion. Zhang Rishan tries to ignore them for the moment, even though he would like to get Zhang Qiling’s version of the ceremony. He feels torn between the possible explanations for this situation, but why would some ancient being that had been trapped in a cave for centuries if not millenia take human form and stay with them? To play tricks on him? Or maybe-

“Lieutenant, if so much time has passed that the grandson of Wu Laogu is at least as old as I am, how come you haven’t aged a day?” Ba Ye’s question jolts him out of these thoughts. “It’s a Zhang-family-thing”, he answers, because Ba Ye already knows so much about their family that it should be enough. Ba Ye nods, visibly brightening at the answer, as if he had hoped for something along those lines. “So, why don’t we just ask Fo Ye for help to prove I’m just a normal human? I mean, if that being was in your head and knows what you know it doesn’t know everything about me.”

Of course he would think of Fo Ye as the answer to everything and of course Zhang Rishan has to say it now. He shakes his head slightly and forces himself to watch Ba Ye’s face and catalogue his reaction. “No. Fo Ye is not with us anymore.” It’s cruel, so cruel to tell him like this and Zhang Rishan hates it even more than he hates saying the words at all. Ba Ye’s whole face crumples but he visibly tries to hide his distress. “How on earth am I supposed to prove I’m just a normal human, then?” he bristles, obviously trying to distract himself with anger. “Tell me! What should I do!” Those last words are directed towards Pangzi and Liu Sang behind him who actually stop their bickering and have the grace to look embarrassed.

“Why would that being even want to stay here? What could be in it for... it?” Pangzi voices Zhang Rishan’s thoughts from before. “Maybe it needs help to leave the cave?” Wu Xie suggests, joining the conversation again after assuring himself that Zhang Qiling is fine aside from a cut on his forehead. “Or maybe it’s just lonely and looking for some company?” Huo Daofu throws in and Zhang Rishan isn’t sure if it’s meant to be a joke or a real suggestion. But if they are just casually throwing around theories he can add one, too.

“Maybe it’s an illusion.” Even if there is no meteorite around and even if he had set that theory aside before. Ba Ye inhales sharply at that suggestion and slaps Zhang Rishan’s knee a little harder than necessary. “Aiya! An Illusion? Does that feel like an illusion? Is there a meteorite around that you haven’t told me about? Shouldn’t you be able to tell the difference?” Ba Ye slaps him again and Zhang Rishan just lets him, flinching only a little. It makes Luo Que beside him tense noticeably, like he contemplates grabbing Ba Ye’s arm and stopping him from hitting his boss, but in the end he doesn’t move and just watches.

“Should I? I mean you were the one who realized it was an illusion back then, and you guided us out of it.” Ba Ye harrumphs at that, knitting his brows. “It’s not an illusion”, Wu Xie says and the certainty in his voice makes it easy to just accept it. After all Wu Xie had come with him and should be a real person, even if they stepped into some fake world at some point, just like Fo Ye, Ba Ye, Er Ye and Chen Pi had been real people who stepped into the meteorite.

“Thank you!” Ba Ye says, giving Wu Xie a small bow. “And if you let me, I can show you that I am perfectly capable of leaving this place all on my own.” Which leaves them with: a lonely godly being looking for company (or a bored godly being looking for some fun?) or the possibility that it is really Ba Ye.

For a moment everyone is quiet again and Zhang Rishan takes the chance to ask Zhang Qiling how he had experienced being possessed or remote controlled or whatever it had been. His answer is disappointingly simple and his experience almost the same as Zhang Rishan’s, except that he had not been in contact with another consciousness but had been knocked out really hard by something as soon as the cave had started to shake. Which confirms Zhang Rishan’s suspicion that there had been something with him in the pool.

He gets up, startling both Ba Ye and Luo Que with the sudden movement, making them stand up with him as if they are preparing to catch him again. It’s endearing and disconcerting at the same time and he opts to ignore the way it makes him feel for the moment, but tucks the feeling away to pick it apart later.

The pool is surprisingly dry and empty, but covered in the same white flaky residue both Zhang Rishan and Ba Ye are covered in, which is reassuring because it means there had been something before. For a moment Zhang Rishan just stares at the empty pool, trying and failing to find a hole or a crack in the stone through which the liquid could have vanished. Surely it did not just evaporate into thin air? His memory is not clear enough to dispel the thought that maybe the liquid had not vanished but changed its shape and made itself into a human being.

“Huh? Why is it empty?” Pangzi asks which makes Zhang Rishan release a breath he hadn’t even been aware of holding. “It wasn’t empty when you could get in?” he reassures himself, looking at the other man. “Hah! Wish it had been, do you have any idea how hard it was to get you out of that stuff?” Pangzi snorts and points at the smudged edge of the pool, where a very visible track of white covers the ground all the way over to their sleeping bags. It also makes Zhang Rishan notice the white smudges all over Pangzis clothes only to find the man grinning at him when he looks up again. The corners of his mouth twitch involuntarily in quiet amusement and he nods his thanks, which makes Pangzi grin even more.

With the pool providing no answers at all Zhang Rishan walks over to the wall to look at the murals, soon joined by Wu Xie who points to the parts of the murals he had mentioned before. It shows a group of people in clothing Zhang Rishan has never seen building this tomb. Maybe some minority? They have no idea how old this tomb is, after all or how long it had been sealed. In the next part of the mural it almost looks like they are summoning the unknown god and not merely worshipping and some part of Zhang Rishan’s mind resonates with that thought. The ceremony looks just like what the two of them had enacted, one person in the pool and the other at the altar with a dagger. But it almost seems like the sacrifice on the mural dissolves into the pool, a thought he really doesn’t want to dwell on.

After that the mural gets quite confusing, depicting the statue that is broken now and people celebrating rich harvests, without any clear connection. He looks back at the picture of the god, tracing the faded lines with his fingers trying to recall everything the being in the pool had tried to tell him through thoughts and feelings and suddenly he understands. Or at least he thinks he does.

“They didn’t worship the god, they captured it and confined it in here because as long as it was here everything around it would be thriving, rich harvests, no sicknesses, people living long and full lives.” As soon as he says it he knows it’s true and he finds Wu Xie nodding next to him. “So, you set that god free and as a gesture of thanks it returned a dead person from your past?” And Zhang Rishan knows dead people don’t come back to life, but this is a god they are talking about and it had made everything else grow, had kept people healthy and strong. Maybe it could do this too?

“I’m still not dead and I was never dead!” Ba Ye protests from beside him and reminds Zhang Rishan that he still doesn’t know what happened when Ba Ye vanished back then, how or when he died. He looks at him and contemplates asking just that but somehow he is afraid of the answer. “Maybe you died and you just forgot.” Pangzi says, pushing at one of the larger rocks left over from the statue with his foot.

“How would someone forget his own death, this is ridiculous! An hour ago I was just in my room, enjoying a nice cup of tea and suddenly I find myself in this cave, almost drowning in that pool!” Ba Ye gestures wildly and angrily with his arm, almost slapping Zhang Rishan in the face in the process, but Pangzi is unimpressed. “How could you not forget your death? Or the fact that you died. Maybe you just dropped dead drinking your tea, things like that happen. Who knows.”

“He didn’t drop dead, he vanished without a trace, leaving everything behind”, Zhang Rishan interjects. If Ba Ye had just dropped dead there would have been a funeral and it would have been just as sad and hard, but there wouldn’t have been a mystery, no reason to wish to know what happened.

“Well, maybe he did drop dead and that god plucked his body from the past, brought him back to life and put him here”, Wu Xie shrugs, “I mean, my terminal lung cancer got healed by magic golden coffin water in thunder city, so it’s not that far-fetched.”

And - oh, oh - realisation hits him like a punch to the sternum, taking his breath away, almost making him double over and sink to his knees. It had been him. Ba Ye never just vanished, had never been kidnapped by the Japanese or Qiu De Kao. He had never died, he had been snatched away by this being - god - whatever - and placed here and now, with Zhang Rishan, because it had wanted to give him something he had lost. But Ba Ye had never been lost, he had been stolen, stolen because Zhang Rishan is selfish and thoughtless and cruel and - He has done this. He has done this to Ba Ye. And to Fo Ye. And -

He can’t breathe. How can he ever say this? How can he ever tell Ba Ye? He can never be forgiven for this, there is no way, absolutely no way. Look out for Ba Ye, that had been his order, the one most important to Fo Ye and thus the most important to Zhang Rishan. And he had failed, miserably - no, he had done the opposite! And for the first time in quite a while he wishes Fo Ye was the one with a long life and not him. Fo Ye would never have done something so stupid.

Unbidden he remembers the illusion he had fallen victim to below the Chen tree, Fo Ye with his gun pointed at him, disappointed, so disappointed and he wishes it had been real, that he had died that day so he would have never been able to come here today. But Ba Ye had been missing before, he had vanished before Zhang Rishan had ever been to this tomb and shared his memories with a god. There would have been no reason to wish to know what happened that day if nothing had happened. And that really makes his head hurt, how is it even possible? How does this work, today and the past linked like this? Like it had always been meant to be this way?

#I wrote this instead of sleeping #dmbj fic #mystic nine #zhang rishan #qi tiezui #fuba #wibbly wobbly timey wimey #ba ye

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thornedrose44 · 3 years

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Ends of the Earth

(Read it on AO3)

The world ended.

Well, that's not technically accurate… humanity's time on earth ended, a lot sooner than to be expected which is where the tragedy of it all lies, if Lena were to guess.

Not that Lena's own time on earth had ended. She was still here, pottering on, miles underground, fiddling with forgotten experiments and watching endless hours of television that she never had time for before…

She wondered if this was what retirement was like…

Admittedly, Lena had always imagined it involving more travelling, maybe some gardening and it had never been lonely. She refused to acknowledge that when she thought of getting older it was with crinkly blue eyes and silver streaked blonde hair at her side which always helped soothe the ache in her chest that such morbid thoughts produced. Now, even that fantasy was well and truly gone.

She would only ever get to watch herself grow old now, at least she didn't have to worry about the paparazzi's comments about her receding good looks.

It wasn’t a bad life, not really. She had enough food to see her through old age or until the tempting call of the void summoned her. If Lena was being honest, which she kind of had to be when the only person she had left to lie to was herself… She knew it would be the latter that would take her in the end.

See the thing is… Lena hears… things.

They’re not real, or they are but they are merely the sounds that an empty building creates to keep itself company. The groan of a pipe. The squeak of a beam. The hiss of a fridge. The knock of a mechanised system keeping the air breathable and the water on hand.

Lena still had enough of her sanity to convince herself that the sounds were a natural part of her safe haven (‘prison’ more like). But there were mutters at the back of her mind that said other things. That squeak was a mouse still alive on the outside. That groan was a ghost, trapped forever alongside Lena. That hiss, the blast-proof doors whistling open and irreparably bursting Lena’s protective bubble. That knock…

The knock was the worst.

The knock was the call of the void that allowed Lena to fantasise. To dream.

That knock meant she was no longer alone.

That knock… that knock could be everything she ever wanted…

That knock could be Kara…

And that…

Lena knew that it would be the void that got her before old age. It would be that knock, her loneliness and the hope of seeing blue eyes just one more time… just one more time…. That would do her in.

***

The first six months hadn’t been too bad. Lena had kept herself busy making the repairs she needed to keep her safe haven ‘safe’ for as long as possible. The Children of Earth’s final attack, that had prompted humanity’s departure two months ahead of schedule and Lena staying behind to ensure their escape, had wrought significant damage to the structure of the bunker.

The work was dull. But it was good. It kept her hands busy. Her mind distracted. And it meant she could fall into bed, utterly exhausted and free of thoughts of what ifs and almosts and not yets and soons and new beginnings…

The majority of the work required for Lena’s home to be brought to tip-top shape was done after six months. The next six months were about optimisation. Trying to make her home… more homey… An already difficult task when there was little in the way of colour to decorate the concrete bunker, but a nigh on impossible task when Lena’s home had never been four walls but blue eyes, golden hair, a bright smile and a warmth that made even the darkest moments survivable.

It was the second year that broke something in Lena that she would never get back again.

It made the light in her chest steadily dim and extinguish.

A candle that had remained alight with the childish possibility that Lena would get her miracle, her last second save and a happy ending.

She knew it was impossible. Knew that the surface of the Earth was not accessible to another living being. That the transmat portal could not be repaired, the necessary materials completely depleted - even if Lena had the materials to repair it, she wouldn’t have been able to generate a high enough voltage to power it. That the survivors were now countless lightyears away and a ship travelling to her would arrive long after she had turned to little more than dust in this mausoleum.

To survive the breaking (more specifically the ‘breakdown’ that had Lena spending pretty much the entirety of a month drunk off her ass), Lena found a routine. She found a routine and stuck to it.

A routine that kept her busy, mentally and physically occupied because if she stopped… if she let her thoughts wander… Well, that knock started to sound rather enticing.

Lena performed regimented checks of her safe haven and its equipment.

Lena had time for reading. For television.

Time for fun science experiments she never had time to progress when the scientist part of her was told to give way to the business woman part.

Time for exercise; soft curves hardening to muscles as she threw around equipment and worked tirelessly and rigorously.

Set meals.

Set bedtime.

Set wake-up.

Day after day passed by in this fashion. Weeks. Months.

Two years in her concrete bunker became three, became five… and before Lena really knew it… she was rapidly approaching a decade in this prison of monotony.

***

It had started with an innocuous ‘beep’.

A fucking beep foretold the destruction of Earth - Lena prayed that humanity, when they re-told the story of the fall of their first home, would ignore that particular aspect of the tale.

It had all started out as a minor reading on a random L-Corp machine tucked away at the back of Lena's lab. (It had been the beginning of yet another half-formed experiment by an idealistic Lena when she thought that being in charge meant she could spend time on her own projects. How utterly naive she had been.)

Lena had taken it over to the DEO where she and Brainy looked over it together for a weekend - mostly because Lena had nothing better to do, what with her friendships being more or less non-existent since her near defection back to the Luthors and despite her subsequent assistance in bringing down Lex.

Lena assumed it was an atypical reading, a presumption that had been reinforced by Brainy with knowledge of the future. Because if this erroneous result was in fact true and accurate then… the Sun clearly had it in for the Earth.

It was heating and expanding at a ridiculous rate. A rate which would make the Earth uninhabitable in a mere handful of years, the heat and radioactivity increasing to such a level that it would be like living in an overpowered microwave.

So, the result had to be wrong because as far as Brainy was aware the Earth was very much still standing a thousand years down the line.

It took a month, with nearly all of L-Corp's resources working on it to find out that, as it turns out, the future can change.

Which was great news for those strongly in favour of free will and heavily against predetermination. Less great news for those that had recently got a mortgage for a new house…

It was full go then.

The next two years were some of the worst and best of Lena's life.

The sun's sudden failure was a parting gift from the Daxamites, who were big believers in ‘if I can't have it, you can't have it either’. Lena assumed Lex would appreciate the pettiness of the action.

The first six months had been filled with hope and a fervour to fix it. Solve the problem like the Superfriends had so many others before. Kara was their guiding light, tirelessly chasing down every lead, ready to get whatever Lena, Brainy and the whole cohort of scientists required at a moment's notice.

Lena, however, wasn't hopeful. She wasn't an optimist. Not anymore at least. Maybe once, when she was young and her mother was there to chase away the monsters under the bed and lift her into the air when the sun was at its warmest.

She had been hurt, though. Lied to and betrayed far too much to have faith in some intangible and, as of yet, unknown success. She was a Luthor. Raised to be resourceful, stubborn and with a tendency to doubt.

So, whilst her team of great minds slept, Lena would stay awake an extra couple of hours and plan and prepare for the worst. Because you never know when 'just in case' would be the only option left.

Lena and Kara's friendship over that six months steadily rebuilt.

It rebuilt over peace offering coffees brought to Lena's side by fidgeting fingers, “You look like you need it.”

“You didn’t have to.” Lena would always remind, not wanting there to be an obligation, not wanting Kara to be there unless she wanted to be.

“I know… I wanted to…” Would always be murmured back, soft and sincere, a rope cast out in the darkness.

It was rebuilt by softly spoken encouragement when either flagged.

“What use am I? It’s not like I can punch the sun better.” Kara huffed on days when she was left to pace without direction waiting for the next task, the next lead, the next… whatever...

“No, but I know that you would if you could.” Lena would reply, earning her a small upwards tick to Kara’s lips that made Lena’s heart flutter with something other than a constant state of anxiety. “You are more than just your powers, Kara. Far more.” Lena would whisper earnestly, and Kara would simply rest her head on Lena’s shoulder.

It was rebuilt by fingers gently interlacing to offer comfort, “We’ll find something.”

“Together?”

“How else? A Super and Luthor are unstoppable, didn’t you know?”

It was rebuilt by Kara sharing her fears of losing yet another home and Lena listening, “I don’t know if I can take another loss like this.”

“I know, I can’t even begin to understand what you must be going through, but it's not going to be the same as last time, you know?” Lena would murmur, soft and hesitant, afraid of stepping wrong, afraid of treading on Kara’s open wounds that she had never known were there before. “If it does happen…” Lena would tack on (always if, never when) in those first few months. “You won’t lose everything. I won’t let you. Everyone that can be saved, will be.”

“Is it bad that I don’t… I can live with a few losses… I can, but there are some… Some that matter more...” Kara confessed haltingly, blue eyes wide and scared as if she was revealing something she wasn’t sure Lena was ready to hear yet.

“No, there’s nothing bad about that. At least,” Lena murmured, ducking her head as she curled her fingers tighter around Kara’s, her thumb rubbing back and forth over knuckles, “I don’t think of myself as a bad person for it.”

“You’re not.” Kara would insist, finally covering over the hurt of ‘villain’ once and for all.

It was rebuilt in Kara carrying Lena to her cot in the backroom of the labs whenever she found her slumped over her keyboard in the early hours of the morning.

“Hmm…” Lena would sleepily hum as she felt herself being cradled in Kara’s arms who never used super-speed when she was carrying her anymore, something Lena was grateful for as it gave her precious extra seconds of being safely ensconced by everything Kara.

“Sleep, Lena, just sleep.” Kara would mutter tenderly, lowering her onto the blankets and pressing an almost imperceptible kiss to Lena’s forehead which guaranteed Lena pleasant dreams.

It was rebuilt on tragedy and hope. It was rebuilt on optimism and pessimism. It was rebuilt by two people who just wanted to save each other in whatever way they could.

***

After six months, it was known. It was known that there was no Hail Mary that could undo what had happened.

Now, it was just about survival… and, for some unfathomable reason, everyone was looking at Lena to ensure that.

“Me! Kara, they’re looking at me to… to… save them!” Lena yelled incredulously once she had returned to the sanctuary of her lab and it was just the two of them (as it often was now).

“Yeah… they are…” Kara replied with a shrug like it was obvious and understandable.

“Me! A Luthor!”

“No. Not a Luthor.” Kara declared firmly, lifting her chin in that way that always made Lena’s knees just that little bit weak. “Lena. The woman that has saved this planet and its people time and time again. A woman who has proven herself selfless and a hero in every way possible. The person that I…” Kara swallowed thickly and in that moment, Lena couldn’t breath, couldn’t move, couldn’t even think. Kara stepped towards her, strong and confident, reaching out to take Lena’s hands in her own, squeezing them tightly as earnest blue eyes stared deep into lost green. “Lena Luthor, you are my hero and I am always looking to you to save me.”

Lena finally inhaled a shuddering breath, nodded her head once and got to work.

The first step was the underground bunkers that would provide shelter for humanity whilst a more long term solution was achieved. The bunkers were not designed to be aesthetically pleasing or even remotely homely. They were functional, quick to put in place and hopefully temporary (which they would be for all but one).

Whilst the bunkers were built, Lena and her team were given two momentous undertakings that were critical for humanity’s continued existence:

Find a suitable new planet to call home.

Figure out how to get the entire population of Earth there as quickly as possible.

Lena hated the second six months of those two years. Kara was barely around, constantly buried under miles of earth, supporting the construction teams in their work, her help was crucial as having someone who could manoeuvre large weights delicately removed the overheads of large pieces of equipment and the time they would take to get in position and slowly carry out the task. When Kara ever did manage to poke her head above sea level, she was off to far flung places trying to minimise the impact of whatever natural disaster was occurring due to the Sun’s interest in making Earth a holiday destination for lava monsters in the near future.

Kara only ever made it back to National City for the occasional weekend once a month. A weekend that she mostly spent sleeping after having pushed herself past the point of exhaustion.

Kara had taken to sleeping in Lena's cot whenever she was back, holding Lena close instinctively whenever the former CEO managed to collapse beside her after her own ridiculously long days.

“You know, you have a far more comfortable bed at home? With proper sheets and pillows and blankets and all those really good things that are conducive to sleep…” Lena drawled as she slipped off her heels and sat on the edge of the cot that was already filled with a dozing superhero.

“I could say the same thing to you.” Kara yawned in return, shuffling to the edge of the single-person cot to leave a reasonable gap for Lena.

“Yeah, but…” Lena began to argue, biting her lip; Kara was out there everyday pushing her body beyond its limits in places with little sun, little hope and little in the way of comfort. And when she was granted a few hours of reprieve, just a few measly hours to rest before she was pulled back under, she spent it in a darkened back-room of a laboratory.

“No buts.” Kara cut in, tugging at Lena’s sleeve to pull her down into the empty space and open arms. “I’m here because…” Kara murmured, nuzzling her nose against Lena’s forehead whilst kindly ignoring Lena’s pounding heart, “Because I want to be here.”

“I want you here too.” Lena would eventually reply once her heart had returned to a normal beat and she was sure Kara had fallen into a deep slumber.

(The Superfriends talked about Kara never returning home and choosing to be wherever Lena was amongst themselves, but they never brought it up with either woman, presumably out of respect or simply being too busy with the impending end of the world).

During that time, Lena was under more stress than she had ever been in her entire life. A whole planet on her shoulders and she was being crushed under the weight of it all.

On the plus side, it was the longest anyone had ever gone without spitting her last name out with disgust. It was difficult to damn the person working tirelessly to save you. Not that there weren't some that tried to call her saviour and devil in the same breath, but the Superfriends, who had become her friends again, would put a stop to it before they ever got to the second part of their sentence.

Lena knew that Kara had asked them to look after her whilst she was away. And she appreciated the thought more than she appreciated the actual looking after. Alex had taken to looming over her shoulder like a bodyguard and frog marching her to the canteen at set times to eat three meals a day. Nia, meanwhile, insisted that Lena walk up and down the white-washed corridors of the laboratory at least twice a day to ensure she exercised.

She grew to love them all: Brainy who was constantly by her side, Alex who was holding her up when she nearly collapsed from exhaustion and Nia who always managed to remind her of the small things she was fighting to save when she got lost in the big picture. She loved them but every time they pulled her away from her work, Lena would hear a voice in her head whispering an ominous countdown.

***

One year post-world-ending-beep, and humanity was tucked away in its new home - the bunkers underground.

Lena and Brainy had finally found a promising planet that they could call home, code-named Goldilocks until an actual name was selected when they finally stepped foot on it (it felt weird officially naming something that they had never seen or experienced). Now, they just had to get everyone there and Lena doubted that there was an intergalactic moving service - maybe that could be her new business venture after her secondment as humanity’s supposed saviour was complete.

Their best option was the transmat portals (mark two) that she somehow needed to make so that they didn’t require a corresponding portal on the other side. Their idea was more of a wormhole or slingshot, that flung them across the galaxy. They had transports that they could load people up in, they now just needed to create the ‘road’ or ‘shortcut’.

Lena spent day after endless day with Brainy in contact with Earth’s greatest physicists trying to solve problems and reconcile theories that would probably have taken centuries to solve, but mother was the necessity of invention. And dear god, did they need this invention.

The pressure was destroying Lena and more importantly it was creating a gulf between her and Kara that they had so pain-stakingly worked to remove over the last year.

“Lena, you need to eat.” Kara pleaded, her fingers making only fleeting contact with Lena’s elbow, the last time she had made contact Lena had flinched which had hurt Kara in a way that no physical attack ever could.

“I’ll eat later.” Lena replied sharply, her eyes remaining fixed on the board in front of her.

“Come on, Lena. Everyone else has taken a break.” Kara murmured, gesturing to the empty room and the blank computer screens.

“I’m not like everyone else.” Lena responded absent-mindedly.

“I know, I know…” Kara soothed, fingers twitching with the obvious desire to pull Lena into her arms.

It had been weeks since Lena had been in Kara’s arms but Lena knew… knew that if she sunk into Kara’s embrace, she would crack open and she didn’t know if she would be strong enough to put herself back together again.

“Just, I’m here… for you… always.” Kara promised with a sad and lost tone of voice that made Lena’s throat tight and scratchy.

***

The Children of Earth were the single most irritating thing about the end of the world, and Lena knew that was saying something.

They were also the people that saw Lena’s near year long record without an assassination attempt as a challenge.

They were a fanatical group that believed if the Earth was ending, the human race should too. That was pretty much it. Considering the rather bleak sales pitch, Lena was impressed by how many people they convinced to eagerly join up.

Unsurprisingly, Lena was the number one target on their (s)hit list - what with being the main person working on getting them all off planet. Kara, took to being by her side almost constantly, an ever present shadow to the youngest Luthor; dark, steely blue eyes and a harsh frown on the world’s celebrated heroine made even the most committed of assassins think twice.

Kara’s shift to bodyguard came after the very first attempt on Lena’s life.

Lena was at her desk in her laboratory, making changes to an algorithm in the dead of night, the rest of her team retreating to their beds for a few hours whilst they could. It was Lena’s shaky hands that saved her life (exhaustion, stress and a near constant caffeine overdose had produced tremors in Lena’s long fingers that Kara couldn’t bear to look at anymore), Shaky hands reaching for a mug of cold coffee. Shaky hands so tired they couldn’t summon up the strength to hold it steady. The porcelain slipping through her fingers and rushing downwards to smash onto the floor.

Lena instinctively scrambled after it, pitching herself awkwardly downwards and to the side,

It was this that saved her.

Ensured the bullet aimed for the centre of her back actually hit her shoulder.

It was the sharp inhale of pain and whisper of Kara’s name as she fell off her stool that saved her.

Because Kara was always listening out for her. On hand and ready the second Lena needed her.

Lena didn’t hit the floor. Didn’t smash into the ground like her coffee mug.

Warm arms were around her before she even got close.

“You’re okay. You’re going to be okay.” Was whispered endlessly on repeat as she was carefully transported to the medbay where Alex and Eliza (quickly roused from sleep by a terrified superhero) got to work. Lena didn’t ask about the assassin, she knew she was safe with Kara watching over her and the Danvers so tenderly cleaning out her wound and that was all that really mattered. She didn’t have any space left in her mind to think of anything else, so overwhelmed with all the problems she had been asked to solve. There was no processing power left to confront other unknown questions.

Kara didn’t leave her side from then on. Not that Lena would let her. Not that night.

Their hands were clasped tightly together and would stay that way even when it inconvenienced the two doctors, who were wise enough not to raise it as an issue.

Lena’s wound was dressed efficiently and in such a way as to minimise scarring, Eliza and Alex returned to bed as they moved away from early morning, and the leaders of the survivors underground were made aware of the threat against their chief scientist. If Kara, as Supergirl, hadn’t insisted on serving personally as Lena’s protector, Lena was pretty sure the leaders would have demanded it, having grown equally fond of and dependent on the youngest Luthor.

When it was just them… just Kara and Lena… that’s when Lena let the tears fall and the sobs wrack her body. She was cradled carefully in Kara’s arms in an instant and everything she had been holding back burst out of her in an unending stream.

It was cathartic, letting it all out whilst Kara just held her and listened and whispered words of reassurance and affection.

The gulf that had formed, disappeared in an instant as Lena buried her head into the crook of Kara’s neck murmuring apology after apology for keeping her out, for putting distance between them, for not being good enough, for not saving Kara’s second home.

Kara listened, rejecting every single apology with a firm voice and understanding blue eyes.

“Don’t push me away again.” Was all Kara asked for.

“Never. Never again.” Lena promised, not knowing at the time how she would be forced to break that promise less than a year from now.

***

The looks and hints and flirts and teases started in earnest then - they had always been there but boyfriends, secrets, distrust, confusion and hurt had blanketed it and kept it from growing. Now, it was just them and the end of the world.

Their days were spent together, Lena trying to save the world and Kara just trying to save Lena.

“You know I was a prodigy back on Krypton…” Kara revealed her past quietly as she was oft to do when the lab was empty and the bunker was blessedly quiet.

“In writing?” Lena asked, abandoning her work to give Kara her full attention - Kara was the only thing, especially when she was like this (soft, vulnerable and eyes aching with the loss of one home) that could make Lena turn away from the screaming voices inside her head.

“No…” Kara laughed lightly, “I was to be the youngest to join the science guild.”

“Really?” Lena murmured in disbelief.

“Hmm…” Kara hummed, her mouth quirking up at the edges; Lena’s eyes dipped down to stare at the movement as they had begun to do with increasing frequency.

“Then why…” Lena began curiously wondering why Kara would turn away from something she had been preparing for and so obviously excelling at.

“Because, on Krypton…” Kara reached out with tentative fingers and pushed a dark lock of hair behind Lena’s ear. “We didn’t have people like you. People who worked on the ‘just in case’. People who spoke up. People who… thought everyone should be trusted with the truth. People who thought everyone deserved to be saved, not just the select few.”

Lena grabbed Kara’s hand and brought it to her lips, pressing a comforting kiss to its palm as Kara revealed her scars to her.

“I didn’t see science the same.” Kara confessed, her gaze turning far-away and distant as she took in the scribbles on the white-board like she recognised the odd syllable of a language she hadn’t spoken in years. “Science was elitist. Science led to hubris. Science failed to save us. But it was the lies that damned us in the first place. So… when I had the chance to start again…” She trailed off, expression melancholic and wistful.

“Thank you for telling me that.” Lena whispered sincerely, once it was clear Kara had nothing left to say.

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” Kara chuckled dark and pained in a way that made Lena’s heart crack across the surface.

“What is?” Lena prompted, squeezing Kara’s hand tightly in the hopes of grounding her.

“If I had been a journalist on Krypton, I could have made a difference. And if I was a scientist here, I could have made a difference.” Kara said, her smile a dark and broken thing that looked just wrong on her face.

“You make a difference, Kara. Every day. Just by being you.” Lena declared, green eyes sharp and jaw clenched determinedly.

The twisted smile receded back to something soft and adoring. “Maybe for the next one I’ll switch back to science, I mean how long do you think it would take me to get upto speed?” Kara questioned teasingly jerking a thumb at the board covered in excessive equations.

Lena let go of the heavy moment, though she wanted to reinforce to Kara that she was perfect just the way she was. But there would be other moments, other conversations, other secrets shared, other wounds tended…

“Depends on your teacher. With me there to help, I could make you an expert within a decade.” Lena asserted with a confident wink.

Kara’s gaze narrowed, a smouldering smirk slowly appearing as the kryptonian leaned into Lena’s space, “Is that so? Professor?”

Lena gulped.

***

It was a known yet unspoken thing between them.

They spoke around it, danced right up to it, fogged up the glass with eager breaths and pressed against the membrane with curious fingers. Lena knew Kara felt it, in the same way Kara knew Lena felt it. Though, both were too fearful to define it, to say how deep it ran, how much it meant to either of them.

It was ambiguous in its immensity, not in its existence.

Whenever they brushed up against it, and came close to breaking that barely visible wall between them, they were pulled back with murmurs of ‘soon’ and ‘almost’...

They were both too dutiful, too dedicated to the task at hand to leave room for much else. And they both didn’t want to start when they couldn’t commit all of themselves to each other. Wanted their chance to have the highest probability for success that it could. Because that's what they both deserved.

“The first sunset.” Kara murmured when they were cuddled up together on Lena’s cot in the small room put aside for the chief scientist at the back of the lab in the bunker. “Me, you and a picnic under the very first sunset.”

“Sounds romantic.” Lena teased, rubbing her cold nose against Kara’s clavicle.

“I’ve got it all planned.” Kara admitted honestly. “Every last detail.”

“You’ve really thought about this…” Lena said in awe, pulling back to look down into soft blue eyes.

“It’s all I think about…” Kara replied, her fingers stroking up and down Lena’s back - Lena wished those clever, clever fingers would sneak under her sleep shirt and run along her bare skin.

“Soon.” Lena exhaled their now common commitment.

“Soon.” Kara echoed.

***

The transmat portals were nearly done. Ahead of schedule which was probably a first for any project, yet alone one on such a large scale.

The only problem was the energy source. It was… rather unstable and the amount of energy required to power all the portals at the same time was substantial. To ensure the tentative peace between all leaders and those involved, an agreement was made that all the portals would activate at the same time and humanity would pass through in one go to ensure that there was no group given an advantage.

Lena understood the political reasoning but it was an engineering nightmare.

They were working on putting power stabilisers on the portals to limit the impact of unwanted surges, when the Children of Earth made their play.

Coordinated explosions that threatened the sanctity of the bunkers moved the scheduled departure date up and prompted a mass evacuation. Kara didn’t want to leave Lena’s side but the people needed their Supergirl and it wasn’t fair for Kara to stay by Lena’s side when she was far from the fighting and others needed her to be their shield. Kara left her side with a promise of, “Soon, we’ll get our sunset.”

Lena had prepped the transmat portals from the command centre, monitoring the power levels with a wary eye as the bunker shook with the ferocity of the fighting. Lena watched over transport after transport, making changes as required to keep the power stable. As the numbers of those left to go through began to dwindle, Lena sent her team of loyal scientists led by Brainy (who she had to order to leave) on their way, leaving one transport for her and the soldiers holding off the Children of Earth.

Lena struggled, as time ticked ever onwards, to keep the power surges under control and the transmat portal open. With the energy already expended, Lena knew if it closed… it wouldn’t be possible to open it ever again.

The soldiers led by Alex and Nia appeared following a large explosion that completely caved in an entire section of the (thankfully, now empty) civilian barracks. Held up by Alex and Nia was Kara, bloodied and bruised, skin a sickly green as her eyes fluttered weakly and her mouth moved trying to form words, fighting desperately to remain conscious. A battle she lost a second after catching a glimpse of Lena hurrying towards them.

They made their way as a group (Lena and those that had taken the pivotal last stand) to the transport when the evacuation alarm was joined by a clinically detached voice calling out, “Power Level Critical.”

The transmat portal flickered before brightening and then dimming almost immediately. The power surges threatening the very integrity of the portal.

“Lena, we have to go now!” Alex shouted, jerking her head towards the last transport that her group of soldiers were already piling into when she saw Lena freeze mid-step.

Lena doesn’t remember making the decision. It was just instinct. She could work out the variables, could see the solution and just… acted. It didn’t require actual thought.

There was the portal that wasn’t safe for a transport to go through unless someone was making the necessary adjustments to the power in the command centre.

There was Kara, hurt and beaten but still so alive and so beautiful and without a doubt the love of Lena’s life.

It was never a choice, so how could Lena have made a decision.

“No, you have to go. I need to keep the power levels under control. You won’t make it, otherwise.” Lena said, her voice eerily calm and collected for what she was about to do.

The looks of absolute, sheer horror that appeared on Alex and Nia’s faces as understanding dawned would stay with Lena forever. It was the moment she realised she was making a sacrifice and not just carrying out a simply logical action.

“No, Lena…” Alex gasped, her brown eyes turning watery as she hefted Kara higher as if.. As if she was trying to shake Kara awake so that she could bear witness to what was happening.

“There’s no other way.” Lena declared, striding forward to cup Kara’s perfect face in her hands before leaning down to press a soft, farewell kiss to Kara’s cheek. “I was really looking forward to that sunset.” Lena whispered quietly.

Lena took one second to memorise that light vanilla scent that she would always associate with Kara before letting go of the kryptonian and looking to the distraught sister, “Keep her safe.” Lena requested simply, “And…” Lena swallowed thickly, “Tell her to be happy. Just happy.”

And with those final words, Lena sprinted back to the command centre, yelling for Alex to “Go!”

It was a close thing in the end. The power surges were seconds away from blowing the portal, and the bunker along with it, to smithereens when the transport finally zoomed safely through to humanity’s new home. Lena cut off the power just in time to limit the extent of the explosion that followed. The portal blasted apart but it didn’t have enough oomph to rip through the bunker.

It did knock out the lights, though, leaving Lena in absolute darkness for the first week of her new existence as the last human on Earth.

***

Okay, so Lena needed to admit to something… just a small thing… it was just, she knew it made her sound… you know… not really all there…

She had a dog.

A… uh… robot dog… that she had built for herself for company…

And, you know, Tom Hanks had a volleyball so, in comparison to that Milo seemed far more… sane…

(Don’t worry she had resisted the urge to call it K-9 and she had made it far more mobile and life-like than the rather square Doctor Who companion).

His name was Milo, after the main character from Atlantis, one of Kara’s favourite films. He was sleek, more grey-hound shaped than terrier, but moved rather clunkily. He had a tendency to trip when going up or down staircase B5-1 since that particular set of stairs were a little steeper than the others in the bunker and Lena had forgotten to factor that in when she created him. Now, she found the little stumble he made on those steps gave him character, made him seem even more alive than the adaptive AI that operated him so she never bothered to fix it.

Lena resisted the urge to give Milo a voice, since a robotic voice coming from her robo-canine companion kind of ruined the image that she had of Milo being a real dog but she couldn’t stand the silence anymore, couldn’t stand only hearing her own voice.

That was the other thing… after a year she’d started narrating for lack of a better word. Commenting on her work, speaking her thoughts aloud rather than keeping them inside her head. Partly to add some sound to her quiet life and partly (but mostly) to remind herself she was still here, still had a voice.

If a tree fell in the forest would it still make a sound?

Did Lena still exist if no one was around to see or hear her?

In year four of her solitary existence, the narration became full-on conversations with herself which eventually prompted her to create Milo after she realised that she had gone to bed two consecutive nights in a row angry at something she had said to herself.

Milo spoke to her in song.

“You’ll always be here to keep me company, right Milo?” Lena would ask after crying over The Notebook.

“I’m never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you.” Milo would blast at her through the speaker in his mouth alongside a friendly wag of his tail.

Lena was working on a beam with a crack in it, bending her head down to check on Milo who was looking up at her through green LED lights. “Did I get it all?” She called down.

“Higher, higher and higher. I said your love…” Milo directed, his LED eyes emitting a beam of light to point out a spot above Lena’s head.

He was a good dog overall, though he definitely had a preference for 80s classics much to Lena’s equal amusement and chagrin.

***

She tried not to think of Kara. But it happened.

The longest she had gone, not including sleep (though most of her dreams involved her blonde best friend so it wouldn’t have helped her average anyway), was three and half hours. An event which occurred during her drunken month in year two; she had grown irrationally angry at the transmat portal and had taken a crow-bar and smashed up the remains of the structure whilst listening to screaming death metal music.

She knew Kara would mourn her, miss her at least for the first year. But Lena knew she would keep herself busy. That there would be near endless tasks to occupy her mind and distract her heart and that whenever there was a lull or a break, the Superfriends led by Alex would be there to soothe whatever pain may surface.

Hopefully, by the second year Kara would be able to think of her and it be a joyful experience rather than one of pain. She knew Kara would still think of her often even one year removed from their separation (loss). Knew she had been significant enough to Kara to leave a wake behind.

By the third year, Kara would be ready - Lena didn’t doubt - to open her heart to another, to find someone else to fill the spaces Lena fleetingly occupied. There would be plenty ready and waiting, many probably far more deserving than Lena.

Kara would find someone else to share that sunset with.

Years four to six, Lena hoped Kara would be rediscovering her passions, that her new home would be stable enough that Kara could get back to the things that made her happy. Lena hoped Kara was still writing, still turning her hand to paper and creating wonderful prose.

Years six onwards… Lena imagined Kara with a family of her own. The image would shift and change but there were always two children underfoot that Kara adored and both of which had inherited Kara’s blue eyes and pure heart. The other person in the picture was blank-faced, their features undetermined. Male or female, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was they put the brightest smile on Kara’s face possible.

“Just be happy.” Lena would whisper her plea out to the universe last thing at night and first thing in the morning. Because, if she said it enough, willed it enough then there was a chance she could make it true. Make the picture in her head of Kara real just by wishing it hard enough.

***

It was the start of her ninth year - Lena kept track by way of scratching into the walls a tally since it pleased her to think she was leaving some indelible mark on this place even if no one else would ever see it - and the knock was starting to become just that little bit more enticing. Lena had started to find herself walking up to the large blast doors and just… staring at them for hours on end.

It was only Milo that was keeping her going by this stage, blasting out, “Don’t you forget about me”, and “Oh, won’t you stay with me? ‘Cause you’re all I need”, whenever Lena’s fingers so much as twitched towards the manual override button.

Lena didn’t think too deeply about how her only reason for carrying on was the potential guilt that came with breaking the heart of a robot dog.

“Spread it like peanut butter jelly...”

“Whilst I appreciate that you found the perfect song for my current actions”, Lena chuckled, casting an amused glance over her shoulder at her companion, whilst she spread the peanut butter over the plastic-like bread that had been made to last decades, “I don’t think you realise what that song is really about…”

Milo’s head tilted to the side at the words - Lena had designed him so that when he was processing new information or analysing anything he would tilt his head to the side like a real dog.

“Oops!... I did it again…” Milo proclaimed, dropping to the ground with an embarrassed shake of his metal head.

“You’re still my best boy, don’t worry.” Lena reassured, finishing off preparing her lunch and making her way to the little living space she had made herself, a rather ratty red sofa and television screen had been added to the small room behind her lab that she had made her own. She had just sat down and was about to take a bite of her sandwich when-

Bzzzztttt…

That was new.

The buzzing sound was so loud and clear that it felt like the entire bunker was vibrating with it. Lena was on her feet in an instant, Milo by her side, as she grabbed her tablet and went towards the source of the sound. As soon as the sound had begun, though, it decreased in volume to a mere hum. Outside Lena’s lab, in the long corridor covered in tally marks was a bright purple circle with blue streaks of light hovering below the ceiling. Beneath the light in a crumpled mass was a figure dressed in dark blue and crimson red with a silver cable connected to their centre which disappeared back up into the portal.

“Okay, I got the angle slightly wrong… Yep, face planted…”, The intruder groaned as they pushed themselves up to reveal a mess of hair. “I know, I can fly but I wasn’t thinking about flying and didn’t react in time… and-” The figure struggled to their knees and shifted round, finally catching sight of Lena who was simply standing there, mouth agape, leaning on Milo to keep her upright.

Kara.

It was in that moment that Lena saw a shade of blue she had been deprived of for over nine years. Kara’s eye colour, though, was possibly the only thing about her that hadn’t changed.

Familiar golden curls had been cut away to be replaced by slightly darker blonde with the odd streaks of silver that only just grazed a jawline Lena’s fingers had traced countless times. Also gone was Kara’s defined and overly muscular body, she looked thinner… almost gaunt. Her cheeks hollower than they had ever been before. The crinkles around her eyes were nowhere near as deep as Lena had imagined them to be whenever she thought of Kara with her family. There were instead, however, lines around her mouth that implied she frowned more than smiled and that… that cracked whatever fragile grasp of reality Lena had left completely apart.

Because of this - Lena no longer trusting her eyes, unable to accept an existence where Kara hadn’t been happy, as Lena had begged the universe to make happen everyday - she didn’t truly see the expression on Kara’s face.

She didn’t see the sheer joy, the tears of elation, the broken smile that couldn’t smile as wide as it wanted due to being so out of practice.

“You’re here… You’re really here…” Kara breathed out, her blue eyes drinking in the sight of Lena shifting shyly from foot to foot as she stroked the smooth metal surface of Milo for comfort.

“Kara.” Lena murmured, testing the word out in her mouth, trying to see if she still knew how to say it after all these years.

“Lena, you’re here…” Kara whispered totally awestruck, getting to her feet and taking slow, careful steps towards Lena, her fingers reaching out for the raven-haired woman.

“I don’t under-... this isn’t real… you’re not real… you can’t be real…” Lena stammered, shuffling backwards away from the ghost in front of her, unaware of the gasp of pain that it caused. “Did I answer the knock? Is this a dream? Milo analyse the surroundings and conditions.” Lena ordered, dropping her gaze to her tablet as she tapped frantically against the screen, mumbling her every thought out loud as she had become prone to do over the years. “Hallucination, most likely… potential causes… sleep deprivation? Unlikely, I have a set sleep schedule. Radioactivity has finally penetrated the bunker and has caused a multitude of health problems. Possible, though I take regular readings of-”

“Lena! Please, stop…” Kara cried, collapsing to her knees in front of Lena, tears streaming down her face. “I’m here, okay? I’m really here!”

“No! No!” Lena shouted in return, “This isn’t real! Because… because…” Lena’s breaths came out sharp and panicky as she was overwhelmed by a tempest of emotions she had worked so, so, so hard to deaden herself to over the last nine years. “You’re meant to be married! You’re meant to be happy! You’re not meant to be here…”

Fingers curled delicately around Lena’s biceps; she wasn’t even aware that she had fallen to her knees as well, that she had brought her hands up to cover her face.

The touch and its sheer gentleness almost made Lena jerk away but the barely there scent of vanilla instinctively made her lean forward instead, her head moving to rest as it always used to do on Kara’s reliable shoulder.

“Lena, how could I be happy without you?” Kara whispered, her fingers moving ever so carefully from Lena’s biceps, round to her back… so tenderly wrapping Lena up in her arms. “Let me take you home, please, please Lena… let me take you away from here, please…” Kara begged, pressing featherlight lips against Lena’s forehead. “Let’s go see that sunset, yeah?”

Lena pulled away so that her hands could move to cup Kara’s beautiful, anguished face, thumbs wiping away the endless tears, “You still want to? Even after all this time?”

“It’s all I’ve thought about.” Kara confessed, a breathtaking smile overtaking her face… and that… that one smile made it all worth it… made nine years in darkness… nine years alone all worth it.

Lena loved how that smile stretched under her palms and she wondered how it would feel under her lips; the thought barely even crossed her mind before she started to lean forward to find out, Kara inhaling sharply as she realised what Lena intended, when-

“Sha-la-la-la-la-la, music play, do what the music say, you wanna kiss the girl.” Milo sang out for them, his metal tail thumping happily against the concrete floor, his green LED lights looking between his best friend and this blonde newcomer excitedly.

“Thanks, Milo.” Lena chuckled wetly, glancing over at her robo-dog before looking back to find Kara’s blue eyes sparkling with joy at her. “I have a robot dog, now.” Lena explained needlessly, cheeks turning an embarrassed pink.

“I can see that.” Kara replied with a laugh, her hand reaching out to brush through Lena’s dark hair, as she asked her voice brimming with hope, “Are you ready to go?”

“Yeah, yeah, I am…” Lena admitted with a fervent nod of her head before pressing a delicate kiss to Kara’s cheek. “I want to see that sunset.”

#supercorp #lena luthor #end of the world AU #happy ending (I promise)#I cried writing this but adored it (what does that say about me?)#Would people be interested in Kara's POV?#Or another part following their time post-saving?

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zmediaoutlet · 3 years

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fic: there will be better days

I’m so glad about the ending of Supernatural. It found its way, in the end. This fic is me drawing out that sensation as long as I could. I hope y’all like it, but it was written in a small way for a special group in a special discord, because I’m so glad we got to experience this dumb happy thing together. <3

title: there will be better days pairing: Sam/Dean rating: E length: 9500 words tags: Post-Season/Series 15, Spoilers for Episode: s15e20 Carry On, Heaven, First Time, Pining Dean Winchester

summary: Sam and Dean settle into their heaven.

(read on AO3)

They stand on the bridge, in quiet, for…

How long? It doesn't matter. Dean keeps his hand on Sam's back and Sam's shoulder tucks against his side, Sam being kind enough to slump down against the railing so that the position works, at all. The view's beautiful. Some woods, a river. A place Dean doesn't recognize but that hums with steady life. What a miracle, that death can bring them something new.

He's splitting his attention, though. The trees, the flowing water, the late-summer feel where the bright gold of everything burnishes down toward fall, it's a sweet goad toward peace, but. Dean's eyes drag away, every few minutes, and it's just—Sam. His eyes steady on the rush of the receding water, and his hair tucked behind his ear, and his back, steadily rising and falling under Dean's hand. Not pulling away. Not fidgeting, or impatient. Like he'd be content with this, exactly this, as long as eternity stretches out in front of them.

A bird flits by, blue-and-white against the green of the trees. Sam's eyes follow it and he smiles, just barely, a pull of lips that makes Dean's heart thump sorely against the inside of his ribs. His body keeps thrilling, reminding him, over and over: Sam. Sam. He slides his hand up to Sam's shoulder and squeezes, and Sam's eyes slide to his face. "Ready?" he says.

Sam doesn't ask for what. "Yeah," he says, soft and easy, and Dean drops his head, laughs. Something that had been knotted in his chest, for years and years, loose now—everything in him, free.

He steps back, and Sam turns to keep him in sight. Dean spins the keys to the car in his palm, grinning. "You want to drive?" he says, tipping his head at the car.

Sam blinks. Shakes his head, and swallows, and when he speaks his voice is thick. "No," he says, and clears his throat, and shakes his head again. "No, I want you to drive."

On the road Dean gives Sam a version of the same explanation that Bobby gave him. "We can go see him," Dean says, glancing across the seat, and Sam smiles and says, "We will," but he says, "Later," and Dean's—yeah, he's good with that. Later. They have forever, to do anything they want.

It's hard to wrap his head around. He doesn't know how long he waited, for Sam. A lifetime. The length of a drive. It felt—feels—like infinity, like every second is stretched and slow and exactly as long as it needs to be. The roads out here are gorgeous, empty, room for the Impala to stretch her legs, and Dean knows in a strange and centered way that if he wanted he could drive forever, and at the same time if he parks it'll have been ten minutes, as far as his mind's concerned, and he won't have missed a thing.

The radio's playing Zeppelin, quietly. Has been since Sam got into the car. Tangerine, right now—does she still remember times like these?—and Dean looks over to find Sam looking right at him. Dean's not sure Sam's turned his head, the whole time. He could make a crack—it rises to his lips, take a picture or what, got something on my face?—but it feels distant. He gets the impulse. Sam smiles, his back against the passenger door, and Dean smiles back sort of helplessly before he turns it back out on the road, and leans back in his seat, and settles into the drive.

Anything they want. Anything they could need, or dream of. There doesn't seem to be any real requirement to sleep, or to eat, or to do—anything. Time, slipping strange, and a stasis of a kind if they want it. That isn't what Dean wants, but he's not totally sure, about Sam.

The world changes around curves. Massive trees obscure the turns and it feels like a new road with every switchback. A short way past and there's—a house. Not a house Dean's seen, but he rolls slower, and Sam finally looks out the window at something that's not Dean, so—a house. Okay, Dean thinks. He can deal with a house.

Two stories, and a basement, and an attic full of dust. Dean goes into a sneezing fit when he opens up the hatch and Sam sniggers at him. It's not perfect, by any means. There's a sagging porch, and the sink in the first floor bathroom doesn't work, and there's some seriously fugly wallpaper that's peeling, and a stained carpet in the rear bedroom that, yikes, did something die on it? Would that even be possible? But Sam says, "This'll work," with content in his voice, and Dean looks around and tongues the inside of his cheek and thinks, well, yeah. This'll work fine.

There's food in the fridge, when Dean opens it. "I'll fix something," Sam says, and Dean looks at him in total surprise. A lifted shoulder, like Sam's been able to make anything other than eggs and bacon and bad, bad pasta his whole life. "What? I learned."

He did. They have chicken, roasted broccoli that Dean admit doesn't taste entirely like farts, these crispy potatoes that are—well, goddamn. There's not a dining table and so they sit out on the porch, a six pack of cold beer between them, watching the night settle in. It's cool but not cold. The lamp on the porch flickers, and Dean smiles, because he's damn sure that's not a ghost and instead that he's gonna have to rip out the wiring and start fresh.

Sam leaves his empty plate on the step behind them. He leans his elbows on his knees, and looks out at the darkening sky. The treetops are shadows against deep purple and Dean wants, very badly, to put his hand in Sam's hair, to feel his neck, his back. To settle himself against the fact of Sam's spine, his ribs and lungs, all of him here. Breathing, and here. "You learned to cook, huh," he says, instead of doing anything else, and gets to watch Sam turn his head, just a little. He's still wearing the same clothes he showed up in. Strange things, that tug a little at something Dean feels like he used to know. Sam turns his head but he doesn't look at Dean; Dean just gets his three-quarter profile, and the shape of his mouth turned a little solemn, and his eyes as they flick over the view of the dark, surrounding trees.

"Yeah, I did," Sam says, after too long. "I…"

That's all, for a few minutes. Dean puts his plate down, too (mostly clean, other than some broccoli he's not gonna be forced to eat), and shifts down one more step so they're sat right next to each other, and presses his knee against Sam's. Sam looks at their knees instead of at him.

"I wanna hear everything," Dean says. He reaches and gets Sam's hand, and squeezes it, and Sam's eyes close. Shit he wouldn't have done before, but hell—he's dead, he gets to. "Everything. Okay? Every—dumbass repair you screwed up on the car, and if you took Chinese lessons at a community college, and who won the World Series, okay, because I remember, we had a bet, and I need to know if I owe you or you owe me."

Sam swallows. "Jesus," he says, under his breath, and then laughs, a little. "Jesus, we did have a bet. That was—uh, that year it was the Dodgers." He swallows again, and when he opens his eyes they're wet, and a tear rolls down very slowly, against the crease of his nose, and his mouth hitches up at the side in a piled-up dimpling fold, and his chin creases, and Dean squeezes his hand very tightly. "Dodgers. But I can't remember which way you bet."

God, Sam. Dean knocks their shoulders together and lies: "Damn, I bet they were gonna lose. How's that figure, huh? I go down and my team does all in the same year? Shitty luck." Sam shudders out another laugh, wet, and nods, looking down at their clasped hands. "Guess I owe you, Sammy. Whatever you want, okay? Figure, we got time up here. I can figure it out."

Sam's chin is still shaking. A tear falls onto the back of Dean's hand, shockingly hot. Sam takes a deep breath. "I'll think of something," he says, when he can get his teeth out of his lip. Their knees grind together, close enough that Dean might get a bruise, if there's still such a thing as bruising. Sam sniffs, hard. He always was a sloppy crier. He looks at Dean a little sidelong, and smiles kind of embarrassed. Like Dean isn't an inch from losing it himself. "I kinda—I watched a lot of soccer."

Dean rolls his eyes, theatrical, and releases Sam's hand. "Of course you did," he says, layering on the disgust, and it's enough that Sam snorts and dashes his hand over his face, and when Dean gathers up their plates Sam's enough together that he can repeat his old dumb argument that there's a lot of strategy to find interesting in soccer, and anyway over the years the U.S. got better so it wasn't even really like rooting for foreign teams. Dean brushes it off, like he always did, and the argument's dumb but it feels—right. Something locking in, something solid. He washes the plates by hand in the sink and Sam dries them, and stacks them in the rickety cupboard Dean's definitely going to build a replacement for, and then he braces his hands on the countertop and closes his eyes again and breathes, slow. Calm, now, but still something built up inside that Dean doesn't know.

It doesn't bug him, like it might have, before. Dean chews his lip, and drains the sink, and tosses the dishrag over the faucet to dry, and says, neutral, "Hey." Sam makes a small noise, so he's not in some other universe. "Just—one thing. How long?" Sam turns his head, looks at Dean, and Dean lifts a shoulder. "It's—with how the time works, up here, I got no idea. How long was it, for you?"

He looks the same, is the thing. The same as he did when Dean was standing there, in the dark, with that strange numbness everywhere south of his spine and a stillness creeping up in his heart. The terror of that moment has already faded but the rest of the feeling is right there—looking at Sam and loving every single part of him. Pinning him into memory, exactly as he was, with his goddamn stupid haircut and his wide mouth. A few greys, at his temples. His body, lean-but-muscled, trim from running. His eyes, beautiful, even as panicked as they were, even as he told Dean that it was okay.

It wasn't. Dean knows that, now. Sam's cheek sucks in, on one side. "I was 68," he says. Dean feels the air go out of himself, a little. That's—jesus. Sam doesn't look sad about it. Not exactly. He slides his hands into his jacket pockets, tipping his head. "I was—I was in bed. It wasn't bad."

Dean bites the corner of his mouth. "Guess that makes you the older brother, then, huh?"

Sam smiles, just a little. "No," he says, and doesn't elaborate more than that.

There are two bedrooms, upstairs. That first night they sleep in the living room, watching old movies on an old TV, Dean in a recliner that's ridiculously comfortable when he kicks the footrest out and Sam on the couch. He wakes up at dawn to Sam still sleeping, his arms folded around a pillow like he always used to do, still in that old jacket, that hooded sweater bunched up and twisted around his waist. Dean recognizes it, now. He dreamed it. His heart feels like it can hardly take knowing, but there it is, anyway. His face is soft, sleeping, and Dean gets up with his back aching just a little—turns out that there are still aches—and he crouches down, and he settles his hand on Sam's jaw, and runs his thumb over the sharp-angled turn of his cheekbone. Sam opens his eyes, slow but not like he was even really asleep, and he looks at Dean looking at him, and Dean just—it's enough. If it was just this, for eternity and past it, that would be—that'd be good.

There's a library, in the house. A small office kind of room, off the kitchen, but Sam says the books change, when he goes in and out, so it stays fresh. The fridge always seems to have something in it. There's always gas, in the car, although sometimes little things need fixing, and in the garage there are things that Dean can use to fix it, so he gets to spend afternoons contented under the big black bulk, while Sam hands him things from the toolbox, and is distracted half the time from reading so that he hands Dean the 3/8s wrench instead of the 5/8s wrench, but that gives Dean an opportunity rag on him so it works out, either way.

"Mom and Dad are here," Dean says, one day. He's doing the wiring, on the porch. As good a place to start as any. Sam's helping, kind of—actual electric work apparently wasn't one of the things he learned, over the years. "They've got a house, Bobby said."

"That's great," Sam says, and when Dean looks down he looks like he means it, soft smile and all, but Sam doesn't suggest they visit, and Dean thinks—well, later's still always on the table. They haven't gone anywhere, really, except for drives sometimes through the mountain roads, and Sam's gone for his runs in the early dawn before Dean wakes up, and Dean's found on a path through the trees a good creek, where he's fished with Sam mostly ignoring him, reading again in a lawnchair with his bare feet kicked out into the soft grass, but still paying just enough attention to smirk behind his book when Dean doesn't catch anything.

They don't really stay apart for more than the time it takes to leave a room and come back. Even with those runs, Dean only knows they happened because as he's waking up Sam comes back with sweat in his hair, and Dean gets to make fun of him for stinking up the place before Sam rolls his eyes and clatters into the bathroom to turn on the creaking ancient shower, and he leaves the door open when he does so Dean can hear the water running, and the splashing, and how Sam's apparently started to hum. He doesn't sing, but Dean recognizes the tunes anyway. When Sam comes out Dean has breakfast ready—they take turns on dinner, but for some reason Sam doesn't like to make breakfast, anymore—and they eat, and then there's some project to do or a movie to watch or a book to finish, and—Sam's right there, solidly content. Like he's making up for lost time, and taking his sweet time in doing so.

Whisky, one night. In the cupboard. It's good—some Scottish blend Crowley had left in the bunker, once, sharp and sweet and rolling smoke down the throat—and they're out on the porch again, on the new bench this time, watching the sunset come down. Sam's mostly holding his glass, rather than drinking, but he looks okay. Head leaned back against the wall, and his shoulders relaxed, broad and strong. He doesn't seem to mind that Dean watches him as much as he does the sky, but he's looking thoughtful, and finally Dean says, "Tell me." Sam rolls his head against the wall, and meets Dean's eyes. "It's been on your mind, all day. Spit it out, man."

The corner of Sam's mouth lifts. "You would've made a good therapist, you know that?" he says. Dean raises his eyebrows. "I've been… I had a son."

Dean's jaw drops. "That's—" he starts, and his brain doesn't supply anything else. Shock—bewilderment—joy, and it's the joy that wins out, and he punches Sam in the shoulder and says, "Frickin' mazel tov, dude! That's—what was his name?"

"Ow," Sam says, half-laughing, clutching his arm. "What do you think? I named him after you."

"Great choice, pick the handsome brother," Dean says, nearly automatic, and Sam rolls his eyes like he's supposed to, but Dean's still spinning through it, taking it in. Sam—with a little boy—and Dean wants to know everything, everything, but Sam's gone from content to content-but-pensive, and Dean makes fun of him for going emo a lot, but this is… "He a good kid? Doing the name proud?"

"Yeah, he is," Sam says. He huffs, after a second, like he's remembering something—some memory that Dean doesn't share. There's been a lot of that, really, although Dean's not sure Sam notices when it happens. "You'd hate his taste in music, though. And he drives an electric car."

"Heathen," Dean says, and Sam raises his hands in surrender, and then leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. Dean looks at his back, broad in the grey t-shirt. He sips at his scotch. "We could—probably see him. I'd like to meet him. And you must…" Miss him, is what he wants to say, except that his heart seems to catch up to what it means, what Sam's saying. That he had a boy, a kid, and he was old enough to drive and have shitty taste in music, and it was a whole life—that the kid had a mother, and Sam had a world separate to this one, and of course Dean knew that and Dean always wanted that for him, and that was true, that wasn't ever a lie no matter what else Dean felt, deep inside where he never, ever intended for it to matter, but. Dean misses Jack, sometimes, in a soft sore way—misses Ben, even, when that pain's far-distant and not even truly his to feel—but what Sam's going through, that's different, and Dean doesn't know how to touch it.

Sam shakes his head, though. "I do," he says, answering what Dean couldn't say out loud. "But I—no, I don't want to see him. Not yet. He's living, and I think—I hope he's doing the best he can. I was kind of an old dad. Old-fashioned maybe, too, but I taught him right, I think, and he'll be okay. I want to just—let him live. In my head. You know? And later, when he's finally—god, he'd better be really old—then. I'd want to see him then."

Dean gets it, and doesn't. He's not sure he could've waited another minute for Sam, if he'd been forced to. He picks up Sam's glass, abandoned on the bench between them, and holds it forward. Sam takes it, and accepts Dean's clink when it's offered. "To Dean," he says, and Sam huffs and gives him a slanted look back over his shoulder, but he nods, and repeats it, and they finish the bottle between them that night.

Funny, that they ended up in the mountains. Kansas was all flat prairie and farmland and endless horizons, and Dad used to joke sometimes when they'd drive across the country's flat middle that you could roll a marble all the way from Abilene to Lincoln and the only way it'd stop is if someone picked it up. Up here it feels—different. With the hills, and the trees. Like they could be hemmed in, if they were feeling bad about it, but instead it just feels like shelter. A place of their own. A place to make their own.

Sam left the bunker, he says, one day. A fishing day, when Dean's got his cooler full of cheap beer and Sam's working on yet another friggin' book, though this time he's at least enjoying the cool air, watching the birds and the river more than he's got his nose in some old dude's ancient wisdom. "Couldn't stay," he says, and Dean—yeah. That makes sense.

Little revelations, now and then. Sam doesn't seem to be in a hurry to tell them, but he doesn't seem to feel bad about them, either. Like they're sorrows mostly dealt with, or details that don't matter in the grand scheme. Dean never had a place, when Sam was gone from him, but even the car—he couldn't drive it, when Sam wasn't there in the passenger seat beside him. He gets how the bunker could've been less a shelter than a prison, when the halls were empty, and the silence got too thick. "I left it to him," Sam says, after a little while. He tucks his bookmark into his spot, tucks the book under his arms. Dean's just holding onto the fishing pole at this point, barely paying attention to the line, but Sam's watching it for the both of them. "I didn't—take him there, ever, but I told him about hunting, about the job, and I left a letter. Explaining it all, with the key and everything. It's there if he wants it."

"Good," Dean says. Sam glances at him. "Someone should use it. He's a legacy, too."

"Yeah, he is," Sam says, and it's quiet for some reason, and then he nods down at the creek. "You're getting a bite, dude—" and oh damn it, see, this is why Sam's a distraction on fishing trips, and Dean fumbles the rod and cusses at his brother and Sam just laughs, and the afternoon's easy, and Dean finally does get a damn fish and brings it home and considers leaving the guts under Sam's pillow, but instead he fries it up with dill and cornmeal and Sam makes nearly orgasmic noises, eating out on the porch because Dean still hasn't built them a table, and Dean says, "Jeez, dude, get a room," and his ears are pink but—he's happy. Sam's happy. That's been the only goal, this whole damn time. A falling-down house in the mountains, with the two of them totally alone, turns out to be as good a place to be happy as any. Go figure, Dean thinks, watching Sam suck his fingers and then turn his eyes hopefully toward the kitchen for more.

A drive. There's a road that snakes up high, ending in an empty lookout point, and Sam convinces Dean to come further—a hike, up to the very top of the mountain, where the trees start to thin and there's a view like—

"Holy shit," Dean says, when he heaves himself up over that last friggin' boulder, and Sam says, "Right?"

A vastness. The forest is thick and the sky's this clear, depthless blue, and the valleys and hills spread out in front of them untouched. Like they're really the only people in all of heaven, nothing but them and the trees and the house. Sam stands with his hands on his hips, looking out, looking like a damn model for that weird orange hiking jacket he's wearing, and Dean sits down on a handy flat rock and feels the sun on his back, takes it in. "You know, I thought the memory thing would've been okay, honestly," Dean says. Sam glances back at him. Instantly knows what Dean means, from the way he's furrowing his massive forehead in disbelief. "I mean, maybe it would've gotten boring, I don't know. Stuck on our hamster wheels forever. But there was good stuff, in there, and we—I mean. We would've been together. Right?"

It had been brutally painful, at the time, but in later years Dean had thought about it. Approached it cautious, like something that would break if he touched it. Soulmates, he thinks, now, deliberate inside his own head, and Sam smiles, like somehow he heard it. "Yeah, I guess so," he says. He tips his head. "Could've watched that memory of you turfing it into the pasture on that wraith hunt about a hundred times, I think."

Dean raises his eyebrows, says, "Ha," while Sam grins at him, but then Sam looks back out at the view. "Would've been some choice ones of you, too, you know," he says, but then shakes his head, even if Sam's not looking anymore. "This is—better, though. Glad Jack did it like this."

"And Cas," Sam says, and, yeah. Cas.

Dean takes a deep breath. He hasn't gone there, in his head, really. Castiel, free of the death he'd cursed himself to, free of darkness. Dean drags his hand over his stubble, remembering. The dark, reaching out. He looks out at the clear, bright day. "He was in love with me," he says.

Sam turns his head, but Dean's focused on the trees—past them—through to that day. All the time after, Dean never said anything about it, out loud or even in his head. They hadn't had a body to burn, and Sam hadn't asked questions, careful and kind in that way Sam had learned to be once he was older, and it had been an old bruise, unhealed, that Dean didn't like to press on because what was the point? It doesn't hurt now, but it's…

"He told you?" Sam says, and Dean nods. A pause, again, and Sam comes and sits down on the rock, too. His hands are clasped between his knees and Dean looks at them instead of the trees. Broad and tan, and big, and calm like everything in Sam is calm, now. "And you didn't know?"

Dean looks up, sharply. "Did you?"

Sam's mouth tilts. "I wondered," he says, and Dean huffs, leans back on his hands, looks up at the clear sky. A breeze, just chilly enough that he's glad of his jacket. Sam shifts, beside him. "Did you want to see him?"

It's asked—a little careful. Like Sam doesn't want to influence him either way. Dean imagines it—praying, and saying—what? He doesn't answer, and Sam doesn't press him, and they sit there for a while, in quiet, with the breeze bringing the smell of the trees.

"I didn't marry her," Sam says, after a while. Dean lifts his head—another revelation. Sam's slowly rubbing his thumbs back and forth, a dry chafing, looking out at something Dean can't see. "She was a really good person. Good mother. I wore a ring so people wouldn't ask questions, but I—I think she would've said yes, if I'd asked, but I didn't ask. She moved across town, when Dean was ten. We got along fine—hooked up a few times, even, after we split, but it just…"

"Never came together?" Dean offers, when the pause has gone too long, and Sam lifts a shoulder, his mouth curling wry as he looks at Dean. "I know the feeling."

Maybe it was some cruelty of Chuck's. To make it impossible for anything else to feel true. Dean tips his leg out so it touches Sam's, and Sam huffs, and touches Dean's knee, and the heat of him sinks right through the denim before he pushes to his feet, and offers a hand to help Dean up, too. They walk back down the trail, back to where Dean parked the car, and they drive down the winding roads with sunset spilling through the valleys behind them, and when Dean parks in front of the house the porch light's on like they left it, and Sam's getting out and saying something about maybe burgers, for dinner, and he'll make potato salad if Dean'll take care of the cooking, and Dean has to pause, with his heart suddenly thick and full in his chest, and thinks—well, if it was intended to be a punishment, then shit if Chuck didn't get it wrong.

They have burgers, and potato salad. Sam doesn't put in enough mayo and Dean tells him so. They watch The Right Stuff, and Sam listens mostly patiently to Dean filling in all the extra details about the astronauts before he tells Dean that he's a nerd, and Dean says, "Oh, if anyone's the nerd—" and they bicker, and wash the dishes, and Sam's beautiful, is the thing. Beautiful. Whole and healthy and content, in the lamplight in the house they're building. Beautiful his whole life, from when he was a little kid and Dean was wiping his snot-nose with the edge of his t-shirt to when he was a bitchy asshole of a teenager to when he was a high-handed and distant adult to when he was just—Dean's brother, paying him half-attention in the mornings, getting all his jokes, being bossy and being kind and being himself, and himself is all Dean ever wanted him to be.

Sam picks up one of the endless books that he's left on the kitchen counter. "You going to keep watching old nerd movies?" he says, a dimple tucked into his cheek.

Dean's chest feels somehow tight and full of molten gold, all at once. "Sammy," he says, and Sam hears the change in his voice, and blinks at him. Dean knows what Cas had meant, those years ago. How it could feel so entirely perfect, just to hold it like this, under your heart. To acknowledge it and know it for true. "You're it, for me. You know that, right?"

A slight tightening, around his eyes. He searches Dean's face but Dean—he doesn't know what expression he's wearing. It hardly matters.

"Our whole lives. I never—there wasn't ever really an option, for something else, but I don't think I ever even really wanted something else. Ever since I was little. It was you and me in my head, no matter how I thought about the future. I wanted you to have more but I never pictured anything else for me, not really. Even when I got the chance. Never came together, you know? But I don't think I wanted it to. All I wanted was you." Sam's lips have parted. Confusion there, but concern too, and Dean smiles at him. "I guess this sounds—this isn't like a goodbye or anything, or a… I don't know. I just… wanted you to know. In case you hadn't guessed."

Sam lays his hand on the counter, like he's looking for something steady. "Dean," he says, and then doesn't seem to know how to follow it up.

Dean shakes his head. "Didn't mean to drop a bomb on you," he says, and it's that loose knot again, an untangled free thing. Easy, when this had never, ever been easy. When he'd died for it, and lived through way worse than dying. Here, looking at Sam's expression—shock but also not quite shock—his other hand still clutched around his book—it feels like nothing but right. He smiles, looking at Sam's eyes. "After the life we had, man, this is the cherry on top. I don't need anything more than this."

He goes to bed. Sam's still standing there, in the kitchen, when he does.

Time moves more because they expect it to than because of any rules. Sam's been studying it, sort of, out of curiosity more than anything else, and he says he thinks that if they wanted it to be it could be about two pm in a warm July forever. Dean's noticed, even if he doesn't much care. How long have they been here, and still it's those last days of summer creeping into autumn, where it's cool in the shade and the sun's warm, and it doesn't snow, and if it rains it's just for long enough to make the house feel cozy and right, and then when the sun comes out again the world's washed-new, and he doesn't have to dig his car out of the mud.

It's raining the next morning, and Dean lays in bed with the covers pulled up around his shoulders and enjoys it, knowing there's nowhere to go. His room is his room only because it's the bed he picked, with the north-facing window and the view of the car, if he wants to glance down and see it; they leave their doors open, almost all the time, and they hardly have possessions that need keeping anywhere. He lifts up on an elbow after a while, and looks over the foot of the bed down the hall, and on the opposite end by the stairs Sam's door is open and he's a solid lump, in his bed, still snoozing through the rain, and Dean's heart folds up in his chest, looking. It tends to do that.

He goes through some morning things. Making the coffee, and sipping at a cup while he eats a slice of toast. He goes into the library and picks something off the shelf, and carries it back upstairs, and then it's the solitary, strange contentment of a morning crap (the door closes for that at least, and he'd wondered why that was something that stuck around in heaven until he experienced the weird peace of an unhurried morning), and then a coffee refill, and then it's still raining and he thinks—yeah, back to bed, crawling in with his coffee and his book, his back to the headboard, the house warm, the sifting rain outside nothing but soothing.

"Hey," he hears, and looks up.

Sam—oh. In his flannel pants and one of those v-neck sleeping shirts, black this time, his hair rumpled, leaning in his doorway. He closes his book and lets it fall down by his leg. Sam's eyes follow it, with a small frown.

"You really went for the beauty sleep, huh?" Dean says, as though the clock means anything. Even in heaven, he feels weird when Sam catches him reading. In that time in the bunker—after Jack disappeared—he'd started again, like he used to when he was in his twenties. Dumb stuff, nothing like what Sam would pick, but he liked the stories. Sam's never made fun of him for it, but he still—well, still.

Sam's still looking at the book but the silence has stretched, with the patter of the rain filling the space between. "I stayed awake for a long time, last night," he says, finally. "Thinking about stuff. What you said. Other things, too."

He seems okay. Not bitter, or angry, or even particularly stressed about it. Still, "Sorry," Dean says.

Sam shakes his head, and looks up at Dean's face. "Don't be sorry." He pushes a hand through his hair, sort-of smiles. "Figures, you wouldn't say anything until you knew I was a sure thing."

Dean snorts. He moves the book over to his bedside table, leaves it with his empty coffee mug. He pulls his knees up under the blanket, making room, and Sam comes and sits at the foot of the bed, one knee pulled up onto the mattress, looking at Dean steady and—and okay. They're okay.

"I had a dream last night," Sam says, finally. Dean nods—the dreams come pretty steadily, up here. Never nightmares, just invention, and memory recontextualized. "It was about… when Azazel had Dad. You remember that? Forever ago. All I wanted was to kill him. All you wanted was for us to be together. Remember?"

Of course, Dean remembers. The way he'd dragged Sam away from another fire. Sam looking at him with almost-pity, when he'd finally admitted what he wanted.

There's not a trace of pity in him, now. He pulls his knee up against his chest, comfortable. "You know, I thought about it," Sam says. "After you were gone. How everything felt—incomplete. Half-a-loaf. Even…" He shakes his head, and Dean wonders what goes there. He'll find out someday. "We were always breaking the world for each other. Normal siblings don't really do that. I don't know if you realized."

"I bet Mary-Kate and Ashley would give it a shot," Dean says, and Sam smiles at him, but rolls his eyes, too. "Sam—"

"I wondered," Sam interrupts. He lifts his eyebrows, a little, and Dean hears it as the echo it's meant to be. Despite everything he can feel his cheeks going pink. "If it wasn't just that we couldn't find something that was better, but that we never would. If you'd…"

He trails off. Dean picks at the blue yarn-ties on his blanket, watching Sam's face. Turned now, toward the rain outside, lit beautiful with morning. "I wouldn't have said anything," he says. Sure, somehow. "Even if we'd had—hell. Another decade, just you and me. When I said this was enough, I meant it."

"I know you did," Sam says. "And I know you wouldn't have. Because you wouldn't have wanted to ruin anything for me, right? If I had some outside shot—some kind of normal I might've dug up?" Dean nods. Sam nods, too, and then reaches out and flicks his knee through the blanket, hard it enough that it nearly stings. Dean claps his hand over the spot and smacks Sam's hand away, but Sam's already retreating, hands up, smiling. "Truce, truce. Just saying. I wouldn't have tried for anything, if you'd been there. It would've just been me and you and the dog."

The dog. "Did he—" Dean says, distracted, and Sam says, "Old and kinda fat, and happy as he could be."

Sam's just looking at him, along the length of the bed. "Sammy," Dean says, and chews his cheek for a minute. Sam's patient. "I know it wasn't easy, that I was gone. But I'm still glad you got that shot. Glad I didn't ruin it."

"You didn't—" Sam starts, and then closes his mouth. He smiles at Dean with his lips closed, and then breathes out slow through his nose. "I'm glad you're glad," he says, instead, and maybe that's all the compromise they'll ever get, on the subject. Dean's not sure Sam gets it, smart as he is. That Dean would've always wondered. That there would've been some horizon, distant and gold, that Sam might've always looked to, and imagined something different.

The rain's slacking, outside. Sam looks out the window again, at how the sun's drawing out, the light changing. "Do you want to try to figure out the cabinets today?" he says.

God, Dean loves him. "You can work the band saw," Dean promises, and Sam rolls his eyes again, and stands up, and says, "Let me shower first, before all the excitement," and Dean watches him step into the hall and then into the bathroom and hears the shower come on, through the open door, and he thinks it'll be a good day. Inevitable argument over what color to stain the cabinet doors notwithstanding.

It sits between them. Dean didn't feel tense about it but saying it aloud nevertheless makes him feel almost weightless. He knows that Sam's thinking about the conversation—going over past conversations, and things they've done, and choices they've made, over and over, because Sam's an egghead who had to puzzle things out forever before he can come to some kind of peace with them—but that's okay. They're still together and nothing's ruined, and the house comes along. They work on the kitchen for a while, Sam pulling down the horrible wallpaper while Dean does the woodwork, and there's a week nearly where they build a fire outside every night and dinner's what they can rig up over the flames—hotdogs, and kebabs, and mac and cheese even that gets a weird smoky flavor to it, and honestly it's about the best version Dean's ever had.

When Sam starts talking he comes at it obliquely. They're watching a movie—Moonraker, just as dumb and wonderful as Dean remembered it—and right over the top of the scene where Jaws is whaling on the guards, Sam says, "I didn't sleep with anyone for almost fifteen years."

"Makes sense, your game is terrible," Dean says, and grins when Sam sighs. "What do you mean? After the breakup with—"

Sam still hasn't said her name. "It just didn't…" Sam shrugs. "It wasn't important somehow."

"Plus you would've thrown your back out," Dean says.

"Yeah," Sam says, dry. "Plus that." A pause, while they both watch the end of the fight. Roger Moore was a way better Bond than people gave him credit for, Dean's always thought. "How long for you?" Dean makes a sound. "Before… You used to brag about it, you know? But you didn't come home bragging for a long time."

"You trying to get me to say just looking at your goofy mug every morning was enough?" Dean tips his head on the couch to find Sam raising his eyebrows, actually surprised. "Hah. Well, it was."

"Seriously?" Sam says.

Dean shrugs, not sure why it's coming as a shock. He doesn't actually remember himself, even though it's closer in memory for him, when he last had that urge—to just go for a hookup, to let off nervous energy. On the screen, Bond's punching someone, and Holly Goodhead's in trouble. "No need to try to fix what ain't broke, as they say," Dean says, and he can tell Sam watches his face for a while before Sam turns his attention back to the movie.

Later: Dean's peeled back the scary carpet and it turns out there's good wood flooring underneath. Go figure. He's trying to decide whether he wants to cut it out in pieces or roll the whole thing up and see if he can get Sam to carry it. Sam brings him a cup of coffee, while he's standing in the doorway to the bedroom and frowning, and then says, "I never thought about being with a guy."

Dean slops the coffee, a little. Good thing he's tearing out the carpet either way. "Uh, okay."

The corner of Sam's mouth tugs up. "It just never occurred to me," he says. "Not really."

Dean takes a sip from his mug. Even in heaven Sam manages to screw it up, somehow—this time, way too strong like he used three times the amount of grounds needed—but it's Sam's coffee, and Dean's so damn gone for him that he's fond of the sludge, too.

Apparently he's been silent too long. Sam tips his head, leaning against the doorframe, opens his mouth and closes it again.

"Do you really want to know?" Dean says, after a minute. He'd answer, he thinks. If Sam asked. What would be the point of keeping it secret, after all, with what they both already know?

"I think you just told me," Sam says, quiet, but shakes his head, and then jerks his chin at the carpet. "If you think I'm carrying that whole thing downstairs you're insane."

"Worth a shot," Dean says, and they put it away, for another day.

Later: they're painting, in the hall between the kitchen and the living room, and it was a long bickering session to come up with the color but Dean thinks that Sam was really arguing just to argue and not because he cared, at all. It smells like paint, which in theory is unpleasant but which really Dean's always kind of enjoyed—because it means there's a project being done, and progress being made, and that always settles something, in his bones—and Sam's got a full on handprint of slate blue on his ass that Dean thinks somehow he still hasn't noticed, and which should cause some entertainment when he does—and Sam says, standing back and squinting at his edging work, "How did you know?" Dean grunts, not following for once. His brush needs to be cleaned. Sam reaches up and fixes a line, carefully swiping blue away from the ceiling, and says, "About us. When did you know?"

Dean pauses, fingers all tangled with the brush in the murky water. Sam's frowning up at the ceiling, patiently doing his part. That's a question he never really asked himself, and he doesn't know the answer. Too easy to say always, even if sometimes that feels like the truth. November 1983 is another answer, but of course that's wrong, too. From the first time Sam smiled at him. From the first time he guided Sam's hands around a gun and helped him pull the trigger, and they nailed that empty Coke can like it was a vamp, at thirty paces. From the day Sam left, at that shitty house in Utah, and Dean stood in the dark street with his heart bleeding out 'til it was empty. From the night Sam died, and Dean knelt in the dirt with him and understood how it felt to die, too, and yet still be forced to stand up and keep living, and to have his whole body reject it, everything in him knowing: no.

Sam crouches down by him, and nudges Dean out of the way, so he can clean his own brush. "I didn't get it, I don't think," Sam says, when Dean hasn't responded. He riffles his fingers through the bristles, blue blooming up so that Dean can't see his skin. "Not for… Man, I don't know. It might've been when I thought we were going to lose you to Amara. Maybe earlier." He draws his brush out of the water and squeezes the wet out, and Dean watches his hands, like he does so much of the time. Capable and square-palmed and long-fingered. Blue paint stuck under his fingernails. He rests his brush on the side of their paint tray and his hands lace loosely between his knees, where he's still right there, inches from Dean. "Wish it hadn't took me so long."

Dean looks at him. Sam's looking back, not really smiling but with his face soft. He stands up, after a few seconds, and from Dean's crouching vantage Sam looks impossibly tall. "C'mon," he says, easy. "Let's finish this up. I want to watch you fail at fishing at some point today."

Later—

There's no real time, and therefore it's no particular day. Days have passed and yet the days are still gold, and beautiful. Sam goes for a run, and comes back, and they have breakfast, and they shower, and it rains briefly midday and so Sam reads in the armchair while Dean watches a movie—Godfather II, and he tells Sam he's a barbarian for reading through it, but Sam calmly ignores him like he always does—and then the rain stops, and Dean thinks, maybe a drive, and so they go for a drive, with the late afternoon sun pouring down. They park, in front of the house, and Dean gets out, and he's thinking about dinner—Sam's turn to cook, but Dean wants steak and Sam's never actually gotten the hang of steak—and Sam says, "Hey," and so Dean turns, and there with the driver door still open on the car, Sam steps up close to him, and takes Dean's face in his hands.

Dean's heart thuds slow, in the base of his throat. Sam's been this close before but he hasn't had quite that look in his eye. He stands still, waiting, and Sam's mouth twitches into a quick smile, like he's had some funny thought that he'll share with Dean, later—and Sam leans down, and when their mouths press together it's...

Sam pulls back, after not long enough. "Is that okay?" he says.

Really asking. Dean's holding Sam's forearms, his lips warm. "You're supposed to be the smart one," he says, and his voice comes out raw. "You figure it out."

His eyes are closed. Sam laughs, softly, and Dean takes a breath, and then there's Sam's mouth, again, soft but insistent, just the right amount of pressure. Sam's very good at this. Who knew. Dean's hand slides to Sam's chest and he parts his lips, and Sam takes the invitation as it's given, licking just barely inside. They're both unshaven but the scratch of Sam's chin feels good. Sam's nose brushes his. Dean pulls back, and tilts so their foreheads are touching, and there's an infinite universe of time around them and he could just stay—here. Right here, with Sam's breath mingling with his, and Sam's hand on his face.

Once they've started, though, Sam doesn't seem to feel the need to stop. "Bed?" he says, quiet, and Dean nods, and then—Sam's room, with the sun coming in the window and the thick blue blanket soft under Dean's hand. Sam sits beside him and leans in and they kiss—again—for ages, Dean's arm around Sam's neck and no sound but their lips meeting and parting, and the breeze soughing against the house.

Sam's—happy. That's the only thing Dean can think, over and over, his heart thrilling for it. "Is it weird?" Dean says, at one point, and Sam touches his cheek with two fingers, and drags them soft along Dean's stubble to his jaw, to his chin, and shakes his head and then laughs and says, "Yeah, but who cares about weird," and Dean says, fervently, "Not me," and Sam laughs again and presses him down to the bed and kisses him, again, and again.

Clothes go away, slowly. Boots, and jackets, and Dean pushes Sam a little upright and unbuttons his shirt, careful, while Sam watches his face. "Do you know what you want?" Dean says, not pushing either way. When the shirt's open he spreads his hands on Sam's chest—god, even through the undershirt, it's—but Sam's shaking his head, and Dean tries to focus, even if focus seems a billion miles from here. "And you never…"

But no, because Sam told him. Sam lays his palm on Dean's stomach, warm. "What did you want?" Sam says. Gentle almost. "The first time you—when you thought about it. What did you picture?"

"Who says I pictured anything?" Dean says, and Sam just smiles at him, and, yeah, okay. So Sam knows him better than anyone. So what.

Naked, Sam is… It's not like Dean never saw it before, but he never let himself look, like he's looking now. Never with the sense of right, that he feels now. Sam's looking right back, which somehow comes a surprise. Dean lets Sam tug off his jeans, his boxers, and he's left on his back on the bed, and Sam stands there and his eyes go all over—from Dean's chest to his dick to his feet, for some reason—and Dean feels himself flushing, but it's more because—

"I didn't think it'd be like this," Sam says, and yeah. Yeah, that's it. Sam's flushed, too, a little red come into the hollows of his cheeks. His dick's half-hard, swinging heavy against his thigh, and Dean wants it. Wants Sam. It should be complicated but it isn't. He spreads his legs, and Sam kneels on the bed and then fits himself there, so Dean's thighs can slide against Sam's, and there's the warm glance of his belly, and his chest against Dean's, and how his nose brushes Dean's cheek and how his hair falls forward, and the dense familiar physicality of him. How he's Dean's brother and how he's—everything, everything else that ever mattered.

They rub together, kissing. Sam's fingers find his nipple and play with it, slow and insistent. Sam's hard, thick, pressing into the crease of Dean's thigh, and Dean nudges under Sam's jaw, kisses his throat, drags his thumb down between Sam's pecs. "Do you want to," he says, against Sam's skin, and Sam's hand cups over the back of his head and he doesn't have to say anything for Dean to know.

There's lube, in Sam's bedside table. Dean laughs, while Sam blinks surprise at it. This perfect house. He pulls Sam in close again, and he doesn't think it'll take much—hell, they might not even have to bother—but he wants it, like this is a first time they might have had, some perfect day that never existed on earth. He drizzles the lube over Sam's fingers and Sam knows what to do, reaching below, and Dean spreads his legs wide and sinks into the pillow, into how it feels. "Do you like it?" Sam says, curious and a little pleased, and Dean hooks his arm around Sam's neck and drags him down for a kiss so Sam won't ask such dumb friggin questions. The slow drag and stretch of Sam's knuckles inside—and he's not going far enough or deep enough, because he's done this to women maybe but never to a guy, but it feels good, anyway.

They don't move from that position. Dean reaches down and tugs at Sam's wrist, and gets a slick dragging hand on his hip, instead. Sam kisses his cheekbone, shifts his weight, and the press inside—ah—thick, and just that first bright sting that makes it count for something, but it doesn't hurt beyond that, and it's just the slow parting drag of Sam, inside him, until he's as far as he can go and stops with his hips pressed right up close. Dean holds him there, feeling. Sam's breath against his cheek, and his weight held tense on one elbow, and their chests rising and falling together. Dean's dick presses against Sam's belly but it doesn't feel important, right now—it's more that they're—finally, they're—

"Please say I can move," Sam says, breathless, and Dean gasps in and then laughs, dizzy, says, "Jesus, you've been waiting on me? Get the lead out, come on—go—"

It lasts—

For the time it takes Dean to curl his hips up and feel how Sam jolts, hard inside. For the time it takes Sam to lift up higher, getting enough space between them that he can see Dean's face, and for him to fit his hand around Dean's jaw and press his thumb against Dean's lower lip and look him in the eyes, startled, like even after everything he's learned something new. For the time it takes Dean to wrap his thighs around Sam's waist and arch, and for Sam to bury his head down into the curve of Dean's throat, and for Dean to hold Sam's shoulders, and for it to be…

Perfect, Dean thinks, after.

They're on their sides. Dean's leg is still caught around Sam's hip. Their heads are on the same pillow and Dean's got his hand on Sam's chest, and Sam keeps tracing some nonsense shape into the skin over Dean's ribs, and the sun's still out, and the breeze is still gentle, and it feels in a way like no time has passed, at all. Like this is still their first day in heaven. That first moment, when Sam appeared on the bridge, and Dean's heart thumped into place, like it was beating again, at last.

Sam's hand settles flat on Dean's side. Dean looks up from Sam's chest, and Sam's waiting there, to meet his eyes. A smile, small. "Good job, tiger," Dean says, and Sam's smile goes deeper, and Dean rolls his eyes, and tugs Sam's chest hair in retaliation. Sam mimes pain but all he does is pull Dean an inch closer, and sigh.

"Do you think we could've made it work?" he says, eventually. Dean hmms, asking. "Before, I mean. When we were alive. It feels like…" He shakes his head, a small movement against the pillow. "I don't know. Like we wasted time."

"Maybe," Dean says. He shifts, stretching out his legs, and lifts up on one elbow. Sam tips his head back to keep looking at Dean's face. Dean looks back, unhurried. The straight line of his eyebrows, and his tip-tilted eyes. His mouth, relaxed in contentment, and the slope of his nose, and that mole that Dean feels the weirdest fondness for. He touches it, and Sam blinks, and Dean smiles at him. "It worked out, though. Don't you think?"

Sam's mouth tips, a dimple peeking up in his cheek. He looks as glad as Dean's ever seen him. "Yeah," he says, finding Dean's hand. Their fingers tangle together, caught warm against Sam's chest. "Yeah, it worked out okay."

#wincest #carry on spoilers #my writing

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