#because we only had like 25 practice rooms across the whole damn campus

[remyfire]

[fic-for-fic-sake]

Does Your Mother Know

A/N: Peter is 18 in this, nothing inappropriate. Age gap. You’re like 25, he’s 18. Also yes I got the inspiration while watching Mamma Mia. 

Pairing: Peter x reader 

Even though the Avengers now had an upstate facility you were staying at the tower for the time being. You were working on your masters degree in neuroscience at Columbia, so Stark offered an available room in the tower, of which you were grateful. You had cringed at the thought of having to take a car into the city for your classes every other day but Tony hadn’t thought twice about setting you up at the tower, claiming you could keep a watchful eye on everything. 

What you didn’t know, what Tony conveniently forgot to tell you was that Peter was also staying in the tower. He started his freshmen year at NYU for Biophysics. It’s not that you had a problem with Peter, not at all. You had known him since he was 15 and Stark recruited his help at the airport in Germany, but Peter had developed a bit of a crush on you. Which more than weirded you out. He was only seven years younger than you but the thought of dating an 18 year old made you balk, it felt wrong. 

Most times you could steer clear of Peter, claiming you had research to do (which wasn’t completely untrue) or saying that you were going out with your friends when really you were hiding at your friends apartment, avoiding him. After the tenth visit to your friends apartment she officially banned you for your own good. And she was right. You just had to tell Peter you weren’t interested in him like that, it should be easy. 

The next morning you readied yourself to talk to him. Practiced phrases over and over in your head until they sounded right. You wanted to let him down gently, he was still your friend after all. And you wanted to make it perfectly clear that this didn’t have to mean the end of your friendship, you could move past this amicably. All of those thoughts left your mind when you walked into the kitchen to see Peter chugging a glass of water. 

Your mouth went dry. He was only wearing a pair of gym shorts slung lowly on his hips, giving your eyes the perfect chance to glimpse the v that was prominent. You also got a very close look at his abs which were, um, impressive to say the least. You maneuvered your way around him to get a coffee mug and start making your brew for the day, your mind now muddled. He refilled his glass once more and then gently pressed his hand against your lower back before moving behind you, “I’m just gonna sneak by you.” His voice husked in your ear. 

You’re so hot, teasing me. So you’re blue but I can’t take a chance on a kid like you. It’s somethin’ I couldn’t do. 

You coughed to cover up the shock as you filled your mug with coffee. You didn’t bother to say anything, much less risk a glance in his direction, as you added milk and sugar to your drink. You knew what he was playing at, you just shook your head and laughed before turning around to go back to your room, conversation be damned. 

But like the dutiful enhanced human he was, he was in front of you in a second, blocking your path with his lithe but toned body. He leaned against the wall casually, like he had done this hundreds of times. 

“Don’t I get a ‘good morning’?” Peter asked jokingly, cocking his head to the side. You could see mirth in those chocolate eyes of his and you wanted nothing more than to wipe the expression off of his face. You just rolled your eyes as you walked around him, giving his half naked body a wide berth. 

There’s that look, in your eyes. I can read in your face that your feelings are driving you wild. Oh but boy you’re only a child.

You had been around the block enough times to know what that expression meant on a guy. Hell, you had given that expression yourself once or twice, enough times to know that nothing good, or rational, ever followed. You were saving the both of you an even more awkward conversation than the one you had actually worked out in your mind. 

“Good Morning Peter.” You responded in a singsong tone as you walked back to your room, hot coffee in hand. You could hear his resounding chuckle as you closed your door and prepared for the day. 

An hour later, as you were preparing to leave for class you got a text from the Iron Man himself. 

Stopping by later today for a little get together. Nothing major, just a few friends. Tell Pete

You rolled your eyes as you typed your response. For Tony, “little get together” meant the whole damn team. Here. In your apartment. You made sure to have a cleaning crew come by the tidy up while you were out. You were about to send a text to Peter when you literally ran into him while going to the elevator. 

He caught you, hands gently but firmly pressed against your shoulders as he helped you right yourself. 

“Woah, where’s the fire?” He questioned, warm brown eyes meeting your own. 

“Class, and then back early because apparently we’re having company tonight.” You explained to him as the elevator opened and you both walked inside. Peter was standing closer to you than usual but not close enough for you to comment on it so you let it slide, for now anyway. You had enough to deal with. 

That night you had come back to the tower at 6pm sharp. You were thankful that the cleaning crew was gone and left the place looking spotless. You had two hours to go before Tony and whoever else arrived so you took the time to relax and unwind. You played music as you took a shower and tried to pick out something to wear. You weren’t sure what you were in the mood for until you saw the perfect dress. 

It was a button down shirt dress that stopped mid thigh. The best part was that it was in royal blue, Peter’s favorite color. Just because you didn’t want to date him didn’t mean you couldn’t have fun. He sure had a hell of a good time teasing you this morning. It was time to give him a taste of his own medicine. You grabbed a deep tan belt to wrap around your waist and didn’t bother to do much with your hair. You painted your lips a deep cherry color before adding small diamond studs to your ears. You looked at the clock and it read 7:55, perfect timing. 

You came into the main area where Peter was sitting on the couch wearing a striped button down of his own and dark wash jeans. He stood at attention when you walked into the room and you could feel his eyes roam over your body. You gave him a coy smile and fluttered your lashes before the elevator door opened. Tony spilled out along with the team each carrying an assortment of food and drinks. 

Rolling your eyes you made your way over to Tony who was already directing where everyone should place the numerous pizza boxes and different cases of beer, hard cider, spiked seltzer, and other kinds of mixed drinks. Honestly, after the week you had, you were more than grateful for this but you would never let Tony know that. 

“I thought you said a ‘little’ get together.” You said, a twinge of a whine in your voice. 

Tony smiled as he threw an arm over your shoulder and gestured at the team, “There’s only like what, 12 people here. Relax.” He pressed a kiss into your hair before going off and grabbing a slice of pepperoni from Nat. 

You were happy to watch the lovely chaos unfold before you but then Bucky was walking towards you, a hard cider in his hand. 

“Ugh you’re the best I love you.” You moaned to your best friend as you opened the can and took a generous swig. Bucky was your best friend on the team and even though you were glad to be living in the city and thus close to campus, you were bummed that it meant you couldn’t see Bucky as much. 

“Careful sweetheart, don’t let Pete overhear ya.” Bucky teased, opening a beer for himself. You shook your head at his antics, because he knew how much it was on your mind. You, of course, had told him about it and he, being very unhelpful, told you that you could probably stand to get laid. 

“You know what, I take it back, I hate you.” You replied before going into the kitchen closet and pulling out a cooler. Bucky helped you load it up with ice before you took it to where the alcohol was. Bucky made some lame ass excuse about checking in on Steve as Peter headed in your direction. You silently cursed him as he walked away. 

“Mind if I take a beer?” Peter asked, gesturing to the brews in the cooler. 

“Aren’t you a little young Pete?” You teased, reaching inside to get him one anyway. 

“I’m old enough.” He replied brazenly before taking the beer from your hands, letting his fingers brush up against yours. 

Well I can dance with ya honey, if you think it’s funny, but does your mother know that you’re out?

Fine, two could play at this game. You, having finished your cider alarmingly fast, reached down for a spiked seltzer this time, fully aware of Peter’s eyes on you the whole time. 

“It’s getting a little warm in here don’t you think?” You questioned, as you lifted the cool can and pressed it against the column of your throat, moaning a little bit as you did so. Peter’s Adam's apple bobbed in his throat as he watched you slide the aluminum across your skin and the trail of condensation it left behind. 

You took that feeling of satisfaction with you all the way to the couch where everyone else was chatting about their latest missions. 

“Ugh I wish I could be on missions with you guys, getting a masters is hard.” 

“But the work you’re doing is literally groundbreaking. I would argue that it’s more important than what we do on the field.” Steve replied, ready to cheer you up, and you were glad for it. 

“I agree, I think you’re doing great work.” Peter said casually, as he sat in the vacant spot next to you, opposite Sam. 

“Hey Pete, how’s freshmen year going? Meet any cute girls?” Sam teased and you internally groaned. You wanted to smack Sam. He knew what he was doing. 

“The girls at school don’t really interest me,” Peter began, placing a hand on your bare knee and rubbing his thumb back and forth across your skin, “I’m into someone else.” 

“Oh yeah.” Bucky teased, eyes narrowing in on Peter’s hand. “What about you doll? You into anyone right now?” Oh you could kill him. You could murder Bucky and you’re pretty sure nobody would stop you. 

“Well...there is someone.” You started, at this Peter’s hand stilled, waiting for your reply. 

I can chat with ya maybe, flirt a little baby, but does your mother know that you’re out?

“Really?” Peter choked next to you. 

“Mhm,” you started, “But I don’t know if I should give him a shot or not?” 

“And why’s that?” Bucky asked, knowing damn well what you were doing. You gave a small smile before you answered. 

“I need someone...with experience in certain things. And he's younger, so I don’t know if he’s qualified for the job. If you know what I mean.” You responded, letting the implication of your words hang in the air. 

Bucky choked on his beer and Peter removed his hand from your leg all together. You smiled. That should buy you some space, or so you thought. Twenty minutes had passed before you got up to use the bathroom. The team hardly noticed, they had picked a movie to watch and everyone seemed pretty glued to the TV. There was only an acknowledgement from Bucky to bring him another beer when you got back. 

You checked your phone in the bathroom and gave yourself a once over in the mirror before you planned to head back out. The only problem was that when you opened the door, a very determined looking Peter was standing on the other side of it. 

“Can we talk?” He asked, voice soft. You conceded and he walked into the bathroom with you before you closed the door again. You turned around to find him staring at you, brown eyes now a liquid amber shade. You didn’t say a word as he moved towards you until your back was pressed against the bathroom wall. He brought a hand up to rest it over your shoulder, pressed against the wall. 

“What are you doing?” You asked, gaze locking with his. 

“I think you know.” Was all he said in response, as he leaned in closer to you. You just shook your head as you rested your hands on the planes of his chest and then ran them up to rest on his shoulders. 

“What do you want Peter?” You asked again. 

“I want you. I want to kiss you.” He admitted. And maybe it was his honesty, maybe it was because you had been teasing each other all day, or maybe it was because you hadn’t had more than one drink in a while, but mostly it was because you wanted to see how far he was willing to take this, so you said, “then do it.” 

He pressed his lips to yours in a gentle, if not unsure, kiss. But you were having none of it. You made up your mind and you were done with his teasing. If he wanted to kiss then you were going to give him the kiss of a lifetime. You threaded your fingers through his hair and pressed your body against his own as you deepened the kiss. You felt his arms wrap around your waist and you moaned your appreciation against his lips. 

You gently coaxed his mouth open with your tongue and wasted no time in exploring every inch of him, enjoying the throaty moan that followed. You walked him backwards until he got the idea and sat on top of the toilet seat, with you in his lap. Your lips never left his as you undid the buttons on his shirt and started to kiss the newly exposed skin, appreciating the deep lipstick shade that marred his otherwise perfect complexion. You moved off of  his lap as your hands found his belt buckle and began to undo it. 

“Woah, are you sure?” He asked, his face flushed and hair mused from your hands. 

Take it easy, better slow down boy, take it nice and slow. Does your mother know?

You cocked your head to one side and rested your hands on his upper thighs before you spoke. 

“Isn’t this what you wanted? I can’t think of another reason why you keep teasing me.” You whispered in a husky voice, looking at him through your lashes. The picture of submission. Before he got to answer there was a knock at the bathroom door. 

“Doll are you still in there? I wanted to make sure you weren’t dead.” Bucky called from the other side and you had to fight the giggle that made its way up your throat. Of course Bucky knew what was happening here. You pressed a finger to your lips for Peter to be quiet before you answered. 

“I’m in the middle of something, I’ll be out in a minute.” You called back. You heard Bucky say something under his breath before you heard his footsteps recede back into the main room. Suddenly you got up from your knees and went in the mirror to wipe off your lipstick and fix your hair. 

“Well, this was fun. Let’s do it again sometime.” You mused to a confused Peter who had a mixture of a shocked and frustrated look on his face. 

“Wait, where are you going?” He asked as you unlocked the bathroom door and made for the hallway. 

“To watch the movie with the team.” You said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “See ya out there.” You gave him a wink before you walked back into the main room and sat down next to Bucky who gave you a knowing smile. Peter came out five minutes later and took a spot on the floor next to Tony who asked him where the hell he’d been. Pete looked like a goldfish as his mouth opened and closed repeatedly, looking for something to say, before he came up with an excuse and Tony went back to watching the movie. 

You were curled into Bucky’s side with his arm wrapped around you when you felt Peter’s eyes on you again, giving you a questioning look. You only gave him a smirk and a wink in return before turning your attention back to the movie. 

Does your mother know, does your mother know that you’re out?

[hysteric-for-sterek]

It’s Destiny

 After seeing the Dylan-less trailer for 6B and hearing the rumor of Colton Haynes coming back for 6B but not Tyler Hoechlin, my mind starts up with my now-perfected coping mechanism of inventing happy-fanon reasoning to explain away all the bad thoughts.

For example, Stiles is too busy kicking ass in college, training up to be an amazing FBI agent one day to get tangled up in the goings-on in Beacon Hills nowadays. He’s left the town in the capable (*cough* positive thinking Stiles *cough*) hands of Scott and Liam, who only call him like, once a week now to use and abuse his superior brain and laptop full of supernatural knowledge.

Plus, Lydia’s still in Beacon Hills for another few months too before she starts at MIT, and lets be honest, Lydia’s brain has always been the most superior, she’s just never been as much of a sucker as Stiles to spend all her free time voluntarily jumping into the thick of the drama to save Scott all the time like Stiles was. From what Stiles can gather from all the calls and texts from back home, Lydia’s getting much more involved in the pack lately, much as she always claimed she wouldn’t.

They talk every day, Stiles and Lydia. Ever since that rom-com worthy love confession and movie-star kiss before he’d left for college, Stiles constantly has to keep pinching himself that this is his real life now. He may even have researched all the possible supernatural elements that could have potentially taken over Stiles’ brain and meant this was all a supernatural long-con of his sanity. Because evil curses, magical pixie dust or alternate realities all seem more plausible than Stiles actually leaving his Dad and Scott behind to attend an amazing college in another whole state on a full scholarship, with the goal of one day becoming a legitimate bad-ass FBI agent, while somehow also keeping a long-distance (but totally not imaginary) relationship with the Lydia Martin. These things do not happen to Stiles Stilinski. His life can never be this good.

Which is also probably why he’s constantly battling the niggling feeling inside him that something isn’t quite right. Before he’d left, Scott had asked him how he was going to be able to leave Lydia behind now that he finally had her after all the pining. Stiles had simply responded with “I was willing to wait ten years for my Get-Lydia-Martin plan to work Scott, but I managed to whittle it down to just 4. I think I can manage the long-distance thing for a while.” Scott had given him a look that said he just could not believe Stiles right now, but Stiles hadn’t taken it too seriously because he knew how Scott could be. Just because Scott develops a severe case of tunnel-vision and infatuated obsession as soon as he gets a girlfriend, doesn’t mean Stiles is the same. It didn’t happen with Malia, and it isn’t happening with Lydia. That is fine, it doesn’t mean anything. Right? Of course not. Sure he’d been infatuated with Lydia for years, but he is still able to function as a human being without spending every minute of every day in her presence. He’s pretty sure that’s normal. Unlike Scott who completely ignored everything and everyone else as soon as Allison or Kira were within heartbeat-listening distance, or their names were even mentioned. He’s pretty sure that’s more of a Scott downfall than a Stiles downfall.

Anyway, this is why Stiles didn’t immediately start panicking when he started getting less texts from Lydia throughout the week. She was still sending them regularly enough that Stiles didn’t need to worry that she’d been abducted by goblins or anything, but they just weren’t coming as frequently as they had been when he’d first left. And then yesterday she hadn’t called him at 7. It’s not like they’d specifically made plans to talk at 7, but it had become habit. Lydia always called at 7. Sure, Stiles initiated the majority of their text message conversations, randomly sending her things as they popped into his head throughout the day - when he overheard someone say something funny, when one of his professors said something interesting, when he saw a cute dog - but they both knew his brain was too scattered and easily-distracted to remember to call every evening. Plus, he was often up studying until the wee hours of the morning and had no clue what time it even was. Lydia did NOT appreciate calls at 2am because that’s when Stiles had finally finished his assignment and decided to call her before bed.

So, following this logic, it’s 1am before Stiles looks up from his computer screen and registers the time and the fact that Lydia hadn’t called. He sits there frowning at his computer screen for a few minutes, debating calling her at this hour or waiting until tomorrow and finally decides on going to sleep and waiting until morning. If anything was wrong, he’d have heard about it through one of the others by now. And he doesn’t really want to admit to Lydia that it’s taken him this long to realise she’d never called and to start worrying. I mean, it doesn’t really sound too good, does it?

When Stiles wakes the next morning it’s to way too much sunlight streaming through his window and his eyes blink blearily open to see his roommate sprawled out on his bed on the opposite side of the room. Stiles is confused because his roommate is practically nocturnal. Stiles NEVER sees him in the mornings. Stiles normally leaves for class before the other guy even makes it back to the dorm. And that’s when Stiles realises he’s slept through his alarm and he is late. Very late. So he jumps up, rushes around to get dressed and runs out the door as fast as he can, completely forgetting about checking in with Lydia. Momentarily forgetting about Lydia completely to be honest.

He remembers again around lunchtime and shoots her a hurried message between classes as he shoves a sandwich down his throat and rushes across campus. All it says is a simple “Do I need to send a search party? Missed hearing from you last night.” and there’s a reply by the time he’s sliding into his seat in his next class. “Search party not necessary.”

The weird thing is that when Lydia calls at 7 that evening, they don’t even address it. Stiles feels too guilty about not even realising she hadn’t called to be the one to bring it up and Lydia just starts into a thought about string theory, which leads to 25 minutes of debating various physics laws before Lydia starts yawning and Stiles says goodnight.

It’s 5 days later when Stiles is sprawled out on his bed with his phone pressed to his ear, listening to Scott complaining about Liam not listening to him in favour of making googly eyes at Hayden and Stiles is holding in the call of hypocritical foul, when Stiles gets slammed with a harsh slap of reality. Because Scott just said… what?

“Wait, hold up. What did you just say?”

“That Liam-”

“No after that, about Jackson.”

“Uh, that Jackson actually sided with me and thought we should start training 3 days a week instead of 1.”

“Jackson’s… back… in Beacon Hills…”

“Um, yeah… You didn’t know that? He flew back about a week ago. Something about selling his parents property or something? Didn’t Lydia tell you?” Stiles doesn’t answer and Scott clears his throat awkwardly before continuing. “Must have slipped her mind. I don’t think he’ll be in town for long. Once the houses sell, he’ll be off back to London…”

“Uh huh. Right.”

“Stiles.”

“No, it’s all good dude. It’s fine. I do have to go though. I have a paper to finish,” he lies.

After Stiles hangs up, he lays there staring at the ceiling for a long time. Lydia had missed calling him again two nights ago and neither of them mentioned it again. And the conversations they had had were mostly about classes and assignments and politics. The text messages had been getting few and far between too. Normally, when uncomfortable and unpleasant thoughts like these started infiltrating his brain, Stiles shut-down, dived headfirst into something else to keep his mind occupied and refused to think about it. But tonight he’s letting himself really hash this out in his head. He’s looking at it like he would a particularly difficult math problem. And it’s another hour before he realizes that that itself is a giant clue. He should be feeling more things about this right? Not intellectually debating it like a brain-puzzle to solve. And all their interactions since he started college had been like this too, hadn’t they? Stiles had always been in love with Lydia Martins brain but there… there was nothing romantic about his relationship with Lydia right now, was there? And there hadn’t been in weeks… months even. Stiles had forgotten to call Lydia. Lydia. His girlfriend Lydia.

Jesus Christ. He’s completely lost it, hasn’t he? He’s lost his damn mind. Being with Lydia has been his ultimate endgame plan for longer than he can even remember. And he had her for all of a few months before completely screwing it up. And he doesn’t know how to fix it.

He doesn’t even know if he wants to fix it.

What the hell?!

After another hour of consideration, Stiles proves even more that he’s lost his damn mind and calls Jackson.

“Stilinski?”

“Jackson.” There’s an awkward pause of silence before Stiles starts up again. “Have you changed at all since leaving?”

“Excuse me?”

“All bullshit aside Jackson, I’m not trying to start shit, I’m just- I just want to have an honest conversation with you, OK? All honesty, 5 minutes of your time, then you don’t have to speak to me again.”

Stiles takes Jackson’s silence as an acceptance.

“Do you realize what you did wrong the first time around? Can you admit you were a total asshole and that you’ve changed now?”

“I- Yeah. Yes. I had a lot of… stuff… on my plate. I wasn’t in a good place and moving has helped me sort through things and get… better.”

Stiles figures the fact that Jackson admitted that at all makes the statement believable.

“Did you… do you…” Stiles clears his throat, annoyed that he’s struggling to say what he wants to say.

“I’ve always loved her Stiles. I miss her every day.”

Stiles nods to himself and blinks back the sudden tears in his eyes.

“OK,” he finally manages.

Time seems to move quickly after that. Stiles has what he knows is going to go down as one of the hardest conversations of his entire life with Lydia the day after calling Jackson. He tells her he’s always loved her and always will love her, but that he thinks the kind of love changed over time as he grew up and he just hadn’t seen it happen. She sobs into the phone and tells him she’s so sorry for not telling him about Jackson being back in town and that she wanted to be that person for Stiles but that she couldn’t help still being in love with Jackson even though she still didn’t think he deserved it or that they could ever even make it work.

It took a long few hours of crying and laughing and talking and listening, but eventually both Stiles and Lydia were able to reach the agreement of being the best of friends and Stiles knew it would be a true and life-long friendship with every fibre of his being. He’s lucky. So god-damn lucky. For so many things in his life.

His new-found clarity on this subject has him spontaneously taking a couple of days off school to fly home for the weekend and see his Dad and his pack and give himself a bit of a wake-up call to make sure he remembers to truly appreciate these people in his life. They have a bonfire on the beach with everyone and Stiles has never felt more like he belonged to a big family. When he’s packing his bags back up on Sunday afternoon and getting ready to leave, his heart is filled with gratitude and happiness and he can’t remember feeling this healthy in a long time.

His Dad drops him off at the airport in the cruiser and Stiles is brimming with positivism as he lounges in an uncomfortable airport chair, waiting to board. He has a crossword magazine open on his lap, and he’s humming along to a random song while he chews on his pen and considers a 7 letter word for “Unavoidable End”. And that’s the moment someone who smells quite nice sinks down in the chair right next to him. Stiles frowns slightly because he’s pretty sure the last time he looked up the airport lounge was relatively empty and there were rows and rows of empty chairs that weren’t right next to Stiles so this dude is being pretty creepy, but he doesn’t look up for fear of engaging the creeper in a creepy conversation. Still, Stiles tries his best to ignore the stranger and keeps his head down, focused on his crossword until the man speaks.

“Destiny,” says a very familiar voice and Stiles is startled, snapping his gaze up immediately, finding himself face-to-face with Derek. Stiles’ eyes are wide and his mouth hangs open, his pen falling to his lap. He doesn’t need werewolf hearing to know his heart is beating dub-step right now. Derek just smirks at him and Stiles feels it in his bones. It’s like someone just disconnected a signal-jammer in his body and Stiles’ veins are suddenly pulsing with ‘I MISSED HIM, I MISSED HIM, I MISSED HIM’.

“The answer to 21 down,” Derek continues. “It’s ‘destiny’.”

[childrenofhypnos]

Chapter 25: Mr. God of War

Joel reported back two days later that his location for practicing gateways was free and clear, but the moment he texted Emery, she also got a call from Grandpa Al.

“The Ward reviewer has arrived,” he said. “Bring Wesley with you and come see me.”

As the governing body of the North American arm of the Hypnos State, the Ward was required to review every Hypnos education facility under its watch. Once a year, a reviewer was sent out to examine the campus, interview students, faculty, and staff, and sit in on classes. Once a year, Fenhallow received a high rating and a commendation from the State for continued excellence. Their reports were released into public record to show everyone outside the State how their protectors’ educations were proceeding.

The reviewers were usually tight-lipped executive types from the non-dreamhunter divisions of the Ward. They were always trained in proper procedure, but they were always from different departments, like they’d been volunteered for the job.

When Emery and Wes got to Grandpa Al’s office, Emery thought for a moment that she had the wrong room. Grandpa Al was there, sitting behind his desk, with the window where it always was and his tea cabinet behind him, and Grandma Juno’s famous powder-blue teacup resting next to his nameplate. But there was another man in the room with him, dark-skinned, barrel-chested, and bare-armed even in the cold depths of a northern October. A silver-and-gold tattoo of a handaxe lined each forearm, the axe heads curving against his biceps and triceps. He was perched on the edge of the desk, arms crossed, huge frame heaving with laughter.

Emery could sense dreamkiller all over him, like a stench.

“Oh no,” Wes said under his breath.

“Come in.” Grandpa Al motioned them into the room. The big man wiped his eyes as his laughter quieted. He slid off the desk and stood to his full height, a little taller than Wes.

“Westerman!” He threw an arm around Wes’s neck and pulled him in for a quick embrace. His voice rattled Emery’s bones; until then, she’d thought Wes’s voice was deep. “I heard you’ve been getting yourself into trouble.”

“Hi, Uncle Ares,” Wes grunted into a large armpit.

“Emery,” Grandpa Al said, motioning toward their guest, “This is Ares Montgomery, the reviewer from the Ward. You’ll be showing him around campus. I had David send you his requests for his rooms and what he’d like to see.”

“I’m pretty easy, don’t worry.” Ares released Wes. He paused, picked at Wes’s hair a bit, looking unimpressed. “You need a haircut, boy. Your momma would be sick. I’ll give you one while I’m here. I’m great with hair.”

Ares himself had only the barest of black stubble across his head.

“Yeah,” Wes said.

“Ares works in the higher echelons of the North American Ward,” Grandpa Al continued, “so it’s very important we make a good impression.”

“You’re gonna make them think I’m lying about being easy, Al.”

Grandpa Al smiled. “I wouldn’t want Em to think it’s not a challenge.”

Emery said nothing. This was Grandpa Al’s nice-to-visitors voice. When he glanced at her, there was a hesitation, a searching, in his gaze. He was still hiding something. He was still looking for something in her. He still knew she’d lied.

To get away from that gaze, she brought up her email on her phone and found a message from Receptionist David with an itinerary and a list of requests for the room.

“We’ll need a little while to get all this ready,” she said.

“Take your time,” Ares said. “I have a few things to check into in the city.”

Grandpa Al glanced again at Emery and smiling encouragingly. For a moment she wondered if he knew she’d been in the library, and if he knew what she’d been searching for. He did have eyes all over campus, after all…but they’d been careful not to let anyone near them, not to speak too loudly, and they all knew how important it was not to tell anyone else.

Then he looked away again, and her insides uncoiled, and she grabbed Wes and hurried out of the room.

~

Emery had only given Ares's list a cursory glance in Grandpa Al's office; when they actually got down to trying to fill the requests, Ares was not entirely as easy as he'd advertised.

The bed was to be made up with hospital corners, curtains were to be taken off all the windows in the room and stored "where they would not be seen," and all furniture was to be removed except for the bed and the writing desk. The list specifically stated that the writing desk's chair was also to be removed. He also wanted a minifridge, four wall mirrors--one for each wall--and a throw rug that would cover most of the floor, all of which to Emery made the "remove the furniture" request seem a little silly.

Emery glared at the list as they got started. "Cucumber water. He wants a minifridge filled with cucumber water?"

Wes shrugged. "It's good for you."

"And why did he need the bed made up? He's not going to sleep in it! Why didn't that get removed, too?"

Ares was staying in August House, the building used for faculty, staff, and guest housing on the west side of campus. They moved the furniture out of the room first. It was only a few chairs and an old armoire, and they shoved them into the unused room next door. The curtains came down too, and got stuffed inside the old armoire. Emery had a rug in her own room that they hauled across campus. It wasn’t wide enough to fill the floor, but by that point she didn’t really care. To acquire the minifridge and its cucumber water, she had to enlist Joel’s help; his schmoozing with the cafeteria members procured a loaned minifridge from their break room and a pitcher of cucumber water they tucked inside once the fridge was hooked up.

Ares wandered in as soon as the fridge door closed.

“Very nice,” he said, looking around. “And timely! But it looks like I took up most of your morning. Why don’t we get lunch? It’s on me.”

It was all on Fenhallow, really, because they didn’t pay for their meals. Students and staff could check in to the food lines in the Crossing’s atrium three times a day for food, and as the reviewer, Ares was going to be handed whatever he wanted. As they entered the Crossing, the lunch crowds parted for them, watching Ares pass with scared reverence. They didn’t have to know he was the reviewer; his presence filled the room without a title.

The tattoos helped. Emery glanced at them every chance she got; the lines of silver and gold glinted in the fluorescent lights, drawing her eye. Most dreamkillers wore their weapons as jewelry or additions to their clothes, like the dreamhunter students did. Emery hadn’t even known they could be carried around as tattoos.

Tattoos. So cool.

“What do you kids do for fun around here?” Ares said as they sat at a table near the fountain with their food. He had a surprisingly small amount of food on his plate for such a big person—just a banana and a cup of yogurt—and Emery tried to remember if the other dreamkillers she knew are so little. She rarely saw Grandpa Al eat, and she’d never even thought about her parents doing regular human things. They were parents.

Emery started in on her salad, pretending it was ice cream, and said, “You know. Play soccer. Get chased by urban legends. Normal stuff.”

“I heard about the Fox. Urban legends like those are tough to handle even for a dreamkiller. They require a little finesse.”

“Well, you know…” Emery settled her elbow on the table and her chin on her fist. Lettuce threatened to fall from the tines of her fork. “Finesse is my middle name.”

“No it’s not.” Edgar appeared from nowhere, sliding into the seat between Emery and Wes, with nothing on his lunch tray but a bowl full of pudding. “It’s Morrigan.”

Wes made a noise that might have been amusement. “Morrigan?”

Emery scowled. “Shut up. It’s some Irish goddess thing, my dad wanted it.” Then she flicked Edgar’s ear. “Where’d you come from?”

“Algebra,” he said.

“Hi there,” Ares said. “You must be Edgar.”

Edgar looked up slowly, eyes wide and face flushed, like he’d just realized Emery and Wes weren’t alone. Even sitting down on the other side of the table, Ares dwarfed him. He stared at Ares with his pudding bowl held close to his chest.

“Yes, this is Edgar,” Emery said when it was clear Edgar wasn’t going to respond.

“I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting you two before,” Ares said, “though I have met your parents. Zoya and Liam.” He shook his head with a good-natured slurp of yogurt. “And people think I’m scary.”

“We’re pretty impressive,” Emery said, deadpan.

Ares laughed. “That sense of humor you definitely got from your dad. Biggest smartass I’ve ever met. You’d never guess it by looking at him.” He looked between the two of them. Edgar was still staring back, cradling his pudding bowl. “The State’s still pretty interested in you, little guy. And you, too, Emery—in both of you. This has been generations in the making, down from your great-grandparents. The leaders of the Hypnos State think you might mean a whole new future for dreamhunting. One where we don’t have to worry about the Insanity Prime and doppelgängers.”

All the muscles in Emery’s back knotted up. She forced herself to chew and swallow.

Wes cleared his throat and said, “I think that might still be a few generations away, Uncle Ares.”

“Sure, sure,” Ares said, still smiling. “But damn, it’s nice to wonder.”

~

Ares left them after lunch, citing a message he’d received on his cuff from the Hypnos Center down the street, and returned half an hour into their weapons class.

Class started off with several of their classmates spouting the rumors that had already begun popping up across campus: that the reviewer was a grade-A certified dreamkilling badass, a man who could behead his enemies with a single punch before he drank the blood from their gaping throats, who made the Dream itself tremble in fear. Isaiah and Sam Howard spent ten minutes pretending to reenact Ares’s dreamhunting exploits, despite having no idea who Ares was. They only stopped when Marcia blew threw the gym doors and snapped at them to get to their training posts.

Emery had switched to the moving targets in the shooting range by the time the rippling pressure of the Dream swept over Hothram Hall, the feeling of an approaching dreamkiller. The class shuddered, lowering weapons. Marcia’s quick sweeping glare sent them into action again, but with less vigor than before.

The gym doors opened. For a moment Ares stood there, framed by the doorway, looking serious and gigantic. The class stopped again and stared. Marcia started walking toward him.

Then the widest, happiest smile broke over Ares’s face, and he threw his massive arms out to the sides and yelled, “MARSHMALLOW!”

Marcia collided with him. He picked her up and swung her around. Emery had never thought of Marcia as a “pick her up and swing her around” kind of person, but here it was, happening—and Marcia was smiling when Ares set her back on her feet.

“Everyone over here,” Marcia called. The students left their posts and made their way to the far end of the track. With that smile on his face, Ares really did look more like an enormous teddy bear than a grade-A certified dreamkilling badass. When everyone was gathered around, faces shiny with sweat and weapons tucked away or leaned on for support, Marcia knocked on Ares’s barrel chest with one fist. “This is my father, Ares Montgomery. He’s a weapons expert, and part of Argos for the North American Ward.”

Argos? Emery glanced at Wes, who was looking right back at her. Grandpa Al had only said Ares worked in the higher echelons of the Ward, not that he was in a special sector—and not that he worked for nightmares-kill-her-now Hypnos State intelligence agency Argos.  

Ares Montgomery was part of the Hypnos State’s CIA.

“Ares, like the god of war?” This was Veronica Lash, leaning on the staff of her naginata near the back of the group.

“That’s Mr. God of War to you,” Ares said, and though his voice rumbled like thunder, he was still smiling. Marcia, fists planted on her hips, beamed with vicious pride. She looked like a slightly smaller version of him, with lighter skin and freckles and that bright orange hair.

“Are those really your weapons?” called Sam Howard, coming out of his brother’s shadow for the first time that day. He motioned to Ares’s arms with one of his two daggers.

Ares gripped his right forearm over the handle of the tattooed axe. When he lifted his hand, the handle came with it. A soft murmur of appreciation rose from the class. Even with the new sense of unease tightening at the base of her spine, Emery couldn’t help but be impressed. The axe emerged from Ares’s skin fully formed, like he was pulling it from a pool of water; the skin it left behind was smooth and unblemished. He swung the axe twice in the air to let the blade sing, then dipped it back into his arm. The tattoo rippled back into place along his muscles.

“When you’re dreamkillers,” he said, “these are the kinds of things you’ll be able to accomplish. I’ll be touring your campus and classes until the end of the week, and I hope to see you all working hard to be your best.”

“Back to stations,” Marcia snapped. “You’ve got a Ward official watching you. Act like it.”

The class dispersed.

“Emery, could I speak to you for a moment?” Ares said.

Emery glanced at Wes. He hesitated until Marcia waved him off.

“I didn’t get a chance to speak to you alone yet,” Ares said. “I wanted to get it out of the way.”

Emery was one of the few students whose weapon training didn’t make her sweat much, but she could feel it gathering under her clothes.

Ares laughed. “Relax! You look like I’m gonna cut your head off! You’re not in trouble. I want to ask you some questions.”

He couldn’t know about the doppelgänger. She barely knew about the doppelgänger.

She shifted feet. “About what? The Sandman?”

“Right on the money.”

“Is that part of the review?”

“No—I’m here for that, but I was also sent to investigate the Sandman’s activities, as they were rather concerning to the State. I read the reports of your missions, but I’d like to hear your experiences first hand. It’s not that I don’t believe your reports, I just prefer to hear the story myself, if I can. Makes it easier for me to separate myth from fact. You can start from the first night you were assigned the mission.”

Emery looked around. “Right now?”

Ares rolled his shoulders, settling in. “Right now.”

She glanced back at Wes before she began. He was watching them from the training dummies, but looked away quickly. Would Ares ask him for the same story later? What if their accounts didn’t match up?

She explained everything she could remember, careful to leave out any mention of doppelgängers or Klaus following her. They had been careful to keep any of those details from their mission reports, too, and that gave her hope that they could keep their stories straight without collaborating first. She finished with Klaus’s appearance on campus.

Ares nodded through the whole thing, expression never changing. “And you and Wes went to speak to the Sandman after his capture, didn’t you?”

Emery’s heart skipped a beat. Beside Ares, Marcia shifted out of her stance and said uncomfortably, “We all know his name. You don’t have to keep calling him that.”

Ares regarded her for a long moment, then said to Emery, “Why did you want to speak to Mr. Warwick?”

“We—we thought, since he came back to campus to help cure my poisoning, he might answer our questions. We wanted him to explain why he was stealing sand from the labs on campus.”

Ares made a noise. “Did he?”

“Yes. He said he’s addicted to it. It helps keep him awake.”

Another noise. Emery couldn’t tell if he was approving what she was telling him or shrugging it off as nonsense. She kept her face very still, afraid the slightest twitch of a muscle would give away the second layer of the story and the fear that had sat, twisted in the pit of her gut, since she saw that picture of her doppelgänger.

If he knew about it—and if anyone would have means to know, it would be an agent of Argos—the Ward would have already served Emery her termination papers.

“Interesting,” Ares said at last, and the tension blew out of Emery like air from a leaking balloon. “I don’t doubt that claim, but he may have had ulterior motives for that sand as well. I’ll be speaking to the S—to Mr. Warwick while I’m here to see what I can learn about his activities. If you remember anything he might have said or done that seemed suspicious, I’ll be here.”

He turned to Marcia, grabbed her around the neck, and pulled her over to kiss the top of her head. “Dinner’s on me tonight,” he said. Then he marched toward Wes’s station, calling out, “Westerman! Knock that thing’s head off, I want to see what that nonsense hammer can do.”

Emery and Marcia were left alone.

“I’ve always wondered what we could call you,” Emery said, shaky. “Like Marshy, or whatever. I should have thought of ‘Marshmallow’.”

To Emer’s suprise, Marcia didn’t even bat an eyelash. Like her father’s appearance had corked her rage. She kept her voice low. “If you for a second think he believed you, you’re stupider than I thought. He won’t press you here because it’s public and he knows you’ve been through a lot recently, but there’s a reason the dean assigned him to you and Wes.”

“So they know there’s more to this?”

“The definitely suspect there was more to what Klaus was doing, yes. They may not know exactly what, but they don’t call in Argos members for drug addiction cases. Either they think Klaus was stealing sand to make some kind of city-wide sleeping bomb, or they think he was up to something else.

“But look—there’s a reason they send my dad specifically. He used to interrogate dreamseekers on their activities in the Dream. Trying to interrogate a dreamseeker is like trying to punch through a concrete wall.”

“Your dad does look like someone who could punch through a concrete wall.”

“Watch what you say around him,” Marcia said. “If they find out you knew about your doppelgänger and didn’t report it, they’ll find out I was the one who told you to hide it. And if they find out Klaus was involved, they’ll sentence him to dream death. He’s already teetering on the edge of that sentencing anyway. So keep your mouth shut.”

All the clever sarcasm in the world couldn’t quell the upset in Emery’s stomach. She felt like a a very small mouse hiding in a field inhabited by very large predators, and one wrong move would turn them all in her direction.

(Next time on The Children of Hypnos —> sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss)