#explain that to me (because i already said that sometimes wearing braces can be worse for you)

[ishikawayukis]

now what we're not going to do is mourn someone's features that they decided to change for whichever reason because it's their body and they can (looking at you twitter)

[poppy-metal]

Omg for the eremin x reader au, so Eren and Armin got together way before the reader joined the equation, so she’s hella insecure and shy around them even though they love her you know? Which leads to her distancing herself from them because they don’t need her anyway, right? Just imagine the soft and hot heated make up session they had once the boys find out that their princess feels like she’s not that important to them.

please. gonna make it a part two this 

Cw: eren is mean at the beginning but he makes up for it <3 smut, the usual.

you becoming armins girlfriend but it leaving an empty feeling in your chest because you like eren too, knows how he looks at you and wishes he would just act on it. he’s there when armin fucks you, when armin makes you cream all over his cock, and sometimes he’ll join in, but he rarely touches you, the closest he’s gotten is holding you against his chest and spreading your legs for armin to fuck into you. you’d been turned on but also jealous of the way eren had leaned over the lock armin in a kiss, their tongues tangling, wishing you could kiss him.

It comes to a breaking point when eren displays his possessiveness again, hating how much armin is falling in love with you and how much he wants you too. He uses your desire to please him against you, makes you sit on a chair and watch as he fucks armin. They look so hot together, but it makes you feel a little squirmy on the inside, not being able to participate. And its made even worse when eren turns armins jaw so he’s looking at you, tells him “look at your little girlfriend watching you get your ass pounded, baby. tell her how good your daddies cock feels”

Armin, lost in the pleasure, of course doesn’t know any better. Looks at you with big blue puppy eyes as eren fucks his tight little hole and moans, “d-daddies cock feels so good inside me” 

“Bet she wishes she could feel it” eren grunts. “Your girlfriends a little slut who wants your boyfriends cock, sweetheart, just look at her drooling over it. You wanna be armin, baby?” 

You squeeze your thighs shut and dont answer. But eren knows, “Yeah, you do. Wanna feel what he feels every night when i slide my fat cock into his little boypussy. Desperate slut, wanna remind me what a real cunt feels like? hm?” 

Armin whimpers under him, curling his legs around eren and dragging him down for a kiss. Eren keeps eye contact with you when he pushes his tongue into armins mouth, fucks him through his orgasm and coos in his ear, “that’s it baby, come for daddy, be my good little girlfriend and show me yours is the only wet hole i need” 

Armin doesn’t know what eren has done, doesn’t know he’s pushed you away with just that line. Thinks this was all just kinkplay, and he’s so sweet. Making grabby hands for you and offering to get you off, tugging you towards his face, but you pull away. 

When you leave that night, flicking a glance at the bed where eren cradles armin to his chest, watching you go with his jaw clenched, you send a message to armins phone, before blocking them both on all forms of media. 

‘I can’t do this anymore. I’m sorry’ 

You don’t know about the explosive fight that occurs between armin and eren the next day. Armin has never been more angry, and it makes eren backpedal, try to hold him but armin just slaps his hands away. Tells eren he loves you and he knows eren likes you too so why is he so mean? 

Eren can do nothing but clench his teeth together and stare at the ground as he admits he doesn’t want to lose armin, and doesn’t want to need anyone else but him. Armin reminds him he’s okay with armin needing you, so armins okay with eren needing you too. He wants eren to want you, has timdily encouraged eren touching you or having sex with you a couple of times, but never psuhed it, though he notices erens lingering stares on you. 

Eren feels horrible, for pushing you away, for making you leave armin, for making you leave him. He just wanted armin to be happy, he didnt expect to want to make you happy too, or to want to open his arms to you. He knows he has to make it right, not just for armin but for him too. 

-----

When you come out of your workplace, you don’t expect to see eren there, nor do you really want to. He’s leaning casually against the back of his car, smoking a cigarette, but he puts it out when he sees you, crushing it under one of his combat boots. He looks sheepish. 

“Hey-” 

You don’t give him the time of day though, breezing by him. You don’t have a car so you planned on walking to the bus station. Usually armin came to pick you up, but considering you’d basically ended things with him, you hadn't expected any rides anymore.

“Hey” Eren says again, and this time he’s right behind you, hand grabbing your arm to stop you. He turns you to him. “We need to talk” 

You wish he wasn’t so pretty. You let yourself look at him, his stubble, his  jade green eyes, the boyish way his hair falls into his eyes. But you shake your head.  “No, we dont. You made that clear” 

You pull away from him and start walking again. “Armin misses you” He calls out, but you don’t stop. 

“I miss you.” 

Okay, you stop at that. Don’t turn around though. You hear his footsteps approach, feel his warmth at your back as he stops, too close. “I miss you” He says again. “Come with me?” 

You turn to look at him again, “Why should i? You miss me? You don’t even like me, jaeger. If you hated me being with your boyfriend so much why did you even ask me too?” 

He bites his lip, shifts on his feet and you can tell his uncomfortable. You’d gathered awhile ago that he wasn’t good with emotions. Tough shit. If he wanted you to get in his car, he’d need to explain some things.

He puffs out his cheeks and palms the back of his neck, and to your surprise, there is a rosy blush that starts to bloom on his cheeks. You don’t think you’ve ever seen eren blush. “I don’t like sharing what’s mine. And armin is mine” He says that with finality. 

You nod your head, starting to turn again. “Right-”

He catches you again. “But so are you” His gaze traps you.”I let you be armins because i thought i wouldn’t care, he still belongs to me, and i belong to him and you...weren’t supposed to belong to anyone. I didn’t want you too” 

You naw at your bottom lip, dipping your head, wondering where he’s going with this.

“But you do” He breathes out, making you look up again. His eyes are sharp, serious. “You belong to armin, you’re his girlfriend and he’s not letting you go, if i hadn’t come today he’d be here on his hands and knees begging for you to come back. and...what’s his is mine so..”

“So..?” You prod, breathless. 

“So you’re mine” He concludes. “Ours. I really wanna fuck you” 

The last part is said so casually you jerk, but eren keeps you steady. Pulls you in. Leans down and tucks a strand of your hair behind your ear. “Let me bring you back with me” his lips brush against yours. “So i can finally fuck my girlfriend” 

You do in fact let him bring you back. 

---

It’s surreal being between armin and eren, having them both touch you. You’re used to armins touch, but erens is new. You’re all shaky and acting like a skittish virgin when eren leans back against the headboard, lazily stroking his cock as armin fingers you open for him. 

His soft lips at your ear, “You take my cock so nice, baby. But daddy’s big. He’s gonna stretch you so good”

“Keep talking about my big dick and im gonna nut before i even get to fuck her” Eren grunts, eyes glued to wear armins slender fingers are sliding in and out of your slick cunt. 

Armin just giggles “But s’true, daddy. You’re gonna split her wide open. She’s tight too” He croons, making you whimper when he curls his fingers just right. “Had her pretty pussy all to myself for so long and she still squeezes my cock, You’ll like it” 

Eren eyes are all heat, eating you up. “Oh, i know i will. Daddy’s been wanting to fuck that cunt for ages” 

“S’that so?” Armin sounds a little condescending, having not been apart of their fight, you can’t tell he’s being kinda petty when he says. “Gonna have to show my girlfriend how much you appreciate her then, if you want her to be your girl you’ll have to make her cum lots, kay? Otherwise im keeping her for myself and you can sit there and watch like you always do while i show her how a good boyfriend fucks their girlfriends pussy”

He dips his lips to kiss your jaw, keeping eye contact with eren when he does. “If daddy doesn’t make you cum stupid, i’ll dump him”

Your cunt squeezes around his fingers at the same time eren growls and reaches out, practically plucking you from armins arms and placing you above him. 

You brace your hands on his board chest as the tip of his thick cock teases your hole, “w-wait” 

“Mm, fuck that” He moans, and pops the head in, eyes fluttering shut and rolling into the back of his skull when your the heat of your fluttering cunt envelops him, silky and smooth and wet, he guides you down the thick length of him. His head thunks against the headboard. “Jesus, fuck”

“E-eren” you whine, poor pussy squeezing around him helplessly as its stretched wide and filled to the brim with him. 

He bounces you once, making you choke on a whimper. “That’s not what we call me” 

Your eyes fill with overwhelmed tears, but you feel armins lips touch your spine as he kisses your back, encouraging you. “Go on, baby”

You wrap your arms around erens neck. “D-daddy” you say, hesitantly, barely breathing the word. 

But eren groans so loud, and eats your lips up in a kiss, rocking you back and forth on his cock, grinding you on it. “Yeah, baby” he pants into your open mouth. “Daddy’s got you. Gonna fuck my sweet little girlfriend tight pussy like she deserves” 

“About fucking time you did” you think you hear armin mutter, but you’re already to fucked out to care. 

[ginnympotter]

call it even

Chapter 1: you’ll always know me

A/N: This is the first chapter of a 2 (or possibly 3? who knows) chapter Muggle AU fanfic inspired by tis the damn season and dorothea by taylor swift hehe hope you like it :) You can also read it on AO3 here.

She felt a tap on her shoulder and took a deep breath. It was way too early in the morning, she had just gotten off a long flight where she barely slept a wink, and she just didn’t have it in her to talk to any fans without the coffee she was impatiently waiting for at the LAX Starbucks.

But she turned around anyway, bracing herself, and then saw a face that jolted her so much she supposed she wouldn’t need the coffee anymore. “Harry?”

“Hey, Ginny,” he smiled. Harry Potter was standing in front of her for the first time in almost a year, looking as handsome as ever. He was tired, his green eyes looking glazed behind his glasses, his hair pointing in all directions- though she could tell he didn’t try to comb it- wearing the grey-blue sweater she knew her Mum bought him years ago.

Without really thinking about it, she moved forward and hugged him, throwing her arms around his neck, and he put his around her waist and hugged her back, but he also let go first.

“What are you doing here?” she asked incredulously, trying not to think too hard about him breaking the embrace before she could.

“My students had a tournament against a school out here,” he explained. “We lost though.”

“I’m sorry,” she offered.

“Oh, don’t be, I don’t mind. But the kids all seem like they’re going to jump out of the plane before we can make it home. I was up until 2am consoling the quarterback. My assistant coach is talking them all down now out there while I grab us coffee.”

She nodded, biting her lip. And then blurted out, “Why didn’t you call?” At Harry’s confused look, she added, “to tell me you were in L.A.?”

He cleared his throat, and Ginny saw a light blush creep up his neck. “Well, I knew you were away for your match. I caught some of it, you played great, as always.”

“Oh,” she responded, feeling stupid. She sometimes forgot that as a member of the U.S. Women’s Soccer team her schedule was often public knowledge. She felt a tug at her heart thinking about Harry still supporting her after all this time. “Right, thanks. I wish I could’ve shown you around the city. Did you like it here?”

He shrugged. “Not bad, but big cities aren’t really my style. You know that,” he ended, a solemn note in his voice. “Have you been enjoying it out here?”

She mirrored his shrug. “It’s fine, I suppose. I like the weather, if that counts.”

“Nothing else?”

With most people she’d probably just lie and say she loved it, but with Harry she had a bad habit of always being blunt. “The traffic here is worse than what they warn you about, and honestly, it’s hard to make friends when it seems like everyone just wants to use you for your fame- or for the more famous people that you know.”

“Well, if you’re ever tired of being known for who you know, you know you'll always know me.” Harry offered her a sad smile. “I’m always a call- or a FaceTime- away. Not that a tiny screen is my ideal way of seeing you, but better than nothing.”

She wasn’t sure how to respond right away, as she could feel her whole body burning up and her throat closing. There was so much in the air between them. But the barista called out a cold brew, and at the same time they both said, “oh, that’s me,” then looked at each other and laughed. The first one had Ginny’s name on it, the one that followed five seconds later had Harry’s.

They walked away from the coffee pick-up area together, and Harry checked his watch. “Well, we have to board soon. I’m sorry this is the only way we got to see each other.”

“I’ll be home for Christmas,” Ginny told him in response. She originally didn’t plan on reaching out to him when she got back home, because she knew her brother and Harry’s best friend Ron would just tell him, and if he wanted to see her he could make that decision for himself. But suddenly this became information that she couldn’t hold in.

“Oh,” responded Harry, running his free hand through his hair. Her heart fluttered at that motion, as she knew what it meant- that he was nervous in a good way. “Well, that’s great! Let me know when you plan on getting in, I’d love to catch up, properly.”

“Yeah, me too,” she said, the sincerity spilling out against her will. She never could truly play it cool with him, not even when they were kids. She hugged him again, smelling home lingering on his sweater. “I will. Have a safe flight, Harry.”

His grip on her was tighter this time, even with coffee in hand, than the last. “You too,” he replied. And then stiffened and let go. “I mean, you already had your flight, so that made no sense. Have a safe...cab ride home, I suppose?”

Ginny laughed at his stumbling. “I’ll do my best.”

He smiled, raising a hand in a small wave as he walked back towards his students. “See you later, Gin.”

She returned the smile and watched him reach his students. She noticed one of them looking at her as if they recognized her. She saw him nudge Harry with his elbow before she turned around and began walking to find her cab driver. As she continued to stride forward she faintly heard him ask, “Mr. Potter, was that just… Ginny Weasley? Do you know her?”

***

It was her fault for thinking her brothers would give her some indication that Harry would be there. They knew she still had feelings for him, no matter how much she denied it and how many times she tried to move on, and yet they couldn’t even give her a heads up.

When Fred and George saw her exasperated expression, they rolled their eyes in unison as Fred put his arm around her. “Are you reverting back to your 11-year-old self, little sis?”

“Fuck off,” she said, shrugging out of her brother’s embrace. “You could have at least warned me.”

“I thought you were bold, or whatever,” said George. “Wasn’t that one of the three qualities you used to describe yourself in People Magazine?”

Harry began walking over to them. She mentally prepared herself as he hugged Fred and George and congratulated them on the joke shop’s expansion. As he turned his attention to Ginny, the twins quickly left to talk to other guests. He didn’t smile.

“Hi,” she said nervously. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”

“Hi,” he replied, one hand in his pocket, the other holding his drink. “Ron told me you landed three days ago.”

She gulped, feeling his hurt absorb her. “Well, I just got settled in and recharged, you know. I- I was going to text you.” Which was true; she did intend on keeping her promise to Harry at the airport, but didn’t know when the appropriate time would be- how do you know the right time to text your ex and first love to casually catch up?

He hummed, taking a sip of his beer. She absolutely despised cold Harry, she could feel it emanating off of him. “It’s fine,” he said, ostensibly lying. “I was catching up with some other people from school anyway. Remember Cho?”

Oh, he was cruel, bringing up his ex like that. “Obviously,” she almost spat. As if she could forget.

“Saw her and Neville, Hannah and Luna the other day.”

She had half a mind to mention Dean Thomas, her boyfriend right before Harry in her sophomore year, reaching out to her asking to go for a drink, but couldn’t find it in her to do it, so instead she just mirrored his cool and pretend unbothered tone. “I don’t remember asking, but thanks for the information.”

Harry’s frown became more clearly defined. “Fine, sorry to bother you.”

She felt a chill as he walked away from her, a familiar ache pooling in her abdomen. They were fighting like they were teenagers rather than grown adults. It was unlike him to start it- it was usually her- but she couldn’t really blame him, though. She knew at the end of the day that she was the main culprit, that she made him ache the way she did because she didn’t know how else to hold it on her own.

She watched him return to her brother Ron’s side and take another large sip of his beer. Ron’s wife and one of both Ginny’s and Harry’s closest friends, Hermione Granger, gave Harry an appraising look and then walked over to Ginny. Hermione gave her a short hug and then said, “Alright, which one of you said something stupid this time?”

Ginny scoffed, pulling away from her friend. “Oh, it’s nice to see you too, Hermione.”

“I saw you yesterday. So which one of you started it?”

“Obviously he did! He had the audacity to mention hanging out with Cho Chang to me.”

Hermione gave a look of utter exasperation. “That’s a new low for him.”

“I know!”

“But I’m assuming you replied with equal spite?”

She sputtered, crossing her arms. “Maybe so.”

“Well, you should have texted him, Ginny.”

“He should’ve texted me! ” she whispered sharply.

“But you told him at the airport-”

“No, I know that, but- I mean, he should have texted me after…” she trailed off, feeling ashamed of herself for being this upset. “After your wedding last year.”

“You mean after you two slept together again after my wedding last year.”

“Well, yeah. Once I got back to L.A. at least. But nothing.”

“You could’ve texted him then, as well.”

“Whose side are you on, anyway? I know Harry’s been your best friend forever and everything but I’m your sister-in-law! Doesn’t family by marriage mean anything to you?”

Hermione shook her head and rubbed her temples. “You two really need to sort out your issues on your own. But if it helps to know, he wasn’t really ‘hanging out’ with Cho. We were out with him and the others as well, Cho wasn’t in our group, she just happened to walk in with Michael Corner and they stopped by our table and said hi for a quick minute.”

“She’s dating Michael? My ex-boyfriend Michael?”

“Oh, yeah, they’ll be engaged any day now,” Hermione informed her.

“That lying piece of-”

“You’re both to blame here,” Hermione declared, using her I’m Putting My Foot Down voice. “Just act like adults for once and sort it out. Properly.”

Guilt enveloped her throughout the rest of the night and she hated how such a small exchange could do this to her, as she had to act like everything was okay, be happy for her brothers and talk about her life in L.A. and as a famous soccer player and sell the life she was living as one she was satisfied to have.

By the end of the evening, before he could leave, she found Harry by himself sitting and reading something intently on his phone. She took a deep breath and walked over to him. “Mind if I sit here?”

He looked up for a second, shook his head, and continued staring at his phone. She eased up just a tad, as she could tell his silence wasn’t his I’m Ignoring You silence, but rather his I’m Deep In Thought and Concentration silence. “Everything okay?” She asked, and when he glanced her way she gestured to his phone.

He gave a half-laugh, half sigh, looking back at his screen. “Yeah, it’s just some of these parents have no boundaries… emailing me during the holidays- on a Friday night no less. I’m just reading through them to decide if any of them are worth responding to outside of my automatic away signature.”

“Is this for the football team kids, or your English Literature students?”

“My Lit students, but there is some overlap. I have this one student, Danny, who’s a really great kid, and his parents are real dickheads, and they’re mad that he got a B+ instead of an A, despite me telling them last quarter that a B is a great grade, and Danny’s already self-conscious as it is and could use encouragement rather than nitpicking over bullshit-“

He caught sight of her face and quickly cut himself off, a blush spreading across his cheeks. She realized she was smiling- it was always nice to see Harry talk passionately about something- and quickly adjusted her facial features. He cleared his throat and closed his phone. “They can probably wait until after the holidays for me to repeat myself, I suppose.”

“I think that’s the right call,” she assured him.

He exhaled, running his hands through his hair and then over his face, trying to wipe off his exhaustion with it all. “Thanks.” He put his hands on his lap and looked at her fully, as he refused to do a couple of hours ago. “Ginny, I’m sorry-“

“No, I’m sorry,” she interjected. “I told you I’d let you know when I’d be here and I didn’t. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I let my frustration get the better of me,” he said with a sigh. “Classic Harry for you.”

She laughed, folding her legs into a pretzel in her seat. “Can’t blame you, really, as I’d probably behave the same.” She let out a breath and continued on. “Look, I did mean to text you and tell you I was back. I just… I don’t know, I was stupid, I thought it had to be the right timing, but I guess that doesn’t make much sense.”

“What, were you waiting for a sign or something?” he asked. He was joking when he asked, but as he processed the look on her face he rolled his eyes and chuckled. “Wow, Gin. You never stop amazing me.”

She blushed and laughed nervously, thinking of all the times in the past Harry had said something like that to her. She wanted to hear more of it, over and over, even when he’s saying it in jest. “That is what I do best.”

His features sharpened a bit and he leaned forward. “Well, how’s me asking to see you tomorrow for a sign?”

She put her hand on her chin and pretended to think about it. “A pretty good one, I’d say.”

[pomegranates-and-blood]

Those who weave (Act I, Ch 1)

Those who weave Masterlist

Pairing: Ivar/Reader, Ivar/Freydis (I warned ya)

Word Count: 4.7k

Warnings: 18+, smut, and then just the usual stuff for this story. The general warnings can be found on the masterlist, please keep them in mind because I won’t warn those in specific chapters.

A/N: So, here’s the first chapter! I hope you like this, I would love to hear your thoughts on this! Fair warning this takes place in an very Alternate Universe lol, I hope to explain it well within the story itself, but if I don’t just shoot me an ask and I’ll bullet point the main changes or smth. For character ages, think around 6b, diverts greately from 5b canon onwards tho.

Also, there’s passing reference to an AU version of Ivar and Freydis’ first interaction (in 5x03), you can find it here. Passing mention, nothing more, but still, it’s there if you wanna read it.

The dream is always the same, the boat is always flimsy underneath you, the waters are always gentle around you.

And the wanderer is always kind towards you.

“If you could ask the Gods for one thing, and one thing alone…tell me, wanderer, what would that be?”

The question is always the same too. And so is your answer.

Looking into his eyes you cannot help but think back to the waters you are so used to seeing around you in your dreams. The endless blue of his eyes that, like the all-encompassing waves of your dreams, try to understand it all, reach it all, by a look alone.

Like now, as he puts heavy hands on the sides of your hips and brings you closer, until you are standing between his legs.

You search his gaze, and though all you can think of still is the endless blue of a surprisingly calm sea, it is you who asks,

“What is it you want, Ivar?”

Head tilted to the side, he doesn’t hesitate to retort, “You.”

“You have me.” You promise playfully, endlessly amused at the annoyed narrowing of his eyes.

“Are you planning on being difficult for much longer?”

“That depends.” You reply, a little sing-song in your words and a growing smile on your lips as you wait for Ivar to bite the bait.

“On what?”

“Will you tell me what it is you want?”

His shoulders rise and fall with a deep angry sigh, but after a moment he gains a glint in his eye, and his hands on your sides creep lower, venturing down the curve of your ass.

“I want to use my tongue on you, have you hold yourself over my face as I make you shake and scream my name,” He tells you, sending a pang of heat through you. His eyes remain on you, hungry, as he continues, “And then I want to be inside you, deep inside you while you are still coming down from your high so I can feel you tight over my-…”

“That is not what I-…”

“You asked, love.” He interrupts, annoyingly satisfied with himself.

You cannot help the effect of his words on you, and even as your roll your eyes pushing lightly at his chest, there’s a part of you that feels heat settle low in your belly at his words.

Ivar grasps your wrists as he falls back on the bed, tugging you forward until you are held above him face to face.

You don’t even consider stopping yourself from leaning down and kissing him. How could you, when he looks so lustful and open and yours?

The errant thought that he very much isn’t all of those things is quickly pushed away by the heady daze of lust that settles over you, even now as you exchange slow and languid kisses. Fire-like warmth takes over, an ember awaiting only the faintest change in the wind to start a wildfire.

You kiss him and let yourself forget, you kiss him and give your hands free reign over him, you kiss him and forget to think or feel anything that isn’t him, that isn’t this.

Ivar pulls back, just slightly, just enough so that he can speak, but when your eyes open to look at him the words die in his throat.

You take in the way his cheeks and the top of his ears still after all this time sport the faint shade of red, the way his gaze seems a little out of focus when your kiss-bitten lips pull into a smile, and realize whatever it is he was to ask for you would gladly give.

Thankfully, his request is simple enough, in more ways than one.

A petulant tug at the edge of your nightdress, and a gruff, “Off.”

You quirk your eyebrow, teasing, “Is that what you want?”

His chest expands under you with a heavy breath, “I swear by all the Gods, woman…”

“Don’t try to threaten me,” You chastise, one last peck against his lips before you lean back to take off your dress. “It never works.”

His eyes rake over you, painstakingly slow and burning you in the hunger that shines in them, a reverent edge to the way he licks his lips as he takes in your naked body that makes you feel as if this were the first time.

You take a step closer, and when Ivar’s eyes return to you, he tilts his head to the side, “Doesn’t it?”

You roll your eyes, “Arrogance isn’t a good look on you.”

“That wasn’t what you said wh-…ah.” His words die in a soft sound somewhere between a gasp and a moan when you slide one hand between his legs, cupping his hardening cock and drinking in the sight before you.

You don’t think there will ever come a day you don’t treasure this, the way he gasps, the way his eyes flutter shut, the way he tilts his head back and bares his throat to you.

Pressing your body against his, you move your hand to reach for him under the pants he wears, grasping at him just in between softly and roughly, and kiss a trail along his jawline as you move your hand up and down over his cock, passing the pad of your thumb over the tip.

A call of your name, breathy, beseeching, and all thought other than having him leaves your mind.

You make quick work of the laces of his pants, and slide them off his legs until there is nothing in between the two of you, until the warmth of his skin seeps into yours and makes the already flaming embers flicker and rage into heat that pools low in your belly and clouds your thoughts.

Straddling him, you kiss him as his hands bring you flush against him, unintentionally torturous drag of his hard cock against your center making you tremble.

Ivar surges against you, one hand splayed at your back to bring you as close as he can, chest pressed against yours and mouth hungry over the skin of your neck. Your hands grasp where they can at fever-warm skin, but before you can lost much more of your mind, your hand presses lightly at the base of his throat and forces him once again on his back.

There’s a growing smile on Ivar’s lips that speaks of hunger, a hunger you feel snarling and desperate inside of you as well, a hunger that pools low on your belly, that makes you bite your lip as you take him in.

There’s a moment, a breath or two, a pause that tortures you as much as him, where you just admire the way his body looks, naked in the low and warm light of your home.

Unable to wait any longer, you straddle him once again, a pang of heat running through you when he dutifully stays on his back, looking up at you with hunger and desire clearly written in his darkened gaze.

Holding yourself above him and grasping his cock with the hand not on his chest, you line him up with your entrance, but not before betraying a smile and pressing,

“What is it you want, Ivar?”

This time it is a surrender, it is a plea, it is a gasp, “You.”

____

It is known men sleep with other women when they are away from their wives, you know this. It is known they sometimes bring women bearing their child back to their homes, a bizarre war prize. Though the most likely outcome is that the two part ways, and the men return to their homes and their wives; and the women they chose to keep their bed warms during the raiding season move on, marry another, one that is free enough to call them their home.

You know this, and as you absently pick at a piece of bread, watching as Ivar works expertly through the process of securing the iron braces around his legs; you cannot help but remind yourself you also know many new things.

You know the cold makes his pain worse, you know he is very good with a bow and arrow, you know a flickering and soft smile can always be found on his lips when you tell him you want him, you know he has days when he irrationally tries to keep his legs a secret from you. You know him, and…that has to mean something, doesn’t it?

You are distracted from your thoughts by movement, and you watch silently the by now familiar wobble of Ivar’s crutch as he stands up, quivering under his weight until he easily finds his balance.

Straightening in his place, he extends a hand to beckon you closer.

“My love, come here,” He orders, and by the way the term of endearment you’ve stolen -taken, borrowed, but always hers- rolls of his tongue alone you have your feet helplessly trailing the distance between you. Ivar’s free hand grasps at the side of your face with more gentleness than you would have expected out of him when you first met him, and he tilts your head up to capture your mouth in his. He kisses you slowly, sweetly, reverently, and your heart breaks further with each breath you share. When you part, his brow rests against yours, and though you can feel his piercing blue gaze on you, you keep your eyes closed, “We will be returning soon, you know that.”

“I know.”

“You will be returning to Kattegat with me.” He tells you, and your body stills at his words, a furrow between your brows that Ivar reaches up to smooth with the caress of a rough thumb as if he hadn’t just said the words he did, as if things were normal.

“No, I…I have responsibilities here, I-…”

“I want you to come with me,” He insists, and any softer tone you may have fooled yourself into thinking you heard is lost when he meets your gaze with his piercing blue eyes and promises lowly, “I am not asking.”

“You never ask.”

He isn’t swayed or insulted, offering only a smile that tugs at your heart.

“Yet you still love me.”

It is an arrogant boast, nothing more than that, and it serves as a reminder for you of the mess you’ve gotten yourself into, it serves as a warning of all the ways this could end in disaster.

During the winter you spent apart, him in Kattegat with his wife and you still here in York with your duties, you told yourself you would forget about him, and life would return to the way it was before he came into it. Yet it didn’t, and somehow it didn’t for him either, because when the warriors from Kattegat returned to continue raiding into England, Ivar found you again, and…life did return to the way it was, the way it was before he ever left.

And now he will leave again, and you have made peace with it. You have made peace with him leaving you once again for the winter, and you have made peace with you not being there to be found when spring comes.

You shake your head, and insist quietly, “You are a married man.”

“I was a married man when we met, and that didn’t stop you,” He retorts, a quirk of his mouth, “I was a married man this morning.”

You look away with a sigh, “Ivar…”

His hand on the side of your face brings your eyes back to him, but you don’t find softness looking back, you don’t find the jarring warmth of eyes the color of winter; you find the probing gaze of a man looking for the answer to a question he hasn’t yet asked, you find something that looks a lot like distrust.

“What reasons do you have to stay here, hm?”

“The same you have to leave. Your life is in Kattegat, as much as mine is in York,” The words leave your lips as the hope leaves your heart. You have known, you have accepted it, but to say it is something else entirely. If you had met before, if you had met in another life, then maybe…but not this time. Searching his gaze, you sentence, “It is Fate we part ways.”

“Why is it Fate? Because you say so, hm?”

“Because you have my heart,” You sentence, trying not to show weakness at the flicker of emotion that crosses his features. “But yours belongs to someone else.”

Ivar’s eyes fall closed, and he shakes his head.

“No, no,” The barest hint of a smile, “It is yours. It was Fate that I found you,” He insists, hand trapping yours, making you pliant under his touch with the warmth of his skin and the openness in his gaze. “I believe…I believe the Gods sent you to me. If anything, finding you proves that it was true what I was told, about the Gods rewarding those who endure pain.”

And not even the warmth of his skin could stave off the cold that creeps over you when you hear the familiar words.

“And who told you that, Ivar?” You ask, a sad smile on your lips because he knows you know the answer.

“Did you believe her?”

Ivar’s shoulders rise and fall with a deep breath, and you lift your eyes from their lazy exploration of the traces of ink on his bare chest to meet his eyes.

“Freydis does. To this day, she still claims there is a reason for pain, hers and mine.”

That isn’t an answer.

“Did you believe her, Ivar?”

“Of course I believed her. I wanted to believe her, I wanted-…” A sigh, and he stops himself. Eyes searching yours, Ivar’s features tighten momentarily, as if trying to not give away something in his expression. “I want it to be true.”

“Why?” You ask, just as quietly.

“So there’s a reason for all of it. Any of it.”

“There is always a reason, Ivar,” You tell him, leaning up on one elbow. He looks up at you, silent. “It just might not be the reason you want it to be.”

“What do you think the reason is, hm?” He prods, the backs of his fingers trailing up and down your arm.

You shake your head, “You won’t find answers in me.”

“But you believe in something.”

“I believe in Fate. I believe…I believe that just like the Völur weave their spells, just as Freyja weaves her secrets, the Norns weave our Fates, our lives.”

“Without reason?”

“Without any reason we can understand.” You correct him, a small smile curving your lips at his insistence.

You bring her up and the reminder that across a sea she exists, she waits, she claims; and it is enough for the warmth to leave you completely, to drain from your skin like the last drop of blood after a deep wound.

You grit your teeth and lower your head, trying to hide weakness that has been there from the first day when you sat before the King of Kattegat as he watched you methodically work on mending the stitching on his armor and smiled stupidly at each clumsy attempt he made at making you laugh.

You turn to the door and open it, but you are quickly stopped.

It is almost a stumble, iron-braced legs not quick enough for how he wants to move, but Ivar reaches the door before you, slamming a strong hand on it and keeping it closed.

You are well used to his temper and his demanding ways, but that doesn’t mean anger doesn’t flare within you now, or that you will simply accept him trying to keep you from moving freely.

“Whatever it is you intend to do, Ivar, I suggest you think twice about it.” You warn slowly, before turning around.

But when you lift your eyes to meet his you don’t find ire, you don’t find rage. You find desperation, you find…fear?

He grits his teeth, breathing sharply through his nose before asking, “Why are you trying to leave?”

He isn’t asking about you leaving the room.

Ironic, you suppose, that he is the one set to leave for Kattegat before the week is over and yet you seem to be the one intent on leaving him behind.

“Spring is over, you ought to return to your home.”

“And you will come with me.” He replies automatically, ever so petulant, arrogant.

“No, my home is here.”

“Your home is with me. You will be coming with me to Kattegat.” He insists, more agitated, yet more fragile in his certainty.

“Is forcing me to be by your side what you want?”

“I want you,” He snarls, leaning even closer. So similar to the words he would speak last night and so many nights before, yet the meaning is so different. Or maybe it is the same, and you just haven’t been listening. Ivar presses his lips together, taking an angry breath before offering, “I don’t want to lose you.”

I am not yours to lose, you want to argue, but it tastes like a lie before your lips even form the words.

There is nothing to lose, you almost try, but the mere thought of it breaks at what is left of your heart on your chest.

“You won’t.” You promise instead, dooming you both. Or maybe you are just dooming yourself.

Ivar leans closer, but you notice him swallow thickly, you notice the way he lowers his guard a bit, no longer so much so on the offense.

“Come with me.” He says, asks, beseechs.

With your eyes searching his, you cannot help but think of the waters you see in your dreams, you cannot help but remember the question you were once -many times, or maybe never- asked.

You cannot help but think of your answer, and realize maybe this is what you are granted, maybe this is the gift you are offered at your answer.

____

Settling in Kattegat proves equally difficult and easy.

It is easy for you to keep yourself occupied; the dawning of winter means people are in search of warmer clothing that now that the men are back from raiding they can afford to purchase, so your days are easily -comfortably, familiarly- busied with sewing and weaving.

It is difficult however, for you to forget what brought you here, what foolish and reckless desires -your own and Ivar’s- have left you here in Kattegat. And it is still easy, to let him consume your nights, to let him take the space he demands in your life; it is still easy, and that is the difficult part.

Ivar is many things, but he isn’t subtle. He wasn’t subtle about keeping you close in York, he wasn’t subtle about how everyone ought to treat you on the journey to his home, and he hasn’t been subtle about where he spends his nights.

And you cannot help but feel strange, intruding, invasive. Stupid, really, that you feel guilt when the man that is married to her doesn’t seem to, but you cannot help it.

You haven’t met her, and there is really no reason why you should, but you have seen her. By all the Gods, she is beautiful, and carries herself in a way you have scarcely seen.

You see her in scarce moments, pass her by on a feast or meet her tranquil gaze across a room. Sometimes you see her with Ivar, a barely-there moment that you feel an intruder for witnessing, her hands carefully folded over her stomach, her a back stiffly held straight, her expression coldly controlled. Sometimes you see her with thralls and young girls around her, and you pretend not to notice the way she sometimes shies away from their touches.

You see her, not long enough to be able to claim to truly know her, but long enough to no longer be able to pretend she doesn’t exist.

Almost a month goes by as you live in this strange in between, as you settle into life in Kattegat as if you were still in York, pretending winter is nothing but another spring.

Tonight, as you sit across from Hvitserk as he animatedly talks about what his travels to the Mediterranean were like, Ivar at your side with a hand -heavy, comforting, possessive- on your leg; you find your gaze finding the Queen where she sits alone, across the room.

She has this way about her, this jarring contradiction between meek and steadfast. She lowers her eyes, she keeps her gaze pointed at the ground quite often, but she has this manner of looking up and meeting people’s eyes that has nothing to do with passivity.

She smiles often, a sweet smile just on the edge of being too wide, but there’s this shine in her eyes when she smiles when people are looking that reminds you of the easily-cracked seashells you could put to your ear against and hear the mournful cry of the sea from.

“What are you so distracted by, hm?” Ivar asks, pulling you away from your thoughts with the sound of his voice alone. You turn to him, offer a smile and a shake of your head.

“Nothing,” You reply, but your focus still lingers on her. This isn’t your place, she should be sitting where you are, or maybe he should be there sitting by her side. You shouldn’t be here, and the realization of it dawns on you like a weight dropped on your chest. You feel sick, and you don’t think there’s any hiding it. “I…I think I’ll retire for the night.”

As you stand up, a hand running down his arm in what you hope is a gesture soothing enough to keep him from asking questions, you steal another glance her way.

She isn’t there anymore.

____

That night, as too-many nights before it, as you settle for bed Ivar appears at your door, comfortably taking room in your space with a familiarity, an ease, that feels wrong even if it fills you with warmth.

You sit before the small mirror in your room, your back turned to the bed where Ivar sits, your eyes focused on the task of brushing your hair.

“What is the matter with you, hm?” He asks. You keep your gaze on the mirror, working on detangling your hair where it is thrown over your shoulder.

Slowly, you start, “You aren’t…subtle.”

He doesn’t need you to be any clearer about what you mean, understanding your meaning immediately, and you are almost grateful for that.

“Why should I be?” He retorts, almost affronted. “You are my woman, I don’t need to-…”

“You have a wife.” You enunciate slowly, eyes wide as they meet his over the reflection in the mirror. Your hands, by force of habit alone, are working on parting your hair in three different portions to ready the braid you are used to wearing to sleep.

Ivar’s mouth curves downwards in a nonchalant gesture, a furrow between his brows.

“Do you think Freydis didn’t know how I spent my time in England? Do you think she doesn’t know about you?”

You still your hands for a moment, before you continue the path of the braid down.

“That only makes it worse.”

“We aren’t…we aren’t as we used to be. Freydis and me.”

You offer a look over your shoulder, and a clipped, “Surely you bringing another woman to her home has nothing to do with it.”

A fake smile at your response that only speaks of annoyance, and Ivar explains,

“It has been this way before I met you, and you know that.”

Hushed conversations by the lapping shores of the river port of Yorktown of how after the loss of the second child grief was made into weapons on both ends, and her words of how it was his seed what had cursed their children to die on the womb was still a thought that haunted him. The rumors that walked with you through the streets of the big city of how Ivar the Boneless had chosen another woman to keep by his side and yet still was only able to remain loyal to one, rumors that you understood much later when you were told Kattegat’s king and queen slept on separate beds.

You grit your teeth, tying the end of the braid tightly, and ask the question you haven’t dared for too long already.

“Why doesn’t she divorce you? Or you her?”

It is idle curiosity, you have never had the intention -the imagination even- to think Ivar would divorce his wife, but after all he has told you it is a question that has ran through your head often, and now that you have been a witness to how they interact, to at least part of it -his nights are spent with you, and that alone is enough to make you question what is the point of any of it- the questions grow louder.

“People would talk,” He replies as if the answer should be apparent, as if that is reason enough, explanation enough. To him, you realize, it is. “They talk enough already, even if I were to be the one to end it, they would-…the rumors would grow louder, people would talk about how she left me.”

“They would be wrong.”

“It doesn’t matter,” He sentences, “I won’t fail, I won’t lose.”

“Fail?”

“The cripple can’t satisfy his wife, can’t father a child, can’t…can’t be a normal man, so she leaves him.”

Your heart feels strange in your chest, as if it is being squeezed tight.

“Ivar…”

He grits his teeth, looks up at you past stubbornly furrowed brows, “You know that is what they would say, I can’t…I can’t let them say that.”

“It wouldn’t be true.”

His eyes fall from yours, “It doesn’t matter.”

He refuses to talk much more about any of it, and if you are honest you are almost grateful for his stubbornness, because you don’t want to discuss anything else any further.

It is with painful ease that you two settle in bed together for sleep, your head on his chest and his fingers absently tracing the dips and curves of the braid you wear.

Sometime in the middle of the night you wake up to a darkened room and a low call of your name in a voice you know well by now, even if you hate to hear it when you are peacefully sleeping and he insists on disturbing that.

Ivar’s fingers are running idly over the side of your face, tracing the contour of your cheek. You reluctantly open your eyes.

“Why aren’t you asleep yet?” You mumble, irrationally annoyed. Your brow furrows, and eyes narrowed, you lift your head, “Better yet, why are you punishing me for your inability to sleep?”

His fingers trail down from your face to the base of the braid on the side of your neck, and ignoring your question he prompts, “Do you regret it?”

Biting back an argument about how this is very much not the time to continue this conversation, you ask, “Regret what, Ivar?”

“Coming here. With me.”

Your annoyance fades away like smoke between your fingers, and you sigh.

“No.”

More easily than you would like to admit Ivar maneuvers you until you are on your back underneath him, looking down at you with a small smile.

“Good.” He sentences. You lift your eyebrows.

“Good?”

He hums an affirmation, leaning closer and stealing a kiss from your lips.

“You are mine,” He reminds you, eyes piercing on yours. Before you get too lost on the way the flames flicker in the blue of his eyes, Ivar leans once again to kiss you, slowly but with an edge you can’t help but notice. When you part, he licks his lips, before admitting, “And I am yours.”

“And hers.”

A smile, a slow blink of his eyes, and he ignores your words.

“I didn’t bring you here to keep you a concubine, and when spring comes I will leave but you will still be here.”

You frown, “What are you saying?”

“I intend to make you my wife.” He states, jarringly certain, unmovable. Your eyes widen, and in the back of your mind you think your breath leaves you in a gasp.

“N-No, you can’t-…”

His eyes search yours, trying to find the answer to a question he hasn’t yet asked. It is still enough to silence your words before they even leave your lips.

Voice quiet, he asks, orders, pleas, “Marry me.”

____ ____ ____

“Whether you love what you love, or live in divided ceasless revolt against it, what you love is your fate.” (F.B)

A/N: I certainly didn’t plan for the first chapter to open with smuttish themes, but I need the practice writing it and I suppose it works well for establishing the relationship between these two. Idk. Hope this was alright, thank you for reading!

Taglist: @youbloodymadgenius​ @xbellaxcarolinax​ @1950schick​ @ietss​ @peachyboneless​ @encounterthepast​ @maggiescarborough​ @fae-sedai​  @zuxiezendler​ @crazybunnyladysworld​ @stupiddarkkside​ @northumbria​  @aprilivar​ @punkrocknpearls​ @heavenly1927​ @ladynightshade30​

[tails89]

If you’re still doing the prompts thing, could you do #20 (“This is, without a doubt, the stupidest plan you’ve ever come up with...I’m in.”) with Buddie from 9-1-1 please? And if not, no worries. :)

Hey there, sorry this took so long. Sometimes my brain just doesn't want to cooperate...

Anyway, hope you enjoy (I changed the prompt a lil)

Also posted on AO3

“Here.” The beer appears in Buck’s peripheral vision, and he reaches for it, fingers slipping in the cool condensation that beads down the side of the bottle.

“Thanks man.” He takes a long sip and stares out into the backyard. “Oh, hey. How were parent teacher interviews yesterday?”

Eddie groans and drops heavily onto the porch swing, throwing his legs up on the railing beside Buck’s.

“They were fine,” he says, taking a long drink from his beer.

“Yeah, that doesn’t sound fine,” Buck says, twisting to face Eddie. “Is everything okay with Chris? Is there—"

“Christopher’s fine.” Eddie cuts Buck off before he can get too worked up. “He’s doing well in school, got lots of friends.”

“Oh.” Buck takes a sip of his own drink. “So, what’s the matter then?”

Eddie pulls his feet from the railing and plants them on the porch.

“He’s got this one teacher, and every time I see her, she’s got something to say about me being a single dad.” Eddie leans forward, his elbows braced on his knees. “Like I’m not good enough for him on my own.”

“You know that’s bullshit,” Buck says. “You’re a great dad.”

Eddie just waves him off.

“Anyway, she was going on about my job and how the long hours aren’t fair on Chris and how alone he is... anyway... Chris told her he’s not alone. He said he’s got me and Carla, Pepa and Abuela and... his Buck.”

“Of course, Eds, you know we’re all there for Chris.”

“I know but, I just—I don’t know why I said it.” Eddie leans back against the swing, staring out into the night.

“Said what?”

“I may have told her we were together...”

The half-mouthful of beer goes down the wrong hole and Buck chokes.

“What?” He wipes his sleeve against his mouth to catch the liquid that’s spilled down his chin.

“It just came out. She kept going on about the type of home environment I was providing, and I know I shouldn’t have let it get to me, but—Chris was so excited. I tried to tell him it wasn’t true—"

“Eddie, it’s fine.” Buck fidgets with the label on his bottle. He can’t quite bring himself to look at his best friend, afraid his face will give him away. It makes sense now why Chris was so happy to see him today, and perhaps why it had taken so long for Eddie to get him into bed. “You need to tell him though.”

“I know.” Eddie sighs and drains his beer. “I honestly didn’t think he’d be excited about the prospect of me dating again. We haven’t really talked about it.”

Buck isn’t excited about the idea of Eddie dating again, dating someone else. He keeps his mouth shut though and finishes his beer. The seeds of a very terrible, stupid plan start to take root in his brain.

“Hey, if uh,” the words stick in his throat. “If you need some time, to tell Chris, I don’t mind pretending for a day or two.” Buck’s heart is pounding so loud in his chest, he wonders if Eddie can hear it too. “Just until you do.”

Eddie laughs, tipping his head back against the seat.

“That is, without a doubt, the stupidest idea you’ve ever come up with...” he says, still chuckling.

“Ha, yeah,” Buck plasters a grin on his face. “Pretty stupid.”

“You know what, I’m in,” Eddie says, regaining his composure. “Just for a day or so. I’ve got the rest of the parent teacher interviews tomorrow night and then I’ll sit Chris down and explain it was a misunderstanding.”

“What about the rest of the team?” Buck asks. “We’ve got a ten-hour shift tomorrow. What happens if they find out?”

“They won’t.” Eddie’s tone is warm and reassuring but Buck shakes his head.

“It just takes one,” he points out. “If Maddie finds out, she’ll tell Chim. And if Chim finds out—” he lets his head tip back with a groan, “—he’ll tell everyone.”

“Is it really that big of a deal?” Eddie asks him, planting his feet back on the porch and sitting up.

Yes, because if people find out that they’re ‘dating’ they’ll have questions and Buck can’t handle that kind of scrutiny, not when he’s already harbouring major feelings for his best friend.

“No,” he says instead. “I guess not. It’s just one day. What’s the worst that could happen?”

~

Buck pulls up at the station bright and early the next morning. He parks beside Eddie’s truck, a smile spreading across his face when he realises he has Chris with him.

“Bucky!” Chris's whole face lights up and he throws his arms around Buck.

“Hey bud.” Buck ruffles the kid’s hair and walks with them towards the firehouse. “What are you doing here?”

“Pepa’s running late,” Eddie explains. “She got caught up in traffic, so she’s going to pick Chris up from here. She shouldn’t be long,” he says, addressing Bobby this time.

“It’s not a problem. You hungry Chris?” Bobby asks, matching Chris’ pace as they head for the stairs. “I’ll see what I can rustle up for breakfast and you can tell me all about school.”

Chris nods along enthusiastically, following on behind Bobby.

“Hey Christopher.” Chimney leans over the balcony rail. “You got any fun stories for us kid?”

“Oh yeah!” Chris hands his dad one of his crutches so he can free up a hand to grip the stair rail. “Did you guys know Dad and Buck are dating?”

Every eye in the building turns to them.

The thing about the station is that it’s never truly quiet. There’s always some noise, some movement, no matter the time of day. But in that moment Buck could have heard a pin drop.

Hen is the first to break the silence.

“Alright, pay up.” She waves her fingers in Chim's face. “Better luck next time boys,” she crows, holding out her hands.

“I definitely heard you say November,” Chimney argues.

“I said, before November.” Hen grins. “It’s before November. Now pay up.”

“You couldn’t have waited just a few more weeks?” Chimney asks them. “Really, is that too much to ask?”

“What is happening right now?” Buck stares at his friends in disbelief. “Have you all been taking bets on us?”

Hen and Chimney share a look. “Uh, yes.”

They say it together, Hen bursting into laughter at the indignation on Buck’s face. “Oh please, you think you’re so hard to read? You wear your heart on your sleeve, Buckaroo. I read you.”

She counts the money she’s won, stuffing the notes into her pocket. “You boys just paid for my anniversary dinner. I can’t wait to tell Karen.” She pauses. “I don’t suppose you two also offer babysitting services?”

Buck bites his lip to hold back the panic clawing at his chest. His gaze flicks to Eddie, laughing and reassuring Chris that he’s not in trouble for spilling the beans. He’s acting like it’s nothing—like their whole team hasn’t been plotting behind their backs.

Eddie had promised that no one else would know, but that had gone down the drain in seconds. And now what? Do they keep up the lie or do they come clean? The idea of telling everyone that it’s not real is worse than knowing they’d been betting on him and Eddie getting together. Or do they already know that too? Maybe that’s the next bet and they’re all just waiting.

“I, uh—” Buck takes a half step back. “I’ll just be back in a minute.”

He doesn’t run for the stairs. He keeps his gait even until he’s at the bottom of the staircase and then he makes his escape to the bathrooms.

Buck spends the rest of the day avoiding the team. Well, avoiding them as much as he is able while still doing his job. While they’re at the station, he finds chores to keep himself busy, ignoring the looks he gets from Hen and Chim and ignoring the friendly teasing that he can’t take a joke.

Avoiding Eddie is the worst. Buck can’t bring himself to do it. He constantly finds himself gravitating back towards his best friend, drawn like a moth to a flame.

Buck keeps waiting for Eddie to pull him aside and ask why he’s not keeping his end of the bargain. Eddie keeps looking over at him, face pinched with an expression Buck can’t quite name. He’s probably pissed Buck couldn’t even keep it up for twenty-four hours, and now they’re both going to look like fools in front of the rest of the team.

~

“Thought I’d find you hiding in here.”

Buck glances up from the bunk to catch Bobby leaning in the doorway.

“I’m not hiding.”

“Good, because lunch is ready.” He goes to leave, then stops, rapping his knuckles against the door frame. “For what it’s worth Buck, we’re happy for you. Both of you.”

“Thanks Bobby.” Buck stands slowly, inhaling deeply. He can do this. He can pretend to be dating Eddie in front of his co-workers while also somehow pretending that he’s not wildly in love with his best friend. He’s got this, no problem.

Buck lets the breath go in a rush.

He’s so fucked.

Everyone’s eyes look up as Buck reaches the kitchen. He’s the last to sit and there’s just the one spare seat left beside Eddie.

As he settles into the chair, Eddie bumps their knees together under the table and offers Buck a reassuring smile.

“So,” Chim says reaching for the salad bowl. “I need details. When did this start?” He gestures between the two of them with the salad tongs before loading up his plate.

“Yeah, how long have you been keeping this from us?” Albert pipes up.

Buck swallows against the lump in his throat. They should have come up with something, just in case, but now they have nothing and—

“It was a few weeks after I got home from the hospital.”

Buck glances across at Eddie, brows knit together in confusion.

“I’d broken up with Ana and Buck was over a lot, helping with Chris,” Eddie explains, accepting a plate from Hen. “There was this one day. Buck had just got back after dropping Chris at school and we realised Chris had forgotten to take this book he’d wanted for show and tell.”

Buck can feel his frown deepening. He remembers this.

“Anyway, Buck wanted to go all the way back to Chris’ school to give it to him. Wouldn’t take no for an answer.” Eddie’s looking at him now, holding Buck’s gaze as he recounts the story. The whole team is looking at them, the heat of their scrutiny makes Buck squirm in his seat. “I said it didn’t matter, Chris could just take it another day, but Buck said—"

“It matters to Chris.” Buck feels his face flush. At the time, Eddie had laughed and said something about Buck being too good for them before Buck had run out of the house clutching the book.

“It just kind of hit me, you know?” Eddie finally looks away, reaching for the bread rolls in the middle of the table. “Just how lucky I am to have him and how much he cares about us and… I kissed him.”

There’s a collective gasp from around the table and all eyes turn back on Buck.

“And what did you do, Buckaroo?” Hen asks, leaning forward in her seat.

“I uh—” Buck glances at Eddie, eyes wide. “I kissed him back?”

“Yeah, and it was about damn time,” Chimney shouts around a mouthful of pasta. “You guys are so cute. It’s disgusting.”

~

The rest of the shift is better after that. Everyone seems satisfied by their story and Buck lets himself fall back into his regular comfortable rhythm, hanging with Eddie between call outs. There is still some awkwardness to it, Buck can’t stop his mind from wandering back to that morning, imagining what it would have been like if it had gone more like Eddie’s story. He’s surprised Eddie even remembered it, it had been just another day between the regular doctor and physical therapy appointments that consumed his every waking minute.

He waits until later that night to say anything. Chris is in bed and they’re back on the porch nursing a beer each.

“Can I, uh, ask you a question?” Buck tears at the label on his bottle. “That thing you said at lunch, about how we got together…” He trails off, not quite sure how to verbalise the whirlwind of feelings it had stirred in him.

“Yeah, well I had to say something convincing,” Eddie says, taking a sip of his beer.

“Oh, right. Yeah.” Buck had spent the whole afternoon thinking that maybe, just maybe his feelings for Eddie weren’t as one-sided as he’d initially thought. This though, this is like a bucket of ice water to the face. “I don’t think I can do this, Eds.”

Eddie’s head jerks up.

“I thought I could pretend, but I can’t.”

“Why did you suggest it then?” Eddie doesn’t sound angry. Buck almost wishes he did, it would be easier if the were both yelling at each other. Anything would be better than the soft disappointment in Eddie’s tone.

“I thought—” Buck takes a breath and tries again. “I wasn’t thinking when I suggested it. I think there was just a part of me that thought that getting to pretend with you was better than nothing. It’s not though, it just made it that much more obvious how much I want this— want us.” Putting down his beer, Buck goes to stand. “I’m sorry. I’m gonna go—”

“Wait. Buck.” Eddie catches his arm. “I should have kissed you.”

“What?”

“Chris’ show and tell. I didn’t kiss you that day, but I wanted to. You were just out the door so damn fast.”

“You wanted to kiss me?”

Eddie pulls him back down onto the swing with a fond eyeroll. “We’re you not listening to my story at lunch?” he asks, voice teasing. “I meant what I said about how it just hit me. You’re amazing Buck, and Chris and I are both so lucky to have someone like you, someone who cares with everything you have. I think I’ve loved you for a while, but that morning I knew.”

“I love you too.” Buck knows he’s grinning like an idiot, but right now he doesn’t care. “I know you didn’t kiss me back then but… you can kiss me now.”

And Eddie does.

It starts off soft and slow—a tentative brushing of their lips, but then as neither of them back off it grows more desperate. Buck curls his fingers in the hem of Eddie’s shirt, pulling him closer and deepening the kiss.

When he finally pulls away, they’re both red-faced and breathing hard.

“So, I guess this means we don’t need to break up,” Buck says with a laugh.

“No,” Eddie agrees. “I plan on keeping you around for a long time.”

[folkloreguk]

Querencia (prequel)

A/N: I haven’t written anything in this format in so long, so I hope it’s okay! Someone once asked me to write a prequel to my previous work “Querencia”, so I finally got around to it (after like 2 years rip dfghjk)

[!you don’t have to read both of these parts to understand either one!]

genre: optional bias (male) x reader (female), fluff, explaining how they ended up together, a tiny bit of smut but it’s marked so you can skip if you want, badboy!bias, nerd/shy!reader, her parents are kinda judgemental (only mentioned), secret relationship?, this is an absolute train wreck lmao

words: ~5.2 k

(H/N means “his name”)

ok strap in for this…every time I write a badboy!au I lose a piece of my sanity

basically you used to go to the same school as him

but that’s the only association you had with him because you never actually talked to him in school

he was known to be a “bad boy”

not as in being a horrible person but rather…

he liked to challenge teachers/adults when he didn’t agree with them

and they couldn’t do much because he ended up having pretty decent grades and most of the time his arguments were valid

you had heard your fair share of stories about him

of him getting into a fight with the captain of the football team

apparently, he had stood up for a girl because said captain tried to take advantage of her at a party when she was drunk

you remember being lowkey impressed but didn’t condone violence either way

so, at the same time you were kind of intimidated by him

there were other stories circulating around

of him hooking up with half the school

in quite inappropriate places if I may add

but no one really knew what was the truth tbh

not that it really mattered to you

you were a typical good-girl-nerd-kinda person and so was your friend group

which meant you weren’t even paying attention to him half of the time

plus you thought you’d never see him again after graduating from school

until sooner or later you wouldn’t be given any other choice

because when you walked into your first ever university lecture, he was there

literally one row in front of you???

you were shook because apparently he was studying the same subject as you??

he had even more tattoos and piercings now

one tattoo covered almost the whole front of his neck

he had black boots on and his pants were ripped at the knees

and obviously he had to be wearing a leather jacket

not that you were staring at him (yes you were)

frankly you thought he looked hot

great it’s your first day and you’re already failing to pay attention

and then he turned his head a little and smirked at you???

suddenly you loved looking at your professor and not him

but since you hadn’t paid attention you were left with questions after the lecture

unfortunately the professor was gone before you could ask them

and your social awkwardness made it hard for you to just start talking to a random stranger

so when he go up and made his way to the end of the seats he had to walk past you

“HEy I have a question” you blurted out when he was at your level

the fact that he was so relaxed talking to you made you even more stressed

and he helped you luckily

then, before he could say anything else but the answer to your question, you had escaped the conversation

because perhaps you still found him a little intimidating

but when you walked out of the hall, he quickly caught up to you

“Hold on, do I know you? You seem familiar” he asked

so you had no choice but to explain to him that you went to school together

he was actually really polite to you

but you had sworn yourself education would come first for you, boys second

so you got out of that situation as quickly as possible

the next two weeks you saw him at lectures but always kept out of his way

he said hello a few times and you would nod and smile shyly

within days he had collected a bunch of girls that often sat with him

you guessed he was staying true to his reputation after all

then one day you were in the lovely park behind your university building because you had a break between lectures

you had brought old bread to feed the ducks in the little pond

but suddenly they all swam away from you, over to the other side of the pond

and you couldn’t BELIEVE

he was sitting there, throwing pieces of his perfectly fine sandwich to the ducks all while putting on an extra holy expression

so you went over to fight (not literally lmao)

he greeted you by saying “The ducks made you stop avoiding me?”

you were shook because how did he even notice

“What? You don’t have enough girl-attention yet?” you said

“Not from pretty girls like you” he said

you must have given him a severely disgusted look because he quickly changed his flirty expression

“What made you avoid me? Did I ever say something wrong to you?” he asked

“No you didn’t…you just don’t seem like the crowd I’d hang out with” you confessed

“Wow, I didn’t take you for the judgmental kind” he said

and he looked pretty upset actually??

“I don’t think you’re a bad person” you said

“But I’m home at least by 9 pm every night to study, my parents look at me like I’m a saint, I’ve never been in a relationship and I get nervous when someone as much as raises their voice at me…you strike me as the complete opposite of all those things” you added

without missing a beat, he asked “Don’t they say opposites attract?”

you realized maybe you really had written him off too soon…or perhaps you had worried that he would take your attention off your studies too much

which wouldn’t have been surprising considering how your first lecture with him had gone

and from then on you tried to be nicer to him

sometimes he voluntarily came to sit next to you in class

you didn’t understand why

because you barely spoke to him due to being awkward and when you did you felt like he judged you for being so shy

he had a way with words and within days you found yourself thinking of him more

his stupidly handsome features, tattooed knuckles and pierced eyebrow…it all attracted you maybe a little too much

it was terrifying to you…how he talked to you so easily and already you were eating right off his spoon

what if he was only playing around and you were nothing but a toy girl to him

but then you cursed yourself for saying that…he said he wasn’t a bad person and you were going to believe so unless he proved himself otherwise

spoiler: that never happened

one autumn night you walked out of university after class, it was dark already and pouring rain

you realized you had forgotten your umbrella at home…but you had to walk there by foot…absolutely fantastic

so you pulled your hood over your head and braced yourself to get completely soaked within seconds

suddenly you heard a voice behind you

“Let me bring you home” he said

“No worries, I’m fine” you tried to tell him

“Come on. You said you live twenty minutes from here. If you get on my motorbike I’ll get you home within a few minutes” he said

you were like “Motorbike??”

“Yeah, come on, it’s over there” he said, and he walked ahead of you

basically he didn’t really give you time to argue

when you didn’t follow him right away, he turned around and gave you a look

“You’ll only get a cold if you walk home in this weather” he said

although your parents had drilled into you the idea that motorbikes were dangerous, you went with him after all

he offered you his spare helmet and you put it on

but you were struggling to close it

so he helped you

he was focused on the helmet, but you were staring at him just because you could

his hair was completely soaked by now and water drops were running down his black leather jacket

he had a habit of biting the inside of his cheek when he was concentrating

and with his hands almost on your face, it was the closest he’s ever been to you

it made you weirdly nervous tbh

but before you knew it he had closed the helmet and told you to get onto the motorcycle behind him

“Hold on to the back of the bike or to me” he said

you were surprised at how he didn’t urge you to touch him

and at first you held on to the tail of the motorcycle but the moment you hit a speed bump you changed your mind QUICKLY

your arms swung around his waist tightly and you felt his chest move when he chuckled

like he had said, it only took a few minutes to get you home, and you told him the way there

and surprisingly you really liked being on the motorcycle???

you had thought you’d be scared but it felt amazing

except for how freezing cold the wind was on your wet cheeks ☹

shortly before you pulled up in your street you told him

“You should let me get off a little earlier…my mom will kill me if she sees me on a motorbike”

he didn’t argue but stopped two houses before yours

you felt like the rain had gotten even worse so you really didn’t have time for big words

you quickly thanked him and he gave you his famous smirk before you ran home as quickly as possible

when you had reached the front door you turned his way and he was still there, making sure you got inside

looking at him there, in the downpour in his cool jacket and on his motorcycle, your cheeks involuntarily got hotter

when you got into your room that night and checked your phone, you had one new message on Instagram

you opened it and it was from him???

“Take a warm shower or you’ll be sick tomorrow” it said

he must had sent it seconds after you had entered your house before he had driven away

he really became a bigger mystery to you from one day to the other

because you had no idea what all of this meant???

maybe you should have gotten the hint way earlier

but you didn’t really know the first thing about dating so how were you supposed to know?

but then around two weeks later something else occurred

again, you had class until the early evening

on this specific day, your university was hosting a party for the new students

technically, you would have fallen into that group of new students

but you weren’t one for partying and after being in class for hours on end, all you wanted was to crawl into your bed and rest

so when your course had ended you made your way out of the university building

and you could tell the party had already started because of the music playing

plus there were people all over the place

some were already drunk…you would have been surprised but also this was university after all

you quickly stepped out onto the street and began walking in the direction of your home

from somewhere, you suddenly heard voices

they were making gross noises, as if calling a cat, and asking “sweetheart, do you have a minute?”

when you turned your head, you saw a group of (most certainly) drunk men-boys goggling at you

and because you didn’t slow down or even react to them, they walked after you

you told yourself they would leave you alone if you only walked far enough from the bus station they had waited at

but inside your pocket you clenched your keys between your knuckles

all of a sudden, something touched your shoulders

you almost had a heart attack and raised your hand out of your pocket

“You didn’t wait for me” H/N said from next to you

he placed his infamous leather jacket around your frame and swung an arm around your shoulder

you were about to tell him he had scared the living hell out you

but he was only glaring at the disgusting guys behind you

“I suggest you go home and sleep it off. And learn to take a hint from a girl when she’s this visibly uninterested” he said

the enraged stare he sent to the group of young men made even you feel slightly uneasy

but it worked…they distanced themselves from you if only hesitantly and with a clearly pissed off attitude

“Thank you” you said and were about to give him back his jacket

“Nothing to thank me for. And I gave you that because your sweater looks really thin. Keep it for now” he said

you were taken aback…as always

“Why aren’t you driving your motorbike today?”

“I am, but it’s parked around the corner here. Want me to drive you home?” he asked

and he gave the look again

which look you may ask

the one in which he stared at your eyes and then at your lips…and then your eyes…and then your lips

and his lips were so pretty

“You know what I want?” you asked, “I wanna know if there’s anything you want from me”

he furrowed his brows in confusion

“Why are you always being like this to me?” you went on

“Are you trying to get into my pants?” you blurted out

and then instantly regretted it  

especially when he said “Do I really seem like that kind of person?”

“I’ve heard stories about you…” you said

“What kind of stories?” he asked

“Of you hooking up with half of our school back then” you said

he laughed???

and then said “And does it matter how many people I’ve had sex with?”

“It makes me think that’s what you want from me, too. And if that’s the case, I’ll have to disappoint you” you said

“Jesus, Y/N. I want to date you” he said

when I say you were shocked it would be an understatement

hot-tattooed-bad-boy wanted to date you??

and you must have signaled those exact words just by your expression

because he said “I’m telling you again, opposites attract. Don’t you at least wanna give it a try?”

of course you wanted to

“Alright…but I’ve never done this before” you said

“We’ll take it slow, I promise” he said

and then “That means I can finally tell you how goddamn adorable you are”

was it gonna be like this forever??? he compliments you and you feel like your cheeks are on fire???

probably

“I’ll bring you home, come on” he said, swinging his arm around your shoulder again

even this gesture made you shy

you didn’t even know how to respond

and this time, being behind him on the motorbike felt like a whole new sensation

now you were close to him, knowing he wanted you there as much as you did…

and it 100% made you scream on the inside

when he dropped you off, you didn’t know if you were supposed to hug him???

you awkwardly handed him his jacket back

“So, where are we going on our first date?” he asked

“First date?” you asked

“Yeah…people who date usually go on dates, don’t they?” he teased you

“Um…what about the cinema?” you suggested

“Fine, let’s see what they’re showing and I’ll text you, okay?” he said

and he texted you remotely fifteen minutes after you had arrived at home that night

…

so you went to the cinema the next day

before the date, you were essentially losing your mind

what were you supposed to wear??

would he care what you wore??

but even if he didn’t, you wanted to look pretty

your anxiety was kind of going through the roof for hours before he even arrived

he had picked you up, somehow looking even hotter than usually??

or maybe those were just your hormones going insane

“You look beautiful” he said when you had climbed onto the motorbike behind him

“And you look handsome” you had replied

his smile had a faint shyness in it, but only for the blink of a second

at the cinema, you weren’t sure how to act differently around a crush than when you were with friends tbh

did you want to hold his hand?? hell yeah

did you do it?? absolutely not

did you want to point out obsessed you were with his body art?? most certainly

did you?? oh no way, you weren’t gonna expose yourself like that (yet)

luckily, he was easy to talk to and had the patience of a saint

he grinned at you when you would become shy, as if it wasn’t the most embarrassing thing EVER to you, especially in front of him

he also probably called you cute like 13 times whilst you were waiting for the movie to begin alone

in the dark, your hands brushed whenever you both reached for the popcorn at the same time

when you looked over at him, he was chuckling

“Are you doing that on purpose?” he whispered

“No way!” you whispered back

“No? I am” he said

you didn’t even know how to respond to that

but he seemed very pleased with himself when he tilted his head at you flirtingly

were there supposed to be this many butterflies in your belly at only your first date?

what have I gotten myself into??? you thought

…

afterwards you walked back to his motorcycle, shoulders brushing now and then

you were in the middle of analyzing every second of the film you had watched, gesturing around in the air and talking excitedly

he leaned against his motorbike and grinned at you in pure admiration while he listened

mid-sentence you suddenly said “Sorry, did I get too invested in this? Do you wanna bring me home now?”

“What? No, if anything I wanna listen to you for another few hours” he said “Do you wanna come back to my place?”

you didn’t know if he was flirting or joking again, but his face was serious

plus you weren’t sure what ‘coming back to his place’ really intended

and once again his sense for reading your mind struck

“I’m not talking about having sex, if that’s why you look so worried. This is only our first date, remember? If you simply don’t feel like it, that’s cool, I’ll bring you home” he said

“No, I want to go with you” you quickly changed your mind “But I have to be home by midnight, or my parents will worry”

“I’ll get you back home by then” he said, smiling in triumph

…

his flat impressed you in a couple of ways

you admired that he already lived alone

plus it was so much more organized and cleaner than you had expected it from a college boy

his bedroom was your favorite part of the apartment

there was no doubt it was his and only his place

posters of his favorite films were plastered on the walls, his bedsheets were dark, a neon sign hung above the headboard of his bed and in the corner, a vinyl player stood

you loved the windowsill that gave you a view out of the fifth-floor flat and had the impulse to sit down there, to watch the cars pass by on the street underneath

“make yourself at home” he had said

and somehow you had ended up on his bed, right next to him

he let you rest your head on his arm while he listened to you

not only did you discuss the movie you had seen

you also talked about literally anything either of you loved

and you realized quickly, that aside from the different way of living, you had surprisingly many things in common

he put on his favorite plate on the vinyl player so you could listen to the music he loved

when he laid down next to you again, he offered his open arms

for the first time, you put your cheek against his chest, listening not only to the music but also his heartbeat

you remember liking his cologne and how warm he was

“I’ve never been so close to someone who wasn’t my friend or family” you admitted quietly

“Does it feel different?” he asked

“Of course” you said

did he not realize???

how your heart hammered against your ribcage and butterflies were flooding your belly and how there was only him in your head and his stupid cute smile and his tattoos and piercings and deep voice and ohmygodhisvoice

but when you looked up from his chest and checked his expression, he looked equally as fond as you felt

“Being with you feels different from being with other girls to me, too” he said

“It feels so much better” he added then

“What do you see in me that you don’t see in them?” you asked suddenly

“I have to admit, at first I thought it was cute, teasing you and seeing you get shy, well, I guess it still is. I liked the idea of getting to know someone with such a completely different image, so sweet and good” he said

and as he did, he softly brushed his hand over your lip

you thought you were going to have a heart attack

“But damn you’re so funny and kind…how can I not want you this way?” he said

and he looked so honest, almost vulnerable, a sight you never thought you’d see

“In which way?” you asked

“In every way” he said

and with one look, he erased all fears you’d had about him and how he might have felt about you

suddenly you understood why people went on dates all the time and searched for love…

at some point you realized how it was past midnight already

he drove you home quickly, and luckily you didn’t get into too much trouble with your parents

this time when he dropped you off, he gave you a hug that made you want to stay in his arms forever

from then on, your feelings could only get worse and you were stressed about what it would do to you

you thought your crush was bad then?? it was nothing

within the next weeks, you fell head over heels for the cliché bad boy and there was no way to stop it

you had told him you didn’t want to prioritize a relationship over your education

so 90% of your dates ended up being study dates

although he was the biggest distraction in your life, this way you at least got a little something done

usually, it went a little like this:

you’d be sitting down at a library table, with him across from you

your head would be buried in a book within minutes, only occasionally looking up at him

and he’d be busy telling you all things he could possibly come up with:

“Have I ever told you how gorgeous your eyes are? I know, even if you’re not looking at me”

“There’s a really cute girl here, but she’s ignoring me. Do you think she likes me too?”

“Hey, do you wanna go out with me sometime, like…on a date? A real date?”

“You know what other people do at the library? There’s an empty space way in the back, I can show you…”

yes sometimes he’d say suggestive things to you

but they were jokes, simply a part of his character

he never pressured you to do anything

even your first kiss took a while to occur

it was one night when he brought you home from a date (this time a real one)

when you said your goodbyes, you suddenly felt an overwhelming wave of affection

his eyes were so warm and only on you, always

softly, his tongue swept over his bottom lip, teeth toying with his piercing

“Can you kiss me?” you asked

something sparked in his eyes…he had won even more of your trust, and rightfully so

his fingers gently lifted your chin, and you always thought you’d be nervous through your first kiss, but no…it was serenity

it was butterflies peacefully floating and fireworks going off all at the same time

had you known how good this felt, you would have asked him to kiss you way earlier tbh

the whole evening until you fell asleep you couldn’t stop smiling

and you liked to think even in slumber, the corners of your mouth had been curled upwards because of him

from then on, kissing him had turned into your favorite pastime

it was especially bad when you tried to have “study dates” at his place

90% of the time, your studying turned into making out with him

oh? you’re taking a break and getting a glass of water from the kitchen? oops now you’re on his sofa, sitting in his lap and kissing

the way he handled you with such confidence and made flirty remarks all the way through your make-out-sessions only reminded you of his experience

sometimes you felt bad, knowing he was holding himself back

other days you wished he wasn’t so hesitant with touching you less innocently

but sometimes you did stop him, if his hands wandered a little too far down your torso, or if things seemed to get too steamy

he would always apologize, even if you told him there was nothing wrong

but his confidence made you feel more comfortable with every time you were in his arms

!!!SMUT AHEAD IN ITALICS

one day you were in the middle of watching a movie on his bed

but all you had been thinking of were his lips and hands

when you kissed him, things quickly turned more intense

only this time you asked him to go further

initially, he was worried

“I wish I could make this more special for you” he said

“If it’s with you, it’s perfect, no matter where and when” you assured him

the first time, he was the most gentle he’s ever been with you

because he had never pressured you and you had chosen this exact moment yourself, you weren’t even close to as nervous as you thought you’d be

and from then on, you only became more comfortable when it came to sex

you could tell he loved showing you and trying new things with you

and before you knew it, he was actually showing you that empty space at the back of the library he had joked about

usually, you were hesitant to do anything risky in public

but when it was late and the library was nearing closing hours, it was almost fully vacant

he could never get enough of your innocent eyes while your lips were wrapped around his cock, kneeling on the carpet floor of the university library in front of him

he’d never get over when he fucked you from behind, two of his fingers in your mouth, muffling your moans while you were hidden behind the bookshelves

other nights he’d show up outside of your house in the middle of the night, just because he missed you so much

*cough* querencia *cough*

there was something about nighttime that made you feel as if you were the only two people in the world

then it would be him and you in his bed, on his kitchen counter, his sofa, his shower or any random wall of his apartment

now you might have understood why the girls loved him

but they didn’t love him the way you did

!!!SMUT ENDING

he loved showing you off to his friends

some of them looked equally as intimidating as him

but as you had learned, most of that was simply looks and wasn’t to be taken seriously

when you hung out with his friends, he had you sitting in his lap, usually bragging about something you had done or said to him

you were like his personal, pretty gem and he was making sure everyone knew

and as much as he wanted you to be known to his friends, you wished you could have told your parents about him

one day, they would understand how much you loved him

they would be able to look past his tattoos and pierced skin and see how amazing he was

but for now, he was your little secret

every night, he sent you a goodnight text right before you went to sleep

sometimes he’d attach a picture of himself

in his pajamas, with messy hair and heavy eyelids, even he looked almost cute to you

other nights, when he was still out, it’d be a mirror selfie, with his hair pushed back perfectly, lifting his head so you’d see your favorite tattoo of his on his neck

his clothes pitch black and shirt lazily tucked into his belt on one side

his eyes would have the cocky gaze you knew from when you first met him

only now it was only meant for you

his message would read:

“I love you angel. See you in your dreams”

[drabbles-of-writing]

Be Alright

This is part of my Four Years AU

AO3

Masterpost

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Luz was never known to be overly cautious.

She was reckless, impulsive, and an overall disaster of a human.

Titan, Amity loved her.

It was almost routine at this point, how it would go. Luz would jump into oncoming danger, others would (sometimes) follow, and she’d limp out with a big grin and a cheer about how she’d shown them, whether or not she’d actually won. It was no surprise that Amity had taken up healing as a secret secondary track.

It was always a gamble how things would go. Sometimes Luz would only have a few scratches, other times she’d be clinging to consciousness by a thread, moments away from breaking Eda’s house rule of nobody jeopardizing the rebellion by going to a public hospital.

But they usually had it handled. Luz would bounce back with twice the enthusiasm, even if her scars told a different story.

Despite all of this, Amity knew she’d never get used to seeing a scar in the making. 

,

“Who brought fireworks?”

“Ed!”

“Worth it!”

Explosions rung out, painting the emptying Night Market in scattered debris and bright flashes. Amity ducked under a broken roof, cursing as another explosion sounded off further away, accompanied with whoops and cheers.

“It’s a miracle none of them are dead yet,” Came a hiss from beside her.

She whirled around, relaxing when she saw it was just Willow appearing by her hiding place, vines wrapped all along her arms. Out of everyone, Amity was sure she would come out the most unscathed.

“I’m convinced Eda’s already died a few times,” Amity said, tilting her head to the sounds of explosions. “But she keeps coming back. My bet’s that she’s on life seven now.”

“That would explain a lot,” Willow agreed, peering out of their hiding place. “Dawns breaking, we should get out of here.” She added, raising her head.

“Already?” Amity lifted her head as well, seeing that, indeed, there was light seeping around the Market.

“Think you can wrangle Luz without setting more things on fire?” Willow asked, glancing at her with a smirk.

“If anyone is going to set things on fire, it’s Luz.” Amity said matter-of-factly, wincing as she heard shouts and a crash from elsewhere in the Market. “I can promise my best,” She said simply.

“That’s the best I could ask for,” Willow chuckled, stepping out of their hiding place. “Good luck.”

“I’ll need it,” Amity muttered, peering around the debris as she heard another explosion sound off. “Titan knows who she's going to piss off this time.”

,

Amity felt like she shouldn’t have been surprised.

And yet, she still felt a wave of exhaustion just finding situations like these.

Luz stood atop a pile of debris, swinging her staff like a club and knocking it against the heads of those in the Night Market who had stayed to attempt to fight her and the rest of the Owl House residents. Aside from a few scrapes and cuts to her hands and cloak, she wasn’t any worse for wear. Even her owl mask was relatively intact.

Eda was somewhere at the bottom of the pile with King, also giving their attackers a hard time. Amity was almost about to be surprised at how tame Luz was being...before she combined a firework and ice glyph and shot it towards an attacker, flinging them back with an explosion and into a busted stand with a gleeful cheer.

Amity sighed and calmly summoned a regular sized abomination, sending it off behind her towards other assailants that had assumed she couldn’t hear them approaching. In boots covered in metal. Honestly, she wondered how nobody had caught them yet.

Luz swung her staff at a different demon, grinning as she turned and scanned the area. Near instantly, her eyes landed on Amity, who was a good few meters away from her trash pile.

“Hey, Ams!” Luz shouted across the battleground, frantically waving her hand, her smile somehow growing.

Amity couldn’t help but return a smile of her own, her ears flicking back as her features softened. 

There was a bark behind her and she snapped out of it, glancing back as Barcus ran by, giving her a tired look.

“Oh don’t you start,” Amity warned, flashing a fang.

Barcus rolled his eyes and rushed off around a broken stand vanishing from sight. Though the sounds of yelling from those of the Night Market confirmed he was still as much in the fight as everyone else.

“Hey,”

Amity yelped at the sudden noise by her ear and spun around, almost falling over before an arm holding a staff hooked around her back and stopped her falling.

“Oops,” Luz smiled sheepishly, her head hovering over Amity’s as her shoulders hunched. While the top half of her face was hidden by her mask, the eyes were very expressive. “Sorry, wrong time for surprises?”

“That’s not going to stop you,” Amity grumbled, getting to her feet as Luz pulled her staff back and thumped the blunt end against the ground. “I was just with Willow, we need to--”

Luz’s head tilted away from Amity’s face for barely a moment before she withdrew a fire glyph from her sleeve and activated it. She chucked it right by Amity’s head, almost grazing her ear.

Amity turned barely half a second later, watching as the fire glyph made contact with a demon trying to sneak up on them. This one hadn’t worn metal boots and Amity hadn’t heard them approaching. Smart. She’d see if she could get the Emperor's Coven to help her arrest that one.

“Sorry about that, you were saying?” Luz said, looking right back down at Amity. She assumed so, at least. The eyes of her mask were more like pale circles than actual eyeholes. 

“The Coven, Luz.” Amity said, also unphased. “It’s dawn, the Coven will be here soon. You know how they like to come early to catch people trying to flee the Night Market.”

“Aren’t you also in the Emperor’s Coven?” Luz reminded, unconcerned. “Can’t you make them leave or something?”

“I’m the leader of my small, and remarkably passive,” Amity enunciated, ignoring explosions sounding off. “Group of the Emperor’s Coven. They don’t come here. Other guards do. I have absolutely no power here.”

“I wouldn’t call Archie breaking Jerbo’s nose passive,”

“Oh you have not seen the kind of guards they have by the Toes.”

“Shame,” Luz leaned against her staff. “Perhaps you could show me sometime?” She asked, the eyes of her mask moving in a sort of eyebrow wiggle.

“Luz,” Amity sighed, clasping the palms of her hands together and pressing it against her nose as she mentally reeled herself in to keep her composure. “Asking me on a date in the middle of a battle is bordering on impressively bold and tacky, which is a line I didn’t know even existed.”

“What can I say? I like making new lines.” Luz beamed widely. “Does this mean I can keep kicking in teeth?” She asked hopefully.

“Absolutely not,” Amity crossed her arms. “I just said the Coven is going to arrive. Do you want to explain to the rebellion you need another prison breakout because nearly everyone here got captured for not leaving?”

“Tell you what,” Luz said, passing her staff to her other hand. “You can grab everyone who’d rather not be here when the Coven arrive while Eda and I finish up here.” She suggested casually.

“Luz you're going to get captu--”

“Oi, there she is!”

Luz and Amity calmly turned their heads, spotting that over the crest of the fallen stands, with the sunrise behind them, was a small band of demons and witches. A little less than a dozen or so. They all looked a little beat up, but many still sported a decent amount of weapons and, likely, magic.

“Oh you’ve got to be kidding me,” Amity groaned, leaning her head back.

“Well, since we’re already here…” Luz said, nudging her shoulder. “I mean, it's pretty bad form to back down from a challenge…”

Amity, ignoring the gang approaching them (who clearly thought they had the high-ground at were taking their sweet time, the idiots), gave Luz a half-hearted glare. Luz was still giving her a hopeful look, giddy with excitement. And Amity had to admit, it had been a while since they’d fought an enemy on the same side. Publicly, at least.

“Fine,” Amity relented, sagging as Luz perked up. “But as soon as they’re gone we are leaving.”

“As you wish, Miss Blight.” Luz said with a low, dramatic bow, mocking the title Amity’s Coven would give her.

“Only you could get away with that,” Amity muttered, finally turning her gaze back to the group of demons and witches, who had spent the last few minutes pulling up weapons from the debris and scattering to ‘hide,’ if you could call it that.

Snowy finally decided to show up, flying around Luz before landing on the end of her staff. Luz stood from her bow and gripped her staff with two hands. Amity summoned her own, already determining where to place three different abominations in the area.

“Shall we?” Luz said, giving Amity a coy look and gesturing broadly to the approaching witches.

“Try not to get your head blown off,” Amity said casually, offering the tiniest of smiles. Luz’s staff began to glow as she took a step back and braced herself, a springboard moments away from uncoiling.

“No promises!”

,

It was hardly a fight.

But Luz didn’t seem to mind. She never did. She was just thrilled to be part of one.

Amity would’ve been bored were Luz not there. One could count on her to make things interesting. Granted you had no say on if it was for better or for worse.

Amity swung her staff, her abomination following and lumbering right into a cluster of demons. She had multiple up and running around, and she’d admit, it was a little tiring. But she’d done worse before, and their assailants were almost gone.

Dawn was well upon them now, the light casting long shadows. Amity had lost track of who was or wasn’t around them anymore. She figured Willow had already left, and likely dragged a few others with her. She’d get yelled at later, she knew it.

There was a holler to her left and she turned towards it, flicking her wrist to move an abomination out of the way.

A spire of ice shot up from the ground, sending three witches flying off to who-knows-where. Luz’s head popped around from behind it, laughing as Snowy flew at another witch trying to run at her. In the same movement, Luz drew a plant and lightning glyph. She threw the plant glyph at one of the larger demons around the ice spire, wrapping his arm in vines. She ran by and slapped the lightning glyph on the vines, causing them to erupt and explode as the demon yelled and bolted.

Amity shook her head, glancing at her own palisman, Fang, sitting on her staff and giving her a bored expression that could rival Willow’s.

“Hey, at least she's effective.” Amity shrugged. Fang only huffed and clung tighter to the top of her staff, melding into it until he looked like nothing more than a fancy wooden carving.

There was a crack and a shout, and Amity looked back just in time to see a demon stumble away from getting Luz’s staff whacked right into their face. Amity quickly moved an abomination towards them to get them stuck, should they try to retaliate. She did a double check on the rest of her abominations, which were thankfully beginning to drive away the remainders of their attackers and beginning to melt into the ground when they were done doing so.

“And you better stay out!” Luz shouted after a demon behind her, waving her fist in the air. 

Amity was about to call out to her, but sounds of rapid footsteps grabbed her attention. She whirled around, summoning a small abomination as a shield before a witch crashed right into it. It took all of two seconds for Amity to recognize their white cloak and gray mask before she recoiled and cursed under her breath.

“Titan I hope you weren’t paying attention,” She mumbled before drawing a circle in the air. One of her other abominations turned into goo and quickly fused with the abomination in front of her, caging in the guard as they yelped and thrashed about.

Amity flicked her wrist and her abomination lumbered off, taking the guard with them.

They had run out of time.

“Luz, we gotta go!” Amity yelled, her shoulders tense as she searched for her human.

Luz had ended up a good few meters away on a slope, hollering after a few running demons. She glanced back at Amity’s shout, and seeing the worry on her face, wasn’t about to argue with her.

“Well, it was fun while it lasted.” Luz shrugged regretfully. “I suppose this is where I bid you adieu” She said, giving Amity a cheeky bow. In the same movement of her bow, she had hooked her hand into her mask and easily took it off and held it out in a hand. It was mainly for show, anyway.

Amity huffed and raised a brow, despite her amused smile. Luz lifted her head slightly and gave a teasing wink before standing back to her feet.

The witch, who hadn’t paid attention to anything else going on, saw a sudden movement from behind Luz. She could only process the mild annoyance at having to patch up another bruise on Luz before she spoke.

“Behind y--”

In barely a second, the demon behind Luz wrapped an arm in front of her and tugged her back, startling the human. In the same moment, before any of them could react, they brought up their other talon. There was the flash of a blade between their fingers before said blade was jabbed straight into Luz’s throat.

Amity froze. Luz froze. Everything seemed to go still. The blade was dug high up on Luz’s neck, blood already coating the object and beginning to leak around the demon's claws. Blood trickled down Luz’s neck and began to stain the collar of her shirt.

And, just as fast as it froze, time snapped back at a jolting speed.

There was a shriek overhead and a dash of white. Snowy reappeared and slammed her body into the demon's face, flashing her talons and screeching. The demon threw the blade to the side, yelping and stumbling back to try and throw off the palisman.

Blood gushed from Luz’s neck, and upon finally being released, the human gasped as her hand flew up to her wound. She stumbled, having nothing holding her up. Her knees shook and buckled, sending her tumbling to the ground, still grasping at her neck.

Amity could only stare, her eyes wide and pupils so narrowed they practically vanished. She visibly flinched and broke out of her state when Luz’s body hit the ground.

“Luz!” She screamed. A scratchy, shrill sound that even Amity didn’t know she was capable of.

She was running before the name was out of her mouth. She suddenly knew what tunnel vision was like. Her focus was solely on Luz, collapsed on the ground. Her feet seemed to hook and stumble against every little pebble as she rushed up the slope, her heart in her ears. Everything else was fuzzy and irrelevant, and they faded into background noise.

Amity was at Luz’s side far too soon and still too late for her liking. She stared down at her, her throat going dry.

Luz was gasping and pressing both hands to her throat, whether it was due to the pain or some part of her conscious enough to try and stop the blood flow, she couldn't tell. Blood pooled out, creating almost a sort of halo around her head. 

But her eyes, oh Titan her eyes.

They were blown wide, and were so white it looked almost unnatural. Her pupils had shrunk to sizes that she’d learned from Luz should not be physically possible for humans. A constant side-effect of shots she had gotten years ago.

Her eyes stared off into nothing, glazed but still so full of pure, unbridled terror. Luz was not someone who was scared easily, and seeing such an unmasked horror from her was nothing short of unsettling. Her eyes darted about as she wheezed for air, and she looked as though she couldn’t tell where she was.

Then those eyes landed on Amity.

Her face barely changed, although her eyes did. Her pupils dilated, ever so slightly. She locked those eyes with Amity as she gurgled through the blood bubbling in her throat. Amity could see her own petrified, still expression reflected back at her in those eyes. She was like a deer in the headlights, and she could feel her hands going numb.

One of Luz’s hands left her wound and she reached out, coated and dripping with blood as her fingers grazed Amity’s pant leg, weakly trying to grab at her.

Finally, though now that she looks back, the entire experience probably only lasted a few seconds, Amity snapped out of her trance.

“Luz,” Amity’s voice cracked, startlingly quiet as she dropped to her knees.

She panicked, and she knew she was. She looked over Luz rapidly as she wracked her brain for what to do. She knew healing magic, for Titan’s sake!

Instead, all she could think of to do was to press down on Luz’s throat, taking over as her girlfriends own hands started to shake and fall. Her eyelids drooped slightly and Amity felt a violent spike of fear at the sight.

“Viney,” Amity croaked, shaking her head as she wrapped an arm around Luz and pulled her closer, placing her head on her lap in some feeble attempt to elevate the wound, even though that wouldn’t do anything for a neck wound because of course it wouldn’t.

“Viney, Viney!” Amity cried, raising her head and frantically looking around the debris and dying--wrong word--chaos around her. “Where’s Viney?” She yelled pitifully, tightening her hold on Luz.

Yes, Viney could help. She was a far better healer than Amity. She’d healed bad injuries all the time. She just needed Viney and everything would be fine.

“Where are you?” Amity wailed, her panic rising to near hysteria as she searched the area with blurry, tear-filled eyes. She wasn’t sure who specifically she was calling for now. “Please, please she…”

Amity risked a glance down at Luz. She was now breathing through laboured breaths, raspy and shaking like a building that was about to collapse. Her eyelids were droopy, but she was stubbornly keeping them open as she lightly tried to hold her hands against her neck.

“There you guys are! What--”

Amity jerked her head up, pulling Luz closer to her chest as her ears dipped low.

Eda.

It was Eda. She was going to be okay. They were going to be okay.

Eda faltered, her confused, but still cocky, grin falling as she looked over Amity. Sitting on her knees, covered in blood that wasn’t her own, holding Luz like she was going to slip away from her at any moment.

“Kid!” Eda exclaimed, rushing forward and skidding to her knees so fast she likely cut them up as she grabbed Luz.

Amity was too numb to stop her, letting Eda take her as she stared off. Eda turned Luz over, sharply inhaling at the sight and her pupils narrowing and ears flicking back. Amity felt selfish for being glad that Eda had to see this, too. Because now Eda could take Luz, and she’d be fine, and tomorrow this day would be a funny story they’d tell the rebellion on a slow day.

Snowy had shown up again, though Amity couldn’t remember when. She had landed beside Eda, chirping and flapping her wings frantically as Eda scooped up Luz in her arms. She stood, momentarily forgetting about Amity as she yelled words the younger witch could no longer make out.

Her vision became splotchy and her ears felt fuzzy. Everything felt like a blur, and she was barely aware of being lifted off the ground. But she could still acutely hear the frantic beating of her heart and feel the stickiness of the blood drying on her clothes and hands.

,

When Amity finally came to, she was in the Owl House.

It wasn’t a consciousness she eased into, but rather was jerked out of by nothing in particular. She simply suddenly snapped up, her eyes shiny with emotion again as she looked around.

She was sitting on the couch, and Lilith was beside her, obviously lost in thought. Willow, Barcus and Gus were the only ones in the room, all of them sitting on the floor around the table in front of the couch.

She felt something warm in her hands and looked down, realizing she was holding a cup of tea. Lilith must’ve made it, considering how obsessed she was. Likely one of the kinds that helped keep her calm, she used those a lot.

She stared at her hands in fascination, seeing that they were no longer covered in blood. And for a moment, she thought she’d imagined it all.

But if she looked closely, she could still see the small bits and splatters of dried red liquid on the back of her hands. And when she looked down at herself, she saw that while her cloak and extra layers had been removed, her pant legs were still covered in dried blood and her shirt had specks of it that had soaked through.

Amity felt like she was going to be sick.

“Are you back?”

She blinked, forcing her eyes away from herself as she looked to the coffee table in front of her. Gus was sitting next to it, leaning his arms on it. He was looking at her now, face full of concern.

“Come--” Amity stopped and cleared her throat, hating how strained it sounded. “Come again?”

“You, um,” Gus gestured to his face with his hand. “Had a bit of a...gone look, for a while. You just, I dunno, you were…” He shook his head and swallowed. “H-how are you doing?”

He was nervous, clearly so. And seeing Gus as such did little to ease her own nerves. At least it was only nervousness, Amity wasn’t sure how she’d react if he was full-blown freaking out.

“I…” Amity blinked a few times, trying to get her mind in order. She was aware of everyone else in the room looking up towards her. “I’m--I’m fine.” She said, looking down at her hands again before sharply turning away. Right, the blood.

“Where, where’s Luz?” She asked, looking around the room. She tried to push down the growing feeling of unease, she didn’t trust herself not to hurl if she thought about it too much.

“She’s upstairs,” Lilith said, frowning slightly. “You saw Eda carry her up there with Viney.”

“I-I did?” Amity said, staring at her mentor.

“Yeah, you wanted to go with them.” Gus nodded, looking increasingly worried. “You don’t remember? You were freaking out and Willow had to calm you down.”

Amity turned to Willow at that, like just looking at her would suddenly explain everything. Willow was sitting at the other end of the coffee table, looking tired. That was nothing new, but her looking ready to fall asleep where she sat wasn’t. She met Amity’s gaze with exhaustion, cringing slightly and glancing away.

“Oh,” Amity said, gripping her cup of tea a little tighter. “I...I don’t remember that.” She said, shrinking in on herself. “Is Luz okay?” She asked, her voice wavering slightly.

Nobody met her gaze. Aside from Barcus, who lay underneath the table, for some reason. He met her gaze for a moment before his ears flicked back and he growled something under his breath.

“I’m going to check on her,” Amity said, pushing back the way it felt like her heart dropped as she sharply put her cup down on the table and stood up.

Her head felt dizzy as she did so, and it didn’t help that everyone started talking over each other as soon as Amity spoke. She stumbled for a moment before Lilith grabbed her shoulder and awkwardly pushed her back onto the couch.

“Absolutely not,” She said sternly. “We barely got you cleaned up, and still need to get you out of that.” She said, gesturing to the stained clothes Amity still bore. “Eda only took her up there a few minutes ago, we were simply catching our breath before you came to, it's why not everyone is here yet.”

“I know healing magic!” Amity protested, shrugging off Lilith’s hand. “I can help Viney.” She said, getting up again.

“You are in no condition to help Luz right now,” Lilith insisted, getting up just as quickly and lightly touching Amity’s arm as she stood in front of her. “Not after all that.” She said, her voice softening.

“What would you know?” Amity growled, more harshly than she meant. “You weren’t there. Nobody here was!” She hissed, resisting the urge to throw her hands in the air.

“No, we weren’t.” Lilith agreed, and the fact Lilith had done so with no argument had Amity shutting her mouth instantly. “But Eda told us where she found you, and judging from how you reacted and looked when they brought you back, I highly doubt seeing Luz in her current state is going to help anyone.”

Amity wanted to protest, she really did. She wanted to shove Lilith aside and storm up to wherever Luz was and do all she can to make her look up at her with eyes that didn’t get burned into her mind like a nightmare and a smile that didn’t have blood gushing out of it. But she knew she’d never make it far. Lilith was stubborn, and Willow would surely help keep Amity downstairs. There was no fighting Willow.

And, if she were honest with herself, she doubted she’d be able to do anything, anyway. Eda was probably already panicking, and the mere thought of seeing Luz laying on a cot with bandages around her neck and curled into a ball made her knees feel close to giving out.

“Luz will be okay,” Lilith continued, moving her hand up from Amity’s arm to the shoulder. “Viney said the blade entered too high,” She explained. “It didn’t hit any main arteries. She’s made it through a lot, this’ll be barely any different.” She assured, giving a tense smile.

If Amity had the energy, she’d argue that the fact everyone was anxiously waiting around didn’t exactly give any good signs. But right now, she wanted to do anything but dwell on today.

“Come on,” Willow said, pushing herself to her feet. “I have spare clothes here, we should get you out of that mess,” She said, offering a hand for Amity to take.

Amity stared down at it for a moment before her shoulders slumped and she took it, letting Willow guide her out of the living room. Gus and Barcus gave her pitying looks as they left through the door by the stairs.

“I’m sorry,” Amity mumbled, bringing her free hand close to her chest, where it was currently fisted. “I didn’t get her out of there in time, I humored her and now--”

“Hey,” Willow said sharply, turning around and narrowing her eyes. “I know how Luz is, this isn’t your fault.” She said, lowering her head so she could keep eye contact with Amity. “Something like this was bound to happen, anyway.” She mumbled bitterly.

“But I…” Amity trailed off, her throat feeling dry as she broke away from Willow’s gaze and glue her gaze to the ground, her hands trembling.

“It’s alright,” Willow said, gently squeezing her hand. “Luz will be fine, and so will you. Knowing her, she’d probably fight the Bat Queen herself if you so much as said you vaguely missed her.” She added, trying to joke.

“I know,” Amity said, looking up as her ears flicked down. “And that's what scares me.”

,

Amity was on her fifth cup of tea when the door to the Owl House had opened.

Barely an hour had passed, with no word from anyone upstairs. Barcus insisted that if Eda wasn’t worrying about having to risk a hospital visit, Luz was bound to be fine.

Nobody had left the house since Luz had been whisked away, leaving none of them able to tell the others they hadn’t picked up on the way back about the situation.

So the laughing and jeering that greeted them when the door opened was a bit jarring.

“Ey, there they are!” Edric grinned, walking in as he shoulder-bumped Jerbo. “I can’t believe you guys left us!”

“Ed almost got caught by the Coven,” King said, sitting up on Jerbo’s shoulders. “I rescued him.” He added proudly, a paw on his chest.

“You did not,” Jerbo shook his head with a smile. “What was the rush? We thought you’d all been carted off to prison again.” He asked, looking around the room.

Exhausted, stricken faces greeted them. You could see the joy die from their eyes, replaced with bone-chilling worry.

“What happened?” Emira demanded, stepping in and closing the door.

“Luz got hurt,” Lilith said calmly. “Badly.” She glanced to Amity beside her, who was staring at her tea. “Amity witnessed it.” She added, quieter and full of pity.

The twins looked to each other with similar faces of fear before they rushed in, moving to crouch beside their sister. Lilith silently moved to the furthest side of the couch so Emira could sit next to Amity. Jerbo and King glanced to each other before hurrying to the others on the floor, talking in hushed tones.

“She’ll be okay,” Amity said, her eyes flickering between her siblings. “I’ve learned from you two that things often look a lot worse than they actually are.” She added with an obviously forced lighter tone, giving a small smile.

“Oh, Amity…” Edric trailed off, his ears pressing back. “What...is…”

“Wasn’t fun,” Amity said, continuing her fake tone. “I can tell you that. I think I washed my hands raw.” She said, looking down at where said rubbed-red hands were shaking as they held her cup. “She’s--” She broke off, swallowing thickly and refusing to let her voice break. “She’s with Viney and Eda.” 

“If you start using humor to cope I’m going to punch you.” Emira warned, a growl forming before dying out. 

“Hypocrite,” Amity rolled her eyes, taking a sip of her tea.

“Well hey, if Viney’s with Luz, then she’s going to be up and running in barely a day.” Edric said, quickly changing the topic away from them. “She's dealt with all kinds of ridiculous injuries, especially from Em.”

“Oh your one to talk,” Emira snapped. “If Jerbo was a healer--”

“Behave,” Lilith called sharply, giving the twins a warning glare from the other side of the couch.

“Yes, mom.” Edric mumbled under his breath so she couldn’t hear.

“Hey, Luz is tough.” Emira said, wrapping an arm around Amity’s shoulders and pulling her against her side. “A little scrap will barely graze her. It’ll be a joke within hours, just you wait.”

Amity raised a hand to her neck, lightly rubbing it as she glanced to her sister, grimacing before looking away.

“It was here,” She said quietly, almost inaudible. “They got her here.”

The twins tensed. Edric squeezed Amity’s arm and she slumped, letting Emira keep her upright.

Neither of them spoke after that.

,

It was late afternoon when they heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Everyone's heads were up in a flash, waiting in bated breath.

It was Eda.

She looked drained, a hand running down her face. She paused at the doorway, looking out into the living room with anxious faces staring back at her.

“She’s okay,” Eda said, and it was like the weight of the sky had been lifted off their shoulders.

Amity almost fell off the couch by how fast and heavily she sagged in relief. Emira’s arm around her was the only thing keeping her stable.

“She’ll need rest for a few days, but Luz will be back to normal in no time.” Eda said, walking into the room. “Viney’s doing a final once over,” She added, catching Emira’s eye.

“Can we see her?” Gus asked, standing up.

“Kids exhausted, you can’t all see her at once.” Eda deadpanned. “Viney already almost bit my head off for staying that long,” She mumbled under her breath. “One at a time, and honestly, Viney might yell at you to leave her alone within the hour.”

Amity was on her feet in seconds, her cup forgotten on the table. She took a step towards the stairs before pausing and turning back to Gus.

Sure, Amity had seen what happened to Luz but...he was Luz’s friend, too. He and Willow were still her closest. And...well, she couldn’t help but feel guilty as she met his eyes.

Gus seemed to understand and smiled, sitting back down on the floor beside Willow.

“Go ahead,” He said, and Amity once again wondered how his emotions could almost flip on a dimel. “But I call seeing Luz next.” He said, looking back to the others with a joking glare that couldn’t frighten a squirrel.

“Yeah, good luck fighting for that.” Willow taunted, punching his arm as he yelped and gave a sheepish smile.

“Don’t break anything,” Amity warned, but smiled back as she nodded to her siblings and made her way to the stairs.

As she passed Eda, the witch reached out for her. Amity paused, watching her. Eda seemed to hesitate for a moment before patting her shoulder and moving away, towards where the rest of their family began to discuss who-knows-what, all the tension having left them.

Feeling a bit lighter, Amity made her way up the stairs.

,

She hung outside of Luz’s room for a moment, scuffing at the floor with her feet. She could hear shuffling and muffled voices through the door, and wondered the consequences of busting in when Viney was still packing up.

The door opened and Amity jumped. Viney stepped out, looking surprised for a moment before relaxing with a smile.

“You know, she was just asking to see you and the others.” She chuckled, re-situating her medical bag under her arm. “Try not to--never mind.”

Viney only shook her head as Amity pushe right by her, rushing into Luz’s room. Viney couldn’t blame her, and only shrugged and shut the door behind her.

Amity paused for a moment to take in the scene, suddenly remembering she probably should’ve mentally prepared herself better.

Luz was laying on her mattress Eda had upgraded her too, under a single sheet. She was laying on her back with one hand hanging off and brushing the floor. The other was situated on her stomach. She was still wearing her outfit from earlier, but her purple cloak had been discarded on the other side of the room, and Luz had been changed out of her surely bloodsoaked shirt. She wore one of her gray tank tops instead, and her eyes were partially closed.

For a brief, horrifying second, Amity was reminded of a corpse in an open casket.

That was, until Luz saw who had entered the room.

“Ami--” Luz’s gleeful cry was cut off by her hacking loudly, coughing as she sat up and pressed a hand to her throat.

“Are you okay?” Amity worried, rushing over and standing over Luz, reaching out a hand.

“Fine,” Luz wheezed, lifting her free hand to reassure Amity. “Voice is just gonna be off for a little while.” She said, her voice scratchy as she rubbed at her neck once before dropping her hand.

And once it moved away, Amity finally got to see the bandages wrapped tightly around her. True to Lilith’s word, they were much higher up than a typical throat-slit. On Luz, it was just below her chin, right where her neck met her head. Though it still didn’t stop Amity from wincing at the sight of the gauzes.

Luz noticed and deflated slightly. She attempted to shake it off and grabbed Amity’s hand, pulling it closer and encasing both of her hands over it. Which was an easy feat, considering they were noticeably bigger.

“I’m glad you're okay,” She said in her strained voice, looking up at Amity with a smile that the witch lingered on a moment too long to be natural.

“I’m not the one you should be worrying about,” Amity said, a little sternly as she pressed her ears back. “If anything, I should be saying that I’m glad you're okay.”

“Aw, you care.” Luz teased, sticking out her tongue. Amity gave her a half-hearted glare and she faltered, her smile falling along with her eyes.

“I just,” Luz swallowed, biting the inside of her cheek as she noticed Amity’s unease. “I’m--I remember what you looked like when I,” Luz hesitated, clearing her hoarse voice as a hole opened in Amity’s gut. “I...I was worried about you.” She mumbled, lowering her head.

Amity stared at Luz’s hunched form for a few moments. Then, tentatively, like she was expecting Luz to bolt, she lifted her other hand and stepped right to the edge of the bed. Luz spared a glimpse up as Amity wrapped her hand around Luz’s back and pulled her closer.

Luz drooped into her hold, thumping her head against Amity’s chest and squeezing her hand tighter. Amity lightly ran her hand through the hair at the base of Luz’s head, which she also rested her chin on and rocked subtly to the side, shutting her eyes.

They stayed like that for a while, letting the memories of the day roll over them before forcing it back, all in silence. Amity was sure Luz could tell she was fighting back crying again, and she knew Luz wasn’t as alright as she acted. Not from how her hands left her own and clutched tightly at the girls sides, pulling at her baggy shirt and pressing her face close.

“I was scared for you,” Luz finally broke the silence, her raspy, painful-sounding voice almost inaudible. “You looked like you’d seen the end of the world.”

“Well, I was certainly scared for you.” Amity said matter-of-factly, trying to cover up her disturbance at Luz having remembered more than she thought. “Don’t worry about it, I’m alright now.”

“That’s the worst lie I’ve ever heard in my life.”

“Oh, and you're a master at figuring out liars now?” Amity snarked, looking down at Luz and meeting Luz’s eyes, which were wonderfully normal and not full of panic.

“I’m good with you,” Luz said cheerfully in her stupid scratchy voice that Amity hated she kind of liked. “Your right ear moves when you lie, when you forget about it.”

Damnit. Edric and Emira had always remembered that tick of hers and Amity had learned to stop herself from flicking said ear whenever she was lying. But every now and again, she forgot.

“That proves nothing,” Amity said stiffly, turning her head away. “I move my ear when I’m annoyed all the time.” 

“That's your left ear,” Luz said with gleeful factuality. “I noticed.” She said proudly, giving Amity an expression like she’d solved a puzzle and was looking for praise.

“That you did,” Amity mumbled, ruffling Luz’s hair so it’d fall into her eyes. She needed to cut that sometime. “You're very annoying like that.”

“Too bad I’m your annoyance,” Luz teased, giving Amity a smug wink.

“Woe is me,” Amity said in a bleak voice, laying her head on Luz’s to hide the blush creeping up her face. “I’m going to be suffering for the rest of my days.”

“C’mon, I do that all on my own--” Luz broke off in a fit of coughs, doubling over and releasing Amity.

The witch stepped back, eyes flashing with fear as got to her knees beside the bed and laid her hand on Luz’s leg. She shoved down the helpless feeling she thought would’ve been gone by now as Luz coughed and rubbed at her bandaged neck.

“Sorry,” Luz wheezed, her fit finally calming down.

“It’s alright,” Amity said, her voice quiet as well. “You should rest your voice.”

“No, I-” Luz flinched, rubbing at her neck more before shaking her head. “I’m sorry for scaring you,” She rasped. “You said we had to leave, and I didn’t, and--”

“Hey, hey,” Amity chided softly, lifting to hold Luz’s free hand. “It was an accident, I don’t blame you. Nobody does.” 

“I know, but…” Luz sighed, her shoulders slumping. She leaned forward, lightly knocking her forehead against Amity’s as she closed her eyes for a second before opening them. She kept her eyes locked on where Amity was still holding her hand.

“I’m a mess,” Luz mumbled, stroking her thumb over the back of Amity’s hand. “And I should’ve...I dunno...I just…” She groaned and finally met Amity’s gaze. “I’m sorry. For a lot of things. And I wish that it,” She gestured around them with her other hand. “Didn’t end up like this. You know? This is a rebellion, I thought it’d be fun. They always make rebellions sound so cool and how you’d always escape them okay and be heroes.”

“So, Azura, then?” Amity lifted a brow.

“Don’t patronize me,” Luz huffed good-naturedly. “Look, I’m just...sorry. That I got hurt, that someone else could’ve gotten hurt, that you're stuck in this mess, that…” Luz muttered and blinked her eyes rapidly, like Amity somehow couldn’t see they were beginning to water. “God, I think I’m still high off those pain medications.” She groaned, covering her face with her hand.

Amity blinked before giving a small smile. She moved her head back slightly and raised her other hand, reaching out for Luz and cupping her cheek. Luz immediately leaned into it and slipped her hand off her face to hold Amity’s in its place.

“I’ve been stuck before,” She said, pointedly keeping her gaze away from Luz’s bandages. “And if this is your idea of stuck, then you better believe I’m not leaving.”

Luz gave a small half-smile, leaning further into her hand. Amity brushed her thump behind Luz’s eye, looking over her with mixed feelings. Luz wasn’t one to admit her fears so openly, and even Amity could tell how she tried to cover up her awkwardness at being open. Perhaps taking a page out of Luz’s book wasn’t a good idea, but she couldn't be bothered to worry about herself right then.

Amity leaned forward, catching Luz’s minor surprise for only a second before she placed a kiss on the side of Luz’s mouth, where a small scar went right over it. She remembered when Luz had gotten that scar, and she recalled how at the time it seemed like nothing more than an inconvenient cut. 

Amity pulled back only a moment later, almost snickering at the sight of Luz. She was flushed and looked like a deer in the--nope. Wrong analogy.

Amity hoped her quick cover-up smile was enough to make up for her sudden shift. 

Luz eventually reeled herself in and her expression shifted to that of a pout, letting her hand fall from Amity’s as she thumped her head on her girlfriends shoulder.

“Cheater,” She whined, her voice muffled.

Amity giggled, relaxing as she wrapped an arm around Luz and held her close. It was an awkward position, but she couldn’t find it in her to care.

She remained there for a moment, laying her cheek against Luz’s shoulder. She glanced to the side, looking over the bandages around her throat. And for a moment she saw just how deep that blade dug into the human’s skin.

“It’s going to scar over,” She found herself saying, feeling Luz stiffen in her arms. “Isn’t it?”

Luz was silent for a few moments, and in those moments Amity feared she shouldn’t have spoken. Luz had never been one to dislike her scars until...well, she’d gotten a rather nasty one from Eda she’d rather forget. But then Luz exhaled, sounding far more tired than she had been before.

“Yeah,” She croaked. “Viney said it would.”

“I’m sorry,” Amity murmured.

“It’s okay,” Luz said, resting her chin on Amity’s shoulder so she could be heard better. “This isn’t my first and it won’t be my last.”

Amity felt a chill at that line. She knew it wasn’t meant to be foreboding, only a small joke so she wouldn’t worry. Yet, it made her uneasy at how Luz brushed it off. And it was a small reminder that, even if Luz felt regret, she was still a naturally reckless person. And one day she’d be right back in her bed, covered in bandages and possibly in a worse condition than a hoarse voice.

“Luz,” Amity said, tightening her arms around the human. “I…”

Titan, what even was there to say? Don’t say that? You deserve better? I love you?

She wouldn’t get anywhere with any of those. And especially not the latter. There was too much going on already, and this was neither the time nor the place.

Amity squeezed her eyes shut and sighed before leaving her eyes half-lidded.

“Be careful,” She said instead. “If not for yourself, then for the others. You have no idea how scared we were.” She flicked her ears further down. “Don’t do anything overly stupid, okay?” She said, her voice hitching as she tried to cover it with a more teasing tone.

She could feel Luz swallow against her shoulder, shifting in her hold slightly.

“I’ll try,” She murmured.

And Amity supposed that was the best she could ask for.

“Also,” Luz started nervously. “Uh, not to rapidly change the subject,” Luz said, lifting her head slightly, her voice a bit more strained than before. “But your claws are kind of digging into my back…”

“Oh, right!” Amity squeaked and jerked back, sharply tugging her hands off of Luz and wincing when she felt her claws slide out of Luz’s shirt and skin. “Sorry, sorry,”

“I’ve had worse.” Luz chuckled, pulling away and giving Amity a mildly pained smile. “And as much as I love having you here,” Her eyes trailed somewhere behind Amity. “I think Gus is about to break something if this doesn’t hurry up.”

Amity turned around, confused. Sure enough, the door to the room was just barely cracked, and Gus could be seen pacing outside it. And Amity was willing to bet Willow was there, too.

“Seriously, guys?” Amity rolled her eyes, exasperated.

“We weren’t listening, I swear!” Gus insisted, pulling the door open further and poking his head in. “We weren’t even here that long!”

“Next time, you can just knock.” Amity grumbled, flicking her ear at Luz’s snickers behind her. 

“Eh, figured you’d tear our heads off if we did,” Willow said, pulling the door open further. “So, can we come in then?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Amity sighed, getting to her feet and brushing herself off. “Eda’s going to kill you if she finds out both of you were sneaking in at the same time.”

“Eh, I’ll probably be fine.” Luz shrugged, her voice scratching more as she clearly tried to hold back another cough.

“Get it out of your system,” Amity told her simply, deciding to push back her earlier turmoil as she turned back to the door. “You want me to cover for you two?”

“You and I both know it's going to take ages for you to finally go downstairs instead of hovering by the door.” Willow deadpanned. 

“This is bullying,” Amity complained as Gus and Willow walked in, with Gus instantly springing to Luz’s bedside and going off about some topic Amity was tuning out.

“Yeah, hurts, doesn’t it?” Willow said with a smirk, raising a brow as she passed Amity.

“...Touché,” Amity mumbled with an acknowledging nod.

Willow only shook her head and came up by the head of Luz’s bed, calmly watching as Gus talked a mile a minute, so much livelier than how he was mere hours ago. Amity stood back and watched, fiddling her hands together as Luz coughed and assured her friends she was fine and letting Gus continue his rambling.

Amity unconsciously rubbed her hand at her own throat before quickly dropping it again. She fiddled her hands together, feeling that her claws were still unsheathed. She pressed along her fingers, trying to coax her claws to sheath. It only somewhat worked, and she relented that her claws weren’t going to go away for a while.

Willow glanced over at her with a questioning look. Amity cringed at seeing her concern and gave a forced smile and nodded her head. She knew it didn’t convince Willow, but she didn’t push and turned back to Gus and Luz without further comment.

She’d always be worried about Luz, she decided as she watched said human listen to Gus and pointedly ignore the warning glances Willow gave her as she messed with her bandages. Luz would always be a handful, no matter how much she changed, she’d still be the human who had to learn as much magic as she could and the one who wouldn’t stand for an emperor like Belos. If nobody would do it, Luz sure as hell would.

And, as scared as she was to blink and suddenly see that blood on her hands again, she decided it was worth it. She’d never get used to it, not completely.

Amity could almost hear Willow calling her a hypocrite, because the more she thought about it, the more Amity began to realize that she’d likely do anything of Luz’s request to make her safer. Hell, she didn’t doubt she’d fight her own parents one-on-two if Luz asked nicely.

And while the thought of that terrified her, she couldn’t find the common sense to find a reason to stop herself, should it happen.

Perhaps that's just the impact Luz had on people.

Or maybe it was just Amity.

She couldn’t find it in her to care anymore.

[fancyfade]

so ive been debating editing chapter 3 on my fanfic to make 1 scene line up more from canon. (chapter 3 is this one, where the characters deal with the aftermath of battle for the cowl, Tim finds out Damian’s Robin, and Dick and Damian move to the penthouse)

I’m debating making the Tim finding out Damian’s Robin scene a little more canon compliant along what happened in Red Robin (link) for a few reasons, the main of which is in the scenes that I’m writing next (like... chapter 47 lol), Tim and Dick do have to talk about what transpired when Dick made Damian Robin. Potential reasons for change

In my fic Tim kind of just left on his own without a push, but I’m not sure if Tim would have left on such bad terms if there wasn’t the complication of Damian antagonizing him and him feeling as if Dick was picking Damian over him (even though in the comic we saw Dick trying to de-escalate and get Tim’s back, it still felt that way to Tim)

I dislike the way some of this was handled in the comic and I can’t really comment on it in my fic if I just retcon it out

it seems fair-er I guess if Tim is allowed to have flaws just like Cass and Damian and Dick all have flaws in this fic. i know many tim stans think otherwise, but punching a ten-year-old victim of child abuse in the face out of anger is wrong.

the con side is obviously this involves Damian getting hit and that kid has been through so much already. I’m really trying to figure out how it works with character dynamics vs like. give the poor kid a break-ness.

anyway if I did decide to replace the current chapter 3, this is what it would be replaced with (only the first scene, the second would be the same). If you are a reader of the fic feel free to leave your comments. I would do an “oh and I edited chapter 3″ note before the relevant stuff was mentioned if I go through with this, I wouldn’t like expect everyone to know what happened. Some of the dialogue is not like exactly like in canon (cuz thats boring and also to match with what I wrote the first time) but the feeling/ beats should be similar

Gotham’s finally had a bit of lull in the violence, and Dick is just wondering how he’s going to do this.

He’s accepted that Damian’s his responsibility – seeing the kid shot in the chest made that perfectly clear, as much as he would’ve liked it to be otherwise. He felt like he was way too young to be watching out for a kid in any capacity other than cool older brother, especially a kid who’s as difficult to get along with as Damian. He was a great fighter, of course, and he knew it – Dick’s not sure he’s ever heard the kid be humble about anything. To make things worse, Dick feels like he’s constantly stuck in the middle between Damian and the kid he actually views as his younger brother – Tim, who Damian tried to kill. Evidence in point:

“Robin?!” Tim asks once he’s gotten back on his feet and Dick's explained his plan – away from Damian, who's still recovering from surgery.

“You made Damian Robin?!” Tim asks again.

Dick sighs. He’s in the cave, in a Batman costume he feels doesn’t fit right at all with the cowl off, and Tim’s still in his regular clothes. He has no idea how to explain this to Tim – no idea how to make him feel like he’s not being replaced. Dick never wanted to be the one doing the replacing – he remembers how much it hurt to find out that Jason was Robin from the papers, and that was after he officially stopped being Robin. Tim never quit – and Dick’s not about to make him – but he has to come home to the guy who tried to kill him getting his name.

“Tim, I know this looks bad, but Damian needs this.”

“Remember when we thought Bruce was going to retire after Crisis?” Tim asks. “Batman and Robin was supposed to be us. You and me. Not you and the psychopath that tried to kill me.”

“Tim, you’re not my sidekick, you’re my partner – ” Dick takes a step towards Tim with his hand out, prepared to offer sympathy, but Tim shakes him off angrily.

“Obviously not!”

“And Damian needs me way more than you do. If we don’t keep an eye on him, he’s going to kill again.”

Tim scowls intensely. “That should really not be an endorsement for being Robin, Dick! He’s a killer! He belongs in jail!” Tim swallows a little and then lowers his voice out of shouting range. “Dick, he didn’t try to kill me because he for some reason thought it was the only way to stop me from doing something bad, as far as I can tell he just wanted to replace me. We’re talking about someone with absolutely no sense of right or wrong.”

“Of course he doesn’t have a sense of right or wrong. He’s a ten-year-old child who was raised as an assassin from birth!”

“Lots of our villains have really sad or sympathetic reasons for doing crime, that doesn’t mean we team up with them.”

“Are you serious?” Dick asks. “This isn’t the same, Tim.”

“How not?”

“Well for one,” calls Damian's voice from the stairs, and Dick can't help but cringe and think not now – “I'm a lot better than them.”

Dick's cringe only intensifies when he turns around to see what Damian is wearing. His new Robin costume.

Tim's hands clench into fists the instant he sees Damian. Dick knows he has to de-escalate things quick before Tim and Damian have another fight.

“Damian,” Dick says, trying to keep himself carefully neutral-sounding. “Shouldn't you be resting?”

Damian lifts his head up slightly so his nose is in the air, and walks down the stairs almost normally. There's only a little hesitation in the twist of his torso, a little stiffness of his right arm.

Either he's zoned out of his mind on painkillers or depressingly good at masking his pain for a ten-year-old.

“Please,” Damian says. “I was trained in the League of Shadows. Do you really think an over-the-hill ex-Robin could put me down?”

Tim's fist clenches further, and so Dick says, letting a bit more urgency slip into his voice, “Damian, shut up. Now.”

Damian puts his left hand on his hips and looks intentionally at Tim. He adds, “I'm not Drake – ”

He's barely got the word out before Tim leaps forward and punches him in the face. Dick's out of his seat, grabbing Tim to hold him back, who is still distressingly struggling against him, like he wants to keep up the assault despite the fact that Damian fell to the floor.

“My name is Tim Wayne!” Tim shouts as Dick is still holding him back.

Damian gingerly sits up. Dick prepares to release Tim, prepares to stop Damian if he has to, if he decides to get revenge. But he doesn't. He just briefly braces his right side with his left hand before wiping the blood off his face.

“I let you get that shot in, Drake,” Damian says, again dropping intentional emphasis on Tim's original last name.

As he does, Tim struggles forward.

“Tim, back off!” Dick says, because Tim still isn't cooling down –

“I want you to feel good about yourself,” Damian continues.

Tim seems to relax his stance slightly, so Dick, possibly in an error of judgment, lets Tim go. But Tim doesn't try to attack Damian again, he just shakes Dick off and starts stomping away. “You want me to back off? Fine.”

He's going for the exit.

If he leaves –

Dick can't chase him. He's not sure that he can leave Damian alone –

“Tim, wait!” Dick says, taking a step forward. “Bruce is gone. But I still need you.”

“For what?” asks Damian and damn it is there anything this kid isn't going to try to ruin?

“Shut up, Damian,” Dick says again, even though as far as he knows he's just going to wind up pushing Damian away too –

And Tim leaves.

Dick turns to look at Damian. The kid's already back to his feet, like nothing happened, and Dick takes a step forward to inspect the injury – though he's really more worried about the gunshot wound than Tim's punch. Both Tim and Damian had wound up injured pretty badly during the chaos that gripped Gotham in the rumors of Batman’s death. As his new and not-improved version of Batman, Jason had tried to kill them both, which Dick is way less than pleased about. He’d been kind of hoping that they could talk Jason down, but this seems like a line he doesn’t know if Jason can ever un-cross. He shot a ten year old in the chest.

Damian grabs Dick's wrist as he reaches out.

“Are you all right?” Dick asks.

Damian scoffs. “You're worried about Drake? I've been hit harder sparring my mother.”

“I was thinking about the gunshot.” Alfred had said the primary damage was blood loss and a punctured lung (well, traumatic pneumothorax, but Dick knew what he meant) and given the kid a minimum of four weeks downtime to heal.

It's hard to tell due to the domino mask, but Damian adopts the position of a kid who's rolling their eyes, head slightly tilted to the side with a loll. “It's not enough to impersonate Batman, now you want to impersonate my mother?”

Dick doesn't know how to approach the mother thing, so he doesn't even try. He just explains the logic for being Batman – (and there is logic behind it. It's not like he wanted this). “Someone has to step up and convince Gotham things can get back to normal,” Dick says. “And serial killer Batman wasn't going to cut it.”

“Did you at least take care of him?” Damian asks.

Dick knows that Damian isn't actually worried about Jason's wellbeing, so he says, “Do you mean 'did I kill him'?”

“Tt. Obviously.”

“Obviously not.”

Damian presses his lips together in a thin line.

Dick might as well get this out of the way now. He's going to have to sometime. “Alfred wants you out of the field for four weeks.”

“That's preposterous!” Damian shouts, and as he shouts, he coughs. He rubs his chest quickly and then glowers at Dick when he sees him staring.

“Damian, you could have died.”

“I didn’t.”

Jeez, doesn’t this kid have any sense of his own mortality? Though, Dick supposes, growing up around Lazarus Pits and a centuries old grandfather might make that impossible.

“I’m not a fool, Grayson, I know I’m not capable of healing instantaneously. I’ll take a break for one week,” he offers, like it’s a huge concession on his part.

“Four weeks,” Dick says.

“What about you?” Damian asks. “Didn’t you get injured?”

“Not as badly.”

“Are you taking a break?”

“Someone needs to convince Gotham that Batman’s not dead,” Dick says. Also, he doesn’t want to take a break. He doesn’t want to be alone with his thoughts. Losing Bruce. Failing Tim.

“Tt. Then I don’t need one either. I’m younger. I heal faster.”

Dick actually has no clue whether that’s true, because he’s not a doctor, but he knows that people usually say kids heal faster.

Dick swings his arms a little, trying to feel them out. They’re still stiff, and as they move, a jolt of pain shoots through him. Even when he’s not moving, his shoulder is still sore. He knows that he might get injured going into the field like this and that it’s not a smart decision – last time he went into the field while still healing, he wound up blowing his secret identity to Blockbuster.

He decides that at least if he’s going into the field, he won’t tell Barbara and Alfred about it. Okay, so that’s probably not the smartest of his plans. Most plans that you have to hide from people who care about you aren't smart.

“I’ll take a week long break with you,” Dick concedes. “And we can see how fast you’re healing.” The second part is a lie, of course. He's not going to supersede Alfred's orders on medical matters.

Dick sighs a little. He figures that while they’re both on bed-rest duty, though, he can try to figure out how to set things up so they can operate effectively once they get a clean bill of health.

“How do you feel about not living in the manor?” Dick asks.

“Kicking me out already?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, I wouldn’t be living here either,” Dick says. It’s true. He’d rather not feel like he’s living in all of Bruce’s old places, wearing Bruce’s old costume, … replacing him, essentially. He needs a place he can clear his head.

“Where would you live then?” Damian asks skeptically.

Dick shrugs. “The penthouse, maybe. Bruce already made a bunker nearby, so we could operate out of there pretty easily.”

Damian narrows his eyes. “Why do you keep saying ‘we’?”

Because you are ten and not ready to live on your own. But Dick just says, “Well, you’re Robin now, right? That means you’re pretty much obligated to team up with Batman.”

“Batman isn’t here, Grayson. He never will be again, no matter how much you play dress-up.”

Charming kid. Like Dick didn’t already know that.

“You know I operate effectively alone, right?” Damian continues. “I don’t need to be hand-held and babysat like all of Father’s previous partners.”

Dick figures that it’d be a jerk move to remind Damian he just almost died and therefore really shouldn’t be on his own. Instead, he says, “Well, Alfred’s staying with me, so unless you want to get all your food and clean the house by yourself, you have to put up with me.”

“Tt . I don’t need a servant. I’ll just eat at restaurants.”

“On who’s money?”

“In the event of his death, my father’s assets should have transferred to me. His blood son.”

Oh boy. Dick rubs his face. “Does this have to be a thing, Damian? No one’s doubting your capacity to take care of yourself but I think it’d really be easier if we were operating out of the same building. “

A long silence on Damian’s part. “Fine,” he says eventually. “I’ll allow you to stay at my penthouse.”

My penthouse. Of course. But Dick takes it. “All right,” he says. “Let’s move in.”

[mostlycompetentwriter]

Get Cool

F/M Pairing: Fem!Reader x Bang Chan (SKZ)

Warnings: None? (it’s kinda innocent)

Word Count: 1K

Genre: High School AU; Established Relationship

Summary: You don’t really mean to cause trouble, but it always seems to find you when you least expect it. Of course, it only makes everything worse when your boyfriend refuses to see reason...

A/N: Requested! 

You practically had the layout of the principal’s office memorized at this point: the floor-length windows overlooking the outdoor track, the gold-plated pictures hanging on the walls, and the giant desk at the center of the room where Mr. Park was sitting with his hands folded on top of the polished wood. “Mrs. Y/L/N.” Mr. Park sighed. “I guess you’re not aware that graffiti is a violation of the school’s academic policy.”

You held your tongue, crossing your arms over your chest as you refused to speak out. But that didn’t stop Felix, AKA your partner in crime, from offering a sarcastic response that would inevitably lead the two of you into even more trouble. Because he just couldn’t seem to help himself: “Of course not, sir! I mean, we would’ve never went out of our way to bring paint to the school!”

You resisted the urge to roll your eyes because sometimes Felix wasn’t the brightest bulb in the box. “Fine,” Mr. Park grumbled. “We’ll have to deal with you both accordingly.” 

Well, that didn’t sound good and you winced when Mr. Park reached behind him for a giant, laminated binder. “Two phone calls to your parents,” he said. “Plus, a one-week suspension from school.”

“One week!” you finally broke-down, bracing your hands against the desk in front of you. “Mr. Park, isn’t that too much?”

“Wasn’t it too much to vandalize school property? What about those poor janitors who have to clean up your mess?”

You and Felix were both quiet again because you knew that there was no way out of this situation. 

Later on, once Mr. Park dismissed you both from his office, you delayed the inevitable confrontation with your parents by making a last-minute decision to visit your boyfriend. He worked downtown at a local flower shop - creating beautiful arrangements and dealing with customers with an enviable amount of patience. 

Chan had taken on the additional responsibility last year to save-up money to attend college. He was always planning ahead for the future, and that was yet another thing you admired about him. The same couldn’t be said for yourself because you were the type to live in the moment and take each day one at a time. Although, based on your current trajectory, you maybe needed to consider a fresh perspective.

Regardless, you stowed away thoughts of your suspension to the back of your head while entering the sweet-smelling flower shop. The store was owned by a nice elderly couple who lived in the apartment upstairs, and they positively doted on Chan whenever they could. Speaking of which, you brightened immediately at the sight of your boyfriend talking with another customer, and you waited until he was finished to approach him with a beaming smile.

But it was probably an interesting juxtaposition - you wearing an all-black ensemble while Chan was dressed in his pink and white uniform with a yellow apron tied around his trim waistline. “Channie,” you cooed, trailing a hand down his arm. “I didn’t get to see you after school.”

“I wonder why,” Chan snorted, and you briefly entertained the possibility that Chan might be in one of his rare sour moods.

“Can I still get my kiss?” you asked, already pursing your lips in expectation. Yet, Chan’s next words were enough to deflate your mood.

“I don’t think so, Y/N,” Chan said, walking away from you despite your attempts to pout at him. Why did he always have to be so responsible?

“Why not?” you asked, tugging on his arm as he dealt with something at the cash register. “Channie, I want kisses.”

“After what you did at school?” Chan asked, and you groaned because you weren’t expecting your boyfriend to find out so soon. But drama tended to spread quickly throughout your school, and you should’ve known better because Chan would never ignore any mention of you.

“It was a harmless prank,” you said, trying to play it off. “Nobody was hurt or anything.”

“Well,” Chan hesitated. “Did they give you detention or something?”

“They just suspended me for a week.”

“Suspended!” Chan gasped. 

“It’s just a week,” you grumbled because, try as you might to retain a “cool” demeanor, you hated to see your boyfriend disappointed in you.

“That goes on your permanent record, Y/N,” Chan said.

“So?”

“Colleges will see that when you start applying,” Chan explained. “But I guess you never think about the future. Otherwise, you and Felix would stop messing around at school with your ridiculous schemes.”

“I’m sorry, alright,” you huffed. “What can I do to fix it?”

“Apologize to the administration.”

“But, Chan-”

“Apologize,” he interrupted, “because I know you can do better, okay? At least for me.”

But you hated it whenever Chan asked you to do something for him since you couldn’t possibly say no to those irresistible eyes.

“Okay,” you grumbled - albeit reluctantly.

“Hey,” Chan said, reaching out to brush aside a wayward strand of hair. The action was enough to send your heart fluttering inside your chest. “I know you have a reputation to uphold or whatever, but I believe in you, Y/N.”

“Yeah, fine,” you murmured, but there was also a tender warmth filling the center of your chest upon hearing his words. “I’ll talk to Mr. Park again.”

“Thank you,” Chan said before he frowned. “If you keep getting into trouble, how can I possibly reward you with kisses?”

You whined at the possibility of being denied Chan’s kisses because that was not a fate you would wish upon yourself. “But what about right now?”

Chan sighed endearingly. “Since you were so cooperative...” He finally relented, leaning down to brush a soft kiss across your lips. And you quickly took advantage - grabbing his shoulders and holding him close. “Y/N...”

“Just indulge me, Channie,” you said, and you returned his smile - holding even tighter to Chan’s apron because there was no better place in the world to be than in his strong arms.

[skylarmoon71]

TMNT 2014/2016 Raphael x Reader-(Short Story) Chapter 2

"You should have just let me take him, he was right there! "

"Come on Raph, we're just supposed to help not make it worse. Besides, we stopped the train. They won't be bringing in any more weapons." Raph grumbled, sheathing both his blades. Apparently they were discussing what took place in their most recent case. Raph lived to defy Leo, it wasn't anything new.

"Whatever, next time I'm going out on my own." he shoved Leo as he brushed passed. Leo grabbed his shoulder, halting him. 

"You're not going out on your own, we do this together Raph!" You really hated it whenever they fought. Despite that, you never said anything when it got like this. Even Mikey and Donnie knew better. Raph pushed Leo back roughly, and the blue bandana turtle hit a shelf close by. Lucky for him he had his shell to take the brunt of the hit. Unlucky for you, you didn't. You were on the other side of the cupboard, and when it started to fall you panicked.

Raph saw it falling, yelling out for you. You braced your hands, closing your eyes. You heard a few items clattering to the floor at the sides of you, but when you realized you were unharmed you looked up. Donnie had his arms spread, holding up the cupboard. He lifted it in the other direction, bracing it back against its previous spot. "Are you alright?" Leo was at your side in an instant, and you sighed relieved. You smiled at Donnie who was already checking your body for injuries.

"T-Thank you Donnie you might have just saved my life." He gave a sheepish smile rubbing his neck.

"I-It was nothing. "

Now that the danger was over, Leo glared at his brother. He stomped in his direction enraged. "What the hell are you doing! You could have really hurt (Y/N)!" You stepped over placing a hand on Leo's arm to calm him down.

"I-It's fine Leo. I-It was an accident. H-He didn't mean to." Raph would never intentionally harm you.

"Yeah Leo, listen to your girlfriend. " That made you a little annoyed. Because he was already angry, you just let it slide. Leo was still sizing Raph up, and you knew you wouldn't be able to handle it if they got into another fist fight because of you. Leo glanced down at the unease in your eyes. Reluctantly, his shoulders slumped. He stepped down, and Raph just wore an arrogant smirk.

"Just like you to fold. Sometimes I wonder why you're the leader." Leo didn't reply, taking your hand and guiding you out the room. You wanted to stay there and try to get both brothers to work out the problem, but you didn't have it in you to pull away from Leo's hold, especially since he looked so worried when he thought you would get buried under the cupboard. So as he pulled you along, you sent a longing look in Raph's direction. He looked up at the last second, right before you went around the corner. That split second, you could have sworn you saw a hint of hurt in his eyes.

~~~

"Are they still fighting?" you were chatting with Donnie on your cell phone. It was pretty late, and you knew you wouldn't be able to sneak out, so you were in your room, laying down on your bed.

"Yeah, don't worry too much. Master Splinter will make sure they don't go at each other's throats." you smiled.

"That's good to hear. Well I'll check in tomorrow. Spring break is about to begin so I'll get to spend more time with you guys."

"That's-"

"Hey is that (Y/N)? Dude what's up!!" you laugh hearing Mikey in the background.

"Hey Mikey, I was just telling Donnie about the upcoming break. We may finally get to settle that score in Call of Duty."

"I'm so gonna kick your butt!" You couldn't wait.

"I'll be looking forward to it." you spoke. After giving your goodbyes, you hung up the phone, flopping back on the mattress. Somehow you'd become a little better at interacting. Before meeting the turtles you pretty much avoid interacting with people.

For good reason to. But with them, it was never a challenge. Leo was like an older brother. Mikey the goofy childish younger brother. Donnie was like a middle child. Smart, techy and a little bit of a dork. Raph was obviously the rebel. Even with all their differences, it was weird that you found comfort trusting them rather than your own species.

Maybe it was because the turtles lived by a code. They were natural born protectors, saviors. At heart, their main purpose in life was helping. And they did. They helped you, not just physically. But also mentally, emotionally. If you could offer them the world, you would do it without a second thought.

You flinched when you heard a small knock on the glass on your window. You looked over at the curtains. Maybe it was a bat? You stepped out of bed, moving to check the glass. When you shifted the curtain, you were shocked at who was hanging unto your window sill.

"R-Raph!" you slapped your hand against your mouth, because that came out much louder than intended. Opening the window, you ushered him inside quickly. As soon as you did it you ran over, turning the latch on your door.

He was lucky your room was located in the back of the house, covered by trees in your yard. It would be pretty awkward if you had to explain him to your neighbors.

Now that you were no longer in autopilot, you stood by the door. Raph was still by your window. He rolled his shoulders after climbing through the small space. And now he was just standing there, clearly unsure of what to do, or say.

"This is awkward.." you had absolutely no idea why he came, and the fact that neither of you had ever had an actual conversation alone didn't help your nerves.

"This is stupid." He groused. You kept playing with your fingers. "W-Why are you....is something wrong back home with Leo?" at the mention of his brother's name his face turned sour. "It's always about him isn't it. Leo. I came all the way here to apologize to you and that's all you have to say!"

Unconsciously you took a step back. You never did like it when he yelled. Especially since this was the first time it was directed at you. Not just that, but yelling right now wasn't the best thing since your parents were only a couple doors down. He must have realized, because he turned his head. "Forget about it. I don't even know why I came." You could feel him fuming from all the way over there. And as much as you wanted to say something, you'd already irritated him, you didn't want to say anything to make it worse. Although at this point just about anything would.

"I'm sorry." you whispered. Raph stopped in his spot, looking over his shoulder.

"I-I know I barely ever talk to you. And I always make things awkward when it's us two. I don't mean too. A-And I didn't mean to get you in trouble with Leo the other day. I-It's my fault that you guys are fighting right now." In a way it was.

Raph sighed defeatedly. He came to apologize, and instead he scared you into doing what he should have done the moment he stepped in, instead of picking a fight.

"You didn't do anything wrong. I'm the one that always messes everything up."

"That's not true." When you said that he turned to you fully. You burrowed your hands behind your back, finally feeling a little confident now that he wasn't as pissed.

"You do have a bad temper, and you suck at taking orders, but you don't mess things up." Where those words came from, you had no clue. But you were liking your sudden boldness.

"Your brothers depend on you. You guys have each other, no matter how much you think you mess up, they'll always be there for you. You just need to be better at working through your issues rather than just walking away from them."

Raph was just standing there listening, he seemed to be actually taking in you words. When he sent you a small grin your cheeks darkened.

"Here I thought you were just a little shrimp. You're a lot braver than you look. " you giggled softly. "I mean, compared to you guys I really am." you joked. Raph was smiling at you, actually smiling. He looked so damn sexy when he smiled. "No! Stop it stupid brain! I'm actually having a conversation with him, don't' ruin it!" Right now really wasn't the best time to fall for his charms.

"Thanks (Y/N)." He was thanking you. Could your night get any better.

"(Y/N) sweety are you alright?" you stiffened, and Raph looked side to side panicking.

"Aw shit!" he mouthed. You shook your hands advising him not to make a sound or move.

" I thought I heard yelling."

"I-I'm fine Mom. It was j-just a nightmare. I didn't want to wake you or dad. I-I'm sorry."

"Nightmares, do you want to talk about it." you could tell she was offering to stay awake longer to help you.

"I'm really fine mom, I promise. It was nothing. I'm going to go back to sleep. "

"Are you sure? I can make you a cup of tea or something. "

"There's no need. I promise I'm fine. Just go back to sleep." She lingered at the door for a while, before she relented. "Alright, but if you change your mind let me know."

"I will. I love you mom."

"Oh sweetheart I love you too. Try and get some rest okay. "

"Yeah I will." You waited in your spot until you heard her footsteps retreating. When you heard her bedroom door close, you sighed, placing a hand to your chest.

"That was close." you whispered. Raph was smirking at you, and it did weird things to your chest.

"W-What?"

"Nothing." It didn't look like nothing.

 "Come on tell me why you're wearing that smug little woah!" you had planned to march over, but you slipped on something on your floor. Raph was quicker, he caught you almost instantly. You must have stopped breathing for at least a few seconds, because you just stayed there in his arms. Your eyes connected, and that's when you let out a shallow breath. Raph was just as taken as you. He didn't move a muscle, just held you upright. You palm flattened against his chest, eyes never straying from his hypnotic gaze. With him slightly bent, all you had to do was lean up a few inches and you could close that space.

"Raph.." the sound of his name broke the spell. He straightened your body, pulling away. He cleared his throat, taking a couple steps back. "I should get going I need to-" he knocked into your desk behind on his way to leave and you winced at the sound that echoed. Raph froze, listening to make sure he didn't give your mother another reason to come back. When there wasn't any sound he relaxed, moving to your window.

"Be careful." you said gesturing to his head as he almost ran right into the glass. He just gave a force laugh, raising the window glass. You smiled. He was sort of cute like this. All fidgety. He ducked, creeping out the way he came in. "I'll come by tomorrow." you stated.

"Yeah..." he responded, but it didn't sound like he was really listening. He looked distracted.

"I guess I'll see you tomorrow then."

He nodded, inching up the wall.

"Yeah tomorrow." And just like that, he was flipping to the top of your roof. You bent your head, watching as he took off into the night.

You were looking forward to tomorrow, that was for sure.

[isuckatwritingmyfriends]

The 5 times Eddie doesn't know Buck speaks spanish +1 he finds out. Be gentle,, I used google translate lmao

1.

"Ni siquiera ves lo que me haces, ¿verdad?"

Buck's eyes are startled up from his phone, lifting to meet Eddie's where he was sitting next to him on the couch, hand rubbing soothing circles into his bad leg. Buck tilts his head, confused, and that's where Eddie makes a fatal mistake.

He laughs softly, "You'll ruin your eyes, staring at that thing so intensely."

Buck, still confused, opens his mouth to ask, but the bell rings and Eddie is gently placing his leg down to rush off to the trucks. He has no choice but to follow.

Sitting across from his best friend, Buck tries to think back on every interaction they've had since they met and- holy shit. Eddie doesn't know I speak spanish.

The call was relatively easy, but the shift had been long nonetheless and when they get back to the fire house, Buck's too distracted to remember to ask Eddie about what he said, before he's off to the showers. And why he lied about what it meant, he thinks. He narrows his eyes down at his boots, it's not like it was anything bad. Why lie?

And Buck gets close, so close to threading a very important needle when Eddie clangs his locker shut. "We'll see you for movie night tomorrow?" he asks, almost to the door already. Buck, mind elsewhere, nods distractedly at him. And he's gone, running off to pick up Christopher on time.

2.

Buck tells Maddie. Because of fucking course he doesn't think about the consequences of his actions. She grins at him, and immediately he knows he's made a mistake. "Oh? What do you do to him, Buck?"

He groans and tries to shove his hand in her face. "Stop, it's not like that." She gives him a flat look. He sighs. "Its not that I don't want it to be, you know that, I just don't want to mess it up with my feelings."

"Really though? What if he feels the same?"

"What if he doesn't?" Buck looks down at his plate, pushing his food around with his fork. "I can't risk losing him and Christopher on a what if."

Maddie frowns at him, but doesn't push much harder. "Well, you're going to tell him you speak spanish then?"

Buck shrugs, "I mean, yeah. I just don't get why he'd hide something so simple."

Maddie looks at him, thoroughly unimpressed, but before she has the chance to tell him that he's the smartest idiot she's ever met, his eyes catch the time on his phone. "Oh shit," he grabs his jacket and keys, fumbling around the table to kiss her cheek. "I love you, I'm gonna be late to movie night!"

"Bye, I love-" The door slams and she hears his quick steps fade down the hall. With a small smile, she pulls out her phone. Chimney's gonna love this.

--

Buck makes it barely on time, maybe speeding a bit through the less busy roads, but no one can prove it. He arrives two minutes before 7, bustling through the door without knocking.

He manages to close the door behind him before he catches an armful of Christopher. "You're here!" he shouts.

Buck grins down at him, lifting him for a squeeze and a twirl. "And I wasn't even late!"

Eddie walks out of the kitchen, smiling, "Just barely. Are your tires smoking?"

Buck sticks his tongue out in response.

Eddie's eye roll is instant, "¿Cómo estoy enamorado de un hombre tan inmaduro?"

Buck fumbles, almost dropping Christopher. He plays it off by setting the kid down, and asking "What'd you pick for a movie?"

Christopher, oblivious to Buck's small heart attack, happily takes his hand and leads him to the living room, rambling about how The Little Mermaid never gets old.

"Hey, how about you help me get the popcorn and drinks, buddy?" Christopher obliges, moving for the kitchen and releasing Buck. Eddie watches him until he's out of earshot, then turns to Buck. "Was that your leg? Is it bothering you any?"

Buck shakes his head, face turning red. "No it's just-" you literally just told me you love me, I think I'm allowed to freak the fuck out!

"It's okay, you go sit down and we'll be out in a sec."

Then Buck is left staring after his best friend, some weird feelings clenching in his chest.

3.

"HE SAID WHAT?!"

Buck slaps a hand over his sister's mouth. "Shut the fuck up! He'll hear you!"

Both pause and lean to look into the living room of Buck's apartment where Eddie and Chimney are aggressively mashing buttons on controllers. Chimeny looks over and smirks. Eddie glances over with a soft smile aimed at them. Buck waves.

He turns back to Maddie, still smiling, but frowns when he sees her face. "Stop it."

"I didn't say anything." She's grinning though, and Buck has been on the receiving end of that grin too many times to be so naive.

"Leave it."

Maddie looks like she's going to burst, so he takes her arm and pulls her over to his front door. "Oh was it so cute when you told him? Was he embarrassed?"

Buck mumbled something under his breath.

"What was that?"

He shot a quick glance back towards the couch, letting him have a moment of mourning for his poor game before turning back. "I didn't tell him."

Maddie's eyes went wide, her mouth opening to presumably start shouting at him, but cuts herself off with a garbled noise. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, trying to compose herself. Buck braces himself. "So you're going to stand there and tell me that he told you, to your face, that he loves you-"

"More implied I think."

She slaps his arm and he winces. "Boy if we were alone, I swear to god!" she whisper-shouts. "Are you trying to ruin your friendship?"

"That's exactly what I'm trying to avoid!"

"How is this avoiding anything but your feelings?"

"Because he doesn't know I understand what he's saying!" Maddie gives him her best were-you-not-just-paying-attention-to-the-whole-ass-conversation-we-just-had look. It's very good. She's had a lot of practice. Buck pinches the bridge of his nose and tries to explain himself better. "He isn't comfortable enough to tell me when he thinks I'll know what he's saying. And it's different, he has a kid to think about. And I respect whatever choice he makes."

Maddie puts her hands on his shoulders. "You need to tell him. The fallout will be much worse if you let it continue." She smiles reassuringly at him, then walks back to their drinks on the counter.

--

It's after Maddie and Chimney have gone home for the night that Buck and Eddie have a few more drinks and chat. Eddie's talking about the sleepover Chris is at tonight while Buck zones in and out. How does one even begin to explain the thought process that lead him to keeping this secret? Oh god, he thinks, this is gonna be one of those little white lies that snowballs until I have to take it to my grave-

Fingers snap in front of his face, his eyes managing to focus on the smile on Eddie's face as he looks at him. "You okay?"

This is it. This is when you tell him you speak spanish. Buck opens his mouth, "Um actually," he pauses. Eddie looks at him, expectantly. "Uh, yeah, just tired." Damnit.

"We can turn in for the night," he suggests.

Buck nods, "Wanna spend the night? I've got clothes you could use?" NO. Absolutely not. Because you will share a bed and he will be wearing your clothes and you are a serial cuddler. So NO.

Eddie's smile grows, "I'm more concerned about how you hog the blankets."

Buck gasps in mock offense, shoving at him playfully. "I do not!"

Eddie just laughs.

Fuck. I'm so screwed. He just doesn't realize how screwed until they're laying in his bed, Eddie sprawled out on his stomach and Buck on his back, every muscle coiled tight. It's quiet for a while, long enough that Buck thinks he might have drifted off, but he shifts and his voice comes muffled from the pillows. "I can actually hear you thinking. Please sleep."

Buck rolls his eyes. Jokes on you, I'm not thinking, I'm panicking.

Eddie moves again and now he's looking at Buck. "Is it your leg?"

His heart twists in his chest and he shakes his head. "It's nothing. Probably you rolling around so much."

Eddie's quiet, so Buck turns his head to look. "Podría acostumbrarme a esta vista."

Buck's eyes widen. Then he sees a moment of small panic where Eddie thinks 'what if-?' But it's gone as soon as it arrives. "Just enjoying the blankets while I still can."

He huffs, but it's lighter between them and Buck starts to drift off.

4.

When they wake up, Buck finds he has taken another victim. Eddie had rolled onto his back sometime while they were asleep, and had Buck tucked in close, wrapped around him. Buck doesn't immediately panic because it feels too right. But when he wakes up more, he knows he should move before Eddie wakes up.

Buck tries to be subtle, slowly pulling his limbs back to himself, trying not to wake Eddie in the process. Except when he looks up, Eddie is watching him with a small smile. Buck's heart roundhouse kicks his ribcage and he let's out a startled "Oh."

Eddie just laughs, "Eres tan hermoso."

Buck's mouth falls open, but he doesn't say anything as Eddie extricates himself from Buck's grasp and starts for the stairs. "I'll make breakfast."

Once he's out of sight, Buck throws himself back on the mattress, slapping a hand over his eyes. "Fuck me."

--

He doesn't want to tell Maddie. Partly because she'll lose her shit, but mostly because he knows she's right. He's waited too long already, if Eddie finds out- When. When Eddie finds out. I can't keep this up forever.- he's probably going to be mad.

Buck ends up telling her. Obviously. She has the same reaction he thought she would. "He called you beautiful and said he wants to fall asleep to you?!"

Buck winces and holds the phone away from his ear for a moment. "Uh, basically I guess that was the gist of it."

"THE GIST?!" Buck grimaces, brings one hand up to scrub his face. "And you still didn't tell him?!"

Buck sighs, because he knows, okay? He really does, but he's scared too. "Mads I-"

Her voice is softer. "Buck, I know you're nervous. But you've said it before, you're basically family. Anyone could look at the two of you and Christopher and see how in love you are, see how much you'd do anything for them."

"Yeah but not Eddie." Bucks spins in his chair, he's tired and doesn't know what he's going to do. "If everyone can see how much I love him too, why can't he? Why doesn't he tell me all this? Why does he only say it when he thinks I don't understand?" Maddie sighs, but Buck continues. "I have to assume there's more here than I can see. If he doesn't want me to know, then I don't."

Maddie's quiet for a minute, just the sound of her breathing comes over the phone. Her voice is gentle when she says, "What happens when he finds out?"

Buck kinda just wants to cry. "I don't know, Mads. I don't know."

5.

Buck and Christopher are playing with legos in the living room. Well, Buck is playing, Christopher is actually building something. He's talking about his day at school and that he's excited for the weekend because he gets to see the rest of his family. Buck's listening attentively, asking questions where it matters and nodding along, until he hears a snippet of what Eddie is saying.

The other man is pacing back and forth behind the couch, on the phone with his family in El Paso. They're talking about the barbeque this weekend, presumably what Chris meant when he talked about being excited to see his family. But I'm not supposed to know that.

He's tense when he stops at the farther end of the couch, talking quickly into the phone. "-él debería poder venir, prácticamente está criando a Christopher conmigo." A pause. "No es justo. ¿Has hablado con Abuela?" He's quiet for a few minutes, then, "Christopher ama él. Lo amo él. Él viene, lo quiero allí, y eso es todo."

Eddie hangs up the phone. With his back still to the boys, he lifts his hand to rub his face with a sigh. When he turns around, he meets Buck's gaze. Okay? he mouths. Eddie nods back, and finally smiles. "I'll go grab some snacks, then we can watch some tv?" Buck grins and Christopher celebrates.

It isn't until after they put Christopher to bed and are sitting together on the couch that Eddie tells him about the barbeque.

"I want you to come. I mean," he scratches the back of his neck. "If you want to come, I would like you to."

"Is that what the phone call was about?"

Eddie gives him a long look and Buck thinks, this is when he realizes. But he doesn't, just sighs and says, "Yeah. Some of my cousins are... well, I'll just say difficult. My parents thought it would be best if it was just Christopher and I, but I told them that we want you to go."

Buck is, well, he's- I'm fucked. I love them. Eddie mistakes his silence. "No pressure though," he laughs.

Buck smiles and nods. "Yes. Yeah, I would love to go."

Eddie's smile lights up his face. "Good, cool, that sounds- uh good."

Buck just smiles back.

+1

What Eddie failed to mention when he told Buck about his cousins was that when he said 'difficult' he really meant 'homophobic'. And just as Maddie predicted, it was getting harder to hide that he knew Spanish. Curse her and her intelligence. Luckily, most of the family were happy to see Eddie and Christopher. And, if Buck was feeling less than modest, most of them loved him.

It started out great: playing with the kids until they all tired him out, eating around a huge table filled with family, chatting around. Buck was finding out many blackmail-worthy stories of Eddie when he was a teenager. With each new piece of information, he had to restrain himself from calling the team and telling them everything.

Buck was also finding out that almost everyone in the family thought they were together. Discreetly of course, they let most of it slip in Spanish, so they probably figured he didn't know they were talking about him. Unfortunately for Eddie, he talked about them all the time, and now Buck knew.

After the initial wave of guilt subsided, Buck made a plan. He went to the kitchen to grab Eddie and him another drink. I'm going to tell Eddie when we get back home. Buck was too busy thinking about how to break it to him, when two of the 'difficult' cousins walked into the kitchen behind him. He didn't notice at first, not until they started shit talking in Spanish.

"Es como él no respeta a esta familia." Buck doesn't turn. He's not supposed to understand what they're saying. Calm down. Leave it alone.

"¡Lo sé! ¿No entienden lo asqueroso que es ver eso?" Wow, that was incredibly offensive. He pushes around a few cans, looking for the drinks they had earlier.

"¡Y ahora Christopher está expuesto a eso!" Buck's hand tightens on a glass. Breathe. Don't say anything you'll regret later. It's not your place.

"No me sorprendería que juguete chico de Eddie corrompa al pobre niño."

Buck stands abruptly, smacking his head off the top of the fridge in his haste. His knuckles are white and he has to force himself to turn and smile. "Found it," he tries to make his voice light. With forced casualty, he walks past them to the counter for the bottle opener.

"Es una pena, él podría haber resultado genial." They continued, or more accurately, tried to continue.

Buck spun on them in an instant. "I know it's not my place to say anything to you, but the two of you are cruel and I genuinely don't know how you come from such a kind and supportive family." The women stood there stunned. "What goes on between me and Eddie is none of your business. And Christopher is growing up to be a kind and caring person. If he turns out to be even half the man Eddie is, he'd still be three times better than you." Buck sucked in a breath and crossed his arms over his chest.

"I think it's time you leave." The voice came from behind Buck. He felt his blood run cold when he heard it. He'd know that voice anywhere.

Buck turned to see Eddie standing in the doorway, arms also crossed, expression hard. He watched his cousins walk past him, embarrassment clear in the way they couldn't meet his eyes. He watched until they made it all they way down the hall and back out to the yard.

As soon as Eddie turned back to him, Buck asked, "How much of that did you hear?"

Eddie didn't uncross his arms, expression now cautious and confused. "You know Spanish."

It wasn't a question. Buck nodded anyway. "I know I said things I probably shouldn't have, but when they started talking about Chris I- I don't even know. I just got so mad because you and him are the best people in the world and-"

"What you said is not the problem," Eddie interrupted. Fuck. He was hoping he wouldn't notice. "Why didn't you tell me?" His expression cracked into one of hurt. Buck's heart twisted. "The things I've said- oh my god, Buck, have you known the whole time?!"

A nod.

Eddie ran a hand through his hair, he looked terrified. "Was this a joke to you? See how much I'd say so you could laugh about it later?" Buck tried to intervene, but Eddie seemed to realize more. "Oh my god, I told you I love you. I told my family and- oh my god you were sitting right there!" He slapped his hands to his face. "Everything my family has said, I can't-"

Buck jumped forward, grabbing Eddie's hands in his. "No, no! It wasn't a joke to me! I'd never- I wouldn't- I could never have made this a joke."

Eddie shook his head, but didn't pull his hands away. "Then why?"

Buck ran a hand through his hair, bringing it down to rub his face before grabbing Eddie's hands again. "You have to understand, I tried to tell you. I thought you knew and then the thing you said on the couch made me realize you didn't. Then I told Maddie and she kept telling me to tell you but-" he let out a sigh. "It was just scary, okay? I didn't want to lose what we had, I didn't want to lost Christopher."

"Buck," Eddie's voice was softer. "I literally told you that I love you. How would you making a move ruin anything?"

Buck tried his best unimpressed look. "You only said those things when you thought I didn't understand. I just thought, maybe you needed time. That you'd tell me when you were ready."

"Oh my god. You're an idiot. I'm an idiot. How do we ever get anything done being so stupid?"

Buck laughed quietly. "That's not nice to say when we just had this really emotional moment."

Eddie just rolled his eyes before pulling Buck for a kiss. When he pulled back, he was grinning. "We can't tell the team about this. We'll never know peace."

Buck let his head fall on Eddie's shoulder. "I told Maddie. They definitely already know."

---------

Here are the translations in case y'all were wondering...(if they're not right, blame google, I did my best lol)

Ni siquiera ves lo que me haces, ¿verdad?- (You don't even see what you do to me, do you?)

¿Cómo estoy enamorado de un hombre tan inmaduro?- (How am I in love with such an immature man?)

Podría acostumbrarme a esta vista.- (I could get used to this sight)

Eres tan hermoso.- (You are so handsome)

-él debería poder venir, prácticamente está criando a Christopher conmigo.- (-he should be able to come, he's practically raising Christopher with me.)

No es justo. ¿Has hablado con Abuela?- (That's not fair. Have you talked to Abuela?)

Christopher ama él. Lo amo él. Él viene, lo quiero allí, y eso es todo.- (Christopher loves him. I love him. He comes, I want him there, and that's it.)

Es como él no respeta a esta familia.- (It's like he doesn't respect this family.)

¡Lo sé! ¿No entienden lo asqueroso que es ver eso?- (I know! Don't you understand how gross it is to see that?)

¡Y ahora Christopher está expuesto a eso!- (And now Christopher is exposed to it!)

No me sorprendería que juguete chico de Eddie corrompa al pobre niño.- (I wouldn't be surprised if Eddie's boy toy corrupts the poor boy.)

[gloves94]

To Be So Lonely [Draco Malfoy] 6

Rating: PG-13 Pairings: Draco Malfoy/OC Chapter warnings: Bullying!

Raised as an orphan, Nel Saintday, endured years of torture from the Slytherin House. The Dark Lord only allowed her existence for her to serve a very specific vile purpose for him. Her birthright dictates for her to choose a side in the Wizarding War… But what would happen if she dares defy the Dark Lord and his wishes? And what happens when she falls for her tormentor? Will Nel fulfill her life’s purpose? And what side will her tormentor, Draco Malfoy, choose? The light that calls to him or the darkness…

CHAPTER MASTERLIST MY MASTERLIST

It didn't take Nel long to realize that her peers would not warm up to her anytime soon. Her lack of a blood status and the fact that she was a graceless orphan made her untouchable in their eyes. She could still remember the look on Crabbe and Goyle's faces when she was sorted into Slytherin. The two looked as if they were ready to warmly welcome her to the House with a nice shiner.

Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle, also known to Nel as Malfoy's personal bodyguards were rather dull. They never said or did much besides eat and tail after their leader. Honestly, she wasn't sure if either of them actually knew how to read. Both of course, blue blooded lads just like the rest of the lot.

The other girls in her year seemed to go way back to kindergarten. It even sounded like all of their parents seemed to be friends. The girls shunned her out of gossip, gift exchanges and other private gatherings that they had. The fact that she was a Slytherin, and the house tended to have a reputation, made it hard to make friends from other houses. There was also the issue that Nel and Pansy seemed to be constantly butting heads, competing or bickering with each other since day one.

Daphne Greengrass was Pansy's right hand. However, their relationship seemed to be unstable with Pansy consistently wanting to one up the witch with backhanded passive aggressive envious jabs at her. Greengrass didn't seem to notice or care, Nel hadn't decided which one. She spent most of her day narcissistically combing and brushing her enviable blonde hair.

The only person in the girl's dormitory that seemed to be decent to her was Tracey Davis. Tracey's father was a Quidditch commentator because of that the girl was obsessed with the Pudlemere United and was often wearing their jerseys. Her mother was a Muggle which made her a Half-Blood and because of that some of the other girls looked down on her too. She talked about Quidditch constantly and even boasted how she would be trying out for it next year.

The first year Slytherin boys were not much different.

Despite the constant company of Crabbe and Goyle it seemed like Malfoy's best friend was a tall boy with dark features named Blaise Zabini. Blaise was charming and had no issue talking himself in or out of any issue. Even when persuading others do to his bidding. Nel could tell he was smart. It was no wonder that Malfoy kept him close to him. He was also terribly proud of his status as a Pureblood. He laughed at most of his best friend's cruel jokes, but tended to be more serious, opting out to simply look down in disgust at others he deemed to be inferior.

The last boy, Theodore Nott, was the quietest of the lot. He seemed to be constantly withdrawn in his own little world and disregarded most around him. No surprise, he was another Pureblood. The curly haired boy usually had his nose buried in a book. Out of the lot he seemed to be the one most indifference to Nel.

And then there was Malfoy…

The thought of him made her blood boil.

Specially after she had learned what the word Mudblood meant. She had asked Tracey one day during breakfast. "Who called you that?" She gasped a little with both of her dark eyes shot wide open in shock. "To your face?" She looked horrified.

As if it was that so hard to believe. The word was casually thrown around the common room with enough frequency that its ominous meaning lingered on the girl's mind.

Nel was presently on her way to Charms, a class that had so far become a favorite of hers. She clumsily walked with several books in her hands staggering on their weight as she pondered on the questions, she would be asking Professor Flitwick.

For somebody who despised reading she had been doing more than enough of it since arriving to Hogwarts. Not only did she have to keep her grades up, she had also learned she had to educate herself and be stronger and smarter than her peers. Specially if she wanted a fair shot at surviving the rest of the school year. It was even harder for her to keep up considering most of the lot came from wizarding families and had been exposed to spell works and magic since a young age.

Malfoy who was walking with his posse of boys watched her from a far. He had been extra bitter as of the late over the fact that Harry Potter had made Gryffindor's Quidditch team and had become the youngest Seeker in a Century. He of course had to take out his anger and frustrations on something - in this case on someone.

His eyes were glued to her back. Fixed on her horrible haircut.

"Watch this," he smirked at Crabbe and Goyle.

He flicked his wand in her direction. Nel didn't even see it coming. It was almost as if she had tripped on an invisible rope. She let out a loud gasp before taking a nasty spill, the handful of books she had been carrying spilling around her.

She looked at her scraped hands and lightly winced at them. Laughter approached her and then passed her as Malfoy and his friends walked by her the three of them laughing. She felt her head grow hot. Impulsively she reached for a large book and with perfect aim tossed it at the back of his head, hitting his gel helmet making him tilt forward.

"Next time you have the urge to hex me! Do it to my face!" She shouted at him.

"Oh, yeah?" He challenged stepping forward. "What are you going to do about it?" He whipped his wand out advancing towards her.

"Make you regret it, you fathead" Nel rose to her feet, books gathered in her arms. She pulled out her wand and without saying a word hexed  him.

Malfoy's head began to grow and inflate like a balloon. He touched it and looked horrified when he realized what was happening. His head swelled up so much his face looked small compared to it. Nel let out a triumphant laugh and turned her wand to Crabbe and Goyle threatening them. The three boys scattered away in panic.

She heard laughter and turned to see Ron bent over with laughter a couple of steps behind her. Harry was next to him sniggering at what he had just seen.

"That's an illegal spell!" Granger stepped forward both her eyebrows turned up in concern. "You could get in serious trouble for that, or worse, expelled!"

Nel huffed humorously and lightly blew on her wand pretending it was a hot gun in one of those Western films she'd watch back at Wool's.

However, Ron shot Granger an irritated look. "Don't listen to her," he stepped forward. "Again, that was bloody brilliant!" He said in awe.

"Thanks," the girl responded as the four of them walked together to Charms class. "Your brothers actually taught it to me." She then turned to Potter, "Also, congrats on making the Quidditch team Harry. Youngest Seeker in the Century? That's pretty wicked," she smiled at him.

"Thanks," Harry flashed her an odd look. "Shouldn't you be upset? Slytherin is our rival team."

She shrugged casually. "I don't see any Slytherins around," she smiled charmingly before walking into potions. It was true. Ever since she found out what the word Mudblood meant - not wanting to be associated with such a disgusting ideology Nel had decided to shed her uniform. Opting out from wearing her emerald and silver tie and her green robes.

It seemed like her classmates had just realized that she wasn't in uniform because the Slytherin girls kept making comments about it or asking her why she wasn't wearing her robes which irritated her to no end.

“You’re going to make us lose House Points!” Bullstrode hissed at her, which made Nel roll her eyes.

Today they would be learning a new spell. One that was known to be most effective during dueling.

"Now, can anybody tell me what kind of spell Expelliarmus is?" Flitwick leaned over his podium eyeing the class.

Granger's hand instantly shot up in the air. Several students rolled their eyes at her. She could really be such an insufferable know-it-all sometimes. She was the kind of student that would remind the teacher to grade homework when it seemed like he or she had forgotten to collect it.

Elowen raised her hand for a change. Surprised Flitwick turned to attend the participation from the usually quiet student.

"Expelliarmus is a disarming charm. It's commonly used during duels to make an opponent lose their wand," she explained.

Flitwick seemed pleased. "Think you can demonstrate Ms. Saintday?"

"Uh…" She shifted nervously ready to cast the spell for the first time when Malfoy walked back into the class with a scowl on his normal sized face. She shook her head and returned her attention to the professor. Nodding, she flicked her wand and Flitwick's own wand flew out of his hand.

"Well done Ms. Saintday, 10 points Slytherin."

There were some low cheers on her side of the room. Nel was about to take her seat when the professor realized she wasn't wearing her uniform.

"Something wrong with your uniform Ms. Saintday?" He asked curiously. "Nope," The girl responded with an innocent smile.

"Then, may I ask why you chose not to wear it?"

The room grew silent expecting her answer. Tracy braced herself already wincing at the anticipated answer. Daphne looked at her oddly.

"Because I will not be associated with a House that prides itself and values bigotry and racism."

Xxxxx

Again, Nel had gotten herself landed in trouble. This time however, she had been sent to the person above Snape. The Headmaster himself.

She was sitting on a sofa chair before the Headmaster's cluttered desk. Her eyes wondered around the cluttered room looking at the many moving portraits on the walls. The mountains of books and artifacts and specially at the phoenix that seemed to be combing its crimson feathers perched on his post. She didn't know it was possible for such a beautiful creature to exist.

She was expecting Dumbledore to come from behind her but the man instead apparated on his desk before her. She flinched at the sudden movement lightly jerking back.

"Ah, Ms. Saintday," he greeted casually. "We haven't chatted since we were at the Three Broomsticks. Have you been adapting well to Hogwarts?" Funny how he used the word adapting. Instead of enjoying. She snorted at his words.

"I've had detention more times I can count and got sent to your office today. How do you think?" She answered rudely with complete lack of regard or respect that came from a lifetime of living under Wool’s thumb.

Dumbledore ignored her crass tone. "I also see you're not wearing your uniform. Any particular reason why?"

He already knew why. Why was he taunting her like this? Trying to tiptoe around her to try and get her to admit it? Suddenly the orphan felt like she was back at Wool's sitting in front of the Matron instead of the Headmaster.

Despite the dancing around the taboo subject he was looking at her with an odd expression on his face. Fascination perhaps? She couldn't quite put her finger on it. It was almost as if he knew something she didn't. As if this was some kind of personal test she had to pass. "You know why," She crossed her arms over her chest. "You'd be surprised to know most of Slytherin's students don't share the believes you are so concerned about. Even then, those same believes can stretch beyond house or even status," he explained in a dismissive tone.

'And what about those who do?' She wanted to ask. How could he take this so lightly?

"I can assure you that this institution does not tolerate or support any beliefs relating or pertaining to the discrimination of others," He reassured her. "I do understand that the Slytherin House gets a particular reputation due to the beliefs of the founder of your house, Salazar Slytherin, a name I'm sure you're more than familiar with."

She starred at him blankly. So? Snape had made her do several parchments on him and the history of Slytherin. Big deal. "However, since you've brought it to my attention," he stroked his beard sagely.  "Something will be done," he winked at her with what she felt was the charisma that could move others to do his bidding to him.

She knew what Dumbledore was going to do. Absolutely nothing about it. She knew what those words meant. She had heard Wool say it plenty of times back at the orphanage.

He smiled at her and pointed his want in her direction. She flinched bracing herself to be jinxed or injured, but instead her green tie appeared and tied itself into a knot on her uniform and her green robe appeared from thin air growing on her arms.

"Sherbet Lemon?" He casually raised a glass bowl that contained a handful of lemon drop candies. Her mouth watered at the sight. Manipulative old man, lemon candies were her favorite…

She avoided his gaze before sinking her sticky hand into the bowl and taking a greedy fistful of them. Tongue half sticking out from her lips. She was about to leave when something stopped her before she reached the exit.

"I almost forgot," She returned to the desk. "Sir, I know that communication between Muggles and Wizards, is well, strained for less of a better word… Is there any chance that I can write to my friend Lucy? She's more family, really." She looked at him with hopeful eyes. "I'm afraid I can't make that exception Elowen. If Ms. Bonilla writes to you, what will stop the other children in Wool’s Orphanage from writing to you as well? The less people that know the better."

She slumped her shoulders in defeat. "However," he continued. "I would recommend you write to Ms. Wool to give your letter to Ms. Bonilla," he said kindly. "Is that all?" He crossed his arms behind his back.

Xxxxx

Nel was taken back when she found Tracey waiting for her outside of Dumbledore's office. "What happened?" She instantly asked. She looked more concerned than irritated which the orphan thought was odd.

"Nothing," Nel shrugged carelessly swinging her book bag over her shoulder. "Just talked," she said in a dull tone wanting to finish this conversation and just head directly to the owlery to write to Lucy.

"He wasn't angry?" She piped following the girl to the Great Hall. "No," Nel responded. She had a feeling that Tracey was only going to keep bugging her until she got her answers. "Like I said, we just talked. He offered me some candy," she said before popping one of the sherbet lemons into her mouth. "And made me wear my uniform."

They arrived to the Great Hall and sat at the end of the Slytherin table and helped themselves to today’s lunch rotisserie chicken, with rosemary potatoes, green beans and a split pea-soup.

"I thought what you did was brilliant," Tracey said taking a seat next to her classmate. "I wish I was that brave," she confessed.

Nel's eyebrows arched almost to her hair line in surprise.

"Or stupid," She heard a voice call from the other side.

Both girls turned to face Pansy who was sitting with Greengrass and Bullstrode. "You think just because you mastered one spell, you're better than all of us? That you can go cry to the Headmaster?" Pansy laughed.

Nel really wasn't having it today. She didn't even bother hearing whatever it was Parkinson had left to say.

"Sodd off fathead," She said casting Engorgio Skullus. It didn't take long for her head to begin to swell like a balloon just like Malfoy's had earlier. Students from other houses laughed at the girl's balloon head. Daphne and Millicent looked horrified as they escorted her friend to Madame Pomfrey. "Make that two spells!"

"Saintday," A familiar nasal voice spoke. Grimacing she turned back to see Snape standing behind her. "Detention…" He grumbled glaring down at her before stalking off.

Great.

"I thought it was pretty cool."

Neither one of the girls had even noticed that Nott had been sitting in front of them quietly reading a book. He looked up with the smallest of smiles.

The orphan didn't smile back. She gave him an odd look. "Aren't you… Like a fanatic too?"

Nott closed his book lightly and put it down. He did a light shrugging motion with his shoulders. "Sort of ridiculous, isn't it?"

Both girls returned his smile. Happy to have found some common ground and a new friend. Perhaps Dumbledore had been right. Maybe not everyone in Slytherin was terrible.

After lunch, for the first time since she arrived to Hogwarts Nel was happy. She was excited to write home and share the good news with her favorite person. She immediately wrote to Wool (Lucy) telling her everything and anything that she could tell her about Hogwarts and apologized for the lack of communication explaining that the school had no phones and was very particular about communications. Which was not a complete lie.  

With that she sent Barberry off with it to London.

Xxxxx

The rest of the school year went as well as it could've gone, especially considering there was a dark wizard out and about seeking to obtain a weapon that was hidden in the school and that their stuttering professor or the Dark Arts turned out to be that dark wizard in disguise.

Nel never received a response a response from Lucy. Not that she was expecting one as her friend didn’t have an owl to respond to her. Who knows maybe Wool was keeping her letters from her. That was precisely the type of emotional torture that the evil woman would play out. The thought made her skin crawl. She prayed that Lucy would forgive her, that she'd understand.

Being a Slytherin wasn’t as unbearable as it had initially been now that Nel had two friends in Slytherin house and even some outside of it.

Much to her surprise she received a letter when the owls were delivering mail the day after swelling up Parkinson's head.

She couldn’t help but smile at the letter.

“Who’d be writing to you?” Parkinson asked while trying time catch a glimpse of the contents of the letter.

“Look,” Nel said leaning over, lowering her shoulder so that she could show the contents of the letter to Pansy. The girl peered over her noisily and let out a shout when she saw Nel’s wand poking out of her sleeve.

A spark went off and Pansy’s head once again began to swell up like a large balloon.

‘Glad to see you’re keeping the fatheads at bay. - F & G’

She couldn’t help but laugh a little and look up to meet the twin’s eyes from across the table. Some students were laughing at the balloon head in the table. Fred and George smiled proudly at the monster they had created.

"Detention Saintday." Snape muttered as he passed by the table. Whatever, it had totally been worth it. So, what if she had to spend a couple of hours polishing ancient trophies at night.

As previously mentioned, Slytherin was at least bearable now. Of course, it wasn't all daisies and roses but in the least bit it was tolerable.

Now she found the most unbearable part to be just how petty and horrible girls could be for each other. Especially when the other girls would comment on Nel's clothes. Since most of her pajamas consisted on oversized t-shirts and mismatching sweatpants that looked worn.

The majority of her clothing was very Swiss looking considering they all had as many holes as the cheese. She didn't even know how many kids had worn them before her.

The orphan built a thicker skin. She tried to push these insecure thoughts to the back of her head. As much as Nel tried not to be materialistic and let it get to her head, it was hard not to. The girl didn't have a single galleon to her name. She looked at all the beautiful things the other Slytherin girls had with green envy. Their pajamas all made out of silk with lovely buttons. Their clothes didn't have holes, lose threads, and weren't washed out, colorless or two sizes bigger than them.

However, the hardest part was watching how blinded they were to their privilege. How they took what they had for granted. She'd watch how they would all mishandle and treat their clothes like rags. Daphne even complained she was sick of having to wear the same thing more than once. Nel’s sticky fingers itched at the thought of taking something from them,  it wasn’t like they would miss it. She also considered asking for it when they declared it so "last season" or something amongst those lines, but her pride was too great.

Nel would always be in need of money. Both in this world and the human one. This need awoke a new sense of entrepreneurship in her.

"Oi," She said tossing a crumbled-up paper to the back of Crabbe's head during History of Magic, also known as the most boring Wizarding class. Both him and Goyle turned back to look at her. Professor Binns was a ghost who had died during teaching, the man had not even realized he had died and simply stood up and continued teaching. Nel wondered how can one know they are not dead?

"Have you two done your transfiguration parchment on the difference between switching, vanishing and conjuring spells?" She asked Tweddle-Dee and Tweddle-Dum.

They shook their dumb heads no in unison.

Of course, they hadn't.

"I could help you with it," She implied. Then realized she'd have to be more concise considering how daft the boys were. "I'll do it for you," she clarified. "A Galleon for every 5 inches."

For somebody that despised reading so much Nel couldn't help but be locked up in the library most days doing Crabbe and Goyle's homework. The two didn't seem to care what grade she landed them as long as they were graded with Acceptable. And both were more than willing to pay.

Eventually she started getting other clients with strange request. One afternoon two male Ravenclaws approached her.

"You're Saintday.” One stated. "You're the girl that writes parchments, right?" The other said both seemed nervous as they fidgeted.

"Perhaps," she drawled out eyeing them curiously. They were Ravenclaws, weren't they supposed to be super smart? What did they need her for? "For the right price…"

"You also know how to turn people's heads into balloons, right?"

She arched her eyebrow at this.

And that's how Nel Saintday became the person you went to whenever you needed a favor done. All transactions were done carefully under the table in the musky corridors of the library to keep everything as anonymous and safe as possible. Parchment writing, hexing, you name it. Nel would make it happen. However, if you wanted something from Hogsmeade or Zonko's she'd refer her few clients to her associates in mischief the Weasley twins.

It was greatly frustrating seeing Slytherin lose the House Cup at the end of the year. Especially considering they had lost because of Dumbledore's favoritism to Gryffindor and the special attentions he put on Harry Potter. Nel scoffed bitterly. She liked Harry fine, but his special treatment really wasn't fair to others. Maybe she envied him. Like her he was an orphan, but unlike her, he had fame, he had a fortune, he even still had a family. Whereas she had nothing.

Finally returning to London at the end of the term. Nel wasted no time pounding on the orphanage’s door.

"Dear God, have mercy on me," Cordelia said aghast at the return of the girl he saw as the evil incarnate. Nel didn't bother in greeting the Matron. Wasting no time, she pushed past her, leaving her trunk and owl by the entrance as she rushed to the girls’ dormitory.

"Lucy!" She shouted excitedly her voice carrying over the corridors as she ran with a broad wide smile.

Some kids eyed her curiously, others cheered to see she had returned. Nel continued shouting her best friend's name as she poked her head into every room she could find. Her heart was pounding from the excitement.

"Lucy!" She shouted again entering the dormitory. She rushed over to Lucy’s bed and her heart dropped at the sight. She felt a painful jab on her chest. All of Lucy's belongings were missing, there were no photos on the wall, books on the nightstand or shoes underneath the bed.

She was gone.

End of Year 1

[transthaumaturge]

Ace Attorney and the Finally Kind-Of Okay Queer Representation

Note: This post contains massive spoilers for Turnabout Academy, the third case in the 3DS game Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies. There are also spoilers for a few cases in the earlier games. Please only read on if you’re okay with that.

I love Ace Attorney, but as a series it is fraught with bad queer representation. It really says something that the first queer character that I felt pretty good about was five games in. Most of this bad rep is in the form of effeminate, gay-coded men that are written as evil and/or comic relief. A brief rundown:

1) Redd White, the power-hungry CEO of Bluecorp;

2) Jean Armstrong, the cowardly café owner who lied on the stand (and who is repeatedly misgendered by the judge for comic relief);

3) Florent L’Belle, the greedy Mayor’s Aid.

All three characters are presented as a mix of negative stereotypes and bad-faith comic relief. They’re dark spots in an otherwise really fun series, and it’s made me very uncomfortable interacting with each one as I’ve played through the cases. I’ve never felt worse about Ace Attorney than when it’s punching down on gay-coded characters, all of whom were written with no redeemable qualities. I mean, two of them were the actual murderers in their respective cases! Honestly, it just sucked.

That’s why I got so excited (and also super-nervous they would botch it again) today while playing through Turnabout Academy, at the moment when one of the characters is revealed to be explicitly trans. I’ll go over the general facts and then discuss why this was a step in the right direction, but still very flawed.

In the case, Robin Newman is a high school law student and a close friend of the defendant. In the early stages of the case, Robin presents as a very masculine individual and even wears a chest brace that is supposedly proof of her manliness. This whole time, she’s represented as a very aggressive and unhappy person. But on the first day of the case, it’s revealed that she put on a feminine costume belonging to the defendant because she really wanted to wear something girly. When further pressed, she comes out in the courtroom and reveals that she’s actually a girl—the chest brace was hiding the fact that she had breasts, and her parents raised her as a boy as some terrible step in forcing her to become a prosecutor when she grew up. Afterward, she’s a very cheerful, peppy person and says that she’s grateful she finally gets to live life as a girl and pursue her dream of becoming an artist.

As a trans woman myself, I started getting really excited as soon as it became clear that Robin put on the outfit—and even more excited when it was finally revealed that she was a girl who had been raised as a boy. The first thing that tipped me off to my gender identity was wanting to wear women’s clothing, so this gender euphoria through clothing scenario was something that I could relate to on a deep emotional level. And while I got nervous at first because the blame for the murder was briefly pinned on her, that ultimately goes nowhere. This is the first queer character in an Ace Attorney game that is represented as kind, positive, and trustworthy. Robin is wonderful. I love her so much.

But now I want to dive into where parts of her portrayal are still negative, and how Capcom made several missteps that ultimately resulted in Robin not being as fleshed-out and three-dimensional as she deserved to be.

First, Robin’s reveal is still treated like comic relief at times. I was really uncomfortable when several characters said “he was a she???” or something to that effect. Given that “he-she” was once a widely used transphobic slur for trans women, it wasn’t in good taste. Also uncomfortable was the fact that as soon as the big reveal happened, she took on a bunch of hyperfeminine behavioral and vocal tics. The worst was when she started swooning every time that anything shocking happened for the rest of the time she was on the stand. It felt like this was just a way to play up the comedy side of “hey, she’s a girl now.” She was forcibly outed in the courtroom, and then magically showed no trauma or self-doubt afterward. It almost felt like she wasn’t there to be a serious character anymore. Later, she thanks Athena for outing her. I think that sends the wrong message.

What did the game do right when portraying her? I loved how visibly relieved and happy she was after coming out, though it sucks that she didn’t get to do it on her own terms. It’s later revealed that she had confided in a professor about her gender identity and had a plan to come out to the school, so that was a nice touch. I also really liked it being mentioned that she had been raised as a boy, removing most of the ambiguity about what we were seeing—that this wasn’t a self-imposed repression of her authentic self, but something that had been forced on her. They used the right pronouns for her throughout the entire rest of the case without slipping up even once, thankfully not misgendering her for laughs like they did relentlessly with Jean Armstrong two games earlier. She was also just a really pleasant character to be around afterward, so that was nice.

What would be on my wish list if I were asked to help in rewriting Robin to be a more positive example of trans representation? First, I would fix her character’s comedic behavioral tics. Most witnesses have some silly animations, but the fact that all of her tics after being outed were hyperfeminine to the point of parody made me uncomfortable. Are there other ways to make her a bit quirky and visibly feminine without punching down on her burgeoning relationship with her gender? I’m sure that there are. It would also be nice for her reaction to being out in public for the first time to be more on par with what you might actually expect if a trans woman found herself in that situation. She probably feels relieved, but also a bit scared, embarrassed, and hesitant about how she’s supposed to act now. I would love to see some of that reflected in how she talks and in how she acts. Maybe she’s daydreaming of what she can wear now that she’s out, and that’s interspersed with nervous hair-twirling and curtsying at awkward times.

I’d also like her to say something to Athena about how she wished that she wasn’t forced to come out in front of a bunch of people like that, but she’s happy that she gets to be herself. Anything other than thanking Athena for outing her with no qualifiers. The fact that she was forcibly outed needs to be portrayed as a traumatic moment. Sure, something good came out of it and Athena didn’t immediately realize that that’s where the cross-examination was going, but it shouldn’t have happened. An apology from Athena would also be nice. She should feel at least a little bit guilty about outing someone in the middle of a courtroom, even if that someone was much happier afterwards.

Finally, I’d love for there to be less ambiguity about the events that led her to this point—and ideally, something that more explicitly shows that she’s a trans woman. The way her dialogue was written, I think the writers were trying to portray her as having been assigned female at birth, but later forced by her parents to take on a male identity for…some reason. It’s never explained why they would want to inflict that on her. She’s trans regardless of her sex at birth if she was forced to live life as a boy for her entire childhood, but I think that it could be handled better. A few possibilities that I like more:

1) She was already in the middle of gender transition, and started wearing the chest brace when her breasts began to develop since she wasn’t ready to be out in public—especially to her parents, who might have cut her financial support off if they had known. After all, she was at a prestigious private legal school. That must have been a concern.

2) She was intersex, and her parents raised her as a boy when she was growing up because that’s unfortunately what happens so often with intersex children—they’re forced into one side of the binary or the other, and sometimes they find out later on that their parents didn’t make the right choice or that they don’t identify with a binary gender identity at all. Robin had breasts because she was born with both male and female sex characteristics, and try as her parents might to force her into manhood, she still had a uterus. Not every intersex person is trans, but plenty are.

3) Or just…remove the bit where she’s revealed to have breasts altogether, and keep in the fact that she’s a girl who was raised as a boy! Why does she have to be “a biological female in disguise”? While either of the above two options would have been good ways to explain the fact that she had breasts, I’m not giving the writers enough credit to have thought of one or the other. If they had, it would have been hinted at. On some level, it felt like they were saying “it’s okay everyone, she’s not really trans. Look, she had breasts all along!” If that’s what they were trying to do, then screw it; just change the reveal but nothing else about the character, and make her an unabashedly AMAB trans woman.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the topic. I recognize that this was super long-winded, but I needed to get my thoughts out—anyone who’s interested in this and got something from the long read, I’m glad that I was able to provide some insight. And I’m not even done with the series yet! Maybe they did do better! I don’t have my hopes up, but maybe! Anyway, please feel free to reblog this post with your thoughts or message me if this inspired any opinions of your own. As long as those thoughts aren’t “Robin isn’t really trans or queer at all.” I don’t need that kind of negativity in my life.

Have a great day, everyone! And thanks for reading!

[im-bipolar-but-thats-okay]

Life Moves On.

Hello to everyone who reads my blog. I appreciate you even if you just skim it, even if you read it on the toilet, or even if you read it and don’t say anything at all to me. I started it as a way for me to journal out loud, but it has become so much more to me. Anyways...

A little update on how I am doing. Great, actually. Thanks for asking. 

Chris broke up with me Sunday and I was sad for about two days. I think ultimately he didn’t really care about me as much as he led me to believe and I realize that now. Yes, I do miss him. I miss talking to him and I miss his voice, but I just don’t want to dwell on him. He wasn’t one of my great loves. He was just a speed bump in my love life. And sometimes that is all people are. 

I am already back on the dating apps. Hah. Already talking to some interesting people. There are plenty of fish in the sea, and I’m one of those fancy lures that looks like it’s actually swimming and has a really big tail. I’m 30 yrs old and I want children. I do not have time to waste. There is someone out there to love me and my darkness and I’m going to find them. I never was one to take things sitting down.

Aside from that, I have been having immense back pain. Last Saturday, my sister actually had to drag me to the hospital. A fist full of ibuprofen did nothing to help me. I was laying on the ground crying because the pain was so bad and had lasted almost 3 hours. The doctor at the hospital could not determine what was the cause. He did not think it was my kidneys or anything, but rather something superficial. They gave me two shots in the butt, a muscle relaxer and pain meds, then sent me on my way. That muscle relaxer worked quick and I was passed out in bed in no time. 

Yesterday I got a chance to go to a chiropractor. She is also a nurse practitioner so it was really helpful to talk to her. She determined that the issue might be my shoes. Basically, I wear heels a lot, like 90% of the time. I wear them to work and I wear them out. Lately, though I had been wearing flats to work. This is due to laziness and depression. The doctor explained that my posture is different in heels vs flats and my back is not use to it. I did ask if the issue could be my hair, she stated no because then I would feel it in my neck. I asked if my large breast could be the issue. Again, she stated no because then the pain would be in my upper back. The shoes are the only thing that has changed within the last month that could be the issue. 

The good doctor did a back adjustment. Basically, everything in my back popped. It was amazing. She hooked me up to this machine that sends like shocks to your muscles. It was also amazing. She gave me a back brace, a giant icepack, and some cooling gel. Everything is amazing. Some unexpected costs but I feel so much better. I had some minor back pain last night and I slept with the ice pack. It was great. 

Feelings wise, I am doing better than last week. Still feeling a little tired and unmotivated, but less 😐. I think going through the back pain and coming out of it has kind of brightened up my mood. It showed me things can be worse, like being in actual physical pain with nothing to soothe it. I know this won’t last long though. I know next week I can very well be back at the 😐. But I’m not scared. I know I will get through it and I will keep trying to find my happiness balance. 

I start a new med this week. It’s called Vraylar. It is replacing my anti-psychotic, Latuda. I wanted a change because I was told Latuda causes weight gain. I was thinking maybe that is why I have gained so much weight the last couple of years. It started when I started taking Latuda. But my psychiatrist said Latuda doesn’t cause weight gain. She stated that sometimes Sertraline/Zoloft does overtime. I am a little bit confused but she changed my medication anyways. 

I am nervous about this new medication because you never know how it will affect you. You do not know if it will make things better or if it will make things worse. You don’t know what kind of side effects it can have on you. There have been some weird side effects I have seen on people. I have asked around and most people like Vraylar but it is still a fairly new drug. My doctor did say it works best for people who have heavily depressed bipolar like me. I will stay vigilant and report back on my experience. 

I want to end this post by saying:  MESSAGE ME IF YOU NEED TO TALK TO SOMEONE.  I have already had a few people reach out and if I don’t respond right away just give me time. I definitely will talk to you about your experiences and I wish you all the best. 🖤

[memegoat]

really feeling that "doctor vs furry artist on patreon" post today because i just spent the last two months in absolutely crippling pain, practically unable to get out of bed for the last two weeks, literally unable to sit at a desk or be on a computer for the entire duration. assumed it was a herniated disc re: being ""diagnosed"" with a bulging disc eight years ago and being told my only option to fix it was surgery and that it would never get better. assumed the disc went herniated despite the fact a doctor never bothered to explain discs heal themselves over time, so even if i had a herniated disc it wasn't related to an injury from *eight years ago*. go to the doc over a week ago and explain all of my symptoms, get disregarded when the doctor is like, oh, your hamstring muscles are tight! and i'm like, that's not what i came here for? claims all of my muscles are tight and i need to do more physical work because he doesn't believe i'm on my feet eight+ hours a day at my job, & doesn't acknowledge the fact i can hardly fucking WALK, doesn't do anything to help me and prescribes me some painkillers after five minutes to get me to go away. go to my chiro two days later & tell her this and she tells me that his claim that my hamstring & front muscles (piriformis and soas) are all tight doesn't make sense and is physically impossible because one being tight means the other is extended. i tell her my other symptoms and she says since i said a back brace hurt my back to try an si belt. try an si belt the next day i go to work and holy fucking SHIT, i literally went from "hardly able to get out of bed" to "physical labor carrying 60+ pounds all day long" in a DAY wearing that thing, it practically eliminating 90% of my pain. i proceed to do more research on the belt and find with my symptoms and that the belt helped, i don't have a herniated disc but that i have sacroiliac joint dysfunction, and everything i had been doing to try and treat a herniated disc & "tight hamstrings" (and bulging disc in the case of eight years ago) was making it WORSE and that's why i was so crippled.

the icing on the cake is i have spent the last EIGHT YEARS with chronic leg, back, & side pain under the diagnosis of "it's a bulging disc" when they straight up misdiagnosed my SIJD and refused to offer me any treatment other than surgery, for a problem i DIDN'T HAVE. i have spent the last eight years with virtually no flexibility, unable to run or walk for long periods of time, and overall resigned to experiencing chronic pain at random intervals with no chance of treatment or recovery for the rest of my life because these doctors can't diagnose SHIT, but i see my chiro on a second visit and she makes a recommendation that leads me to a solution for my EIGHT-YEAR LONG PROBLEM

like holy shit i am wearing this belt on a daily basis, i have adjusted the way i sleep to support my si joints, and have started doing stretches to help it and i'm only three days into this and i already feel better than i did a month ago.

i get it that misdiagnoses happen sometimes and all but holy shit my experience with medical doctors is in the absolute shitter and i can't believe NOBODY COULD DIAGNOSIS THIS FOR EIGHT. YEARS. meanwhile my fucking CHIROPRACTOR has done more for me in the twenty minutes i've seen her in the last month than any medical doctor has done, and this is why the american healthcare system is so fucked

[sighmurderbot]

Irish Coffee Chapter Two

Title: Closing Time

Chapter Rating/Warnings: G, I don’t think there’s even any profanity in this one

Word Count: 2.4K

Summary: They meet over coffee and Kierkegaard. There was a spark in his honey-brown eyes that drew her to him. There was a sadness behind her bright smile that drew him to her. Spencer Reid/Original Female Character. Slow burn coffee shop meet. Strangers to friends to lovers. This fic is also available on AO3, it’s ahead of tumblr currently!

previous chapter//next chapter

“Friends are those rare people who ask how we are and then wait to hear the answer.” 

- Ed Cunningham

It had been a tiring Thursday, which is saying something. Thursdays were the one day a week I only worked at the coffee shop, just coming in for a few hours to close, meaning it was the closest thing I had to a day off. That being said, somehow the denizens of DC had decided this was the Thursday to descend on this coffee shop and just...be assholes. My head ached from the amount of focus and energy it took to process complaints and orders simultaneously while making drinks and keeping the cafe clean.

It might only be a three hour shift, but sometimes it’s a long three hours.

I finished wiping down the table in front of me and stood, arching my back to stretch it out. 

I’m not sure what caught my attention. A flicker of movement, perhaps, or maybe just the sense of someone else nearby.

I glanced towards the front of the store, scanning the city street on the other side of the floor to ceiling windows.

And there he was.

He looked a little worse for wear, his clothes wrinkled and hair mussed, as if he had only slept briefly and in uncomfortable places. Light spilled from the streetlamp above him, his high cheekbones casting harsh shadows across his skin.

His eyes widened a little as I spotted him.

I couldn't stop the smile that spread across my face upon seeing him. He intrigued me, and...I'll admit it, I thought he was cute. The door was still unlocked and I waved for him to come inside. 

Maybe my Thursday is starting to look up!

He seemed confused at my gesture, glancing over his shoulder and pointing a hesitant finger to his chest.

“Me?” he mouthed, eyebrows drawing together in a confused frown.

I rolled my eyes and grinned, quickly making my way to the door and holding it open with one arm. Cool air rolled in off the street, ruffling a few flyaways around my face.

“Come on in!” I exclaimed. “We don’t close properly for another ten minutes.”

He shoved his hands into his pocket, rocking back on his heels a little.

“Are you sure? You-you probably already cleaned everything and I don’t want to be in the way.”

“Don’t be silly,” I smiled. “Just come in, sugar.”

He ducked his head and stepped inside. I watched his shoulders relax slightly as he stopped a few feet into the store.

“What can I get ya?” I asked, crossing to behind the counter. His eyes flicked from the menu to me and he tilted his head a little, as if in confusion. I felt my lips twitch in a small smile.

I wonder what he’s thinking, he looks baffled…

“Sir?” I asked, thinking it was perhaps not a good idea to let on that I overheard and remembered his name.

“Why do you call me sugar?” He asked. His tone wasn’t accusatory or upset, simply curious. My cheeks reddened slightly.

“Well, that’s your order, right? Uh...large mocha with extra sugar?”

He nodded, a pretty frown still wrinkling his forehead.

“You remembered?”

I looked down, chuckling a little. 

“It’s not every day a nice man reading Danish philosophy comes in and is kind enough to talk to me like a person,” I said honestly.

More confusion from the man before me. I worried that I had said too much, scared him off. I serve hundreds of people a day, remembering one customer might come across as creepy or weird or-

He cut off my train of thought as he spoke.

“You think I’m nice?”

The question was genuine, he blinked a few times like he was having trouble processing what I said.

“...yeah,” I laughed a little. “I mean, I obviously don’t know you, but I get feelings about people. My feeling is that you’re nice.”

“Huh,” he said, eyes returning to the menu above me.

“So…” I gently prompted him. “What can I get you? Same thing?”

“Oh! Yeah, same thing please.”

“Have a seat anywhere!”

It only took me a minute to finish making the drink, and instead of calling it out at the counter I walked it to his table.

He looked up as I set the drink in front of him, giving me a closed-lip smile and wrapping long, delicate fingers around the warm cup.

“Reid,” he commented into his cup. I almost missed it. “Doctor Spencer Reid. That’s my name.”

Doctor Spencer Reid. That’s a nice name, I decided.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Doctor Reid,” I said with a smile. “Katie, but, you already knew that.” He nodded and looked back down at his coffee. 

“Let me know if I can get you anything else, Doctor,” I said, then turned to finish closing. He seemed like the quiet type who preferred to be alone, or maybe he’d just had a long day.

“Uh, Sp—” he said as I turned around, so quiet that I missed most of what he said.

“Sorry?” I turned around, pushing some hair back towards the ponytail it had slipped out of.

He looked up and his gaze swept over me, analytical and probing. I found myself nervously twisting my apron tie around my fingers.

What is he looking for? What does he see? 

“You wear a hearing aid,” he said matter-of-factly.

Oh.

I nodded silently, my face falling before I could catch it.

What’s he going to say? Berate me? Mock me? My thoughts were perhaps a tad more bitter than intended, and I tried to keep that out of my voice.

“Yeah, sorry,” I said, cringing inwardly at how flat I sounded. “I can’t pick up certain frequencies.”

“You know,” he said, taking one hand off his coffee cup as he began to gesture with his words. “The use of hearing aids has actually been proven to reduce cognitive decline and lower the risk of developing dementia.”

What’s he doing? I thought, thrown off a little, but not upset by this turn of events. Is he...trying to make me feel better?

“There was a study conducted in Europe, two out of three people who used hearing aids wished they had gotten them sooner,” Spencer continued, both hands involved in his gestures now. I began to fear for his coffee. 

“They lead to a better social life, mental and physical health, and job performance. So...it’s a good thing. That you have them.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” I accepted, watching him with a small smile. He seemed embarrassed after his small outburst.

I gestured to the chair across from him.

“May I?”

He nodded, taking a sip of his sugary drink.

“So,” I said, taking a seat. “You’re studying philosophy but you’re also a doctor. How’s that work?”

If I thought he looked embarrassed a moment ago, he was downright flustered now.

“I, uh…” he fiddled with the cardboard protector around his coffee cup. “I am a philosophy student,” he said. “But I already have my doctorates in Mathematics, Chemistry, and Engineering. And another bachelor’s in Psychology.”

He suddenly fell silent, eyes fixed on the steam coiling out of the slit in the cup’s lid. I couldn’t keep my impressed admiration off my face, smiling as I opened and closed my mouth, trying to process something to say.

After I hadn’t replied for a few seconds he looked up at me from beneath his lashes. He was almost wincing, as if bracing himself for ridicule, mockery, disgust.

Just like you, my mind prompted. 

I gave him a wide grin and set my folded hands on the table, leaning forward a little.

“Doctor R— Spencer. That’s amazing, you don’t look much older than me.”

“I’m 26,” he replied, almost automatically, then frowned. “Wait, what?”

“That’s amazing,” I emphasized. “You’re amazing, that’s a huge accomplishment.”

I watched a light shade of pink spread up his cheeks.

“Oh, uh...thank you,” he said unsurely.

Waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“I mean it,” I said, meeting his eyes. “You must have worked incredibly hard for those.”

“Well, I have an eidetic memory and an IQ of 187 but...college isn’t friendly to 12-year-old high school graduates.”

I gave him an empathetic grimace.

“Sometimes it’s not the course load that’s the hard part of college.”

“You can say that again,” he agreed, taking another sip of his coffee. “I thought you weren’t a student though.”

I pressed my lips together, looking down at my hands.

“Not anymore,” I said shortly.

“Oh. I’m sorry,” he said, but it sounded like he was reading out of a book. I didn’t really mind. People don’t understand, they can’t, not really. 

“I’m working to go back.” I don’t know why I said it, why I told him. It wasn’t any of his business, but for some reason I wanted Spencer to know I didn’t drop out because I screwed around, I didn’t want him to think that I didn’t care.

“Everyone has their own pace,” Spencer said. “At least, that’s what my mom told me.”

I felt my breath catch in my chest, and I gave him a small smile that I hoped wasn’t as sad as I suddenly felt.

“My mom told me something similar,” I found myself admitting. “Run your own damn race, she told me.”

Spencer tilted his head, as if asking me to explain. His eyes were fixed on me, I felt almost shy about being the complete focus of his attention, but I also had a feeling that anything Spencer did was the absolute center of his focus.

“It means that everyone has a race they’re running,” I said. “And you should focus on yours, not anyone else’s. If you focus on someone else’s race you’ll probably trip while trying to run your own. If...if that makes any sense.”

“It does,” Spencer assured with a small smile. 

“Heh, moms, right?”

I let out a slightly nervous laugh, but something in Spencer’s eyes, an understanding, calmed me.

“Moms,” he agreed with a small smile.

We shared a quiet moment, just looking at each other. His face was too harsh and angular for a man with liquid honey eyes and perfectly curved lips. I wondered where he worked, what stressful career painted dark circles like bruises under his eyes and stripped the softness from him.

“I should close up,” I said finally, regretfully. 

“Oh, yeah, of course,” Spencer hurried out of his seat, almost knocking over his coffee but deftly catching it before it could tip too far. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” I replied, maybe too quickly, as I stood as well. Spencer arched an eyebrow.

“I just-” I started, then exhaled a laugh and looked down at my shoes. “I don’t get to have a conversation with...well, anyone, very often.” 

I twisted my apron tie around my finger three times, then unspireled it. 

“I don’t really talk with anyone outside of work,” Spencer admitted. He didn’t seem upset about it, it was simply a fact of his existence. 

“That’s kinda sad,” I said, my hand flying to my mouth right after. 

“I’m so sorry,” I said quickly, hand returning to harassing my apron ties. “I didn’t mean-”

“No, it’s okay,” Spencer cut me off with a shrug.

He really doesn’t seem upset, I guess some people are happy that way.

“Well,” I smiled up at him. “If you ever want to talk to someone you don’t work with, you know where to find me.”

He nodded, returning my expression.

“Thanks.”

I noticed how he kept a respectful distance between us, and remembered how he hadn’t offered to shake hands when we swapped names. 

Touch avoidance.

He seemed to notice everything, and with an eidetic memory he’d remember it all, so I carefully filed this away. Even though I might not be able to compare to him on memory, I could still try and remember something important to someone who had gone out of his way to be nice to me.

“Can I walk you out?” I asked, glancing around the room to make sure I had finished closing.

“Uh, yeah, sure.”

“Great.”

I gave him a bright smile.

“Wait here, I’ll be right back.”

I hurried to the back room to grab my coat and bag. A few moments later I returned, and Spencer was still there. For some reason I had almost expected him to disappear, almost as if he wasn’t ever there.

But there he was, tugging on the sleeve of his cardigan and shuffling in place.

“Ready to go?” I asked, tugging my coat around me. It was old, and too big for me, and frayed at the bottom, and I had to patch the elbows last winter, but it was warm.

And it was hers.

Every time I pulled the old blue coat on it was like a memory of a hug from my mom.

Spencer nodded.

“Andiamo!” I exclaimed cheerfully. Spencer’s attention perked.

“You speak Italian?”

“A little, you?”

“I’m passable.”

I grinned. 

“I’ve only spoken with you a little, but something tells me you’re a sight more than passable.”

Spencer cracked a smile, ducking his head to hide his pleased expression.

“Maybe I’m closer to fluent, but I’m not there yet.”

I made my way to the door, hitting the lights on my way. The shop fell into darkness, the only illumination the emergency lights and the city ambience outside. 

“It was really nice to meet you, Spencer,” I said earnestly as he joined me on the sidewalk outside. I locked the door and gave it a rattle to make sure it was secure, then turned to him. He tipped the last of his coffee down.

“It was nice to meet you too, Katie.”

“I’ll see you around?” “Yeah, probably.”

He raised the now-empty cup.

“You’re the only one who puts enough sugar in,” he joked, and I laughed with him. 

Raising my hand in farewell, I set off to catch the bus and he began walking the other way. Once I reached the corner I glanced back at the tall figure, passing in and out of sight under streetlamps as he drew further away.

When was the last time I talked to someone who wasn’t a coworker? I wondered. No time was easily coming to mind and I grimaced. It wasn’t easy to maintain a social life while working three jobs.

It’ll be worth it, I assured myself, Friends can come later, I need to do this.

I was dedicated to my goal, and I’d stick to it, but deep down I was hoping to see the handsome Doctor Spencer Reid again. 

A friendly, casual acquaintance. It’ll be nice to see a friendly face every now and then.

And that’s truly all I hoped for, for now.