#any single time jess (not me) requests a prompt from me i just HAVE to go feral | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lovelyirony · 4 years

Note

pls 33.) “He said oh my god you’re piecing it together/You are just a shadow of me/oh my lord you’ve never left the mirror/You were never ever free” Mirror Master with Peggy and Sharon parallels and some Steve/Sharon mayhaps? OR 12.) “It’s on pretty lady/born to be angry/grip of the vice/click on the trigger, girl/sip wine on ice” It’s About Time with rivals to lovers Nat/Maria

Sharon loved visiting her Aunt Peggy. From investigating the various nooks and crannies around the house to the “don’t tell your father I told you this story...” tidbits, it was her favorite place. Her house always smelled of tea and linen, and sometimes Aunt Peggy allowed her to try on some red lipstick.

“With red, you’ll be unstoppable,” Peggy says teasingly. “And who knows what will happen when you’re unstoppable...”

Being a kid means you don’t see a lot of the things that go on behind the scenes, so to speak. Sharon doesn’t know why her mother never likes that it’s Peggy who watches her when she can, doesn’t understand why her father doesn’t want Peggy to tell her what her job is.

She doesn’t know why her mom steers her away from any talk of “being just Peggy!”

“You want to do something else,” her mother says worriedly. “Didn’t you want to be a ballerina?”

“Peggy said they can’t work as a ballerina for very long because of repetition,” Sharon says, frowning.

“Then you can be a doctor. Or a lawyer!”

“Lawyers are boring,” Sharon says, rolling her eyes. “Why can’t I be like Aunt Peggy?”

“Because...just don’t ask,” her mother tells her. She’s irritated, voice getting sharp. Sharon knows that her mom is never a fun person when she’s mad. So Sharon doesn’t say anything, not until her mother is lying down for the night and she sneaks out to her dad’s office.

“Mom doesn’t want me to be like Aunt Peggy. Why?” She whispers, crawling into his lap. He smells like printer ink and the woodsy smell of his cologne.

“Peggy...she’s chosen a dangerous career. It gets her in a bit of trouble sometimes. Your mother doesn’t want that for you.”

“She wants me to be a boring lawyer,” Sharon whines. “I don’t wanna be a lawyer.”

“You don’t have to be,” her dad whispers. “You can be what you want. But with Aunt Peggy’s job...there’s more of a chance that you don’t get to see family as often. She’s lucky that she doesn’t have to move to England or Paris again.”

“She lived in England?” Sharon asks, eyes bugging out.

“Yes, for a bit. You know that we were raised there. She wasn’t there to visit anyone. She had to work the whole time.”

“That doesn’t sound like fun,” Sharon says, frowning.

“No, no it isn’t. But I think saving lives as a doctor could be fun, yeah?”

“Maybe.”

Sharon doesn’t stop wanting to be like Aunt Peggy. Peggy is fierce and Peggy is liked by a lot of people and holds influence.

Peggy Carter probably doesn’t sit alone at lunch because girls called her weird and guys say she’s too much like them.

Peggy Carter has loads of friends, like Aunt Angie and Mr. Jarvis.

If Sharon was more like Peggy, then maybe things would be different and her mom would quit asking her if she wants to invite Mackenzie to her birthday party.

Sharon is very similar to Peggy. Scarily so. She has the same intensity to her gaze, the same drive to help others in her own way. She doesn’t suffer fools easily, and Peggy knows that if she’s not careful, Sharon will end up like her.

And that is one thing that she is terrified of. Peggy knows a lot of the things that have led her to survive are either lucky or questionable. She’s done lots of things she’s not proud of. She doesn’t always check in on her kids as much as she should, doesn’t miss the drifting commentary of not being something/somewhere/someone “again.”

Again. What a damning word, to be something/someone/somewhere “again.”

So when Sharon asks her if she can start training--after all, she was already thirteen and needed to get a headstart if she really wanted to be like her aunt--and Peggy looks at her.

“No.”

“What? Why not?” Sharon asks, sipping the rest of her tea. “Is it still too early?”

“My job is not easy,” Peggy says. “It is not a game.”

“You think...what?” Sharon asks.

“You wouldn’t take it seriously,” Peggy says. “This isn’t some adventure of Betty Carver, this isn’t a Captain America adventure. No.”

Sharon blinks back tears. She can’t cry in front of Aunt Peggy, not here. Not now. She wants to prove she’s not some fucking little kid who thinks this is her thinking it’ll be like Betty Carver, the stupid nurse from the old radio show about Captain America.

“I-I’ll go home now,” Sharon says, voice brimming with tears. She can’t hide it. Doesn’t have the training for it, obviously. “See you later.”

Peggy knows it hurts Sharon. She knows it does, knows that she will never look at Sharon like she usually does. But she needs Sharon to be nothing like her.

Because if she’s everything like her...oh god.

Her mother is relieved. There’s a lighter air to her demeanor when Sharon says she’ll just walk home from school anymore.

“I don’t wanna bother Aunt Peggy,” she says lightly. They can’t know what was said. She can barely think of it without tears coming back up. “Do you think I can sign up for anatomy in high school?”

A doctor. That’s what she’ll be. That’s what she tells herself.

But then there comes a night when she’s home alone. Her parents are on a date night, playfully telling her to not do anything dangerous. She knows they mean have anyone over, light the house on fire.

They don’t think she’ll reconsider her career path.

Aunt Peggy doesn’t think she can do it. She thinks that Sharon is just some kid who thinks this whole thing is some stupidly fun mission and she’ll tell stories by the campfire when she’s old.

Sharon’s not stupid. She still may be a kid, but she doesn’t know why the hell anyone thinks kids are stupid.

She can still pretend like she’s gonna be a doctor. She’ll just need to add some necessary lies. Like saying she needs to study foreign languages to a.) make sure she knows her patients, and b.) get scholarships. Saying she needs self-defense because she wants to work in DC.

“To work on politicians, huh?” her dad asks with a grin. “Don’t pull the plug, they’ll throw you in jail.”

“I won’t get caught,” Sharon jokes.

“Don’t,” her mother warns. “You’ll get us all in trouble one day, I swear. What made you decide to focus more on all this, hm?”

“Future’s important,” Sharon says. “Isn’t that what you always say, mom?”

“So you can listen to that but not me telling you to put away your laundry seven times?”

“Mom!”

Her mother chuckles.

“I’m proud of you, honey. Just think, our next doctor! How fun...”

She prattles on about her insanely-boring Uncle Jimmy, who could make paint beg to dry quicker.

Sharon starts studying, and studying hard. She memorizes languages, at least enough to get by. She starts going to the gym and kickboxing. And she remembers that she wants to do this in spite of Aunt Peggy, because she wants to be there to help people.

She remembers Peggy’s stories of Steve, which always varied with Captain America’s. Steve was a sweetheart who liked to draw and had a surprisingly vicious sense of humor.

“You and him would have gotten along like a house on fire,” Peggy would say, chuckling. “Of course, he owed me a dance...I’m not sure if I would have taken him up on that.”

She would gaze fondly over at Uncle Daniel, who smiles in response and kisses her on the forehead and tells her what’s for dinner.

Steve always did stuff for the right reason. Didn’t matter that he was as skinny as a telephone pole, didn’t matter that he could get around New York by categorizing which streets he got beat up on. He kept going. He kept trying to be the best person he could under the circumstances.

That’s what Sharon likes about Steve Rogers. Of course Captain America most likely ended World War II on a much quicker pace and gave hope to millions, but it was Steve who at the end of the day promised a dance and had smiles on his face that were endearingly familiar to her.

When she goes to college, she goes on scholarship and moves into a dorm. Her mother tries to convince her in vain to join a sorority.

“Don’t you want built-in friends?” Her mother asks. “After all, you know that I still talk to Roberta and Missy from mine--”

“And they’re such a delight,” dad mutters, ignoring the dirty look his wife gives him. “Sharon, do what you want. You wanna join a sorority? Fine. You don’t? Cool.”

“They’re beneficial, Sharon. Who knows how many connections you could get for jobs?”

That makes Sharon pause.

She joins a sorority. Not her favorite thing, but some of these girls have mothers and fathers and family members that sway decisions. And if she wants a favor later, she’ll have to see Lindsey puke out three margaritas in a shitty bar to do it.

Class, of course, is difficult. She plays the part well of studying to be a doctor and finding out it just isn’t for her.

“Oh that’s okay,” her father says. “I wanted to be an archaeologist at some point. Can you imagine how ridiculous that would be? I misplace my socks half the time, I don’t know what I’d do with dinosaur bones...”

Sharon giggles. Says she’s thinking about switching to be a communications major.

They okay it, she’s set. She also has more time to train, practice languages, and get a minor in Spanish.

She keeps a lookout for SHIELD. Listens carefully to what her dad says about Aunt Peggy.

He knows something happened. Neither party will tell him, but something is off in the way Sharon makes too sharp a remark and Peggy hasn’t the faintest idea what Sharon’s actually up to.

“I worry about both of them,” Harrison tells his wife.

“People grow apart some times,” Amanda answers sleepily. “And it’s good that Sharon grew out of that phase where she wanted to be Margaret. Of all things...”

He supposes his wife is right. He sets down his newspaper, takes off his reading glasses, and heads to bed.

Meanwhile, Sharon has ditched her sorority’s party night to interview at SHIELD. She’s submitted her applications under Agent Thirteen, waiting for a response. When she gets an email from someone named “Phil Coulson” to meet at seven o’clock for an interview, she dresses in business casual and waits at a cafe for him.

He blinks.

“Does...does Director Carter know you’re here?”

“No, and I would prefer it if she didn’t,” Sharon says. “Especially since she’s retired and SHIELD is no longer under her eyes.”

Coulson clears his throat.

“Of..of course. May I ask why?”

“Family connections are dangerous things to have in this business,” Sharon tells him, taking a swig of coffee. “I would prefer to avoid it.”

She gets a trial run. She’s put in a course with the other new recruits. Calls her parents and says it’s a boot camp for leadership. (She’s not wrong...technically.) She tightens her ponytail and listens as the senior agents tell them all it isn’t a walk in the park.

“This isn’t some ‘save-the-day’ routine that you get to brag about once it’s done,” Agent Coulson says in that infuriatingly even, boring voice he has. “You’ll have nightmares. You will have to lie to everyone you love about everything. And people will leave you and you cannot blame them for it, you cannot tell them the real reason. Are you ready for that? Do you think you can handle that?”

Recruits nod. Sharon says “yes.” Because verbalizing it? That means you have a dedication. Simply nodding never means what it is. It means you cannot dedicate yourself to a problem, but you think you can.

It is that night when she sleeps on an uncomfortable cot that she understands Aunt Peggy a little bit more. She understands why she couldn’t always be there, why her own kids didn’t like visiting, or so mom had said.

(Maybe why she told you to stay away, her brain whispers. But she remembers her throat burning, remembering that her aunt had told her that she couldn’t train someone like her.)

Sharon keeps that thought away. Better not to have personal connections.

Of course, everyone wants to know why she’s Agent Thirteen.

“You like numbers or something?” One girl asks. “Come on, you can tell me. We’re friends, right?”

They are not friends. Lily seems to think they are because she wants Sharon to let her guard down enough so she can beat her time on the obstacle course.

“Nope,” Thirteen says. “Just call me Thirteen like everybody else. You’re not gonna know it.”

“Fine, be that way,” Lily says. “I’m still gonna kick your ass on the obstacle course, Thirteen.”

Sharon grins.

“Do your worst, Lily.”

(Lily’s worst is...well it’s worse than most everyone’s. She’s rejected from the field academy and doesn’t let anyone see her cry. But everyone can hear it over the steady thrum of the shower.)

“So, why the number Thirteen?” Agent Barton asks. He’s different from most recruits. For one, he’s from Iowa. That in itself is...something. Secondly, he was recruited from an honest-to-god circus where he wore purple sequins.

“Thirteen is my favorite number,” she responds, rewrapping her hands for the sparring session. “Why purple sequins?”

“They were out of hot pink,” Clint says, and she laughs. “Come on, I think if we hurry to the cafeteria we can get a meal that is only questionable and not highly questionable.”

Thirteen scores well on tests involving body language. She reads people like a book. Her aim could use work, but it’s proficient enough to impress. She can turn on the charm, turn on the lies like she’s meant to do it.

(And she’s spent so long lying to everyone around her, is it any wonder?)

When she gets officially inducted, Fury asks her if her aunt knows.

“No, and I would rather she didn’t,” Sharon said tersely.

She understands Peggy now. She understands her in the way that agents are lost and people get frustrated and drop the training because they have a spouse that they love more than life itself. God knows how Peggy balanced it.

She thinks that maybe Aunt Peggy was scared that Sharon would disappear and never return, become like so many others on the wall of remembrance.

Sharon touches Steve’s placard every time she passes it. It’s more tarnished than others, the first one on the wall. Her fingers trace the “S” and the “R” every time, and she smiles as she remembers the stories of him.

People see similarities. The higher-ups don’t spill any secrets to the lower agents, they can’t. But they know that she’s related to Peggy in the way her voice becomes clipped when she’s frustrated, in the ways her eyes flash in rage.

She’s too similar, she knows that.

The comparisons won’t stop. Because she knows she’s too similar. Dear god, sometimes she’s worried that she’ll look into a mirror and see her.

The older agents, the ones that have been in the field and now deal with all the boring paperwork and paper trails whisper to her that Peggy made a lot of the same decisions as she did, stayed behind to make sure the job was done.

“You’re just like her,” Agent Veering says, his spectacles slipping down his nose. “She would be proud of you, you know.”

No, no she wouldn’t. To have someone turn out exactly like you?

Well...you know your shortcomings. You know your failures. You know how you will die, nearly. And someone having that same pattern?

God, Peggy would die.

So she pushes that out of her mind. She focuses on the mission at hand and reads the various notecards on the fridge about “please don’t touch this meal or you will die.”

She’s one of their best. Of course she is, people say. Fury is reminded of Peggy’s legacy, of how Sharon acts. She puts herself out there first, luring people away with expectations. It’s...eerily similar.

Sharon gets a call from her parents. They think she has an office job dealing with communications in security fields. (Technically not a lie. Also not a complete truth.)

“You need to come visit Peggy,” dad says quietly. “Please.”

“What happened?”

“She’s been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.”

It’s a terrible thing. Because it can’t get better, it will only get worse until you have someone who doesn’t know a damn thing.

Peggy doesn’t like all the fuss.

“Don’t worry about me darling,” she tells Harrison. “I’m fine. Just a bit forgetful. I’ll be out of hospital in a week, tops. I’ll be back to work!”

She thinks she’s going back to work a lot.

They actually have to keep her in a special home, one monitored by SHIELD agents. She keeps revealing secrets, ones that people absolutely cannot know.

But on good days, Sharon visits. And on bad days.

“I cannot believe you joined SHIELD,” Peggy says sharply. “It’s exactly what I didn’t want you to do.”

“Should’ve told me to go for it and then told me about the recruit training,” Sharon says. “Would’ve turned me off completely.”

Peggy laughs. She holds Sharon hands.

“Promise me you’ll be careful. Don’t...don’t be like me.”

And it means more now. It’s unavoidable, what Peggy has. And yet there’s always the “what if.”

“Okay,” Sharon says, knowing she is lying. “Okay.”

Sharon cries in her car. For longer than ten minutes. Which is fine, she knows that.

But she gets a call from Hill.

“Thirteen?”

“What?”

“Okay over there?” Maria asks. Sharon can feel the eyebrow raise from here.

“Personal issues. I’ll be okay. What is it?”

“You’re gonna want to get here as quick as possible. I’m talking a hundred miles an hour.”

“What, did Fury finally wear white?”

“No, way better than that.”

They fucking found him. They found Steve Rogers. He’s in a block of ice and he’s alive.

Sharon’s horrified. Everyone else seems to be losing it, smiling and grinning because Cap is back.

They don’t know how badly he’s going to be out of time.

She goes straight to Fury.

“You can’t push him immediately,” she says. “You can’t.”

“And what, you know Cap better than us?” Fury asks.

“I know Steve better than you,” Sharon says, leveling with him. “And this is gonna suck and he’s going to need to learn how to be himself before Captain America is even an option. Trust me. Trust the psychologists who are gonna tell you the exact same thing.”

Fury looks at her for a moment.

“Tell me the difference.”

“Steve is going to run out of that room because you messed up,” Sharon says, gesturing to the woman they’re having going in. “You got the fashion wrong, you got the hair wrong. In the army, her hair would’ve been up and away. You’re also playing a baseball game that he was at. He knows that he won’t be.”

“We’re not sure the state of his memory.”

“He memorized strategies and sites of attack in one glance and could recall even the smallest detail about a stranger, he’ll remember,” Sharon argues.

Steve Rogers runs.

Sharon curses. She fucking knew they’d pull this, knew that SHIELD wanted Captain America back so badly they’d forget that he’s still just a guy.

He stares at Times Square with all of its people, all of the lights, and he looks lost.

“I...I had a dance.”

Fury ushers him back inside. Sharon says nothing.

This does not explain why Steve Rogers gets moved in right next to her apartment.

“What the fuck,” Sharon seethes into her phone. “When I told you to get him help, I didn’t mean me!”

“You’re the one who has the closest connection to him. Seeing your aunt is gonna depress the living shit out of him,” Clint says.

(Yes, she told Clint. In her defense she was wine-drunk, had eaten the best burger to that point in her life, and Clint had made her laugh for ten minutes straight.)

“Is he seeing a therapist?”

“As soon as he agrees to one.”

Sharon knocks her head against the wall. And then goes over to see Steve looking forlornly at the space.

“What’s up?” she asks.

Steve turns, blinking at her.

“Who are you?”

“Sharon. Carter.”

“You’re...?”

“Related? Yes. But that’s not important right now. You need help unpacking your kitchen stuff.”

“I’m fine.”

“I don’t think you realize how bad new agents are at packing things,” Sharon says. “I’m helping.”

Steve is truly and really lost. It reminds him of when he went through the city for the first time by himself and got lost around a streetcar and he couldn’t find his way back until Bucky had happened to walk by with a cute girl on his arm.

He should really tell Bucky about all of this, he just needs to find--

Stamps. For a man who’s MIA. Or KIA. Most likely the latter.

Then he can’t breathe. And he sits on a chair that’s too modern and he stares at a carpet that looks weird, and Sharon is by him.

“Hey,” she says. “Breathe. You’re here in your apartment. I put away dishes. I’m making you get new coffee mugs because the ones you have are disgusting.”

“Where the fuck do I get those?” Steve asks. “Woolworth’s? Do they even have those?”

“Missed it by a decade or eight,” Sharon says. “No, there are other stores. Better designs, too. Or we can go and paint custom mugs. Ever wanted to see what it looks like to paint ‘fuck you’ on a mug?”

Sharon is pretty sure she’s fucking everything up.

But Steve laughs.

“You can....you can do that?”

“Of course you can,” Sharon says. “Let me show you some stuff...”

Steve is taught the worst and best of American pop culture. He hates rock music for now.

“I’m down the hall, the first room on your left,” Sharon says. “Don’t hesitate to knock for anything. I know you will need things, do not tell me you are fine. You’re not a good actor yet.”

He breaks a wall. A fucking wall. It’s the one leading into her room, and luckily her bed wasn’t against it. He’s covered in dust and wood and plaster, and he speaks a litany of apologies.

Sharon can’t help it.

She laughs.

“Only you would make sure we had a shared apartment,” she says.

“I can fix it I know it isn’t proper--”

“I don’t care about proper,” Sharon says. “At least now I can keep a closer eye on you. We’ll have SHIELD do some renovation work while I show you potentially the worst or best places you will ever go.”

Steve gets a tour of DC. He remembers when there were stories and pictures of President Woodrow Wilson’s sheep “mowing” the lawn. He’s surprised at all the security measures, and is not happy that there is more security on public transit.

“We can still break in if you want,” Sharon says. “But I’ll get you a pass.”

“It’s the future and it sucks,” Steve mutters.

Sharon laughs out loud at that.

“Well I’ll show you something that doesn’t suck, and that is a restaurant that I only take few people to, such as Agent Barton. You’ll meet him later, he’s a real disaster.”

Steve loves the burger place and all of its seedy decorations and kitschy photos of old celebrities visiting.

Sharon takes him grocery shopping. He’s overwhelmed.

“How are there more than one type of orange? How can you afford them?”

“We get good pay from SHIELD,” Sharon answers. “Tell me, have you ever had a strawberry margarita?”

“What?”

“Adding to cart,” Sharon answers. “You’re about to enjoy alcohol, finally.”

“Peggy tell you I hate it?”

“Just figured you would,” Sharon says. “She said the only time she saw you drink was when Bucky disappeared.”

It’s sad after that. Steve’s shoulders hunch in on themselves.

“You ever lost someone?” Steve asks.

“I am,” Sharon says quietly. “Do you want to make a pie?”

“What?”

“I’m going with no,” Sharon answers back. “We’ll make good brownies then.”

Steve’s frame is hilariously slim when you wrap an apron around it. Sharon can’t see she doesn’t admire it.

“This is amazing,” Steve says.

“Quit licking the batter,” Sharon says. “We have to eat these, you heathen.”

“Oh, like you’ll die from it,” Steve answers back sarcastically. “I was frozen for seventy years, I wanna lick batter.”

Sharon nods.

He doesn’t want to see a therapist. Insists he’s fine.

Sharon gestures to the wall that is now tastefully decorated with curtains.

“...fine. But if I don’t like it I’m leaving.”

“Would never force you to stay,” Sharon says. “Keep in mind one therapist is not your end-all solution. Sometimes you need to look around.”

“Do you...?”

“Yup,” Sharon says. “Can’t be as sexy as I am without a few issues that need working on.”

Eventually, Steve finds one.

He shows Sharon his world. He shows her records that he keeps buying off online sites, the player that he swears he can fix up.

“We could probably get you a functional gramophone if you wanted,” Sharon says. “Like yeah it’ll be expensive but we can do it.”

“I want one that’s well-loved,” Steve says. “One with character.”

Not for the first time does Sharon smile.

They sit together at dinner sometimes, and Steve tells her about what Brooklyn used to be, and she tells him stories of how she would climb trees until she couldn’t go any higher, and she used to memorize all of the cassettes and CDs that her parents had. She could still sing along to ABBA with no prompt.

She makes Steve watch Mamma Mia! after that, laughing as he stares wide-eyed.

“This is incredible.”

Steve looks at Sharon like she’s his world. And in some respects, she is. But he can’t get over how different she is from Peggy. And that’s the damning evidence, isn’t it? That she’s a connection, but she’s...she’s not.

She doesn’t wear red lipstick, doesn’t own any. Told him one day that she looked stupid in it. “I’m unstoppable without it, I don’t need it,” she says, and it feels like there’s something more there.

How she reacts in some ways like Peggy would, but how communicative she is with others. How she laughs and makes sure people are comfortable in the situation. Not that Peggy wasn’t any of that, but she was focused on getting to the end, to proving that it was a success. Sharon wanted the same thing, but what mattered was that people were okay.

He doesn’t stay with Sharon all the time. She encourages him to get out “into the big, bad, scary world.”

She meant interacting with college art students, which is quite scary. He agrees. He thinks it’s very cool that you can dye your hair now, and buys the shittiest dye ever.

He dyes his hair blue and accidentally smears some down his neck. He shivers as Sharon traces her hand down, laughing.

“Oh my god. Steve, what did you do?”

“Marcy in my class has pink hair, I wanted to dye my hair!” Steve says defensively. “You left me bored.”

Sharon smiles up at him.

(What would it be like to wrap his arms around her? To hold her and let the universe pass them by?)

He shakes his head out of the thought.

“Ooh, showing off the hair?” Sharon asks, grinning.

“Of course.”

“Nerd,” she teases. “Well come on, I got some ice cream from the store. Your favorite which is disgustingly basic, but here we are.”

“It’s basic for a reason, it’s good,” Steve teases right back. “Need to ask you about my new art project.”

“Shoot.”

“I need to draw someone. And you’re basically the only person I really, um, want to draw.”

“What, afraid that you can’t capture Coulson’s strong personality on paper?” Sharon asks wryly. Steve snorts.

“Oh yeah, his vivacity would fly off the page. Really and honestly, truly.”

“Well, what do I need to do?”

“It has to be a stylized portrait from any historical era,” Steve answers. “And I already have the materials and stuff, we just need to go shopping for some clothing and stuff. Maybe accessories.”

“Okay.”

Sharon thinks her heart is absolutely stupid for beating this fast. It’s been doing this more recently.

Natasha keeps making fun of her.

Steve wants to do a Baroque style, over-the-top goddess style. He has her dripping in drapery and gold chains, thin as can be. He delicately sets a crown that he weaved into her hair.

“You look gorgeous,” he says, blinking. “Just...wow.”

“All thanks to the cute artist,” Sharon flirts back, winking. “Tell me how you want me.”

Silence after that.

But Steve positions her reclining, and she can’t stop herself from raising an eyebrow at him.

“I feel ridiculous, just so you know.”

“You look great, if that’s any connotation.”

“It could be.”

She smiles at him, and that’s the winning expression. “Hold please.”

Sharon tries her best, stilling. Benefit of SHIELD training. She can stay still for hours. Her smile, however, moves.

This is fine. Steve smiles back.

“Break time,” he announces a couple of hours later. Sharon sags on the couch, swinging her legs over.

She overestimates her abilities and the fabric, as one foot gets caught and she falls forward.

Steve’s catching her in a flash. She grins.

“Being my hero, huh?”

“Of course,” Steve says. “Where would I be if I didn’t save the pretty lady?”

Sharon smiles, leans closer.

“Can I...I wanna kiss you.”

Steve blinks. Goes for it.

Sharon smiles into it.

Months later, when everything’s going to shit and Natasha asks if that’s the first kiss he’s had since 1945, he smiles to himself.

“No, it’s not,” he tells her. “You knew that, didn’t you?”

Natasha smiles to herself.

“Sharon’s not gonna be mad at me, is she?”

“Of course not,” Steve says. “Especially after I tell her I convinced you to wear these terrible shoes.”

“Hey!”

When he wakes up at the hospital, Sharon’s standing at the side and Sam’s sitting down.

“On your left,” Steve pants out.

“You--” Sam hangs his head, laughing. “You got me on that one. Got your shield. We don’t know where Barnes is. Your girl is here, by the way. Gotta say, you got lucky.”

“Damn right I did,” Steve says weakly. Sharon waves. Steve tries to wave.

“You got thrown from a Helicarrier, don’t,” Sharon says. She sends Sam off with a goodbye hug and a promise to deliver some dessert as a thank-you.

She looks at Steve.

“You have so much explaining to do. So much. But later.” She takes his hand, kissing it softly. “I was terrified.”

“So was I.”

They sit like that for a moment. Steve turns, seeing the bandage around her arm.

“What’s that?”

“Rumlow’s a bastard with a knife, played dirty,” Sharon says. “It’s nothing. He got crushed under a building. Karma, you know. Whole thing.”

Steve laughs. Winces. Sharon puts her hand over his.

“Get some rest,” she says. “I’ll be back tomorrow to visit and evaluate if you can go home or not.”

“I’ll be fine.”

Sharon rolls her eyes.

“Of course you are.”

She presses a kiss to his forehead.

“I love you, honey. Stay safe.”

“You too.” He squeezes her hand.

Things will be okay.

#HOLY FUCKING SHIT. HOLY FUCKING SHIT THIS IS SO FUCKIGN LONG. WHAT THE FUCK DID I DO #peggy carter #sharon carter #steve rogers #clint barton #yes clint is her bff yes i do what i want #of course i do what would you have expected #lovelyirony writes #any single time jess (not me) requests a prompt from me i just HAVE to go feral #staron

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that-one-weeb-but-starwars · 3 years

Note

For your writing prompt post...

Tech X reader where one of them risks their life for the other and ends up captured by the enemy. The other needs to rescue them before it's too late!

Thank you in advance :3

Bro I had SO MUCH FUN writing this one ngl. Thank you for the request!! And please! Any more ideas? Feel free to send them in!!

Clones and Lightsabers

"What do you mean Y/n's been captured?" Tech asked, "y/n doesn't get captured-"

"Well she did." Jesse spoke.

"I'll say it again- Y/n doesnt get captured." Tech defended.

"We recieved this message not long ago." Cody spoke, the hologram appearing.

Y/n sat on the floor, Savage and Maul besides her.

"Bring me what I want-"

"I can help both of you! Just let me-" y/n tried to tell.

"BRING ME WHAT I WANT! NOW!" Maul defended, "AND WHAT I WANT IS KENOBI AND SKYWALKER!"

Savage grabbed her by her arm lifting her weak body up as she struggled against his grip, kicking her feet.

"And if you don't!" Maul's lightsaber ignited, as he moved to face her.

"Maul! We were friends once! Don't do this-"

She cut off herself with her own screaming as her arm was cut off.

"If you don't bring me Skywalker and Kenobi! It will be her head!" Maul argued.

The group had seen there share of carniage, but someone close to them getting tourtured.

Tech was engraged, she hadn't done anything.

"What's are course of action?" Tech asked.

"We don't have one not-"

"You have none?!" Tech shouted.

"Tech." Hunter spoke.

"No!" Tech argued, "you have no course of action! No plan!?"

"Get your men in line!" Jesse argued.

"Tech!" Hunter argued.

Tech glared at Hunter and the regs infront of him.

"We don't have a course of action as of yet." Cody spoke, "The Jedi council hasn't agreed to the mission.

"I believe if we talk to General Skywalker and Kenobi we'll be able to do this under the Jedi Council." Rex spoke.

Speaking of the devil, Anakin, Obi-wan and Ashoka walked in the room.

"Well?" Crosshair asked.

"Its no go." Anakin said reluctantly.

"But that doesn't mean where not doing it." Ashoka spoke.

"And I only agree. Y/n though came out of no where. Is important. And will be saved." Obi-wan spoke, "and if Maul wants both me and Anakin. We shall give him what he wants."

"Could you survive that long?" Tech questioned.

"Tech!" Hunter snapped.

"Its not an option." Skywalker spoke crossing his arms.

"If we wish to get Y/n back we'll have to be a good enough distraction." Obi-Wan told.

"Very well." Hunter spoke, "So. Whats the plan?"

The rescue team stood in the Havoc Marauder, Tech working on the map and coordinates timing everything.

He sighed as he lifted up his goggles rubbing his eyes.

"You need rest."

He turned his head seeing Anakin, "I am more busy than you presume."

Anakin walked over taking a seat next to him in the empty cargo bay, a single light hanging over him.

"You worry for Y/n."

Tech stayed silent and contuied to work.

"But you regret what happened to her."

Tech stopped working, "she wouldn't blame you."

Tech stayed silent how was he ment to respond? It was true, Tech blamed himself for it all. Why you were captured in the first place? That was his fault.

The group had encountered Darth Maul and his brother. Y/n had said it was a peace mission, and even took the liberty of leaving her saber onboard. It was one of the only times the bad had got there asses handed to them. Y/n had taken a saber dropped on the ground, Maul walking up to Tech.

"The weak will die first."

Before the red saber was brought down it was blcoked.

"You are the weak one my friend."

Y/n held the dark saber with two hands, pushing against Maul as he growled.

"You."

Maul jumped back as the saber battle beginning, giving the clone force enough time to escape,

"Get in here now!" Hunter demanded.

"Go without me! Now!"

"Y/n!-"

"Now! I'll make it back!"

Tech sighed, looking down at his work, "She may not blame me. But I blame myself. The sith said the weak die first, I am lucky enough to have a head on my shoulders."

It was silent as Anakin pulled something from his robes as he stood up, placing a wrapped item infront of Tech.

"Give these to her. When you see her." Anakin spoke walking towards the door, stopping in the door way, "Oh and while your at it. Add something to them."

He left the cargo bay as Tech sat in silence, wipping away his work he put the wrapped item infront of him, opening them he seen the two lightsaber hilts, completely plain- nothing but a button on each one and a extension on each end, there being a third button at the end of one.

Picking up the two they were a singular unit,until Tech pulled on them slightly the two disconnecting and him dropping one causing him to curse a word of Mando, picking up the saber he placed the other on the crate, looking at the engravings, sure the actual desgin of the sabers were simple but they were littered with names, most he recognized.

People such as the Generals, most noticeably Skywalker, and Tano's name. Even clones names engraved such as Fordo and 99's names. He found his own closest brothers, but his own name no where to be found. She had attempted to convince him but he called the act childish and Y/n accepted it.

How stupid was he, a blank spot besides the ignition button calling his name as he rubbed the blank spot. Sighing he looked over the second one, Savage and Maul's name being there but along with the name Feral under it. All had horns protruding from there names and silly- semi-decent engravings of peoples faces done all cartoony were spotted around the two of them.

Traveling down to the bottom of the saber he spotted two extentions both looking as if they snapped into place, he did as hypothesis and with sucess snapped them into together, the saber accidently turning on causing him to jolt, one side yellow the other orange.

He remember watching her shadow train, her movements smooth and fluid, she had made it look so effortless. With her high jumps, kicks, flips, she had it all. He'd watch her, every time, even having Crosshair join the session and shoot at her as she dodged each bullet, the two constantly bickering with one another as they trained.

Tech had questioned the tech before, analyzing everything she had explained and even opening them up for him. He knew how they worked, he understood weight, and center of gravity, momentum. She had taught him- Y/n had taught him everything about the saber, she had entrusted that enough to him.

So.

Why couldn't he fight with them to get her back.

No he was just a clone.

Right he was a clone.

Just a clone- just a clone in love with an unreachable higher being.

But he loved her.

He loves Y/n, and no one else in such a way. Seperating the sabers he held them in both hands looking down at them.

He had time, not much but he had time.

Igniting the sabers he took postion.

How would of Y/n done it.

Bracing her feet? Her center of weight leaned a bit forward? He didnt know much, but he would have to.

The ship landed after time, Tech tolding onto her sabers hidden away in his bag. The generals going over the plan with everyone again.

The plan never did goes as planned, both Anakin and Obi wan with there captains being stopped by Grevious and Savage rather than the brother duo.

"She should be in here." Tech spoke, quickly hacking the door pannel as it opened, the room large and circular in size. Y/n chained to the middle of the room by her ankles, one hand that was left and her neck.

"Y/n!" Tech shouted as he ran over.

"T-tech?" She asked watching him run over and drop to his knees, immediately examining her.

"You're arm- they cut more-"

"I'm okay tech..." she spoke, "Im okay now that you're here."

"Ashoka! Watch out!"

Tech turned his head, Ashoka braced in defense against Maul.

"Tech! Hurry up with those restraints!" Hunter demanded, the group of clones firing at Maul.

Ashoka had been tossed into the men, a large chunk of them being decommissioned along with herself, Tech reaked of anxiety, working as fast as he could.

"Thats it!" Wrecker shouted rushing at Maul as the man was just tossed aside on the count of the force, taking the rest of the men with him.

"There!" Tech spoke popping the last restriction.

"Tech!"

Tech turned around just to also be thrown across the room, his backpack falling off as he laid flat on the ground.

"You will persih! By my hand!" Maul shouted, Y/n's weak form being lifted up into the air as she grasped at her neck with the one hand she had left.

"M-Maul! N-No!"

"You will Die! And they all will watch!" Maul shouted in anger.

Tech groaned looking up as his ears rang. The contents of his backpack infront of him.

"You will die! And you will fall!"

Looking just infront of him Y/n's sabers laid infront of him as he reached for them.

Y/n forced onto her knees as she looked up at Maul, just to look down in defeat.

"Now Kenobi will lanquish in the pain I did!" Maul shouted dark saber in hand as he raised it up ready to strike.

Bringing it down in one heavy swing it clashed with two sabers, the sound of them clashing filling the room and echoing off the walls.

Y/n looked up, and so did the awakening clones.

"Is. Is that Tech?!" Echo asked shocked as the others as Tech struggled yet held his ground blocking Maul from Y/n, her sabers in hand as he pushed Maul back.

"The clone?!" Maul snarled, the two slowly pacing in a wide circle.

The pacing stopped.

"You think you can defeat me." Maul argued.

"No." Tech spoke, "but just because I can't defeat you doesn't mean I'll let you kill her."

"The girl?!" Maul laughed, "A clone in love with a Jedi!?"

Tech took stance, he copied her, both feet brace, leaning forward slightly, bent slightly over, one saber up for attacks one lower for defense.

Maul took his usual stance, Tech adjusting his as he clicked the sabers together his arm now back holding the weapon, his back a bit more straight.

"Now I wonder who taught you." Maul smirked in both anger and well know the victory would be his.

Maul rushed at him within the next second taking the defense as he and Maul pushed against on another for higher ground.

"Don't just sit there!" Hunter demanded, "Help our brother!"

The clones now in a rage of passion got up, Ashoka following the party as Maul fought against the group,in the midest of defending he detatched on saber from the other, hoping to surpise the Sith as he attempted to slice at the mans legs, but to no avail as he was shoved back.

Tech only rushing back in with both sabers, even if he was only for defense he needed to save her.

He needed her.

Slicing hard Maul was hit in the shoulder causing him to fall backwards, "this isnt the end!" He shouted pulling out a remote as the panel he fell on opened up and he fell through.

"Take care of Y/n! I'm going after Maul!" Ashoka demanded, "Jesse!"

"Yes General!"

The two jumped down the hole, Tech still in the center of the room, Holding the ignited sabers with a heavy pant.

Turning back to Y/n he remembered his objective, letting the sabers drop from his hands he rushed over to her.

"Crosshair! The med kit!"

"Uh-Yeah..."

Y/n was still in shock herself, "It seems they atleast patched you up decently, but you're sleep deprived and starving-"

"Tech."

Tech contuied to ramble, "Tech!"

He finally stopped looking up at her, "Im okay...I promise."

Unlike anyone else Hunter knew how to read a room, forcing his men out the room without a word.

"I still need to fix your arm up." Tech told her, going thorough the kit,alredy starting to repatch her arm up, cutting the old bandages.

"Tech."

"Yes..."

"You copied all my moves. You've watched me?" Y/n asked.

"I-" Tech responded, "I know they are not mine to use-"

"Fuck being a jedi." Y/n told him.

"Excuse me?-" he questioned, just to be pulled into a heavy kiss, his hands not knowing what to do he sat tense.

Y/n pulled away only for a second taking in a peice of air, just to smash her lips on his again.

Soon melting into the kiss he dropped the siccors his hand running through her hair as he kissed back, pushing back into the kiss as Y/n pulled away for air.

"I love you." She told him.

"You. I-" Tech spoke shocked, he had just been made out with and told I love you withing the same mintue, "i- I love you too."

Y/n smiled at him as he smiled back.

She had been brought to an infirmary and was given full medical treatment, after being given a solid arm and told to rest that same night Tech came in, top half armour removed and in his blacks, Y/n sat there using blocks and twirling things around with her new arm and hand.

"Cyare." He spoke holding her still flesh hand.

She smiled softly, "These um. Are for you."

Y/n saw both sabers in Tech's hands, and with her metal hand she grabbed both of them.

"General Skywalker said you like new things. I pressumed you out every new person you meet on there." Tech spoke, "I remember rejecting the idea from you when we first met."

Y/n looked at where the empty spot use to be, his name now engraved on the spot.

She smiled softly rubbing a metal finger over the fresh engraving.

"Its perfect Tech." She spoke looking up at him, leaning towards the side he sat on as he leaned forward the two kissing softly.

Y/n chuckled softly, Resting her head against his.

"Im glad your alright." Tech spoke.

"And Im glad it was you who saved me."

#star wars headcanons #star wars #star wars tech #tech x reader #bad batch tech #the bad batch tech #star wars: the bad batch #tech the bad batch #clone wars tech #tcw tech #star wars tbb #tech x you #writing asks

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parvulous-writings · 3 years

Text

36 Degrees C // McCree x Reader

Request: Hello❧ Can I please get fluff 14 with McCree? It has been miserable with the heat and I wish I could work at night instead of day time because I teeter between overheating and heatstroke most days and thus am awake at night for some mercyful coolness. My friends are striving but my heat tolerance is zero and I strive at below zero celcius... 😥How are you holding up? -Seriously overheated Blue❧ 💙

Requested by: Blue

Summary: A oneshot using the prompt “ “It’s okay... I couldn’t sleep anyway...” “, also based on Blue’s predicament- hopefully it brings you some sort of peace <3

Warnings: None

Words: 1K

Notes: I feel your pain, Blue- I also struggle greatly in the heat. Anything over about 20 degrees Celsius and I can’t spend more than about 20-30 minutes outside at a time, unless I’m under good enough cover, which is rare. So, I stay inside all the time during summer. Though, someone or something must be watching over me, because it’s been overcast and raining ever since my birthday, where I am. Also, I have finally reached 100 followers! Whoop whoop!

Not my gif

The past week or so had been nothing more than a scorcher, weather-wise. There was no clouds in the sky, let alone any other sign of rain. It was not a good time for you- heat made you suffer to a degree where you could have sworn your every waking moment was spend living in hell, or some similarly high-temperature place. Heat was never your strong suit- you thrived in lower temperatures, much lower temperatures. To put it simply, you’d much rather be sent to Echopoint than Petra. Jesse, on the other hand, he loved the heat, he soaked up the sun like a basking viper. He spent every chance he got outside, reveling in the sun and it’s light, and he even got a bit more of a tan going with how long he’d spend out there. You didn’t know how he did it, how he endured such heat and mugginess. The only time you ever got any peace from aforementioned heat was after sundown, so this had thrown your entire sleep schedule out of balance. It was not a fun time, to say the least. It was like a constant state of sleep paralysis, in some ways; you didn’t feel quite alive- you could hardly move most days- but you didn’t feel quite dead either. Whilst you experienced such torment and hardship, McCree just acted as if he were living his best life, like he couldn’t be happier.

One night, just after sundown, and when you had finally regained your ability to move, you strode towards the window. You opened it carefully, allowing a cool breeze to waft through, cooling you down further. Jesse was fast asleep in your shared bed, and he didn’t mind the breeze one bit. Or, he didn’t react to it at least. You perched yourself on the windowsill- you room was high up enough that you had the perfect view of the landscape, vast and sweeping. You let your eyes wander over the sight before you, your eyes eventually landing on some faint lights in the distance. You sigh gently. How peaceful it seems out here, in the dead of night, no one awake to make a sound. The contrast between night and day at the complex was rather frightening at times, especially when walking the corridors. Usually they bustled with life, but at night, there was silence, and lots of it.

You were roused from your train of thought from the shuffling of covers. You look over your shoulder towards the only other person in the room. The breeze had gotten stronger during the time you had been thinking to yourself, and it was now disturbing Jesse. Though you moved to close the window for him, it was too late, he had been woken up by the chill. As he sat up, and laid his sleepy eyes on you, you gave him a sheepish smile. “Sorry...” You say quietly to him. “I didn’t mean to wake you.” Jesse gave a quiet grunt as he pushed himself into a seated position. “It’s fine... I couldn’t sleep anyway...” He lied, jokingly. As he stretched his arms behind his head he gave a little bit of a yawn. “What’re ya doin’ up so late, anyhow? It’s the middle of the damn night, ya should be over here..” He patted the empty space next to him. “With me.” He chuckled lightly. You gave him a little bit of a shrug in reply. “Too hot, I guess.” Jesse gave a deep sigh at that. “Are ya still complainin’ about the weather? It’s lovely durin’ the day, what are ya on about?” “It’s not my kind of weather, Jesse.” You explain. “I don’t deal with the heat as well as you do.. I can’t.” Jesse rolls his eyes a little, though it’s hard to see in the low light. “Oh come on, now, Sugarcube,” He starts, trying to coax you over. “Just come over here...” He waves you over, and you fold your arms over your chest. “Did you not listen to a single word I just said?” “Well, yeah, ‘course I did...” He pauses. “I just thought that some snuggles might cheer ya up...” You give him a rather unimpressed look. “It’s too hot!” You insist. “You need to start thinking more with that,” You point to his head, “And less with that.” You point down to his hips.

You turn back to the window, though you hear more shuffling. You ignore it for the most part, and the sound turns into the heavy pat of feet against the cold floor. A pair of arms wrap around you, pulling you into the still very warm chest of Jesse. He pressed a gentle kiss to the back of your head, before his chin rested on your shoulder. “C’mon, Sugar... I know it’s hot, but it’s lonely without ya in bed...” He whined quietly, though you knew that he was only joking beneath that. You chuckled gently at his words, reaching up behind you to carefully caress his beard. He leans into the touch, humming quietly in approval of the contact. “Just a few more minutes, cowboy...” You say quietly to him, and he falls silent. The silence doesn’t overly last long though, as the gunslinger sweeps you up into his arms. “C’mon, you need sleep. I don’t want to have to deal with ya bein’ grumpy in the mornin’.” You struggled in his grip, wanting to be put down. “Jesse!” You hiss, not wanting to be too loud and wake up your neighbours. “Put me down!” He doesn’t listen to you, still keeping you clasped in his arms, even as he fell back onto the surface of the bed with you. “No...” He mumbled, pressing his face into the crook of your neck to stay close to you. Though it was unbearably hot, him holding you close was not as hot as you had been expecting. He pet your head gently, “Go to sleep, Pumpkin.” He mumbled, already starting to fall asleep himself. You chuckled quietly and you feel him start to fall asleep, his arms still wrapped around you, his breathing slowly calming you and lulling you into slumber.

#ourcree #jesse mccree x reader #jesse mccree #overwatch #overwatch x reader #mccree overwatch

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the-evil-authoress · 3 years

Text

GX Month Day 7: “Ojama Delta Thunder!!”

That’s right! You know what today is! Today we celebrate The Chazz, the one and only Manjoume Thunder! Give sparky boi a hug!

WE STAN SUPPORTIVE WORKPLACES IN THIS HOUSE. Also, tiny bit of Egoshipping at the end.

This monster is just over nine pages. What am I doing with my life?

“So you wanted to talk Pro stuff?”

It takes Chazz’s brain an extra minute to process the words, still reeling from the bombshell Jaden decided to drop on them tonight. Then he latches onto the chance to think about literally anything other than the fact that Jaden literally fused himself with the monster that tried to kill him! How stupid do you get?! “Yes, please, I’m desperate.”

“Alright, no need to grovel.” Aster holds a hand out to preemptively stop any further begging that admittedly would have happened. “Like I said, I’d be glad for the company.”

It’s still surreal to watch Aster be both honest and vulnerable even though Chazz has seen it a few times now thanks to these group talks Jim started. Chazz has actually seen most of his friends break down in tears at this point. This year has been a fucking trip. “Okay, what’s the catch?”

“You’ll be my assistant.”

“Sorry, what?” Chazz must not have heard that right.

“You’ll have the chance to see how the Pros work up close and personal, and I get an extra pair of hands on deck.” Aster shrug. “Win-win.”

That is absolutely not a win-win! “I’m not gonna be your lackey!”

Aster levels him a look that would be insulting enough even without the younger boy’s obvious lack of fear in the face of Chazz’s anger. “So you don’t want my help then.”

Oh this son of a- Deep breath in. Hold it. Exhale. Don’t scream bloody murder at the literal one person related to the Pro Dueling business giving Chazz the time of day. “Fine. What exactly am I expected to do?”

“You’ll be managing Aster’s schedule,” the woman says as she escorts Chazz up the elevator because Aster couldn’t be bothered to meet Chazz himself. Esmerelda, she introduced herself as, an employee of the Senrigan Group assigned to look after Aster. Purple curls spill over her shoulder and she’d be pretty if her smile wasn’t so...unnerving. Sharp green eyes bore down at him and Chazz wants to fidget in this stupid, uncomfortable suit. “Take this.” Esmerelda holds out a simple flip phone and Chazz accepts it with minimal confusion. “It’s a company phone and will be your primary method of communication.”

This gig sounds simple enough at least.

At the top floor of the company-owned skyscraper, the doors open to reveal a spacious and luxurious pad. Reminds him of home, honestly, and Chazz has to swallow down the confusing mix of emotions that brings. “I’ll be living here? Not bad.”

“Certainly not.” Esmeralda chuckles and gives Chazz a smile that - in one word - he would describe as plastic. Leading him through the entryway-living room space, she opens a door to a room that looks like a typical office space.

“That’s a lot of phones.” He stares incredulously at the appliances that line the desks.

“Of course,” Esmerelda says and Chazz finds it more than a little unnerving that she doesn’t deem it necessary to address why there are so many phones in this room. “This is your desk.” She taps a spot on the table top with an immaculate nail. “Make sure you arrive before seven.” Chazz nods and the woman leads him back out of the room to a set of narrow double doors that open onto a balcony. “You will be sleeping there.” She points down at a comparatively tiny, rustic looking building squeezed between the back of the skyscraper and the road. Is that a warehouse?

It’s a warehouse. There’s a couch and table on the landing near the door and a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. The power is out and a cloud of dust rises from the couch when Chazz sets his briefcase on the cushions. Sadly, this isn’t much worse than the Slifer Dorms. He’ll make it work.

“You put him where?” Aster looks up over his cup of chamomile tea, something Sartorius recommended after noticing his trouble sleeping and, like most of Sartorius’ suggestions, works fairly well. Setting the cup down, he presses his finger tips to his temple and doesn’t wait for an answer. “Esmerelda, you are evil.”

“With all due respect, sir, this boy is a Manjoume.” Esmerelda frowns, posture stiff where she sits on the other end of the couch and brows furrowed in an expression that speaks exactly how she feels about this situation. “The Manjoume Group is our biggest rival. He could be here to steal company secrets.”

“I highly doubt that,” Aster mumbles and picks his tea up again.

“To my knowledge, Chazz has an estranged relationship with his family,” Sartorius says from the armchair across the table, pencil tapping lightly against the clipboard on his lap. That paper is either Aster’s schedule or a crossword; Aster doesn’t care enough to squint. “Besides, he is a personal friend.”

Aster scoffs. “Chazz and I are not friends.”

“Friendly acquaintances then.”

“Acquaintances,” Aster corrects. “We’re just acquaintances.”

“Of course,” Sartorius agrees in that voice that implies he knows something he isn’t willing to share yet. Aster narrows his eyes at him over the cup but doesn’t press the issue. He’ll find out soon enough; Sartorius isn't that good at keeping secrets.

“Exactly,” Esmerelda presses. “Why are you sticking your neck out for him?”

Sighing, Aster sets his cup down to massage his temple once more. He knows Esmerelda means well, but she’s been watching him like a hawk even since he got back from the other dimension and Aster misses that small bit of freedom. “I don’t know. Maybe because I felt bad for him? Maybe because I wanted someone to talk about-” He lets the sentence hang and shelves the bulk of his bitterness and frustration before continuing; he doesn’t need to take it out on them. “-who actually understands.”

Esmerelda presses her lips. Sartorius stares at him with those damnably soulful eyes. Even if he could have predicted that whole fiasco, he certainly wouldn’t have been able to stop it. Aster doubts nothing short of the sun imploding could have stopped Jaden from chasing Jesse across dimensions; Aster had just been the idiot who got too close.

“It’s late.” Aster exhales wearily. “You should go home.”

Nodding, Esmerelda stands and bids him a good night. Only after the elevator has closed behind her does Aster allow himself to slump against the couch. Sartorius sets the clipboard on the table - it’s a crossword - and holds out his hand. “Shall we retire?”

“Yeah.”

It’s easy to be vulnerable around Sartorius, probably because of how long they’ve known each other, and Sartorius is still the only person Aster can completely relax around. He lets Sartorius pull him up off the couch and they head down the hallway to the bedrooms at the back of the suite.

“I’m in the next room if you need me,” Sartorius promises with his usual nightly greeting, and Aster has the distinct feeling he’ll be taking him up on that later. Today’s been stressful.

Chazz arrives at the office room at 6:55 sharp and freezes at the sight of the person already sitting there. “Good morning, Chazz,” Sartorius greets like they’re old buddies or something and not the guy who brainwashed him less than a year ago. “I trust Esmerelda already briefed you on the daily necessities.”

“No?” Chazz croaks. He’s going to be working with Sartorius? What happened to Esmerelda?

Sartorius’ expression falls into one of surprise and concern, but one of the multiple phones rings before he can respond and his attention immediately swerves. “Good morning, this is Sartorius speaking,” the man says with an uncanny level of grace and authority. Whatever is said on the other end of the line prompts him to pull up some kind of spreadsheet on the computer in front of him. Another phone rings as the conversation continues and Sartorius wordlessly directs Chazz to answer it with his hand.

“This is Weekly Duelist,” a voice chirps in his ear, a bit loud and on the edge of demanding. “Next week, could we have Aster...”

A third phone rings. Sartorius pushes a pen and paper at Chazz as he sets the first phone down and reaches for the next. “Write it down.” He’s on the next call before Chazz can ask for elaboration.

And so the morning goes. Chazz scribbles down the names of different dueling events and talk shows and gods-know-what-else that want Aster’s attention while Sartorius alternates between his own conversations and calling back the interested parties on Chazz’s list to fit them onto the spreadsheet.

Esmerelda shows up during a lull in phone calls as Sartorius walks Chazz through using the digital schedule, and Chazz’s brain is too fried from the last 2 hours of his life - has it only been 2 hours?? - to even care about the guy being in his personal space. “The first few hours of the morning are always the busiest. If you can’t confirm at the time of the call, write down the request and call back later. You must also always consider location and travel time- Oh.” Sartorius looks up abruptly. “Excuse us a moment.”

Standing, Sartorius pulls Esmerelda back out the room with him, and Chazz takes the opportunity to just sit and do nothing. A few names remain on the callback list. Should he get started on that or wait for Sartorius to return?

“You sent him in here with no instruction.” The conversation floats in from beyond the door.

“I told him to arrive before seven.”

“Before seven does not imply ‘in time to receive instruction’, Esmeralda. If you weren’t going to show him anything last night, he should have been here at least half an hour before hand.”

So that woman set him up for failure? Whatever, nothing Chazz isn’t used to. Reaching for the phone, he calls back the next event on his list. He’s got two more events scheduled before Sartorius and Esmerelda return and sits back in the chair smugly as he ends the call. Sartorius’ eyebrows rise as he glances over the schedule on his own screen.

“Well done! I’m glad to see you taking initiative.” The praise sends an odd thrill through Chazz like a half forgotten memory and he decides not to dwell on it. Sartorius turns back to Esmerelda with an almost smug grin. “And you worried.”

The woman presses her red lips together with a dismissive hum; Chazz prefers it to the plastic smile.

A tea and snack break later, Chazz finds himself fetching Aster’s clothing and duel disk - why the hell does someone need that many of the exact same thing?! - for a photo shoot, then hauling books from a truck to the table of a signing event - he didn’t know Aster wrote a book about duel philosophy. Admittedly, he’s curious - all while occasionally answering phone calls and penning new events onto his paper copy of the schedule.

The sun has set by the time he finds himself slumping back in his desk chair, Aster’s schedule neat and tidy on the spreadsheet before him. The phones have finally gone silent.

“Good work today.” Sartorius enters with a tray of soup and breadsticks and sets it on the desk adjacent to Chazz.

Chazz blinks at it. “You cook?”

Sartorius smiles. “Yes. Mizuchi and I lived alone for most of our lives, so we had to learn how to take care of ourselves.”

“Oh.” Chazz doesn’t know what to say to that so he doesn’t say anything as he reaches for the soup and spoons some of it into his mouth. It’s surprisingly good, mild, not too salty like most of the canned stuff.

“There’s an extra room up here for you,” Sartorius says and Chazz looks up sharply.

“I don’t have to stay in the warehouse?”

“Goodness, no.” Shaking his head, Sartorius presses his lips and continues at length, “I suppose Esmerelda wanted to test your resolve.” Chazz snorts. “I assure you, Aster and I did not approve.”

Didn’t stop them from letting him sleep there last night. Chazz can’t even muster the energy to glare at the man, only managing what must be a fish eyed stare. He dips the breadstick in the soup before taking a bit; oo, now that’s a good combination of flavors.

“How was your first day?” It’s still unnerving how calm and even Sartorius speaks even without the malicious undertones from the Light of Destruction.

“Exhausting,” Chazz answers without hesitation.

Sartorius chuckles. “I’ve put on some tea if you’d like to join us.”

Chazz considers this and shakes his head. “Nah, I’m gonna go get my stuff.” Still too weird, and honestly he wants nothing more than to crash in a real bed and stop existing for a few hours.

Nodding, Sartorius stands. “The room is at the far end of the hall. Mine is the second on the left if you need anything.”

Chazz really shouldn’t be surprised these two live together.

The following week is more of the same. Chazz follows Aster to all manner of events from meet-and-greets to fancy parties, always doing the heavy lifting and always answering the phone. During the precious few moments he has to breathe, Sartorius talks his ear off. The man is a surprisingly witty conversation partner and the complete opposite of Chazz’s sparse memories from the Society of Light.

“Of course I’m different.” Sartorius laughs good naturedly as Chazz curses his slip of the tongue. “That wasn’t really me, Chazz.”

No, Chazz supposes it wasn’t.

“He’s so good with people,” he mumbles, leaning on the balcony railing where they watch Aster mingle in the party below.

“Of course.” Sartorius sounds fond. “That’s what it takes to succeed. I believe you can learn a lot from watching him.”

Yeah, if Chazz can manage to find the time between everything else.

“You want me to what?”

“Organize the cards in here,” Aster repeats and Chazz baulks at the sheer number of stacks that line the shelves. “The power’s back on so that won’t be a problem. No specific deadline, just work on it when you have spare time.”

“What spare time?!”

Aster only raises his eyebrows with that unimpressed expression he’s so fond of giving, and Chazz clenches his teeth.

“Can I least get some gloves and a mask and a duster?” It’s filthy in here and Chazz doesn’t fancy breathing in whatever dust cloud he’s found to kick up.

“There should be cleaning supplies in the closet.” Aster waves a hand vaguely before turning to take his leave. “Good luck.”

A number of people make house calls with Aster; Chazz doesn’t pay much attention to them because he’s usually neck deep in phone calls and keeping Aster’s schedule straight - he does not need another double booking fiasco, thank god Sartorius had the charm to sort it out peacefully. One guy in particular, however, Chazz does get used to seeing; Mike something-or-other, a TV producer hell bent on getting Aster in on his comedy acts. Aster throws him out more than once.

“Why don’t you just cut ties with him?” Chazz asks after another such altercation. “You clearly don’t like him.”

“He’s good at what he does.” Aster frowns, annoyed if not outright angered. So are Slade and Jagger and that didn’t stop Chazz from telling them to fly a kite. Picking up his cup, Aster winces as his hand shakes and quickly sets the cup down before the tea can spill. Chazz zeros in on the movement.

“Hand,” he says, scooting over to sit by Aster on the couch without a second thought.

“What?”

Chazz doesn’t wait as he takes Aster’s hand and smooths out the joints between his own fingers before pressing gently and rubbing circles with his thumbs.

“You know massage??”

“Yeah.” Chazz still doesn’t get why everyone makes a big deal of it. This is something he’s always been able to do; used to find it weird that other people couldn’t because it felt so easy to him. A natural skill or whatever. “Jesus fuck,” the English expletive slips past his lips as he feels the knots and strained muscles in Aster’s hand. “I’m cancelling meet-and-greets and signing events for a while.”

“Excuse me?”

“So your hand can heal,” Chazz cuts Aster off before the other can work himself into righteous indignation. “You can’t duel without your draw hand. Two weeks of minimal activity and you should be fine. But we should tape this. Do you have a first aid-”

A white kit with a red cross hovers in the peripheral of Chazz’s vision. He stares dumbly up at Sartorius as Aster huffs with amusement. Cautiously, Chazz takes it. “Can you still see the future or something?”

“Predict,” Sartorius corrects as he takes his usual seat in the arm chair. “And not all predictions are accurate.”

“Riiiight.” Just gonna ignore that piece of information for now then. Chazz pulls the ace wrap out of the kit and turns back to Aster’s hand. “Tell me if it’s too tight.”

Maybe he’s imagining it, but there might be a sliver more respect in Aster’s eyes when Chazz finishes wrapping his hand and a tiny, genuine smile on his face.

This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening!

Aster’s going to lose his entire career just because one lousy card went missing?!

Chazz paces back and forth across the warehouse floor, gnawing on his fingernails. The cards have all been organized - monster, trap, spell, then by type, archetype, and alphabetical. Chazz could point exactly to which box a single card is in, but the one card apparently more important that Aster’s fucking career disappears from right under his nose!

They even know who took it! They have photos from the security camera! But they can’t prove shit because the bastard was smart enough to keep his face covered and away from the camera! If they can’t prove it, they can’t get the card back! And then Aster-

“Boss, breathe!” Ojama Yellow squeals. “I think you're having an angry attack!”

“Anxiety attack!” Chazz screams, suddenly aware of just how rapid and shallow his breath has gotten. Geez, he sounds like Jaden after-

JADEN!

Chazz dives for his school-issued PDA, yanks up the contacts, and rapidly taps his foot against the floor as he waits for the other end of the line to pick up. He dials twice before getting an answer.

“What?”

“Jaden, I need your help!”

“Do you have any idea what time it is?” The other boy sounds groggy and disheveled.

No, Chazz has absolutely no idea what time it is in Japan, he is on the side of the globe and that’s not important right now! “Listen! I need you and your freaky powers for help with something!”

Silence. The line clicks dead.

“DID YOU JUST HANG UP ON ME?” Chazz screams into the empty warehouse. It takes three more tries to get Jaden back on the line.

“And why should I help you?”

“SERIOUSLY? Wait.” Something about Jaden’s voice sounds off. The cadence? “Yubel? This is Yubel isn’t it? Put Jaden on the line! I don’t want you!”

“Jaden is asleep as I was before you so rudely interrupted me and will be returning to now,” Yubel snips.

“WAIT!” Chazz screeches before she can hang up again. He doesn’t need to waste any more time on callbacks. “Never mind! I just need help! Aster needs help!”

The silence on the other end stretches long enough that Chazz fears the monster already hung up. “I’m listening.”

Chazz doesn’t even question it when Jaden tumbles out of the shadows onto the warehouse floor, grumbling about fudged landings and never being at locations before, just snaps at him to hide the wings and drags him up to Aster’s apartment. “I brought help!” he announces as they barge in.

Aster’s head snaps up and Chazz watches the scathing remark die on his tongue as his eyes fall on Jaden. “Oh. That’s an idea.”

“Okay, what the hell is going on?” Jaden walks fearlessly up to the trio. “Cuz I got the basics from Yubel, but details would be nice.”

“Yubel?” Esmerelda asks with a weary glance between Jaden and Chazz.

Jaden blanks at her then turns away dismissively. “Not important.”

Aster tosses the security photos onto the table between them. “This is the guy who took the card. Mike, a TV producer who’s been trying to get me to go along with his comedy gimmick for weeks now. We know it’s him but these photos won’t hold up in court.”

Picking the photos up, Jaden holds his chin thoughtfully. “So you just need me to get this card back?”

“And maybe some proof that this guy stole it,” Chazz adds quickly, trying not to cringe as Aster’s eyes flicker over to him, but the pro silently nods his agreement.

“Alright. I’ll see what I can do.” Setting the photos back on the table, Jaden glances at the elevator, makes a face, and walks straight for the balcony. They all watch in confused silence until Jaden leaps off the balcony railing.

Esmerelda screams. “Is he insane?!”

Even Chazz charges toward the balcony, leaning over the edge in terror, only to find Jaden standing calmly on the sidewalk below like he didn’t just jump off the top floor of a fucking skyscraper!

“How?!” Esmerelda gapes, gripping the railing with white knuckles.

“I’m not even gonna question it.” Aster waves a hand as he returns indoors. Sartorius chuckles quietly, the only person who hadn’t made a mad dash after the reckless idiot.

Chazz sinks to the balcony floor, waiting for his heart to finally get the memo that they don’t need to be freaking out anymore. Gods above help them all...

Jaden gets the card back and manages to publicly humiliate Mike in the process. Win-win.

At the end of Chazz’s ‘employment’, Aster challenges him to an official PR duel. It’s the first time Chazz has gotten to seriously break out his deck in a while and he fears he’ll be rusty, but the plays come to him easier than they ever had. Oh, he gets it now. When he organized all the cards in the warehouse, he read each one’s effect; he thought about how to play them and combo them with each other. Aster’s deck is easy to read and Chazz pulls off a spectacular win.

Amidst the cheers, Aster holds out his hand. “Nice work. Guess you did learn a thing or two.”

Riding the adrenaline high, Chazz pulls him straight into a hug. Aster grunts, going rigid before awkwardly patting his back.

“Maybe not in front of the cameras.”

Chazz immediately backpedals. “Right! Sorry!” There’s an odd expression in Aster’s eyes as they shake hands properly this time.

“Sartorius. I have another problem.”

Sartorius sniggers as Aster predictably sinks into the seat next to him, flipping over the cards in his game of solitaire. “Oh, I don’t think this one is a problem,” he says with confidence, this morning’s card reading still fresh in his mind. “You should ask him out.”

It takes a second. “SARTORIUS!” Aster pushes away from the table, looking positively scandalized. “I don’t have time for a social life let alone a romantic one!”

Humming, Sartorius places a card on its designated stack. “I’m sure you can make the time. After all, you’ve been making time to visit Duel Academy quite frequently of late.”

“For my mental health!” Aster goes on the defensive, but there’s no denying the hint of flush on his cheeks. “And that's not the point! I don’t care if you read it in cards, I’m not just randomly asking him out!”

Sadly, Sartorius knows half of Aster’s reluctance to the idea is because the media would have a field day with any celebrity’s love life, let alone one with...less conventional preferences. That will not, however, prevent Sartorius from teasing his best friend. “How would you prefer to ask him out then?”

With a frustrated whine, Aster glares at Sartorius. “Not at all.”

“That’s a lie.”

“Shut up.”

#gxmonth2021 #chazz princeton #manjoume jun #aster phoenix #sartorius kumar #jaden yuki #egoshipping #ygo gx #yugioh gx #yu gi oh gx #long post

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cali-holland · 4 years

Text

Risky Quizness- Tom Holland One Shot

Pairing: Tom Holland X Reader

Requested by Anon: meeting tom at one of the pub quizzes he goes to at his local pub, he and his mates need more people on their team to sign up, so they asks you and a couple of your friends to join, you and him connect. Xxoo

Prompt: When you meet Tom at a pub quiz, sparks fly between the two of you.

Word Count: 1800

A/N: Huge shoutout to @saysomethingspiderman for being a major help with this one. I’m hella American and never experienced a pub quiz before lol aka brits dont hate me for this

Masterlist Tom Holland Masterlist

*Gif is not mine*

~~~

“Damn it.” Tom muttered, looking at his phone with a frown.

“What?” Harrison asked, sitting next to him at the table with their two pints.

“Harry just texted me. He’s sick.” He replied. “And Sam’s with his girlfriend and you know mum would never let me take Paddy.”

“So it’s just us then?” The blond let out a sigh.

Pub quizzes weren’t much fun with two people. Normally, they’d go with Tuwaine, Harry, and Sam- sometimes even Sam’s girlfriend would tag along, but Tuwaine had a family thing come up, and now the twins had bailed.

“We could always try to find someone to join our team? Right?” Tom offered weakly, and his friend shrugged.

“We’d have to find people willing to actually join us.” He stated and Tom nodded. The pub was already filling up with hopefuls for the pub quiz, there was no way they’d find others to team up with them-

“You can’t do a pub quiz with two people! It just doesn’t work like that!” You let out a frustrated groan as you passed by Tom’s table with your friend. And just like that, a light bulb went off in Tom’s head as he jumped after you.

“Hey, wait!” He called out and you and your friend paused, turning to him skeptically as you held your drinks.

“You only have two people for the quiz? My mate and I are also a team of two. Did- did you want to, maybe, join us?” Tom asked, realizing how stupid it sounded to ask that out loud- to ask a couple strangers to be on his team for a pub quiz. Your friend looked at you and you contemplated it for a moment.

“Sure, but we better win.” You stated, following a triumphant Tom back to his table (much to Harrison’s surprise). You sat down in an empty chair, leaving one open between you and Harrison, and Tom slid into it.

“I’m Tom, and this is Harrison.” He introduced the two of them.

“Y/N, this is Jess.” You replied with a smile. The quizmaster quickly made his way around the pub, handing out a sheet of paper to each of the teams.

“What should our name be?” Tom asked, looking at the paper in front of him.

“Risky Quizness.” You said simply and Jess let out a laugh beside you.

“Risky Quizness?” Tom and Harrison both repeated, and you nodded.

“Every time we’ve used that name, we’ve won the pub quiz.” You stated.

“That’s because the only time we’ve won it was our name!” Jess added, and you rolled your eyes at her.

“We still won. Maybe we wouldn’t have been second last time if our name was Risky Quizness, not Universally Challenged.” You picked up the pencil from the table and grabbed the paper from in front of Tom.

“Risky Quizness, like the Tom Cruise movie?” Tom asked you, a small smile on his face.

“I’m writing it!” You announced and Jess groaned, but the boys just laughed.

“In case you couldn’t tell, she runs the quiz.” She teased.

“Shove off.” You groaned, “I’m competitive.”

“How many of these have you won?” Tom inquired. He honestly wasn’t sure how well he and Harrison would do with their usual team; by the end of the night, he would have always had enough beers to be a bit hazy on how many he actually knew on his own. He wanted to do well though because who didn’t love winning? And he also may have wanted to impress you a little.

“Just the one.” You mumbled, not wanting to fully admit it, “But we keep coming in second. There’s this group at our usual place called Let’s Get Quizzical and they win every single time. So we’re here in hopes that they won’t be.”

“What about you two?” Your friend asked.

“We’ve won a few times, but honestly, I don’t remember if I got any of them right.” He laughed.

“So, it’s up to you then, blondie.” You joked, and Harrison smiled with a grimace. “You two are lucky you’re attractive.”

Before either could respond, the quizmaster began to speak, announcing the general knowledge round. Some were easy questions like name the longest river in the U.K., complete the line from Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” (which you knew immediately), and how many hearts does an octopus have (that one you and Harrison got in a heated debate about whether it was two or eight, when Jess stepped in as the marine biologist to tell you it was three).

The next couple rounds went by smoothly, the four of you working together to make sure you got the right answers. By the time you were on the final round, the movies round, you felt fairly confident that your answers were like 90% right (you still weren’t sure if you trusted Tom and Harrison in saying that the DeLorean in Back to the Future had to hit 88 to time travel because you definitely thought it was 85 like the year the first movie came out).

“Which Star Wars character gets namechecked in Indiana Jones: Temple of Doom?” The quizmaster asked, making the four of you pause.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen that movie.” Harrison stated.

“Yoda?” Tom suggested, thinking it was a fairly iconic Star Wars character.

“It’s Obi-Wan.” You said as you wrote down the answer. “I just watched the movie like two days ago, and trust me, you’re not missing out if you haven’t seen it.”

“Two hours I’ll never get back.” Jess shook her head with a sigh.

“That bad?” Tom asked and you both nodded.

“The worst.” You shuddered just thinking about it.

Though that question stumped Tom and Harrison, it wasn’t until the last question of the round that you really didn’t know the answer.

“Last question. This sequel film is the 10th highest grossing superhero movie of all time.” The quizmaster read off the question, and you turned to the rest of your team, unsure of the right answer.

“I don’t know? Captain America?” You asked, wracking your brain for any good superhero sequel films you’d seen. You watched Harrison try to nudge Tom inconspicuously, who was blushing beside you. He mumbled something to you, but you couldn’t hear it at all. “What movie?”

“Uh, Spider-Man: Far From Home.” He spoke up louder, the blush on his cheeks darkening as he shot Harrison a glare.

“Oh, right, never saw that.” You replied, and Tom laughed nervously.

“You really never saw it?” He asked.

“Nope.” You shook your head, “I don’t even think I saw the first one, honestly. Not that big of a Spider-Man fan.” As you wrote down the answer Tom had given you, you missed him sending a look back to his friend, trying his best not to be slightly offended by your words.

“You should watch them. They’re really good movies.” Tom said with an encouraging smile when you looked back up at him, ignoring Harrison’s kick under the table. It wasn’t until then that he realized you had absolutely no clue who he was, and it was the best thing ever for him; you were treating him like just another random guy who invited you to join his pub quiz team.

The quizmaster announced the end of the quiz, and everyone went over their answers. Much to your familiar disappointment, your team ended up second again.

“Maybe, it’s just you.” Tom teased you as Harrison and Jess went to go get more drinks.

“Rude.” You playfully scoffed, though you were still a bit upset by the loss. “Maybe if you had known that Wisconsin was the dairy state then we would have won.”

“You didn’t even know that one!” He refuted. It was true- the American geography round just about wiped your team out. Tom shifted a bit closer to you, leaning on his arm, flexing it almost, “So you think you’ll be back at this pub for next week?”

“I think I could be convinced to return.” You replied slyly. Before Tom could ask for your number, you already had your phone unlocked, sliding it over to him. “Here.”

“You already knew.” He chuckled, handing you his phone in return. You both typed in your numbers and switched phones back.

“That one Spider-Man question. How did you know that?” You asked, thinking back to all the sigh’s the erupted throughout the pub when the answer was revealed- most had gotten it wrong, so how did Tom know so quickly that he was right?

“I just know.” Tom shrugged in an effort to play it off.

“You know off the top of your head the 10th highest grossing superhero movie of all time?” You eyed him suspiciously.

“They said it was a sequel, so it had to be either that or Incredibles 2.” He joked, but you weren’t too amused. He leaned in closer to you, creating an intimate distance between your two faces, “Can I tell you a secret?”

“What, are you Spider-Man or something?” You asked teasingly, but his smile never faltered.

“Yeah, I am.” Tom replied. You laughed before you realized the complete seriousness in his voice and his face.

“Seriously?” You managed through a fit of laughter.

“I really am! And you said you didn’t like my movie.” He teased.

“I said I never saw it.” You corrected him. “That has to be cheating for it to be your movie as the answer.”

“No, it definitely isn’t.” He shook his head with a laugh.

“How much did it gross? How much?” You asked, wiggling your eyebrows at him jokingly, “You check the box office daily, don’t you?”

“I do not!” He protested, chuckling, “And it made over a billion, thank you very much.”

“Did you drop your pants for that to happen or something?” You quipped, and his face heated up. You gasped, “You didn’t!”

“It was just for one scene and I had my underwear on!” Tom insisted, “You’d know that if you saw the film.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll watch it- both of them.” You laughed.

“How about I quiz you on them next week?” He joked, and you groaned.

“No, that means I’d have to pay attention.”

“Fine, I won’t quiz you on them on one condition.” Tom rested a hand on the back of your chair, leaning in closer to you. You raised your eyebrows at him, telling him wordlessly to continue, “Go on a date with me?”

You nodded, laughing as you spoke, “Yes, but I gotta say, I really thought you were going to make me watch your own movie with you.”

“Trust me, darling, we can do that, too.”

~~~

Tag List: @viagracex @theamazingtomholland @hellomoveonby @heyitsshrez

Tom Tag List: @quaksonhehe

#tom holland #tom holland imagine #tom holland one shot #tom holland fanfic #tom holland x reader #tom holland x you #tom holland x y/n #tom holland fluff

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capncooks · 4 years

Text

⠀،⠀⠀jesse pinkmanʼs mail

request: hi!! your first fic was soooo good, i love the way you write! if it’s not too much trouble, how about jesse with a shy and introverted reader, i feel like he’d be real sweet about it! maybe around late season 4 - 5? thank u bby ❤️

word count: bruh i typed it into tumblr instead of my notes so... can't calculate it. woops. it's average tho, bout 800-1000.

summary: you have recently moved into the house opposite jesseʼs. for some reason, the mailman keeps delivering some of jesseʼs mail to your door and every week you try to muster the courage to hand it to him. it's been two months and you decide that enough is enough.

again. jesse pinkman. you were almost certain by now the mailman had seen you enough times to know your name definitely was not jesse pinkman, but every monday and every thursday you ended up with his mail.

you knew you should've sorted it out when it first happened, but like always– your stomach tied itself into several knots and neither you or those letters made it past your front step. sometimes you would wait for him to come out in the morning and hope that you could ʼbumpʼ into him, though he never showed and it was almost as if he was nocturnal. god knows what he did for a living.

but, today was the day. no more waiting around, no more procrastination behind your front door and standing there asking yourself “should i do it now or tomorrow?”. it was today. you wrapped an elastic band around the wad of envelopes and wedged them between your arm and side as you grabbed your keys to unlock the front door.

it was a fresh morning, not in the summery sense, but slightly cold and biting. you looked to jesseʼs house through the weak fog– hell, it always looked so... unlived in. your mind began to slip into that second-guessing state, wondering if you should even bother since he never seemed to be there, but you shook it off before it took hold of you and began to cross the street. nearing his door, you rehearsed what you would say in your head– even thinking about how hard your knock should be, how you should stand, how you should hand him the envelopes. being this introverted seemed like a handicap in moments like these.

“uh, can i help you?”

you froze. or should i say, you froze again. you had been so caught up in how you were going to deal with the situation, that you had completely stopped midway up his path and were none of the wiser to his emerging presence.

“i–” you stuttered a little, trying to find the words to explain, but coming up with nothing more than the single letter.

you began to burn up, feeling it rush into your cheeks and up the nape of your neck. you might have even considered walking away, if not for him—

—he looked at you with such calm and ease, as if he had all the time in the day just for you. he didn't looked impatient or bothered, but kind; his reassuring smile sent a wave of confidence over you, and the words came back one by one.

“your mail” you began, holding it up slightly, “it keeps being delivered to me, i live over there”. you pointed to your house sheepishly, before returning your gaze to him.

he began to walk down the path to meet you, looking over your shoulder at your house and then back to you, “you haven't always been there, right?”

you shook your head, wanting to elaborate, but not feeling brave enough to do so. social skills were not your forté.

he picked up on this, slowly taking the letters out of your hand and flicking through them, “august?” he questioned. it was now october, you could understand his confusion.

“i had trouble, um–” you took a deep breath, reminding yourself of his easy going manner before starting again, “i had trouble finding you, you don't seem to be in much”.

“i won't be in at all if i don't get these bills paid” he noticed a few of the letters were from the gas and electric board, biting his lip.

your eyes widened, realising the issues you might have caused, “i am so sorry, i should've tried harder... i didn't know they were all impor–”

he stifled a small laugh, shoving the wad into the pocket of his oversized jacket, “yo, don't worry ʼbout it. iʼm sure the big man will be chill”.

you nodded slowly, taking it all in. god, he was so laid back. usually, people just seemed to huff and sigh at you... as if your shyness was an inconvenience to them. not him, though.

“i didn't get your name” he hushed, breaking the growing silence between you both.

your mouth twitched at the corners a little, almost as if you were about to break into a grin. here was a person who had seen you at your worst, and still wanted to know your name.

“y/n” you suppressed the grin, but allowed for a small, polite smile as you spoke.

he returned the the favour, “jesse”

laughing a little, you gestured towards the letters, “i know”

he took a moment to look down, before breaking out a chuckle himself and shifting his feet a little— “oh yeah, right. obviously”.

did you sense a little nervousness in him too?

with a final glance at him, you began to fiddle with your keys as a signal that you were leaving. jesse cocked his head up to look at you, a small smile still resting on his face.

“well, uh– when your next round of mail comes” you joked, testing the waters to see how he reacted about seeing you again.

he shoved his hands into his pockets, taking out the wad of envelopes and waving it in the air a little, “iʼll be waiting”.

and with that, you turned on your heels and began to walk back to your house. jesse headed back towards his own, though he lingered in the doorway– hands in his pockets and slouched against the side as he watched you leave.

he'd be seeing a lot more of you from now on, whether you brought him his mail or not. he would make sure of it.

* * *

written by ade ☺︎︎ , found on @paulsimonpie and @capncooks.

(p.s. thank you for the request, it was so fun to write!!! and also <3333 ur feedback made my day).

any requests, please send them into my ask/submissions box. my inbox is open for any queries you might have. you can send a prompt or an entire plot idea, but preferably note the season too as it helps with imagery.

feel free to leave feedback, i do this for my own personal enjoyment, but also for you– the lovely reader.

#jesse pinkman #jesse pinkman x reader #jesse pinkman imagine #jesse pinkman fanfiction #jesse pinkman one shot #breaking bad #breaking bad fanfiction

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malexmalereader · 4 years

Text

Jesse McCree x Male!Reader - Confess it, else I'll take it to my grave

A/N: it's here. Part 2 to a oneshot written quite some time ago, requested by @madeofunicorns111813 - sorry it took so long - I also took some liberties with the request, hope it's not too bad either way!

Part 1:

Part 2:

As you slowly open your eyes again, waking from your nap, it's pitch black outside - only a small lantern on the porch spending some light, that illuminates a few more bottles of whiskey and cans of beer standing around the porch swing, mainly where Jesse had sat earlier.

The amount of them made you shake your head in amusement - he must be drunk as balls by now, if he hasn't passed out somewhere else yet.

Now there was no sign of him, not the gentle feeling of his arms around you, no indication where he might be gone - only his scent faintly lingering in the air.

You stretch and sit up straight, taking a deep, content breath.

You check your wristwatch and let out an impressed whistle - you'd slept on that old, only mildly comfortable porch swing from what must've been 10 p.m. to somewhere around two in the morning.

You hear the front door open, Jesse's heavy steps a little uneven as he saunter back over to the porch swing, barely acknowledging you.

In his hand he has a glass of water, sighing deeply before downing it in one go. You fondly watch as he spills just a bit of water, that drips down his beard and stains his shirt.

He sets down the glass and sighs once more, staring of into the vast emptiness of the seemingly never ending fields.

"I reckon, and please take my word on this one - it might just be bedtime for the two of us.", you chuckle as you watch him clumsily trying to get up, setting you swinging ever so slightly.

"You ain't the boss o' me-", he says, a few hiccups interrupting him as he stumbles his way forward.

You roll your eyes and get up as well, offering to be his arm rest and crutch, but instead of throwing an arm over your shoulder he wraps you up in a big hug.

"I'm really glad to be back here-", he slurs, headbutting into your neck with a little more force than he meant to.

You pat his back, letting out another chuckle.

"I know man, I know. You've mentioned it a couple of times.", you calmly state, not too surprised by his emotional outburst - even way back when you were younger he had the habit of getting sappy when he let his guard down - either with the help of alcohol or not.

"Nah, you ain't hearing me Darlin'...", He mumbles against your neck, his beard tickling you, before lazily lifting his head to look into your face.

His right hand finds its way to gently cup your cheek and you feel your face grow a little warmer, as you realize how close he is to you. Granted, you were a little surprised and conflicted about whether it's just the alcohol getting the best of both of you.

But god damn it, if his face didn't look stupidly handsome in the low light of the lantern, making his eyes sparkle as he looks at you with such fondness.

"God, I love you so much…", He says, his voice low as his thumb strokes your cheek.

You swallow harshly, trying to avert your eyes away from him - though you had not completely slept the whiskey from your mind yet, you didn't want to get caught up in something that Jesse might not even mean.

But there was just something so captivating about the way he was looking at you - something you had longed for for almost three decades.

"Y'know, back when we were kids my Ma would tease me 'bout how much I talked about you…", he chuckles as he slurs on "And I'd always tell 'er that she got it all wrong. (Y/N) ain't nothing but a friend, he's just real cool, just my ride or die guy for when times get tough."

A corner of your mouth twitches up into a slight smile at the mention of Jesse's Mother - she was a really sweet lady, always had apple pie ready when you and Jesse came back from a days adventure.

It wasn't until she remarried back when Jesse was 17 that all went downhill.

"But I think she knew I was lyin'. Could see it in her eyes. I bet right now she's looking down at me from the heavens thinking to herself 'told ya so, boy.'", Jesse sighs, pulling you a little closer.

"For the longest time I thought I'd marry you. At some point I would've asked you out, real sweet, had it all planned.", as he keeps talking, you swear his voice is getting weaker and his eyes are getting watery - though you wouldn't bet on it.

You gently stroke his back as he keeps talking.

"I wanted to- I wanted to take you out to sit on that ol' abandoned truck at the very back of my Ma's farm. We would've sat down on the back, under that really ugly lookin' cherry tree. There- there was a meteor shower that night.", His eyes slowly drift away from you as he keeps talking, his hand finding its way down your arm, hesitantly lingering at your fingers.

"I had my whole life figured out - I'd tell you, and you'd tell me that you'd always liked me too, and we'd've kissed under the moonlight and all that. We'd've-", he chuckles slightly "We would've finished school, and gone to prom, and then we'd have gotten jobs and get married…"

He lets out a shaky breath.

"I wanted to- I wanted to have a big, sweet wedding on your Mommas' farm, and then we'd've settled down a little further out - but not too far away from our families. So that when we would have had children they could always celebrate their birthdays with their grandparents an' aunts an' uncles an' cousins."

You sigh and intertwine your fingers with his, bringing the hand that had previously stroked his back to his cheek.

You tenderly wipe a tear away with your thumb, guiding his head back to look at you again.

"I'm- I couldn't. I couldn't tell you. Thought you'd say no... I was too much of a coward. And then- the whole thing with my stepdad happened...Ma told me she was remarrying and I just- I just left- and left you, and her, and he got her and hurt her and I didn't even- I didn't even say goodbye to her I-", he chokes up, lowering his head, his eyes closed as he sobs just the slightest bit.

Unsure of what else to do, you squeeze his hand and wipe some stray hair from his face, encouraging him to look at you again.

He carefully opens his eyes, glancing into yours.

"And yesterday, when I came back you just...you welcomed me with open arms and just- you- I don't deserve you. I don't deserve any of your hospitality and all that…I've- Darlin', I'm the absolute worst.", Tears keeps spilling from his eyes as he rambles on.

You let go of his hand just to wrap your arm around his waist and pull him closer.

"I'm gonna have to disagree with that statement, cowboy.", you smile slightly as his expression changed from sad to slightly confused as you glance at his lips for a short moment, before looking back into his eyes.

His gaze flickers from your own lips, to your eyes and then back to your lips.

And as you pull him closer and closer, until your lips meet for a gentle kiss it feels as though time has stopped in its tracks.

His are slightly chapped, taste like all kinds of alcohol and he still reeks of smoke, but right now you couldn't care less as you close your eyes and melt into the kiss.

You can feel Jesse's shoulders relax as his hands roam around your back and up and down your arms.

And when you part he looks just a little more baffled than before. Though there's also a love struck glaze over his eyes.

"Sweetheart, I- I don't think I understand.", He says, almost breathless, a big, dumb grin on his face.

"And I thought that would get my point across just fine.", you giggle, pressing another soft kiss to his cheek.

"After all this time, I don't think there's a single thing in this world that could make me not love you, Jesse.", you confess.

Jesse's eyes widen and he practically tackles you with another kiss. You don't care about the bottles and cans you knock over with your feet as he makes the two of you stumble back on the porch, back down on the swing.

And it doesn't even bother you when the lantern loses its light - if you were afraid of the dark before, right in this moment it simply didn't matter.

Jesse had you encased in his arms, and by what you could tell, you wouldn't ever have to worry about being alone again.

#jesse mccree #jesse mccree x male reader #jesse mccree x reader #jesse mccree imagine #mccree #mccree x male!reader #overwatch mccree #ow mccree #overwatch x male reader #overwatch x male!reader #overwatch x reader #overwatch imagine #mccree imagine

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myevilmouse · 4 years

Text

2020 Fic Year In Review

This disaster year was my second of writing fanfic for the Star Wars fandom, focused as always on my handsome Jedi and charismatic Grand Admiral. Here’s the same thing I did last year: basically share the idea of the fic I wanted to write and the result of what came out of that idea.

Because I don’t outline or plan, it is often as much a surprise to me as to my readers as to where the story winds up. But I enjoy the magic that is surrendering to the muse / autonomous typing hands, so I doubt that will change anytime soon.

Context: 2020 began with the fic whining circle’s discussion of the sad dearth of blowjobs for Luke Skywalker in fandom. We resolved to remedy this with the creation of the Luke Deserves All The Blowjobs Challenge, our 12-month mission to provide our man with 12 blowjobs, detailed lovingly for your (and his) pleasure. We all agreed to contribute and so my first offering was:

1. Anomaly

Idea: In 2019, I participated in the Star Wars Rare Pairs Fic Exchange. Shanlyrical had requested the pairing of Guri/Luke, which I’d never considered. I didn’t get assigned that one (I got assigned Thrawn/Original Art Forger), but the idea stayed with me. The blowjob challenge was the perfect opportunity.

Result: A one-shot I am quite proud of, written from droid POV attempting to seduce our Jedi (who is quite difficult to seduce damn his perfect ass), full of technical and cyborgian terminology. Since shanlyrical had put the ship in my brain, it was gifted to her.

2. Comfortable

Idea: Write an “old married Skywalkers” smutfic for a Valentine’s Day gift to my Luke/Mara cohorts.

Result: A rather florid one-shot that is overstuffed with choice adjectives and bursting at the seams with love for my Jedi’s happy ever after.

3. The Problem With Prophecy

Idea: Write a Thrawn/Pryce fic for the Thryce Discord’s Valentine’s Day. The prompts shifted, from “blind date” to “soulmates” or maybe vice versa as a theme. I had already started it when the prompt changed so made them both work.

Result: Another “how they got together fic” (of which I seem to write many for Thryce) that was a lot of fun to write, with a little contemplation about free will vs destiny in there.

4. Proxy

Idea: The Luke Deserves All The Blowjobs Challenge needed more fic, and no one wrote that Asajj Ventress/Luke pairing I had requested for SW rarepairs 2019… *cracks knuckles* If you want something done, gotta do it yourself!

Result: This was an interesting challenge. Whilst I typically attempt to create scenarios for Luke to bang all the ladies that are SOMEWHAT realistic, I decided the only way to make this happen was to assume whatever plot was required to set this up had already occurred, so it starts *cough* right before the action, so to speak. I also sort of low-key ship Ventress/Kenobi (what is that called? Ventrobi?) so operated throughout with the idea that since she couldn’t have Obi-Wan, she was settling for another Jedi as a plaything. Since I used only pronouns for Ventress in the fic, I suppose the reader could imagine any wicked woman or Nightsister or whomever on the other end of Luke’s cock, but in my brain it’s Asajj and she is a lucky woman (and Luke is a lucky man). Anyway, it was probably one of my least popular fics this year but I still like it!

5. Thranto 400 Works Celebration Ficlet (Ch 3: Everything To Lose)

Idea: @jessko-fic asked me to contribute to this collection to commemorate the Thrawn/Vanto ship hitting 400 works on AO3. Me: Slash?!?!

Result: I don’t write slash in general because I just…don’t really enjoy it, doesn’t float my boat or melt my butter, although so often I wish that weren’t the case. I have read a lot of Thranto thanks to Jess’s evil influence though, and thought I could tackle this ship. I wanted to write something exactly 400 words for the 400 works thing, and the result was a little “missing scene” that I hope was true to the spirit of the collection while also slotting into Thrawn and Eli’s storyline.

6. Creativity

Idea: For The May The Fourth fic exchange, try to hit my giftee’s likes and stuff as many MacGyver-inspired easter eggs as possible into the story.

Result: 14 “original series” MacGyver-isms crammed into this thing, including winks and nods to names and dates, and plenty of Luke and Mara banter to accompany the mission. One of my most researched fics this year and one of the most fun to write! And my giftee loved it, which is the best result possible.

7. Physical Graffiti

Idea: Agreed to a one-on-one fic exchange with @jessko-fic, since we never get matched in “regular” exchanges. She requested Luke x Sabine, which tied in perfectly to my never-ending goal of Luke x All The Ladies.

Result: A (hopefully) sexy multi-chapter that required a lot of research on timelines to get them together for this “missing scene” and Mandalorian stuff. My septuagenarian mom has proclaimed it’s her favorite of any of my stories, so I call it a success. O_O Yes, she reads my fic.

8. Strangers When We Meet

Idea: Write a reader-insert fic for @enmudecer. I love setting challenges for myself, and writing a smutty reader insert was something entirely new to tackle.

Result: I think reader inserts sometimes get a bad name but they can be a lot of fun. I avoided the (y/n) convention because I find it pulls me out of the story, tried hard to keep it gender neutral, and hopefully everyone who reads it can feel like they just banged Luke Skywalker 😉 Also I have a long-standing goal of writing songfic, and while I didn’t do it here, at least the title is from a Bowie song that seemed appropriate. So not just my first reader-insert, my first song-titled-fic!

9. Infectious

Idea: The Thryce Discord, and in particular @handsofthrawn, had been asking/lobbying me for ages about writing a quarantine fic since the world was in lockdown.

Result: Well, this is what I achieved this year, when I look back at what I accomplished. My longest fic ever, and a particularly ambitious premise of getting from an awkward, miserable (and hopefully realistic) fuck-or-die scenario to a happy ever after for my evil OTP. I unashamedly love this story and I’m so happy and grateful to the readers who loved it with me—their comments and kudos gave me life when the stress of reality made me want to curl into a defensive little ball and hide for the rest of the year.

10. Evilmousetober 2020

Idea: I couldn’t choose what X-tober prompts to use for my October drabbles this year, so I used whatever felt right that day.

Result: A compilation of my tumblr drabbles from various October prompts.

11. Dis Manibus

Idea: I am not going to write this fic. I am not going to write this fic. Crack and ridonc and no way is there any conceivable way it would work. And then I wrote it. The basic concept as my muse nagged me was to write the “nightmare comfort” trope with Luke and Pryce. WHY?! I HAVE NO IDEA I DON’T CONTROL THIS BITCH. Anyway, the idea wouldn’t go away.

Result: This fic is the perfect exhibit of how I never know what the heck is going to happen when I start writing. Everything was a surprise to me, including the Thryce element to what was SUPPOSED to be a Luke/Pryce fic. Also I didn’t get the smut I wanted. *curses* But I like it anyway and it worked, timing-wise, for Halloween-y themes.

12. Alone Time

Idea: After swearing not to write fic for the rest of the year, @contentment-of-cats put out her Merry Chissmas bingo card and my ambitious ass decided to try to knock every single prompt out with a one-shot.

Result: Thrawn jerking off in the shower and thinking verrrrrry naughty things. I apologize for nothing.

So in 2019 I wrote 26 fics and this year only got to about 12…but fanfic is for fun, and we all needed fun this year. I enjoyed writing for you and I hope you enjoyed reading my output. I look forward to providing more smexy silly and strange fic for you in 2021. <3

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cxptain-rex · 4 years

Text

Yourself {Captain Rex}

pairings: rex x reader

warnings: none!

request: this was requested by @iscream4starscream, I hope you like it!

prompt: 30.“You don’t seem like yourself tonight.”

***

Another mission gone wrong. Rex has been seeing how he loses his brothers in the battlefield. For some reason he has had enough on this particular campaign.

The moment had been way too fast for him to comprehend. A bomb went off engulfing members of the 501st. The screams and cries piercing Rex’s ears. He winces at the noises.

Thankfully, Dogma, Tup, Kix and Hardcase were already in a transport back to the Resolute. But Rex and Jesse had stayed to make sure each trooper got in a transport to head back to the ship.

Rex watches with pain as the flames lick up the remaining corpse of his now gone brothers. He wishes he could run and save them all but he can’t. At first he has the instinct until Jesse stops him. The Arc trooper grabs his brother and hauls him away.

As a gunship picks the duo, Rex can’t help but feel somber. As he closes his eyes he senses the guilt rushing through his veins like a venom.

It should’ve been me, he thinks as a tear trickles down his cheek. Thankful for the bucket covering his tear stained face, Rex cries silently. Jesse tenses at the moment he listens to his Captain’s crying.

He grabs Rex’s hand, squeezing to assure him. “Vod” Jesse’s mumbles as the shuttle lands on the starship’s hangar. The remaining troopers flow out of the gunship leaving behind their Captain and ARC trooper. Jesse takes one last look at Rex and leaves.

The Captain sighs softly remaining composed after all he was bred for this. To fight and die for the Republic. Not to weep for fallen comrades. But my brothers Rex’s consciousness mumbles from the depths of his mind.

He shrugs the whisks of his mind as he goes to the command center, his footsteps slow and heavy. Nothing new, same as always.

The same routine. Debrief, hit the refresher, mess hall and sleep. But this time, Rex is heavy with guilty and he cannot help it.

***

After the debriefing, Rex stands amidst the mess hall. His gaze travels through the tables filled with his chattering brothers.

Instead of the usual warmth and happiness that he feels, at the moment he feels cold. Like something is missing.

“Hey, I’ve been looking for you”

There it is. What he’s been missing. You.

You advance towards the blonde captain. A soft smile edges on your features. Your Y/C hair tied neatly on a hairdo. Done by Ahsoka. Your tunics blue in honor of the 501st.

Rex’s golden gaze meets yours. You stop. Sadness and guilt flows from Rex’s force signature like waves. You frown cradling your forehead, a noise of confusing erupts causing the Captain to grab you.

You search in his gaze for your Rex. For your gentle and kind lover. But a broken man stands. With pain and guilt flowing like a river bend from the cracks of his heart. “What’s wrong?” He asks leading you away from the mess hall and down to your secure quarters.

Rex knows how strong you are with the Force and it does not surprise him for you to be so reacting towards his feelings at the moment. “I can feel...so much...sadness” you say mumbling the last part dejected. The Captain closes his eyes cursing himself.

The walk to your quarters is silent and once you’re inside you push the captain towards your bed. Rex does not complain as you strip him off his armor leaving him his blacks on. You pat the mattress between your legs and he crawls over to nuzzle in your embrace. The Captain feels in peace as you sooth his pain through the force.

The atmosphere seems more at ease now, it is been days since the Jedi cruiser hasn’t received an attack. For now you can just long for this peace and bask in it as the stars pass by quickly in hyperspace. You enjoy watching the dimension pass by with Rex in your arms. It’s soothing as the blue light fills your quarters as it flows through the viewport of the ship.

“You don’t seem like yourself tonight” you mumble tracing his arms. Rex feels a punch to the gut as you say those words. He cannot help it, he wishes to fake it but he feels. And what he feels is too much for himself.

“I lost too many brothers today” he says and you understand. Rex doesn’t need to tell you everything, you understand his pain. You wrap your arms tighter around him and that’s what it takes to make the man shatter. Sobs erupt from him causing your heart to spasm painfully.

No matter what you say, it won’t change the fact of the losses he had to endure. Perhaps you can sooth his pain and make his heart believe but Rex knows. He knows.

War comes with a prize which he must be willing to pay wether he likes it or not. And that prize is that, in any given moment not only he might lose his brothers.

But he might lose you as well.

And the Captain is not ready to watch you rise and fall. Rex will fight with his last dying breath just to keep you safe and make it through the war.

***

The sobbing has died down and now Rex has fallen asleep. You lay still staring at the durasteel ceiling of your quarters. The turmoil in Rex has died down like a dying fire, you can still feel the warmth of his anger but it is low now.

The force flowing through you binds you to Rex making you feel what he feels. You can sense him wherever he is and however he feels. At the moment you can sense his sadness, something that you haven’t felt in so long. You have, but not this strong.

The only thing hanging in you is the hope. The hope of surviving the war and being able to settle down with your lover. Perhaps leaving the Order and the military but that is your life right now, you must live with it.

Each night you meditate and you feel it. You feel the balance of the force falling. Something is coming. Something that might be unstoppable. You feel how its threads wrap around you, choking you. You see the shadow over the Republic and it laughs and cackles at you. You see the darkness.

But you also see something else. Light and peace

The shadow is gone, defeated. You see the GAR in its splendid glory. The clone legions retreating from the front lines. The Jedi bringing peace once again. You see the balance in the force. Normality and you feel happiness. It is concrete and achievable.

You open your eyes from your vision to meet golden orbs. Rex stares in worry on his features but you calming him once again with the force. It ripples from you and through him. “You scared me” he says silently hugging you tighter from his position between your legs.

“Don’t worry, love. I’m here” you reassure laying a kiss on his forehead. I’m here, you call into your bond with him. Rex grasp your form tighter in hopes of feeling that sense of peace once again.

***

Author’s Note: I’m back! I’m sorry that I’ve been gone lately. I’m just very busy but! I have you guys in my mind every single day!

I hope you guys enjoy this cute Rex thing I did it’s like angst but not angst I’ll just say it’s fluff tbh. This a fix-it fic cus I don’t want to see Order 66. Screw order 66. Jaja. Anyway! Ily guys! Reblog if you enjoyed this! If you guys have any feedback let me know!

tags: @skinny-macncheese (cause I know you wanted some Rex content)

#clone imagines #captain rex imagine #cxptain rex #the clones #captain rex x reader #commander rex imagines #commander rex x reader #commander rex #captain rex #the clone wars #tcw season 7 #tcw imagine #the 501st #ct 7567 #adri answers #fix it fanfiction #star wars imagine #star wars

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basura2319 · 4 years

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hello hello!!!! can i request 52. “I think I’m in love with you and that scares me half to death.” for rex please? 😇😇😇thank you lovey!

A/N: Just a bit over 500 words; I hope you like

WC: 583

Warnings: angst and fluff?

You really did try to excuse Rex’s weird and distant behavior towards you as of recent.

Everything was fine. He was talking to you like a close friend not too long ago, but now? It all changed.

Out of the blue Rex begins to address you by your last name. Why? You have no karkin idea.

Oh, but it doesn’t stop there. You went up to him to greet like you always do, but tells you that he “can’t talk right now.” He gives that excuse every time you want to talk to him and it makes your furious. He doesn’t stop by to eat at the mess hall with you and if you’re sitting with his brothers, he won’t join in. He won’t even spare a glance at you no matter how long you stand there and stare at him.

What hurts most of all is the clear discontent that contorts his face the second you’re in his line of sight. You didn’t have to see it to know; you could feel it.

Fine, you think haughtily. If he wants to drop you as a friend then so be it. You have no reason to keep beating yourself about it.

Although it didn’t stop you from wondering what went wrong. Well, it doesn’t matter now does it? It doesn’t matter that the man who makes your heart stop with a single smile, who makes you feel emotions no Jedi should.

You huff leaving the briefing room. It was dark outside and perhaps you should be heading back to the temple, to clear your head by meditating.

“Hey (Y/N)!” shouts a voice from down the hall.

You turn to the voice and it’s of course Fives, along with Jesse, Hardcase, Kix…and Rex, still avoiding your eyes it seems. They’re on their way to head out to the bar you presume.

“Come with us, we’re going to 79’s,” he waves over.

“I’m afraid I’m needed at the temple guys,” you lie.

“Banthashit, (Y/N), come with us,” adds Hardcase, slinging an arm over Fives. “We’d love if you’d join us.”

You chuckle lightly. “I wouldn’t say that about everyone though.”

Your words make Rex’s eyes widen in shock.

“I’ll see you men later,” you nod, before walking away quickly.

Shit. You shouldn’t have said that.

Why not? It’s not like his attitude towards you is in any way welcoming.

You feel someone coming your way. Rex.

You move your feet faster.

“Wait!” He calls, but you don’t listen. “(Y/N) seriously stop—”

You whip your body to face him. “So now you wanna call me by my first name?”

“Look,” he says nervously, looking around to see if anyone was watching. “I’m sorry for pushing you away like that and you deserve to know why I—”

“Rex, just go okay,” you turn to leave. “Whoever put you up to this—”

Your words instantly die off when he turns you over to kiss you roughly on your lips. You want to break away but can’t as you stand there, eyes shut, kissing him back like you’re being deprived of air.

He breaks away, panting as he rests his forehead over yours. “I think I’m in love with you and that scares me half to death…”

You stare at him for a few seconds, stunned before bringing his face in forward to kiss him again.

“I think I’m in love with you too Rex,” you sigh against his mouth, losing yourself to his kisses.

***Request a character with this prompt list or the dialogue prompt list!!!

#requests #captain rex #captain rex x reader #commander rex #commander rex x reader

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fayevalcntine · 4 years

Note

can we talk about how over the course of her relationship with logan, rory is more or less conditioned to just be okay with everything he does?? whenever she expresses displeasure or disapproval with him he gets upset and persuades her into not being upset??? and it happens like. every single time. she’s a bit more resistant when he cheats, but even then he throws a tantrum until she agrees to forgive him. (1/2)

like in s5 when he tells her to come over without mentioning he has friends over (and then ignoring her all night), or in s6 when he goes over to the pool house and invites a bunch of friends over without her permission, even when he cheats, or fucks off to vegas in s7. she gets upset but he convinces her that her side of things doesn’t matter, and she’s never allowed to develop past that.

Yeah, Rory just has to let so many things be his way in their relationship and whenever they're not, or she even simply disagrees with him about something, it always has to be his way otherwise he'll get upset and argue with her until she relents or he'll leave if she doesn't back down.

Logan's main problem in their relationship, even when he seemingly doesn't have it in season 7, is that he just doesn't know how to properly communicate with Rory. Specifically, he doesn't want to hear her side or he simply won't accept her side as one with valid arguments against his own, like when they have a fight at the bar after Jess leaves, and she tells him how he (very accurately) possesses more opportunities in his lifetime than so many other people have, even her. Another example that is similar to this is when he's so personally offended by her article about rich people that he feels the need to bring up her own family's wealth and how he's "just like him" in terms of having money and opportunities. But even if Rory does have that, why exactly should she not criticize wealthy people and their behavior that stems from that? And on what ground does Logan get to stand on to tell her that she shouldn't write such an article simply because her grandparents have money and are more than happy to use it for whatever they wish? In both scenarios, Logan takes to victimizing himself over his family's money and influence and how he so blatantly uses it, while at the same time considering himself someone who has no opportunities outside from the one role his father has planned out for him (despite the fact that said role is such a significant one and he's going to be starting off with a vastly bigger step than other people by literally inheriting a company). I will have to at least give him credit for going to talk to her after they have the latter fight, but I hate that his fans view this as such a significant moment over someone acknowledging Rory's privilege as if Logan has any ground to stand on when it comes to that.

In the scene where Rory shows up to find him playing cards with his friends, I can never understand fans loving it when Rory was pretty clear on wanting to meet up with him to talk to him personally. And he doesn't even allow her that because he spends the entire night talking to his friends while playing, even though he knew she likely wanted some time with him alone. The scene itself might not be this significant since they're not officially involved yet, but it's so foreshadowing in how Logan's general attitude towards Rory's requests can be. Whether it's him controlling the setting that Rory comes in or him basically telling her to drop everything and go with him to New York on a whim, or even inviting his friends over to the pool house with a European girl that is a complete stranger and speaks no English, Logan only seems to do whatever he wants to do without taking her feelings or plans into consideration. This can even be pointed out in how he relentlessly pursues her after he decides he wants her back, despite the fact that he was the one who "broke up" with her through his own sister in the first place. And he doesn't take no for an answer from her until she gives in, even going so far as to go and pester Lorelai about it when whether or not Rory wants to take him back is her own decision, not her mother's.

I hate the cheating thing, it's the most irritating and idiotic thing Logan ever did and even if you take his side and not consider it cheating, it's beyond fucked up that he knew that the girls he hooked up with would be at the wedding and that Rory could easily bump into them, never mind the fact that he left her in a room with them while they were preparing for the wedding. I hate how the show again frames all these girls as flighty and promiscuous, therefore distrustful (Logan even takes to calling them "vipers" as if they're personally out to get him), when if anything else it's his fault that he didn't even tell her? He should've been honest about sleeping with them while they were apart, and even if he didn't consider it cheating, it vexes me so much how he never even takes Rory's feelings into consideration at all here.

LOGAN: I've not even thought about another girl. RORY: Except for Walker, Alexandra... LOGAN: We were broken up, Rory. RORY: No, you were. LOGAN: I thought we were broken up. I thought that's what the fight was. I thought that's what the separation was. Do you believe me? Do you believe that I honestly thought we weren't together? RORY: I guess. LOGAN: So then, if you believe that, that I thought we weren't together, then do you believe that, in my mind, I was not cheating on you? RORY: I guess.

He doesn't apologize for not telling her, he doesn't apologize for hurting her feelings, he doesn't even give her any space when it's clear that she wants to be alone at Paris's. He corners her and gives her an even dumber version of Ross's "we were on a break!" routine, only by saying that in his mind it wasn't cheating because he thought they were broken up. Again, he doesn't take Rory's side into consideration at all here, especially since he personally decided they were broken up instead of it being a mutual one. What I especially hate after all of this is that Rory is understandably still bitter over it, seeing as how she wasn't even allowed to be angry, and when she becomes passive-aggressive towards him, he takes to being the victim again.

LOGAN: [...] You haven't forgiven me. RORY: What are you talking about? LOGAN: For the girls I was with when we were separated. RORY: I said I forgive you. LOGAN: Yeah, you said it, but you haven't, though. You haven't. I'll be at the pub.

In this entire scenario, Rory’s viewed as unjust and unfair towards Logan, and only his feelings are taken into account when it comes to her unresolved anger. And of course, Rory’s feelings are even further unresolved and never mentioned beyond this episode because Logan (conveniently) almost dies on his trip with his friends, which prompts Rory to feel guilty and immediately take to his side to nurse him back to health. Rory’s never allowed to process through her feelings over the cheating argument, and she’s never even allowed to see her feelings as justified because again, Logan never told her about it. For even the most practical reasons, he should’ve at least mentioned that he wasn’t exactly celibate during their time apart.

It’s telling how even with his improved behavior in season 7, Logan still doesn’t tell Rory the truth about why he ran away to Vegas with his friends until after he comes back. It’s baffling that we’re suddenly supposed to accept him telling his father that he doesn’t want to work for him anymore and is set upon improving himself for the course of over 2 episodes, before he yet again, makes the decision himself to propose to Rory when he never even discussed marriage with her before that. And not only does he propose, but he does so right in front of her family and friends at her own graduation party. I don’t think I need to explain how public proposals are pretty manipulative if they’re done suddenly and without the approval of both parties for it. Logan’s decision being that he breaks up with Rory as soon as she makes her answer clear that it’s no, because she wants to live her life after just having finished university, just makes the before-mentioned ‘development’ that he was given fall flat to me. Yes, it’s great that he’s decided to make something of himself outside of his own family’s influence, but this comes right near the end of the season without us seeing him even think about it or consider it before that, and even after this, he still takes to only doing what he thinks is right and doesn’t take no for an answer from Rory.

#gilmore girls #anti rogan #anti logan huntzberger #answered #lorelaileighs

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aesthetical-bucky · 4 years

Text

Three’s A Lucky Number

Pairing: Bucky x Female!Reader

Summary: You’ve sabotaged Bucky’s dates three times, but what happens when the super soldier finally confronts you about it?

Requested by @hailmary-yramliah - Hey! So I love the fic Hungry Heart and wanted to request again since you're an amazing writer! XD Could you do a BuckyxReader where the reader is jealous of Bucky's date because she has a crush on him and he's oblivious? Maybe he finds out when the reader sabotages his date and he confronts her? Or you could go a whole different route hehe thanks in advance! ❤️

Warnings: Language, sex toy play (at the end), implied smut, a smidgen of confrontation in a confined space. If I’ve missed anything, please let me know!

Word Count: 2,220 (oopsies)

Authors Notes: This was requested by the lovely @hailmary-yramliah and I’m sorry because I got so carried away with it but it just wrote itself? Hehe! Hope you enjoy reading :)

If looks could kill, the blonde-haired bitch Bucky invited over would certainly be dead by now. You were sat next to Steve when Bucky walked in with her hanging off his arm as they sat on the opposite couch. Truthfully, you didn’t understand why she was here and if you were honest, you didn’t want her here. His date had spent the entire day at the compound, mingling with the others and trying to fit herself in and they had reservations for dinner in an hour at some fancy top restaurant. You hated it and you knew jealousy was an ugly look, but at this point, you couldn’t care less. “Oh, is this Chloe?” You smirked pointing to the lady. Bucky’s eyebrows creased as he tried to figure out what you were up to.

“Y/N, what are you doing?” Bucky seethed, giving you a warning look which you blatantly ignored.

“Who is Chloe?” The dragon with the voice whispered, her hand grazing his thigh and it was making your blood boil.

“Some girl he brought here last night to fuck. No big deal.” You shrugged nonchalantly, earning a warning nudge from Steve.

“Y/N, Come on.”

“It’s true and then the night before that he brought home that… uhhh what’s her name…” You clicked your fingers and smirked as you continued. “Fiona from statistics!”

“Y/N!” Bucky warned. Your eyes flicked over to hers and grinned. She was shifting uncomfortably in her seat and scoots away from Bucky, something he easily notices. “I’m so sorry Jess. I don’t know what her problem is.” Bucky scoffed, interlacing his fingers with hers. A lump formed in your throat at their hands, your anger and frustration building up.

You harboured a crush on the soldier pretty much since the day you arrived in the tower and officially became an Avenger. But you knew he was out of your league but it didn’t stop you from trying. Bucky had reservations for the type of women he dated, the same type that was sat opposite you right now biting her lip like the seductive horny bitch she is.

And sometimes you felt really angry towards Bucky because that bastard was so oblivious to your attempts. You even told him he looked like sex on legs when he strolled through the kitchen in his sweats and that tattered old henley of his. His hair dishevelled and sticking up so high you could probably pick up a clear WiFi connection. His response? He just told you to be quiet. It broke your heart every time, your crush was turning into feelings and you wanted nothing more than to protect him from all the other single women in the world. You wanted him to be yours, not hers.

You watch as he whispered something in her ear. A blush forming on her cheeks as she twirled her curly hair around her finger. A loud pitched laugh invaded your ears. Anger boiled up when you saw the blonde-haired bitch throwing her head back, Bucky eyeballing her exposed throat.

Bucky was driving you crazy and he wasn’t even aware of what he was doing.

“Fuck sake.” You cursed with an eye-roll. Though your eyes widened when you realised you just said that out loud, but at least the bitch stopped laughing.

“What’s wrong, Y/N?” Tony smirked when he sauntered in the room adjusting his bracelet. Tony was probably one of the few who knew of your love for the soldier. It was hard to deny it when he found your journal full of desires and inner feelings for Mr Barnes. You made the mistake of writing a dream you had in the journal, a dream where you became Bucky’s wife and bearing his children. Tony hasn’t stopped bringing that up ever since and you hoped he wouldn’t now. “Is your husband annoying you?” He cackled.

Fuck

“Don’t encourage her Tony.” Steve interfered.

Wait, did Steve know about it too?

“Y/N, come with me please,” Steve ordered, walking into the kitchen and pouring a couple of glasses of wine.

“Please don’t lecture me, Steve.” You sighed.

“Was those lies really necessary? You know about Bucky’s past Y/N. You should be happy for him so why on earth are you trying to sabotage his third date this week?” He demanded in his ‘Captain’ voice.

It was true, you knew Bucky wasn’t actually sleeping with anyone because he wasn’t that type of man. But when he brings different girls to the compound, you knew it was only a matter of time before he took a dip in their manhole.

I’d be happy with him. God, if only you knew Steve.

“Now please take this glass of wine to Jess and apologise. It’s not a request.”

“Fine.” You mumbled, taking the glass from his hand and reluctantly going over to them. Bucky watched you with careful eyes and as you neared Jess, you pretended to trip over your feet, sending the full glass of wine down her white dress.

“Oops.” You shrugged with a grin as she desperately patted down her dress.

“Oh my GOD! BUCKY! Your friend is a fucking lunatic!” She screamed and Bucky growled and you took it as your cue to leave the room. Only to have a large metal hand wrap around your wrist and march you both out of the room.

You were stumbling hopelessly behind Bucky towards the elevator, his fast walk pace was impossible for you to keep up with.

“Buck! Slow down!” You hissed as his grip tightened. Bucky repeatedly pressed the elevator button and more-or-less threw you inside once the doors eventually opened, you backed away from him when he stood in front of the buttons, again repeatedly punching his floor number.

“FRIDAY, shut the fucking doors!” Bucky snarled, clenching his hands into fists and breathing heavily.

You stood there on the other side of the elevator nursing your bruising and sore wrist as Bucky stared straight ahead with his arms folded over his large chest. He almost looked identical to a dragon, minus the smoke flailing out from his nostrils and the tips of his ear turning a bright red. You knew you were gonna be in for it just by the thunderous look on his face.

The elevator ride to his floor was intense, to say the least. The quiet hum of the elevator, the heavy breathing and the tension surrounding you was so thick it was scary, almost like a severe gas leak, you’d just need one little naked flame to make an explosion. You almost couldn’t stand it.

You turned to face Bucky and sighed. “Buck, I’m really sor-” you flinched when his large hand suddenly moved towards the big red STOP letters above the numbers and he punched it. The elevator came to a halt and now you didn’t know what to expect.

Bucky faced you, then stalked slowly towards you, prompting you to take a step back until your back was flushed against the wall.

“Why are you sorry, Y/N? What did I ever do to make you hate me so much that you took it upon yourself to ruin any chance of happiness?” Bucky seethed, his steps not faltering. “I want to know, what did I do? Did I hurt you? Did I upset you? WHAT DID I DO?!” He growled and your eyes screwed shut, your body tensing from his tone. His flesh fingers gently held your chin. “Look at me, Y/N.” Your eyes opened, his anger replaced by confusion. “Please tell me what I did.”

You felt guilty and you knew Bucky could see the guilt whirling around in your irises. “Nothing,” you whispered under your breath with a shake of your head. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t believe you, Y/N. Didn’t you once have a dream about me? About being my wife and having my beautiful children?” The corners of his lips lifted into a sly smirk. Your eyes widened to the size of planets.

“How did you KNOW about that?!” You cringed.

“I may or may not have stumbled across your little journal. Mrs Barnes.” He chuckled, but not in a tormenting way. Bucky wasn’t teasing you, he was just actually quite flattered. “Why did you keep your feelings from me for so long huh? We could have been married and having our babies right about now.” He smirked. “Tell me doll, did you think about us making those babies, hmm?”

And really, you wished for Hell at this point to just open up and take you. This was a nightmare, the one person who definitely wasn’t supposed to read that journal, did. And you had an intuition that Tony may have had something to do with it.

Bucky dipped his head downwards. His face was so close to yours that you could feel his breath fanning against your lips.

“I’m so embarrassed right now.” You mumbled

“I’m actually really flattered but I wished you would have told me sooner because I have been going out of my mind over my feelings for you.” His usual ocean blue eyes are a darker shade. You can feel his heartbeat under the palm of your hand. “Do you still want me?” He asked and your eyes are drawn to his plump pink lips. With no words spoken, your hands wrapped around his neck and crashed his lips to yours in a heated passion. Bucky’s hands slithered down to your waist and behind your thighs, giving them a gentle but firm pinch silently asking you to jump. Your legs wrapped around his waist as your tongues and teeth clashed against one another.

“FRIDAY, my room!” Bucky panted against your lips. His hard member feeling so constricted in his pants.

“Yes, Sergeant Barnes,” FRIDAY responded and the elevator started moving once again.

Once the doors to Bucky’s floor opened. He carried you down the hall, your lips attacking his neck on the way. Bucky kicked the door open with his heavy combat boot and stumbled inside, kicking it shut harder than necessary. Bucky stumbled over to the bed and threw you down. You giggled when you bounced and saw the hungry look in his eyes.

“FRIDAY, lock my door and alert the team that Y/N and I are busy for a couple of days.” He ordered and the AI beeped in acknowledgement.

“Of course, Sergeant Barnes.” The AI responded. Leaving you and Bucky in total silence once again.

“Now then.” Bucky taunted, removing his Henley and kicking his boots off. “I believe a certain someone sabotaged not one, not two but three of my dates.” He tutted with a shake of his head.

You brought a finger up to your lips and pleaded with doe eyes. Knowing full well it wasn’t going to help you in this situation.

“Three dates. Three possible relationships ruined. I think you need three different kinds of punishment, doll.” He smirked, pulling a few items out from his bedside table drawers. Your eyes widened when you realised they were, in fact, sex toys. And you didn’t entertain the idea of those being used on you when they could have been used for the other women in this very room.

“Buck- no I don-”

Just as though Bucky can read you like a book, he interrupts. “They’re brand new, doll. See? Still in the packaging. I haven’t even slept with anyone.” He reassured. “But you already knew that. So tell me, do you want this Y/N? Do you want me?” He asks for a second time.

“I do.” You answer with a nod.

“Ah, preparing for our big day huh?” He chuckled, tearing the plastic off with a simple flick of his wrist, inserting the batteries to the rabbit. Bucky presses the buttons to make sure it’s working and a wide Cheshire cat grin grows. “Perfect.” He throws it down on the bed and his fingers work on the button of your jeans and zipper and swiftly pulling the tight material along with your soaked underwear down your legs and throwing them somewhere across the room.

Bucky lubes the shaft of the vibrator with a generous amount so you don’t feel any pulling. He grins as he gently pushed the plastic toy inside. The rabbit ears snugged against your clit as Bucky works through the first vibration. He grins, laying down on his stomach with his knee slightly bent, working through the different vibration sensations, sending you into a whole new dimension of pleasure. And if that wasn’t enough, he pressed the rotary button so the shaft wiggled around inside of you, occasionally touching your G-spot.

Bucky set the vibration on the highest setting and your toes curled into his comforter as you neared your orgasm. And you were almost there when he suddenly shut the rabbit off completely.

“Bucky!” You whined, which earned you an eye roll as he disregarded the toy. His breath hitched when your juices ran freely from your entrance. Bucky pulled you up to your feet and he sat himself down on the edge of the bed. He motioned to his lap and you went to straddle him but he shook his head.

“Lay across my lap.” He ordered and you complied. “Second punishment, I hope you’re ready, Y/N. You’re in for a long few days.”

Taglist: @jobean12-blog @criminal-cookies @nano--raptor @marvelgirl7 @godofplumsandthunder @the-wayward-robot @littleredstarfish @becs-bunker @evanstanwrites

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consumedkings-archive · 4 years

Text

@shallow-gravy jess..... jess jess jess...... where do i even begin huh? what do i even say? you are the sweetest, the most obnoxiously talented, and i just!! hm!! i just really adore you all to tiny bits and pieces. merry christmas my beloved friend, thank you so much for all of your love and support and listening to my ramblings, for loving my girl elliot, for letting me gush over diana. the list really do be endless!! i could probably wax poetic about how grateful i am to have made a friend as wonderful as you, but in the interest of time, i will just say: thank you thank you thank you! and merry christmas!

ii. a venom dripping in your mouth

elliot honeysett/john seed/deputy diana baker, the unholy trinity, in full-fledged terroristic force. this is pure self-indulgent trash, and i can’t believe this is an acceptable christmas gift to give you but i so hope you like it!

canon? who is she. i don’t know her. herald!elliot au, largely canon divergent but like it doesn’t REALLY matter bc i don’t go into detail that much. idk man just roll with it

words: 8.8k because i’m incapable of having any Chill

warnings: naughty language, some blood warnings, mentions of past trauma. nothing super explicit but like idk when elliot and john set their sights on diana i do think they need a warning of their own lmao. also, i guess i should warn i don’t know how anything works ever and don’t come for me, don’t drag me, this is supposed to just!!! be fun!!! thanks!!!

“Who the fuck is that?”

Burke’s crossing the street with Pratt and the rookie in tow. Diana drags a few feet ahead, smoking and attempting to not be a part of the conversation, which is hard to do when there’s only a handful of them at the office anyway.

Pratt glances up at the blonde they’re about to pass. She’s propped against the hood of a jeep, the hem of her daisy dukes barely reaching mid-thigh, taking a long drag of a cigarette. He notices the head of a snake tattoo coming down her thigh. It’s hot; the air is buzzing with bugs and heat from the midday sun, and Burke can feel the sweat collecting in the hollow of his collarbones and at the nape of his neck.

From here Burke can tell she’s not looking at them—she’s looking at Diana. Hungrily.

“Elliot Honeysett,” Pratt replies, keeping his voice low, and he spits on the ground. “John’s wife. Fucking psycho.”

Ah. A Seed, Burke thinks, with no absence of venom. A Seed but with her own last name. An uninteresting but unexpected detail.

“You know her, rookie?” Burke asks, looking over at Diana. The brunette stares at him and drops her cigarette to the ground, grinding it out with her shoe.

“No,” Diana replies shortly. “I’m not from here.”

She says it like that’s supposed to explain it, like that’s going to make it make sense why the blonde’s eyes are fixed on her, and of course it doesn’t.

“I went to school with her,” Pratt offers up, and Burke looks at him curiously.

“Yeah? She a psycho then, too?”

“Nah.” The deputy crosses his arms over his chest, refusing—pointedly—to look at Elliot even once after identifying her the closer they get. “John made her that way.”

Diana’s been quiet, lighting up a second cigarette, when she says, “I dunno. To join a cult you've probably gotta have that shit in you all along.”

Burke makes a low noise of agreement. He watches Elliot wiggle her fingers at Diana in a little wave as the cluster of them nears, flashing a most pretty smile; at first glance, he thinks that the blonde looks more bubblegum than cyanide, all curled hair tucked up in a high pony and red cupid’s-bow lips and white, white teeth.

“Howdy, deputy,” she calls, Southern drawl honeyed.

Diana visibly grimaces, pointedly pushing her gaze forward and fixing it on the office. There’s a split second where Burke thinks he sees something flash across her face, but she’s stuffed it down and the sharp lines of her expression smooth out.

And then Elliot looks at him. Burke waves, but he doesn’t smile—it’s not meant to be nice, it’s meant to relay the message that he sees her. When she regards him expectantly, he goes ahead and greets, “Mrs. Seed."

I fucking know you. No surname fuckery is going to throw Burke off the scent. There are so many boogeymen and monsters in the world that don’t want you to know their name, and he thinks Elliot Honeysett might be one of them.

She doesn’t stop smiling at the misnaming, necessarily—her expression smooths out into mild amusement—and then she opens her mouth and pushes the lit end of her cigarette onto her tongue. Pratt says, under his breath, “Jesus Christ,” and Burke thinks he can hear the sizzle for a split second before it’s out, and then she tosses the cigarette to the side.

“Marshal,” she greets him, and he slows his walk for just a moment. “Lookin’ a little flush. You not used to the hot weather, honey?”

“It’s cooling off up in D.C.,” he replies, keeping his tone conversational despite the urge to punch those pearly whites in, “but I used to come here every summer. Nothing I can’t handle.”

Elliot smiles. It’s all teeth. Burke thinks about how most animals do that as a threat. “Good. I’d hate for you to be uncomfortable.” And then her gaze turns to Pratt, and she says flatly, “Pratt.”

“Honeysett,” Staci returns, and he might not have been able to sound more disingenuous, but it’s well-deserved—the blonde makes no effort to hide her disdain. She rolls her eyes, mouth twisting in amusement before she swings around the front of her jeep and into the driver’s seat.

Like he can’t resist the blatant dismissal, Pratt tacks on, “Tell the hubby I said hello.”

The engine revs. Burke watches her pop a pair of blue shades on, leaning against the rolled-down window. “Eat shit, bud,” Elliot says, and smiles just before she kisses the air in Burke’s direction and pulls a hard u-turn. The tires squeal on sizzling pavement, and she waves at them through her open window before she speeds off.

Burke watches the receding vehicle and says, “They all that peachy? Can I plan on Joseph being a fuckin’ breeze?”

“Fuckin’ whatever,” Pratt says, biting the words out as Diana swings the door open. “She’s all golden princess until you get close enough to see she’s picking the wings off of flies. Why’s she so interested in you, rookie?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Diana snaps. “I don’t know what goes on in that psycho’s brain.”

Burke grimaces.

“Might do well to find out,” he says, “before we learn the hard way.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“John.”

He makes a low noise, staring at the map stretched out before him; it’s his first mistake, because Elliot has never been very patient when she has something to say, and this time is no different. She ducks under his arm and settles herself on the table, on the map, effectively breaking his eyesight with the thing which is keeping him perfectly and completely unfocused on her.

“Do you remember what you said to me when we got married?” she asks him, her voice suspiciously light and unfettered by the usual components of her timbre—like venom, or sharpness. Elliot skims her fingers along the skin exposed by the undone buttons of his shirt.

He watches her. She’s up to something. “I remember every single thing I’ve ever told you,” he replies, stifling his amusement, “and I said many things. Which are you referring to?”

“Pick one and try.”

The neckline of her tank top brushes the bottom of her Wrath scar, the jagged lines marring what was otherwise perfectly unblemished skin. What game are you playing? he thinks, but not without affection, digging his thumb past those little shorts she likes so much. “How about... ‘I can’t wait to rip this fucking dress off of you’?”

“Try again.”

Ah, so that kind of game. Not the sexy kind. “‘I’m going to give you anything you want’?” He says it with a border of cautioning, because Elliot doesn’t cash that line in very often, but when she does it’s almost always for something big. She’s in a mood tonight, this wife of his, the kind of mood that he’d normally like to take advantage of if he wasn’t busy trying to make sure they keep eyes on the Marshal.

Elliot beams at him. “You know me so well, handsome,” she murmurs, and tugs him down by the front of his shirt for a kiss; luxurious, open-mouthed, and slick, and then against his mouth she says, “I want the deputy.”

“For what?” John asks. “Dinner? She’s been around that Marshal, who’s almost certainly here for something to do with Joseph.” When the blonde blinks at him, as if this has no bearing on her request, he barks out a laugh. “You’re asking too much.”

“You said anything.” Elliot pulls back to look at him, fingers still fisted in his shirt.

“I did,” he says, slowly.

“So,” the blonde murmurs silkily, “get her for me.” And then, as though she is the most gracious: “Consider her a belated wedding gift.”

John exhales out of his nose. He’s hard-pressed to say no to Elliot, but he’s got the sneaking suspicion that this is one of the instances where he should. It’s not like Elliot ever asks for anything that’s really unreasonable—not usually—but this? He could get her just about anyone, and she wants Diana Baker?

“For what?” he asks again, brows furrowing as Elliot undoes the rest of the buttons of his shirt so that she can drag her nails against his abdomen. “What could you want the rookie deputy for, hm?”

“Does it really matter?” she prompts, looking up at him through her lashes, and he thinks no, not really, but he knows better.

“Yes,” he replies, the corner of his mouth ticking upward. “It does matter. Really. I’m going to have to pitch this to Joseph and Jacob.”

“I like her,” Elliot says without hesitation. That’s how it always goes—John will push as long as he has to, until he doesn’t anymore, because they always give each other what they want. In the end. “And we could use her.”

He scans her face. Elliot doesn’t say she likes someone without merit. He’s come to trust that she’s got an eye for people, even if he can’t always see it—and he doesn’t see it, not really, in a fresh-in-town junior deputy that’s in over her head.

For a second, he thinks about it; it wouldn’t be the first time that they’ve allowed a third party, but it would be one of few times that she’s chosen, which is different in and of itself. If he knows her at all—and he does—she doesn’t usually pick unless she intends to keep them around for a long while.

“I’ll consider it,” John says finally. “After tomorrow.”

A smile curves her mouth. She slides her arms around him and kisses his sternum, just beneath his own sin, revealed—a pair, the two of them, closer than just lovers.

“That’s all I ask,” Elliot murmurs sweetly as his thumb sweeps the slope of her cheekbone.

It’s not, John thinks, but he thinks it with love, because he does—he loves his wretched little viper, this monster that looks at him through her eyelashes and says things like, I want her, so get her for me.

It’s not all you ask, but that’s just fine.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“Absolutely not.”

Jacob is the first to speak after John’s proposition, which is not uncommon. The eldest brother does tend to be the most unforgiving, John finds, of his wife’s aspirations; even though, between all of his siblings, Elliot and Jacob get along the best.

John heaves a sigh. “Elliot is convinced that the deputy can be of use to us, if she’s allowed to—”

“Your wife,” Joseph interrupts, “shows a great lack of self-control asking such a thing.”

John bites back the gut-instinct response—that Elliot shows the most control for asking, rather than just taking what she wants, because as a woman capable of it, she can—and instead swallows back, “She would like to serve the Project, Joseph. In this way.”

“Maybe I wanted the deputy,” Jacob drawls. “Didn’t you ever think of that?”

Turning his gaze to his eldest brother, John says, “Well, have you expressed that to our brother, Jacob?”

“It didn’t occur to me until now,” the redhead replies, feigning an air of innocence. “But now I think I do.”

He can feel his teeth grinding. “Funny, that until Elliot showed an interest—”

“Yes,” Joseph acquiesces after a moment. “You and our most holy sister may pursue the deputy by your own means, but you must—” And here he looks at John, pointed. “—let the love into your heart, brother.”

A wash of relief crashes over him; after the fucking shit show that the last evening had been, John thinks that it’ll be good to bring some good news back to Elliot, who’s been itching to get out into the thick of the madness. Even if Joseph seems to be implying he doesn’t want their typical means used, that’s fine. Open to interpretation, right?

“I want the deputy brought to heel, John,” Joseph continues. “It is crucial for the survival of not only us, but also our people, that you show you are capable of doing this.”

“Of course,” John replies, smiling. “Elliot and I would do anything for you.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

When the junior deputy finally comes to, Elliot is sitting across from her. Diana makes a low, vicious sound as she lifts her head and fixes Elliot with her eyes—lovely eyes, Elliot thinks admiringly, while her molars grind and the noise vibrates through her head. John’s reluctantly left her alone; he thinks he should be the one to soften Diana for her, but Elliot thinks John’s just going to push her farther away.

“Good morning, sugar,” she greets, and Diana spits onto the floor.

“Fuck you.”

“Yes,” Elliot replies sweetly, “if you behave.”

Diana’s eyes flutter for a moment, like she isn’t expecting that so soon and so fast—but certainly she expected it in some respect, because Elliot’s been purposefully obvious about her intention for the deputy, to both Diana and John. She doesn’t want a mindless convert, dulled and emptied out by Bliss and agreeing blindly.

Her fingers itch. She tugs absently at the sleeve of her sweater, rolling her chair forward as the brunette pulls at her binds.

“What the fuck did you do with Hudson?” Diana grinds out.

“I wouldn’t worry about her,” Elliot dismisses, and waves her hand. “She’ll be just fine.”

There’s a brief moment where the brunette looks at her, sweeps sharp, green eyes over Elliot and she cocks a half-done smile at her before she says, “Yeah, Joey told me all about you.”

Elliot smiles. “Only good things, I’m sure.”

“Said you’re a fucking bitch.” Diana arches a brow loftily. “A nutjob.”

“That checks out.”

Diana spits on the floor again, ridding her mouth of the blood from her rough handling, but this time she spits it out at Elliot’s feet. Elliot sighs and tucks some hair behind her ear just before Diana asks, “So, what’s the plan here, princess?”

She blinks at the deputy. She's a little pleased at the pet name, but she doesn't want to let it show. “Plan?”

“Yeah,” Diana says, rolling her eyes. “C’mon, I’m not fucking stupid. What’s the plan? What’s the dynamic? John sends you in because you’re the pretty one, soften me up, and then he comes in to finish the job and cleanse my sins or what the fuck ever it is he thinks he’s doing?”

Elliot feigns bashfulness and flutters her lashes. “You think I’m pretty?”

“Fucking come on,” Di bites out viciously. “Whatever the ploy is, get it over and done with.”

It’s no fun when you say it like that, she thinks, but she can tell Diana’s sort of at her limit—not quite, because if this was her limit, then Elliot would have greatly overestimated her—but she’s getting there. Residual Bliss still burning through her system, and for what? For her to have more of an attitude? How well she’d chosen.

“There’s no ploy, Diana,” Elliot says after a moment, leaning back in her chair. “John wanted to cleanse you his way—I told him no.”

The deputy regards her for a moment, tugging absently at the binds on her wrists. “Why?” she asks, warily.

“Because it wouldn’t work,” Elliot replies. “You can’t make someone get better. They have to want it. And I don’t think that you do, honey.”

Diana’s eyes flicker for a moment. Elliot can tell that she’s trying to regulate her breathing, trying to smooth it on the way in and out of her so that it isn’t so laborious, but it’s hard to do when there’s Bliss wreaking havoc on all of your defenses. She would know—she tries not to expose herself to that shit if she doesn’t have to.

“You’re right,” she says after minute, “I don’t want to “get better”, and I sure as fuck don’t want anything you’d give to me.”

“I don’t want that either,” Elliot tells her. “Not through any kind of religious baptism or cleansing, anyway.” She waves her hand and settles back against the seat, fishing a carton of cigarettes out of her pocket and sticking one in her mouth before she wiggles the box at Diana. “Smoke?”

The brunette regards her hatefully, silently, and Elliot shrugs before she lights her own, tosses the cigarettes onto the nearby workbench and takes a drag. When she blows the smoke out through the corner of her mouth, she says, “I don’t think we’re that different, Diana.”

“No?” Diana prompts, her mouth twisting around the words ruefully. “I could count the ways. One of us is a married to a fucking psychopathic kidnapper...”

“Colorful.”

“... and one of us also is a psychopathic kidnapper....”

Elliot smiles, but she doesn’t show her teeth, not the way that she smiles at Burke or Pratt because she wants to make them squirm. Diana rolls her neck.

“So if you don’t wanna cleanse me,” she begins, barely modulating the venom in her voice, “why the fuck am I here?”

“I like you,” Elliot says plainly, because she’s never been able to beat around the bush, not really. She’s not as sneaky as John, as brutal as Jacob, as smooth as Joseph. She’s not like any of them, and sometimes, that’s lonely.

The deputy regards her with something close to a poison-riddled look. Instead of addressing I like you, Diana seems to take advantage of this and makes a demand, instead.

"That Bliss shit makes me feel like garbage," she says. "Don't give it to me anymore."

"You did puke it up quite a bit, didn't you?"

Diana grimaces. She looks like she might want to say something, perhaps regarding Elliot's explanation, but the blonde waves her hand to stop whatever is about to come out of the deputy's mouth. She's not there to argue the logistics of a cosmic pull, anyway.

“I moved out of Hope County straight after high school,” she explains, “and back home to Georgia. Big city. Very exciting. I was tired of this little town and how few opportunities it had. Atlanta? That shit had so much going on.” Elliot pauses, crossing her leg over her knee.

“So glad,” Diana seethes, “that I’m getting a fuckin’ origin story.”

Elliot sucks her teeth. “Anyway, I date a shithead, I break up with him, and then he breaks into my apartment and holds a knife to my neck.” Elliot waves her hand again, because these details are so inconsequential to her at this point; she can barely remember the boy’s face, or anything about that moment except for a few key details. The color of his sweater sleeve (cream); the smell of his cologne (expensive); the paint chipping around her doorframe (small, baby blue chipping to white plaster underneath).

The brunette stares at her. Elliot takes a drag of the cigarette and taps the ash off of the end.

“I’ll spare you the details,” she continues, “but do you know what I was thinking that whole time? And after?”

Diana’s jaw works loosely, absently, like her brain is firing off neurons without needing to. “I don’t fucking know.”

“Try and guess.” She pauses, and then says meaningfully, “I’m sure you’ve got an idea of the kinds of things your mind says when you’re in a moment like that.”

When she watches Diana and smokes her cigarette with leisurely, relaxed movements, the brunette’s eyes flicker over the smoke cloud and she manages out in a wobbling sneer, “Probably something like—like that it wasn’t your fault, or some other kind of psychological-drivel to make you feel like you were in control.”

Elliot comes to a stand. The deputy’s closer than she thinks; it is about control, but just a different path.

“No,” she says, planting a hand on the arm of the chair Diana’s tied to so she can lean down. “I kept thinking, ‘this isn’t going to ever fucking happen again’.”

There’s a strange suspended moment between them. Diana’s lovely—more lovely than she’d let on, probably—but more than that, watching the deputy claw and rake her way through group after group of Eden’s Gate members, causing them problem after problem, Elliot can only think, aren’t we a little pair, the two of us?

A person didn’t get used to killing so fast unless they’d at least thought about it before. Maybe done it before.

“Do you know what it’s like, Diana,” Elliot continues, “to realize that you’ve reached a point of being able to do anything to stop something like that from happening again? It’s not oppressive. It’s liberating. Why do you think an animal stuck in a trap will chew its own foot off to get out?”

She straightens up. She wants to touch—tuck the hair away from her face, trace the lines of her face—but she won’t. Not yet. She’s more patient than John is, more willing to wait for that moment of satisfaction.

Diana says, “It’s real fucking liberating knowing Hudson’s chained up somewhere.”

“You have to stop giving a shit,” Elliot replies, “about other people’s freedoms before you’ve gotten your own.”

The brunette opens her mouth to say something, but before she can, Elliot plunges on. “We’re the same because we’re both going to get it done, whatever it is for us,” she says. “By any means necessary.”

Diana’s staring at the wall. She’s silent, and spitefully so, and she won’t look at Elliot; maybe because she knows that’s exactly what Elliot wants. In fact, that’s almost assuredly what it is.

“I want a cigarette,” the brunette says after a moment, petulant.

Elliot smiles thinly and brings her own to Diana’s mouth. More enunciated, Diana says, “I want my own cigarette.”

“It’s nice to want things, deputy,” Elliot idles. “Take it or don’t, it’s up to you.”

She does, after a moment of deliberation. Elliot drops the cigarette to the concrete floor as she breathes the smoke out and stamps it out with her foot. Diana takes a long time to blow the smoke out of her mouth, and she shifts in the chair; her eyes flicker up to meet Elliot’s, and she’s sure she can see something wicked in them.

“Animals chew themselves out of a trap because they’re animals,” Diana says after a second, not exactly the profession of attraction Elliot was hoping for. “Not because it’s liberating.”

Elliot laughs and pushes the chair she’d been sitting in back and out of the way. She picks up her carton of cigarettes from the tool bench and replies. Glancing over her shoulder, she can feel her expression softening when she looks at the deputy—soaking wet, rattling with cold and what Bliss they’d manage to pelt her with. Not much, they told her, whatever “much” meant.

“We’re all animals, deputy,” she acquiesces after a moment. “In the fucking end, anyway.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“Glad you’re getting along with your deputy.”

John knows he sounds petulant. He knows, and he still can’t stop it from coming out of him as Elliot peels her sweater off over her head and drops it onto the floor. She glances at him over her shoulder.

“Green with envy looks good on you, baby,” she idles, and he feels his molars grind.

“You could play a little hard to get,” John says, trying for lofty and failing. “She’s a fucking menace, after all. She’s been causing problems nonstop, she took Fall’s End from us—”

Elliot says, “Our,” without stopping her undressing, which is two parts frustrating and one part endearing because John knows she’s trying to disarm him. She’s not stealthy about her tactics, and she doesn’t try to be.

“Our what?” he asks her, barely containing his irritation.

“Our deputy,” his wife replies sweetly. She turns, finally, to look at him—giving him her eyes, because she knows that he hates when she doesn’t—and leans against the dresser. “You called her my deputy. She’s not mine. She’s ours.”

John presses his lips into a thin line. He knows Elliot. He knows what it is she’s doing, because even though Diana has been nothing but a fucking thorn in his side, hearing the blonde say she’s ours gives him a pleasant, wretched kind of thrill writhing slick and hot in the pit of his stomach. As much as he knows her intimately, so too does she know exactly the kind of thing to keep him interested.

But it is a little different, if she’s considering sharing. If Diana isn’t her own private conquest.

“Is that so?” he asks, managing to keep his voice conversational now despite his piqued interest, sidling over to her. “I seem to recall that she was supposed to be my belated wedding gift to you.”

Reaching up, he drags his fingers along the inked scales of the serpent curved around her hip, swallowing up some of those gossamer-fine scars she had given herself and stretching down her thigh.

“Well,” Elliot murmurs demurely, “would I be a very Godly woman if I didn’t share with my husband?”

The words push the corners of his mouth upward.

“No.” He sweeps his eyes over her face. “I suppose not.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Joseph quickly comes to think that the deputy is more trouble than she’s worth. John hates when he says things like to Elliot with him still in the room, because he knows that Elliot isn’t going to cow to his brother—even though she should. It’s one of the most irritating traits of hers.

“She’s making a mess,” Joseph says, standing in their kitchen, watching Elliot with his eyes—the same way that he watches Jacob, sometimes. With wariness. “More of a mess than the good she would do us if she were converted.”

Elliot replies tartly, “It’s a good thing you don’t lift a finger to clean up a mess then, isn’t it? John does it for you, no questions asked, and by proxy, I do too.”

“If you have an issue with the way things are,” his brother articulates carefully, “then perhaps you should discuss the expectations that have been set out for you by God, with God.”

Elliot’s jaw sets. The contention sits there, her death, locked in her jaw.

Oh, John thinks, and he says, “I’ll be back.” She gives him a sharp look.

“I think that’s best,” she bites out. He knows what that means—she wants to be alone to argue with Joseph as she pleases, without having to worry about Joseph going, well, what do you think, John? Because he will, inevitably. He will, and John will have to look at Elliot and say, you know that he’s right, Joseph knows best, we’re here to shepherd.

As he descends to the lower bowels of the ranch, he stops at the bottom of the stairs.

“... do more for you than you fucking realize...”

“—refrain from speaking to me like—”

“—deserve to have this, Joseph—”

They should have taken Diana to the bunker, not kept her here. Not where there is so little space between them and her. The lack of distance lets Elliot feel close to her, and like any unloved animal, when she has something to keep, she guards it viciously. This is no different.

Diana is no different.

“You’re quite the conversation piece,” John tells the brunette when he walks into the room. She’s been with them for three days, and in that time she’s nearly escaped; unfortunately, the only exit from the basement is to go up, and she’s easy to catch up there.

The deputy regards him with a half-lidded gaze that reeks of impudence. “What’s it like?”

“Having a conversation piece?”

“Being so pathetic you have to kidnap someone to be able to have conversation,” Diana drawls venomously. The words spike a bout of irritation in him, hot and wretched, and he thinks he doesn’t know if it was worse to come down here to avoid Joseph and Elliot’s argument or if he should have stayed.

“My brother thinks you’re more trouble than you’re worth,” John bites out.

“I’m really fuckin’ concerned about Joseph’s opinion of me.” She smiles, all teeth, and the gesture strikes him as eerily reminiscent to Elliot. “So what, you’re gonna baptize me now or whatever instead?”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” he snaps, circling the chair that has been her home. “He doesn’t even want you cleansed. I’m thinking he’s just going to have us kill you. Stick your head up somewhere to send a message to all of your little friends in the resistance.”

Diana’s quiet at that for a minute, before she says, “Wifey won’t let that happen.”

“You—” John sucks in a sharp breath. “Don’t call her that.”

“Why not? She’s been making fucking bedroom eyes at me every second, that’s not my fault.”

Diana’s goading him, but it’s hard to see around the irritation. She’s impertinent, and impudent, and there’s nothing that he wants to do more than to just break that inside her—until she’s saying his name and begging and begging and begging. It’s the part of him that Joseph wanted him to cleanse and cut out, but that Elliot tells him she likes the best.

We’re closer than lovers, she would say, digging her nails in hard enough to draw blood, the same sin binds us.

The same sin that she sees in Diana, too. Wrath, he knows, even though he hates it.

“She has taken a particular interest in you,” John relents after a moment, though he doesn’t like to, “deputy.”

“I’m a catch,” Diana agrees. He sucks his teeth.

“My wife has always been a purveyor of wretched things.” John leans against the tool bench, narrowing his eyes. “I suppose she must think there’s something salvageable about you.”

“Is there a point?” the deputy asks, sounding tired. “To this... Monologuing? It’s very Marvel-villain of you, but I don’t have any popcorn or alcohol, and it makes it a lot less enjoyable.”

“Look,” he hisses, pushing off from the tool bench, “if we had it my way, you’d have your sin revealed and you’d be on your fucking knees begging us to keep you, you wicked little—”

“John?”

Elliot’s voice drifts down from the stairwell, and he snaps his mouth shut. She’d be furious if she knew he’d lost his temper. Maybe. Probably.

“Uh-oh,” Diana sing-songs, just low enough for him to hear, “here comes the ol’ ball and chain. Isn’t that right, buddy?”

The insinuation hangs there, between them, that Elliot is their ball and chain, and he feels his blood pressure spike. “Shut. Up,” John grinds out between his teeth, just as he hears footfalls descend the stairs above. When his wife does finally turn the corner, there’s a lovely high colour in her cheeks, and her eyes look a little wild.

“Bonding time?” she asks.

“Hardly,” John replies, just as Diana says, “Oh, you know it,” and he shoots her a look. Elliot had called her their deputy, their shared conquest, but both he and Diana look at Elliot more than they want to look at each other.

He does want, he thinks. He feels that tell-tale itch. It wouldn’t be so strong if Diana didn’t just buck against them all the fucking time, but he does want, which makes it all the more frustrating when she turns that venom on him.

“We should give the deputy a little blissful encouragement,” John remarks, turning his gaze to Elliot. “It might make her behave.”

“I don’t think so,” the blonde idles, as he reaches up and tucks a strand of hair away from her face. Oh, yes—she is furious. He can feel the tension from the grind of her molars against each other. The conversation with Joseph didn’t go well, then.

“Joseph wants to speak with you,” Elliot tells him as he runs the pads of his fingers down the column of her throat. There’s a nasty, jagged scar there—he’s trying to remember where it’s from, but he can’t.

“About what?” he says, brows pulling together.

“Wives, submit to your husband as to the lord,” she intones, the obedience in her voice cloying and all-too-sweet to be genuine, “for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Saviour—”

“Fucking unreal,” Diana says from the chair, and Elliot’s mouth ticks upward.

“As the church submits to Christ,” she finishes, fixing John with her eyes, “etcetera and so on.”

John is filled with dread. He thinks maybe Elliot’s mouthed off one too many times—she’s never liked Joseph, never even been particularly religious, and her own heritage is such a violent mishmash of religion and criminal activity that she’s hardly got the track record for piety. Scarlet is a practicing Catholic and Ambrose’s opinions on religion are unknown, considering that he’s been vanished for so long, so it’s no surprise that Elliot views religion as something like ambiguity.

“I’ll be quick,” he murmurs, which they both know isn’t true, but he says it anyway.

“Don’t rush on my behalf.” Her eyes are dark—he can see the pupils eating away at the baby blue of her irises, and when she reaches up and brushes his hand away from her face, there is a tiny tremor in her hands.

Not good at all, he thinks, stepping around her and looking at Diana. Her eyes are on Elliot for a heartbeat longer, and then she looks at him, and he knows that she’s seen it too. She’s too sharp not to have.

As he approaches the stairs, John says, “Play nice, hellcat.”

“I always do.”

Near the top, he hears Diana say, “I don’t think you’re capable of playing well with others, princess,” and Elliot says, “He said play nice, not play fair, and I can be plenty nice,” and he feels a little surge of warmth at the playfulness in her tone. It’s a timbre that he doesn’t hear out of her often, and almost exclusively with him, so to hear it now not only makes him a little envious, but also pleased.

The deputy is a wretched, wicked thing, yes; she should be cleansed, but there is also a part of him that knows Elliot would not want her any other way, just like he wouldn’t want Elliot any other way.

And that’s good enough for him.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The deputy escapes.

It’s not a surprise to Elliot when he tells her, and he thinks maybe she was waiting for it all along, considering that Joseph had conditionally allowed them their pursuit of Diana as long as they can keep her under control; it would not be completely unfounded to think maybe Elliot gave her a way out, to keep the chase fun. To keep it fresh.

She takes Fall’s End back. She takes the fucking plane back. She takes Hudson back. She takes, and takes, and takes, and that’s all Diana Baker is capable of doing, John thinks—fucking taking, even after he and Elliot had been so gracious with her. It grinds against his patience as though his nerve endings have been exposed; it shreds the last of his control, sinks its claws into him like nothing else.

Sunrise Farm. Rae Rae’s. The Lamb of God Church. One after another, they play this game of existential tug-of-war; where Diana takes one and moves on, Elliot surges back in to take it back again. He thinks that his wife should be able to crush the Resistance under her bootheel, but he has the sneaking suspicion that she doesn’t want it to be done so quickly. And, in many ways, Diana outfoxes them with what appears to be little effort; their supply trucks get mowed down. The silos burn. Men keep dying.

These are all things that should disparage Elliot, but each time John points it out to her—“She’s wicked, Ell,” he’ll posit—she regards him loftily and says, “Well, she can’t be anything less than us, can she?”

Diana gets pulled back to them. She escapes. It happens over and over, until the lines start blurring, until John thinks maybe, sometimes, she lets them catch her—like she’s looking forward to those moments. When she’s there, at the ranch, things feel different; Elliot moves with a strange surety around the deputy, like they know each other already, deep in the marrow of their bones. Maybe, in a way, they do.

And in those moments, there’s a shift. Elliot allows her freedoms on good behavior, which run on such thin ice considering Diana herself, and are almost always immediately broken at first. But no matter how many of their things she destroys or spits on or takes, no matter how many times John finds himself disgustingly exasperated with her—he is always happy to see her back.

In part because he knows Joseph has given Jacob and Faith both leave to kill her if they have the misfortune of coming across her, and in part because he sees the way Elliot leans into her like a flower to sunlight; her fingers ghost over Diana’s skin, and she pulls Diana into her lap and kisses her, hot and open-mouthed, and sighs when Diana petulantly sinks her teeth into her lower lip.

It draws blood, and John knows from the way his wife looks at him that it delights her.

“Wicked,” Elliot murmurs then, tongue peeking out to swipe the blood from her lip, reiterating the word that John favors Diana with the most. “Don’t you think so, baby?”

“Incredibly,” John agrees. He climbs onto the bed behind Elliot, sweeping the hair from her shoulder and pressing a kiss to the junction of her shoulder.

“How well we chose,” the blonde purrs, dragging her fingertips along the column of Diana’s throat, and he can see the goosebumps rise in her skin. Diana’s eyes flicker, dreamily, and their gazes meet over Elliot’s shoulder. She’s tame, like this—or nearly-tame, close to domesticated, at least for a little while. It’s only ever for a little while. And though they fall into a strange, tentative routine every time she’s here—even though John can lean over Elliot’s shoulder and pull Diana into a bruising kiss, until he feels her breath hitch.

He loves it. He loves the feeling of Diana’s mouth parting under his, loves that their fingers meet, tangled, in Elliot’s hair, grounding Diana to them. At night, when Elliot has contented herself with enough of a taste of Diana and John both, when they lay tangled together, Diana kept between them.

Our deputy, Elliot had said; in moments like these, it feels true.

“You missed us,” the blonde says against Diana’s neck. “We missed you, too. Especially John.”

Her eyes are sly when she looks at him, when he pulls back from Diana to regard his wife curiously. She takes the brunette’s chin in her grip and guides her back, brushing their noses together.

“Missed having both of his little vipers,” she murmurs silkily, and John sees the flicker of her tongue against Diana’s lips. “Didn’t you, John?”

Yes, he thinks, but does not say, because his mind is encompassed with the way Elliot kisses Diana; reverently, with the intent to worship. Never rushed and never urgent, only ever luxuriating in it.

At first, he and Diana get along for Elliot’s sake—as much as they can, anyway, because even Elliot is not enough of a bridge to force them to get along—but when they have the deputy, and his wife gets called away, they fall into a kind of rhythm with each other. It’s not a familiar cadence. It’s daunting, and a little jarring, the way they bite and scratch at each other for comfort, both missing their girl.

“I’m not going to stay,” Diana says then, against the blonde’s mouth, the same way that she said it into John’s mouth. Her neck and shoulders are littered with the remnants of their time together, and he wonders if the Resistance members ask.

“We know,” John says, leaning down and grazing his teeth across the fading bruise of a love bite. He drinks in the way Diana hisses and squirms. “You’ll always leave.”

“And always come back,” Elliot agrees. She noses past the hair gathering in the crook of Diana’s shoulder.

“Like you were never gone at all.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

It becomes her mantra. I’m not going to stay, Diana says every time, and every time she only sticks around for a day or more before she dissipates into the air like a wraith. He doesn’t know how long it goes on like this, but he does know that each time Joseph becomes more impatient. Each time, the act of losing her strikes a chord of panic in John—she won’t come back this time, he thinks, or maybe this time she’ll come back with more than just her, or or or—but Elliot doesn’t feed into his panic; she treats it like anything else, with the confidence that the deputy will come back. He desperately wants to keep Diana there with them, where he can see and touch and taste her, where he is certain Jacob hasn’t gotten her, but she always follows through on the promise of leaving.

“Aren’t you at your limit?” John asks, late in the evening, watching Diana from across the island counter in the kitchen. This time around, Elliot has been gone for most of the time Diana has been here, which makes it more difficult to know that her tolerance for sticking around is going to be running out soon. By the time Elliot comes back, Diana might already be gone.

“I’m always at my limit,” she replies, her idle venom more a comfort now than ever, “with you.”

“You’re a real comedian, deputy.” He saunters around the island, his hands finding her hips and his mouth finding her neck. He likes hearing the way her breath slides out of her when he does. “Though I seem to recall a specific instance in which you were not at your limit, and couldn’t stop asking me for more—”

He’s about to follow through on the insinuation, because Diana’s eyes narrow when she looks at him but she’s warm and close and he watches her gaze flicker down to his mouth, but the sound of the front doors to the house opening startles him out of the dreamy haze the brunette tends to put him in. John pushes off from the counter and walks out of the kitchen, brows knitting together at the impudence of someone to come barging in without being announced.

“Herald.” It’s one of the men, and his face cloudy. “It’s—I’m sorry, we—”

“Spit it out,” John grinds out between his teeth. He hears the sound of Diana rustling in the kitchen behind him, and then from outside, Elliot’s voice.

“Don’t fucking touch me—”

The blonde shoulders her way through the doorway as someone flutters nervously behind her. John takes in a number of details very rapidly: she’s clutching at a spot close to her shoulder, just below her collarbone, there is blood coming out of her mouth, and she’s fucking pissed.

“Get a doctor,” John barks out, just as Diana steps around him and goes to Elliot. He does, too, but mostly to clear the members of Eden’s Gate out of the room because he knows Elliot’s going to come unglued if they stick around.

“Fucking Pratt,” Elliot seethes, even as Diana’s hands go to her, trying to guide her to the couch. The blonde jerks when she feels hands on her, looking wild, and John tenses for just a second; in moments like these, his wife’s ability to differentiate between threat and non-threat is almost non-existent, and he’s suffered the consequences of it plenty of times. “Don’t—fucking—”

“It’s me, you monster,” Diana snaps. “Sit the fuck down.”

The blonde’s breathing is labored. She swallows back what he can only assume is a mouthful of blood before he says, “Hellcat.”

“I’m going,” she bites out, and then she does. Diana touches her elbow, and she stiffens, and then sits down where the brunette tells her to. When she pulls her hand away from her shoulder, it’s sticky and wet with blood.

“Jesus Christ,” Diana says, a little wrench in her voice that she quickly snuffs out. “Getting sloppy?”

“Eat shit,” Elliot wheezes. “I hate that fuckhead. Can’t wait til I—” She sucks in a sharp breath. “—til I g-get my fucking—hands—”

Diana is circling Elliot, trying to get a good look, as John grabs a first aid kid from under the kitchen sink. He keeps thinking about all of the blood coming out of her mouth; it’s not the first time he’s seen her like this, but it’s definitely not any easier, either.

“Exit wound?” the deputy asks.

“Fucking shot me with a 9 milli FMJ,” the blonde says between her teeth, “there’d better fucking be an—”

“Stop,” Diana interjects as John returns with the first aid kit, “being unhelpful.”

It’s a torturous amount of time between Elliot’s arrival and the arrival of the doctor they have for such occasions. In the meantime, Diana does what she can—she knows probably more than both of them, even Elliot with her close proximity to violence, about how to stabilize a gun wound; she cleans it and stops the bleeding as much as she can, her face set in a grim, tight expression.

The brunette packs the wound with gauze and says, “You’re a goddamn idiot.”

“Cute one though, huh?” Elliot asks, her voice a little hoarse and her eyes fluttering. “Be cuter if someone could get me some fucking oxy.”

“Save it for the doctor, princess.”

“So glad,” John manages out tartly, Elliot’s fingers loosely curling against his palm, “so glad we have your calming presence here, deputy.”

Diana regards him for a moment, and she looks about to say something when the doctor chooses precisely that moment to arrive. He doesn’t do much by way of conversation; he works silently, intensely, his fingers moving a sort of surety that comes with many years of practice, but he hardly looks at John or Diana while he works.

It’s probably odd. People know that Diana is around, but they don’t know-know, in the sense that there’s never been an official announcement or acknowledgement of what’s going on. Occasionally, the doctor’s eyes furtively flicker towards the brunette; but if he’s feeling pressed to ask, he doesn’t let it show.

By the time Elliot is stitched-up, drugged-up, and planted into the bed, the heat and bubbling fury have died out of her, the embers smothered by the painkillers. Diana lays in the master bedroom next to her while the doctor talks to him outside in the hall.

“Bed rest, minimum three weeks,” he says. “If she keeps coughing up blood, call me. No strenuous activity, no stress—”

“Doctor,” John says tightly, “with all due respect, let’s keep the expectations under control.”

The doctor grimaces. “Bed rest, three weeks. Everything else, just—try your best.”

John nods, short and impatient, and dismisses the man with a gesture of his hand before he steps into the bedroom. Elliot’s murmuring something to Diana, but the words are slurring and her voice is pitched so low beyond normal volume he can’t make it out, even from there.

He wanders to the side of the bed, sitting down on the edge by Elliot’s hip.

“What’d he say?” the blonde asks, her words slurring and her fingers tangling in strands of Diana’s dark hair. “Two days, ready—go?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Diana says irritably.

“Three weeks bedrest,” John tells her. “He thinks you have a collapsed lung.”

“Fuckoff,” Elliot groans, the words blending together.

“He also said no strenuous activity, no stress—”

At that, Diana laughs, the sound billowing out of her in a short, disbelieving bark. “Fucking what?”

“That...means you t-two have to….behave,” Elliot mumbles, her eyes flickering. “No stressin’ me—no streeeessin’—”

“Stop.” Diana sounds almost affectionately exasperated. “You are so painful to listen to.”

“—no stressin’,” Elliot finishes stubbornly, “me. Out.”

Later that night, when she’s finally drifted off into sleep and John and Diana have her settled between them, John props his head up in his hand and sees Diana still awake. She’s looking at the window. It’s open, and the late-August breeze comes drifting in, bringing with it the smell of pine and wilderness.

“At your limit?” John asks as he did before, keeping his voice soft so as not to stir Elliot. Normally, he wouldn’t ask—he would just wait to realize that Diana’s not there, and go from that point on. But it’s different, now, with Elliot like this.

The brunette turns her gaze to him. For a second, her eyes flicker over Elliot, who stirs a little.

“She always this annoying?” Diana says, instead of answering, and by annoying he thinks she means worry-inducing.

“Like it’s an Olympic Sport,” John replies.

She exhales out of her nose. They sit like that for a little while, until Diana settles back against the pillow. Elliot’s fingers are knotted loosely into the sleeve of her t-shirt, and the blonde’s breathing stutters and hitches in her chest.

“Not yet,” she answers, finally. “Not at my limit yet.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“How many days has it been?”

John’s voice breaks Elliot out of her reverie. She blinks, and realizes that she’s been checked out. The painkillers make her brain foggy, and if it weren’t for the excruciating, searing pain in her chest and shoulder, she’d just stop taking them.

The sound of the shower running in the bathroom adjacent to the bedroom trickles in through the fog. That’s right: she’s in bed. She’s in bed, and John is next to her, his fingers tracing the coil of the tattooed serpent on her thigh, the cigarette in her fingers burning for who knows how long since the last time she’s taken an inhale of it.

“Since what?” Elliot asks, looking at her husband. John slides his hand up and snags her fingers, bringing the wedding ring she sports to his mouth.

“Since our viper came back to us.”

She tries to think back that far, but it’s hard. Elliot reaches over with a wince and taps the cigarette out into the ashtray. In the bathroom, she can hear the water switch off.

After a moment, she replies, “Must be over two weeks.”

Her husband makes a low noise. She brushes her fingers through his beard, and he murmurs, “Longer than usual.”

“What are you two gossiping about?”

Elliot’s gaze flickers up sluggishly to Diana, standing in her towel, propped up against the doorway. She’s such a far cry from the girl that she was when they first got their hands on her that it’s almost easy to forget she ever existed in a place where she wasn’t theirs. How absolutely dreadful, Elliot thinks, just absolutely fucking dreadful, to think she was once not ours.

“How long we have to wait for you to come back over here,” John says easily. “Not only are you using up all the hot water, but Elliot’s pining.”

“Oh, yeah?” Diana sounds amused as she makes her way to the bed. “Poor little bed-ridden snake, aren’t you?”

Elliot laughs, because it should be absurd—it should be, that Diana is here, leaning in when Elliot beckons her, the brunette’s mouth soft and sweet against her own. It should be absurd, but it isn’t, because this isn’t the first time Diana’s kissed her like this and it won’t be the last, either.

“Every time we’re apart,” Elliot confirms resolutely, “I wallow around. Just ask John.”

“I have a hard time picturing you wallowing.”

“She does,” John says, planting a kiss on Elliot’s jaw. “She wallows around and says, when do you think our Di will be back? Does she think about us?” And then, grinning wickedly, he adds, “Do you think if I ask nicely, she’ll shove her fingers in my mouth?”

Elliot laughs, grabbing John’s jaw and jostling him. “You fucker.”

“I will,” Diana says, and now she sounds sly, and in the way that Elliot does. “If you ask.”

Pausing, Elliot feels her chest tighten a little. Mine, she thinks tiredly, glancing between John and Diana both. They’re here, and hers, and even though she told John the deputy is for them she thinks maybe they’re both for her.

“What else?” She turns her gaze back to Diana. “What else will you do, if I ask?”

Diana’s gaze flickers. Her lips press into a thin little line. I’m not going to stay, she looks like she wants to say, but she doesn’t. She just says, “You’re chatty as fuck tonight, aren’t you? Sounds like it might be time for you to pop another painkiller,” and goes to fetch the pill bottle.

Elliot settles back against the pillows and watches the brunette rifling through the dresser. This is when Diana says, I’m not going to stay, her little mantra, but she doesn’t, and John tangles their fingers together and squeezes her hand.

The deputy always leaves, and she always comes back. She hasn’t said yes, she’ll stay, and she also hasn’t said no, she’ll go, and in this instance maybe that means exactly what Elliot wants it to.

Maybe, it means this time, she’ll stay.

#my writing #2020 christmas electric boogaloo #jess!!! jess!!!!#im not hiding in the tags but i hope u like it #ik you just proofed it but guess what?#it's probably still got spelling errors #<3 #just ash things #otp: the unholy trinity #anyway hi i love you #i can't believe i actually got this shit done in time for christmas #i hope..... the vibes are good #and the flow #ahhhhh lmao #ksjfskadjf #OKAY BYE LOVE YOU #fc5 fic

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siren-queen-imagines · 5 years

Text

Rebound

To a lovely anon: I have your Billy Russo request for you! I hope you enjoy!!

Prompts Used: 1.“You said that I’d get to have you all weekend. Why can’t you just tell them you can’t go?” - “Because it’s my job, and it’s important.” - “And I’m not?” 6.“Losing you was the most unbearable pain I’ve ever felt.”

Masterlist

(gif by me)

The smile you gave the group of girls didn’t exactly reach your eyes like it normally does...but they didn’t even really seem to notice. You were out with the girls, after refusing the last 2 months.

“You need to get over him properly.” One of them told you.

“Yeah. You need to meet a new guy.” Another said.

“At least rebound sex someone. It’s been 2 months but better late than never.”

And then they laughed. Honestly you got where they were coming from but you just weren’t in the mood to be genuine about any of this.

2 months ago, your 3 year relationship with Billy Russo came to an end. You had just finished moving out and are still looking for a place to live...but for now you were living with Jessica, your sister. And that’s how you were dragged out tonight.

You really preferred to stay in and just gorge on food and watch something on Netflix but Jessica thought a night out with the girls to celebrate the end of your moving out from Billy’s place was in order. Plus, she always said you needed to celebrate your newly single life.

To be honest, you still weren’t feeling it. 3 years of being with someone wasn’t gonna be gotten over in 2 months...well, for you at least. It honestly didn’t help that it seemed all Jessica did while you were going through your mourning period was try to get you to go out or invite the girls over where all they do is want to talk about Billy. Granted it was because of how much of an asshole he was but just even hearing his name never helped.

You know what else never helped? Them talking about how hot he was while they were at it and then wanting to know about your sex life with him. You definitely needed new friends. Hell, these girls were more your sister’s. They didn’t exactly get along with your actual friends.

So yeah, being out with them was the last thing you wanted.

“I’m out.” You announced to the table after you drained the last of you drink. “I’m gonna go get another one.”

“Oh my god.” Nadine, another one of the girls awed, not hearing you. “Look who decided to show his pretty face.”

“You’re kidding.” Layla chuckled, following Nadine’s eye line.

You did the same and there Billy was, sitting at the bar with Curtis. God, you still missed him.

“Eh, he’s still looking fine as hell though.”

“Definitely. Looks like the break up didn’t affect him. You sure you’re the one that ended it, Y/N?”

“Doesn’t matter.” You replied with a scoff. Rude. “It’s been fun but I’m out.”

You got up from the table, grabbed your stuff and headed to the bar. You sat down and ordered your drink when the bartender came around.

“I thought you didn’t like your sister’s friends.” A voice said from behind you.

You turned to see Billy standing behind you with a soft smile on his face. You looked over to where he was before and saw Curtis looking over. A girl took up the chair Billy previously occupied, offering you a small smile. He held up his beer and winked at you before talking to the girl next to him.

“Curtis got a new girlfriend, huh?” You asked Billy, offering him a spot next to you.

“Yeah. She’s great. She’s perfect for him.” Billy replied, making himself comfortable next to you. “Don’t change the subject. Why you out with your sister and her minions?”

You laughed and shook your head.

“She dragged me out. They’re trying to get me to ‘move on’.”

“How’s that working out?”

“They’re all the worst at it. All they’ve been doing is mooning over you.”

Billy raised an eyebrow at you before turning back to the table of girls. Their glares turned to smiles as Nadine and Layla waved at him.

“Surprised your sister isn’t. She’s been glaring daggers at me since she saw me.”

Of course he would notice you were there before you even noticed him. You chalked it up to the Marine in him.

“I think she’s been angry at you since you came over here. She was fine while I was at the table.”

The two of you shared a chuckle and you both took a sip of your drinks.

“How’ve you been?” Billy asked you.

“Getting by.” You admitted with a sigh. “Still living with Jess so it’s had its ups and downs.”

“Y/N, I told you that I could stay elsewhere until you found a place you wanted.”

“The lease on the apartment is in your name. Besides, I was the one that moved in with you. It didn’t feel right to have you leave.”

The two of you sat in silence again, the only sound being the noises in the bar.

“How have you been, Billy?” You decided to ask.

“Honestly?” Billy offered. “Not too good. I never thought I’d say that. Ever.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because, Y/N. I’ve told you this before. Before you, I never really felt the way I feel about you when it came to other women. I didn’t really care much when they wanted to end things or when I ended things.”

“Feel? You still feel that way about me?”

You wanted to slap yourself because of the hope that filled your voice. You knew Billy could hear it.

“Of course I do. We’ve only been apart for 2 months. If I’m still being honest, losing you was the most unbearable pain I’ve ever felt. Still is.”

You looked over to Billy in shock. He never tore his gaze from you and you could see nothing but the truth in them. Wow. You thought you knew but maybe you didn’t.

“If you could do things different, would you?” You asked after taking a moment.

“In a heartbeat.”

The two of you held an intense gaze...yeah, you still definitely felt it.

“Y/N.” Jessica called you, causing you to break eye contact with Billy.

You turned to look at her, where she stood a few feet away, her arms crossed.

“We’re leaving. Come on.” She continued.

“I’m not ready to leave.” You told her.

“Well we are.” She motioned to herself and the table. “Anyway, aren’t you supposed to hang out with us?”

“No. I already told you I was out but you weren’t listening. You all were too busy fawning over Billy.”

Jessica’s glare found Billy before landing you once more.

“We’re leaving. Maybe you can find somewhere else to stay tonight like your ex’s place since I’m clearly wasting my time trying to help you.”

“Okay.”

You decided to leave it as that. You heard Jessica scoff and storm off, her heels clicking and clacking against the wooden floor. You knew she hated it when you ‘okay’ed her. Looks like you would stay at a hotel. Maybe you’d stop by tomorrow and grab your stuff and stay in said hotel until you found your own place. It was better and easier than living with her.

“Where are you gonna stay?” Billy asked casually.

“Hotel. It’s been a while since I’ve treated myself.” You shrugged.

Billy was about to offer to pay for it but he decided not to. He knew you’d turn it down and make a comment about you being able to take care of yourself. While he knew that to be true, he still didn’t mind. It wasn’t out of obligation or guilt or anything. He just wanted to take care of you. He liked taking care of you.

“You want a ride?” He offered instead.

“Sure. That would be great, actually.”

Billy paid for your drinks, despite you insisting on paying for yours. Again, it wasn’t a big deal to him. Before you left, he checked in with Curtis to let him know you guys were leaving. After bidding him goodbye, the two of you got to Billy’s car and he drove towards the hotel you wanted to go to.

Even something as simple as this, a car ride, was missed. It felt normal despite no longer being a couple. You couldn’t help but think about what Billy said at the bar about changing things. It made you think about why you chose to end things with him.

=================================

You were putting the finishing touches on the table you had set up. You decided to cook Billy a special dinner before you were set to spend the weekend away at the Poconos. You lit the candles and checked the time. Billy should be home any minute now.

“Y/N?” Billy called out as he walked through the front door.

Billy looked around the dim room, slightly smiling to himself when he saw the candles on the table and the set up.

“Hey babe.” You smiled, walking over to him with two plates of food in your hand, kissing him.

“What’s all this?”

“Just wanted to do something nice.” You walked to the table, placing the plates down. “I figured it would be a nice start to our weekend.”

Billy sighed, no longer smiling.

“About that.” He started. “I won’t be able to go away with you.”

“What? Why?” Your good mood was slowly beginning to deflate.

“Work. We got a last minute security job for the senator. I have to stay here.”

“Billy.” You forced a smile for a brief moment before it faded. “I’m sure the boss won’t mind considering you are the boss.”

“I’m sorry, Y/N. But the company needs this. Do you know how big this could be for business? I need you to support me on this.”

You shook your head and ran a hand through your hair. It felt like every time you guys had plans, he was cancelling for Anvil. You understood, you really did as he was the owner and CEO but every job was a big deal. When would he stop cancelling on you and put you first for once? You felt like you’ve been taking a backseat to his job too much lately. It hurt.

“You said that I’d get to have you all weekend. Why can’t you just tell them you can’t go?”

“Because it’s my job, and it’s important.”

“And I’m not?”

“That’s--that’s not what I’m saying.” Billy was trying to keep from getting mad.

“You might as well have.” You argued. “You’ve been doing this so much lately that I’m beginning to wonder if you even want me.”

“Are you kidding, of course I want you.”

“Are you sure? Because you’ve been putting your work over me. I’m tired of being second best.”

Billy paused, running a hand through his hair. He didn’t like how this was sounding.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Does it matter? Because you’re gonna do what you want anyway.”

Billy didn’t like how defeated you sounded.

“I’m tired of this, Billy. Maybe it’s time we call it on this relationship.” You continued.

“Hold on, wait a minute--” Billy started.

“I think it’s best for both of us if we break up. We’re both going in two different directions.”

“Y/N, please, hold on.”

You walked away from him, heading to the door and grabbing your purse and jacket.

“I’ll be back soon to get my things.”

“Y/N, I--”

He paused when he saw that you started crying. He knew there was nothing he could say to fix this. It seemed like you had thought about this for a while. He watched as you walked out of the door. Fuck. What did he do?

=================================

“You mind if I walk you to your room?” Billy asked after you checked in, room key in hand. “Make sure you get there safe?”

“I don’t remember hiring you to protect me.” You lightly teased.

“It’s part of the ‘free ride’ package where everything is free.” He smiled at you brightly.

You laughed and shook your head. Oh, that smile of his would be the death of you. He could almost always get you to say ‘yes’ to anything with that smile.

“Lead the way then.”

The two of you walked to your room, talking about what's new in your lives. You haven’t felt at rest like this since before you and Billy split. You missed this.

And dammit, you still missed him.

“This is you.” Billy said as you both came to a stop to your room. “May I?” He held his hand out for the room key.

You gave it to him and he unlocked it for you. You found yourself confused when he walked in, looking around the room, some of his actions over exaggerated.

“What are you doing?” You laughed.

“Making sure you get full use of your ‘free ride’ package. Room’s secure.”

You couldn’t help but smile at him. It felt like one of the most genuine in a while. You knew Billy took his job seriously but that didn’t mean he didn’t have fun with it when it came to you. Plus, you remember telling him once that he’s too serious when it came to work that sometimes it came home with him. You liked his playful side...and it caused him to embrace a different, silly side to himself that he was most comfortable with showing you.

“Well, thank you, Lieutenant.” You saluted him.

Billy smiled at you. God, he wanted to badly to kiss you right now. He had to stop himself...you weren’t together anymore.

“I better get going.”

“Okay.”

“It was good to see you. We should get coffee tomorrow or something.”

“Yeah, that’d be great.”

You walked Billy to the door, the two of you pausing at the threshold. You gave him a hug, one that lasted longer than it should.

“Don’t forget to lock the door behind me.” Billy reminded you, something he always did when you were together. You never know in New York, even with a protected home like theirs.

“I know, I know.”

Billy walked out the door and waited to hear the door lock behind him. With a sigh, he headed back to his car.

You on the other hand, waited by the door for a moment before you went to sit on the bed.

It was very clear to you that there was still something between the two of you. You knew he meant it earlier when he said he would change how things went before the break up. You could see it in his eyes and hear it in his voice. Maybe things could work out between the two of you. Maybe you could get back together.

You began to take off your shoes and get settled in when there was a knock on your door. You went over and looked through the peephole, unlocking it immediately.

“Billy, wh--” You started.

You were cut off when Billy’s lips met yours. You kissed him back, your arms wrapping around his neck as he pulled you closer to him. Holy shit, you missed this; you missed the feeling of his lips on yours; you missed the feeling of his body against yours.

“I couldn’t leave without doing that.” Billy told you, his forehead resting against yours as you pulled back from the kiss.

“I’m glad you came back.”

“I screwed up before. I was stupid because you were right. But know that I always wanted you. I still do. If you’ll let me, I promise to do better; to be better.”

“I’ll let you. I promise to do better too. I should be more supportive--”

“No, no, no. You didn’t do anything wrong. You’ve been nothing but supportive and I took advantage of that.” Billy cupped the side of your face, his thumb tracing your lower lip. “Things will be different. I promise. I meant it when I said I would change things in a heartbeat.”

“I know you did.”

Billy offered you a soft smile before he kissed you deeply. He kicked the door closed behind him before he picked you up and carried you over to the bed, laying you down gently. He’d make sure you knew exactly how much you were wanted.

#the punisher imagine #billy russo x reader #billy russo imagine #billy russo

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