#day twenty seven prompt

[pronker]

Accents (G) Hogan's Heroes fic for Falling For Hogan's Heroes

Title: Accents Author: pronker Era: November 1944 Summary: Diva is as Diva does. Also, what if Manfredi and Johnson transferred to Stalag 17 from Stalag 13? A/N: Written for a theForceDAHTNET's challenge that matches tumblr's Fall For Hogan's Heroes 2022 Day 27 prompt: Lashing out/built up frustration, what are the odds? :)

"Uff da," moans Johnson.

“Non sei ancora pronto? Dai!“ growls Manfredi.

Rökk Marika is my name. The Germans say Marika Rökk. Ez nagyon állat. As long as I make UFA product to uplift the masses of the Third Reich and milk dear Herr Goebbels of tidbits of information, I take their deutschemarks as I dance to their tune. I have learned to accept much in ten years.

The dragon twitches its tail. Must I risk my manicure in this barbaric prison? There is no guard inside the Hall of Recreation per my demand, so I must.

"Stand still," I command. The two Americans inside the rubber dragon mumble something or other as I ascertain the site connection remains secure, tail to torso. "Do not squirm so. I shall tell you when to move." Ach, the bronze catch chips the Jungle Red paint on my left pinkie as I clinch it tighter. I play the diva as everyone expects.

"Tök rossz!" Manfredi and Johnson must hear me inside the dragon because I shout loud enough to awaken my baby; fortunately, Gaby remains at Hotel Hammelburg with Georg in our barely adequate family suite. He is so good with her. From habit, I trill my R's and rumble my umlauts to play up my Magyar accent. To listen to me would rouse the indigestion that plagues dear Georg at age sixty-two, yet I know Germans adore exotic touches as long as they are not too exotic.

A disturbance grows at the barred door while someone roasts the marshmallow-shaped guard. "Aw, come on, Schultz! We're all members of the Marika Rökk Fan Club. You've gotta let us in to get her autograph! Forget the rules for once!"

Mistrust gilds the gemütlich tones I've learned to recognize in two days' stay. "Colonel Hogan, please, it would mean my life!"

Skepticism silvers the other voice. "Your life, Schultz?"

"Well, maybe it would mean only my lunch, but that is still serious business."

A shrewd voice, its accent as familiar to me as the scent of paprika. "Schultzie, Schultzele, a petit four I made just this morning --- mmm, smell it --- oops the icing is still soft --- here, taste on my fingers --- "

"Das ist doch ja wunderbar and you saved this one just for me, only you would do this, how nice of you, cockroach --- "

Another voice, scratchy from cigarettes. "You love them so much, Schultzie, 'ere, take another."

"Very well, Colonel Hogan, twenty minutes, no more." I can hear lips smacking even through the door.

I have learned another thing in two days staging Ereleuva at Stalag 13: the door to the Hall of Recreation squeaks like an unrehearsed coloratura. After Schultz unbars the door to allow entry and then shuts it once more, a group of nationalities approaches.

Three Americans outnumber the rest, an intriguing Frenchman and an Englander, all in uniform except the Frenchman. I wonder why he is not.

Attitude leaks from the unquestioned leader, firm in voice, stride and manner. However, there lurks an artist's fire underneath. Dance? Music? Drama? "Madame Jacoby, our respects." There it is, step one of the code, which is the use of my formal name; it is common knowledge, yet an American could be excused for ignorance. I incline my head.

"You have the advantage of me," I purr as Manfredi and Johnson stir in their confining suit. Would they emerge to undo the latch as they greet their commander? They two may be taller than I am, but this is my rehearsal. I whip around to shrivel the one wearing the front part of the suit with a glare. Through the eye holes, I can see his gaze drop --- I am unsure if it is Manfredi or Johnson in the head of the suit --- and he retreats one step, bumping into the tail part of the suit to provoke a yowl from within.

The officer's decisive, unsmiling face relaxes into either a smirk or half-smile as he bows in the European fashion and indicates the rest of his group. "I'm Colonel Robert Hogan. I am senior officer of these men and head the Official Stalag 13 Rökk Marika Fan Club, where we eschew German customs regarding name order as much as we eschew saying Heil Hitler."

There it is, the second step of code recognition: the uncommon English word eschew, twice.

I am among friends.

IOIOIOIOIO

From ten feet away, the dragon stomps its clawed feet as it gurgles gibberish through the mesh-covered open mouth. In the weak light of the Hall of Recreation, its feldgrau scales tipped with gold paint lack our film crew's expert lighting to lend sparkling glamor and danger. As it stands, only the cerise spine crest head-to-tail brightens the rubber suit. Eh, Tail End straightens his spine to greet his comrades. I shall weep if the connection loosens again, but it does not.

"Cor, you two, wotta sight you are," chortles the Englander. The colonel focuses on me but the others surge to the dragon. The four men lean in closely to hear an account, I suppose, of what Manfredi and Johnson put up with helping me stage Ereleuva, a turgid, ambitious fifth entry to Wagner's Ring Cycle penned by Herr Goebbels himself.

Hogan allows one minute of reunion and then inclines his head wordlessly towards the door; the Englander and the American with springy hair drift to the entry after polite pleased to meet yous as they pass me. I note how they secure the area, one leaning casually against the door to block easy entry as the other engages him in conversation to provide covering background noise for Schultz's curious ear, if he thinks to eavesdrop. Obvious, is it not, that these soldiers team together as much as troupers in a successful, year long stage engagement?

The others clot around as I shoulder my way inside the tight group of the youngest appearing American, the Frenchman and the American colonel to play the sun while the three orbit me. Hmmm, the commander could be Mars, which would make the youngest a quicksilver Mercury and the Frenchman a languid Venus. I see now that the red sweater sports a discreet rank or unit patch on the shoulder, so French good taste triumphs over Kantian ideals of a uniform. I approve. Idle notions like these make my Georg consult my opinion about our films together. I wonder how the day proceeds with small Gaby and her loving pappa.

"Let us push on, because I must return to my husband at the hotel in two and a half hours. I must feed my seven month-old Kleine. She will be hungry."

"Can't your husband feed her? I mean, come on, it's not that hard." The youngest's face shows honest puzzlement.

This is too outrageous a comment to let pass. I put on the face I used in Woman of My Dreams, a triumph at the Axis powers' box office just this summer. Georg calls it my sly Marlene Dietrich face. "I can tell you from experience, that doesn't always work."

"Carter!" explodes Hogan. I feel certain this one does not blush often, yet now his ears burn a becoming shade of crimson. "Think about it."

Carter does. "Oh."

"We won't keep you long." The man becomes all business, so I must, as well.

I fish the slip of paper from the top of my stocking, just under the garter. "Here. I overheard this place name and the word 'soon' at a cast wrap party. The atmosphere at the smörgåsbord dripped with triumph between Goebbels and the others in line; I do not know more. You westerners have the information, and in two weeks our crew travels to Czech Revar to pass this name to the Russian contact. She intimates to me she has used you before."

Hogan's ears burn the uppermost hue of Hungary's tricolor once more and is that disgust or acceptance on the handsome face? "If it's who I think it is, used is the word, all right."

"I see," I say. He thinks, remembers, and then continues.

"How is Goebbels these days, gnädige Frau?"

I shrug. If time permits, I can banish his execrable German accent. "He promotes my work, but he is hard to like therefore I do not like him. I am an actress so I pretend to like him and this" --- I flourish the slip of paper before stuffing it into the colonel's grasp --- "rewards me and now you."

He secures the paper into his cap swiftly before his eyes widen as if my words register at last to spark protective instincts. "Don't take your baby to Czech Revar!" he bursts out. "I hear terrible things go on there --- "

"It is no Széchenyi Spa, true. Have you seen Czech Revar?"

"Well, no --- "

"I have and it is as pleasant a land as I have visited. Our crew goes to shoot backgrounds of the mountains for Ereleuva."

He pushes. "Aren't there enough mountains in Germany? Do you have to travel so far?" I recognize the signs of one well used to control. We do not have time for this.

"Kamerad, colonel, I give up. Ask Georg because he is my director in all things and the father of my child. He would not risk us."

"You are more trusting than the law allows," mutters Hogan before changing the subject. He removes his cap to peer at the name on the paper. "Losheim." His intense concentration and crinkled brow prods my memory of the cast party I viewed through a mist of schnapps.

"I, I think that Herr Goebbels said that a, a bold push comes through the Losheim gap."

IOIOIOIO

I sense there is little this colonel does not know despite his imprisonment, but Losheim puzzles him as much as it does me. He beckons to his second --- I think it is his second by the chevrons but I, too, am unsure in this moment and do not wish to show it --- and the second moves across to us while the Englander stays his solo post guarding the door. "Losheim Gap ring any bells, Kinch?"

The reply arrives quickly with becoming modesty. "Not really. London is worried about the Siegfried Line, though. A gap sounds dangerous to them and to us. Three hundred ninety miles of protection for the Krauts."

The dragon shifts uncomfortably and I spare the two men. "Sit, sit. Take the load off, as you say."

"Tanks," comes through the mesh loud enough for us to hear as the two crumple onto the floor, then roll onto their sides awkwardly to spare the suit.

"Tanks," repeats Hogan. "Artillery and tanks could pierce a gap from either side. This name needs to reach London pronto, Kinch."

I contribute what I can. "Westwall is what we --- I mean the Germans --- call the Siegfried Line. Have you seen the Westwall?"

"No, we flew over it. Have you seen it?"

"Not in person. It is said to be impenetrable."

"That's what we said about the Maginot Line," says the Frenchman softly. There is in his face embarrassment for his country, and grief for her, and resolve to do better; I feel the same precise way about my Hungary and the disgraceful Horthy who deserves whatever the Nazis charge him with.

Hogan appears not to notice my sympathy with the Frenchman. "We're stuck in Hürtgen Forest, a real quagmire," he grumps, hugging himself tighter. "If only Field Marshal Model hadn't jumped into bed with Adolf --- "

"Really?"

"Figure of speech, Carter."

"Oh."

Hogan seems at ease with speculating in front of me. "Since Normandy, the Krauts are on the run but they'll turn like anyone would if pushed against a wall. They'll fight like demons."

"They are demons," I say. "I have seen things that you have not, dear colonel." Ach, the dear just slipped out.

"Timepoint ten minutes in from twenty." This from Carter; I sense the man operates on science and mathematics or perhaps on another plane of existence from the rest of us mortals. It endears him to me.

I take command. "Our time is nearly up. I would like to speak with the one wearing the red sweater."

"Me? Nobody ever wants to talk to me!"

Hogan gestures permission absently, drawing aside to confer with his second about Losheim while Carter tags along. The five each display a thread of artistic talent to my professional eye, and I wish to ask an opinion as we two seek a corner. "What is your name?"

"Louis LeBeau, at your service." He is so courtly! I feel he was born that way.

"I am a dancer and a singer and der Führer wishes Georg to direct me in a heavy going drama about Ereleuva, of all people."

"Who?"

I ramble a bit, a fault of mine when I am passionate. "Der Führer approved Herr Goebbels' tiresome story of Ereleuva, the mother of Theodoric the Great of the Ostrogoths, who lives on in legend as Dietrich von Bern. She is a mother though perhaps not a wife, she is true to her faith and she will fight a dragon in the story to protect her country, can you believe it?" I want to pace, but I calm myself deliberately. "Why not pick her daughter, Amalafrida, who led a revolt, or the daughter of Amalafrida, Amalaberga, who also attempted a coup? Why not Ingund or Aregund, sisters who practiced polygamy with King Chlothar, whom you may know as King Clotaire?"

He shakes his head as his eyes begin to cross. "I only sing and dance a little in revues. European history, pah." I laugh.

"Herr Goebbels told Georg to 'make her the typical, strong Teutonic queen, brave in battle, efficient in family matters and of course beautiful.'" I shrug. "Herr Goebbels realizes Der Führer adores Germanic history and likely will censor whatever he disapproves of, so Georg and I must toe the line in this film. Ereleuva will uplift the masses."

"Is that what you want to do?"

I meet his gaze firmly. "I must, even if Wagner pirouettes in his grave. I will dance, sing and primp in another film, if there is one." This next is difficult to say, though I feel his mind is open, at least. "Do you think I can play a queen?"

"Indubitably, madame." He again lifts my hand for a kiss.

"So, we owe you one. What can we do to help you?" Hogan approaches more quietly than I would think. Louis and I both jump a little.

This question is easy to answer. "Pretend to attack me. Critique the movements of the dragon." I wink at them all. "Play with me to make the scene less serious, less, less … um … "

"Less Boche." Louis blocks the action. "Everyone, get up on the stage. Stage left, Manfredi and Johnson, middle shall be Madame, and you four stage right. Vite, vite! Carter, the time?"

"Huh? Oh, right, five minutes, tops."

"Then, I think, mmmm, Madame in profile with an imaginary sword, and you four show your backs to the audience. You will support Madame."

They complain as all soldiers do. "Not me best side, mate." "Can the dragon breathe real fire to burn us?" "LeBeau, don't let directing go to your head."

This will be the most fun I've yet had in Stalag 13. I seize a ping pong paddle before mounting the stage. "I have an idea to blend capoeira with the usual boring swordplay! Let me show you."

"Very well, use it, whatever capoeira is." Louis speaks loudly to be heard through the rubber suit. "Manfredi and Johnson, on your toes, menace Madame. Everyone else, go with the flow." He vents to his comrades. "Move, shift your weight, don't just stand there! Pretend you have swords!"

Manfredi and Johnson roar, claw the air --- well, Manfredi does because I believe now the head end to be him --- while Johnson sweeps the tail end. As the dragon draws near, I swirl the paddle over my head to catch the attention of the beast before rocking back and forth on my feet. The dragon halts in surprise as I stand on my hands before launching a backwards somersault flowing into a muted kick at the dragon's teeth. I misjudge the distance a mere trifle as the kick lands on Manfredi's throat. He staggers sideways, pulling Johnson with him until they sway like two pendulums. The joint between tail and torso gives way and I groan, "Tűnj az utamból!"

I roll forward like a bocce ball towards the dragon to control the damage to the expensive suit, but the acting bug seems to have bitten the three Americans and the Englander. There, I'm between Manfredi and Johnson now, who regard the suit sadly as they sit splayed upon the wooden floor. "You had to do it, Manfredi, just had to ruin the dragon, and after all the time we spent in it."

Manfredi appears unable to speak and waves his hands instead. Johnson looks to take offense at the gestures after he removes the dragon's head from Manfredi. "You can't call me that and get away with it."

Louis shouts, "In character, in character! Keep it moving, only a minute or two before Schultz --- "

Hogan, Carter and the Englander drop the act as my support warriors while helping me to my feet, as if I need any help. Manfredi massages his throat, I start to apologize and then Johnson takes a swing at Manfredi. Is Johnson a Berserker?

"Hold it, hold it!" reprimands Hogan as he attempts to make peace. The Englander clutches Johnson's arms from behind, I admonish, "Hagyd abba!" and Louis joins us on stage. Perhaps Johnson is a Viking Berserker because he kicks at Manfredi, who dodges backwards to stumble into Hogan, who sways into Carter, who bumps Kinch who staggers into me and we all go down in a heap while a dark object sails past me down onto the floor.

Louis crosses his arms and shakes his head as he peers down at us. "Incroyable." This must not happen when film is in the camera. It is good to get this contretemps out of the way early. In our daze, none of us react to a squeak and then bang! of a door slamming against its jamb as another person enters the Hall of Recreation.

"Himmel," breathes Schultz. "Himmel." He stoops to retrieve Hogan's cap. "Here, Colonel Hogan, oh too bad, it is crushed. I straighten it for you."

Louis is best suited for what must happen. He makes a startling jeté off the stage to the floor and snatches the cap. "Schultz, merci."

The Englander finds his voice even though sprawled out. "A bit o' blockin', Schultzie, and good as new, I say."

Kinch gains his feet to lift Hogan and me to ours. I should like to know these men better, but now it is time to gather up props and script, bow in gratitude to them all, and change into street clothes from jaunty mid-thigh skirt and stretchy pullover. "Please call my car, Sergeant, while I make ready to leave. This scene needs a rewrite."

Schultz clicks his heels and departs.

IOIOIOIOIO

The End.

IOIOIOIOIO

[whatisthismandoinghere]

[thisapplepielife]

Written for @corrodedcoffinfest.

You Love Me, Now Act Like It

Day #27 - You'll Be in My Heart | Word Count: 1000 | Rating: M | CW: Language, Mention of Weed | POV: Eddie | Pairing: Steddie, Gareth/Di (OC), Previous Steve/Di (OC) | Tags: Bickering, Fools Being Fools, Love Quadrangle, Not Really, But Gareth Sure Wants to Whine About the Past a Lot

"Yeah, well, you've fucked my wife!" Gareth yells, and Steve rolls his eyes.

"Every damn time? That's your only card to play?" Steve asks, not getting riled, not even a little bit. "You don't get to hold that over my head forever. You wouldn't have even met her if it wasn't for me. You're welcome, by the way."

"That's not true. You don't know that!" Gareth snaps, even if they all know that's definitely true.

"Well, technically, I'm the one that went over and said hello," Eddie adds, just to put a little gasoline on the fire.

"Eddie," Gareth says, a warning that he better take his side.

Eddie's not choosing sides in this dumb fucking fight. It's old news. 

Hopefully they both just simmer down.

They do not.

"And I'll dick her down again, remind her of what good sex actually is, if you don't shut up," Steve says, and Eddie has to turn around to hide his smile. 

Steve's choosing absolute violence today, and Eddie loves him a little bit extra for it.

Gareth explodes, and Steve is running, cackling. 

They fight like this all the time, and this is always where it ends up. 

Ten Years Earlier

"Is that Steve Harrington?" Gareth asks, and Eddie jerks his head over to where Gareth is looking. Son of a goddamn bitch, it is. It definitely is.

Steve's standing next to Robin, and has his arm slung over the shoulders of a girl Eddie doesn't recognize. Girlfriend, probably.

"I'm gonna go say hi," Eddie says, and Gareth rolls his eyes.

"Of course you are. He's got a girl, what do you think you're gonna accomplish?" Gareth asks, but he trails along after him.

"Don't know, don't care," Eddie says, and pushes his way through the crowd. He hasn't seen Steve in years, not since Hawkins, when he missed his chance. His window, when they were looking at each other, like…maybe? 

And he ran, too scared of what that could mean. For him, for them, for the band, if he tried to make a move.

Tonight though, he's older and not at all wiser, as he slides his hand along Steve's shoulders, over his back, and Steve jumps a little, turning to see who's touching him.

"Holy shit!" Steve says, dropping his arm from the girl's shoulders, and flings them around Eddie's neck, squeezing. "Eddie! What're you doing here?"

Eddie hugs back, "Playing tonight," he adds, nodding towards the stage.

"Awesome. That's so fucking cool, what a small world," Steve says, still holding on for dear life.

Eddie is the one that steps back first, he always is, however reluctantly, but he holds Steve's arms, looking at him, "You look great. You too, Buckley. And you as well, stranger," Eddie says, laying on the charm. Like he doesn't want to fuck her boyfriend. 

He definitely does.

Has always wanted to, if he's honest with himself, which he rarely is.

"Di," Robin fills in, when it's clear Steve wasn't jumping to introduce her. 

"Yes, sorry! This is Di. Diana. My girlfriend. I know Eddie from home," Steve explains, reaching over and taking her hand. Eddie sees her smile up at him. He hates her.

"This is Gareth," Eddie offers, resting his arm across Gareth's shoulders, so he isn't tempted to touch Steve again.

After the show, Eddie leans against a wall, head close to Steve's face, so they can hear each other over the music.

Gareth's on the couch, sitting between Robin and Diana, his back turned on Robin as he talks to the pretty girl he doesn't know, instead of the lesbian he does. Robin looks less than thrilled with the direction the night has taken. 

Then, Jeff and Goodie are standing over her, holding out a joint, an offer. And Eddie smiles as Robin nods, getting up and following them.

"If you're gonna be in town, we should, I don't know, catch up. Go on a double date or something," Steve says, and Eddie finds himself nodding before he even realizes what he's agreeing to.

A double date? With who? And that's when he realizes that Steve thinks he's with Gareth, which, no. But if that gets him out with Steve for the night, sure, why not? Eddie wants to spend a little time with Steve, before Steve's gone again, maybe to be seen in ten more years. Five, if Eddie's lucky.

Later, Steve and crew gone, Eddie corners Gareth, "We're going on a double date."

"With who?" Gareth asks.

"Steve and his girlfriend," Eddie says.

Gareth cocks his eyebrow, "Well, I sure hope you mean that I'm going on a date with Steve's girlfriend."

Eddie laughs, he wishes.

"I mean, if you can make that happen, kid, you'll never have to buy another beer in your whole life," Eddie says, slinging his arm over Gareth's shoulders, "It's just one night. Do it for me?"

"Fine, but this is stupid. And I hate you," Gareth says.

"You love me," Eddie answers, "now act like it."

Present Day

Eddie finds Gareth sulking by the bar. 

"Stop letting him get to you, that's why he does it," Eddie says.

"I know," Gareth grumbles.

"Does it really bother you that much? Di loves you, kid."

Gareth smiles, "I know. But, I don't love thinking about it."

"Then stop thinking about it," Eddie advises, "You're the one that always brings it up."

"He put his dick in my wife!"

"Recently?" Eddie prods.

"No," Gareth says, pouty.

"Then think about how many times he's put his dick in me since then," Eddie says.

"Thanks for that mental image," Gareth says, then looks at Eddie, with a shit-eating grin, "I could use a beer to help fix this atrocity your boyfriend has committed against me."

Eddie laughs, but opens his wallet. 

Sure, he's had to buy a lot of beer over the years, and Gareth didn't really steal Di from Steve, that fizzled on its own, but it's still been the best deal Eddie's ever made.

If you want to write your own, or see more entries for this challenge, pop on over to @corrodedcoffinfest and follow along with the fun! 🦇

[ivelovedhimthroughworse]

Inktober 2023

Day 27 - Beast

The black-and-white polecat cocks his shotgun. "Look here, son. We don't want any of your trouble. They might put up with you deviants wherever you come from, but this is Nebraska."

Wayward Son, Chapter 27, Rainbow Rowell.

Jeff Arnold definitely knows how to keep mages out of the Quiet Zone. When his shotgun is broken, he brings out the chemical warfare.

[nerdieforpedro]

Day Twenty Seven - Nature Walk

Word Count: 570

Warnings: Cute Pero ❤️

Notes: I wanted married Pero back. He’s adorable. There was a bathtub last time so now we have new things.

Main Masterlist / March Spring Prompts 2024 / Writing Challenges

“Mi amor (my love), who do you go with when I am away?” Your husband Pero asked as the two of you walked through the forest that was about five kilometers away from your home. He held your hand as the two of you made your way on your usual path collecting herbs that you use in your salves. Shaking your head, you pull out the knife Pero had given you six months into your courtship.

“This keeps me safe Pero. I am careful. Do not worry so much. I always let the neighbors know when I go foraging.” You respond in a calm tone, you hope to calm his fears somewhat. Now that he’s been home a few months, your husband has been observing your routine and although he’s been a boon in most areas, gathering supplies is where you struggle. Not because he can’t carry things or doesn’t listen when you tell him what’s poisonous or safe. It’s because he constantly complains that you should not doing this alone and also blames himself for not making more to keep him home longer.

“I do not like it at all mi vida (my life). My next jobs need to be much higher paying. Something I can retire on and remain with you. To keep you safe. There’s no point in earning the coin if you’re not here when I come home.” Pero stops as you pick some lavender and sage, adding it to your basket. You’d love him to be home. Your strong, loving sweet bear of a husband. Fierce as he is loving. He was kind when others sought to just take advantage of you, supported your apprenticeship (maybe making it much easier for you to take over from the previous old man via intimidation) and is always gentle when he comes home, except in one area which it’s highly encouraged by you that he uses his strength. “Maybe I should not leave at all this time. Extend my break. I shall hone my skills, see if there are any local jobs.” Pero cuts some bark off a tree a few meters away, correctly identifying it as peppermint.

“I don’t want you to give up your livelihood for mine Pero. I will be fine like I always have been while you’re gone.” The touch of your hand to his shoulder had him look at you again.

Throwing an arm around you and kissing your cheek, Pero grumbles in your ear, “It’s not much of a life without you in it mi corazón (my heart). I wouldn't mind being one of those fat happy husbands.”

From your laugh, it makes him grin, making his beard scratch your neck, “I can give you both Pero no matter if you stay or not.”

“For now I shall stay by your side, only if a job has a large enough reward will I leave your side again mi amor.” Moving from behind you, he took your hand in his and continued down your usual path of herbs, gathering together. The time was finite but the married couple would spend it wisely together.

[chaotic-orphan]

Febuwhump: Day Twenty-Seven

Prompt— Left for dead #febuwhump

This one was hard I honestly had no idea what to write

*~*~*~*~*

When the dust settled, Whumpee saw a pair of boots approaching them on the battlefield. Their salvation or their destruction, honestly, Whumpee didn’t care who it was. Either way they’d be away from the ground, probably dying already… a foot in the grave, if not both.

A boot nudged their shoulder and Whumpee was too weak to fight back, as their back hit the ground and forced them to stare up at the stranger.

“Well, well, well, Whumpee,” said Caretaker with a smile. “Looks like even your precious friends left you for dead.”

Whumpee whispered out something that Caretaker couldn’t hear, so they crouched down in front of Whumpee, one hand cupping their ear. “Huh? Speak up, Whumpee.”

“K— k-kill… m.. me.”

“Kill you?” Caretaker asked with a wide smile and pressed a finger down to Whumpee’s nose and made a soft boop. “Now why would I want to do that?”

“Pl—please.”

Caretaker tilted their head at Whumpee, then reached down and scooped Whumpee up into their arms. Whumpee was taller than Caretaker, so it must have looked comical to an outsider to see Caretaker carrying them like a child. Though… no one did see them, Whumpee doesn’t know how long it was since the battle finished.

“I’ve got a better idea, Whumpee,” said Caretaker. “Since they left you for dead, how about, we use that to our advantage and destroy the heroes instead, hmm?”

“Nnn— they’re friends,” Whumpee wheezed out. They definitely had a couple broken ribs. “Family.”

Caretaker’s eyes burned with a destructive fury as they stared down into Whumpee’s half lidded ones, it would have made Whumpee gasp if they could.

Caretaker’s hands tightened around Whumpee. “Family doesn’t abandon family, Whumpee. I understand you’re probably a bit delirious right now, so you can sleep if you like.”

Caretaker tilted their head back up to stare ahead. “Just know that when you wake up, I’m sure you’ll feel a lot differently. I can wait until you’re better, but know… we’ll get our revenge.”

Whumpee drifted in and out of consciousness after Caretaker said that. Their mind fuzzy and all over the place, too dizzying to register what had actually happened to them.

One minute they were in Caretaker’s arms, the next they woke up in a bed, light spilling through the curtains that were only partially drawn.

Caretaker walked in, a smile on their face as they saw Whumpee sitting up. “Ah. Good. How are you feeling?”

Whumpee’s eyes reflected Caretaker’s in that moment, that greedy, vengeful thing. Whumpee said: “I feel like I want to destroy them for leaving me to die.”

Caretaker’s smile grew into a lazy grin, their eyes anything but, burning like two hot coals with pride and that same awful destruction. “I told ya you would.”

[draconli]

Dragon Elves Day 27: Ghost

Mildly unamused by being dead.

Sorry for bring late as I making some Halloween treats.

[31-daysofhorror]

It's Day Twenty-Seven of 31 Days of Horror!

Today's prompt is: Tear

Check out the rest of this month's prompts here!

[youruncleolaf]

no one talks about the adjustment everyone goes through as they age where learning about new people (internet, celebrities, etc) goes from “everyone is a grown up” to “my god they’re only ten years/ barely older than me” to “what do you mean they’re younger than me”

[ceilidho]

sundog

prompt: Simon comes across a girl when she's recently been evicted and takes her back to his place, despite her reservations (nsfw, 8.5k) [based on this old post] [on ao3 here]

-

The circumstances of your life change so abruptly that you lose sight of it for a moment. 

Then, you’re out on the streets with the clothes on your back and a suitcase packed so full that a sweater sleeve sticks out where the zippers meet. The locks to your apartment have already been changed. You know because you tried them anyway, desperately hoping that the eviction notice taped to your door might have been misplaced.

Evidently not. The keys don’t work. You contemplate chucking them on the walk out, but instead you keep them close like a talisman of protection, though it’s failed to live up to its purpose so far. 

You’ve got it under control for a day. If by ‘under control’, you mean experiencing a full body panic attack in the locker room of the twenty-four hour gym down the street from your old apartment. The staff gives you uncomfortable looks when you come in on the verge of tears with your suitcase rolling behind you, but they let you in because your membership is up to date. If you can count on anything in life, it’s consumerism. 

That doesn’t last long though, mainly because a locker and a wood bench won’t cut it in the long term. You sleep in the back of the local library until a stern-faced, if pitying, librarian threatens to call the cops on you. Pity isn’t sympathy, evidently. 

Gym management threatens to cut the lock on the locker you’ve been using as temporary storage space. Matter of fact, they say, you can’t be using the locker room as your quasi apartment between the hours of nine P.M. and seven A.M. just because everything else in the city is closed. Go home, they say. 

What home, you don’t say, before packing up your things and heading out on your way. 

If there’s one thing you can count on, it’s capitalism. 

You didn’t think this kind of thing could happen to someone like you. Someone like you being an ordinary person. Homelessness always felt like a far away concept. But the world is cruel and life is brutal. What you didn’t realize before was that, at any moment in time, you’ve been closer to poverty than wealth, and here you are now, sitting in the park with your suitcase between your legs, the sun rapidly setting behind you, your phone at ten percent battery, and nowhere to go because your family is, frankly, nonexistent, and your friends, for lack of a better word, have almost entirely washed their hands of you.

Sorry, they’d say, the frown emoji expressing something like pity at a distance. We don’t have a couch to spare. 

I can sleep on the floor, you’d texted back. They’d gotten cagey after that. People like to be wanted only to a certain extent.

You can feel the panic rise up in you, too big to contain. It comes out in the form of blubbering tears and snot running from your nose. Big, hiccuping sobs. It’s not pretty. Passersby avert their eyes for the most part, save for the ones that eye you with something bordering on perverse delight and that’s what finally makes you get up and speed walk away, lest they feel compelled to approach you. 

But even in the tailwinds of summer, it gets cold outside at night. Worst of all, as the evening grows dark, the streets empty out until you can’t help but feel like a beacon with your little rolling suitcase. It clatters against the sidewalk as you try to hoof it down the street, looking for any shop still open to loiter in. Most close after nine though. You’ve googled homeless shelters, but the sheer anxiety keeps you floundering around up and down the streets instead.

It feels beyond helpless. You’re in a state like you’ve never been before, crying under a streetlamp because you needed a moment just to get your bearings. 

What you know now is that this world is a house of false bottoms. You thought the circumstances of your life could never change. You were never well to do, but you were doing well. The sight of the unhoused sitting with their backs to the brick and mortar stores on your walk home or congregated in a park in the middle of the city with their tents and shopping carts used to fill you with immeasurable pity, maybe even a quiet moment’s reflection; now, you see them as kin. 

Easy, isn’t it? To slip between states. To go from solid to liquid to gaseous. Easier than you ever could have expected. 

When it starts to rain, you almost close your eyes in relief. Anyone could’ve predicted this. 

You almost don’t respond to him at first, keeping your eyes trained on the sidewalk to avoid any bumps. Also, it never pays to look up at a man barking at you, especially not when he’s barking something like, Girl or Bird, turn around. 

Then he says it again, closer this time, and you’re forced to look up, if only to see who’s approaching you. Your suspicion melts away to distrust at the sight of the man stalking towards you. Distrust with a touch of trepidation—maybe outright alarm. Surely no man his size wearing a balaclava tucked into a hoodie straining around his arms would have innocent designs on you. 

He’s one of the bigger men you’ve ever come across. You look across the street to see if there’s a bar missing its bouncer, but all the shop fronts are dark like the ones on your side. 

You don’t bolt at the sight of him, but it’s a near thing. He appears from nowhere, and yet there’s nowhere for him to hide. Not with the size and breadth of him damn near taking up the whole sidewalk. His demeanour and stride evoke such a sense of authority that at first you mistake him for a plainclothes man, and wouldn’t that be just the icing on the shit cake of a week you’ve been experiencing. But something about him says otherwise. 

“Plan on catchin’ your death out here?” he asks, and you shiver. Not from the cold, but from the sound of his voice. 

You’re not used to talking to strangers. A month ago, you would’ve ignored the man lambasting you for being out in the rain; maybe crossed the street and hailed a cab instead. You don’t have those kinds of options anymore. The only thing left in your repertoire is to shout back. 

“I’ve got mace!” you yell out, your voice a hoarse rattle carved out from hours spent crying. 

“That’ll do ya fuck all out here,” he says, a touch condescendingly. “You lost or somethin’?”

“I’m not lost,” you sniff, rubbing the snot away from your nose with the end of your sleeve.

“Then get home instead of roamin’ the streets. You’re askin’ to get snatched up, bird.”

The threat of that has been lingering in your head these past few days, even stretching back to the very first moment that you noticed the sign on your door, but now it has its intended effect. You shake. 

“I can’t,” you whisper.

“Bloody hell,” he sighs. “Why the fuck not? Need someone to call you a cab?”

“I got evicted. I don’t have a home,” you say, and sniffle when your nose leaks again. Saying it outloud brings tears to your eyes again, a pressure building behind your orbital sockets and down to the tip of your nose. 

You must look like the saddest thing in the world standing there in the rain under the dim light of the streetlamp, the pole looped with graffiti and old gum. When the man berating you for being out in it takes a step forward, coming into the light, you can finally make out the bored depths of his eyes. A deep brown. Entirely unimpressed with the picture in front of him, maybe even a bit peeved. 

Your socks are wet and your shoes squelch when you take a step back. You pull the sheer sweater tighter around your frame, but it does nothing to protect you from the damp, frigid air. 

“You been out here long?” he asks, taking another step closer. Not tentatively either. His gaze sweeps over you proprietarily, taking stock; his arrogance comes as an afterthought. He’s not rubbing it in your face that he can do whatever he likes—he just does. 

You wheel your suitcase around in front of you to put something between the two of you. “…Just today. The gym kicked me out.”

You sound petulant, words chewed between your lips and teeth; begrudgingly admitting to the various pitfalls of your existence. All the bad luck. It’s shameful to admit to losing complete control of your life. 

“Haven’t ya got any family, girl? Friends? What’re they letting a girl like you stay out on the streets for?”

You could be sick on the pavement. “…That’s none of your business.”

His eyes go flat at that, unimpressed. “You always this nasty to people tryin’ to help?”

And you’re not. That’s the part that grates the most. You’re all soft underbelly; no bark, no bite. It’s inconceivable that this could’ve happened to you—inconceivable because your head is filled with false promises and mythologies. The myth of exceptionalism. This happens to other people. Not good girls that go to college and get their degrees and find a stable job. 

They’ve pulled the rug out from under you so fast that you haven’t even toppled over yet. That’s how quick it all happened. 

“What help are you?” The bite comes out of nowhere, fueled by bitter humiliation and resentment for the predicament you’ve found yourself in. “Are you gonna put me up in a hotel?”

“Think I’m made of money, bird?” he asks rhetorically. 

“You’ve probably got more than I have.” 

Now you’re weepy again at the thought. Down to your last hundred dollars and you’re in between jobs at the moment. It might’ve been easier to haul yourself out of poverty if applying for jobs didn’t require a mailing address. That’ll be your first priority once you find a place to live. But conversely, how are you meant to find housing with no proof of income? Landlords laugh in your face before slamming the door shut. The conversations are circular, but they always come to a grinding halt; that’s the only thing you’ve learned to expect. 

The worst part of this whole conversation is that it doesn’t follow any of the scripts you’ve previously memorized. When have you ever had to deal with a man interrogating you about your place of residence? It makes no sense. 

It’s inconceivable to imagine that this is happening to you, but it is. Life comes at you hard, with a razor’s edge. Sharp enough to cut, to lacerate. 

“You need a place to stay,” he states bluntly. 

“It’s fine. I’ll—I’ll find something.” 

“You could come home with me.” He says it so bluntly that for a moment all you can do is blink. Surely you misheard him. Surely a man of his size and breadth, dark mask obscuring his face, wouldn’t be daft enough to ask a woman he found on the street to come home with him.

The offer, as well-intentioned as you hope it is, puts you on edge. “No, that’s…that’s alright. I don’t want to…put you out. I was going to look up nearby shelters.”

“Shelters’ll all be full this time of night,” he says. “Never been on the streets?”

You clenched your teeth, nerves starting to get the better of you. 

“I can go to a church,” you say, voice terse now, frayed with nerves. 

He snorts. “Haven’t been to one in a long time, but pretty sure those close too, pet. It’s late.”

You sway on your feet, the suitcase at your side the only thing keeping your knees from buckling. Dead ends everywhere you turn. You’ve always thought of yourself as resourceful; that if push came to shove, you’d figure your way out of any sticky situation. That smacks of arrogance now. All your suppositions are dissolving right in front of you, your own self-image along with it. 

A heavy foot stepping into a puddle brings you back to focus. The masked man is closer now, within arm’s reach. Your heart jumps into your throat. He towers over you, monolith man; big as a sequoia, or other deadland creatures that vanish out of sight when you catch a shadow out of the corner of your eye and whirl around to look it dead on. 

“I can’t go home with a stranger.”

You know you’re not supposed to put your faith in strange men. Bad things happen to girls that go around trusting any man that offers up their help. 

The fist in your chest loosens infinitesimally when the man reaches up to pull the mask off his head. He’s every inch the brute you imagined in your head—blunt chin and crooked nose, a nasty scar running up his lip. There are scars all over his face, in fact—bisecting his left eyebrow and down his cheek. The blond hair on his head is slightly grown out, like he’s used to keeping it neat and tight but it’s been awhile since his head has seen a razor. His beard grows in a bit patchy, the burnish gold of a five o’clock shadow.

You frown. “Is that supposed to make me trust you?”

“Well, now we’re not strangers, are we?”

“That doesn’t—that doesn’t change anything! I still don’t know you.”

He shrugs. Takes a step back. “Suit yourself then. No skin off my ass.”

Your stomach roils, anxiety coming back with a vengeance. You hadn’t noticed it recede since the man started talking to you, but you notice its return. When he makes a move to turn back around, you lurch forward, your hand extending out and fisting in the side of his shirt. He pauses, then looks down at you. 

“…Where else am I supposed to go?” you whisper.

He tilts his head. “Could sleep on a bench in the park.”

You glare at him through tear-soaked eyes. “That’s not funny.”

“Wasn’t meant to be. You’re shit out of other options at this time of night.”

“So, what? Now it’s-it’s my fault or something?”  

His eyes don’t exactly soften, but they lose their hard edge. 

“I’m not gonna ask twice,” he says. Not cautioning you, just stating a fact. “You coming or not?”

Disaster seems like a given at this point. At least you could pick your poison. 

Words are beyond you though, so you just bite your lip and nod, eyes downcast now. 

What else is there for you to do but follow him after that? You trail along after him like a sad, wet cat left out in the rain. 

He finds her wandering the streets with her pretty little suitcase rolling over every bump and crack in the sidewalk and there’s no fighting the urge to drag her home. 

She doesn’t look like a runaway. Just a poor thing down on her luck. Her cheeks practically glisten with her tears when she looks up at him with her big, pathetic eyes, and it makes his cock plump up against his thigh. 

That’s not what this is about though. Simon presses his hand against his dick to rub out some of the ache while she flutters around the bedroom and reminds himself of that again. He didn’t take her home to maul her like a dog. He dragged her back to his flat because she looked wounded and scared out of her wits. 

He can be good every now and then. 

“Sit down, will ya?” he grunts, tugging her down onto the couch when she flits across the room to grab more of her shit out of her suitcase, glancing down at him apprehensively on her way by. She yelps when he sends her sprawling onto the couch. 

His flat isn’t much. A one-bedroom above a laundromat; eggshell walls and torn up baseboards because he hasn’t gotten around to fixing the place up. It’s better than sleeping on the streets though, he knows that much. 

Simon’s no stranger to that; if being in the military taught him anything, it was how to survive regardless of circumstances. In the weeks after his medical discharge—his knees beyond busted, basically bone on bone, and even these days, though he works more to have something to do than to earn a living, they still scream at him when he puts too much weight on them—he wandered aimlessly for a bit, crashing on Gaz’s couch for a bit and sleeping on benches for a spell after that before finding his footing again. 

Simon ignores the way that she yaps at him though, used to tuning people out. He flicks on the television and flips to a show that looks vaguely entertaining before getting up and ambling over to the kitchen. 

“D-do you want me to help?” she asks from the kitchen, tripping over her words in her haste to get them out. 

She reeks of the need to please. Desperate; cloying, sickly sweet like flowering dracaena. It clings to her like a perfume, silk-wrapped and packaged just for him. It could give a man like him indecent thoughts. His thoughts already tend towards the impure. 

He must eye her like a ravenous animal because she flinches suddenly under his gaze, eyes flicking away nervously before meeting his again. Good girl, Simon wants to say. Eyes on me. 

“Sit down,” he barks instead, and relishes in the way she sits back down with her hands tucked under her thighs. 

She’s really a pretty little thing. A shame that he found her out wandering in the rain, out where any man with worse intentions could have stumbled across her. The thought alone could drive him to violence. Again he stares at the back of her head and the slope of her shoulders, evaluating. His bloodlust dulls to a simmer. It pounds in his ears like a dull drum, but at least now he can hear again. 

Anyone else could have found her first, but they didn’t. He did. That tempers the homicidal impulse thrumming in his blood. She’s in his flat now, freshly showered and skin still damp. When she looks over her shoulder, it’s him she sees. 

Poor bird with her clipped wings. She’s not in danger of flying off anytime soon. The thought placates him. Tucked away in his cage, he doesn’t have to rend anyone limb from limb.

It’s been years since he traded in his fatigues for a hi vis jumpsuit, but some days he misses it so acutely that his hands shake and his vision fades in and out. This is one of those days. He toys with the idea of reaching out to Price in the morning to learn more about her, but then discards the idea. Better if it comes straight from her.

Besides, he doesn’t like asking for favours anyway.

“Name’s Simon, by the way,” he grunts, nostrils flaring when he sees her flinch at the sound of his voice. “Riley.”

“Oh,” is all she says. He waits a beat.

“Gonna give me your name, bird?”

She does, voice squeaky like it’s said under duress. That pisses him off more. 

He's not much of a cook, but he can whip up something quick, so he tosses one of his frozen meals into the microwave and sits her in front of the TV while she shivers and shakes on the couch.

They eat in silence, the TV on in the background. It’s the only noise besides the soft sound of her chewing. Simon can tell she’s gone hungry in recent days by the voracious way she eats, unable to keep herself from shovelling the food into her mouth. She seems almost embarrassed by it after swallowing her last bite, looking over at him from the corner of her eye like a guilty dog. He ignores it, keeping his eyes on the TV instead.

He can tell she wants to say something. A shit childhood and two decades in the military have left him with the ability to sniff out tension, and it comes off her in waves. After putting her plate on the coffee table, she sits back against the couch and squeezes her fists over her lap. Gnaws her lip and casts furtive glances in his direction. When the tears build up on her waterline, his cock twitches. 

“What?” he barks after the umpteenth sniffle, twisting to face her. 

“I—um—I just wanted to say thank you,” she whispers, her head still tilted downward, trying to make herself small enough to go unnoticed. 

Simon stares down at her, unblinking. He half wishes she’d cry a little more, just a few tears to soothe the beast in his chest. It’s better for her that her eyes remain dry. He doesn’t think he could hold himself back if one slipped down her cheek right now. He’d have to grab her by the nape of her neck and twist her over the side of the couch, shove down both their drawers and feed his cock into the warm, wet slot between her legs. Pummel her little cunt until his spend leaks out in thick, viscous globs, until her thighs shake so violently that only his hands on her shoulders and his shaft shoved deep in her pussy keeps her upright. 

He can almost smell it from between her legs, throbbing with gratefulness. He stares down unabashedly at the spot between her legs. Let her say something about it. 

“Don’t mention it,” he says instead, tilting his head when her tongue peeks out to wet her lips. “‘Was nothing.”

“No, it was really nice of you,” she insists, speaking more forcefully after gathering up some of her courage. “What if I…—you took a stranger into your house.”

That gets the blood pumping. “Gonna gut me while I sleep, pet?”

It’s half deranged that his cock chubs up in his jeans at the thought of his little bird with a knife in her hands, hands dripping with wet, dark blood. He shifts, readjusting himself so the metal teeth of his zipper don’t bite into his dick. 

She frowns. Endearing. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“Not really good at looking after yourself, are you?”

“I am—it’s just…” tears build up on her waterline again, “it was one thing after another. I couldn’t get it all together.”

Pity isn’t an emotion he’s accustomed to feeling. Simon’s not even sure if that’s what he’s feeling now. It’s more like the bastard child of pity. 

He lets her off to bed with a warning not to fuck with anything in his room. She skitters off quickly after that. Her cute little ass follows her into the room until she shuts the door behind her, hiding it from view. He huffs. Being good never gets him anywhere.

He lets her run away though because he can’t tarnish everything he touches. Some things deserve to stay polished. 

Instead, he brushes his teeth and washes the last of the dishes before turning in as well, getting a clean sheet out of the linen closet to drape over himself. The couch isn’t nearly long enough for him to stretch out on, not like the king sized bed in his room; there’s already a spring poking him right in the middle of his back.

Sleep won’t come easy tonight. 

Simon wakes up on the couch with a kink in his neck. He lays there for several minutes gritting his teeth until the worst of it passes. When he sits up, his back cracks and pops, joints loosening only reluctantly. His age is getting away from him again; the wear and tear on his body finally starting to catch up. There’s only so much abuse he can put himself through. 

The morning races on outside his front door and he has work to get to, but his body orients towards the closed door of his bedroom almost without his say. It creaks as it swings open. 

In the slowly dimming haze of sleep, he must have subconsciously thought he dreamt the night before because seeing the girl from yesterday curled up in his bed halts him in his tracks. Her suitcase is open on the floor beside the bed. She must have changed into her pyjamas after slinking away last night because he doesn’t recognize the little cotton shorts hugging the swell of her ass and the shirt riding up over her belly button. 

Despite the perfunctory morning jerk he gave himself just ten minutes prior, his cock twitches in his work pants, gaze locked on the underside of her ass, the flesh peeking out from beneath her sleep shorts. 

The hunger ebbs out of a deep, cavernous hole in him. A heavy, oppressive heat; lust so gnarled and twisted that he hardly recognizes it. He can see it play out in his mind—crawling over the bird’s prone form and turning her over onto her belly, his knees on either side of her legs, cloaking her. Tugging down the zipper of his pants and wrenching those slutty shorts down to mid-thigh before burying his shaft in her hole. Little bird that followed him home, sleeping in his bed. She should thank him for his help with a wet hole. 

Simon takes a step into the room and then stops. He won’t—can’t—

His teeth grind together from how hard he clenches his jaw. 

He stands in the doorway and watches her sleep in his bed for longer than he should. Only when he feels something ugly well up in his chest does he finally bark out her name, snorting softly when she jumps and nearly falls right off the side of the bed. 

“Get up,” Simon grunts. “And make yourself something to eat. I’ve gotta head out.”

He walks away before the befuddled look on her face makes him crack a smile. 

She tiptoes out a few minutes later, still in her PJs. Her wary glances tick him off. For the effort it’s taken him to keep his hands to himself, he deserves more than her shifty looks, scoring him like he split her little peach open in her sleep.  

Breakfast is an uncomfortable affair. It’s partly his fault, but he doesn’t apologize for it. They eat in tense silence until it’s time for him to head to work. 

“Don't think about leaving—any of my shit gets nicked and it's your ass.”

He leaves her with that warning, slamming the door behind him.

Your heart goes quiet at the dawning of your new life. 

Adjusting to your new reality takes a bit of effort. The first few days with Simon feel tenuous at best. You worry constantly about doing something wrong and finding yourself back out on the streets. You’re thankful to the point of pandering, apologizing for any sudden move or sound that you make. You can tell it annoys him. 

The real work is recontextualizing your perception of yourself. The world feels strange now that you’re outside of it; alien somehow. You used to think of yourself as somehow inextricably woven into the fabric of society. The thought of losing everything never even occurred to you. It never even presented itself as a possibility. You worried about homelessness the way people worry about quicksand—in some nebulous way touching on the real without being absorbed by it. 

And now you are cut from another cloth altogether; abruptly, without any warning. You used to feel like one with the rest of the world, a kind of kinship based less on parentage or ancestry and more on inner nature. Weren’t you the same as any of them? But now the drapery has been pulled down and you know—you are not the same. 

Your future used to shimmer under the surface like a bioluminescent fish, but now it’s just a ghost.

He tells you to stay put when he goes to work so you do, spending the days puttering around the apartment, watching TV, and cleaning. There’s not much else to do. It’s almost a relief, to be honest. You’ve spent so much time without a place to call home that the second someone offered you one, the outside world became anathema in your head. You couldn’t step foot out of the front door even if you wanted to. 

Tears well up at the smallest thing. You blubber over not being able to work the coffee machine in the kitchen. When the sound goes out on the TV, you cry so hard that it leaves you woozy. You’re lachrymose, downtrodden. Soul a startling verdigris; your waterlines might as well be white with encrustations of salt. 

He must notice the dark cloud following you from room to room, but he doesn’t bring it up. You’d find it tactful, but you know him a bit better than that. 

Then Simon brings home a cat after his shift one day and you don’t know what to say to that.

Thank you doesn’t seem to suffice. I love it doesn’t cut it close. The truth of the matter is that words only ever approximate the feeling; they can get close enough to give you a glimmer of what’s stashed inside, but you can’t pry them all the way open. So you take the off-white cat from him when he practically tosses the poor thing into your arms, and stare up at him wide-eyed, eyes already watering for reasons once again unbeknownst to you. 

“Thank you for taking him home,” you say, already on the verge of tears.

He stares down at you, unblinking. You’re learning to read into his silences though. 

“Don’t expect me to take care of it,” he says instead of accepting your thanks. “If you can’t handle it, it’s going back outside.” 

You hold the cat tight to your chest, staring up at him with horror until the little beast nearly scratches your eye out in an effort to squirm out of your arms. 

At first, you’re not sure what to make of it. It can’t be a peace offering because, apart from the rare occasions where you manage to get on his nerves (not wholly impossible, but you’re learning how to stay on his good side for the most part), you and Simon get along pretty well. You coexist, at least. He cooks, you clean. 

It’s likely a distraction, you finally realize, something to keep you from moping around the apartment all the time, listless and directionless. Despite the fact that you’re no longer in any immediate danger now that you have a roof over your head, misery still clings to you like a second skin. The relative safety of Simon’s flat has actually only given you a chance to really properly mourn the loss of your former life. 

Training the cat to wear a harness without tipping over (the little drama king) and taking him on his first walk outside (just a little turn around the block, though you half jump out of your skin whenever you cross paths with another person) gives you enough of a sense of purpose to propel you through the next week. 

You can tell that Simon thinks the cat is more trouble than it’s worth, especially when it decides to fixate on the one person in the flat that doesn’t pay it a lick of attention, but still it makes your heart melt to see it curled up by his side when you watch TV together at the end of the night. 

“Is this normal for you?” you ask, hands folded in your lap.

His gaze doesn’t move from the television screen. “Is what normal?”

“Taking in strays.”

He snorts, then takes a second to answer. “No.”

You wonder if he intends to sound as caustic as he comes across. The truth is self-evident though. Words only mask the real, and the real in this case is that Simon Riley is a man that feeds and takes home strays. He can grumble about it all he wants. It’s a bit demeaning to think of yourself that way, but once again, the truth is what it is. 

You study him from the corner of your eye until bedtime rolls around again. He’s become the most interesting thing in the world to you, through every fault of his own.

If he didn’t want you to fixate on him, he wouldn’t have left you home alone with nothing else to do. 

“Bird!” Simon roars from the other room. “The cat’s pissed on the floor again.”

You spring out of bed before Simon has a chance to toss it out onto the balcony. 

It feels temporary up until the first time you use Simon’s address on a job application. It stands out stark on your phone screen, black on glowing white. You’ve always preferred it to dark mode, though that preference has fluctuated in recent weeks as you’ve spent more and more time on your phone. 

This is the first time staring at the screen without blinking for a prolonged period of time that hasn’t left you with a throbbing migraine. 

He tells you to stop bothering him with stupid shit when you ask him if it’s alright to use his address. That answers that. Guilt lingers on the periphery of your mind the first time that you do, but then the application is submitted. An innocuous grey box that redefines your whole world in a way that [Thanks for applying!] doesn’t seem to encapsulate. 

Your old friends come next. They come back one by one, guilty, furtive looks aplenty. You Facetime the one who wouldn’t let you sleep on her couch while sitting on Simon’s bed. When she asks you about your living situation, all you tell her is that you found a roommate. It doesn’t feel right to give her more information than that. What has she done to deserve your honesty? 

You manage pleasantries and a half decent conversation, but truth again lingers at the back of your mind. The unspoken reality that this person—someone you trusted—could’ve been there for you in your time of need but chose to look the other way instead. Like taking you in would’ve been some big, terrible thing. 

The body forgets everything except what hurts it. The body remembers nothing except what helps it survive. 

Gratefulness lodges into your heart like an arrow shot from a castle’s ramparts intent on your demise. You could pull it out from the other side and succumb to blood loss, or you could push forward, lay siege to the man hidden inside its walls. 

And you do. You want to show him every grateful inch of you. Even when it only results in more upset. Simon comes home to the smoke alarm blaring and a small fire in the microwave before he bans you from the kitchen altogether. You only cry for an hour in the bedroom with the door shut before he drags you out to takeout on the table in the living room. It’s an improvement. 

“I’m sorry,” you sniffle into your veggie burger, on the verge of tears again when you glance into the kitchen to see most of the mess still there. 

“It’s fine.”

“I just want to—I wanted to make it up to you…for taking me in.”

“You don’t owe me shit,” he says brusquely, dismissing you. His tone tells you to drop it, but that seems as likely as you growing wings and flying away. 

“Yes, I do. You let me stay here when I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

“If you want to make it up to me, take care of the cat and stop leaving your shit all over the bathroom. Found your knickers on the floor after you showered yesterday.”

Your face goes hot at that. You have nothing else to say. 

Your attraction is a banal consequence of living under the same roof as him. There are only so many times he can come up behind you while you’re making your morning cup of coffee and swipe your mug before taking a sip from over your shoulder, barricading you against the counter. Acutely aware of the size of him with the way he’s pressed up against you. 

You lose your train of thought whenever Simon wanders into a room. He lumbers in like a beast, steel-toed boots covered in mud and dust, ignoring the way you scold him for walking around the apartment in his shoes. Just cocks an eyebrow and stares down at you knowingly, like he can see right through you, knows that you’re only squawking and flitting around to hide the way your thighs rub together. 

“It’s my fuckin’ flat,” he says instead of pointing out that your pussy’s wet because she knows there’s a man in the house that could take care of her proper. You know it too. 

“I live here too, you know,” you huff. “I can’t wash the floors every time you come home.”

“Thought I was doing you a favour letting you live here.”

His words would fill you with righteous indignation, but they don’t because his actions don’t line up. You study him like a moth under glass, enthralled by the parts of him that used to frighten you. 

It’s more than that though. He’s wedged himself into the hurt place in your heart, holding it up like Atlas. 

You really do think that there’s something so special about him that you’ll never be able to articulate. Simon is everything you didn’t know you desperately wanted. The longer you live with him, the harder it is to deny how much you need him. 

You will show your gratitude though. Every tender, aching morsel of it. 

The little peach she grinds on his thigh is wet and ripe. Simon doesn’t tell her that he doesn’t need her gratitude; if he wanted it, he would’ve taken it already. But he doesn’t shove her out of his lap either. It’s not his problem if she thinks it’s necessary or not.

Maybe it’s not solely for his benefit, he concedes when she winds both arms around his neck and pushes her supple tits into his chest, climbing over his lap until her pussy is pressed right up against the cock fattening up in his jeans. She whimpers like she’s in pain. 

Must not come a lot; he knows she at least hasn’t in recent days. Simon’s always been a light sleeper—he’s sure he would’ve heard any desperate attempts to get herself off in his bed, the springs creaking under her weight, her hushed, bitten off moans leaking out from under the doorframe. The thought riles him up more than he thought it would. 

Still, Simon doesn’t lift a hand to help the poor bird in his lap as she grinds down on his length. His arms stay stretched across the back of the couch, hips canted just enough to give her a perch and nothing more. 

She gasps every word into his ear, voice all pitched and breathy. “Ah, ah, ah—thank you, thank you, I…—can I please have it? Please, please let me, Simon, pleasepleaseplease—”

It feels like everything they’ve been through so far has been leading to this. He’d smelt it coming like blood in the water. 

All week, his bird has been sitting on her hands and trying not to give herself away. Cloaked in a nervous, frenetic energy. Anticipatory. She’d doe-eyed him the night before and begged him to sleep in the bed with her instead of wrecking his back on the couch, but he’d ignored her in favour of watching Argentina decimate Croatia in the semi-finals. It must have not sat right with her though because she’d been broody from the moment he left for work until he got home, steering him into the kitchen and practically hand feeding him before coaxing him into the living room to watch a movie while she cuddled up beside him.

That hadn’t lasted long. 

“What’s gotten into you, pet?” Simon asks, hardly dissuading her when she presses petal soft lips to his jaw and nuzzles, breathing heavily. His heart swells. Desperate little slut. 

“Took care of me,” she mumbles, almost slurring her words. “Always taking care of me, Simon.”

There’s no denying how hard it makes him to think about being her protector. The littlest things make her smile. Even the bloody cat had her trailing after him for a week straight after the fact, eternally underfoot. Always trying to curry favour. Eager to please. 

Her worship leaves him unbalanced. Unstable even. A train careening off its track, the massive weight of catastrophe right behind it. The sense that life will never be the same after this. His surface level indifference is underscored by steeled self-control. He keeps his arms on the couch because he knows the second he puts them on her, it’s over. There’ll be no holding him back anymore, no possibility of him ever letting her go back out into the real world. Lock jawed, teeth sunk into her tender underbelly. 

“Told you, you don’t owe me nothing,” Simon murmurs, curling his hands under her ass. 

“Then—then…—I don’t know, pretend it’s just for me.” It’s a joke because they both know it’s not just for her. When her eyes sparkle with amusement, his cock throbs.

He lets her ruck the shirt over his head and struggle with his belt until she manages to unbuckle it like he has no say in the matter. She’s far less considerate with her own clothes, shucking them off and nearly ripping her knickers in the process, which almost prompts him to take her by the wrists and slow her down. He likes the lace and frills. 

It’s a fight to fit his cock into her hole, as slick as she is. Coin slot tight; he almost breaks and tells her to take it easy when she reaches behind her to line his shaft up with her entrance and sits down, just barely stretching around the mushroomed head of his dick before wincing, tears springing into her eyes. 

Simon does break when she tries to sink down another inch, thighs shaking violently. “Right, get off—you ain’t ready for this.”

“I am!” she insists, face screwed up in a scowl and a bead of sweat dripping down her temple. “Just—I can do it, Simon—”

“No, you can’t. You’re rushing and hurting yourself—”

“Wait, okay, wait, I can…just give me a minute, okay?” she begs, and he doesn’t tell her that he’d give her all the time in the world. Stay on this couch until the flesh fell off his bones. He’s waited so long; what’s a little longer? 

Besides, the sight of her stretching herself out with her fingers is reward enough. She whines into his shoulder and shudders when she has to force another finger in before she’s ready. Too eager. It could give a man a complex. His blood is already scorching him from the inside out, too hot for his veins.  

He considers helping her out, but watching her writhe and struggle in his lap is far more enjoyable. 

He stopped paying attention awhile back, too focused on cupping her tits and running his tongue around the budded areola, sucking her pert nipple into his mouth, but she couldn’t have gotten to more than three fingers before running out of patience and lining him up again. This time, she sinks a bit deeper on the first stroke, still choking on her breath but forcing herself to take a bit more. 

“You’re alright—you’re alright,” Simon murmurs, stroking a hand up and down her back while she impales herself on his length. She’s still too tight to take him comfortably, sweats and shakes over him. He pinches her nipple to distract her from the pain and smiles when she yelps. 

She melts all over him, slick drenching his shaft and lap, her tongue lapping at the sweaty skin of his neck. Honeysuckle fragrant; the sweetest thing he’s ever known. Silken, tight. Fits like a glove around him. 

He could lose himself in her. Piston into her until the thought of where he begins and where he ends dissolves into the tight warmth between her legs.

His bird is a greedy girl. She uses him like a toy to get herself off, bouncing in his lap and mewling into his ear everytime his cockhead nudges against her cervix. Too big to fit all the way in. 

“You do this a lot, pet? Fuck every man that lends you a hand?” he pants, taunting her.

“No!” she snarls in his ear, feisty and sharp-toothed. Her nails dig into his back, scoring white lines into his skin. The shiver that wracks him is so violent that his arms tighten around her waist reflexively, making her gasp. 

It doesn’t matter whether she does this often or not; the only thing that matters is that he’s the only man that gets to fuck her from here on out. Still, winding her up is half the fun. 

“Perfect girl,” Simon chuckles, breathless. “Made for me. Got m’self a pet right off the street.”

And he did, didn’t he? Went wandering out into the night and came home with a bird fluttering her wet little wings. 

His conscience is clean. He could’ve tied her down, kept her right where he wanted her (in his bed, his flat, the yawning cavity of his chest—) but his self-control remains unparalleled. Tough as nails. Strong as steel. And now look at what he has as a reward for his patience—a fever-hot cunt around his cock and delicate fingernails scratching the base of his skull. 

A pretty bird that’s made his chest a cage. 

The world goes vertical, horizontal. Fluid; sliding away from him. Something crashes in the background, so far off in the distance that he can hardly make out the sound. 

He opens his eyes to find the ceiling staring back down at him, and then her face, hovering over him on the carpeted floor, her hands kneading the muscle of his chest. Her brows are drawn tight now, pinched. She stares down at him, past him, gaze like a transparent veil. 

“Gi’me…gi’me…” she pants, barely able to pull herself off his cock. 

He has to dig his fingers into her ass and pull her off, ignoring the way she whines and begs him to fill her back up. Ignores it because he knows what’s best for her; knows how to take care of what he owns. 

When he bucks up into her, she chokes, fingers nearly yanking his chest hair out. 

“Fuckin’ hell, that’s pretty,” he breathes. Snaps his hips up into hers again, relishing in the way she squeezes tight around him, almost to the point of pain. 

His pleasure always comes jagged though. Whether the ache of his joints or nails tearing up the skin of his back and chest. Vicious and messy—how he likes it. She gives him everything he could want and more. The hand dug into his chest right above his heart could pierce right through the flesh and tear it out.

He pulls her all the way off his cock just for the pleasure of hearing her beg him again, then pulls her up his chest and eats her out until the beast in his belly calms down. 

He yields to her whining only after a good few minutes. Soft bastard. Drags her back down until her soaked hole mouths at the head of his cock and he thrusts back up inside. Home. It’s his now, whether she likes it or not. Simon guesses he’s lucky that she wants it too; if he had to convince her, he would, but her desperation is just another gift for him to savour. 

“Squeeze me good, bird. Say thank you—” thank you for taking me home, thank you for keeping me– almost spills off his tongue, but he reigns it in. She knows what to be thankful for. 

“Nngh, Simon,” she sings, fucking herself on his cock. The sweetest sound he’s ever heard. 

Simon’s never felt bigger than under his sweet bird. Thighs spread so wide around him that he knows she’ll ache in the morning. Brutish hands groping her thighs and waist and tits, rough against the softness of her skin. Stuffed full of a big cock, not even to the root; she bites right through her bottom lip when Simon pets at the thin skin stretched around his cock, her gaze wounded, overwhelmed. 

Nearly blacks out at the thought of cramming a finger up there too. Only faint concern for her well-being tamps down the urge. 

“Come on, fuck—that good, pet?”

“R-right there, oh god, ohgodohgod—”

He lets her ride him until she comes, until he comes, until his spend is blistering hot in her cunt, drooling down the length of his cock, frothy white with her cream and his come. 

It’s a sight to look at. Gets him right in the chest. Nothing like times of yore; this is something with meaning, with feeling. When he lifts her off, his seed trickles out of her soft hole in white globs and makes his chest ache. It doesn’t matter whether it takes root or not. All that he needs is already here. 

Beautiful and rare as a sundog; haloed by light. All this time, he dared not think this could be it. 

He thinks he’ll love her with the same ferocity Icarus had on his descent.

She shivers when he traces his fingers up her spine. “N’more. M’tired.”

“Wasn’t gonna, pet.”

The bedroom then. She twitches in his arms when Simon carries her to bed and pats his chest approvingly when he slides in beside her. 

He could’ve told her that it’d end up this way. He smiles indulgently when she shifts and splays over his chest, her nose nudging his nipple. Already fast asleep. 

In the morning, you sit across from him, half a grapefruit in a bowl in front of you and a mug of coffee, black. 

“I think I want to go back to school,” you say, apropos of nothing. The spoon clinks against the inside of the bowl. 

“Yeah?” he says, only half-listening. 

“I can always get a part time job on the days when I don’t have class. I never liked my old job anyway.”

“Do whatever you want,” Simon grunts. “Not my problem.”

Under the table, your cat’s tail curls around your ankle while he waits for you to sneak him the scraps. 

You smile.

[pathologicalreid]

hiii I love ur fics <3 I am OBSESSED with the prompt “can you come get me?” bc h/c makes me 💥💥💥 so I was thinking:

reader has been kidnapped by the latest unsub and the team is trying their hardest to find her but all the leads keep coming up empty until one day Spencer gets a call from her and the first thing she says is “can you come get me?” she sounds extremely upset and afraid so Spencer and Hotch leave to go find her. when they get there, she looks like she’s been through hell so they rush her to the hospital to be checked out, all the while they can’t seem to get any info out of her about what happened.

Spencer & reader could be platonic or romantic, whichever you like. (also I was thinking maybe hotchner!reader ? if that wouldn’t be too many things to ask for lol)

I love how you do angst and h/c, so keep up the good work and have a wonderful day <3

can you come get me? | S.R.

who? spencer reid x fem!reader category: angst content warnings: kidnapping, hospitals, stitches, blood draws, catatonia, disassociation, brief mention of sa, ohio mentioned, general cm violence (let me know if i missed any) word count: 4.56k a/n: i have no idea how this got so long but i love the plot of it so much that i couldn't cut any of it! i'm such a slut for the "you came"/"you called" trope that i couldn't help myself! i wrote this with the idea that it would be in place of the m*eve storyline (which means our lord and savior blake is here)!! anyways anon i hope you enjoy this - i love you!

Any external sound was completely ignored as Spencer flipped through the same file for the eighteenth time that day. In his periphery, he saw JJ and Rossi nod at each other before Rossi split away, walking up the ramp to where Hotch’s office was.

It took him a moment to realize JJ had made herself comfortable by sitting on the edge of his desk. She had her jacket neatly folded in her arms as she eyed the file he had, grief filling her eyes as she registered what he was looking at. “What are you doing tonight?” She asked, trying to keep her voice as light as possible.

The question was entirely pointless, she knew exactly what he was doing tonight, but in an attempt to get her to leave him alone, Spencer humored her, “I’m working late tonight,” he answered simply.

JJ’s smile faltered ever so slightly before she shook her head, “You’ve been working late all week, what if you come over tonight? Will’s making dinner. Garcia’s coming after she finishes her system update,” the attempt to get him out of the office didn’t go over his head, but it wasn’t going to work. “Henry would love to see you – maybe you could teach him a new magic trick.”

Peeling his eyes off of the paperwork, he looked up at the blonde, “You know I can’t.” He felt so close to an answer, he couldn’t possibly leave.

“Look, Reid, I get it, but you’ve been working crazy hours for the past month. Maybe taking a night off would be good. You can start fresh in the morning,” she tried to coax him into leaving the case be.

It hadn’t been a full month; it had been twenty-seven days. Almost four full weeks since you were taken. It had been one week since Section Chief Cruz had told Hotch that the BAU needed to start taking new cases, as the trail to you had run cold.

Considering you were Hotch’s daughter, that discussion had gone rather poorly. Cruz had been able to give the team leeway. Both Spencer and Hotch had fully intended on taking advantage of that leeway, and the rest of the team helped when they had the capacity.

Turning back to your file, Spencer shook his head, “I’ll go if Hotch goes.” He knew there was no way Hotch would be leaving the office tonight, the only reason Hotch went home anymore was for Jack, and he was at a sleepover tonight.

JJ’s shoulders slumped in abject disappointment as her eyes followed Dave as he exited Hotch’s office, the slamming of the door enough to make the lingering BAU agents flinch. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, defeated.

Rossi wagged a finger at Spencer, “Go home at some point tonight, kid,” he instructed.

Waving a quick goodbye, Spencer resumed making notes in the margins of the papers that were making a permanent home on his desk. He looked up when Hotch exited his office, eyes following him as he brewed a pot of coffee in the kitchenette. The two of them acknowledged each other with a nod before continuing on with the hunt.

Both of them knew the odds, that you had been gone this long and there was a good chance that they’d never see you again. Despite that, Spencer would head up to Hotch’s office in about an hour, and the two of them would confer.

Eventually, the sun set, and a thunderstorm rolled in, the flashes of light coming in through the windows as he began to consider going for another cup of coffee.

Wiping a hand down his face, he inwardly groaned as his phone started to ring. Half expecting it to be JJ, he was surprised to find that it was an unknown caller. Clicking the answer button, he lifted the phone to his ear, “Hello, this is Dr. Reid.”

There was an eerie silence on the other end of the call, if he strained his ears, he could hear the pattering of rain. He tried to greet the other person again, but when there was no answer, he started to lower the phone to hang up.

“Can you come get me?” Your quiet voice came through the receiver, effectively knocking the wind out of Spencer’s lungs.

Fiddling with his belongings, Spencer gripped your file, “Where are you?” He asked urgently.

You sniffled, “I don’t know. A payphone off of twenty-eight.” If he strained his ears, he could listen to the rain. Spencer wondered if he could calculate how far away you were by the sound of the thunder where you were compared to where he was.

His chest ached at the exhaustion in your tone, imagining you had gotten approximately as much sleep as he had recently. That is to say, little to none. Pulling the phone slightly away from his face, he called out for Hotch, getting his attention and waving him over. “Y/N, can you see any mile markers or exit signs anywhere?” Spencer asked, bringing the phone back up to his ear.

“I can’t see much of anything,” you admitted. That made sense, your glasses had been recovered at your abduction scene. Spencer kept them in his bag with the rest of your belongings that had been released from evidence. “I feel lucky enough that I was able to find a pay phone,” you said, and for the first time, he noticed that you were whispering.

Glancing at the inside of his wrist, Spencer checked the time. JJ had mentioned something about Garcia staying in her office for a system update – what were the odds the tech analyst was still there? Stalking out of the bullpen, he made his way to her office, Hotch hot on his heels.

After knocking on the door, her voice rang out, “Enter, mere mortal.” Once she had recognized who it was, she greeted Spencer directly, “Ah, Dr. Reid, did you need a ride to JJ’s?”

“Can you locate a payphone based on the phone number?” He asked hurriedly, the longer you stood out there in the rain, the more danger you might be in.

A confused look was plastered on her face, but she turned back to her screens and started click-clacking away. “Most def, boy genius. Run me the digits,” she responded, pulling up some sort of database that Spencer didn’t recognize – probably for the best.

She typed the phone number just as quickly as he recited it, turning around and telling him that the pay phone in question was approximately thirty minutes away. You had only been thirty minutes away this entire time. “Send the coordinates to Hotch’s phone,” Spencer instructed, stepping toward the door. “Tell the rest of the team to come in,” he continued, “it’s Y/N.”

Each stage of grief flashed across Penelope’s face as she nodded assuredly, scrambling for her phone as she took care of notifications.

Impatiently, Hotch held the elevator door open as Spencer entered, keeping the phone up to his ear, “Stay on the phone,” he told you.

A desperate whimper came from your end of the call, “I don’t have any change. I found a few quarters on the ground, but I don’t have anything on me.”

“Stay on as long as you can, angel,” Spencer amended. “We’re on our way.”

The rain was worse than he had initially thought, but Mother Nature was no match for Aaron Hotchner. They were only about five minutes from the coordinates that Garcia had shared, and the phone call had dropped off before they were even on the main highway. The dropped call certainly didn’t help the rising tension in the SUV.

“Did she sound scared?” Hotch had asked for the nth time.

Not taking his eyes off of the map, Spencer nodded, “She sounded like she was stranded in the middle of the woods in Virginia, in a thunderstorm, and was using a pay phone as a lifeline.” His entire body was thrumming with nervous energy as they sped down the road, “but she’s alive.”

He didn’t miss the way Hotch’s knuckles turned white as he gripped the steering wheel. You being alive would have to be enough of a comfort to the both of them for now, but Spencer knew what your life meant to your father.

“There it is,” Spencer said, interrupting his thoughts with the recognition of a phone booth on the side of the road, in front of a seemingly abandoned gas station. In a moment of uncharacteristic recklessness, Spencer clambered out of the vehicle before it came to a full stop, an umbrella and jacket in tow.

Hesitantly, he approached the crumpled heap of limbs underneath the pay phone. It wasn’t a full booth, it had just enough coverage to prevent the payphone from short-circuiting. You had jammed yourself underneath it, trying to keep yourself as dry as possible.

Kneeling in front of you, he swept his sopping-wet hair from his face, “Y/N.” His voice was no more than a breath, he didn’t dare reach out to touch you — lest you not want to be touched. A strike of lightning lit your surroundings enough for him to note the bruise that had bloomed on your cheek.

As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he watched as your lips parted in recognition, “You came,” you whispered.

He nodded, “You called.” His heart soared as you shuffled yourself closer to him, allowing him to wrap the FBI-issued jacket around your rain-soaked frame. “Let’s get you out of this rain, alright?”

Standing up on shaky legs, Spencer helped you walk to the SUV where your dad was waiting, shining a flashlight to help guide you to the vehicle. Based on how heavily you were leaning on him, he could tell that your left leg was injured. Despite your injury, you stepped away from Spencer to hug your father.

For a moment, Spencer felt like he was intruding on a family moment, but he recalled all of the times he had been invited to join in Hotchner festivities these last few years and allowed his eyes to meet Hotch’s.

The two of them shared an understanding look as Hotch pulled away, “We should get you to a hospital,” he said, cupping your face with parental gentleness.

Spencer helped you into the SUV, unable to put any pressure on your leg, you depended on the handles to pull yourself up. As you maneuvered yourself, he tried to determine what your injuries were. His eyes scanned your body until he made his way back to your face, “Angel, keep your eyes open.” He felt as if he was asking a lot of you, but he didn’t know if you had taken a hit to the head. Falling asleep could do more damage. “Hey, Y/N?” He said, watching as your eyes fell shut and your head slumped forward. “Hotch,” Reid said urgently from the backseat.

Understanding perfectly, Hotch hit the lights on the SUV and turned on the siren. Flashes of red and blue signaled to other drivers that there was an emergency.

You were silent.

As soon as they had gotten you to the emergency room, your entire demeanor had changed. Spencer guessed that you had been in fight or flight when they had picked you up from the phone booth, and now that you were getting the help that you needed, all of the fight had vacated your being.

In the white fluorescence of the hospital, he could see how drained you looked. Once the doctors got their hands on you, you refused to let him or your dad near you.

Hotch was in the hallway, talking on the phone with your Aunt Jessica while he tried to arrange childcare for Jack so he could stay with you - the leader of your care team estimated you’d be in the hospital for at least a few days.

While you had been mobile when they came to get you, your energy had left along with your adrenaline, and eventually, the best course of action was to just let you sleep. That was how Spencer ended up sitting cross-legged in a stiff hospital chair, watching over you as you slept.

Respectful of your wishes, he kept a fair distance from you, but you’d be hard-pressed to convince him to let you out of his sight. There were tubes and wires going every which way from your body, oxygen, an IV, and electrodes monitored your life. Boiling you down to a collection of numbers that showed Spencer just how alive you were.

The doctors suspected you had bacterial pneumonia, but they were still waiting on the results of your chest X-ray to make a formal diagnosis. Your presumed leg injury had turned out to be a bruised hip bone – part of a sickening pattern that reflected that of someone who had been thrown down a flight of stairs.

A knock on the window to your hospital room caught his attention, causing him to turn his head and come face to face with Rossi and Blake. Opening the blinds so that he’d be able to keep an eye on you from the hallway, Spencer stood up and joined his colleagues in the corridor.

“What’s the report?” Rossi asked, nodding in the direction of your room, and placing his hands on his hips.

Spencer rubbed the back of his neck before responding, “The doctor said that all things considered, she’s in good shape, but…” Shaking his head to wake himself up, he crossed his arms in front of his chest, “She’s sick and was beaten. Right now, she’s sleeping. We have no idea she was running in the woods, so it’s not surprising that she’s exhausted.”

He continued on to list other maladies that the doctors had provided, dehydration, malnutrition, one cut on your arm that needed to be stitched, and that was just scratching the surface. Dave nodded understandingly, “but the sooner we get to ask her questions, the better.”

Shrugging, Spencer looked over at your father, and then back to you, “When she wakes up on her own,” he murmured, watching as a nurse checked on your IV. He didn’t want to risk waking you up or asking too much too soon of you. “Can I ask you a quick question?” He lifted a finger inquisitively to the nurse who was walking out of your room, scribbling something on your chart.

The nurse hummed in response, raising her eyebrows as she waited for him to ask.

“Do you think the infection has anything to do with her silence? She might be hurting so she isn’t talking?” He asked, it wasn’t unheard of, when people were in a lot of pain, sometimes they coped with silence.

While the nurse might have an excellent bedside manner, the three profilers took note of the concern in her eyes. “The silence might have more to do with her psychological well-being than her physical well-being,” she responded, it was a healthcare way of trying to appease them. Really, they didn’t know much better than the members of the BAU did.

Blake’s eyebrows shot up in curiosity, “Could it be catatonia?”

“In order to diagnose catatonia, she’d need to display three of twelve symptoms. Those are stupor, catalepsy, waxy flexibility, mutism, negativism, posturing, mannerism, stereotypy, agitation, grimacing, echolalia, and echopraxia. So far, she really only meets one of twelve,” Spencer answered.

Shrugging, the nurse pointed at Spencer with her pen, “What he said.” She looked down at the chart before continuing, “Her care team leader called for a psych consult, but we won’t really know one way or the other until she wakes up.”

Nodding, Rossi nodded in acknowledgment, “What else could it be?”

Pursing her lips, the nurse tilted her head to the side, “Peritraumatic disassociation is another possibility, but again, we won’t know until she wakes up.���

The waiting game began. As luck would have it, an FBI agent being abducted created a lot of paperwork, so Hotch was holed up in a conference room while Rossi and Blake worked on the profile. JJ and Morgan stayed back at Quantico with Garcia to look back at what information Hotch and Spencer had been gathering over the past twenty-seven – now twenty-eight – days.

Spencer stayed with you, tucking your blanket around you when he watched goosebumps sprout along your arms. He paid close attention to everything that the doctors and nurses said about your condition, relaying everything to Hotch via text message. They ran a kit on you, and the only solace was that there was a chance that they could DNA match whoever did this to you.

He left that last part out of his message to your father.

As soon as you started waking up, Spencer had to leave the room, watching from the hallway as medical personnel flurried around your bed. At first, he had assumed your aversion to himself and your dad was an overall aversion to men, but you didn’t flinch when it came to the male doctor who was checking your vitals manually.

A nurse peeked out from the door, “Are you Dave?”

Furrowing his eyebrows, Spencer cocked his head back in confusion, “No? I’m not – why?” He asked, gaze flickering back into your room as you scrawled something on the piece of paper that a nurse had handed you.

“She said she’d talk to Dave,” the inquiring nurse shrugged, turning back into your room, and adjusting your pillow beneath your head.

Still confused, Spencer slipped his phone out of his pocket, nimbly typing a message to Rossi before returning the phone to its home in his slacks. Trying to respect your peace, Spencer remained in the hallway, leaning back against the wall as he heard the familiar sound of Italian leather boots turning the corner. “Are you sure she didn’t mean Aaron?”

Spencer shook his head, mirroring the older man’s confusion, “She physically wrote your name out. She’ll only speak to you,” he answered, trying to hide his own pain for the sake of ridding you of yours. If you wouldn’t talk to your father or himself, it made the most sense that you’d talk to Rossi. You’ve known him the entire time your father worked in the BAU.

Shrugging, Rossi walked into your room and approached you with the care of a man approaching a deer. He remained this way until he made it to your bed, and Spencer watched as he smoothed your hair away from your face affectionately.

You leaned into his touch, and Spencer didn’t miss the cue. When was the last time anyone had touched you with love in their heart?

He had kissed you goodbye before you went on your run, just thirty minutes before your location turned off and your usual Thursday route turned into a hunting ground. With what you did for work, you switched paths frequently, but someone had been watching you, or at least, that was the conclusion the team had drawn.

Watching as Rossi spoke with you, Spencer noticed one anomaly – you weren’t speaking to him. Instead, all of his questions were answered with blinks or scribbling on paper.

The two of you went until a nurse came in, telling the both of you that they needed to run a few more tests. Taking his leave, Rossi told you something that Reid couldn’t quite make out and rejoined him in the hallway.

“What did you say to her? Just now?” Spencer asked, his need for any sort of contact with you becoming so desperate that he’d now accept it secondhand.

Frowning, Rossi placed both of his hands on his hips, “I called her piccolina, I used to call her that all the time when she was just a little thing running around the old BAU bunker.” Taking a moment, Rossi pulled out his little notebook and read through it. “White male, late twenties to early thirties, sometimes gone for days on end citing ‘work,’ but she never figured out what he did for work.”

Spencer’s eyes burned at the realization that you had been working your own case while being victimized, he peered in through the window as a nurse drew your blood.

“She said he drove a dark American sedan, making it either blue or black,” Rossi continued to list off, eyes following Blake as she approached the two of you. “Y/N said the car was filthy like he had been living out of it when he couldn’t get to her in the woods. The car had an Ohio party plate on it with expired tags.”

Blake arched a brow at the new information, “Party plate?” She said quizzically, looking at Spencer for clarification.

Nodding, Spencer looked over at his friend, “That’s the colloquial name for restricted license places. They’re given to people who are convicted of DUIs, which is actually called an OVI in Ohio. In Ohio, they’re yellow with red print, and the only state to have something similar is Minnesota where they call them whiskey plates because they all start with the letter W.”

“Well, he’s confident. Maybe too confident, driving around with expired tags and a license plate that already puts a spotlight on him,” Blake said thoughtfully, adding to the profile in her mind. “We should get this information to Garcia, maybe look for people who recently relocated from Ohio with those plates,” she suggested to Rossi.

Rossi nodded, skillfully flipping the cover back over his notepad and gesturing for Blake to follow him to the conference room, effectively leading Spencer to his own devices. When the nurse left to bring the vials of blood to the lab, he returned to your room, taking his seat on the edge of the room – as far away as he could get while keeping his eyes on you.

He looked up to your bed, catching you staring at him. As soon as you knew you had been caught, you turned your head to the other side, averting your gaze toward the window.

Every thirty minutes or so, Spencer moved the chair approximately five inches closer to you, by four in the morning, he had closed half of the space between you. He kept his eyes on you, watching as you stared thoughtfully at the ceiling. You had that crease between your eyebrows that told him you were thinking too hard, and he had to sit on his hands to stop himself from reaching out and touching it as if he could soothe all of your bad thoughts.

In the doorway, Rossi had appeared, garnering your attention as you propped yourself up on the flat hospital pillows. “We got him,” Rossi announced to the room, a reserved smile on his face.

Spencer watched as you visibly relaxed on the bed, your face softened as your eyebrows relaxed. Rossi explained some next steps, but he was only half listening, he could only focus on you.

Once Dave was gone, Spencer took a leap of faith and shuffled the chair to your bedside, “How are you feeling, angel?” He asked, taking up a muted tone.

You stared at him, blinking at him until, eventually, your face crumpled, and you leaned toward him.

Not missing a beat, Spencer stood up from his chair so that he could sit on the edge of your bed, meeting you in the middle, he gently wrapped his arms around you, rubbing small, soothing circles along your back with the flat of his hand.

In the past twenty-eight days, Spencer thought that being reunited with you could fix all of the hurt in his chest, but this, right here, was a different kind of pain. Tears sept through the fabric of his shirt just as soon as they fell from your eyes, and all of the hurt that he had felt before just morphed into a different kind of suffering.

His heart ached at the sight of you in this much pain, so much emotional turmoil that you had silenced yourself. What was he supposed to say in order to comfort you? ‘You’re okay,’ was wholly false, and ‘it’s alright’ felt like a cruel joke. You very clearly weren’t okay, and none of this was alright.

“I’m here,” he reassured you, his voice no more than a croak as he tried to swallow his own emotions. “I’m right here,” he repeated, continuing his ministrations on your back until you had cried yourself to sleep.

With your body in its weakened state, Spencer carefully adjusted you onto the bed, making sure none of your tubes or wires were kinked before settling back down in his chair and taking your hand in his.

Around the time the sun came up, your care team came through for morning rounds and woke you up to thoroughly inspect your status. Once they left you to your own devices – with the promise of food in half an hour – Spencer focused all of his attention on trying to coax you into speaking to him.

Tenderly, he dragged a finger across your forehead before continuing down the bridge of your nose, “I’d really like to hear your voice, sweetheart.” His voice was gentle, maintaining a subdued tone in the early hours of the morning.

He watched as you sighed, deflating all of the air in your lungs as you tipped your head to the side, interrupting his movements. “I asked him to do it,” you murmured, voice raspy from lack of use.

“To do what?” Spencer asked, heart beating a little faster at the sound of your voice. He watched how you nervously gripped a fistful of sheets and looked at him. Only you weren’t looking at him, it was more like you were looking through him.

You took a deep, shuddering breath before you answered, “To kill me.”

The confession weighed heavy on his shoulders, but it wasn’t regarding anything against you. It was in the realization that you had been in so much physical and emotional turmoil while in captivity that you had asked for your own death. That even for a moment, you sat in front of a killer and asked for him to end your life as an act of mercy.

Noting Spencer’s lack of response, you continued speaking, “That’s why he let me go. I begged him to just end it and that took away any appeal for him.”

Last night. You had pleaded on behalf of your own demise last night. Carefully considering his next words, Spencer met your eyes and replied, “That must’ve taken a lot of courage.”

You faltered for a moment, evidently not having expected those words from him, “What are you talking about?”

It made sense to him now, why you wouldn’t talk to him or your dad. He felt like such a fool. You had been ashamed because you felt like your abductor had diminished your worth by breaking you down. Spencer knew better, “You stood your ground. You faced your own death, and you chose that over further suffering. Dying isn’t an undignified act, no matter how it comes upon you,” he reminded you, smoothing your hair away from your face as he watched your lip quiver.

“Thank you for staying,” you croaked as emotion closed your throat.

Spencer hummed thoughtfully, swiping a rogue tear from your cheek, “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

[confessedlyfannish]

Writing Prompt #12

Bruce is reading the paper when the pour of Tim's coffee goes abruptly quiet. It would be hard to pinpoint why this is disturbing if it wasn't for the way the soft, tinny sound the vent system in the manor makes cuts out for the first time since being updated in the 90s. The pour, Bruce realizes, has not slowed to a trickle before stopping. It has simply stopped. And there is no overeager clack of a the mug against the marble counter or the uncouth first slurp (nor muttered apology at Alfred's scolding look) immediately following the end of the pour.

Bruce fights the instinct to use all of his senses to investigate, and instead keeps his eyes on the byline of the article detailing the latest set of microearthquakes to hit the midwest in the last week. Microearthquakes aren't an unusual occurrence and aren't noticeable by human standards, which is why this article is regulated to page seven, but from several hundred a day worldwide to several hundred a day solely in the East North Central States, seismologists are baffled.

Bruce had been considering sending Superman to investigate under the guise of a Daily Planet article requested by Bruce Wayne (Wayne Industries does have an offshoot factory in the area) when everything had stopped twenty seconds ago. That is what he assumes has happened (having not moved a muscle to confirm) in the amount of time he assumes has passed. His million dollar Rolex does not quite audibly tick but in the absolute silence it should be heard, which confirms the silence to be exactly that—absolute.

While Bruce can hold his breath with the best of the Olympian swimmers, he has never accounted for a need to remain without blinking without being able to move one's eyes. Rotating the eyeballs will maintain lubrication such that one could go without blinking for up to ten minutes. But staring at the byline fixedly, he estimates another twenty seconds before tears start to form.

These are the thoughts Bruce distracts himself with, because he doesn't dare consider how Tim and Alfred haven't made a (living) sound in the past forty-five seconds. About Damian, packing his bag upstairs for school after a morning walk with Titus that was "just pushing it, Master Damian".

There is a knife to his right, if memory serves (it does). In the next five seconds—

"Your wards and guardian are fine, Mr. Wayne," the deepest voice Bruce has ever heard intones. For a dizzying moment, it is hard to pinpoint the location of the voice, for it comes from everywhere—like the chiming of a clocktower whilst inside the tower, so overpowering he is cocooned in its volume.

But it is not spoken loudly, just calmly, and when he puts the paper down, folds it, and looks to his right, a blue man sits in Dick's chair.

He wears a three piece suit made entirely of hues of violet, tie included. He has a black brooch in the shape of a cogwheel pinned to his chest pocket, a simple chain clipped to his lapel. Black leather gloves delicately thumb Bruce's watch (no longer on his wrist, somewhere between second 45 and 46 it has stopped being on his wrist), admiring it.

"You'll forgive me," the man says with surety. "Clocks are rather my thing, and this is an impressive piece." He turns it over and reveals the 'M. Brando' roughly scratched into the silver back. He frowns.

"What a shame," he says, placing it face side up on the table.

"Most would consider that the watch's most valuable characteristic." Bruce says, voice steady, hands neatly folded before him. Two inches from the knife. To his left, there is an open doorway to the kitchen. If he turns his head, he might be able to get a glance of Tim or Alfred.

He doesn't look away from the man.

"It is the arrogance of man," the man says, raising red eyes (sclera and all) to Bruce, "to think they can make their mark on time."

"...Is that supposed to be considered so literally?" Bruce asks, with a light smile he does not mean.

The man smiles lightly back, eyes crinkling at the corners. He looks to be in his mid thirties, clean-shaven. His skin is a dull blue, his hair a shock of white, and a jagged scar runs through one eye and curving down the side of his cheek, an even darker, rawer shade of blue-purple.

The man turns the watch back over and taps at the engraving. "Let me ask you this," he says. "When we deface a work of art, does it become part of the art? Does it add to its intrinsic meaning?"

Bruce forces his shoulders to shrug. "It's arbitrary," he says. "A teenager inscribes his name on the wall of an Ancient Egyptian temple and his parents are forced to publicly apologize. But runic inscriptions are found on the Hagia Sophia that equate to an errant Viking guard having inscribed 'Halfdan was here' and we consider it an artifact of a time in which the Byzantine Empire had established an alliance with the Norse and converted vikings to Christianity."

"The vikings were as errant as the teenager," the man says, "in my experience." He leans back in his chair. "I suppose you could say the difference is time. When time passes, we start to think of things as artistic, or historical. We find the beauty in even the rubble, or at least we find necessity in the destruction..."

He offers Bruce the watch. After a moment, Bruce takes it.

"The problem, Mr. Wayne, is that time does not pass for me. I see it all as it was, as it is, as it ever will be, at all times. There is no refuge from the horror or comfort in that one day..." he closes his hand, the leather squeaking. And then his face smooths out, the brief severity gone. He regards Bruce calmly.

"You can look left, Mr. Wayne."

Bruce looks left. Framed by the doorway, Tim looks like a photograph caught in time. A stream of coffee escapes the spout of the stainless steel pot he prefers over the Breville in the name of expediency, frozen as it makes its way to the thermos proclaiming BITCH I MIGHTWING. Tim regards his task with a face of mindless concentration, mouth slack, lashes in dark relief against his pale skin as he looks down at the mug. Behind him, Bruce can see Alfred's hand outstretched towards the refrigerator handle, equally and terrifyingly still.

"My name is Clockwork," the man says. "I have other names, ones you undoubtedly know, but this one will be bestowed upon me from the mouth of a child I cherish, and so I favor it above all else. I am the Keeper of Time."

"What do you want from me?" Bruce asks, shedding Wayne for Batman in the time it takes to meet Clockwork's eyes. The man acknowledges the change with a greeting nod.

"In a few days time, you will send Superman to the Midwest to investigate the unusual seismic activity. By then, it will be too late, the activity will be gone. They will have already muzzled him."

"Him."

"There is a boy with the power to rule the realm I come from. Your government has been watching him. The day he turned 18, they took him from his family and hid him away. I want you to retrieve him. I want you to do it today."

"Why me?"

"His parents do not have the resources you do, both as Batman and Bruce Wayne. You will dismantle the organization that is keen on keeping him imprisoned, and you will offer him a scholarship to the local University. You and yours will keep him safe within Gotham until he is able to take his place as my King."

This is a lot of information to take in, even for Bruce. The idea that there could be a boy powerful enough to rule over this (god, his mind whispers) entity and that somehow, he has slipped under all of their radars is as frustrating as it is overwhelming. But although Clockwork has seemed willing to converse, he doesn't know how many more questions he will get.

"You have the power to stop time," he decides on, "why don't you rescue him? Would he not be better suited with you and your people?"

"Within every monarchy, there is a court," Clockwork. "Mine will be unhappy with the choice I have made," he looks at Bruce's watch, head cocked. "In different worlds, they call you the Dark Knight. This will be your chance to serve before a True King."

Bruce bristles. "I bow to no one."

"You'll all serve him, one day," Clockwork says, patiently. "He is the ruler of realms where all souls go, new and old. When you finally take refuge, he will be your sanctuary." He frowns. "But your government rejects the idea of gods. All they know is he is other. Not human. Not meta. A weapon."

"A weapon you want me to bring to my city."

"I believe you call one of your weapons 'Clark', do you not?" Clockwork asks idly. "But you misunderstand me. They seek to weaponize him. He is not restrained for your safety, but for their gain."

"And if I don't take him?" Bruce asks, because a) Clockwork has implied he will be at the very least impeded, at worst destroyed over this, and b) he never did quite learn not to poke the bear. "You won't be around if I decide he's better off with the government."

"You will," Clockwork says, with the same certainty he's wielded this entire conversation. "Not because he is a child, though he is, nor because you are good, though you are, nor even because it is better power be close at hand than afar.

"I have told you my court will be unhappy with me. In truth, there are others who also defend the King. Together we will destroy the access to our world not long after this conversation. The court will be unable to touch him, but neither will we as we face the repercussions for our actions. I am telling you this, because in a timeline where I do not, you think I will be there to protect him. And so when he is in danger, even subconsciously, you choose to save him last, or not at all. And that is the wrong choice.

"So cement it in your head, Bruce Wayne," the man says, "You will go to him because I tell you to. And you will keep him safe until he is ready to return to us. He will find no safety net in me. So you will make the right choice, no matter the cost."

"Or, when our worlds connect again, and they will," his voice now echoes in triplicate with the voices of the many, the young, the old, Tim, Bruce's mother, Barry Allen, Bruce's own voice, "I will not be the only one who comes for you."

"Now," he says, producing a Wayne Industries branded BIC pen. "I will tell you the location the boy is being kept, and then I would like my medallion back, please. In that order."

Bruce glances down and sees a golden talisman, attached to a black ribbon that is draped haphazardly around the neck of his bathrobe, so light (too light, he still should have—) he has not felt its weight until this moment.

Bruce flips the paper over, takes the pen, and jots down the coordinates the being rattles off over the face of a senator. By his calculation, they do correspond with a location in the midwest.

"You will find him on B6. Take a left down the hallway and he will be in the third room down, the one with a reinforced steel door. Take Mr. Kent and Mr. Grayson with you, and when you leave take the staircase at the end of the hallway, not the elevator."

The man gets up, dusts off his impeccably clean pants, and offers him a hand to shake.

"We will not meet again for some time, Mr. Wayne."

Bruce looks at the creature, stands, and shakes his hand. It feels like nothing. The Keeper of Time sighs, although nothing has been said.

"Ask your question, Mr. Wayne."

"I have more than one."

"You do," Clockwork says. "But I have heard them all, and so they are one. Please ask, or I will not be inclined to answer it."

"What does this boy mean for the future, that you are willing to sacrifice yourself for him?"

There is a pause.

"So that is the one," Clockwork says, after a time. "Yes. I see. I should resolve this, I suppose."

"Resolve what?"

"It is not his future I mean to protect," the man says. "It is his present."

"You want to keep him safe now..." Bruce says, but he's not sure what the being is trying to say.

"I am not inclined," Clockwork repeats, stops. His expression turns solemn, red eyes widening. In their reflection, Bruce can see something. A rush of movement too quick to make heads or tails of, like playing fast forward on a videotape. "Superman reports no signs of unusual seismic activity. With nothing further to look into, you let it go in favor of other investigative pursuits. You do not find him, as you are not meant to. He stays there. His family, his friends, they cannot find him. His captors tell him they have moved on. He does not believe them, until he does. He stays there. He stays there until he is strong enough to save himself."

Clockwork speaks stiffly, rattling off the chain of events as if reading a Justice League debrief. "He is King. He will always be King. He is strong, and good, and compassionate, and he is great for my people because yours have betrayed his trust beyond repair. He throws himself into being the best to ever Be, because there is nothing Left for him otherwise. We love him. We love him. We love him. My King. Forevermore."

The red film in his eyes stall out, and Bruce is forced to look away from how bright the image is, barely making out a silhouette before they dull back to their regular red.

"I am not inclined," Clockwork says slowly, "To this future."

"Because of what it means in the present," Bruce finishes for him. "They're not just imprisoning him, are they."

"They will have already muzzled him."

Clockworks is right in front of him faster than he can process, fist gripping the medallion at his neck so tight he now feels the ribbon digging into his skin.

"Unlike you, Mr. Wayne," and for the first time, the god is angry, and the image of it will haunt Bruce for the rest of his life, "I do not believe in building a better future on the back of a broken child."

"Find him," the deity orders, and yanks the necklace so hard the ribbon rips—

Clack!

"sluuuuurp!"

"Master Timothy, honestly!"

"Sorry Alfred!"

[cevansbrat0007]

Regrets Only.

Summary: Ari reaches his limit with your latest TikTok prank...

Warnings: Mature Themes, Smut, Ari Being A Menace, TikTok Pranks, Shenanigans, Angry!Ari, Brat!Reade, Small Chase Kink, Light Manhandling. Biting, Spanking, Bondage, Handcuffs, Overstimulation, Cursing, Minors DNI

A/N: Prompt courtesy of @jamneuromain. Part my Sweet Renegade Series. Semi-proofread, not beta'd. All mistakes are my own. Likes, comments, and reblogs are always appreciated. Thanks for reading!

In all the times you’ve tried, you’ve never once regretted pranking your man with something you’d seen on TikTok – until today. Yes. Believe it or not, this time you might’ve gone a bit too far. 

Which is why you’re currently holed up in Ari’s fairly spacious closet, sipping on a bottle of water and munching on a granola bar while you wait for the bounty hunter to calm down. You lean back with a sigh, only to wince when you feel a shoe digging into your side. 

You make quick work of tossing it to the other side of the room before returning to the treat in your hand. But just as you go to take another bite, you hear something that makes your stomach sink - even as your pulse spikes. 

And it lets you know that you are well and truly fucked.

Earlier That Day (Roughly Twenty-Seven Minutes Ago)

After a solid ten minutes of vigorous stretching, you bend down to check the laces on your tennis shoes. Once they’re secure, you quietly make your way to the kitchen to retrieve the items you needed for your latest prank. The one you planned to play on your favorite unsuspecting bounty hunter, who was blissfully snoring away on a couch in the living room. 

Now, this particular one just so happened to be a little…bolder than either of your previous stunts. It required more courage, coupled with a dash of bravery, and a well thought out Plan B in the event things went south. 

You open the refrigerator and pull out the pack of hot dogs you’d bought during your last trip from the grocery store. While you’d originally told Ari that you wanted him to put them on the grill, he had no way of knowing that they would also be used to torture him. Common sense told you that you’d be better off keeping that tiny piece of information to yourself. 

Stifling a mischievous giggle, you extract one singular frankfurter from the package before resealing it and putting it away. Next, you move to your utility drawer to gleefully swipe a pair of scissors. 

This was the entire plan. You were going to quietly tuck a hot dog in your man’s zipper, and then wake him up so he could watch you snip it in half with a pair of scissors. In all the videos you watched – and you’d watched a number of them – every bleary eyed victim panicked as if you’d just cut off their actual dick. 

And therein lay the prank. 

The clips had left you in stitches for hours. So much so that Ari had noticed how much fun you were having, only to roll his eyes when you revealed that you were scrolling through his least favorite app on your phone.

Fucking TikTok.

He hated it. You loved it. Frankly, the only reason he even tolerated you telling him about the things you’d seen is because he could tell it brought you joy. 

Excitement buzzes through you as you tiptoe into the living room. You’re grateful to see that Ari is still sleeping, snoring soundly with one impressively muscled arm tucked behind his head. 

With gentle hands, you dutifully undo the zipper of his Levi’s before carefully inserting the hot dog. Since you don’t want to mess this up, you make sure to go slow, taking your time. You just knew this prank was going to be epic. 

Once that’s done, you briefly take a second to wipe your hands on your leggings before taking a deep breath. Well, it was now or never. Go big or go home, as they say. 

Leaning down, you grab Ari by the shoulder, attempting to jostle him awake. It takes a couple tries, but he does eventually open his eyes.

“Whaa–?” A grin breaks out across his handsome features as he emerges from his sleepy haze. “Hey, baby.”

“Hiya, Beast.” You offer him what you hope looks like your most unhinged smile and the reveal the pair of scissors that, up until now, you’d kept hidden behind your back. “How’s about I take a little off the top?” You sing, brandishing the shears. 

“The hell?” His confused blue eyes go wide as they follow the path of the scissors. Shock overcomes him as he watches, in what feels like slow motion, as you cut off a sizable portion of the frank. 

“WHAT THE FUCK?!” He roars, grabbing himself as he scrambles off the couch and onto the floor before proceeding to do the funniest, most awkward backwards crab walk you’ve ever seen in your life. 

You double over with laughter as Ari struggles to come to grips with the fact that you definitely did not just make him the next John Bobbitt your Lorena. He’s breathing hard as he rips the hot dog out of his zipper, holding it up to the light. 

“Oh my God, that was amazing!” You wheeze.

“The hell is wrong with you?!” He tosses the damned thing across the room before covering his face with his hands as he wills himself to calm down. “Have you lost your fuckin’ mind?”

Wiping tears from your eyes, you decide to put the bounty hunter out of his misery by whispering his least favorite phrase: “It was a prank!” A renewed wave of laughter hits you when you recall just how gobsmacked he’d been by the whole ordeal. God, your sides hurt something fierce. 

“Just what in the ever loving fuck would make you think that was funny?” Ari growls low in his throat as he finally sits up. And the look he’s giving you now…

It’s hot enough to burn right through you. And not in a sexy way.

“That’s just the magic of TikTok, I guess.” Your smile wanes as you watch your severely irritated boyfriend slowly climb to his feet. “I mean, you should’ve seen your face when–”

“When what?” Comes his quiet rumble, the sound reverberating deep in his chest. “When I thought you cut my dick off just now? Is that–is that what you’re laughing about?” The smile he offers you looks a little less than friendly.

“Um yeah. I’d say so.”

Instinct, as well as the need for self-preservation, has you taking a cautious step backwards. You were prepared to run if you had to. It was the whole reason why you’d stretched in the first place.

“Oh yeah?” Ari scrubs a palm over his ticking jaw. “Is that so?”

Instead of responding you decide to simply nod. Oh, and take another step backwards, of course.

“I’m sure that if you’d maybe stop and think about it –”

“Why don’t you c’mere so I can show you just how much I appreciate your so-called sense of humor?” He motions you forward, opening up his waiting arms. 

But you know better. 

“I, uh…” You hedge, bracing your hands in front of you. “Can see you might need some more time to appreciate the joke. So I’m just gonna…um…” You blow out a breath. “Give you some space so you can – eeeep!”

An incensed Ari picks that moment to strike - lunging at you with a speed that belies his size. Thank goodness you’re prepared. Ducking under his arms, you spin around and make a mad dash for the stairs. Squealing, you take them two at a time, hoping to make it to your sanctuary before he can get his hands on you. 

“Get your ass back here, Bird!” 

No way, pal!

Heart pumping, you grab the doorframe and all but slingshot yourself into Ari’s bedroom, slamming the door behind you. While it would only buy you a couple of seconds, that was really all you needed. 

You dive headlong into a nearby closet before swiftly closing the door and hitting the lock. As your chest heaves, you decide to take a seat on the floor before reaching for the bottle of water you’d previously planted in your hiding spot.

After guzzling almost half, you replace the cap. You knew you ought to conserve your rations. Just in case you were stuck here for a while. 

“I’m not on your shit today, baby. Okay? Today your man’s got time!” Ari bellows seconds later. “So, if I were you, I’d come on out now!”

Shaking your head, you vow to stay silent. So you say nothing, even when he tries the knob on the door that separates him from you. 

“Open up, sweetheart!”

Again you say nothing, in favor of unwrapping one of your favorite granola bars. They were the chewy kind, the ones that tasted more like dessert than they did something healthy.  

“I’ll come out when you calm down!” You finally yell back after you chew and swallow. “Fucking Beast.” You grumble under your breath.

“Oh, I’m more than calm.” The weight of his sardonic chuckle is not lost on you. “Why don’t you come on out and see?” You can’t help but jump when one of his fists pounds on the door. “I swear…I just wanna talk.”

“I don’t believe you!” 

“You’re gonna open this door, darlin’.”

“No, I’m not!” You hiss, throwing one of his shoes at the wall for good measure.

“Yes, you are.” Ari hits back. “Now, you can either come out on your own, or…”

“Or else what?” 

“Or, I’ll come in there and get you. And trust me, little Bird…that’s the last thing you want.”

“Yeah?” You spit, meanwhile inwardly lamenting your man’s lack of a sense of humor for the umpteenth time. “Well…” You take another bite of your granola bar. “I’d like to see you try.”

Famous last words.

Ari whistles low, making you shiver. “Wait right there, baby. I’ll see you in a minute.”

You let out a sigh of relief once you get the sense that you’re finally alone. As funny as it all had seemed initially, you were quickly coming to regret this particular prank. The longer you sat in this closet, the more you began to honestly examine – and then reexamine – your life choices.

Perhaps it was time to give your newfound love of pranking your bounty hunter a break. Lips pursed in thought, you allow yourself another bite of your chewy bar. Only to frown when you hear a very familiar sound that fills you with instant regret.  

Apparently Ari had returned. And he’d brought his power drill. Fuck!

Your mouth goes dry as the sound grows louder. And then you’re forced to watch in horror as your man makes fast work of literally removing the closet door from its hinges. It was the last thing you ever expected your normally rather patient and understanding boyfriend to do. 

“There’s my girl.” Ari’s dangerous purr comes as he picks up the now useless slab or wood and sets it aside like it weighs almost nothing. “C’mon out of there so we can talk.” 

When you don’t move, your bounty hunter decides to come get you. He hauls you out by your wrist, making sure not to bruise you in the process.

“Beast, don’t you think you’re being a little dramatic? I mean – ooh!” You scoff, only to rise on your toes when his free hand comes down on your vulnerable ass. Hard.

“Ow!”

“Let me make something very clear here, darlin’.” He leads you over to the bed before sitting down and then pulling you over his knee. “You want to waste time messin’ around on that stupid app you love so much? Fine.” Ari slaps your rump again, forcing you to bury your face in the covers to keep from crying out. 

“But where I’m gonna draw the line right now is you testin’ ‘em out on me. Unless you’re in that kitchen whipping up a new recipe I am not to be your guinea pig. You get me?”

His heavy palm comes down hard again when you don’t respond. This time he takes a moment to massage your cotton covered backside. “Do. You. Get. Me.” Each word is peppered by a solid smack.

“Yes!” You wail, although it comes out slightly muffled. 

Still not satisfied, Ari goes to grip the waistband of your leggings, dragging them down to your ankles, complete with your simple, white cotton panties. “This could’ve been a relaxing Sunday for us, little Bird. Just mindin’ our own business.” You can’t help but shiver when you feel him fondle your upturned ass, molding and massaging your burning cheeks. “But you just had to go and be a brat, didn’t you?”

“I–I’m sorry!”

It was too little, too late. And you both knew it.

“Oh now, you’re sorry.” He mocks before raining down a fury of perfectly-timed smacks. “I love you, baby. I do. But I also know you. You’re not really sorry – at least not yet.” 

Ari eases out from beneath you, all the while demanding that you remain face down with your reddened ass pushed up in the air so that he can enjoy the view while he prepares the next part of your punishment. And you had best believe you feel his sharp teeth sink into the left globe of your ass before he goes.

Consider it a parting gift.

One Hour Later…

And that’s how you found yourself handcuffed to the bed, courtesy of the signature purple, butter leather cuffs he’d had made for you. Unfortunately for you, you’d learned that he’d recently purchased another set…

For your ankles.

Your bounty hunter smiles as he picks up one of your vibrators – the one you’d purchased together – before applying it to your already oversensitive clit. Bucking your hips, you try to escape the torture.

With no such luck.

You desperately tug at your restraints, even as your cries fall on deaf ears. No matter how many times you promised to never play another prank on him ever again, it still wasn’t enough. Instead he’d continued to keep you bound while he worked out his anger…

By ruthlessly overstimulating your poor, sweat slicked body. No matter how many times you came, no matter how many times you threatened to scream yourself hoarse, he kept demanding more.

Because, according to Ari, since you’d taken a few years off his life, you apparently owed him as many orgasms by way of apology as you were able to give. Which meant you were going to be sore as hell tomorrow. 

Which was why, in this moment, although you could feel another orgasm threatening to overtake you, you were filled with nothing but…

Regrets only.

END  

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[inlovewithpandora]

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨ Summers In Pandora Masterlist ୧˚｡˚ ⋆

About — Welcome to my masterlist which will contain all my written works for me and @neteyamsoare’s event ! if you want to join it as well, our prompts and guidelines are posted here!!

Advisory — 17+ Only! The content of these posts will contain nsfw content so if you aren’t 17 or older please don’t interact! Warnings will be given at the top of every fic so please interact carefully!

Notes — I’m so excited to be posting this list and sharing what character I’ll be pairing with each prompt! July is almost here and i can't wait to show y'all what I’ve been working on and i’m excited to read the fics you guys fics as well!! ・If you would like to be tagged in any of these works click here — Special Events Taglist

Day One — Age Gap // Tonowari

Day Two — One Bed // Neteyam

Day Three — Angry/Hate Sex // Lo’ak

Day Four — Discipline // Neytiri

Day Five — Jealousy // Tsu’tey

Day Six — Choking // Ao’nung

Day Seven — Makeup Sex // Neteyam

Day Eight — Corruption // Tonowari

Day Nine — Morning Sex // Jake Sully

Day Ten — Lactation // Jake Sully

Day Eleven — Somnophilia // Tsireya

Day Twelve — Mirror Sex // Neteyam

Day Thirteen — Sex Pollen // Lo’ak

Day Fourteen — Dilf/Milf // Jake Sully

Day Fifteen — Drunk Sex // Neteyam

Day Sixteen — One Night Stand // Lo’ak

Day Seventeen — Quickies // Lo’ak

Day Eighteen — Forced Proximity // Ao’nung

Day Nineteen — Dirty Talk // Neteyam

Day Twenty — Recording/Sex Tape // Spider

Day Twenty One — Submission // Lo’ak

Day Twenty Two — Friends With Benefits // Lo’ak

Day Twenty Three — Mutual Masturbation // Neteyam

Day Twenty Four — Cowgirl/Reverse Cowgirl // Lo’ak

Day Twenty Five — Exhibition/Voyeurisum // Tsireya

Day Twenty Six — Breeding/Mating Press // Ao’nung

Day Twenty Seven — Degradation // Ao’nung

Day Twenty Eight — Caught Masturbating // Ao’nung

Day Twenty Nine — Manhandling // Tonowari

Day Thirty — Shower/Ocean/River // Ralak

Day Thirty One — Body Worship/Praising // Ao’nung

— all rights reserved © INLOVEWITHPANDORA 2024. all fanfics belong to me, do not copy, translate, repost nor recommend on tiktok any of the works seen here.

[erenjaegerwifee]

Summers In Pandora Masterlist

🌸I firstly want to say a quick thank you to @neteyamsoare and @inlovewithpandora for making this beautiful prompt list and I’m so happy to be able to write it!

🌸 please note my context is 18+ if that makes you uncomfortable do not read or interact with my post

🌸 if you would like to be added to my Taglist please let me know! Do not repost my work on any other website or app.

Day One: Age gap // Jake

Day Two: One bed // Lo'ak

Day Three: Angry/Hate sex // Lo'ak

Day Four: Discipline // Neytiri

Day Five: Jealousy // Neteyam

Day Six: Choking // Ao’nung

Day Seven: Make up sex // Jake

Day Eight: Corruption // Jake

Day Nine: Morning Sex // Neteyam  

Day Ten: Lactation // Neteyam

Day Eleven: Somnophilia // Tsireya

Day Twelve: Mirror Sex // Tsireya

Day Thirteen: Sex Pollen // Neteyam

Day fourteen: Dilf/ Milf // Neytiri

Day Fifteen: Drunk Sex // Neteyam

Day Sixteen: One Night Stand // Lo'ak

Day Seventeen: Quickies // Tsireya

Day Eighteen: Forced Proximity // Neteyam

Day Nineteen: Dirty Talk // Lo'ak

Day Twenty: Recording/ Sex Tape // Neteyam

Day Twenty-One: Submission // Ao'nung

Day Twenty-Two: Friends with Benefits // Neteyam

Day Twenty Three: Mutal Masturbation // Neteyam

Day Twenty Four: Cowgirl/ Reverse Cowgirl // Lo'ak

Day Twenty Five: Exhibition/ Voyeurism // Tsireya

Day Twenty Six: Breeding/ Mating Press // Jake

Day Twenty Seven: Degradation // Jake

Day Twenty Eight: Caught Masturbating // Neteyam

Day Twenty Nine: Manhandling // Neteyam

Day Thirty: Shower/Ocean/River // Neteyam

Day Thirty One: Body Worship/ Praising // Tsireya

[bakugoushotwife]

kylee here and welcome to Kinktober 2023! prepared to be wowed by all the prompts and characters we have coming up this October! all will have individual warnings + additional kinks included and featuring a curvy!f!reader.

‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎ ‎‎ ✧*̥˚ 𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐓𝐎𝐁𝐄𝐑*̥˚✧

day one: daddy kink x kento nanami / read now!!

day two: blindfold x satoru gojo / read now!!

day three: mirror x keigo takami / read now!!

day four: voyeurism x choso kamo / read now!!

day five: size kink x toji fushiguro / read now!!

day six: dacryphilia x touya todoroki / read now!!

day seven: edging x kento nanami / read now!!

day eight: overstimulation x satoru gojo / read now!!

day nine: bondage x kento nanami / read now!!

day ten: breeding x choso kamo / read now!!

day eleven: monsterfucking x katsuki bakugou / read now!!

day twelve: threesome x satoru gojo x suguru geto / read now!!

day thirteen: somnophilia x shouto todoroki / read now!!

day fourteen: degradation x toji fushiguro / read now!!

day fifteen: brat-taming x suguru geto / read now!!

day sixteen: femdom x naoya zen'in / read now!!

day seventeen: sex pollen x yuuta okkotsu / read now!!

day eighteen: cockwarming x tomura shigaraki / read now!!

day nineteen: hate sex x satoru gojo / read now!!

day twenty: make-up sex x suguru geto / read now!!

day twenty-one: impact play x katsuki bakugou / read now!!

day twenty-two: cunnilingus x megumi fushiguro / read now!!

day twenty-three: toys x kugisaki nobara / read now!!

day twenty-four: dry humping x keigo takami / read now!!

day twenty-five: biting x choso kamo / read now!!

day twenty-six: bondage x shouta aizawa / read now!!

day twenty-seven: car sex x maki zen'in / read now!!

day twenty-eight: uniform x satoru gojo / read now!!

day twenty-nine: hello,

day thirty: do you want to play a game?

day thirty-one: oh my god—it’s ghostface!