#and the whole mirror match thing is thrown off entirely

[stacy-fakename]

Rat Grinders:Don’t do anything to the Bad Kids until antagonized, and it’s later revealed that their bad actions were a result of being groomed by one of their teachers for years and then murdered and possessed.

Intrepid Heroes:Fuck you, sending you to hell and you can’t be revived.

[camilaxmartin]

velvette stressing about a date with reader/getting ready

so stressed, obsessed

navigation // rules // masterlist

summary: how the getting ready for a date looks from velvette perspective

warnings: NOT PROOF READ; some cursing probably, you can count some parts as suggestive

note: i made headcanons out of this cause it fitted more for me (it just looks like headcanons it’s literally a one shot but let’s skip that) i was having a stressful night and just wanted to get it out:)

note 1.2: i love writing my princess as a mess cause as much as she loves being organised i can’t get messy velvette out of my head:) - it’s about balance yk?

requests: open!!

ღ | velvette was soo excited about the date and hear me out, so excited. of course, she was going on a lot of dates i mean look at this girl but this time it felt… different

ღ | the time you asked her out (cause we both know she wouldn’t do it if she actually liked someone and was nervous around them) she tried to play it off and it actually worked until you heard her little giggle when she thought you wouldn’t be able to hear it

ღ | the first thing she did after you’ve asked her out was literally stumble through her whole wardrobe to find something to wear that night you two were gonna meet up. she shuffled through all of her clothes and groaned in frustration as nothing was even close to being enough to what she had in mind for that night

ღ | velvette decided she was gonna try and make something to wear and the start of it was really promising, but soon after she got to like half the dress she thrown it out of her hands and groaned loudly not feeling like her skills were enough (which is fucking RARE for this girl)

ღ | she grabbed her phone and looked up some dresses online trying to find *the one* but nothing seemed right to her. she locked her phone and thrown it away on the ground, jumping on her bed and falling with her face right into her pillows. she wanted everything to be perfect and yet it felt like the whole hell was against her

ღ | soon after her mumbling to herself that everything is shit and she shouldn’t even go on this date, she fell asleep her hair getting out of control, as always when she slept without earlier preparation for it

ღ | the next morning she woke up on her own, her eyes opening slightly as she had no clue she had fallen asleep the day before. she sat up on her bed and unwilling stumbled out of it to grab her phone and check the time

ღ | her hair literally straightened out on its own when she saw the time. it was way too late for her usual routine and by now she should’ve been already in her studio preparing her show. she groaned, which was like literally the only noice she was making for the past two days, and send vox a quick message that she won’t be able to make it today so he has to think something out

ღ | she sighed as she thrown her phone away once again and laid back down starring at the ceiling, rethinking every decision she has ever made in her entire life

ღ | after about half an hour she was already in front of her wardrobe looking for something at least decent to wear for tonight. after many and i mean, many difficulties she has finally chosen a dress matching it with some high boots, a silky jacket and a small purse in the same color as that dress. she wasn’t fully proud and happy with the choice but it was the best she could do. she rolled her eyes throwing that outfit on her bed and stormed into her bathroom knowing she’s already way too behind in her daily routine

ღ | because she has fallen asleep yesterday without planning it first, she had no idea what hairstyle should she wear for tonight. i mean sure- she has thought about it a million times already but hasn’t decided on anything yet. she looked herself in the mirror her hands immediately touching her face in all the spots she wanted to change or just get fixed and sighed feeling her anxiety rising up

ღ | velvette shook her head, took out her phone putting on her favourite playlist to get ready, and undressed, getting into the shower and preparing for one of the longest showers of her life. she turned the water on, heat of it hitting her skin immediately as she sighed in pleasure, getting her favourite shampoo and razor from one of the shelves. she bubbled up her hair and rinsed it out almost immediately putting on some conditioner and making sure not to wet her hair for a while. she then get to washing and dolling up all of her body. she quickly shaved her legs, armpits and decided to shave between her legs as well i mean- you never know what can happen right? especially if you’re in hell

ღ | after removing all of that hair from her body, she rinsed herself off and put on body scrub, scrubbing all of her dead skin off and doing it a bit too aggressively for her liking but what you’re not doing for beauty right? she rinsed off the body scrub as well and finally cleaned her whole body with rose soap getting herself all nice and clean. then she rinsed the conditioner from her hair and washed it with shampoo one again

ღ | finally, she stopped the water and get out of the shower shaking her head before getting out. she grabbed her favourite towel and wrapped it around herself, grabbing a special towel for her hair and wrapping it up as well. she looked herself in the mirror once again and smiled, handing for a body cream to get herself even more soft than she already has been

ღ | after doing so, she took out her face cosmetics and washed her face, doing a face mask in the spare time and then putting on milion of her creams and serums to made sure she was perfect for tonight

ღ | she took a deep breath as she looked at the time and realised she had to fasten up the whole process a bit. she unwrapped her hair from the towel and thrown it on the glass of her shower to dry, as she shook her head once again to feel if her hair needs fake drying or not

ღ | velvette whined and walked out of her bathroom still wrapped in her towel, as she walked over to her wardrobe to pick out some underwear. she quickly decided on a red set with pink and blue hearts on it, and panties that didn’t leave much to imagine. she smirked looking down at it, hoping she wouldn’t wear it for nothing tonight as she walked back to her bathroom putting it on

ღ | being in only her underwear she got started on her makeup knowing it’s probably going to take up most of her time. she took out all of her cosmetics and stuff and got to work. she was singing along to her playlist and actually having a good time while putting all of it on, her mind letting her anxiety go down for a few moments. she was doing her usual routine with her makeup, but also added small hearts around her eyes, something she didn’t do normally, every one of them matching her eyeshadow

ღ | when she was done she looked at the time and realised she needed to be ready in about an hour. her eyes widened as she stormed out of the bathroom and grabbed her picked out outfit, walking over to the huge mirror in her room looking herself up and down. she smiled to herself seeing her body, she was never the one to be insecure about it or at least that’s what she was telling herself, and started putting on the dress having a little trouble with it as she was trying not to get it wet with her still wet hair. she let out a sigh as she managed to put on the dress without any unwanted problems and sat down on the floor to put on her boots. she bit her lip, her thoughts going to the planned date again as she felt her nerves rising again. she took a deep breath trying to calm herself but it did nothing. she zipped up one of her boots and looked at it in the mirror smiling and admitting to herself that it didn’t actually look as bad as she thought it did. she quickly put on the other boot and made a little spin in front of her mirror admiring how her look turned out

ღ | she took another deep breath and ran to the bathroom to dry her hair. she looked at the time and tried not to freak out more as the hour of your meeting was getting closer and closer. she took out the hairdryer from one of the cabinets and plugged it in, knowing it’s gonna take her a while to get at least a presentable hairstyle

ღ | she has been drying her hair and drying as finally they become fully dry. she smiled to herself in the mirror and when she glanced at the time she instantly freaked out. if she didn’t leave now, she’d be late. but her hair wasn’t fully done

ღ | velvette bite her lip and grabbed her phone writing you a message that she was gonna be late a bit and trying not to make it sound as nervous as she was feeling at that moment. did it work? you can just imagine how that message look, i mean it was something along the lines of:

hiya babes, i’m gonna be a little bit late, hope you will wait for me xx

or

i’m running late, so just wait for me and don’t you dare say anything about it when i finally get there, see ya xoxo

ღ | safe to say she was even more stressed out now. she quickly grabbed her hairbrush and started aggressively brushing her hair getting mad at herself more with every second and every brush passing. she let out a whine sounding like she was at the edge of crying and looked at herself in the mirror reminding herself, that she can’t cry now as it would ruin her makeup and she’d need even more time to fix it

ღ | velvette took a deep breath and grabbed another conditioner to style her hair. after a few moments she managed to pull her iconic two ponytails while leaving her bangs curled (like her natural hair, i have ep. 8 in mind)

ღ | she smiled to herself admiring how good she actually looked and quickly grabbed her phone storming out of her bathroom, grabbing her early picked-out jacket along with her purse and immediately left the vee’s building like it was literally on fire

ღ | as she was walking to the spot you two agreed on, she felt like her whole skin was on fire, her heart was pounding in her chest and the biggest lump was forming in her throat. she tried calming down as she started brainlessly scrolling through all of her social media’s but nothing seemed to help. she shoved her phone annoyed into her purse and cursed herself in her mind for choosing such a small one. her thoughts were getting louder and louder with every second, even starting to tell her that this whole date was a huge mistake and she shouldn’t have agreed to it

ღ | she was inside her head the whole time as she finally reached the spot you two chose and saw you standing before it, waiting for her yet not looking mad that she was late. her head became empty in a second and an uncontrollable smile creeped onto her face as she walked over to you with her usual confidence, yet her stomach was starting to fill up with butterflies. she finally reached you and greeted you with a small wave and a simple “hi” to which you immediately responded with another “hi”, wide smile and a wave back

ღ | velvette was sure there and then that no matter what outfit she would’ve picked or whatever hairstyle she pulled or if she even showed up two hours late looking like an old windbag (see what i did here?;) all of her doubts would leave instantly when she saw your beautiful smile that was apparently reserved for her only

ღ | the date, obviously, went amazingly and you guys picked out another day to meet up once again, despite the fact that that night velvette wasn’t alone walking back to the vee’s tower and definitely wasn’t the only one sleeping in her bed

ღ | the hopes she had while picking out the underwear before going out definitely got fulfilled

[lucky-clover-gazette]

prince's gambit highlights & annotations

chapter 3

indented text is from the book. some quotes have commentary, some do not. some comments are serious, and some are definitely not. most of them will only make sense to people who have read the series. and, like, there are spoilers. so please read the books first if you're interested!

also: part of the reason i'm doing such a close reading is to study cs pacat's style, especially in terms of how she does romance and erotica. there are "craft notes" that might seem weird, like i'm being redundant or restating something rather than analyzing, but those are more things that i want to remember/take away from the writing!

i'm going to tag these longer posts with "sam reads capri" in case anyone wants to read them all at once.

this is a google doc i wrote with overall content warnings for the captive prince series. it's not perfect, but i do think it's important to include.

The dispatch that Laurent had written the night before galloped off to the east with a horse and a rider.

this is to the guy at the inn, right?

He became aware of Laurent on the periphery of his vision, pale-haired and wearing riding leathers.

blonde man jumpscare

Laurent was apparently arrogant enough to do this without armour. He clearly didn’t think he was going to lose, not if he was inviting the entire troop to watch it happen. He wasn’t thinking clearly at all. Laurent, with his unmarked body and his pampered indoor skin, would be fresh from palace sports where his opponents would have always, politely, let him win. He’s going to be killed, thought Damen, seeing the future in that moment with perfect clarity.

again. “i hope she fries / i’m free if that bitch dies / i’d better help her out” (buffy the vampire slayer, once more with feeling)

Damen’s heartbeat was loud with the shock of his surprise: at the end of the first exchange, Laurent was still alive. At the end of the second also. At the end of the third he was, persistently and remarkably, still alive, and watching his opponent calmly, measuringly.

THE PEOPLE’S PRINCE!!! ✨

Laurent fought like he talked. The danger lay in the way he used his mind: there was not one thing he did that was not planned in advance. Yet he was not predictable, because in this, as with everything he did, there were layers of intent, moments when expected patterns would suddenly dissolve into something else.

glances pointedly at the book 1 garden scene

Laurent turned back Govart’s second surge with an easy grace and a particularly Veretian series of parries that made Damen itch to pick up a sword.

“he’s so competent i need to duel him so bad” this is attraction! to me!

It was not an even match at all. It was a lesson in abject public humiliation. But the one teaching the lesson, the one effortlessly outclassing his opponent, was not Govart. ‘Pick it up,’ said Laurent, the first time Govart lost his weapon.

now that we’re in book 2, we (and damen) finally get to see laurent’s laurentocity projected on an opponent who is not damen. and it’s like, oh, is that how everyone else has seen him the whole time? no wonder they were confused by laurent’s worst and most openly depraved behavior towards damen in book 1. especially since they didn't know that damen killed laurent's brother!

Damen knew the answer to that question. Laurent was not going to kill him. He was going to break him. Here, in front of everyone.

we all need hobbies. that just happens to be one of laurent’s

He looked first to the Prince’s men, instinctively expecting to see his own reaction to the fight mirrored on their faces, but instead they showed gratification coupled with a total lack of surprise. None of them had been concerned that Laurent might lose, he realised.

because he’s that bitch. catch up, damen

Lazar, who had thrown Laurent the cloth, didn’t look as though he was going to be mouthing off about Laurent again. In fact, the new way he was looking at Laurent reminded Damen unmistakably of Torveld. Damen frowned.

someone’s jealous againnnn

His own reaction had him feeling oddly off balance. It was just that it was—unexpected. He had not known this about Laurent, that he was trained like this, capable like this. He wasn’t sure why he felt as though something, fundamentally, had changed.

me when i realize that i have a crush on someone

In other words, the Regent was to be informed that his Captain had been well and truly turned off, in a manner that could not be painted as a revolt against the Regency, or as princely disobedience, or as lazy incompetence. Round one: Laurent.

hey, that’s kinda how my annotations look!

Damen was finishing with the fire when Laurent came into the room, still in riding clothes. He looked relaxed and fair, as though weathering a duel, cutting down his Captain, and following that up with a day-long ride had had no effect on him at all. By now Damen knew him too well to be taken in by it. By any of it. He said, ‘Did you pay that woman to fuck Govart?’ Laurent paused in the act of stripping off his riding gloves and then, deliberately, he continued. He worked the leather from each finger individually. His voice was steady. ‘I paid her to approach him. I didn’t force his cock into her mouth,’ Laurent said.

oh you KNOW laurent was holding back a smile here. also gloves 😮‍💨

‘You broke a man today. Doesn’t that affect you at all? These are lives, not pieces in a chess game with your uncle.’ ‘You’re wrong. We are on my uncle’s board and these men are all his pieces.’ ‘Then each time you move one of them, you can congratulate yourself on how much like him you are.’ It just came out. He was in part still reverberating with the blow of having had his guess confirmed. He certainly didn’t expect the words to have the effect on Laurent that they did. They stopped Laurent in his tracks. Damen didn’t think he’d ever seen Laurent caught completely without words before, and since he couldn’t imagine the circumstance was going to last long, he hurried to press his advantage. ‘If you bind your men to you with deception, how can you ever trust them? You have qualities they will come to admire. Why not let them grow to trust you naturally, and in that way—’ ‘There isn’t time,’ said Laurent. The words pushed themselves with sheer force out of whatever wordless state Laurent had been shocked into. ‘There isn’t time,’ Laurent said again. ‘I have two weeks until we reach the border. Don’t pretend that I can woo these men with hard work and a winning smile in that time. I am not the green colt my uncle pretends. I fought at Marlas and I fought at Sanpelier. I am not here for niceties. I don’t intend to see the men I lead cut down because they will not obey orders, or because they cannot hold a line. I intend to survive, I intend to beat my uncle, and I will fight with every weapon that I have.’ ‘You mean that.’ ‘I mean to win. Did you think I was here altruistically to throw myself on the sword?’

context: damen accidentally hits the Laurent Vulnerability Button by comparing him to his uncle. in a rare moment of exhausted honesty, laurent admits his own helplessness and the dire nature of their situation. he doesn’t have time to do this right—doing it at all is already a daunting challenge. he then restates his determination to succeed, or at least die trying.

the last time something like this happened—“i can’t protect you as i am, trust me”—damen verbally eviscerated laurent and abandoned him in a vulnerable state. i wonder what will happen this time…

also. “i intend to survive. i intend to beat my uncle. i mean to win.” so this is how he’s survived the past 7 years: pure force of will. i love laurent so much.

Damen made himself face the problem, stripping away the impossible, looking only at what, realistically, could be done.

a strength of his! and often a weakness of laurent’s!

looks like damen isn’t going anywhere this time :)

Damen said, ‘I will help you in whatever way I can, but there will be no time for anything but hard work, and you will have to do everything right.’ Laurent lifted his chin and replied with every bit of cool, galling arrogance he had ever shown. ‘Watch me,’ he said.

I FUCKING LOVE LAURENT OF VERE!!!!

[aviculor]

Katakuri has said a few times by this point how Luffy would become a threat to Big Mom if left alone, and it's clear in this moment that this sentiment is evolving into respect for Luffy. By the time this fight is over, Katakuri will have wounded himself to make up for Flampe's sneak attack and thrown away his scarf to bare his "pelican eel" mouth for all to see. It's easy to write the Luffy/Katakuri fight off as just a mirror match where Luffy needs to overcome his own limitations, but it's more like a speedrun of character development for Katakuri. He showed up late in the arc and did little besides using observation haki to flick jellybeans at the worst possible moments. I mean, as I pointed out, he was present during the Big Mom Pirates' raid on the Sunny but all he did was sit in the background without even being acknowledged. And yet he somehow managed to jettison into being the most well-developed member of the Charlotte family aside from Big Mom herself and maybe Pudding. It's also clear the whole mirror match thing was something he was intentionally doing rather than it being his regular fighting style. The thing here is that this fight changed Katakuri. Luffy changed Katakuri. Katakuri no longer felt ashamed of his "flaws" like his facial scars and his love of donuts and the fact that he does lay down and rest like a normal person. After it was all over, he once again acted tender towards Brulee, his little sister who he became hard and unfeeling in order to protect.

Luffy did not beat Katakuri into the ground like so many other antagonists; Katakuri allowed himself to fall. And as he's lying there on his back, he asks Luffy if he intends to come back and defeat Big Mom one day. Which is honestly kind of a strange thing to ask when he already knows the answer. It almost comes off like he wants it to happen. Like he wants Luffy to promise that he will. In fact, hearing Luffy say it seems to bring Katakuri peace in his defeat. What if Katakuri actually wants his mother to be taken down?

We don't know if Big Mom and Kaidou died in that magma pit, but it goes against the entire ethos of One Piece for Luffy to kill and for antagonists to never be seen again. Plus, after all the buildup that started on Fishman Island and came to a boil on Whole Cake Island, it would be anticlimactic if Luffy never actually fought Big Mom and she just vanished from the story after being beaten by Law and Kid on Wano. If Big Mom shows up on Elbaf, since her history is so intrinsically tied to there, it's possible we could finally see Luffy vs Big Mom. And maybe...just maybe...it's possible we could see Katakuri become an ally.

[errorryx]

the synonym of companion

read on ao3 | 3rd life/double life, grian & scar, 2.5k words

a while ago, i took an english vocabulary test that was circling on tumblr, and this question stuck out to me a lot. i finally got around to writing the fic it deserves. grian and scar's relationship is up to personal interpretation.

fool

Scar wants to take control of the entire desert, and for some reason, he’s chosen Grian to help him. Grian has to drag him all the way across the seed to get his point across: the desert is far too large for them to defend it. They’d be better off going after dark oak. Smaller, he’s sure, and easier to defend.

“What if we just mine it all?” Scar asks.

Grian just laughs at him. When he gets back to the village to meet with the group that’s settled there, he recounts Scar’s hair-brained scheme to them. They all have a good laugh at his antics.

It’s what Bdubs says before that, though, that sticks with him. “Is Scar your jester?” he asks, and Grian looks behind him to see Scar perched on top of his chair. Smiling widely, just waiting for Grian to turn around and notice him.

It’s easy to laugh at Scar when he never stops smiling. Every insult thrown his way is water off a duck’s back. Nothing sticks to him, and nothing can dissuade him from a bad idea if he’s got his heart set on it. It’s what makes him fun to be around at the best of times, and it’s what makes him dangerous at the worst.

In a game like this, Scar is a very dangerous friend to have.

“Scar!” Grian shouts. “I think you’re my soulmate and you’re too busy chasing fairies!”

If Scar hears him, he doesn’t show it. He keeps swimming after his allay, not a care in the world. Joel listens, at least—he hits Scar again, the final nail in the coffin. Grian screams in frustration as he takes damage in perfect tandem with Scar, knowing he’s doomed.

Somehow, Scar misses all of it. Too focused on his stupid allay to pay attention to his real soulmate right in front of him.

It’s second nature to tell Joel and Etho not to clue him in. It’s a great joke, watching Scar run around without a clue that his soulmate is right beside him the whole time. But as time drags on and Scar misses hint after obvious hint, Grian’s irritation keeps growing. Finally, he gives in and goes to find Scar in the jungle, surrounded by pandas.

The first time he tries the trick with the dripstone, Scar turns his head away at the last second. Even though it takes a good chunk of their shared health, he doesn’t move from his spot, waiting patiently for Grian to get to the point.

How can you be this stupid? Grian wants to yell at him. If Scar doesn’t think Grian’s his soulmate, why would he stand where Grian asks him and let his guard down so completely? What does it say about Scar that he would trust Grian with his life when Grian’s already demonstrated his willingness to hurt him?

What does it say about Grian that Scar will do all this, but won’t even look at him?

“Look at me,” he says, and breaks the dripstone again. Scar looks.

“Oh my gosh,” he says, and Grian laughs, mainly out of relief. They’re more than half dead now, but at least Scar finally knows they’re together.

mirror

In the morning, Scar stares at him with green eyes.

Grian stares back, feeling sick. This can’t be a repeat of the desert, he reminds himself, not when they’re a matched pair. They’ll kill and die together.

Grian’s spent all this time chasing after Scar that he doesn’t know what to do with him now that he has him. Put him in an obsidian box with stacks and stacks of food, maybe. Throw some pandas in there and he’ll even be content with it. That way, Grian can go about his business without having to worry about Scar’s wellbeing.

He doesn’t need the trouble that Scar brings with him in spades. Even if it makes his heart rush, even if the adrenaline is addicting and it worms its way inside his head until he can’t think about anything except blood. The bloodlust is Scar’s thing, and this time around, Grian is above such notions. He wants to build a house. He wants to get his gear enchanted and build up defenses and keep them nice and safe. He wants to win.

He doesn’t want to look at Scar and see everything Grian’s trying to hide written all over his face.

Grian’s on green and Scar’s on red and there should be an ocean between them, but the deal isn’t off. Grian’s just thankful that it hasn’t occurred yet to Scar that he could satiate his bloodlust right here, right now, on someone who’s contractually obligated not to fight back. He watches Scar pace around the site of his second death, muttering to himself.

“Scar, I won’t kill for you,” Grian says.

Scar looks up. “Well, of course not, silly. You’re not red. You don’t need to.”

Need? Is it really a need? Judging by Scar’s frantic movements, he might just be telling the truth.

But killing was one of the first things Grian did in this game. It’s what got him here. He feels it even now, an urge he ignores most of the time, but not always. Grian kills when it pleases him because it’s what he knows, and there’s no room for that in a place where lives count for so much. He ought to know better. He ought to be able to stop.

Grian is a green life, and Scar is red. They have far too much in common.

They kill together, of course. It comes as no surprise when they die the same way.

entrapment

Scar keeps all his pandas in a tiny hole in the ground. While building the walls of their keep, Grian peeks over at them sometimes. They're always moving, twisting and writhing in their tight enclosure as if it’ll help them break free.

He’s constantly tempted to jump down there and break a block so they can escape. It’s not as if they’ll have enough time to wander away before Scar gets done with the panda sanctuary, and Grian can always blame an enderman or another player for releasing them.

He doesn’t free the pandas. He shouldn’t be wasting his time feeling sympathy for a bunch of mindless animals.

He builds his layered walls up higher and higher. Once he’s at the top, he looks up at the sun, no closer than it was before he started. At his freedom, no closer than it was in the desert. At Scar in the distance, hard at work constructing a much nicer prison for his pandas to live out their days. Soon Scar’s enclosure will be finished, and he’ll lure his stupid animals over with the promise of bamboo, and they'll follow him helplessly. They don’t have a choice.

Grian wonders which part of this is supposed to be the bamboo.

He misses his wings. He suspects it wouldn't make a difference if he had them. He could fly up and up and up, and never get any closer to the sun.

It's his fault.

Scar dies and it's his fault. Grian can repeat until he’s blue in the face that he didn't do it on purpose, but it's still his fault and there's no getting around it. Scar looks at him with yellow eyes and Grian looks back and feels nothing but fear.

He's not afraid of Scar. He's afraid of being stuck with Scar. It's that fear that pushes him to accept the duty of keeping Scar alive, despite the fact that no one, not even Scar, seems to expect him to take it.

That's why he's here, isn't it? To confront his worst fears? He's been running from things he can't face for years now. Pledging himself to Scar is hardly the worst fate he can imagine, as much as he likes to pretend otherwise.

“I’m legally obliged to be with him,” Grian says to anyone who will listen. The rest of the greens laugh like they don’t believe him. But Scar, with his yellow eyes and his unshakable smile, accepts Grian’s word at face value, and that makes it much easier for Grian to accept it too.

This alliance lasts as long as the green in Grian’s eyes, and no longer. He could fling himself from the top of this sand dune right now and it would be over. That knowledge ought to comfort him, if it were true.

The longer Grian survives, the less he believes his mantra that he’s here because he has to be.

He owes so much more than a life in a death game. He will owe more than he's worth for as long as he continues to hide among normal players. His debtors want his satisfaction, and they want his pride.

It's his fault. Scar is yellow, and undeserving of the debt of scrutiny Grian carries with him.

Grian’s pledge to try to keep him alive is not motivated by kindness. It's the height of selfishness. At the cost of Scar’s safety, he doesn't want to be trapped alone.

partner

It’s him and Scar against the world.

It always has been, even when it isn’t. Now that they’re red, all their enemies are temporary allies, but that lasts as long as the yellow names do. Soon it will be Grian and Scar against everyone else.

Scar antagonizes people, especially on red. He puts himself in danger and only ever makes it out through sheer luck. His violent tendencies don’t stop when he’s green or yellow, but he’s worse when he’s red, reckless and paranoid at once, a dangerous combination. Grian is never safe with Scar on his side.

Scar reaches for his hand, and Grian lets him. He’s never been safe with Scar, but somehow, on red, feeling two pulses in perfect unison, he’s never felt safer in his life.

It’s him and Scar against the world.

It’s been this way since Scar first became red and maybe even earlier. Maybe as early as when Grian stood in the ashes of that godforsaken creeper crater, unwittingly hatching a plot to tie the two of them together. 

It's far from the first misguided scheme to blow up in his face.

Regardless of his many failings, with Scott’s death, there's no one else left in which Grian can put any confidence. Just him and Scar against everyone else. The thought should sober him; instead, it fills him with a sick excitement. Scar has nowhere else to turn. He's dependent on Grian to keep him safe.

He thinks the rush of battle might be the best feeling in the world. But he's proven wrong when Scar kills him and he wakes up red, when he gathers his things and goes right back to Scar’s side. It's him and Scar against the world, of course, and when the world is just Bdubs, it's an easy victory. The red rage is so strong, and he's so weak. He could burn himself to ash so easily this way. He could kill and die without remembering to care about any of it.

It’s just him and Scar at the end of the world, and Grian isn’t ready for the world to end.

Grian’s world ends abruptly, anticlimactically.

At first he's furious, robbed of the ability to see his feverish plans come to fruition. There's no joy in dying to another one of his own half-baked murder plots. His red life is gone, and with it, all of his delight, all of his righteous anger, all of his strange priorities and stranger dreams.

Scar's heartbeat is gone from his chest. Grian didn’t want it in the first place, but its absence is a thousand times more painful than its presence ever was. He's never wanted anything more in his life than the very thing from which he spent the whole game running.

Scar is dead and it’s Grian’s fault.

Scar is not an idiot. He's not some living reminder of every mistake Grian’s ever made. He's not a punishment from the powers that be. And while he may call himself Grian’s from time to time, he is not Grian’s to keep.

Grian has been denying Scar personhood for as long as they've been playing this game, in an effort to relieve him of the guilt from which Grian suffers. He's kept Scar in the dark, and worse, he's used Scar’s obliviousness to his benefit, all under the guise of protecting him. Never once considering that Scar, given the choice, might not choose Grian’s idea of salvation.

It paints him in a deeply unflattering light. The soul bond itself wasn't enough, apparently. It took this cataclysmic loneliness for him to come to the realization that Scar is just as deserving of autonomy as Grian. It seems he’s incapable of learning his lesson until it's been thoroughly beaten into him.

He's preparing to throw himself a pity party when Scar finds him. Two ghosts meet each other's gazes, and Grian finds nothing that he deserves in Scar’s colorless eyes.

“Well,” Scar says breezily, as if the heart Grian craves doesn't lie still in his translucent chest. “Not a very fun ending, but we gave it our best, didn't we?”

Grian did not give it his best. Grian hasn't given anyone his best in a long, long time.

“Scar,” Grian says, “if you knew something so terrible that just knowing about it hurt, and it affected someone else too, would you tell them?”

Scar’s unshakable smile slips. Just for a moment it slips, and in that moment, Grian swears he can feel Scar’s pulse as his own. But it's too fast to be sure, and Scar goes right back to smiling like he’ll never stop, not even for the end of the world.

He never stops smiling. Not when Grian lands the last blow, and not when his eyes roll up behind his sockets and the back of his head hits the sand with a miserable finality. Scar is dead and it's Grian’s fault and he never stops smiling.

“Maybe you should ask them whether they want to know or not,” Scar suggests. His smile is audible in every word he speaks. It's never felt like such a slap in the face.

He's right, of course. Grian despises how right he is. “Do you want to know something that will hurt?”

Scar tilts his head and fixes Grian with a very genuine expression. Like he knows already. Like he doesn't know, but it won't hurt him to find out, any more than it hurts him to stay in the dark. “It's you and me against the world, right?” he asks. “If that's true, I think we're better off both knowing what we're up against.”

He can almost feel his wings on his back again. When he jumps, it's like flying.

“Let's get out of here,” Grian says. It’s like falling from a cliff when he takes Scar’s hand, in the way that it’s like flying. “Let’s get out of here, and I’ll tell you everything.”

psst if you read all the way through and enjoyed, consider reblogging!

[criticallyacclaimedstranger]

Fic: Misty, chapter x (the end)

chapter i | chapter ii | chapter iii | chapter iv | chapter v | chapter vi | chapter vii | chapter viii | chapter ix | chapter x

Read on Ao3

Rating: Explicit (whole thing)

Fandom: Prospect

Pairing: Snowman!Ezra x f!reader (monsterfucker au)

Tags: it’s basically monster fucking but with a snowman which could technically be classified as a monster i guess?, gothic horror kind of, sorrow, dementia, anxiety, dog murder, masturbation, Frankie thirst, pet murder, racism mention, huge age gap, implied possible sexual abuse of minor, spookiness, PiV sex with an actual snowman, possible hallucinations, hypothermia, Frankie yearning, the spookiness continues, More dog murder and implied sexual abuse of a minor, implied illegal abortion, adulterous kissing, lots of crying.

Chapter warnings in addition to the above mentioned: Character death.

Summary: Escaping your empty apartment after having been dumped by your fiancé, you rent a cottage at Oakgrove House over Christmas to nurse your wounds. But strange things seem to happen at the estate, where an old woman wanders around in search of old friends long gone, and snowmen appear as if by themselves on the lawn…

Chapter word count: 1,985

A/N: You know what the problem is when you start a fic, write on it for a couple of weeks, then leave it be for the next eleven months or so? You forget the original idea. (Unless of course you were smart enough to write down the entire synopsis, which of course I wasn't.) This is a very different fic from what I wanted to write during Christmas of '21. But sometimes change is good, I guess. Thank you, readers! The epilogue is for you.

Tagging: @harriedandharassed @paulalikestuff @pazizz @lovesbiggerthanpride

You wake up on the couch with no idea how you made it there. Curled up against the cushiony seat and with a blanket thrown over your naked form, you slowly blink your eyes open. The first thing that you notice is that there is sunlight rippling in through the window. You have not seen the sun in weeks, it seems. But there it is: a faint, end of December sunlight that tells you that it is late in the morning, and you need to move on. The official check-out time is noon, but Denise had told you when you spoke to her over the phone that one hour here or there does not matter. You have to clean up, however.

Stretching out carefully, you notice the light scratch of the wool blanket on your skin. You're naked, but warm and comfortable. There is a soft beat in your pelvis, like little tremors lingering after an earthquake. You recognize it as the aftermath of an orgasm but have never experienced it so long after the actual event.

Last night comes back to you and brings a smile to your lips. You have no fear, no disgust, no confusion. Everything seems crystal clear, and you feel amazing, filled with new energy and hope. You get up and take a shower, enjoying every single drop of water washing away anxiety and dust. You take the showerhead in one hand and direct it between your legs as you brace yourself against the wall with your other hand, head thrown back with a low moan as you give yourself the quickest orgasm you've ever had. Positively glowing, you dry yourself off and look at yourself in the mirror. Your face does not seem to match up with your mood: you have dark bags under your eyes, your skin is pale, almost ashen, and the lines you have seem deeper. Not letting that affect you, you get dressed and start to clean up the place. You do it humming, and on light feet, as if a huge weight has been lifted from your shoulders.

The photographs and the letter are put back in the attic, right where you found them. They are not yours to keep. You make sure the bookcase looks untouched, the postcards back in their hiding places. As you sweep the floors, you have time to think about what happened last night, the revelations that had been shared with you.

Ezra was not innocent, despite his willingness to help Olga. He knew about her feelings, her age, and he exploited her. He could have helped her get the abortion without asking for anything in return. He manipulated her into killing her dog just to see if she would do it. You know this. You have had him inside of you and you know his mind, for it has been inside yours. He was untamed and complicated, the blurry grayness between the boring absolutes of black and white.

Maybe the killing of Snowflake prepared Olga for what she might have to do one day. Maybe it was Ezra's way of helping her beyond what he himself was willing or able to do. For reasons unknown, he never intended to take her with him, you know that now. Maybe he gave her the next best thing: a capacity for death.

Fifteen minutes past twelve, you put your bag into the trunk of your car and brush the snow off the vehicle before walking up to the main house to leave the key. The sunlight has diminished slightly by now and clouds are gathering again, but that does not affect your mood. You're excited to return home, get rid of the apartment and move into a new one, one that's not sullied by the memory of your treacherous ex. The rat, with its sharp teeth and claws red of your blood, is gone from inside your ribcage, and you are going to leave it behind, run over it when you drive away from Oakgrove.

Denise answers the door and you can immediately see that she has been crying.

"Oh, right, you're leaving," she says, as if she had completely forgotten about you. Accepting the key, she takes a deep breath.

"Mom died last night."

Your mouth falls open. "Oh. Oh... I'm sorry. That's... but she was out only yesterday?"

"Yes, know," Denise acknowledges. "We had dinner and then she went upstairs for a lie-down. Later when I went to check on her, she had passed away. In her sleep, apparently. The ambulance was here around nine, you didn't notice?"

You strain to remember what time it had been when you had seen Olga and Ezra last night, but you have no idea. Did you catch a glimpse of the clock when you used your phone as a flashlight in the attic? Not that you can remember.

Your face must have betrayed something, because Denise tilts her head.

"Are you okay?"

It is ridiculous that she, who just lost her mother, should ask that of you, so you hurry to nod.

"Yes, I'm just... she seemed well enough yesterday. I'm so sorry."

"I feel bad for thinking it," Denise confesses with a grimace, "but it feels like it's better this way. She never had to end up in an institution. If her dementia had progressed, she would have become too much for me. She could die in her own bed, in her home."

A sad little smile plays on her lips. "She never left home, you know. Grew up here, never went anywhere, not even vacation. She always wanted to stay close to home."

You swallow, casting down your eyes.

"Did she have siblings? Maybe someone who's still alive?"

Denise shakes her head. "She had a brother, but he died young. Some kind of accident, she never spoke about it."

Your bright mood darkens and your stomach twists. Olga's daughter does not know what you know. It seems unfair, but how could you ever tell her? How could she ever believe you?

Expressing your condolences once again, and thanking Denise for the rent of the cottage, you finally turn around and walk to your car. Thoughts spin around your head and you try to lay them to rest with Olga. There is nothing more you can do but return home and live in the knowledge that half a century ago, something horrible happened here and this Christmas, you found out what that was through a series of inexplicable events.

If anything of is it true, that is. You have the words of an old woman with memory disease, and the gestures of a ghost. A fucking ghost, who possessed a snowman that you can find no traces of. A snowman that had sex with you.

Your good mood is gone and instead, you feel light-headed. The sun is obscured by dark clouds, and a couple of snowflakes come dancing down. Before you've reached your car, it's coming down as thickly as it did a few days ago, when you arrived. Before you get into the car, you look around you, maybe expecting the snowman to still stand on silent guard somewhere. But there is nothing but snow covering a front garden. The windows of the picturesque little cottage are dark. You glance up at the attic window, maybe expecting to see something up there. What, you don't know.

Eventually, you brush the snow off of your coat, and get into the car. Adjusting yourself on the seat, you frown when your coat gets stuck uncomfortably under you. Lifting your ass, you reach underneath you to smooth the fabric out, and your hand touches something hard.

It's a leatherbound diary. When you open it, you see Olga's name written on the first page, along with the letters, photographs, and cards that you found. The date of the first entry is the first of May 1952.

You look around you, check the mirrors, but of course you see no one. Putting the diary on the seat next to you, you start the car and back out of the driveway. You’ll read it when you come home. Maybe.

When you reach the junction where the road divides into a smaller section that leads to the lake, and the main one continues away from the house, a small, white dog runs right in front of your car. You step on the breaks with a startled shout, and the car comes to an abrupt stop. You weren't going fast, thankfully, but your heart is beating as you put the car in park and unbuckle your seatbelt to go out and have a look. Before you have opened the door, however, you see the animal by the roadside. It's a rabbit in its white winter coat. Its black eyes glare accusatorily at you before it hops off. You stare after it as your heart slows down, and for a moment you half expect to hear Olga's haunting cry for her pet.

But there is only silence, save for the whir of the heater. When your legs have stopped shaking, you release the handbrake and gently press down on the gas pedal. For the last half mile before the county road, you drive slowly through the falling snow, checking the sides of the road but seeing nothing more. When you reach the end of the private road and hit the turn signal, you're met by a pickup truck that slows down enough for you to catch Frankie nod at you through the window. Before you can nod back, he's away towards the house.

Speeding on the county road, Ezra's smirk haunts your rear-view mirror. You put on the radio and block him out, focusing instead on what lies ahead.

I can't find him Misty... Oh, please, can you help me? He must be somewhere Open window closing Oh but wait, it's still snowing If you're out there I'm coming out on the ledge I'm going out on the ledge

Kate Bush: Misty

epilogue

Winter has turned into spring when you're packing up the last boxes in your old apartment, the one that you shared with your ex. In your pocket burns the keys to your new place, your very own place, where your own bed, a brand new one, waits to embrace you.

There is a knock on the door, and you almost skip to the door, expecting your friend to come and help you carry your belongings. But it's not her, but Frankie, the gardener from Oakgrove House.

"Hi," he smiles bashfully, clearly awkward with the situation, yet there is a hopeful glint in his eye.

"What... what are you..."

"I know. It's bad, isn't it?" He pulls the baseball cap off his head and scratches his hair.

"How did you find me?"

"I asked Denise. Said I found something in the garden when the snow melted, something that belongs to you."

"Did you?"

"No."

"What do you want, Frankie?" You are now alarmingly aware of how inappropriate this is, and Frankie seems to be thinking the same.

"I wanted to see you."

"Here I am," you state dumbly. He chuckles low, but his eyes have a dark intensity to them as he looks at you.

"Here you are."

"And where is your wife and kid?" you ask harshly. Frankie casts down his eyes and clears his throat.

"At home. I mean... at her home. She filed for divorce between Christmas and New Year."

You want to say you're sorry, but that would be a lie. Frankie shakes his head.

"It was stupid of me to come here. I'm sorry."

He turns around abruptly and starts to walk away. You take a step out.

"Frankie?"

He stops and turns around. "Yes?"

"You good at carrying boxes?"

His smile is a little lopsided, but warm.

"I get by."

You wave at him to follow you, then return inside.

[awlwren-writes]

3, 4, 17, 18, 21, 30 for the behind the scenes ask

3. Do you write fics from start or finish, or jump around?

I mainly write from start to finish for a particular story or chapter. Sometimes I will move scenes around, of course, or realize I actually want to start sooner and go back to fill things in, but usually I just go and hope the words keep coming.

That said, if I write a series or collection of themed posts, often I write the middle/second one first. This is often something I accidentally do with reading series as well, so maybe that says something about me.

4. Do you outline before you start writing? If so, how far do you stray from that outline?

Already answered!

17. What fic are you most proud of?

Technically already answered but I'm going to answer again, because choosing one favorite is the worst. The fic I (at this moment, it will probably change with the wind) think is the best out of what I've written might be Over Your Hill. I got to explore a headcanon I like, I got to delve a little more into what their relationship looked like in the early stages (useful for Those Who Wander) and I enjoyed the comfort part. And when I reread it recently I liked it a lot! Which was a very pleasant surprise.

18. What is a line/scene you’re really proud of? Give us the DVD commentary for that scene.

Again with the choosing! You get my commentary anyway in the end notes most of the time because I can't shut up. ^_^

Okay. I'm proud of how I matched up Cor's assault on the dropship in Heaven in a Rage to what Nyx heard in WWFL's chapter, Eternity in an Hour. At that point, the way we were writing is we would talk about the general scheme of things, broad strokes, background info, etc, and then she would write the chapter and then I would write mine as an alternate perspective on the framework she built, and sometimes then we would adjust minor things if I thought of something cool and we had time. But half the fun was fitting my story around hers.

Spoilers here for the climax of the first arc of Smoke and Mirrors, in case anyone wants to read it and enjoy the Drama unspoiled. Plus, it got really long (Long enough to crash Tumblr's Editor, apparently, T_T, so this is the rewritten commentary), so I'm putting it under a cut.

So for Nyx's actual rescue, she gave me: a loud bang and shouting, Nyx hits the wall, someone yelling "(get us out) of here, Drautos", clashes of metal, a roar, Nyx thrown across the ship, then Cor is there talking to him. (I never actually questioned that any of this could be a hallucination, btw, I treated it as a strict guideline. Which maybe made this harder than it should have been. I also have wondered a lot why people in the comments doubted it was Cor that Nyx heard, and just now noticed WWFL's very Evil end note asking if people think it's actually Cor or someone else. Sorry for questioning you all for nearly a year.)

Okay.

This is full on half the fic, so you're getting the highlights, not the whole thing quoted.

The hatch was closing as the ‘ship lifted off, leaving Cor a smaller and smaller window to get on board. He was confident he could cut through the hatch, but he was less confident that the blow would stop there and he couldn’t risk that Nyx was on the other side. Thankfully, the fact that this was an older model was helpful in that the hatch was on the side rather than the front. If he got the right angle… Cor darted up close to the ‘ship, thankful the strange magitek engine didn’t actually give off heat despite its color, and slashed at the hatch from the side. It dropped off the ‘ship entirely, and the ‘ship lurched, off balance from the sudden loss of weight. A soldier fell out of the opening, screaming.

Cor was originally just going to jump on the hatch and prevent it from closing, and then I realized the hatch opens up not down, and he would be squished if he tried. And then, like Cor, I wondered about just cutting it open, and discarded it for similar reasons. But it wasn't speculation in vain, because I could give that train of thought to Cor so he wouldn't instantly have the right answer without trying!

And so we have Cor making himself a permanent entrance, which will come in handy later as well as be a problem later, and we have the bang and a Wilhelm scream, because I am a Star Wars nerd and couldn't resist, and the jolt that knocks Nyx out. It also made my next steps easier, because Cor could kill the pilot mooks quickly without one having to survive long enough to scream, or Nyx to have missed the noise of the fighting.

Through this whole fic, in Cor's perspective the word ship always has an apostrophe in front of it indicating it's an abbreviation for Dropship or Airship, kind of like early writers did for 'droid (See, I told you Star Wars was formative). This is because he's just less familiar with the terminology and the technology itself; when he thinks "ship" (without the apostrophe) he's thinking of a water craft. Drautos doesn't have that problem in his POV chapters, because he has spent a lot of time talking about them with the people who designed them and use them every day.

Moving on. To summarize the next part: Cor gets to demonstrate his skills by mowing some soldiers and techs, gets to see Nyx is alive and ties him down so he doesn't slide out of the plane like the screaming soldier did, and then the copilot tries to attack Cor in a blind panic at having the Immortal in her ship. Cor kills her, and as she dies she squeezes the trigger and sprays the pilot, killing them.

The ‘ship started to dive as the pilot fell forward onto the console.

Cursing this whole day to fall into the depths of Leviathan’s mysteries to never be remembered again, Cor charged across to the front of the ‘ship as fast as he could on his bad leg, pulling the pilot back and grabbing the white joystick underneath them. It reminded him of playing video games with Regis as a teen, but he pushed that memory away and pulled up on the joystick, hoping to level them out at the very least. He had no idea how to land this thing.  

I really enjoy fantasy swears, because I love the worldbuilding behind what makes something vulgar or taboo. A culture that is sex positive might not use "fuck" as a curse, for instance. One without a concept of Hell might instead think of the very creepy depths of the Ocean and how jealously Leviathan guards what is hers, and consider that whatever falls to the ocean floor is more lost than lost, and you get a concept halfway between Davy Jones' Locker and Hell.

Does anyone else remember playing computer games with joysticks? Am I just old? Cor is older, so he gets the experience as well.

The ‘ship did seem to level out, but it also turned back in a wide circle toward the courtyard and the machine guns on the other craft. He tried to straighten it out but the ‘ship wobbled alarmingly and he hastily adjusted his direction back to the way it had been. Hopefully Drautos had taken the other ‘ship out by now.

Actually, as the commander of the Niflheim army, Glauca probably knew how to fly this thing. Hadn’t the glaive captured one once, too? It wasn’t important. He tried to hold the joystick steady and tapped his radio. “Drautos, come in. I need you to tell me how to get this scourge-riddled spawn of a tortoise and a garula landed!”

Here I shamelessly shoehorn my HCs into this fic. The first is that Cor joined the Retinue as a driver, and prides himself on this skill. That makes the inability to instantly be able to pilot a foreign craft on his first time very galling to him personally. The second is that the reason Nyx can do so in the movie is because of said captured craft, which was slotted for an infiltration mission for the Glaive and so the Guard didn't get to play with it. This is how the Traitor Glaives know how to pilot them as well, and might explain how they got the rare pilot-able model during the battle at the airships in the movie.

Cor's lack of ability to fly the ship also allowed me to do two things which made my job easier. First, it gave him a reason to call Drautos, whom he might otherwise be inclined to leave behind just to not risk Nyx further. Yes, it would be great to not have Drautos/Glauca (and I had fun playing with Cor not knowing which name to call him by) running free with all his information, but Cor was hurt and protecting Nyx, and fighting to capture or kill Glauca when he was cornered like this wasn't an acceptable risk if he could avoid it. Second, it allowed him to come back close enough to base that Drautos didn't have to chase down an airship on foot.

There was static over the line, likely interference from the base itself, but no answer. He tried again. “Drautos! I need to get this flying box on the ground or at least last long enough to get it out of here, Drautos!”

And we finally have the line Nyx hears! I changed the first part of it from what WWFL was probably thinking of, but it still fit what Nyx heard, so I was grinned and moved on.

Drautos, by the way, hears none of this, between the metal box Cor is in and the metal boxes and buildings he is in, and probably whatever jamming the base has set up. And because he knows Cor is ridiculously competent at too many things and because Drautos himself knows how to pilot and so sometimes underestimates how difficult it is (as do we all with things we know well), he takes Cor's bad driving as intentional, probably wanting additional backup in case things go wrong.

[Cor circles back around, gets fired on, and then...]

A massive clang resonated through the craft as Cor struggled with the controls, and the ‘ship shuddered from the impact. Cor craned his neck to peer below them at the courtyard, trying to see what had hit them, if someone had managed to bring larger weaponry into the fight, but he needed most of his attention to keep the craft in midair. He risked a quick glance back at the interior of the ‘ship to see if he could see any obvious damage, but his view was blocked by the still partially-melted form of General Glauca.

The big clang is Glauca and his metallic armor hitting the metallic dropship! Yay! The other clangs Nyx hears as he wakes up are the bullets hitting the ship.

I figured this made more sense than having anyone who could cross swords with Cor showing up at this point, which is where my mind first went when I heard "clashes of metal". I think this was also the point I realized my first draft of this rescue (which involved a lot more fighting on the airship) wasn't going to work, scrapped it, and started the one you see here.

Poor Cor. Under fire, can't control the ship, thinks he's been hit by a missile and then sees his traditional enemy Glauca. It's probably for the best that he has both hands full or he might have attacked him. Which is why he, in the next paragraph, is very insistent on reminding himself that he's a sort-of ally and calling him:

“Drautos!” he exclaimed, then wrenched his attention back to the instrument panel to stabilize the ‘ship as it swayed again. Blast it into ions, he was better than this. He could hold a car steady on the road while he tracked daemons’ paths through the countryside around him if he so wanted, but the controls on this vehicle were touchier than a car wheel.

Glauca’s armored gauntlet settled on his shoulder as Cor frantically worked at the controls, then he leaned over and pressed a combination of buttons in the center of the console. Cor could read Nifltunga, but these were labelled in some bewildering combination of abbreviations and acronyms and so he had been ignoring them, figuring it was better to work without them then press something wrong. Whatever Drautos did, it stabilized the ‘ship and caused the whine of the engine to roar with sudden burst of speed, which Cor frantically tried to direct up and away from the base and the courtyard full of enemies.

And now we have the roar and the second jolt! (RIP to Nyx's brain. Blame WWFL, not me) I leaned into the ambiguity of the word roar and made it the engine roaring as Drautos switches it to GTFO mode rather than, say, our lion-associated POV character because of the same thoughts about the lack of plausible enemies at this point.

Yes, Nyx was tethered, but it was hastily done with materials not really meant for someone lying on the ground. It kept him from falling out of the aircraft, at least, even if he got a little more banged up.

Poor Cor. So used to being excellent at everything and he's crabby about this one time he's not. Not that he allowed himself the other excuse for that difficulty that I pointed out here: foreign abbreviations are The Worst. Especially technical ones.

Another note about fantasy swears: I base most of the action ones on the astrals - frost it, burn it, blast it, etc. The various versions mostly get used in certain contexts - Ifrit is kind of shady (no pun intended) in current culture, for instance, so anything with burn/ash/char is pretty serious. Shiva references are kind of a mixed bag at the moment because of Niflheim associations, and before she self-destructed were very popular in Insomnia. Nowadays they're kinda old-fashioned, because she's better regarded. Blast (with the modern reference to ions! Some swears do change) refers to lightning and thus Ramuh, so it usually has to do with judgements or condemning something. In this case, Cor is judging himself and this situation very hard, and also has lightning on the brain because of Crowe's attack.

Anyway, next they Talk in a Manly and Dramatic fashion where they don't really address any of the emotional things going on, but Cor does acknowledge that Drautos didn't have to help but did anyway, even at what may be the cost of everything he worked for, and Cor appreciates it even if it probably won't change much.

Cor finally gets to check on Nyx and Drautos fills him in on the basics, including the miasma infusion, and right on cue Nyx -- who is rather messed up between getting doubly concussed in a short time period, having a fever, being infected with the scourge, and generally pretty hurt before that with only rather janky medical help that's gotten ripped open a few times -- gets to hallucinate his sister dying and Galahd burning! Fun times.

I wanted to put Nyx calling for his mom both because it fit the time he was hallucinating, but also because it's historically a thing that even Strong Tough Soldiers do. Being hurt sucks, even if you are a Main Character, and it's not a shameful thing at all to be afraid (this is my Tolkien influence, when literally everyone being afraid of the Nazgul blew my childish mind and made confronting them even more impressive rather than expected).

The hallucinations are there because that was a thing that was happening to him and I wanted some continuity with WWFL's take on Nyx vs the Scourge, and because it's a nice cover for Cor missing what Drautos is doing (his Final Message). Plus, it means Cor has a pressing need to give Nyx help ASAP, without worrying about spinal injuries and the like that might have caused him to delay using a potion otherwise, because Nyx in his hallucinations is probably doing worse damage and he clearly needs a lot of help.

So Cor does some desperate first aid, and bundles Nyx up against him so he can't hurt himself more.

He reached up and stroked along Nyx’s cheekbone, trying to wipe away some of the damning tears.

Does this help anything? No. Does it make Cor feel better to not see evidence that Nyx is infected? A little. Should Cor have been touching the scourge tears with his bare hands? Definitely not. Luckily, he is the other kind of immortal.

“I’ve got you, Nyx, we’ve got you,” he murmured, matching the cadence of his voice and his hand to the pulse of the engine as they dropped slowly, presumably toward a landing somewhere. Cor couldn’t bring himself to care where. “We’ve got you.”

Cor switches to the "we" here, because it had to happen eventually to fit the script. I like to think the "we" only partially includes Drautos, and mostly includes the rest of the glaives and guard who came to help rescue Nyx, and a reassurance that Cor didn't get captured in trying to save Nyx - a reoccurring nightmare for Nyx.

Nyx shifted against his shoulder, leaning up into Cor’s hand on his cheek. Cor could feel his lashes fluttering against his neck as he started to stir, and he let himself believe it was a good sign. “Cor?” He could barely hear it over the sounds of the ‘ship landing, but it made his heart soar higher than the airship had. Nyx was talking, and he recognized him. Surely that was a good sign? His name had never sounded so sweet.

He stroked Nyx’s cheek slowly, wiping away more tears as they fell. Were they lighter? Surely they were. He kept up his mantra, reassuring Nyx that he wasn’t alone, that he was safe. “We’ve got you.” He’d never let go.

Butterfly kisses are the best. Even if the situation is the worst.

Cor is Tired and Dramatic (as was I when I was writing this). He's going to cling to hope and what victories he has and comfort his boyfriend as best as he can and let the Drama flow. He's earned it.

Until Drautos (who had temporarily earned back his first name basis by the help he's given them and by Cor being Tired) takes his turn to be The Most Dramatic.

Thanks for the sticking with me on that long tour through my thoughts (and pity the two and a half hours it took to write it and rewrite it after tumblr ate it.)

21. What is the one fic that got away?

Probably To Hope's End, my Nyx as a Messenger AU. I want to go back and finish it. I do. But I have a lot of unfinished stories, and I think that one's furthest on the backburner for now. Partially because it's going to be long, and if I'm focusing on a long one right now it's going to be Those Who Wander.

30. Tell us an idea for a longfic you want to write in the future.

I would like to get back to the time travel fic I've told you about where Regis trying to use the crystal to check out Noctis's future causes refractions, so you get past, present, and future Cor and Nyx (who were anchoring the spell) of various ages all shoved in a room together and trying to figure out what in the world is going on.

And all the chaos that spills out from that.

I also have several fics that I've posted that I want to continue or expand on if I have the time and writing energy to do so...

But you know pretty much all of my ideas already.

[skye-huntress]

RWBY Ice Queendom Reaction

Episode 10: “Mirror of Darkness”

First off, I want to start by saying I noticed something pretty significant that I missed in the last episode. I mentioned how Blake’s room looks pretty nice compared to the nightmare fuel of the rest of the manor, but the symbol on the door and sign caught my attention. It was the White Fang symbol, but not for Adam and Sienna’s White Fang. It was the symbol for the original White Fang that Ghira lead. The only way that could show up in Weiss’ dream is if she was aware of what the White Fang used to be, what it should have always been, and she now associates the symbol with Blake. Sign that held Blake’s Relic also had the same symbol.

I can get behind what Blake is saying. The things in that place are things Weiss has never had the chance to sort through. She only found out about Blake hours before being trapped in the nightmare and was still sorting through her feelings. Now Blake wants to force a confrontation between both of their own hatred and prejudices which is quite the gamble.

So I noticed how some people were so quick to outrage over Blake’s outfit because it looks like her abusive ex’s and “how dare they make her wear that”, blah, blah, blah. Well, I didn’t immediately make that connection but once I saw it, you know what was the first question I asked? How would Weiss know what Adam looks like? How would she know he even exists? Why would she associate his look with Blake? Even despite how twisted things are in the dream, Blake is clearly viewed quite favourably by Weiss, nothing like how the White Fang are represented. It doesn’t make sense, because Blake becoming like Adam is obviously Blake’s nightmare, not Weiss’. As so often happens with RWBY, even this anime, people jump to conclusions without understanding any of the nuance and context.

Of course, Yang is completely against this plan, but as Blake said, they’ve tried rushing the Grimm before and it cost them dearly because they couldn’t get past Negative Weiss. Sneaking in didn’t work. Yang’s maintenance plan had promise, but they bungled it and it resulted in Nega-Weiss outright banishing them. So it’s the fight fire with fire (or ice with fire?) approach. Negative Weiss vs Negative Blake.

Is it just me, or does Blake’s nightmare seem more terrifying and intense than Weiss’?

So apparently, Jaune’s immunity extends to his clothes and gear, meaning Yang gets to benefit it by wearing his cape. I’ll be honest, I didn’t quite register that that was what she was wearing in last week’s episode.

So it seems the match ups are like this: Nega-Weiss vs Nega-Blake, Yang vs “BIG NICHOLAS!”, Jaune vs Arma Jaquesis (RIP Vomit Boy), and Ruby is going to solo the Nightmare itself.

Jaune at least has back-up from the infinitely more competent children who fight like they are playing a game. He also has his massive sword which is heavily implied to be a physical manifestation of his Semblance since he hasn’t properly unlocked it. Can he use it himself, probably not. More likely he’ll find a less conventional way to use it against his opponent. Or just get Dream Pyrrha to do it.

This is the most action Bumblebee has ever gotten, she deserves it. And of course in a dream she can drive on walls! As for Yang herself, she finally has a use for all that extra firepower, fighting an entire building! Really, out of the entire cast, it would either be her or Nora who’d get that kind of matchup.

Moving on to, uh, Negative Checkmate? It seems Blake’s change has really shaken Negative Weiss. It’s like I was saying, even in her most negative thoughts that wasn’t even close to how Weiss viewed Blake, it’s like seeing a whole other person. Mostly because it is, it’s Blake if she became more like Adam. She is the Beast that has embraced the curse.

I’m going to say something that some people might take issue with so feel free to jump to the next bullet point at any point. There’s a reason I will never go so far as to call Weiss a “racist”. The label is thrown around a little too much and too easily. Weiss did have some racist views, but she never hated the Faunus for being different, and as far as I am aware, Weiss has never actually discriminated against or persecuted anybody for simply being a Faunus. Most importantly, Weiss is someone you can actually talk to and reason with. With that said, I’m not surprised that Negative Blake’s accusations are confusing Negative Weiss, because Weiss was never a direct contributor of any of the injustices mentioned.

Negative Weiss is clearly occupied, in fact, she seems to be struggling. I’d say it’s because Weiss doesn’t actually want to hurt Blake, meanwhile Negative Blake is clearly far more aggressive. Neither seems to be backing down though and Negative Weiss’ resolve doesn’t seem too shaken yet. At least, now Ruby has a clear path to the Grimm

On that note, Ruby might be biting off more than she can chew. That thing has a lot of vines that might be too much for a single person to cut through. To top it off, the marking on her hand shows she is still infected. The more she exposes herself to the Grimm, the more she risks being trapped in a dream again.

So I have my prediction, Ruby doesn’t necessarily need to defeat the Grimm itself, she just needs to free that part of Weiss that the Grimm seems to be holding on to. Weiss mentioned something that was in the shadow of the one they were facing, and that dress is clearly something the Grimm is trying to keep away from everyone. If Ruby can free it, she might release Weiss’ consciousness from the Grimm and instead of having to fight Negative Weiss and the Grimm, Team RWBY can do what they do best, fighting together as a team.

We have two episodes left, but since this is a short series that won’t have another season, at least a part of Episode 12 should be a sort of epilogue. Depending on how much time is spent for that, we might be getting most of the climax next episode, which the title seems to support. My best guess is much of it will focus on Weiss and Blake breaking free of their Nightmare forms, with Ruby and Yang’s help respectively, and then they can all regroup with Ruby and fight the Nightmare in Weiss together. That final fight will either be towards the end of Episode 11, or perhaps most likely in the first half of Episode 12.

[feanorianethicsdepartment]

Alright, I read your recent post and need to know - what is your interpretation of Maglor’s relationship with the twins?

askjdhslkjag my biggest self-inflicted problem in this fandom is that my take on maglor, elrond, and elros' relationship is so intensely detailed and specific i am forever tormented by none of the fic i read ever quite getting it right (from my perspective; i’ve read plenty of fic that presents a good interpretation on their own terms, it’s just never mine.) it’s simultaneously way darker than the fluffy kidnap dads stuff and nowhere near as black-and-white awful as the anti-fëanorian crowd likes to paint it, it’s messy and complicated and surrounded by darkness, and yet there’s also a sincere connection within it which mostly serves to make all those complications worse. angry teenage elrond is angry for a great many reasons, and the circumstances around him being raised by kinslayers account for at least half of them. there’s lots of complexity here, and i don’t see it in fic nearly as often as i’d like

(warning: the post... feathers? i already have an internet friend called faeiri this could be awkward - anyway, the post she’s talking about includes the line ‘everyone is wrong about kidnap dads except me.’ this post follows on from that in being as much a commentary about why various popular interpretations of both how the kidnapdoption went and the way people subsequently characterise the twins just don’t work for me as it is a setting out of my own ideas. i’m not really interested in getting into discourse here, i’m just trying to get my thoughts down. i’ve read fic with these interpretations before that i’ve liked, even, don’t take this as a Condemnation, aight? also this turned out long as hell, so i’m putting it under a cut)

i can never buy entirely fluffy depictions of kidnap dads

which isn’t to say i don’t read them! sometimes all i want is something sweet, for these kids to get to be happy for once. it’s not like i think their time with the fëanorians was completely devoid of laughter

it’s just. the pet names, the special days out, the home-cooked meals, it can get so treacly it stops feeling like the characters they are in the situation they’re in and turns into Generic Found Family #272

it soaks out all the complexity - which is the thing i am here for - and acts like oh, these kids were never in any danger, they were perfectly happy being abducted by the people who murdered everyone they knew, there’s nothing possibly questionable about this relationship at all

and... yeah. that’s not the characters i know. that’s not the context i know they belong to

i just can’t forget the circumstances that led them to meet

rivers of blood, the air filled with screams, a town ablaze, a woman choosing to die. every interaction the three of them have is going to proceed from that nightmare

(sidenote: i tend to hold it was maglor that raised the twins, with maedhros looming ominously in the background not really getting involved. it’s mostly personal preference, i’ve been in and out of the fandom since before this kidnap dads thing blew up and when i joined that was a perfectly standard reading)

(also the cave thing was a dumb idea, old man, if only because it implies beleriand had streams safe enough for children to play in at that point. the way it separates the twins from the third kinslaying is also something i don’t particularly vibe with)

probably my least favourite angle i’ve seen on the situation (edged out only by ‘maglor was actively abusive towards the twins’ which no no no no no no no no NO) is the idea that maglor (and/or maedhros, append as necessary) took the twins specifically to raise them

like, i get where it’s coming from, but it makes maglor come off as really creepy

(i have read fics where it is indeed played off as really creepy, but that’s not a maglor i have any interest in reading about)

(’mags 100% bad’ is just as facile a take to me as ‘mags 100% good’)

even if you’re saying maglor took them in because they had no one left to take care of them - i highly doubt they were the only children the fëanorians orphaned at sirion. idk, it always makes maglor seem much less sympathetic than i think it’s meant to

i prefer to think of it as more... organic? something that evolved, not something that was preordained. them growing closer gradually, the twins finding an adult who might maybe be on their side, maglor becoming invested in them almost by accident

and then the twins are so comfortable with the second scariest monster in amon ereb they frequently sass him off and maglor’s gotten so used to not hurting them he’s not even thinking about it any more. no one’s quite sure how it happened, but they’ve made a Connection

‘wait aren’t they a murderous warlord of questionable mental stability and a pair of terrified small children who’ve lost everyone they ever knew? isn’t that kinda fucked up?’ yup! that’s the point! complexity!

another idea i don’t like is the idea that maglor was an objectively better parent to the twins than eärendil or elwing

other people have talked about this already, i won’t rehash the whole thing. i will say that while i don’t think elwing was a perfect parent - someone so young, in such a horrible situation, i wouldn’t blame her for screwing up - i do think she (and eärendil) did the best by them they possibly could

this is one of the few things they have in common with maglor

something i come across now and again is the idea that sure, elwing and eärendil weren’t abusive or horrible or anything, but they were a couple of basically-teenagers with so many other responsibilities, there was only so much they could do. maglor, on the other hand, is an experienced adult who could take much better care of the twins

and...

first off, it’s not like mags doesn’t have a job. he’s a warlord, he has a fortress to help run, military shit to handle, lots of other stuff that needs to get done to stop everyone from starving or getting eaten by orcs. i feel like sirion had enough of a government there was plenty of opportunity for elwing to take days off and play with her kids, but in the fëanorian camp nobody really has the time to chase after a couple of toddlers, least of all one of the last points on the command network. they just don’t have the people any more

(seriously, the twins getting a formal education with tutors and classes and shit is a weirdly specific pet peeve of mine. this is a band of renegades, not a royal household; if there’s anyone left with those kinds of skills they almost certainly have more important things to do)

more than that, though - well, a quick glance through my late stage fëanorians tag should tell you a lot about what i think maglor’s mental state is like at this point. he is so accustomed to violence death means nothing to him, he’s lost most of his capacity for genuinely positive emotion to an endless century of defeat and despair, he hates everything in the universe, especially himself, he’s only able to keep functioning through a truly astounding amount of denial, and he covers it all up with a layer of snark and feigned apathy, which he defends aggressively because he’s subconsciously realised that if it breaks he’ll have absolutely nothing left

(maedhros, for the record, is... i’d say more stable, but at a lower point. maglor may interact with the world mostly through cold stares and mocking laughter, but at least his mind is firmly rooted in the present)

(on the other hand, at least maedhros lets himself be aware of what they are and where their road will lead)

which... this doesn’t mean maglor doesn’t try to be kind to the twins, or rein in his worst impulses around them

there’s just so little of him left but the weapon

he stalks through the halls like a portent of death and gets into hours-long screaming matches with maedhros and has definitely killed people in front of the twins

not even as, like, a deliberate attempt to scare them, but because when you solve most of your problems by stabbing them it’s pretty much a given that people who spend a lot of time around you are going to see you do it at least once

and sometimes, he curls up in an empty hallway, and weeps

... suffice it to say i don’t think elwing’s the more preoccupied, or the less mentally ill, parent here

just. in general, the fëanorians aren’t cackling boogeymen, but they’re not particularly nice either

no one has the energy left for that. not these isolated and weary soldiers at the end of a long losing war and the beginning of the end of the world. they don’t really bother to guard the kids against them escaping. where else are they going to go?

the sheer despair that must have been in the fëanorian camp after sirion, the knowledge that the cause cannot be fulfilled, that they are utterly forsaken, that they’re really just waiting to die -

it can’t have been a happy place to grow up in, under the shadow of loss and grief and deeds unrepentable, and the slow march of inevitable defeat

they would have had a better childhood if they stayed in sirion, raised by people who knew how to hope

but that isn’t the childhood they had. and despite everything i’ve said, i don’t think that childhood was an entirely awful one

yeah, see, this is where the other side of my self-inflicted fandom catch-22 comes in. just as much of the pro-kidnap dads stuff comes off as overly saccharine and simplified to me, i find much of the anti-kidnap dads stuff equally simplistic in the opposite direction

the idea that maglor and the fëanorians never meant anything to elros and elrond, that they had no effect on the people they became at all, that it was just a horrible thing that happened when they were children, easily thrown in the rear-view mirror...

that’s even more impossible to me than the idea that life with the fëanorians was 100% fluffy and nice

like, i’ve seen the take that elros and elrond hated the fëanorians from start to finish. they were perfect little sindarin princes, loyal to their people and the memory of doriath, spurning every scrap of kindness offered to them and knowing just what to say to twist the knife into the kinslayers’ wounds

... dude. they were six. hell, given their peredhelness, mentally they could easily have been younger

what six year old has a firm grasp of their ethnic identity? what six year old is fully aware of their place in history? what six year old would understand the politics that led to their situation?

don’t get me wrong, i can see hatred in there. but something else that doesn’t get acknowledged alongside it often enough is the fear

some of the stuff i’ve read feels like it gives the kids too much power in the situation. they’re perfectly happy to talk back to and belittle the people who burned down their hometown and killed everyone they ever knew, like miniature adults who don’t feel threatened at all

and, like, six. i can see them going for insults as a defensive measure, but it is defensive. it’s covering up fear, not coming from secure disdain

(and a lot of those insults sound, again, like things an adult who’s already familiar with the fëanorians would say, not a scared child who’s lost almost everything. why would a six year old raised by sindar and gondolindrim know what the noldolantë is, let alone what it means to maglor?)

(... i’m just ranting about this one fic that’s been ruffling my feathers for five years straight now, aren’t i)

i mean, i write elrond as the world’s angriest teenager, who snipes at maglor pretty much constantly, but the thing about angry teenage elrond is that he’s angry teenage elrond

he’s spent long enough with the fëanorians he has a pretty secure position within the camp, and he knows that maglor won’t hurt him from a decade and change of maglor not, in fact, hurting him

but as a small and terrified child abducted by the monsters his mother had nightmares about? he fluctuated wildly between ‘randomly guessing at things to say that wouldn’t get him killed’ ‘screaming at maglor to go away in words rarely more complicated than that’ 'desperately trying not to do or say anything in the hopes of not being noticed’ and ‘hiding’

(and i don’t think the twins were never in any danger from the fëanorians, either. quite besides the point that before they started orbiting maglor nobody was really sure what to do with them... well, they wouldn’t be the first children of thingol’s line the minions took revenge on)

(fortunately for them, maglor did, in fact, take them under his wing. by this point even their own followers are shit scared of the last two sons of fëanor, nobody’s going to mess with their stuff and risk getting mauled. tactically, it was a pretty good decision for a couple of toddlers)

more to the point, i feel like a child that young, in a situation that horrible, wouldn’t reject any kindness they were offered, any soothing touch in a universe of terror

in a world full of big scary monsters, the best way to survive is to get the biggest scariest monster possible to protect you. that’s how elros rationalises it when they’re, like, eight, mentally, but at the time they were just latching on to the only person around them who seemed to care about them

that’s how it started, on their end. two very young very scared children lost in a neverending nightmare clinging tightly to the lone outstretched pair of hands

as for maglor...

i’ve called mags evil before, but i see that as more of a... technical term? he is evil because he did the murder, he remains evil because he won’t stop doing the murder. hot take: murder bad

but that doesn’t make him, like, a moustache-twirling saturday morning cartoon villain. he is deeply unhappy with the position he’s in and the person he’s become, and he’s always trying not to take that final step over the edge

it’s not that i can’t see a maglor who is abusive or manipulative or who sees the twins more as objects than people. it’s just that that characterisation is one i am profoundly uninterested in. i do occasionally read fic with it, but it never enters my own headcanons

horrible people can do good things!! kinslayers can do good things!! the fallen are capable of humanity!! people can do both good and evil things at the same time, because people are complicated!! maglor is not psychologically incapable of actually taking pity on these kids!!!!

it’s... again, complexity. the fëanorians straddle the line between black and white, which is a lot less sharp in the legendarium than it’s sometimes characterised as. it’s what draws me to their characters so much, why i have so many stupid headcanons about them. pretending they fall firmly on either side of the line is my real fandom pet peeve

and, like, this moment? this sincere connection between a bloodstained warlord and two children who will grow up to be great and kind in equal measure? i may not entirely like the direction the fandom’s taken it recently, but that beat, that relationship, it still gets me

so no, i don’t think elrond and elros’ years with the fëanorians were an endless cavalcade of abuse and misery. i think there was love there, despite the darkness all around them

an old, tired monster, and the two tiny children it protects

maglor never hurts the twins, not ever, not once. his claws are sharp and his fangs are keen, if he so much as swatted them he’d rip them in half. instead he folds down the razor edges of his being, interacting with them ever so carefully. he has nightmares of suddenly tearing into their skin

seriously, the power differential between them is so great, maglor so much as raising his voice would break any trust they have in this horribly dangerous creature. fics where he does corporal punishment always get the side-eye from me

the mood of their relationship is... i find it hard to put into words. melancholy, maybe, like a sunny afternoon a few days before the end of the world. three people who’ve lost so much finding what respite they can in each other as the world slowly crumbles around them

there are times when it feels like the three of them exist in a world of their own, marked out by the edges of the firelight. maglor telling stories of the stars, elros giving relaxed irreverent commentary, elrond getting a few moments to just be, all their troubles kept at bay

they are the last two lights in a world sunk into darkness, the last two living beings he does not on some level hate. he will tear his own heart out before he sees them in pain

he teaches them to ride, he teaches them to read, he gives them everything he still has left. the twins should never have been in this situation, maglor probably isn’t entirely fit to take care of them, but it is what it is, and they take what love they can

(maglor depends on the twins emotionally a bit more than any adult should rely on any child. he’s still very much the caretaker in their relationship, but that relationship is the only one he has left that’s not stained by a century of rage and grief. he’s obsessed with them, maedhros tells him frequently. maglor’s standard response to this is to try to gouge maedhros’ eyes out)

(that particular darker side to their relationship, where maglor’s attachment to the twins turns into a desperate possessiveness - that’s not something i think i’ve ever seen in fic. which is a shame, it feels much closer to my own characterisation than the standard ways this relationship gets maleficised. darker, in a different way than usual. horribly compelling in its plausibility)

however you want to read it, i don’t think you can deny this is a relationship that defines elrond and elros’ childhood. they were raised in the woods by a pack of kinslayers, the text is quite clear on this

but i’ve seen a lot of talk about how elros and elrond are only sirion’s children. they are completely 100% sindarin, they love and forgive eärendil and elwing thoroughly and without question, they identify with doriath over - even gondolin, let alone tirion. the fëanorians - the people who raised them - had zero effect on the people they grew into and the selves they created

and that, more than anything else, i find utterly unbelievable

look, i get what this is a reaction to. a lot of the kidnap dads stuff paints the fëanorians as elrond and elros’ ‘real’ family, and i’ve already talked about what i think of the idea that maglor-and-possibly-also-maedhros were better parents than eärendil and elwing. i think it’s reductive and overly optimistic and just a little too neat

but to say instead that elrond and elros held no great love in their hearts for maglor, no lingering affinity with the fëanorians, no influence on their identity from the people they grew up around, none at all? that after it happened they just left it behind and resumed being the same people they were in sirion?

that strikes me as just as much an oversimplification. it sands down all the potential rough edges of their identity, all that inconvenient complexity that stops them from fitting into any well-defined box, and replaces it with a nice safe simple self-conception i find just as flat and boring as declaring them 100% fëanorian

we can quibble over who they call ‘father’ (i personally find that whole debate kinda petty) but denying that it was actually maglor who was the closest thing they knew to a parent for most of their childhoods, and that that would, in fact, affect the way they thought of themselves and their family, elides so many interesting possibilities out of existence

(i’m not even going to get into the most braindead take i have ever heard on the subject, namely that because their time with the fëanorians was such a small fraction of elrond’s total lifespan it was like being kidnapped for two weeks as a toddler and had no greater significance than that. do you not understand what childhood is????)

like, i tend to think of elrond as a child as being very loudly not-a-fëanorian. elros is more willing to go with the flow - hey, if the creepy kinslayer wants kids, elros is happy to play into that in order to not be murdered - but elrond is very firm that he’s not happy to be here and he doesn’t belong with them

(this is after they get over their initial terror, of course, when they’ve realised they won’t be fed to the orcs for the tiniest slight. even so, elrond only really gets shirty about it around people he’s comfortable with, whose reactions he can reasonably guess at. naturally, the first person he does it to is maglor)

elros calls maglor their father exactly once, when they’re... maybe early preteens? this is because elrond hears him do it and immediately loses his shit. they have a dad, elrond says, in tears, and a mum, and any day now their real parents are going to come to pick them up and take them home

... right?

it gets harder to believe as the years roll on, as their memories of sirion fade, as they find their own places within the host, as maglor watches over them as they grow. elrond still mentally sets himself apart from the fëanorians, but it’s more of an effort every year. life in the fëanorian camp is the only one he’s ever really known. he can barely remember his mother’s voice

then the war of wrath starts, and the fëanorian host drifts closer to the army of valinor, and the twins come into contact with non-fëanorians for the first time in forever, and it becomes clear just how obviously fëanorian elrond is. he always insisted he wasn’t like the kinslayers at all, but he dresses like them, talks like them, fights like them

the myth cycles the edain tell are almost completely unfamiliar to him, he barely remembers the shape of the songs of lost doriath. even these sarcastic commentary and subversive reinterpretations he made of maglor’s stories - those were still maglor’s stories! he’s been trying to guess at the person he was meant to be, but it’s growing nightmarishly blatant how little elrond ever knew about him

instead, the people he was born to are as alien to him as the orcs of morgoth. he is a fëanorian, through and through

... yeah, elrond (and/or elros) having an absolutely massive identity crisis upon being reintroduced to his quote-unquote ‘true kin’ is another angle i’d love to see in fic that i don’t think i’ve ever come across. all those potential grey areas around who they are and who they’re supposed to be sound utterly fascinating, and i think it’s the complexity i hate to see elided over the most

i really, really doubt they could effortlessly slot back into being eärendil and elwing’s children. not when they’ve been surrounded by, lived alongside, been raised by the people who were supposed to enemies for most of their lives

they just don’t fit into that box any more. they can’t

speaking of eärendil and elwing, while i do agree that they both (especially elwing) get a lot more flak than they deserve, i don’t agree that therefore elrond and elros were never the slightest bit mad at them and fully forgave them for everything with no reservations

because, well, they were left behind. elwing had no other choice, but they were still left behind; it led to the world being saved, but they were still left behind. all the best intentions in the universe don’t erase the weeks and months and years of waiting, of a hope that grew thinner and frailer until it finally quietly broke

that’s a real hurt, and a real grievance. even if the twins rationally understand that their parents were making the best out of their terrible situation, you can’t logic away emotions like that. it’s perfectly possible for them to know they have no reason to resent eärendil or elwing, and yet still harbour that bitterness and pain

(i did write a thing once where elrond loudly rejects eärendil as his father in favour of maglor, but something i didn’t add in that i probably should have is that elrond later regretted doing that)

(not like, several centuries later, when he’d grown old and wise. two hours later, when he’d calmed down. but he was still legitimately angry at eärendil, because the one thing angry teenage elrond was not lacking in was reasons to be mad at the adults around him, and before he could figure out if he had anything less furious to say the hosts of the valar left middle-earth behind)

(it’s another element to the tragedy of the whole thing. in that particular story, which is mostly aiming for maximum pain, the only thing elrond’s birth parents know about their son for thousands of years is that he hates them)

(and he doesn’t, not really. you can’t hate someone you’ve never known)

not that i think they couldn’t ever make up with their parents! fics where elrond and his birth parents work past all the things that lie between them and form a functional familial bond despite it all give me life. i just don’t like the idea that there’s nothing difficult for them to work past

i don’t like the idea that elrond and elros would naturally, effortlessly identify with the mother they last saw when they were six and the people they only vaguely remember. i can see them doing it as a political move, i can see them going for it as a deliberate personal choice, but i can’t seeing it being immediate and automatic and easy

no matter how great a pair of heroes eärendil and elwing are, that doesn’t change the fact that to elrond and elros, they’re at most a few scattered memories and a collection of far-off stories. and so long as the twins stay in middle-earth, they’re never going to draw any closer

compared to the dynamic, multifaceted, personal, and deep bonds they have with the fëanorians - who, and i know i keep saying this but i think it gets tossed aside way more casually than it should, are the people who actually raised them, their birth parents must feel like a distant idea

and that’s why i can never buy interpretations of elrond as 100% sindarin, a pure son of doriath, with no messy grey areas or awkward jagged edges to his identity. given everything we know about his life, it seems almost cartoonishly simplistic

honestly it seems like a narrative a bunch of old doriathrin nobles trying to manouevre elrond into being high king of the sindar or something would propagate. it's neat and nice and tidy, something that’d be much more convenient for everyone if elrond did feel that way

but i just don’t see how he can. this narrative is easy and simple in a way real people never are, it ignores all the forces pulling him apart. elrond being uncomplicatedly sindarin with the life he lives and the people he's close to - that doesn’t make any sense to me

which isn’t to say i think he’s 100% noldorin, from either a gondolindrim or a fëanorian perspective. (i find it a little more believable, given, again, who he grew up around and who he hangs out with, but it’s still a bit too reductive for my tastes.) it’s also not to say i couldn’t believe an elrond who made an active choice to emphasise his sindarin heritage

it’s not how i think of him, but it works. i don’t have a problem with other people interpreting the complexities of the twins’ identities differently

i just have a problem with people acting like it doesn’t exist

in general i think there’s a lot untapped potential that gets left behind when you declare the twins, separately or together, as All One Thing

they’re descended from half the noble houses of beleriand, and they have deep personal ties to most of the rest. they belong to all of the free peoples even the dwarves, somehow, probably and i feel like that was kind of the old man’s point? so many peoples meet in them, to say they wholly belong to any one species is probably an oversimplification

they sit at a crossroads of potential identities, and rather than narrowing down their worldviews to one single path, they take the hard road and choose all of them. that’s what you need to do, if you want to change the world

and, to bring this back to my ostensible topic, in my estimation at least this mélange of possible selves does include them as fëanorians! it’s not overpowering, but it’s certainly there, and the adults they grow into long after they’ve left the host still bear influence from their childhood

nothing super obvious, nothing that wouldn’t stand out if you didn’t know what to look for, but there’s something almost incandescent in how fiercely elros reaches out for his dreams

there’s something almost defiant in elrond’s drive to be as kind as summer

as for who they publically claim as their family... honestly, it depends. while it’s usually more tactically prudent for elros to connect himself to his various human ancestors, on occasion he does find a use for his free in with the elf mafia, and elrond, code switcher par excellence, is famously the son of whoever is most politically convenient at the moment, which is rarely, but not never, maglor

(in the privacy of their own minds, well, eärendil and elwing may have been the parents elros was supposed to have, but maglor was the parent he actually had, and elros doesn’t particularly care to mope over what might have been. elrond, for his part, figures that after all the shit maglor has put him through, the least that bastard owes him is a father)

but honestly? i think before any of their mountain of identities, before thinking of themselves as sindarin or gondolindel or hadorian or haladin or fëanorian or anything, elrond and elros identify as themselves

they are peredhil, they are númenóreans, they are whoever they make themselves to be. that’s how elrond finally resolved his identity, figured out who he was and found something past the pain and the rage

he wasn’t doriathrin, or gondolindrin, or falathrin, or fëanorian, or whatever else. he was elrond, no more and no less

and that person, elrond, could be whatever he chose to be

... elros came to a similar conclusion, with much less sturm und drang that he’s willing to admit. being able to go ‘hey, i can’t possibly be biased towards any one of your cultures, because i’m descended from all of you and i was raised by murderelves’ makes it a lot easier to unite people around your personal banner, turns out

the stories other people tried to force on them shattered into pieces, and the peredhel twins were free to shape themselves into anything they could dream of

and as the new world struggles alive, these lost children of an Age of death begin to bloom into their full glorious selves -

i just. i love the poetry of that. despite every single shadow that hangs over their past, despite all the clashing notes pulling them apart, they harmonise it all into a greater, kinder theme, determined to make their world a better place in whatever way they can

they fail, of course, but so do all things. the inevitable march of entropy doesn’t diminish the long millennia they (and their descendants) held onto the light

and their growing up in the fëanorian host definitely had a huge effect on the noble lords they became. you can see it in elros’ loud ambition to create a land of happiness and hope, elrond’s quiet resolve to heal all the hurts inflicted by this marred reality

it wasn’t a perfect time by any means, but neither was it a nightmare. it was what it was, a desperate existence at the edge of a knife where, nevertheless, they were loved

even after years upon decades upon centuries have passed, it’s hard for the wise king and the honourable sage to separate out and identify all the conflicting emotions swirling around their childhood. they never knew eärendil or elwing, true, but they also never really knew maglor

not as equals, not as adults, not as people who could truly understand him. he disappeared into the fog of history, leaving only childhood memories of razor-sharp, gentle hands

it’s messy and it’s complicated and getting any real closure would be like shoving their way through a thornbush with bare hands even if elrond could find the shithead, and yet at the core of it all, there is light. not the brightest of lights, maybe, but an enduring one

that contrast, above all, that note of warmth amidst the shadows, is what fascinates me so much about their relationship. three screwed up people in a screwed up world, finding a little peace with each other

and the fact that somehow, it does have a good ending - the children grow up magnificent and compassionate and just, they become exemplars of all their peoples, lodestars of the new world born out of the ashes of the old - that makes it seem to me like this relationship must have contained some fragment of happiness

but, fuck, all the darkness that surrounds that love, all the tangled-up emotions its existence necessitates, all the prefabricated self-identities it can never slot into - nothing about it is simple, nothing about it is easy, and i find that utterly enthralling. especially how, despite everything, that flickering light never goes out

well, i don’t think it does, anyway. my take on this relationship is both complicated enough no one else ever quite gets it right and well-defined enough every single ‘error’ in other people’s interpretations sticks out like a kinslayer in rivendell

it is an entirely self-inflicted problem, i will admit. other people are allowed to interpret those complexities differently from me, and it’s entirely my own fault i lack the :waves hands around nebulously: to write my own hypothetical fic on the subject at a pace faster than glacial

still, though. i do wish there was more fic out there that engaged with these complexities. a lot of the common fandom interpretations of this relationship just sweep it all away

[thefanbasewhore]

To Forget.

Summary: Buck has a nightmare and just wants to forget about it, of course with the help of his girlfriend.

Warning/content: (18+), suggestive content ahead. Biting, slight degration, rough sex, mentions of PTSD but Bucky is a soft little angel towards the end. P in V, oral (female receiving)

Paring: Bucky Barnes x reader

A/N: I don't ever write smut, so this kinda sucks but also took me 2 weeks to write 😡

He's curled on the floor, chest heaving as he takes a deep gulp. Eyes ablaze but wide with sadness, fear of the demons who drown him every night he closes his eyes.

The smallest step has his head snapping in your direction, hand reaching out as if he was looking for something to protect himself with but with a few clicks and gears turning the vibranium hand unclenches a sigh of relief leaving his lips.

"Hi baby." His heart is still pounding, mind still racing as he remembers the reason he's in this predicament. Faces of those he's wrong, guilty he's the reason families mourn and children go without father's. Bucky opens his arms, wanting you close, wants the feeling of anxiety and guilt to go away.

Without hesitation you sink down next to him, finding a home between his arms, chest warm and comforting.

"It's alright Buck, I'm here." Lifting your head to face him, petting his hair as you press a soft kiss to his lips. His eyes are sad, glossy with unshed tears, chest irratic against your own. "I'm here."

A hand against his chest reminds him to breath, taking deep breaths out his nose to ease the burning chest. "You have to start waking me up when you move off the bed, don't like you sleeping out here by yourself."

"You look so peaceful, it would be a crime too."

A warm, soft hand glides up the bare skin of your inner thigh, skillful and unforgiving as it pushes deeper and deeper underneath the hem of the shirt. Bucky's eyes flicker to your own, sad and wild but also, filled with an aching hunger felt deep inside the pit of his stomach. The blues mixed with a sense of panic but layered with cloudy lust. "Wanna forget sweetheart."

The words mean nothing as a finger presses against the bundle of nerves covered by your panties, which momentarily surprises and makes your jump, warm lips press against the junction of where your neck and collar bone joint. "Help me forget?"

It's hard denying such a request especially feeling the cushioning of his bottom lip follow the line of your collar bone with wet, sloppy kisses. He's sucking at the skin, nibbling and paining it purple in his wake, fingers now running over the hem of the black, lace panties. His other hand reaches over, vibranium knotting into your hair, cupping the back of your head to angle your face towards his, it's not soft - rough and meaningful but just enough to make your heart pound and between your legs wet.

Longing eyes as he bites his swollen lips, staring at each other for an eternity - or that's what it feels like. The tension is high, his hardness heavy on your inner thigh as he moves closer, coolness of dog tags felt through the thin shirt, the contact hardening your nipples. Eyes dark are feral and when you dare look away - down at where he throbs against you, he harshly yanks at your hair. "Eyes on me, sweet girl. I still haven't gotten my answer yet."

"Yes, yes, yes." That's all he needs as a tongue wets the skin of your neck, a smooth trail of saliva making your neck his. Flesh hand reaches between, squeezing your tit softly, rubbing it through the shirt and feeling it harden.

Clearly frustrated, his fingers pull at the hem of the shirt with a growl, soon enough it's up and over thrown across the room with little regard. Hands squeeze every round piece of flesh, gentle but meaningful as lips bruise your skin.

His chest flushes against your own, now with heavy breaths for an entirely different reason. Frustrated hands find the barrier between his hand and your aching arousal, face mirroring the irritation because of it as two hands push into hem before shredding them with little regards.

You barely have time to gasp as his fingers fill you, smooth kisses presses against the line of your stomach as fingers slide out before curling up into the spot that makes you cry.

He's relentless, at first it's too much, trying to move up the bed from the source but he holds you still, grounds you underneath him until you're soaking his hand, whining out for him.

"More, more, please." At this point you don't know what you're begging for, something snaps inside you. Warm and filled with a tingle that numbs both legs but between his fingers which move in and out at an unforgiving pace you can't feel a thing.

It's impossible to form words as he hits a spot so deep you cry out.

"Look at you.." He teases but hard eyes are anything but playful, they're cruel and condescending and never leave your own. The way he talks is so filthy, degrading but love every word that falls from his mouth. "All dumb, can't even speak. Am I making you dumb, sweet girl?"

The words get stuck in your throat again, the feeling on his finger hit deeper and deeper as your mouth falls open in a silent scream. Eyes feel heavy, half way closing as walls flutter around his scissoring digits. "Gonna come for me, honey?"

"Mmmm!" Is all you can manage as a pair of teeth sink into your inner thigh, it doesn't break the skin but will leave a mark that will last days.

"Yes you are, look at you. I want it, give it to me." A tongue runs out to roll over the burning skin, soothing it with wet saliva and a few kisses as his fingers milk you through. "There it is, you're gorgeous, baby."

It happens so fast, white, hot pleasure that temporarily blinds you. A dark bliss with shaky thighs, they only thing that pulls you back is the feeling of lips against your inner thighs and clicking of plates and shifting of gears as cool vibranium pets your hair, skimming over your hair line. "You with me, bunny?"

A weak nod but that's all he needs before a long stride of his tongue catches a taste of your cum, squealing at the surprise and sensativity of post orgasm. "Bu- Buck -."

You can't form words once again and he can care less. He's ruthless, nibbling at the over-sensative bundle of nerves, licking and moaning with the slightest shift of his own hips

Hands fall to feel the smooth hair, stands a little longer on top fill into the gasps of your fingers, pulling harder- harder then you usually would but Bucky doesn't seem to mind.

"Buck - ugh!" The sounds are filthy, wet and sloppy as one particularly hard pull of hair muffles a moan that vibrates your whole lower half, legs start to shake as thighs tighten and cup his ears.

He's putting his all and everything into you, drunk on the feeling and taste as everything else in his broken mind disappears - he's tense, angry but only filled with thoughts of you, you, you.

For the second time within only minutes of each other you cum, Bucky doesn't dare move, taste every single drop he could manage before pulling away. Arousal smeared across his face as he sits on his knees between open legs using the back of his hand to wipe whatever he could manage.

The loud announcers of the soccer match on the television is the only sound next to the heavy breathing, breasts moving with every breath and Bucky can't look away. Metal fingers cool your nipple, squeezing and pinching as you let out a gasp and cower from the touch. The hand fingers your chin, clicking as it curls against the chin and pulling eyes to his open.

He doesn't bother with words, instead closes the gap between both of you. Taste of yourself tangy on lips, a strong tongue parting lips as the shift of hips has his cock kissing your opening. He tests the waters, pushing forward for the bulbous head runs up and down and up again to touch the bundle of nerves that makes you moan under his mercy.

Tears of frustration prickle eyes but his tongue continues to messily run over every part of your mouth - the roof, the tongue, sucking lips purple and swollen - he can't get enough. It's torturous but soft, lips are kind and caring and considerating on the distraction for the moment.

"You're so beautiful, how'd I get so lucky?." He sounds drunk whispering against your lips, slurring and slow as flesh fingers knot the back of your hair to bring you deeper into his lips. "Can't get enough of you."

"Buck, need you." Wether he hears the words or completely ignores them, his tongue rolls over your own, sharp teeth catching the fat of your lip as his hips tut into yours. He's throbbing against your inner thigh, pre-cum mixed with your own arousal soaking the skin.

The small hand goes unnoticed as it slips down his hard stomach, following the trail of hair that leads to him. His lips are too busy, messy and wet as they move against your own. A hand wraps around his hardness, momentarily separating where you two meet, a small gasp parting lips.

His eyes flutter close as you pump him, pressing soft, gentle kisses against his shoulder. The skin is hot, and still tastes salty from his dream but the whisper of your name under his breath has you reaching forward, fingers at the base of his neck to bring him to your own lips.

You take this time to squeeze and he groans, unaware of your true intensions to push him off, hands against his chest to apply a force that's enough to knock him into his back.

Pretty blue eyes with soft alabaster skin, which flushes compared to the disholved light pink blanket that's fabric tightens under his body weight but never leaves your face, well maybe a second to watch you straddle his thighs, rub your aching pussy against this heavy length.

He doesn't fight as you lift yourself up, rubbing the throbbing head against your folds before slipping into the warm, wet hole with a hiss.

"Jesus, sweetheart." He groans, every inch sending a shock of pleasure up his spine but also stretching you so good it's intoxicating. Drunk on him, the way blue eyes beg you for more, bites his lip and smirks seeing just how ruined you already look.

Finally he's snug, not an inch left to move but you're so warm he doesn't know if he wants to, so you decide to for him. Pressing a hand against his chest for support, giving him an experimental roll that receives a deep breath, "That's it."

"Look good like this." Cool metal squeezes your left breast with his admittance as your hips finally find their rhythm.

Bucky flesh hand follow the lines of your stomach, over the roundness of your breast grab ahold of the posterior aspect of your deltoid, the other cool one is digging dents into the skin of your hip as another skillful roll of your hips has his head rolling back onto the ground.

His mouth hangs open, soft praises filling the air.

You're so good to me.

That's it honey, feel so good.

Eyes squeezed shut as small, sloppy kisses are felt against his neck. A set of teeth digging into the skin and something snaps. A snarl with teeth, fangs on full display as he uses his hand placement as an advantage to turn the pair of you. He pulls out with a hiss, angry and red but the hand against your back guides you to lay on your stomach. With a gentle but meaningful push pressing your cheek to the floor and keeps it there, his other hand curling around your hips to pull them towards him.

Without a word he splits you open again, easing himself until you're a withering mess, under the mercy of his hand which keeps your head grounded, the surface of the floor cool on contrast with the skin of your cheek. He doesn't waste any time, pulling out before trusting so deep you feel him in your stomach.

It doesn't stop, over and over again. Every ounce of frustration is felt as he sheths every inch of himself inside you. Brutal, almost painful but clouds your mind, barely can speak as his hips snap against your own.

He's taking it out on you, so lost in his pleasure he's temperily blind from why this even started in the first place, all he can concentrate on his how good and right you feel, the sound of your arousal every time he trusts into you, the way his name falls from your lips.

A small ache starts to form from the repeated force on your ischial but it's burns so good as he continues to split you open.

"Fuck..." He moans, "So good, sweetheart."

His hips are faultering and slowly loosing rhythm as he hears his end, the vibranium fingers squeeze your ass before pulling away and coming down to hard you see black and feel the rush of blood to that area makes you dizzy.

It's a sharp, searing heat that fills your stomach. Under his mercy as he claims you his, teeth scrape but his lips follow behind to soothe. A hand cups the back of your neck, pulling you towards him but his hips never stop, he's filling you with a brutal pace as your back makes contact with his swollen chest.

The hand wraps around the front now, squeezing the tender area of your neck and you're a mess, feeling his other hand press down on the bundle of nerves that makes you squeal, begging for more.

Arousal coats your legs, thank God he's holding you up because they're shaking, unsteady as he bottoms out inside you again. The bulbous head stretching you to no return, he changed the angle by flexing an knee for more force and you're done for.

Teeth nipping your ear, down the sensative skin of your neck that's already covered with all his love bites, soothing them with the warm surface of his tongue. Heavy breathing in your ear all you could hear as all your other sense dull out, falling limp in his arms.

It's numbing the way the orgasm hits you, blinding and all you can feel is a red hot release that bubbles your chest, makes you cry out for him. All you can hear is a moan in your ear, the "Good girl," as Bucky nears his end.

Almost seconds later, hips still against your ass, pressing harshly as white spurts coat your walls and follow with a small kiss against your shoulder.

He's breathing heavy, slowly lowering both of you on the floor but doesn't dare pull out, instead pulls you close to his chest, sensative and twitching.

He's breathless, but looking over your shoulder to see the closed mouth smile with an appearance of a dimple. "Thank you, baby doll. Feel better already."

His tongue clicks at the imprint of his hand on your cheek, red and on fire but due to the post organism haze you barely felt it. The outline of his fingers starting to rise off the skin, it would be there for a while. "I'm sorry." An apologetic kiss touches your arm, follows a trail up and to your back, soft breath fans your neck, "I was too rough, took it out on you."

Sleepily shaking your head with a goofy grin, "Was good, like it."

A hand cups your head, lifting it front the hard floor to place a pillow there and gently placing it there. The other rubs soothing circular motions over your ass check, with a small frown.

"Bucky, it's okay. I'm fine."

"Don't like hurting you, was too rough." He argues, guilt creeping at his shoulders, weighing then down aa avoids eye contact.

"I liked it." Despite your sore extremities you turn to face him, one hand comes up to cup his cheek, rub the high globes of his face and vibranium soon follows to cover yours. "You were not too rough, in fact, wanna give me a matching one on the other side?"

[itsthestutterforme]

Becoming Mine (Vincenzo)

Summary: Y/N is working with Vincenzo and a loyal ally from Italy. Han seok captures her and tortures her for information. She holds out longer than he hoped and wants her loyalty for himself.//SMUT WARNING, MINORS DNI

--

Jang Hanseok sent Ms. Choi to get her hands dirty and oversee the torture of Y/N for information. Y/N and Vincenzo grew up in the Mafia together. They taught each other everything.

He has asked Y/N for help with taking down Babel and she said yes without any questions asked. And now she has to suffer the consequences of loyalty.

First they started with electrocution. They tied her to a metal chair and put spark plugs on the back side of the chair. They would send a jolt, each longer than the last. "Go to hell!" She yells at Ms. Choi after the jolt that lasted 20 seconds.

Then they moved on to cutting with the thinnest daggers. Death by a thousand cuts, she always thought it was a cliche thing to use. But hey, to each their own torture method.

Her hair sticks to her forehead and the sides of her neck as he digs his knife across her collar bone. "Fuck!"

Ms. Choi walks into Hanseok's office with a grimace. "What's wrong?" "She's not breaking. She's a lot stronger than I thought." Ms. Choi says, linking her hands behind her back. Hanseok stands from his chair and rounds the desk.

"What tactics have you used?" He asks. "Electrocution, cutting, waterboarding, fire and even bludgeoning and she still tells me to go to hell." Choi rambles.

"I could use someone of her loyalty," Hanseok states. "I want to meet her," he adds. "With all due respect, sir, she'll never agree to that. She's endure days of torture for Vincenzo, she isn't going to give him up or betray him. She's willing to risk her life for him." "Will you risk your life for me?" He asks, searching her face for a response.

"I'll kill anyone you tell me to, sir," "That didn't answer my question. I still want to see her." He says. Ms. Choi drives him to the warehouse where they keep Y/N. She was currently unconscious from the pain she has endured. Hanseok's face grimaced and he says, "You took get your hands dirty a little too literally."

Y/N gasped as she regain consciousness and she groaned softly. She looked up to see Jang Hanseok and he smiles. "Who the hell are you?" She asked before spitting out some blood in her mouth. "Hopefully, I'll be your new boss." He says, stuffing his hands in his pockets. "In your dreams, tough guy." She snarks.

A man punches her across the face and she looked at him with pure annihilation and vexation. That look gave Hanseok butterflies in his stomach. The feeling was beyond the norm and he had no idea what the origin was. She opened her mouth to say something else but Hanseok intercepted.

"Touch her again, and I'll have you thrown off a building." He threatens. Hanseok watched as the man stepped away from her. "You, cut her loose," He adds, pointing to another man.

"Sir, are you sure about this?" Choi asked and he didn't answer. She was cut free and the first thing Y/N grabs is the man's throat before breaking it.

Another man came at her and she ducked under the punch before punching him twice in his armpit before punching his throat. She limps over to the table where her weapons were and grabbed her smaller knives.

She tossed them in the air and within seconds, three men dropped dead with the knives in their skulls. Which only left Ms. Choi and Jang Hanseok.

She grabs a gun from one of the corpses and aimed it at them. "Tell me why I shouldn't kill you both," "Do that and my men sets that entire plaza on fire with everyone inside."

"I'm calling your bluff lady, you're just trying to save your ass because you know that I'll put bullet in your head without blinking," she says as she cocks the gun and applies steady pressure on trigger.

"Wa-" she pulls the trigger and sends a bullet straight through Ms. Choi's head. Hanseok chuckles wryly before saying, "Now I'm in need of a new lawyer and strategist," he says, his hands still stuffed in his pockets.

"Who are you?" "The CEO of Babel," he answers nonchalantly. "So you're the one who started all this,"

"Well I can't take all the credit. She had her fair share," he says, referencing to Ms. Choi. Red dots appear on Y/N chest and she notices. "I have this place surrounded. One move to shoot me and you'll get shot to pieces. Just take the easy way and work for me. It'll be a lot of fun." "Right, like killing innocent people is fun,"

"It seems like you enjoy killing people." "Only those who deserve it," she snaps. "Regardless of your intentions, my guys wills drop you before you can fire. Question is, do you want to live and be treated like a queen?"

She doesn't respond and he adds, "Or I can kill both you and your mother. She loves to visit a little shop in.. Siena, right? What's it's called again?"

Her grip tightens on the gun before tossing it across the room. "Kill her and I promise to kill you and every single one of your sponsors," "Looks like you and I have more in common than we thought. Come on, let's get you cleaned up." He walks out of the warehouse and she hesitantly follows.

Y/N's POV

You sigh softly as you stepping into the cold, crisp in contrast of the warm, misty air in bathroom. You had pulled your hair into a loose ponytail before you put on Hanseok's shorts and t-shirt. You hate to say it, but his clothes were extremely comfortable. He promised to take me out shopping tomorrow for clothes.

"I didn't know what you liked so I bought everything," he says, referencing to the various plates of food on the kitchen counter. Your eyes settle on kimchi jiagae and you make your way over to the table.

You a grab a few bowls to try some of the kimchi jiagae, bulgogi, dakdoritgang, dakgangjeong and mixed rice. You set them on the tray sit on the pillow he prepared for you.

"You like spicy food, huh?" He says and you nod. "Yeah, my brother likes spicy food too." You wait until he comes back with his tray of food to dig in. You hum lowly as you eat your bulgogi and you feel a hand touch my chin. You pull away and look at him with confused.

"What the hell are you doing?" "I'm sorry, I just.. you look.. you're beautiful," "If you think that you can someone convince me into sleeping with you, you have another thing coming,"

"What? I can't appreciate your beauty without something in return?" He asks innocently. "Hell no," you sneer. He chuckles before saying, "I'm going to have some fun with you."

Over the next few weeks, he has bought you a whole new wardrobe, shoes and jewelry. He's even made sure my hair and nails are done with complementary spa days.

He's been pampering you ever since you were a part of his life. You've been enjoying it but you've developed a sense of waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It also raises questions. Why did he choose you? How long will this pampering thing last? Is your mom still held hostage? What is he planning on doing with Vincenzo?

"Hey, kitten." You roll your eyes at his new pet name for you. You have no idea where he got it from because you are nothing like a kitten. You were playful or adventurous, but you were high maintenance.

"How many times do I have to tell.." you trail off as you see him in a light blue three piece suit with white leather shoes. His hair was combed to the side with gel and you could smell his cologne from where you sat.

"Why are you dressed like that?" "Do you like it?" He say, nearing you slowly. "No," you lie and he smiles at you. "You sure about that?" He leans his hands on either side of you and ducked his head to be at your eye level. "I bought you a matching dress. Get dressed, we leave in an hour."

He nudges his nose against yours before leaving the room and leaving you hot and bothered. Ever since you walked in on him lifting weights without his shirt, your mind came up with various, filthy scenarios that made your panties soaked.

You stand up from the chair and walked into the bedroom to see a goregous silk, light blue dress with diamond seam around the midrange of the stomach.

You take a shower and apply your favorite lotion and perfume before you slide on the dress. You latch on the sparkly, light blue heels. You put on your robe and sit down to apply some foundation, highlight and mascara on to your face.

You were just about to clip your hair up and leave a few curls out but you hear Hanseok say, "Leave your hair down." You look at him through the mirror to see him leaning his arm on the door frame, pulling his dress shirt taught around his solid biceps. He eyes you with a soft smile on his face. "You look beautiful," he says as he nears you once again.

"I know." You stand up and meet him half way across the room. "Shall we?" He says , offering you his arm. "Let's just get this night over with,"

**

You two return at one in the morning and you were infuriated. He spent the whole night flirting with random women at the gala. "You make no sense to me, Jang Hanseok." You say, taking off your earring and tossing them on the dresser.

"What makes you say that?" He asks, sitting on the bed to take off his shoes. "You pamper me with all these gifts, clothes, jewelry to convince me to stay in your life and then you spend the entire night flirting with every one you could lay your eyes on." You snap.

He takes off his vest with a sigh and loosens his tie. "I wanted to see if you cared. Cared about me and my attention." "Well, do you?" He adds. "If I didn't care, do you think I would have said anything?" You snap.

He grabs the back of your neck and pulls you inches away from his face. He tightens his grip and says through gritted teeth, "I've had enough of your attitude, just answer the question."

"I just did." His fingers dig into you neck enough to cause discomfort but not enough to break skin. "Do you care about me?" He asks. "Unfortunately, yes." "Why unfortunately?" "It only makes it harder to-" "

"To betray me?" You push his hand away and say, "What the hell makes you think of something like that? I was going to say it makes it harder to say no but you always think everyone is out to get you. It should be me asking the qu-"

He stops your rant by slamming his lips on yours. One hand rests on the back of your head and the other smooths over the dip of your back.

Your fingers work on unbuttoning his shirt as you walk him onto the bed. He sits on the edge and pulls you into his lap. You pull his shirt off his shoulder and leave kisses up his chest in it's wake.

He moans softly and you could feel his hard on press against your inner thigh. You tug the rest of his shirt off and push his back on the bed. You buck your hips against him and a soft whine leaves his lips.

You quiet him by tenderly biting down on his bottom lip. His lips latched onto yours and presses your core harder against him.

He pulls your hair gently to evade your attention from his lips. He rolls you on you stomach and stands. "Han seok, what are you-" he rips the dress open from the back, making you yell out in surprise.

"Damn it, I liked that dress." "There's plenty more where that came from kitten," he smooths his hands up the back of your legs and squeezes your ass.

You pull off the rest of your mangled dress, leaving you in your white lace set. "And don't you dare rip-" he rips the lace underwear in two and pulls you so your knees are on the edge of the bed. "I'm going to kill you, Han seok."

"I've been wanting to get a taste of you since I set my eyes on you." You let out a squeak when you feel his hot breath agaisnt your core.

You've never been in the position before so you have no idea what the expect. He licks up the stripe with slow, deep licks, each lick lasting longer on your clit. "Oh God," you grip the sheets with a white knuckle grip when he curls his tongue along the upper wall and caresses a g-spot. Your legs started to shake and loud moans leave your lips when he slips in two fingers and curled them hard.

You tried crawling away from him, feeling overwhelmed of the pleasure but he holds you back by your thighs. With a few more licks, you release yourself on his tongue and he hums with satisfaction.

"You taste a lot better than I thought, baby." Your body already started to twitch and you could tell that this was going to be a long night.

You roll onto your back and chills roll down your spine when you see him licking your juices off of his fingers. Pushing yourself backwards, he pulls you closer to him by your ankles. "Han seok, please. It's too much."

"You're doing great, kitten. Just relax and let it wash over you." He says softly, pecking your lips before settling himself between your legs once again.

He spreads your legs wide before he sucks on your clit harder and faster than the first time, sending shock waves through your body. "Fuck! Oh my God!"

Looking down at him, he locks eyes with you and he completely devours your bundle of folds. He alternate between licking side to side and up and down with a curl of his tongue.

Your back arches and stars cloud your vision as you come down from your second high. He pulls away from you with his lower face covered in your juices. "Come here," he lifts your trembling body and dropping it into his lap. He smooths his hands over your ass before unbuckling his dress pants.

He pulls down his boxers and his erection stands up tall, making your whimper. He's going to destroy you. "I'll be gentle," he whispers, lifting your chin to meet his gaze.

You nod your head in agreement and lines himself up at your entrance. Throwing your head back as your walls expand and contract around him. You wrap your arms around him and bury your face into his neck and he bounces you in his lap.

Time slows a few seconds when you meet his gaze. "Oh God," you chant as the knot intensified in your stomach. "I'm close, Han seok."

His lips locked with yours and your boys jolts forward when his thumb rubs hard circles on your clit. Your entire body spasms as he cums inside of you but he continued to rub circles until you came.

He stayed buried inside of you while you sat in his lap as you both catches your breaths. Resting his forehead against yours, he says, "I love you. You believe me what I say that, right?"

You nod and holds the sides of your face. "Say it," "I love you," "Good girl," he pulls out of you and slides you both under the covers.

You lay directly ontop of him with a thin sheet covering the both of you, sighing as he draws circles on your back.

[melancholyshadow]

a monday in new york city || b. barnes

one & two 

summary: another date with bucky, but this time its in new york city with some familar faces. 

pairing: bucky barnes x female!librarian!reader

warnings: some ANNOYING as cliches that i just love, swearing 

an: okay so i know its been a week, but hey i’ve been busy! this series is going to have one more part! and it’s going to be spicy, but that is gonna take awhile because it takes a lot for me to write spicy stuff. also, this series doesn’t take place in a specific part of the mcu timeline, i just pick the characters i want and throw them together. the next part of my steve series should be out soon, like within the next couple days! enjoy!!! <3

“You should meet me in New York City tomorrow.” 

You and Bucky were talking on the phone, no Facetime or Skype, because this man still had a flip phone. After knowing about his history, this did not surprise you. Funnily enough, you didn’t actually know he had a phone until about two weeks ago. You proceeded to laugh at him for about thirty minutes when he pulled out the phone. It had been almost three months since he walked into your library for the first time. And the two of you had spent nearly everyday together, of course, except for those days he was gone on ‘obligations.’ 

“Like a date?” You asked, rolling onto your stomach, and moving the phone from between your ear and shoulder and onto your pillow. You heard him chuckle, and your cheeks warmed up. “We could call it that.” It was a Sunday night, and tomorrow was a holiday so the library would be closed, and for once, you had a day off. And you were over the moon about spending it with Bucky. 

“What do you have in mind?” You said, propping your head up on the palms of your hands. “Well, before I ask you, promise me you won’t freak out.” This peaked your interest. “Well what is it?” You pushed, “Promise me, first.” He was being stubborn. “Fine.” You sighed. “Well, the Starks are throwing a party tomorrow night…” He started, The Starks..? Like Tony and Pepper Stark? “...for our little group and some S.H.I.E.L.D agents, and he said I had a plus one, so of course, I want to take you.”

You were speechless, and you could feel the nerves creeping up from your stomach, all the way up to your throat. “Hello?” He asked, making sure you were still there. “Yeah, yeah, I’m still here. Just processing.” You muttered, now completely sat up in your bed. There were a few more moments of silence, then you spoke. “So you want me to go to a party thrown by Tony and Pepper Stark, and not only that, but a Stark party that will be mostly all your superhero friends?” You asked more rhetorically than anything else. “Yes.” He said confidently, which for a moment made your nerves waiver, but only for a couple seconds. 

“If it’s any consolation, I really want you to come, and everyone really wants to meet you.” Everyone? Who is ‘everyone’..? Like the Avengers? They knew about you? Holy shit. You couldn’t think about that right now though. You broke it down in your head, trying to simplify it. Bucky really wanted you to go, and you really didn’t have a reason to say no, other than being very anxious about the whole thing. “You know what, sure.” You were finally able to get out the words. “Wait, really?” He asked excitedly. That made you feel good, that he was so excited for you to meet his friends. 

He gave you all the details, adding to the nerves creeping up your throat. “I’m gonna get some sleep.” Bucky muttered at around 11, which was late for him. “I probably should too.” You said with a yawn. “Goodnight, Doll.” He said in a raspy tone, followed by him yawning as well. “Goodnight, Buck.” You said sleepily, about to hang up the phone, but then he spoke again. “And doll, I promise you won’t regret saying yes.” And with that, the phone line went dead. 

It was a restless night, you tossed and turned for a couple hours, thinking about all the ways you could fuck up on this date. The last time you checked the clock it was just after one in the morning. When you did finally wake up, the sun was beaming straight into your bedroom. Warming up the room around you, you felt a thin layer of sweat covering your body, but that honestly could have been from the nerves. The first thing you did was grab your phone, and check if you had any text from Bucky, and you did. 

It was a simple ‘good morning, doll,’ the same text he’s sent you every morning since you guys traded phone numbers. You sent him a similar text back, and rubbed the remaining sleep from your eyes. After contemplating staying in bed for awhile longer, you decided against it and figured you could start the day, as it was already almost ten in the morning. 

After a warm shower, which consisted mostly of shaving and washing your hair, you decided to make a quick breakfast. While you ate, you contemplated on what to wear. Bucky said it was more on the fancier side. You had a couple ‘fancier’ options, but not a closet full. Breakfast was done and dishes were clean, so now it was time to try on all your options. By the end of you trying on almost everything in your closet, you decided to keep it simple but elegant. It was a black satin slip dress that fell right above your knee, and the shoes were a pop of color and definitely brought the outfit together. 

As you pulled into the parking lot of the hotel, you felt those same nerves creeping up the back of your throat. The lot was full of cars, but you were able to get a spot closer to the front. This party looked like a lot more than a ‘little group and some S.H.I.E.L.D agents.’ After sending Bucky an ‘I’m here’ text, you gathered your phone and some little extras into your clutch. While you did some last minute touches and repositioning of your hair in your rear-view mirror, there was a small knock on your driver-side window, making your entire body jump, head snapping towards the noise. 

Your eyes landed on Bucky, who was practically doubled over on laughter. After getting in a good laugh, he pulled open your door, giving you a hand to step out more smoothly, which you swatted away and rolled your eyes at him. Once he got a good look at you, his face shifted. The dress you wore accentuate parts of your body that your everyday clothes certainly did

not. And you were not the only one who noticed. You could feel Bucky’s eyes on your as you walked in front of him to navigate through some of the cars. 

Once there was enough room for both of you to walk side-by-side, you felt his metal hand slide along your lower back, coming to rest on your furthest hip. His fingers rested on your hip bone, with each step you took, his hand followed the curve, giving it a small squeeze. “You look amazing, doll.” He whispered into your ear, making a layer of goosebumps cover your arms. “So do you, Buck.”

You were glad you wore black, because of course, so did Bucky. He wore a black undershirt, with a black blazer with leather lapels, and of course black dress pants. The two of you looked like a pair, which you liked. The two of you approached the front door of the hotel, pulling his arm away from your body, making you feel empty. He whisked the door open for you, letting you walk in before him.

The lobby was pretty empty, just a receptionist and a couple security guards standing around. You could hear talking and laughter from behind a couple pairs of closed doors. You followed Bucky towards one of the security guards, who was standing in front of one of the sets of doors.  “She’s with me.” He explained, as the two of you approached him. Those words made you giddy, and you smiled at the man. “Alright, Sergeant Barnes.” The guard said, pushing the door open for both of you. 

“Oh, Sergeant Barnes, huh?” You joked, wrapping one of your arms around his metal bicep. He tensed up a bit, but then laughed, “I like the way you say that.” Then added a wink. You looked away from Bucky, and towards the crowded, very crowded, room. Bucky definitely underestimated the amount of people would be here, but it was a Stark party after all, so you weren’t surprised. Bucky and you walked towards the bar, taking a seat, which you were thankful for, your feet already killing you. 

The two of you spoke for awhile, sipping on your drinks. You weren’t sure why Bucky drank, since he physically could not get drunk. But if the drinks were free, you would be drinking too. “Hey Buck, there you are.” A man approached you two, placing a hand on Bucky’s back. Both of you turned your head, eyes landing on a familiar face. “You must be (Y/M/N).” He smiled, sticking a hand out for you to shake, so you did so. “Hello, Steve.” You matched his smile. 

After the three of you bantered back and forth for a few moments, Steve spoke again, “Well if you two want to join us, most of us are sitting on the other side of the bar.” He explained pointing to the side of the room. Following the direction of his fingers, you saw a group of some more familiar faces. You knew most of their faces from news articles, but knew their names from Buck’s stories. It was Natasha, Bruce, and Wanda. “Wanna go?” You heard Bucky ask you, placing a hand on your knee. “Of course!” You said, perking up. Going over there was the last thing you wanted to do, because you already knew this was going to be awkward. 

Steve led as Bucky followed him through the crowd, pulling you by your hand. Maneuvering through the people, ‘sorry’ and ‘excuse me’ passing your lips every so often. “I’m back…” Steve said, “...and I brought friends.” His use of the endearing term ‘friend,’ made you lighten up a bit. After some, not so awkward, introductions, they all started talking, and you happily listened. Your stories could never match up to any of theirs, so you didn’t even try. “Do you want another drink?” Bucky asked, noticing your empty glass. “Yeah, sure.” You smiled, he grabbed the glass out of your hands. He left your side, walking to meet the bartender who stood closer to the middle of the bar. 

“So (Y/M/N), has Bucky read every book in your library yet?” Natasha asked, but by the way she emphasized the ‘your’ in her sentence, you couldn’t tell if she was implying an innuendo, but you decided to keep it literal. “Ya’know, he actually tends to stick around the romance section, his favorites are the damsel in distress ones.” You joked, placing the back of your hand on your forehead, closing your eyes like you were fainting. This got a laugh out of the group, making a small bit of confidence grow inside you. “What’re you guys laughing at?” Bucky asked, placing the fresh drink in your hand. “Nothing.” You said, pretending to lock your lips, making the group laugh again.

After a few more drinks, you had stopped feeling so tense and started loosening up. You started talking with Natasha and Wanda, while Buck, still nearby, spoke with Steve and Bruce. The three of you were sharing some of your dating horror stories. That was until the DJ started playing some more upbeat music, Natasha immediately stopped and looked between you and Wanda.

“Do you guys wanna dance?” He asked hopefully, wrapping one of her hands around yours, and Wanda’s, wrist. “Sure!” You exclaimed, which made Wanda agree. The three of you left the bar, making your way to the large dance floor in the middle of the room. There were a good amount of people on the floor, and everyone was in their own worlds. It took you a while to get into it, but when the DJ played a song you knew all the words to, it was over.

The three of you danced in a circle together. You danced similarly to the day Bucky caught you dancing at the library. Eyes shifting from open to closed, hands running up and down your body, hips moving side to side, fingers running through your hair. You felt eyes on you, and you looked towards Bucky. He had a green beer bottle pressed to his lips, not sipping just sitting there, like he was frozen. His eyes followed every curve of your body as it moved. Knowing that he was watching you made you want to move even more, Natasha and Wanda matching your energy level. 

After saying all your goodbyes to everyone, and Natasha drunkenly inviting you to one of her and Wanda’s girls night, Bucky walked you to your car. “You really shouldn’t drive.” He insisted, grabbing the keys you had hanging around your finger. You definitely weren’t drunk, but more like buzzed. “I’m fine.” You insisted, leaning against the side of your car, trying to get any weight off your feet. 

“Stay the night with me.” He inisited, both hands resting on your hips, and his forehead resting on yours. You debated back and forth in your head, well the best you could in your buzzed state. “Fine.” You said, trying to sound reluctant, but you were the opposite, but he couldn’t know that. “But, I need to leave by 7:30 tomorrow morning!” 

The drive was short, no longer than five minutes. “Now don’t make fun of me, as you know, I don’t spend very much time here.” Bucky explained, hand resting on the doorknob of his front door. “Oh shut up, I’m sure it’s fine.” You laughed, placing your hand on his and turning the doorknob. He stepped in first, flipping on the light switch. Your eyes scanned over the viewable part of the apartment,”I was right, you just need to do some major decorating.” 

Bucky walked off as you practically ripped your shoes off your feet, sighing in relief. Leaving the foyer and stepping into the living room, you searched for Bucky and he was standing in the kitchen. So you snuck up behind him, wrapping your arms around his waist. “Hi.” You mumbled, eyes fluttering closed and cheek pressed against his back. “Hey, doll.” He muttered back. 

You felt Bucky raise both his arms, and you heard some shifting, so you assumed he was searching for something in his cabinet. You heard what sounded like a pill bottle, and he shook some of them out into his hand. “Here take these.” He grabbed one of your hands, placing two small, circular pills in your hand. It was some form of Advil, you could tell by the familiar red color. 

Pulling away from him, you placed the pills into your mouth and he handed you a glass of water. “Thanks.” You said, taking a gulp of the water. “But I’m not gonna be hungover.” You insisted, placing the glass into his sink. You could tell he didn’t believe you, but he just smiled.  “Let’s go get you some comfier clothes.” 

“These are not gonna fit.” You called from the other side of the bathroom door. Bucky had given you a shirt and some red flannel pajama pants. The shirt was fine, you wore big shirts quite frequently, but no matter how tight you pulled the drawstring, the pants fell down to your thighs.  You peaked your head out from behind the door, and Bucky was sitting on the edge of the bed. “The shirt is pretty long on me, is it weird if I just don’t wear pants?” You asked him. He shrugged, “I don’t think so, as long as you’re comfortable.” He smiled. You opened the door all the way, and handed him the red pants, and he tossed them on the opposite side of the bed. 

“Well, It’s almost one in the morning, you should get some sleep.” He stood up from the bed and walked towards his closet,“You can have my bed, and I’ll sleep out here.” He pulled out a pillow and a sheet from his closet. “What, don’t wanna sleep with me, Buck? I see how it is.” You giggled, acting like you were upset, and rolling your eyes. 

“No-no, I-Buck, I’m kidding.” You cut him off, laughing at his sudden awkwardness. “I didn’t want to assume.” He finally muttered out. “I guess I don’t mind sharing a bed with you.” Continuing your joke, and slipping under the comforter. Engulfed by the smell of Bucky, which added another level of comfort. He pulled open the dresser once again, grabbing a shirt and some pajama pants, leaving you to go change in the bathroom. 

You scrolled on your phone, setting multiple alarms to make sure you woke up on time tomorrow morning, then placing it on the bedside table. Letting your eyes fall closed, you turned so that your back was towards the bathroom door. Without opening your eyes, you heard the bathroom door open, and then the lights flickered off. 

There was some quiet shuffling and you felt the bed dip beside you. Your eyes reluctantly opened, and you were greeted by the sight of Bucky’s back. Without thinking, you placed your hand on the arm that wasn’t tucked under his body, pulling at it softly. He rolled inward, now facing you. There was a sleepy smile on his face, and he blinked slowly, desperately trying to keep his eyes open. You placed a hand on his face, thumb softly running over the stubble on his cheek. His eyes finally shut, face full of content, the corners of his lips still upturned. Wiggling closer to him, “If we cuddled a little bit, I won’t tell if you don’t.” You said, letting some excess air out of your nose, as a laugh. “I know we aren’t dating, but…” Your voice trailing off.

“Yeah, about that…”

[1magine-engine]

Obey Me: MC is Hiding Something

When MC first awakens in the council room no one thinks much of them. They’re sitting there shivering like a dog left out in the rain and refuses to meet anyone’s eyes.

Lucifer starts to wonder what in devil’s name made you a good candidate for this exchange program. You barely had enough courage to answer when Lord Diavolo welcomed you so graciously, much less look dignified in any way.

Something odd he does observe though is, despite your silence and obvious terror, you seemed to accept the concepts of a Devildom and of RAD and him and his brother very easily or maybe you were just nodding along insipidly.

Mammon’s opinion of you is even lower. He already hated the idea of having to watch and make sure some stupid human didn’t get themselves killed on their first week. Damn it! That wasn’t his job! They can’t even carry a conversation, always just staring and watching everybody.

The human doesnt seem to have any kind of motivations or idea as to what they wanna do. Lucifer will never know if he leaves you alone at school for a while considering you’ve found your friends group with the other exchange students. And at home he sees no problem with letting you go off for just an hour or two. All you really do is walk around and examine the rooms and grounds. Maybe you’re an architecture freak or something.

Leviathan barely pays you any mind when you arrive, not like he ever has the chance to, being that he never leaves his room outside of going to class. But during breakfast he does notice how interested you seemed in the game console he’s playing on. And for a moment he wonders if you’re a gamer or an otaku too

but no, ugh you’re just some normie. You watch Asmo obsess over his compact mirror and Satan over whatever book he’s holding just the same. And you’re conversation is shit like Mammon said. Listless and lacking enthusiasm. But he doesnt stop you when you watch over his shoulder when he plays.

Satan doesn’t have a problem with you. That said, he doesn’t particularly like you. But he can respect how much time you seem to spend in the library, and how many books you borrow about the devildom and kinds of demons. It made sense, you wanted to know the kind of creatures you were surrounded by.

he does wonder though, why one day you seem to be borrowing a lot of Solomon’s books and Solomon’s time as well. But then again, that makes sense too, you were both human after all. Maybe you would stop flinching and get even a little more comortable with someone your race around. When one of his tomes disappear, he interrogates Mammon because of course, it’s Mammon.

Asmo likes your style. It’s not particularly glamorous or eye-catching but it matches your aesthetic. He especially admired your choices in acessories. The amulet you’re always wearing is so pretty and he swears sometimes it almost glows. And your rings were peak Devildom fashion, sharp, edgy iron designs. But he especially adored the silver spike earring you wore.

He was both delighted and smug that he was the first one to get a little closer to you. But of course, how could you resist! You even complimented the perfume he was wearing and asked where he got it. And he directed you to his favorite oils and essences shop that supplied products and ingredients from every realm. And while applying some to your wrist he catches a glimpse of a tattoo peeking out from under your sleeve but you pull your hand away, bashful. Oh, he’ll get you to show him someday. Heehee.

Beel is curious how a human can eat so much. He’s been told human athletes apparently eat a lot to maintain muscle mass and strength and the like but looking at you, you didn’t seem the type to do anything strenuous. Except he does notice that when a demon bumps you in the hall, you’re not hurt or thrown off despite the size difference. And when you’re purposely knocked into by someone else, your reaction is fast, pivoting out of the way and behind the demon and you almost look like...

Nah. You weren’t going to attack him, you began to cower and apologize again and again until Mammon had to drag you way before it got any more embarrassing. The next time you pique his interest is at the gym in the house. You always make sure to go at a time when there isn’t anyone else and he happened to go after you. But it couldn’t have been you that just used that machine. Were you really capable of lifting that much?

Luke and Simeon are sympathetic, Simeon understands the discomfort and the adjustment and answers any questions you have about the brothers and how not to piss them off or placate them if ever you did make them angry. He answers your questions about RAD and the program but does wonder. Wherever did you get an angel relic like the one hanging from your ear?

Luke says you shouldn’t be afraid of those no good demons, if anything happens you can run to Purgatory Hall and they’ll help. He promises. He likes your company and starts up baking with you, teaching dishes and pastries. He tells you a lot about Michael and lets slip things about Lucifer and the brothers back when they were still angels. You don’t push him on the subjects but you do seem pretty interested.

it all came together, very easily. First the lights, Leviathan’s screams echo in the halls as he laments not having saved soon enough. Asmodeus’ whining about losing such good selfie lighting came next and both come out into the hall, yelling for their older brother. “Lucifer!”

If not for that, Lucifer probably wouldn’t have noticed, having been locked up in his firelit office since dinner was over. Heaving a sigh he gets up. All of the yelling told him the lights were out so how could he have expected the brilliant flash of white that burned his eyes when he opened his door. He stumbles, leaning on the door frame for support as footfalls race down the hall.

He growls, feeling his wings and horns materialize but something isn’t right. His vision doesn’t return and his skin starts to burn. In the air he catches the faintest scent of something he hasn’t smelled in a long time. Holy oil.

When the little light in the fridge fades, Beel thinks he may have fucked up. But then it turns out the whole house is out so it must just be some prank. He keeps eating, uncaring whether or not he identifies what it is he’s shoveling into his mouth. Then he smells it.

once upon a time he’d caught Luke with some kind of cookies from the celestial realm. And they were some of the best cookies he’d ever had in his existence. He could never forget that smell, so when it wafts through the air coming from the main hall, he follows. Drool begins to gather beneath his tongue.

He misses the sharp, metallic scent drifting beneath it.

Satan’s vexation spikes when his reading light goes out and his peace and quiet is distrubed by his idiot brothers. Mammon probably tried to turn the power off in Levi’s room to get him out so he can sneak in and steal his stuff again. But then Asmo starts yelling, and one cry from Lucifer rattles his bones.

It’s enough to get him on his feet. But what draws a gasp from him is the flash of lightning that gives him his sight for a moment. White lightning, an impossibility in the devildom’s ever red tinged sky. He goes to the window, knocking a stack of tomes over and unlatches it. But it doesn’t budge. Using the light on his D.D.D. he tries again but it just won’t open.

Outside Satan’s door heavy footsteps, thump along in a slow rhythm. Satan races to the door and Beel is there trudging along the carpet like a zombie, his nose perched in the air.

“Beel?! What the-? What are you doing?”

“Hey what’s the big idea!? Where are you guys!? Who’s doing that weird singing?!”

Mammon calls out into the mansions, just as confused as everyone else. Satan’s brows furrow; he didn’t cause this, then. He’s about to answer but Mammon yelps, and a resounding thwack has Satan grab Beel, and race towards the sound, almost stumbling over each other’s feet in the dark. They’re only guide is the ocassional flash of white and the sound of chanting growing louder as they grow near.

It is still pitch black but years of experience and spatial awareness tells him they’re in the foyer. Satan ventures out, almost tripping over something on the ground; it’s Mammon. He lays at the top of the steps, passed out. Satan is about to shake him awake when Leviathan and Asmo come out of a hall holding up Lucifer between them. Another flash. Lucifer’s demon form flickers in and out, smoke rising from his blistering skin. Satan freezes and Beel picks up Mammon in his arms.

“Satan! What the hell is going on!?” Levi calls out into the dark over the spell.

The chanting stops. So does the lightning and they’re plunged into complete darkness. They hear the sound of plastic and a baggie hits Beelzebub square in the chest, landing on Mammon’s stomach. “Cookies?”

He smells that first but then they recognise the other scent prominent in the air as blood.

Human blood.

“Wait, where’s MC?!” Asmo’s voice comes from the black. “Are they trapped somewhere?”

Someone laughs.

“Oh, you don’t need to worry about that.”

Lightning flashes again, bathing the foyer in glaring white. It’s only for a moment but their eyes are quick enough. It becomes clear where the stench of blood was coming from. “After all, I’m not trapped in here with you...”

Your eyes seem to glow, vacant of whatever fear or trepidation you’ve deceived them with for weeks. In your hand is the earring Asmo admired so much, the silver tip dripping red. At your side, your palm is sliced open, already clotting as you’ve used all you needed for the seal activating the devil’s trap around the entire house. Your sleeves are pushed up to the elbows the sigils and signs inked into your skin tasting air again after so long. As you place your hand on the seal they come alight. Your lips curl over your teeth.

“You’re trapped in here....with me.”

Solomon knows a demon slayer when he sees one. And he tells you right off the bat whatever you’re planning it isn’t a good idea. You’re outnumbered and overpowered by them.

but then he sees otherworldly magic light up the skies and decides maybe it’s a good time to visit the House of Lamentations.

Part 2

[thornedrose44]

It's Funny Right Up Until It's Not

Read on AO3

It's funny because it's harmless…

It's funny because it's never a big deal…

It's funny because it's forgotten by the next day…

It's funny because she's fine.

She's always fine…

Until… she’s not...

It's funny right up until there's a growing pool of blood.

It's funny right up until Kara's hands just can't seem to stem the flow.

It's funny right up until Kara can't get her to open her eyes no matter how much she screams.

It's funny right up until the moment Kara realises Lena might actually die this time…

*****

Lena always said she would start to worry if she didn't have an assassination attempt at least once a week, claiming she would phone her enemies to check that they were all still kicking - concerned they might have passed away or even worse… lost interest.

Lena was the one that joked about it from the start, her dark-edged humour and flair for the dramatic finding their niche with the topic of the failed attempts on her life.

Alex jumped in next - her humour similar to the youngest Luthor and her affection for Lena not high enough for her to find the subject of Lena’s death off putting like she would with anyone else. Her amusement at the failed attempts taking a harsher edge towards Lena than necessary. "You know why they keep missing you? You run so stupidly that logical aiming no longer applies."

Kara could chart Alex and Lena’s friendship by how the jokes changed. How Lena was no longer the punchline but the assassins, how they were idiotic for daring to take on Lena, "I mean seriously! What sane being in the known universe would think: 'I know that Lena Luthor stopped an alien invasion, is probably the smartest person on the planet and is practically a sharpshooter but me and my crappy store bought pistol will be more than enough to take her on'."

Alex's shift into more positive banter led the way for the rest of the Superfriends to get in on the action. They placed bets on when the next attempt would come. They would reminisce about the most ridiculous attempts so far - the spiderman impersonator that had used suction cup gloves to slowly climb the side of L-Corp was a particular favourite, exhausting themselves halfway up and crying for Supergirl to save him.

It became one of the most regular jokes amongst them, an old and familiar friend that they could fall back on and break the ice with when the need arrived.

Kara had hated it to start with. Had hated Lena's nonchalance and the twinkle of mirth in her eyes after her latest would-be assassin was carted away in handcuffs. Had hated Lena’s morbid humour. Had hated the bullying disguised as playful banter that Alex had inflicted on her best friend who always shook it off far too lightly. Had hated how it became a comfortable staple amongst her friends.

But… with every failed attempt that Lena walked away from without a scratch… Kara's hatred reduced. She started to laugh at the jokes and appreciate the compliments that Alex now tucked into her banter (each one an apology for those that had cruelly come before). She started to engage in the bets and fondly roll her eyes in faux exasperation when she would find Lena working away even as they swept up the glass from the latest attacker.

And once the Supergirl secret was out, their friendship more solid than ever, Kara finally poked fun as well.

It was funny because Lena was never hurt.

It was funny because Supergirl would always, always, always be there to save her in the nick of time.

It was funny right up until Supergirl was too late.

*****

Kara had been in the training room at the time, her powers dampened by the green suffused walls. She hadn’t heard the ringing from the watch calling - screaming out - for help. She hadn’t heard the gunshots. The skyrocketing heartbeat.

She hadn’t heard any of it.

Alex had insisted, after assessing Kara’s technique to be a little lazy in a fight the day prior, that they re-sharpen her skills in the training room. The sisters had spent the morning laughing between thrown punches; exhausting themselves and bickering good-naturedly. Kara had made Alex swear that they would be finished before eleven, not wanting to be late to her standing brunch with Lena that she always looked forward to.

It should be noted that it takes Kara a minute to somewhat recharge in the morning light streaming through the DEO’s windows on the mezzanine balcony after her training sessions. It was something Alex and Lena had spent a significant amount of time working out, taking into consideration the kryptonite strength in the training room and Kara’s typical sunlight absorption rate - neither liking the idea of Kara powerless for an extended amount of time.

So... it took a minute.

A full minute spent talking to Alex about… Kara wouldn’t even remember after everything that happened next.

She would, however, remember the moment when her super-hearing kicked back in and she was overwhelmed by the high pitched warble from Lena’s watch, followed by the sound of Lena’s barely there breath and thready heartbeat.

Kara won’t remember taking off so violently that Alex was thrown back several feet. She won’t remember smashing through the DEO’s ceiling nor the sonic boom that accompanied her flight and shattered hundreds of windows.

She won’t remember landing with such ferocity the entirety of L-Corp shook, matching the tremble running through her body.

She will, however, always remember the growing pool of blood and how she dissociated at the sight of it. Some strange voice in her head whispering that it must simply be red wine that had slipped through Lena’s fingers. She’d always liked wine, the voice would soothe, a particular cabernet with a price tag that would make Kara’s eyes water, that’s all it was.

She needed it to be wine.

It didn’t matter that the puddle - lake, ocean - was more than a single bottle’s worth.

It didn’t matter that Lena only drank wine with others, her solitary drink of preference being whiskey.

It didn’t matter that Kara had never seen Lena’s elegant fingers ever let a single drop fall from her glass, let alone an entire bottle.

It didn’t matter because it could not be blood.

Lena doesn’t bleed, not that much, not ever.

Because Lena was always fine. Kara was always there on time.

Always.

The next thing that would be forever ingrained in Kara’s memory, seared into her mind’s eye like burnt pixels exposed to the same image endlessly - a ghost overlapping everything else - was Lena’s body taking centre stage on the red carpet of her own creation.

Lena, pale beyond comparison, curled into a small ball, single arm stretched out and stained crimson. She was wearing Kara’s favourite dress - green with a white printed flower design - she had worn it to their first brunch after they had reconciled. It was associated with hope, reunion and new starts. It complemented Lena’s green eyes making them sparkle and twinkle even more when the light streaming through the little restaurant’s window had hit them at just the right angle.

Lena’s cheeks had flushed a pleased pink, ears burning a warm red when Kara had stuttered out a compliment that day. That brunch had settled something between them, ensured they walked with linked hands towards their new future rather than struggling on different paths that occasionally converged.

Now it was stained red. Splattered almost beyond recognition.

Kara won’t remember crying or screaming for Lena to wake up. She only knows she must have done it when she looked in the mirror hours later to find her cheeks marked with semi-permanent tear tracks whilst her throat ached from overuse.

She won’t remember flying Lena so carefully and tenderly to the DEO.

She won’t remember landing.

She won’t remember the expressions of utter devastation on Alex, Brainy, Nia and J’onn’s faces.

She won’t remember Alex having to shove her away so that she and the medical team can get to Lena.

She won’t remember Brainy and J’onn forcibly restraining her.

She will remember the sound of Lena’s heart stopping for thirty seconds and feeling like the whole world had ended.

*****

The space was filled to the brim with loved ones that couldn’t bear the idea of leaving whilst the medical staff fought to save Lena’s life

Brainy and Nia were sat huddled together against one wall, Nia running a calm hand down Brainy’s ramrod straight back. J'onn stood in the corner, observant gaze sweeping protectively over everyone, ready to swing into action at the slightest indication someone required him. Sam and Ruby - who had flown over using the L-Corp jet the second they had heard - were curled up on one of the two benches, Ruby’s soft cries muffled against Sam’s curled shoulder. Kelly, meanwhile, was hovering nearby, flitting between people, providing endless comfort and support.

It was Kelly that had gently tugged Kara to the bathroom and washed away the crimson marking her skin and brought her a change of clothes, telling her in gentle tones that she didn’t need to be Supergirl in this situation.

It was permission to fall apart, to just be the best friend and not the hero.

Kara didn’t know she needed that until she finally realised no one had touched her since she had brought Lena in, that she hadn’t sat down or rested either. Her stiff posture and clenched jaw warding off all those that wished to provide comfort.

The second permission was granted to her, Kara immediately sought out her adoptive mother, who had just arrived, and collapsed into her arms, willingly breaking down and begging between sobs for Lena to be okay.

Kara and Eliza took up the other bench - mirror images of Sam and Ruby - Eliza, intermittently, pressing reassuring kisses to Kara’s head as they waited and waited and waited.

“She’s stable.” Alex announced with little ceremony as she stepped into the room, cutting right to the chase knowing a delay of any kind would not be appreciated by those sitting in the makeshift waiting room/DEO hallway. There was an instant audible expulsion of air that accompanied the sheer relief of the room's occupants.

Kara, however, didn’t sigh in relief, didn’t whisper a thank you to any deity listening, instead she got to her feet and approached Alex, desperation clear in her eyes and in the shake of her hands. “Can I see her?”

Alex blinked taken aback by the suddenness of the request but not the request itself, “Kara, she’s-”

“Please.” Kara begged, blue eyes pleading, legs shaking, ready to drop to her knees in supplication if need be.

“Kara, I don’t-” Alex murmured, looking quickly over at Eliza for support.

“Take her.” Eliza interrupted, tone serious and grave after spending hours holding her daughter who hadn't cried this much since the destruction of her entire planet. “Take her to Lena.”

“Okay, come on…”, Alex shook her head in wary acceptance, moving to hold open the door to Lena’s room.

*****

“She’s in a medically induced coma.” Alex explained quietly, her voice only just audible over all the whirring machines that Lena was hooked up to.

“Will she...” Kara asked, trailing off unable to finish the question.

Unable to imagine the still, pale mannequin laid out on the bed before her being all that Lena will ever be.

“Her body needs time to heal.” Alex explained carefully, not directly answering Kara’s question, “Once we’re more confident that she…” Alex cleared her throat, trying for tact and simplicity, “That she’s improved, we’ll back off the medication and gradually encourage her out of the coma.”

“Okay.” Kara accepted, sliding into the seat beside the bed, fingers reaching out tentatively to wrap around Lena’s limp ones.

“Okay?” Alex repeated, confused by Kara’s lack of pressing questions.

“She’ll wake up.” Kara murmured, bending down to press a kiss to Lena’s knuckles. “She’ll be fine. She’s always fine, isn’t she?”

“Uh…” Alex mumbled, uncertainty twisting her insides as she approached her sister who seemed so… lost.

“How many attempts has she survived now, huh?” Kara asked, her tone light but so dreadfully wrong and out of place like an easy-going dinner with friends jarred from its natural rhythm by the sharp squeak of a fork against a plate.

“Kara?” Alex whispered, stepping towards her sister like she would a wounded animal. "She's really hurt and I don't-"

"She’ll be fine, Alex. She’s always fine!" Kara hissed, blue eyes turning fierce with an ethereal red glow that had Alex stopping dead in her tracks. "It happens every week like clockwork and Lena is always fine!"

"This… this isn't like those other times…" Alex said slowly.

"YES, IT IS!" Kara screeched, the embers in her eyes sparking dangerously.

Alex swallowed thickly, a genuine trickle of fear running down her spine at the disturbing mish-mash of emotions flickering across Kara’s shadowed face. The only thing that made Alex see her sister in the dark swirl of emotions was the tender way she continued to cradle Lena’s hand as she ranted so loudly it shook the walls, every word undoubtedly audible to those seated just outside.

"They're all the same, Alex. It doesn't matter if they are professional or amateurs.” Kara snarled. “It doesn't matter if the plan is simple or complex. They've all tried to kill her and failed! It’s the same fucking thing as all the others! It’s not different."

"I-" Alex began in a futile attempt to soothe her sister’s heartbreak and loathing, but she might as well have tried to turn the tide.

"It's a joke, right?!” Kara laughed darkly, “That's how certain we are that they will always fail. That she will always be okay! We wouldn't joke about it if there was any actual risk, right?!” Kara asked, not waiting to hear the answer as the question itself was enough to punch a hole in Alex’s chest and leave her gasping for breath. “Because how fucked up would that be? That I laugh about my best friend… the woman I… my Lena, dying nearly every week." Kara’s voice cracked with true despair.

"Kara, you didn't-"

"Yes, I did and so did you. So did everyone.” Kara accused, laying out their crimes that they were all undeniably guilty of. “We laughed. We placed bets. We minimised it but didn't actually do anything. There is an assassination attempt on her life every week and yes, we stop it when it happens. But have we ever actually done anything to prevent it in the first place? Or did we just like the joke too fucking much?" Kara sobbed, finally turning away from her sister to gently lay her head atop of Lena’s frail hand.

"Kara…" Alex croaked; hot tears spilling from her own eyes at the sight of her sister becoming undone and knowing that any comfort she could offer was limited.

Lena’s state was precarious, her life still in the balance.

And with regards to the source of Kara’s anguish and the failings she had thrown at all of their doorsteps… well, Alex couldn't refute them especially knowing she had been the worst of them. The guilt was like that of a thousand blades slicing her up from the inside out, and she barely staggered to the door where Kelly was waiting with sympathy and love that Alex had never felt so unworthy of.

"She's going to be okay." Alex called out over her shoulder as she fell into Kelly’s arms, knowing Kara couldn’t hear her over the sounds of her grief and pain… but needing to say it nonetheless. Needing the words to be out there in the universe.

Needing them to be true.

*****

Kara stayed by Lena’s bedside for the entire week that Lena remained unconscious - an ever present sentinel that barely slept and only ate when Eliza forced the food onto her. The tumultuous swirl of fear and guilt that had become her constant companion, weighing heavier than the two worlds she already carried on her shoulders, kept her ever-vigilant and on a hair-trigger for even the smallest of threats to the young Luthor’s life.

Alex stopped by once a day to check in but she kept her distance, neither sister ready to address the crimes Kara held them both accountable for. The older Danvers looked almost as wrecked as Kara, dark circles under her eyes revealing deep-levels of exhaustion and stress - Kara wanted to ask how she was and check that she was looking after herself but the words just wouldn’t come. When Alex stopped by, Kara huddled even closer to Lena’s bedside and kept her gaze fixed and purposefully away from her sister’s.

Brainy and Nia, on the other hand, more than made up for Alex’s short visitations, setting up shop in Lena’s room whenever they could free themselves from the responsibilities Kara had unwittingly dumped on them - Brainy had stepped up to cover for Supergirl’s sudden disappearance in much the same way Nia was covering for Kara at work. Both had heard Kara’s distraught cries when she had seen Lena in the hospital bed and both were shouldering their own fair share of blame and guilt.

Brainy wasn’t very good at showing how distraught Lena’s near death had made him, hiding behind a tablet screen as he sat in the corner of Lena’s hospital room, but Kara was more than aware of the grief-stricken glances Brainy would send to his intellectual equal when he believed no one was looking. Kara didn’t call him out on it, merely gave his shoulder a squeeze every now and again before giving the Coluan some privacy - trusting Brainy above everyone to not let anything happen to Lena.

Whilst Nia hadn’t known Lena as long as everyone else, she was a gentle soul with the kindest heart that Kara had ever seen, her loyalty and love was firm and sincere regardless of how short a time she had known someone as was the case with the CEO. Lena was the person that Nia went to for support about sibling drama because Lena, unlike Kara, knew what it was like to truly doubt family love and how to cope when that support which everyone expects to be unconditional vanishes without a trace. Lena was the person that Nia had started to go shopping with, their appreciation for designer and statement fashion providing them bonding time that no one else could easily (or willingly) provide.

Eliza stuck around, the temporary dissolution of the sisterly bond that the two sisters’ typically depended on forcing the Danvers matriarch to step in and pick up the disjointed pieces of her family. She was the one that compelled Kara to shower, eat and nap. She was the one that dragged Alex by her ear into Lena’s room for her flying visits. She was the one that took point on Lena’s care, Alex too emotionally spent and frazzled to lead, and Kara untrusting of anyone else when it came to treating her best friend.

The medication was steadily backed off on the fifth day, Lena’s tests showing promise that she was improving. Lena groaned intermittently on the sixth day, groggy and confused - utterly unaware of Kara who flitted constantly over her with every sound like a worried mother hen. It was the seventh day - Kara’s mind fleetingly linking it with something holy and divine - when Lena awoke.

“Lena?” Kara whispered as Lena’s eyes fluttered open, green eyes slowly focusing and showing awareness that had been lacking whenever they flashed open a day prior.

“Kar-” Lena began, her voice fading out after the first syllable, her mouth so dry that her tongue barely managed to apply any moisture to her cracked lips. Kara responded immediately to her needs, her every nerve tuned in exclusively to Lena after days at her side.

“Here, small sips…” Kara encouraged, holding out a cup of water and straw which she pressed gently against the other woman’s lips.

After Lena had drunk her fill, Kara placed the cup back on the side before retaking Lena’s hand tenderly in her own.

“Better?” Kara checked.

“Hmm…” Lena hummed affirmatively, green eyes greedily moving over Kara’s face causing the blonde to flush and wish for the first time in the last few days that she had spent a bit more time on her appearance.

“I-” Kara began, her voice cracking with emotion as her lower lip trembled with barely suppressed sobs.

Kara had so much to say. So much.

The words had come endlessly whilst Lena had been asleep, thousands upon thousands of conversations she was desperate to have with her best friend playing on endless repeat in her mind’s eye scripted to perfection. She had promised herself she would have them all, would say them all the second Lena was awake and listening. She had memorised them and mouthed them to herself as she sat by the bedside, pressing kisses to Lena’s knuckles to mark the end of each sentence.

But now… her signature ramble had deserted her. There was so much to say and Kara was already overwhelmed at simply being able to stare into intelligent green that she so adored.

“Kara?” Lena called out soothingly.

And much to Kara’s embarrassment, the kryptonian promptly burst into tears upon hearing her name.

“Kara, it’s okay…” Lena rushed to reassure, squeezing Kara’s hand and tugging her closer so that Kara could bury her face into the pillow Lena was resting her head on - even in her broken down state Kara was so careful of Lena’s injured body. “I’m okay.” Lena repeated until Kara’s cries began to quieten and her shoulders stopped shaking, reducing down to a mere tremble.

“No, you’re not…” Kara hiccupped, turning her head to peer into concerned green eyes.

“Of course I am.” Lena reassured with a light, dismissive chuckle that made Kara tense up and her jaw clench. “That idiot couldn’t aim for shit.” Lena scoffed with an amused roll of her eyes that meant she was blind to the rage visibly brewing in her best friend’s countenance. “I’m thinking of turning the corridor leading into my office into a target range. Only those that can hit three out of five targets can gain access. That should stop like eighty percent of the assassins and then those that do make it through will at least be worthy of-”

“SHUT UP! SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Kara demanded, throwing herself from the bed, hands clamped tight over her ears as she paced the room with such heavy footsteps that visible cracks in the tiles marked her every move.

The sudden silence that followed would have been suffocating if it were not for the familiar beeps of the machines that monitored Lena’s precious heartbeat. Slowly, Kara pulled her shaky hands away from her ears and glanced at her best friend with her peripheral vision, not ready to face those green eyes after her outburst. Lena was watching her curiously, no hint of fear in her expression or body language, eyebrow raised and lips pursed.

“Kara?” Lena encouraged, inviting an explanation with that single word.

Kara inhaled roughly, rubbing at her creased forehead with tightly wound fists. “It’s not funny, Lena…”

Lena cleared her throat and began with a tone that always accompanied her dry, snarky wit, “Well, maybe not right now but by the third attempt after this one-”

“NO!” Kara bellowed in total disbelief that Lena completely failed to get it. “YOU NEARLY FUCKING DIED.”

Lena yet again rolled her eyes and waved a hand as if to sweep it aside like it was a meaningless report that she had made a minor grammatical error in. “Kara, you’re over-reacting.”

“I AM REACTING THE RIGHT FUCKING AMOUNT TO SOMEONE TRYING TO KILL THE WOMAN I-” Kara’s voice cut out sudden and sharp.

Finally, Lena’s mask of nonchalance and indifference cracked. Round green eyes, slack jaw and hands tightly fisted in the bed’s blanket. A deer in the headlight that had never believed a car would ever come and had just been forced to watch it swerve erratically by, missing her by an inch.

Kara sucked in her lips, holding in the single word with all of her mighty strength before deflating and stating for the record, “It’s not funny. It was never funny. Never.”

*****

Kara didn’t keep her distance after that but that didn’t prevent a sizable chasm from opening up between them. It was nowhere near as bad as the fallout from Supergirl-gate, but it was ten times more awkward. The confession that almost happened, the assassination attempt and Lena’s near-death were swept momentarily under a rug but they loomed over them both regardless.

The Superfriends served as a suitable buffer, all of them (except for Alex) coming in on rotation to catch up with Lena throughout the day, keeping her occupied (though, Kara’s stony silence and brooding glare was definitely the elephant in the room) until exhaustion pushed Lena into a deep slumber.

It lasted two days which is more than Kara thought Lena would let her get away with but she hadn’t taken into consideration how fragile Lena was from her injuries. Kara hated herself just that little bit more for always assuming everything was fine, that Lena was unbreakable and failing to see what was really going on below the surface.

“How long are you going to give me the silent treatment for?” Lena questioned, peering over at the blonde who was sat in the corner of the room typing up a fluff piece article to keep Andrea’s wrath at bay as she kept herself sequestered in Lena’s hospital room. Kara pointedly ignored the question, shoulders curving forward to keep her tightly locked towards her laptop screen.

“Come on Kara, talk to me, please?” Lena whined, sounding like a child denied her favourite toy and not someone that had gone through an incredibly traumatic event.

Kara’s jaw clenched, self-awareness making her realise that if she hadn’t of been the one to find Lena, hadn’t watched the grim bruises littered across pale skin lighten to murky blues and greens… she wouldn’t be able to tell that Lena had only just escaped the sweep of death’s scythe.

“I hate it when we are not talking.” Lena declared soft and earnest, finally pulling the kryptonian’s gaze away from her computer screen to the woman that Kara knew with absolute certainty would always make her breath catch no matter how much time passed. “I know my humour is a bit insensitive but I genuinely didn’t mean to upset you. Kara, just-”

“I’m in love with you.” Kara interrupted, the words slipping out easily after being held onto so tightly for years.

She was so drained of emotion, of thought, of strength, her heart battered and bruised by everything she had gone through, but the core of her loved Lena without end. With nothing else in her, there was nothing to hold back that limitless source which had been begging to be released.

“I have been for a long time,” Kara admitted gently, fingers shifting away from her keyboard to gently interlace - her gaze dropping down to focus on their interaction, “so much so that I don’t even really remember a time where I wasn’t in love with you.” Kara shook her head ruefully. “I should have told you earlier but I just… I was so scared of losing you, in even a small way… What if I told you and we hung out a little less? What if I told you and you stopped hugging me as hard as you do? I know I should have… I know it's the exact same reason - excuse - as why I kept Supergirl a secret and I know how…” Kara swallowed thickly, the crinkle between her brow deepening even further. “I should have learnt but you mean so much to me. I didn’t know… I’ve never loved like this before. When I heard… your heart stop. It was Krypton all over again and I just…”

“Kara.” Lena breathed in awe.

“I am so in love with you,” Kara repeated, practically begging for Lena to accept it as the truth; she didn’t care in that moment if Lena returned her feelings, it wasn’t about that, it was about Lena knowing she was loved. Truly and deeply loved. “Please believe me.”

“I believe you.” Lena whispered causing Kara’s head to jerk upwards to find Lena looking so small and vulnerable. The youngest Luthor timidly tapped the empty space next to her, “Come here.”

“I…” Kara hesitated, afraid of getting close again - so utterly afraid of destroying this beautiful moment between them.

“Come here.” Lena beseeched and Kara was on her feet and settling next to her best friend in an instant unable to deny her anything. Immediately, Lena reached out for her, directing Kara to lie down and rest her head on the uninjured side of her chest. “Just listen.” Lena requested; Kara did as she was told - though her super hearing and the beeping of the monitor in the corner told Kara that Lena’s heart was beating strong and steady, it was nothing compared to feeling it hum under her cheek. “It’s beating for you,” Lena revealed, her voice little more than a whisper muffled by how she pressed her lips to Kara’s forehead, “it's always been beating for you.”

*****

Lena fell asleep not long after but Kara stayed awake until the early hours of the morning… just listening to Lena’s heart and experiencing the regular rise and fall of Lena’s chest with every breath. She slipped out of Lena’s room before dawn, going to shower in the changing rooms before the early morning shift change.

Freshly clean and dressed in clothes that Eliza had brought by, Kara watched the sunrise from the balcony that she had initially heard Lena’s watch calling to her for help. She had returned to the spot whenever she had managed to pull herself away from Lena’s room - her self-flagellation tendency making itself apparent.

“She uses humour to cope.” Alex muttered, moving to stand by Kara’s side as they watched the first peeks of orange appear on the horizon, both blatantly ignoring how the glass was new and that there was a patched up hole in the ceiling above them.

“I know that.” Kara replied.

Alex sighed, resting her forearms on the balcony guard, “There are worse coping methods.”

“I know that too.” Kara acknowledged, pursing her lips and shaking her head. “It’s not about that… not really anyway…”

“Then what’s it about?” Alex inquired.

Kara loved Alex best when she was like this. Encouraging but not overbearing. Guiding but not directing. When she was just her big sister and not her over-burdened protector. She was easy to talk to like this and this version of her had been coming to the forefront more and more with Kelly’s gentle love and care.

“She’s laughing to deal with incredible trauma.” Kara summarised before turning to look at her sister and asking the question that had been plaguing her the most, “But why are we laughing?”

“Because she wanted us to.” Alex answered simply.

“Yeah,” Kara agreed, mouth twisting into a bitter smile, “she wanted us to but she needed us not to more… she needed us to help her… and we just laughed.” Alex cringed at that but she fully flinched at the question that came next. “If it was me that was getting assassination attempts every week… what would you have done?”

Alex closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, fortifying herself for the truth she was about to announce, “I would have taken the world apart to find and stop whoever was doing it.”

“Yeah…” Kara said quietly, there wasn’t much else to say. “I’m not going to apologise for yelling.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“We need to do something.”

“I know…” Alex agreed, turning her back to the sun that was halfway to fully risen, “whilst you were watching over Lena, I may have started on something that might help.”

“So that’s where you’ve been,” Kara hummed thoughtfully, “I figured you were avoiding me.”

“I was.” Alex admitted readily, much to Kara’s surprise. “Well, not you. Lena.” Alex corrected, “I couldn’t face her until I had something… done something.”

“She misses you.” Kara revealed.

“Why?” Alex murmured sadly, “I was a terrible friend.”

“You’ve made up for it.” Kara refuted, nudging her sister’s side comfortingly.

“Have I?” Alex scoffed, unconvinced but happily leaning into her sister now that the gap between them had been bridged.

“That’s not for me or you to decide. It’s for Lena. And she misses you.” Kara asserted, giving Alex a moment to consider what she had said before dropping her own truth-bomb, “I told her I was in love with her.”

Alex whirled round to face her, loudly and joyfully exclaiming, “You did?”

“Yeah.” Kara winced, shyly rubbing the back of her neck, “You knew?”

“Not until recently.” Alex tutting at her own blindness, “I should have seen it earlier.”

“I didn’t want you to. I wasn’t ready to deal with it yet and you’ve always made me brave.”

Alex smiled at that, “How did it go?”

“Good.” Kare coughed, blushing profusely, “She… uh… loves me too.”

“That I’d known for a while.” Alex chuckled. “Are you two-”

“Uh… kind of? We’re acknowledging it but not acting on it.”

Alex’s brow creased at the lack of certainty to her answer, “What? Why?”

“Lena needs time to recover. And after everything,” Kara frowned, “I don’t think a little time to do that is too much to ask.”

“Responsible decision.” Alex complimented.

“Kelly’s advice.” Kara divulged.

Alex’s smile expanded to a proud grin. “Unsurprising.”

“Come on,” Kara ordered, clapping her hands together before slinging an arm around her sister’s shoulders, “show me what you’ve been working on, then you better go see Lena.”

*****

Two gunshot wounds, one to the torso and one to the right thigh, as well as two broken ribs, a black eye, stitches to her lip and her skin turned into an homage to Jackson Pollock by different shaded bruising. Lena catalogued the injury rundown given to her by the doctor with little interest; she paid even less attention to her treatment plan, the medication schedule and the intensive physiotherapy her leg would require.

All she really wanted was to get back to work; if Kara wasn’t there shooting her stern glares everytime Lena’s gaze wandered, the CEO would have happily been replying to emails on her phone as the Doctor lectured away.

“Did you even listen to any of that?” Kara asked once the doctor had taken his leave.

“I heard his name…” Lena grumbled, phone already in hand and frown settling in as she reviewed the most recent email from her marketing head who still hadn’t quite got it through their thick skull that weapons were no longer their main focus.

“And what was it?” Kara questioned, her phone vanishing from her hands with a flash of superspeed.

Lena huffed out a disgruntled breath. “It was...”

“It was?” Kara prompted, arms crossed over her chest, foot tapping the floor angrily whilst her nostrils flared.

Lena pursed her lips, schooling her expression to hide just how attractive she found a stern Kara to be. “It’s on the tip of my tongue.” Lena said slowly, playing desperately for time. “Doctor…” Kara merely arched an eyebrow at her. “Smith?”

“Not even close.”

“Damn…” Lena muttered with a pout.

“Lena,” Kara began with a sad shake of her head as she moved to sit on the edge of Lena’s bed.

“Ugh, you’re about to lecture me too, aren’t you?” Lena groaned.

“Lena, this is important.” Kara stressed. “Your treatment is important. Your health is important.” Kara’s blue eyes shone with love and Lena couldn’t quite meet her gaze. “You are important.”

Their confession of love still hung heavy between them despite Lena not explicitly saying the words in return. It should have marked a huge change in their relationship but it was lost amongst the tidal wave that had come before it, put on pause until the wake from the assassination attempt had dissipated enough for Lena to catch her breath.

“Fine…” Lena relented, reaching out to take Kara’s hand, gaze still shy and ducked. “I assume you were listening then?”

“Of course, I was. It was about you.” Kara replied so honest and sincere that Lena’s heart audibly fluttered on the heart monitor producing a smug smirk on the blonde’s face.

“Go on then, tell me.”

“Will you actually listen to me?” Kara checked, tilting her head to the side.

Lena lifted her head and met Kara’s eyes with a steady gaze of her own, “Of course, I will. It’s you talking.”

*****

The strangest thing about it all was the attention.

And for once it wasn’t negative media attention.

It was Kara and the Superfriends, they were being attentive. Lena hadn’t spent a single minute alone since she had woken up in the DEO hospital bed. Kara had been there the most to start with, her time in Lena’s room decreasing significantly a couple of days after the kind-of-confession (Lena assumed Kara was giving her some breathing room) but she was always present for any appointments and back for dinner, sleeping by her side in the decent-sized hospital bed. As Kara’s time decreased, the other Superfriends tagged in to fill the gap.

Brainy joined her most mornings for games of chess and to talk through some of the sticking points in Lena’s inventions. Nia covered the afternoons, filling the room with light and happy conversation, regaling her with stories of silly work disputes and helping her with her hair and make-up, teasing her like a little sister would when she mentioned wanting to look nicer for Kara.

Kelly would slot in every now and again but she made Lena uneasy, she looked at Lena like she could see right through her armour and it unsettled her. Her usual attempts to crack through awkwardness with a dry comment didn’t seem to faze Kelly and Lena’s obvious discomfort resulted in Kelly staying away for the most part; whenever, she did leave though she always made it clear that Lena could call her if she ever wanted to talk.

Lena pretended she didn’t know what Kelly was hinting at.

Eliza was the biggest surprise. Ever since Lena failed to listen to any of her doctors, Kara had clearly ratted her out to the oldest Danvers prompting the Doctor to personally take over Lena’s care, somehow innately knowing that Lena wouldn’t be able to ignore her like she did all the others. Eliza was a near constant presence in Lena’s room, reading through a pile of medical journals and historical romance fiction that Lena was slowly becoming tempted to borrow as time passed.

Alex was still a complete no-show.

Lena tried not to let it bother her.

Her and Alex had always had a tumultuous relationship - built on distrust and dislike at first sight. Kara had been their bridge and mediator. They had grown past it, grown to trust and like one another as time passed. It had been hard-fought compared to the easiness (Supergirl secret fallout notwithstanding) of their individual relationships with Kara. It was precious because of that.

Alex coming to see her with a bottle of whiskey, after defeating Leviathan and Lex being thrown back in jail, ready to fight to rebuild their friendship all over again was one of Lena’s dearest memories. Alex was the only one to reach out to her first after everything. Lena had to make the first move with Kara, Brainy and Nia. She had been too afraid of Alex to reach out, thinking their friendship would never recover… Alex had proved her wrong.

But now… Alex was avoiding her.

And Lena didn’t really know why, though a small voice in her head told her that Alex just simply didn’t care about her enough to visit…

“Did you have a good day?” Kara asked, stepping out of the ensuite bathroom dressed in cosy pyjamas, shuffling over to the side of Lena’s bed that had become her own.

“You don’t already know with your litany of spies?” Lena remarked, turning the page of her book with a single accusing finger.

“What-” Kara began, brow creased with confusion.

“I don’t think there is a single minute of my day that is not covered by one of your friends.” Lena revealed, snapping her book shut and shooting the blonde an arched eyebrow. “I can’t sneeze without someone already on hand holding out a handkerchief.”

“They’re worried about you.” Kara reminded her softly as she settled next to Lena, arm immediately finding its place around Lena’s waist and gently encouraging her to lie down beside her. “And they’re your friends, Lena.”

“Sure.” Lena tutted unconvinced.

Kara’s pliant body that Lena had become used to snuggling into became stiff and tense. “Do you think they are only here because I asked them to be?”

Lena rolled her eyes, perking her head up to look into sharp, unamused blue eyes, “Are you seriously telling me they’re not?”

“Lena,” Kara said, slow and serious, “they’re here because they care about you. Because they nearly lost you and they… they don’t want to be away from you.”

Lena stared into the deep blue eyes she adored and saw only earnestness reflected in them.

“Oh…” Lena breathed, her heart squeezing tight in her chest desperately trying to contain the swell of emotion that had just flooded it. “I didn’t realise...”

“We love you, Lena.” Kara whispered, her free hand reaching out to tuck stray locks of raven hair behind Lena’s ear. “You’re going to have to get used to us being around.”

“Hmm…” Lena hummed, cheeks blushing a pretty pink at Kara’s tender touch and the realisation that came with finding you have family. Lena buried her face in Kara’s shoulder, suddenly shy and embarrassed - Kara didn’t tease her for it, simply gave Lena the comfort and sanctity she craved.

They were quiet for a long time, the hum of the machines and welcome darkness of the room lulling them both to sleep. It wasn’t until Kara’s breath had started to deepen that Lena found the courage to ask about what had been weighing heavy on her.

“And Alex?” Lena murmured, breaking the silence and calm with those two words.

Kara’s deep, even breaths faltered. “She’s still not been by?” Kara asked carefully; Lena shook her head slightly, not trusting her voice to remain steady. “Well… ummm… she’s busy…”

“Yeah… of course…” Lena replied, letting out a sad sigh before falling into another troubled sleep.

*****

“You look like shit.”

Not exactly the first words she was expecting to hear from the older Danvers after a three week absence but Lena had known it would be something along those lines.

It was Lena’s last day in the DEO hospital room that had been her resting place since she woke up from the attempt on her life. Kara and Eliza were taking her back to her apartment that afternoon - both of whom were going to be taking up residence in Lena’s apartment alongside Sam and Ruby who were already staying there to support Lena’s long-term recovery.

Lena folded her hands carefully in her lap as she studied the redhead leaning against the doorway. “You don’t look much better.” Lena said after a long pause, arching a curious eyebrow at the dark shadows beneath Alex’s eyes.

“Touche.” Alex acknowledged with a dip of her head that gave her an excuse to keep her gaze directed to the floor when she asked, “How are you feeling?”

“Alex, you…” Lena stopped, grinding her teeth together in frustration before shaking her head, “You really don’t need to do this.”

“Do what?”

“Pretend.” Lena answered simply, shooting the hesitant agent a melancholic smile. “Force yourself to be here. I assume Kara guilt-tripped you into being here.”

“Kara didn’t-” Alex began only to stop abruptly at the sight of the unimpressed glare directed her way. “Okay, she might have encouraged me.” Alex admitted, scuffing her toes against the floor in the exact same way Kara did whenever she was guilty of eating the last bit of Lena’s ice cream. “She can be pretty intimidating when it comes to you.” Alex’s eyes twinkled in a blatant attempt to get them to bond, to seal over the cracks between them with cellophane.

Normally, Lena would accept it. Would laugh and blush knowingly, giving Alex the free pass she was angling for.

That was before she nearly died and her second closest friend after Kara couldn’t be bothered to stop by for five minutes until the day she would be allowed to leave the only place they shared.

“Well, I’ll tell her you came by, so don’t worry.” Lena replied politely with a single nod of her head.

Alex flinched at the coolness of Lena’s response, “Lena… I…”

“Alex, I nearly died.” Lena stated bluntly, the truth of it like the swing of a reaper’s blade between them. “If what I overheard from some of the agents is true… I did die.” Lena chuckled darkly to herself at the sheer absurdity of it all, “I nearly die once a week, sometimes more. My life expectancy is incredibly short - don’t tell Kara that, though.” Lena quickly requested, she’d seen how much all of this had affected the blonde and she didn’t want to pile onto her pain. “I don’t think about it because if I do…” Lena trailed off, her gaze turning distant as she whispered, “I don’t think about it. What I’m trying to say is…” Lena exhaled deeply, letting go of her charged emotions and in a far more real way letting go of all expectations of friendship when it came to the older Danvers. “I don’t need to be around people that don’t want to be around me.”

“Lena.” Alex croaked from the door.

Lena didn’t look at her. Didn’t want to see the effect of her honesty.

So, instead, Lena reached out for the book on the bedside table, flipped it open and promised with a brusque business tone, “I’ll tell Kara you stopped by.”

*****

The return back to her apartment was a welcome shift, having grown sick of the sight of her hospital room’s four walls after the first day of waking up there. Lena was happy to be back in her own space but after a day that’s where the joy ended.

Being back in her apartment acutely reminded her of her current lack of independence.

She was no longer awake at six for work like she used to be, her injuries and medication making her sleep long and late into the day. Then when she was awake she found herself groggy and fatigued.

She couldn’t get up and make breakfast for herself, she couldn’t shower without support, she couldn’t focus for long without her attention drifting. Her penthouse was abuzz with life and activity in a way that it had never been before but she found she couldn’t quite enjoy it to its fullest with how she jumped at every loud sound and struggled to keep herself awake for the length of a film.

That wasn’t the worst part though...

There had been a certain safety and security that had come with being at the DEO: surrounded by armed agents that were there to keep her safe, her super-powered friends just a couple of corridors away at all times.

That’s not to say her apartment wasn’t secure.

It was probably more secure than the DEO with biometric locks, bulletproof glass and a panic room that could probably survive armageddon. And if that wasn’t enough, she currently went to sleep with one of the most highly regarded Doctors in the country as well as one of her best friends who would fight tooth and nail for her staying in her guest rooms and to top it off, she had Supergirl curled up around her every night.

The panic attacks started when she had returned to the apartment and her medication dosage had been decreased enough to lift the fog on her mind and allow the dark thoughts and fears to seep in under the cover of darkness.

She managed to hide it, mostly due to luck more than anything else.

Kara was out for most of the day still, off doing who knew what - the kryptonian had been particularly secretive about her recent activities - and Lena had managed to request privacy when she felt an attack starting that Sam and Ruby were always quick to acquiesce to.

She just needed to get past this, she just needed to push the fear, that she had kept tightly sealed in a little box in some far-flung corner of her mind, back into the abyss it belonged in.

If she could do that…

She just didn’t want to be afraid anymore, not when she had so many good things in her life, like her new bedtime routine...

“And anyway long story short…” Kara grinned, as she lifted Lena gently into the bed, tucking the sheets lovingly around her, “he gave me a camel.”

Lena chuckled, pressing a quick appreciative kiss to Kara’s cheek that had the blonde ducking her head bashfully. “I’m assuming you didn’t keep it.”

Kara winced, admitting weakly, “I kept it for like a week. It destroyed my apartment. Destroyed.” Kara stressed with a horror-struck expression.

“Really?” Lena prompted as Kara supersped to turn out the lights, change into her pyjamas and get into bed by Lena’s side.

“You remember when you popped round to my apartment for lunch one day and you thought there was a gas leak because of the smell?” Kara asked, holding out an arm for Lena to curl herself up under.

“Yeah?”

“Camel.”

“Huh.” Lena muttered thoughtfully, “I thought you were just having really bad flatulence.”

Kara gasped in shock and disbelief, “And you still wanted to hang out with me?”

Lena shrugged, licking her lips before declaring simply, “I’m in love with you.”

It was the first time she had properly said the words.

“I… umm… I…” Kara stammered incoherently, her entire face turning a lovely shade of tomato. “You like making me all flustered, don’t you?” Kara groaned.

“Yes.” Lena answered honestly, “Until I can…” Lena’s smile dimmed momentarily at the reminder that she was still not quite ready for that next step, “it’s the only thing I can do right now.”

“There’s no rush.” Kara assured, even as Lena heard a small clock ticking in her mind, counting down to the next inevitable bullet she would have to dodge.

*****

Lena had learned to be quiet from a young age.

She was told firmly that screams and cries and whimpers were not acceptable. That her nightmares did not warrant waking the house, did not warrant shaming the Luthor name with her tears and her petty fears.

Lena taught herself to wake with a mere sigh whilst her throat clenched tightly to hold in the shout of desperation that wished to escape.

Lena taught herself to sleep motionlessly, to not toss and turn as her dreamed body clawed and swam through a syrupy atmosphere whilst shadowy figures relentlessly hunted her down.

Lena taught herself to hide her nightmares from a young age - it was easy enough to do, she got a lot of practice in the Luthor Mansion and she had regularly brushed up on these skills since she started dodging bullets every other day.

No one would ever know the horrors that plagued her at night as long as Lena had her way.

What she didn’t count on was that the horrors could grow and mutate into terrors far worse than anything she had ever experienced.

For the first time since she was child, Lena awoke with a blood-curdling scream, her entire body trembling and skin clammy with cold sweat.

“Lena, you’re okay. You’re okay.” A soft voice soothed, warm arms wrapping gently around Lena to prevent her from causing harm to herself with her frantic movements. “Shh… you’re okay.”

“I… I…” Lena cried, shaking her head to clear the nightmare veil still shrouding her mind.

“You’re okay. You’re okay.” Kara repeated endlessly, each utterance just as soft and gentle as all the others.

“Kara…” Lena croaked, burying herself in Kara’s warmth and forcing the kryptonian’s arms to wrap even more around her. It was the fear that made her honest whilst the pain of her constantly aching body made the words tumble out even easier, “I’m… scared. I don’t want to die. I don’t…”

The pliable cocoon made of Kryptonian muscle hardened to steel in an instant at the confession. The murmured words of comfort ceased and Kara’s breath went from light and even to deep and irregular.

“Lena, you’re not going to die.” Kara whispered harshly, the words cold and vicious - but not towards Lena, never towards Lena - as if she could intimidate away any and all threats just by speaking it into existence. “You’re not.”

“This time.” Lena muttered, timidly reaching out to hold Kara with her own hands as she ducked her head under Kara’s chin.

“Lena?”

“I’m not going to die this time.” Lena breathed, “What about the next one? And the one after that and after that and… It never stops. And I don’t- I don’t want to die. I don’t want to be scared all the time. I want to be excited and happy because you love me.” Lena’s hands clutch handfuls of Kara’s pyjama shirt with white knuckles. “But all I’m thinking about is: how little time we have. How stupid it is to get into a relationship when I know the odds - because they offer them on a number of mainstream betting sites - of me making it to the next year is slim to none.”

Silence followed Lena’s speech, heavy and suffocating. Lena held her breath waiting for the kryptonian to reply.

The lightest touch of lips to Lena’s forehead allowed her to breathe out slow and steady.

“You are not dying.” Kara declared sternly.

“I’m just scared…” Lena sighed, snuggling closer to the blonde encouraging the lips to press repeatedly against her brow until the lines creasing it eased away, “all the time, Kara. All the time.”

They fell asleep entangled together - if Lena had been more with it she would have tried to get Kara to re-position herself into a more comfortable position, not that Kara would have been persuaded, unwilling to move an inch if it distanced her in any way from the youngest Luthor.

Lena awoke the next day to gentle fingers brushing through her hair, enticing her back to the real world that was illuminated by the bright morning sun. Kara was up and dressed, sat on the edge of the bed, running one hand through Lena’s hair and intermittently stroking her cheek whilst her other hand balanced a tray loaded up with pancakes, strawberries and orange juice.

“Mmmm…” Lena hummed happily, turning her head to press a quick kiss to Kara’s palm.

“Breakfast.” Kara announced cheerily, helping Lena sit up before placing the tray carefully on her lap and pressing a kiss to Lena’s blushing cheek.

Lena took a deep breath, taking time to appreciate the sheer beauty of this singular moment: the woman she loved sat next to her with an adoring look having made her favourite for breakfast. She wanted to be able to enjoy this without feeling like damocles’ sword was looming above her at all times.

“Kara?” Lena murmured, reaching out to interlace their fingers, seeking support.

“Yeah?”

Lena swallowed thickly, squeezed Kara’s hand once, and asked, “Can you ask Kelly to pop by? When she has a chance that is.”

“Of course.” Kara beamed, lifting their joined hands to kiss the back of Lena’s hand, her blue eyes shining with pride.

“I want to be excited. I don’t want to live in fear.”

*****

It was a few days later when Lena found herself alone for the first time in over a month. Kara was out during the day as usual, Sam and Ruby were out at the cinema enjoying some mother-daughter time whilst Eliza had left for a walk five minutes ago. Lena was working through some calculations at the dining room table - Eliza had positioned her wheelchair at the table and left her a warm cup of coffee to tide her over until she got back.

Admittedly, Lena probably should’ve realised that it was all a ploy because barely ten minutes had passed before the front door swung open and in strode one Agent Danvers.

Lena placed her pen back onto the table and quirked a perplexed eyebrow at the redhead, “Alex? What are you doing here?”

“I’m kidnapping you.” Alex declared with a smirk and cocked hip.

Lena pursed her lips, musing thoughtfully, “And here I thought if you ever did kidnap me, you wouldn’t be so open about it…”

Alex frowned, “You’ve thought about me kidnapping you?”

“Not you per se.” Lena explained with a wave of her hand before rolling her temporary wheelchair out from the table and over to her intruder, “The DEO or some other covert government agency grabbing me and hiding me away in some dark cell.”

“That…” Alex began, her intent to deny the possibility of such a scenario occurring dying after a single moment’s consideration. Lena chuckled sadly at the guilty brown eyes that dipped away from her gaze. “Nevermind.” Alex murmured, shaking her head and forcing back her usual confident swagger. “There’s something you need to see.”

“Alex-” Lena sighed, not really in the mood for whatever Alex had planned.

Suddenly Alex was in front of her, knelt down - not to patronise but to easily reach out for Lena’s hands.

“You’re probably my best friend,” Alex announced, firm and beautifully honest (a signature Danvers trait), “not counting Kara or Kelly. But Kara loves me as a sister above everything else. Kelly loves me as a romantic partner above everything else. You are my friend with no other requirements, no other levels… nothing else.”

“Alex, I…” Lena blinked, utterly taken aback.

“You are my friend and I love you.” Alex assured, her expression turning pained and remorseful, “You are my best friend and you nearly died and I realised that I… I haven’t been a very good friend. I was so mean to you to start with. For no fair reason.” Lena bit her lip and stared down at their joined hands, unable to hide how the constant hatred for crimes she did not commit (actively stopped) had left deep and everlasting wounds that she would probably never recover from. “And then when I finally started to pull my head out of my ass… I never apologised, I never… I just smoothed over it.”

Alex cringed with the memories but pushed onwards regardless - admirably brave and stubborn to a fault.

“When the Supergirl fallout happened, I knew you were suffering.” Alex admitted causing Lena to flinch in surprise and nearly pull away but Alex’s hold gently followed after her. “If it was me in your position, I would have… I would have destroyed so much and I was raised in a family filled with support and love and… I knew you were suffering but I… I just didn’t think. You’re always so strong and unbreakable that I just didn’t think. You’re my best friend and I have not treated you like that.”

“Alex,” Lena swallowed thickly, hanging her head in shame, “what I did during that time… I’m so ashamed.”

“You’re missing the point, Lena.” Alex murmured, “I didn’t mean to-” Alex exhaled shakily, rapidly blinking away tears on the cusp of falling. “You’ve made up for it. Now it's my turn.”

“You have nothing to make up for.” Lena rushed to reassure as Alex stood back up, chin held high and determined.

“Yes, I do.” Alex insisted. “Assassination attempts every week, Lena. That is not okay. A short life expectancy for my best friend is not okay.” Alex’s hands clenched into tight fists by her sides. “I should have done something.”

“It’s not your responsibility.”

Alex grinned bright and defiant, “It is now.”

*****

“Alex, what’s going on?” Lena said slowly, not really sure what she was watching play out on the screens in the DEO command centre.

Alex merely winked at the CEO as she stepped up to the console and called out, “Supergirl, how are things going?”

“Good.” Kara replied, her voice coming through loud and clear through the speakers. Lena watched in awe - as always - of Kara flying through the air, swerving around traffic like it was nothing. “Rounding up the last few stragglers; they thought they could outrun me in a van which has a max speed of like sixty.” Lena laughed at the stupidity of the escape attempt which immediately alerted the superhero to her presence. “Is Lena there?”

“Yep,” Alex replied with a broad grin, wiggling her eyebrows at the youngest Luthor making her blush a bright red, “so you better put on a good show for your girl.”

“Will do.” Kara promised instantly, accelerating and performing aerial aerobatic maneuvers with the sole purpose of impressing only one person.

Lena shook her head, her heart swelling with affection, as she rolled her eyes at Alex’s smug smile. “What’s the mission?” Lena asked, trying to regain some of her composure.

Alex’s smugness faded to be replaced with something far softer at the question.

“Shutting down the final CADMUS outpost.” Alex answered, crossing her arms and nodding over to Brainy who brought a map of the world covered in hundreds of red dots. “We took down any and all remaining Leviathan supporters last week. Lex supporters the week before that.” The red dots flashed to highlight the different groupings as Alex listed them off. “We’ve also finished gathering evidence on Edge, he’s going to be arrested alongside his allies first thing in the morning.”

Lena’s mouth had dropped open at some point and there was a light buzzing in her ears as stared blankly at the crossed off red dots. “I don’t understand.”

“CADMUS took a little longer just because of the sheer number of bases and how they decentralised after Lex was taken down, each working independently.” Alex continued unperturbed.

“Then how-”

“Lillian. She told us where all the bases are.” Alex answered without needing to hear the whole question.

That cut through Lena’s stupor in an instant and wrenched an almighty gasp from her. “What? Why?”

Alex’s expression turned melancholic yet again, clearly upset that the answer wasn’t obvious to Lena, that there had to be a more-than-love-reason. “Because you’re her daughter and you nearly died.”

“I don’t…”

Alex turned so her back was to the wall of red dots, hands on hips and unfaltering in the face of adversity. “No more assassination attempts. No more short life expectancy.” Alex asserted, waving a hand towards the screen. “This. All of this. You deserve this. You deserve to grow old. You deserve to not live in a constant state of fear. You deserve to be happy in love.” Alex’s jaw clenched noticeably as brown eyes shone with a watery film, “We should have done this years ago. We should have protected you years ago. We should never have laughed, Lena.”

“Alex…” Lena exhaled roughly, her bottom lip trembling as she tried to keep in the sobs, feeling so overwhelmed with love and gratitude. “Thank you.”

Alex didn’t acknowledge the words, she merely walked over to Lena and pulled her into a tight hug, providing her a much needed shoulder to cry on.

*****

“Did I mention how much I hate physical therapy?” Lena huffed through gritted teeth.

“Oh you know…” Alex replied with an exaggerated roll of her eyes, “just about every minute or so.”

Lena hummed, somewhat pleased at the answer, “I thought it was more than that.”

“Suck it up, Luthor.” Alex teased even as she got a bottle of water ready for Lena once she’d finished the exercises.

“Remind me again-...” Lena panted, “why I agreed that you could accompany me to PT instead of Kara?”

“You need tough love.” Alex answered, repeating the words Lena had used a week prior when she had requested Alex’s help. “You’d never finish a single exercise if Kara was helping you.”

Lena pursed her lips but didn’t argue.

Kara was loving, affectionate and probably the best support system Lena had ever had. She cared for Lena in a thousand and one ways that Lena had never believed she was worthy of. Unfortunately, all this made Kara the absolutely worst person to accompany her to physical therapy. At the first wince or sign of discomfort, Kara insisted Lena rest and take it easy. She barely made it five minutes through the session before Kara was escorting her back to the apartment to give her a bath and massage - Lena loved every second of it but accepted Kara would not be going with her to the next appointment.

“Not really seeing that as a downside at present.” Lena admitted, her muscles burning as they were steadily rebuilt and restrengthened.

“The sooner you finish PT, the sooner you can get around by yourself.” Alex reminded her knowing it was the single best incentive to get the CEO through this.

“Good point.” Lena acknowledged groaning as she pushed herself through the last rep. As soon as she finished, Alex talked her through recovery, handing her water to sip slowly from before checking her recovered injuries and scars.

“Hey Alex…” Lena began, shifting nervously as her breathing returned to normal.

“Yeah?” Alex prompted, arching an eyebrow having picked up on Lena’s odd tone.

Lena opened her mouth to speak before snapping it decisively shut, “Nevermind.”

“Don’t go shy on me now, Luthor.” Alex remarked, helping Lena unsteadily to her feet and guiding her over to a bench in the DEO training hall where they had been working out.

Lena nibbled on her bottom lip, and glanced at Alex’s profile. “I want to ask Kara out on a date.”

“That’s great.” Alex cheered immediately before quirking her head to the side, “What’s the problem?”

“I know I’ve been…” Lena winced, “hesitant.”

“Lena,” Alex said softly, “you’re recovering from serious physical, emotional and mental trauma.”

“But-”

“And despite all that…” Alex continued, settling into her role as cheerleader and confidant with ease, “you’re still taking Kara’s feelings into consideration. Despite everything you’ve been through you’re still being sensible and thoughtful. You’re not kickstarting a relationship until you’re sure you can give it the best chance.”

“You and Kelly have been talking about this.” Lena guessed.

“A little.” Alex answered only slightly rueful, “You’re my best friend and Kara’s my sister. It comes up in conversation.”

Lena chuckled at that, nudging Alex’s side playfully before announcing, “I think I’m ready.”

“That’s great.” Alex said just as enthusiastically as before, “So I’ll repeat, what’s the problem?”

“I don’t…” Lena sighed before confessing “I don’t know where to take her. I want to do something special.”

“Are you seriously asking for dating advice with my sister?” Alex questioned.

“You’re my best friend,” Lena shot back, “who else am I going to ask? You saw how Brainy handled dating Nia and well… Nia is dating Brainy...”

“Okay, I see your point.” Alex relented, “Though, when we talk about your dating life, Kara is not my sister.” Alex requested, “Just some random person called Kara.”

“Deal.” Lena accepted. “So…?”

“You don’t need to do anything special, she already loves you.”

“That’s exactly why I want to do something special.” Lena whined, “But I’m kind of limited by the aforementioned trauma…”

“Let’s get a coffee and strategise.” Alex declared, patting Lena’s back supportively. “Come on, you’re buying.”

*****

Lena adjusted the green dress that Nia had taken her shopping for earlier that afternoon, hating how it clashed with the cane she was using to move around with. A small candle lit table was set up on the balcony - Sam and Ruby having kindly moved it earlier - with one of Kara’s favourite homemade dinners, courtesy of Eliza, steaming in the early evening light.

Lena paced, awkwardly awaiting the blonde’s arrival; Alex’s words of advice and support on repeat in her mind to drown out her anxieties.

Kara, for all her patented Kara Danvers clumsiness, was the epitome of gracefulness when it came to flying allowing her to land almost inaudibly on the balcony by Lena’s side taking her by surprise. Lena jerked back at the sudden appearance but a familiar gentle touch to her elbow settled her in an instant.

“Lena? What’s all this?” Kara breathed, eyes darting from Lena’s green dress to the set table as her super suit vanished to be replaced by her standard shirt and chinos,

“Dinner.” Lena replied, swallowing thickly as she reached for Kara’s hand and mumbled shyly. “I mean a… date-dinner-thing. If you want, that is?”

Kara inhaled sharply, blue eyes wide with shock and barely restrained excitement. “I want. I really, really want.” The blonde dashed to the table, pulling out a chair for Lena clearly not keen for any kind of delay.

“Alright then.” Lena chuckled, walking towards Kara’s dazzling smile and everything it offered.

*****

“An hour.” Brainy said, laying down his opening gambit.

“Pfft… an hour, are you serious?” Nia scoffed, “Thirty minutes max.”

“Twenty.” Alex shot back with a challenging lift of her chin.

Nia pursed her lips as she considered Alex’s suggestion. “You’re on.”

The two women shook firmly on it, much to Kelly and Briany’s amusement, just as Kara and Lena walked back from the kitchen loaded up with snacks and drinks.

“What are you guys talking about?” Kara inquired, narrowing her gaze accusingly at her gathered group of friends who had set up shop in her and Lena’s joint apartment for their weekly games night.

Kara had moved in formally two weeks ago following six months of dating during which they had practically lived together for the entirety of it but had been wise enough to keep themselves places that could be just theirs until they were officially ready.

“Nothing.” Nia and Alex answered quickly and in-sync.

“We’re gambling.” Brainy answered guilelessly at the same time.

“On?” Kara asked, dumping the load of snacks in her arms onto the coffee table before crossing her arms whilst Lena laughed lightly as she settled on the couch next to Alex.

“Leave them be, darling.” Lena soothed, tugging gently on Kara’s pocket encouraging her to sit down and lean against Lena’s legs.

“Okay.” The kryptonian muttered, immediately acquiescing to the suggestion, all the fight going out of her as soon as Lena tenderly ran her fingers through blonde locks.

“Whipped.” Alex instantly coughed.

“And proud.” Kara accepted with a shrug, tilting her head to look up at Lena with adoring blue eyes. “I love you.”

“I love you too.” Lena replied without hesitation.

“Ugh.” Nia groaned, throwing her head back in exasperation.

Alex held out a hand to the youngest reporter, wiggling her fingers in demand, “Pay up.”

“She didn’t even make it a minute.” Nia exclaimed in disbelief.

Kara’s brow creased in a cross of confusion and outrage, “You were betting on me?”

“Yep.” Alex answered without the slightest sign of guilt. “On how long it takes for you to say ‘I love you’ to Lena.”

“That’s… I…” Kara squawked, mouth flapping open and closed before snapping shut in defeat. “I don’t know what to say.”

“That’s because Lena removes you of all verbal reasoning skills.” Brainy remarked drily.

All eyes swiveled to look at the genius in surprise.

“Did Brainy just make a joke?” Lena asked quietly to no one in particular.

“I think he did.” Nia said slowly.

“Nice one, Brainy.” Alex laughed, lifting her beer bottle up in respect and effectively setting everyone else in the room off with their own chuckles and giggles.

“Laugh as much as you like.” Kara rolled her eyes in amusement, “Doesn’t bother me.”

“Are you sure?” Lena checked, bending down to whisper privately into Kara’s ear, “I can ask them to stop.”

Kara turned to look up at the love of her life, reaching out to tenderly stroke her cheek and ease away the flicker of unnecessary concern.

“I’m sure.” Kara asserted honestly, her smile widening as she leaned up to kiss Lena slow and deep. When they pulled back, foreheads resting against one another, Kara whispered into the shared space between them. “It is kind of funny.”

It’s funny because Kara loves Lena.

It’s funny because Kara will always, always, always love Lena.

[novoaa1writes]

honest

pairing(s): daisy johnson x nb!reader, melinda may & nb!reader (familial)

summary:

coming out is never easy—even when you’ve got reliable people in corner.

contains: angst & fluff with happy ending

(also available on ao3.)

word count: ~2,000

rating: teen

warnings: sparring, self-doubt; anxiety (not chronic); muscle pains, bruises, and aches (from exertion); mild language; coming out; discussions of gender and sexuality

notes: 

in my head, this is staged at the playground somewhere in season 2-3ish of marvel’s agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

— —

disclaimer: this is in no way reflective of the experiences of all non-binary individuals everywhere. as someone who’s recently had the realization that i am Not Woman and Not Man and has been subsequently made to have some rather difficult conversations with those closest to me about changing up pronouns, this is simply based off of my own experience and struggles with my gender / sexuality. it’s a uniquely personal thing to come to terms with, and it’s different for everyone.

feel free to message me if you’d like to talk about it!

— —

You let out a long, slow breath, eyeing yourself critically in the bathroom mirror. 

Nervous eyes, shower-damp skin, lower lip swollen and puffy from biting it relentlessly—an obtrusive testament to the overwhelming abundance of unease ballooning in your chest.

Yeah. Seems about right. 

“C’mon, Y/N,” you grumble, taking great care to pitch your voice well below the hum of the fan overhead. “It’s fine. You’re fine.”

The more insistent you become, the less you believe it. 

“It’s just Daisy,” you continue, silently willing yourself to remain undeterred by the crushing doubt that gnaws away at your insides. “She’ll understand.” 

... But will she?

You frown at your reflection, skin prickling with frustration. “And if she doesn’t…” you trail off, hating the quiver in your voice for betraying your weakness. “If she doesn’t, then you shouldn’t be with her anyways.” Your voice comes out stronger this time, even if the words themselves are enough to scare you shitless. 

You like Daisy. Could grow to love her, even. 

Being with her… it’s made you the happiest you’ve ever been in your entire life, and damn it all, but you mean that. 

“She’s going to understand,” you say aloud. “She will.”

God, you pray that that’s true. 

— —

7:00am sees you getting your ass thrown violently all across the mats by an ever-indomitable Melinda May, racking up bruises and scratches and aches like no one’s business. 

By the time 9:00am hits, you’re a wheezing mess, sprawled spread-eagled atop the sparring mats—lungs on fire, chest heaving for breath; sweat-drenched skin littered with technicolored bruising.

In short, it’s hellish. 

“C’mon,” May urges, tone curt and even. She looms imposingly down upon you from above, a decidedly unamused expression gracing her elegant features—and, get this: not a single hair out of place, nor a hint of labored breathing. 

You groan and squint up at her, searching for—

A-ha!

There, just above one immaculately-manicured brow and, like, two millimeters beneath her hairline—a tiny little droplet of perspiration. As you watch, it seems to absorb itself into her flawless skin—disappearing before your eyes like it was never even there. 

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” you grumble. 

May just raises a single brow, offering you a hand up. “Up.”

You frown at her but don’t push your luck; rather, you accept the proffered hand and allow her to pull you to your feet. Your arms and legs and abdominal muscles all scream in protest as you lurch upright into a flat-footed stance, but you grit your teeth and bear it. 

Training with May—torturous (and often humiliating) as it may be—is voluntary. Something you chose, and continue to choose even despite the unadulterated hell it puts your body through with every swift kick and bone-jarring punch.

Not only that, you’re lucky to study opposite someone as fearless, skilled, and fucking terrifying as Melinda May. 

Even when your limbs are all ache-y and sore and burning with a pain beyond your years, you know that. 

Still… 

You probably could’ve done without this today. After all, getting your ass kicked for a solid two hours all across the mats doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. And, considering the conversation you plan to have with Daisy this afternoon, you’re gonna need to muster up all the confidence you can get. 

— —

“Spit it out,” May prompts, sidling up to match you stride for stride as you take a couple cool-down laps around the miniature track (¼ the size of a regulation model)... walking, that is. Not jogging. 

Honestly, you think that if you even tried jogging right now, you’d pass out. 

You spare her a sidelong glance as the two of you round the bend, perfectly in sync. “What?” 

May purses her lips, giving you a look. “You were sloppy today,” she remarks pointedly. “Distracted.” 

Her stare seems to burn holes through the side of your head. 

“Wow, thanks,” you mumble. The sardonic quip tastes funny coming off your tongue.

“You were off today,” May reiterates, sidestepping your wisecrack entirely. Her footsteps are soundless even as the soles of your beat-up Air Force Ones slap the tread audibly with every stride. “That doesn’t happen often.”

“Sure it does.” You shrug. “You kicked my ass today, same as always. If you ask me—” You hesitate briefly at the look on May’s face, which is plainly screaming ‘I didn’t’ “—today’s been anything but out of the ordinary.” 

“You’re a terrible liar,” May remarks without missing a beat. It’s like she didn’t even hear you (which you damn well know that she did). 

Still, you don’t do her the disservice of arguing the point any further. 

You walk another ten paces in perfect silence—no, twelve. You know because you count each one. 

Unsurprisingly, you’re first to break the immersive quiet. “I think I want to tell Daisy.”

May’s impartial expression doesn’t change. “About?”

You almost roll your eyes, but manage to curb the impulse at the very last second. “You know what about.”

Hell, May was the first person you told. You came to her quarters hyperventilating in the dead of night, tears streaming down both cheeks and a sense of such deep-seated discomfort swelling in your chest, your ribs positively ached with the force of it.

“I want to hear you say it.”

You bite your lower lip, apprehension gnawing at your insides. “About…” You trail off, internally scolding yourself. This shouldn’t be so fucking hard. “About me being… non-binary.” 

Non-binary. 

What a flimsy little term. So matter-of-fact… almost scientific in nature. And yet, the way it affects you is nothing short of visceral—all-encompassing and monstrous, compressing your very lungs in an iron-clad vice until it’s agony to draw breath. 

It hurts, it hurts, it hurts ; voicing this simple reality that’s plagued you since you were very small, looming malignantly in the margins of everything you do… and yet, the truth of it rings keen and strong in your ears—clear as a bell.  

It’s liberating and frightful all in one; a grating juxtaposition, to be clear.

“Yes.” The sound of May’s uncharacteristically gentle intonation cuts clean through the blaring noise in your head, yanking you out from a sea of inner turmoil with startling decision. “I’m proud of you.”

Her words—gently-spoken as they may be—hit you like consecutive sucker punches to the gut. “What?” you choke, forcing out a breathless chuckle. 

May—predictably—is staunch, unyielding… wholly undeterred. “You’re being true to yourself,” she insists, matching you step for step as you start in on lap two. Your chest burns something awful and your legs aren’t much better, but you pay it little mind. “That’s no small thing.”

“It’s terrifying,” you tell her. As far as you’re concerned, that’s something of an understatement.

She nods. “It often is.”

“What if… What if I tell her and she doesn’t like me anymore?”

May raises a single brow. “Daisy, a known bisexual who has stated on more than one occasion that the gender binary is ‘stupid’ and ‘exclusionary’? Daisy, who’s been on dates with more than one openly non-binary person in the past?”

“Well, when you put it like that…” 

May—bless her heart—doesn’t snort or sigh or roll her eyes, but you can tell it’s not for lack of wanting. Instead, she merely slants you a pointed look that says, ‘Exactly.’

You walk the next six strides in silence, your feet aching in your shoes.  

“I’m going to tell her,” you say eventually, a tinge of cautious certainty creeping into your tone. You don’t know who you’re trying to convince—yourself, or May. 

All the same, May is nothing if not steady and dependable amidst stormy seas; she always knows just what to say. (Or, what not to say, as it were.) 

There are no tears, no hugs, no flowery platitudes… nothing but a sharp nod of approval and the barest hint of a grin curving her lips, like she sees you for who you are and she approves—like she’s proud, even. You don’t know how else to translate the tender mercy in her eyes, the way it seems to warm you from the inside out. 

Yeah, you can tell Daisy. 

You’re going to tell Daisy. 

And May’s gonna be right there beside you the whole time.

— —

In retrospect, you definitely could’ve gone about this better. 

Like, you weren’t exactly going for the kind of heartfelt reconciliation you’d see in some coming-of-age sap-fest movie on the big screen; and it’s not as though there’s an exact script to follow for all this, but… 

Pulling away from a decidedly heated kiss to blurt out, “I’m not a woman”—and doing so while you’re half-naked and straddling the lap of a similarly scantily-clad Daisy in bed, no less—definitely hadn’t been your first choice. 

Judging by the expression on Daisy’s pretty features—which is caught somewhere between taken aback and genuinely concerned—she’s coming to the same conclusion.  

To her credit, though, she recovers quickly—though the crease between her brows (a testament to her lingering bewilderment) remains. “What?”

You swallow thickly, carding your fingers through her tousled hair—a nervous habit of yours you’d developed as of late. “I’m…” You sigh, apprehension building in your chest. “I’m not a woman.”

Daisy’s brows raise marginally even as she offers a shallow nod, wide attentive eyes steadfastly holding yours. “Okay…” she begins gently, rubbing circles into the bare skin above your left hipbone with a callused thumb—a subtle nudge for you to continue. 

“I just—I don’t feel like a woman,” you say, and this time it’s easier, even if the sheer measure of honesty in that statement is enough to make your stomach turn. “And I don’t feel like a man, either.”

Understanding flares in Daisy’s pretty brown eyes. “Okay,” she says again. “So, you’re not a woman…” She pauses, dipping her head to place a feather-light kiss upon your shoulder. “And you’re not a man,” she continues, lifting her jaw to study you face-to-face, the tip of her pert nose brushing up against your own. “Which means… ?”

“I’m, um,” you squirm a bit, shifting atop her bare thighs, “... non-binary.” Your cheeks are hot, burning with shame, and you have never been so grateful that your skin is tawny enough to conceal it. 

Daisy doesn’t blink. “Okay,” she replies, then leans forth to place a barely-there peck atop your lips. 

You frown down at her, lips tingling. “‘Okay’?” you repeat.  

Daisy grins, leaning in for another kiss—and you’re all too quick to indulge her even as your thoughts spin and disbelief wars violently with consternation within your chest. 

Her lips are soft and warm against your own; when her tongue flits out to trace your lips, you’re parting them in an instant to meet her halfway; the sensation of kissing her is nothing short of euphoric, and you surrender willfully unto it like leaves in the brisk autumn wind. 

Seconds pass, or maybe it’s minutes, but she’s catching your lower lip between her teeth and you’re sucking on the tip of her tongue and— 

Quite suddenly, the kiss has become nothing short of filthy—all open-mouthed and desperate and bruising just how you like, and damn it all, but you can finish the rest of the conversation another time.

For now… well. You’re preoccupied with other things.  

— — 

(Later that night, when you’re both laid up in bed and drifting off to sleep, Daisy asks if you’d like her to start referring to you as ‘they’ and ‘them’ rather than ‘she’ and ‘her.’

When you answer in the affirmative, telling her that nothing would make you happier, the sheer measure of honesty in your words doesn’t feel nearly as nauseating as it did before. 

In fact, it’s rather the opposite.

The way Daisy reacts—a murmured, “Okay”; a feather-light kiss upon your forehead; two strong arms pulling you closer in the dark… well. That’s just icing on the cake. 

Despite everything—the self-doubt, the second guessing, the aching soreness settling into the very marrow of your bones—you feel yourself break out into a broad grin beneath the pitch-dark cover of night.

You feel good; comfortable in your own skin. You feel… happy.)

— —

end notes: i want melinda may to be my friend.

LINK TO MASTERLIST

[maschotch]

I know all CM character info tends to be wildly inconsistent but when it comes to Hotch's age specifically, given that the first age is suggested in Season 1 and the older age is first used in Season 5 (on the medical chart in Nameless Faceless), my favorite explanation is (suspension of disbelief may be required here) that the writers looked at where they were going with Foyet and at the parallels created between the two characters and decided that it worked better as a toe-to-toe showdown, two sides of the same coin sort of scenario if they bumped Hotch's age up to more closely mirror Foyet's (I believe his is given as the late 60s - I know Hotch's isn't far off to begin with and this sounds entirely like bullshit but I just like the idea that sometimes the interesting parts of the writing were more intentional).

What's also interesting to me based on their respective ages is that it's entirely possible that if Hotch went to Harvard or Yale (they're both up that way right?) then it's entirely possible that he could have met Foyet then while they were both at the same college (the couple who adopted him are mentioned as being wealthy and presumably he learnt some of his computer skills somewhere). This is not necessarily as relevant a thought, but it's an intriguing possibility.

hmm that definitely works if you focus on emphasizing the parallels between foyet and hotch. but for me personally, i like to keep hotch’s age down a bit. mostly because i still think its insane that hotch and haley have been together since high school and had their first child in their late thirties, so pushing the age higher than that 1. makes it even stranger 2. makes a pregnancy even more dangerous. i have my own take on why they waited so long to have a kid but ANYWAY tbh i kind of like there to be a little dissonance between foyet and hotch??

i love the parallels between them. i do. people who’ve dedicated their lives (or thrown away their lives) to the cause that fuels them, the creed that gives them purpose. without it, they wouldnt have lives at all. seeing what hotch couldve become if he’d taken a different road, confronted with the very real possibility that he could still go down that path.. very fun. the parallels dont stop there (im just too stupid to come up w the others rn)

but i dont think they have to line up exactly to make the story impactful. in fact, i think there’s something a little more chilling about the futility of it: they share similarities, sure, but it didnt have to be hotch. it couldve been anyone. foyet couldve chosen anyone. but he chose hotch

disturbing as it is, i very much believe foyet views this as a courting of some kind. he’d made his vows to shaunessy and committed to them until his end. it wasnt just the killings that excited foyet; it was the power, the control, the devotion. and once he was finished with shaunessy, his path intertwined with hotch once more and thats when foyet’s obsession started. he craved the intimacy of a life-long connection. there’s something more special about that than murder.

no, i think its more fun for foyet to chose hotch. their fates align because of coincidence and happenstance, not because they were destined to be at odds. they’re not the kind of soulmates that were made for each other, where someone matches you down to every groove and crevice. theyre the kind where they become molded to one another, where someone twists and breaks you until you fit them perfectly. there’s something more alluring about that to foyet. something he has to work a little harder for. hotch didnt submit to him readily like shaunessy did, but the thrill of the chase excited foyet. it was a game: how far could they go before they ruined each other?

akdhakhdk ik this was about age and i turned it into this whole other thing lmao and i write more about foyet’s infatuation with hotch in greater detail later, but all this to say i dont think its necessary for them to be the same for the story to be as tragic. its fun to think about! but i prefer there to be a little disconnect, if only to add to hotch’s suffering. torturing him with the assurance that this wasnt inevitable. they werent always meant to collide like this; he couldve made any number of different choices along the way that wouldve changed the outcome—for better or for worse