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tunaababee · 4 months

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we will be everything we say - Chapter 8/Epilogue

masterlist // fic playlist // read on AO3 // overall rating: e // wc this chapter: 5.3k

Feyre Archeron has been best friends with Rhysand Sterling ever since she moved onto the same street when they were kids - the two became absolutely joined at the hip, with nothing able to come between them.

As they get older, life gets more complicated and things get harder. Not everything comes as naturally as it once did. People change, things happen, friends... drift.

But after drifting apart, maybe life can push them back together again, in time.

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

a/n: thank you all so much for coming with me on this journey. this fic has been my baby for a long while so it feels weird to have it fully out in the world, but i hope you've enjoyed! also, biggest shoutout to @climbthemountain2020 - the best beta reader a girl could ask for and without whom this fic wouldn't have been possible. <3

more smut in here btw! have fun <3

Chapter 8/Epilogue: forever and always

Being with Rhys felt so easy – as natural as breathing. Since they had gotten together a bit over a year ago, life hadn’t always been smooth sailing and stress-free, but it was definitely easier to roll with the punches with him by Feyre’s side. She wouldn’t trade it for the world, though she was still always in a bit of disbelief as to just how loving and kind he was towards her. Every day with him felt like a gift she didn’t deserve but treasured all the same.

Since that night, things had definitely moved… fast, to say the least. With any other person, Feyre would have thought that moving in together after only two months would have been insanity. But, of course, it had simply been a natural next step with the amount of time she spent at Rhys’ place and vice versa. Besides, they’d already spent twenty years getting to know each other – it’s been overly drawn out if you ask me, Rhys would say whenever she asked him if he was sure about it all. Soon enough, she’d gotten settled into the roomy apartment in Velaris over in uptown Prythian, and it had quickly gone from his to theirs. The first few months of living there he couldn’t help but get giddy like a schoolboy every time she called it home. She’d be lying if she said she didn’t feel the same way, but he gushed about it to her every minute he could, and it made her laugh. It certainly made her stomach flutter every time he followed ‘my home’ up with ‘my girl’ and ‘my Feyre’, though.

They’d set aside a workspace in the apartment that the two of them shared – Rhys busy designing dresses and suits and outfits in between paperwork at his ever-cluttered desk, Feyre painting and drawing and bringing her visions to life right next to him. Her art career had been kicking off at a steady pace – she was being regularly featured in various gallery shows, alongside her online art store comprised of her more fun works bringing in a comfortable amount of sales. Rhys was succeeding all on his own merit as well, which didn’t surprise Feyre in the slightest considering all his ambition. Night Triumphant was becoming more and more reputable as a brand, beginning to have a handful of brick-and-mortar stores slowly but surely expanding across the country, meaning he was travelling more often for work. The two of them would collaborate sometimes as well, with Feyre making artworks that got printed on custom fabric and made into the most stunning garments, often for her to wear if Rhys had his way. It wasn’t uncommon for one of them to find the other watching them work before they were all over one another. If there was one thing the two of them couldn’t ever get enough of, it was each other. They managed to make it work and live comfortably pursuing their dreams, and Feyre couldn’t think of another time she’d been so happy in her life.

But right now, it was New Year’s Eve, and the two of them had each been busy with their own respective business – Rhys had been trying to fulfil the higher demand from people wanting a stunning outfit over the holidays, while Feyre had been dealing with her own higher volume of orders for the giving season. Balancing time with their friends and family, each other, and working had been difficult and they’d definitely had to set some of it on the backburner to make sure they met all their commitments. Late nights, long days and bone-deep exhaustion that only that lazy week between Christmas and New Years could allow them to recover from. Both of them had been too tired to do much of anything besides sleep and binge Netflix together, but at least they were together.

Tonight, they had decided they should go and see their friends for a few drinks to help ring in the new year, the two of them having gone a little bit stir crazy after a while.

“We don’t have to stay out all night, right?” Feyre called from their bedroom, rifling through the closet in nothing but underwear and a bra to try and find a nice but comfortable outfit for the night.

“Not unless you want to, darling. But you know I’m never opposed to sneaking out of anything early with you.” Rhys’ tone was playful as he came up behind her, arms wrapping around her bare waist before pressing a kiss to the delicate spot between neck and shoulder.

She turned her head to press a kiss to his temple with a smile before focusing back on her task. “True, but we have to actually get out of the door to do that in the first place. Now go get ready!”

With a playful swat to his hip he let her go, hands in the air in mock defense before grabbing some clothes of his own and retreating to the bathroom. The cheeky, Cheshire Cat grin never left his face the whole time she could see him, and it always made her heart do a little flip, beating in double time. Everything about Rhys always made her feel like a kid with a schoolyard crush in the best way – like she was able to tangibly grab that lost time she hadn’t had with him in her hands and make it real.

Feyre carefully picked through the closet before settling on something that definitely leaned more on the casual side of things, but still made her look and feel good. She grabbed a tight-fitting white crop top, paired with her favourite black tennis skirt and thick, fleece-lined pantyhose to keep her warm despite the winter chill. Cute but comfy – exactly what she was after. There was also the added benefit of that it would drive Rhys a little bit insane, which she always took an immense amount of joy in.

As if he’d heard her thoughts like a moth to a flame, he came back into the room as she stood in front of their full-length mirror and pulled her top on. Rhys looked drop-dead gorgeous in a tight fitting henley shirt and dark blue jeans that outlined the quickly developing bulge in his jeans deliciously. She couldn’t help but smirk, fussing with the shirt and fiddling with the necklace around her neck – the same one he’d given her the night they had gotten together. She hadn’t stopped wearing it since.

There was a hunger in Rhys’ eyes as he leaned against the doorframe of their bedroom, biting his lip slightly as he folded his arms and raked his eyes over her.

“You almost ready to go, honey? I just need to grab my sneakers and a cardigan.” She looked at him over her shoulder, a twinkle in her eye as she schooled her face into the most innocent expression she could manage. She knew exactly what he was thinking when he looked at her like that.

“Mm, I’m not sure. I feel like I might have forgotten to do something before we go,” he said, crooking two fingers at her to beckon her closer, the silver rings he always wore gleaming against his skin. “Do you know what that could be, Feyre?”

Feyre took deliberately smaller steps than normal, drawing out the tension between them as she stalked closer and closer before she could slide her arms around his neck. “Mm, no idea what you could mean. What I do know is that if we don’t leave soon, we’re gonna be late to meet everyone else at Rita’s.”

He didn’t hesitate to grab her ass, roughly kneading the flesh there as Rhys tilted his head down to brush his lips over hers. “Let them fucking wait.”

Before Feyre could even try to pretend to put up a protest, he pressed his lips needily to hers, hands sliding down to the backs of her thighs to hoist her up effortlessly. Her back hit the wall, groaning into his mouth as she could feel his hips pressing relentlessly against her own as her legs wrapped round his waist. She couldn’t help but roll her hips to try and drive him even wilder, eliciting a delicious little moan from him that was music to her ears.

“You really thought we’d be able to leave the house on time? When you’re wearing that? Making yourself look all pretty just for me, hm?” Rhys’ lips and teeth made headway down the column of her neck, nibbling and biting and sucking to leave a trail of hickeys for everyone to see.

She hummed with satisfaction, a smile playing on her lips. “I thought I’d- ah- make at least a little effort since it’s N-New Years and all, what can I say?” A harsher nip to the crook of her neck made her gasp, a hand knotting itself firmly in his hair to press him closer as if there was any gap between them in the first place.

Rhys moved a hand from under her thigh to slip between their bodies, under her shirt, under her bra, to greedily palm at her breast and pull and tweak at her hardened peaks. He pulled his mouth away from her neck to lock his gaze with hers, an intensity in them that he reserved just for her. The eye contact with him always made everything feel so much… more and she lived for it.

“You can say my name as I make you take every inch of my cock,” Rhys grinded his hips against hers roughly to punctuate his sentence, rock hard against the searing-hot wet spot that was quickly soaking through her panties and beginning to show on the stockings she was wearing. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you Feyre? Being my little whore, taking everything I give you?”

She couldn’t do anything but whine, nodding dumbly as she tried to rut against him, attempting to develop more friction between their bodies. He smiled almost mischievously, gently placing Feyre onto her feet for barely a second before they were both scrambling – Feyre to yank her stockings and panties to the floor before tossing them aside, Rhys to be rid of his belt and undo his jeans. The moment he was finished, Rhys grabbed her hips with a bruising force that sent heat spearing through her centre. Feyre almost jumped back into his arms as he pushed her back into the same position they’d left off at. Her mind and body were practically putty in his hands, nothing but sticky, syrupy thoughts of the pleasure she knew full well he was capable of providing her running through her mind.

“You’re such a good fucking girl,” He muttered lowly, moving a hand lower and lower over her abdomen until his fingers began to drift teasingly through the folds of her pussy. “All soaking wet already.”

Her face was buried in the crook of Rhys’ neck, a desperate whimper leaving her as she bit down into his golden-brown skin with need. Her hips canted against his hand, fingers occasionally slipping inside her with exceptional ease before they drew right back out again. He was deliberately trying to drive her mad and it was working far too well. “Baby, please please fuck me already, pl-please, I need you- need you to fill me, unh- up so bad.”

The ministrations his hand provided stilled, Feyre’s head firmly falling back against the wall before she met his gaze. Rhys’ pupils were blown wide, his cock twitching at her words against her inner thigh. “Need me to fill you up, huh?”

Feyre nodded at him with a groan.

“Need to feel me come inside you? Fuck it into you nice and hard, like a little slut?”

She groaned lewdly at that, fingernails digging into the back of his neck. “Yes, baby, plea-ase.”

Without warning or ceremony, he lined himself up and quickly pushed inside her with no resistance, twin moans spilling from their mouths in delectable harmony. The hand that had been fisted around his cock quickly moved up to her neck, gripping lightly as the firm planes of Rhys’ body and his rough thrusts pinned her harder up against the wall over and over. The lock her legs had around his waist loosened, one of them pushed right back up with his free hand to hit as deep as he could, her feet bobbing up and down with every snap and roll of their hips into one another.

Feyre caught a glimpse of the two of them in the full length mirror she’d been preening in on the other side of the room a little while ago and oh god, the sight made a moan warble from her throat helplessly.

“Gonna fuck you so full, Feyre,” A whiny little ‘uh huh’ escaped her with every sentence, every ounce of filth he slurred into her ears. “Gonna make sure my darling is filled to the fucking brim, god, you were made for me.”

Feyre’s mind just got more and more hazy as she felt her climax build with each roll of her hips, every stroke of Rhys’ cock inside her pressing against that one spot that made her lose any sense she had. She could hear him babbling about so perfect and babygirl and would look so good with my baby inside you one day – it made it near impossible for her to form words or sentences even if she tried.

“C-Come, Rhys, I’m gonna c-“ Feyre didn’t even get to finish her sentence before she was letting the most depraved, guttural sound she’d ever heard loose from her throat as her walls tightened like a vice around Rhys’ cock. He kept fucking her right through, the sensation so intense that a stray few tears fell from her eyes as she focused solely on the complete ecstasy enveloping her. She was distantly aware of Rhys coming apart not long after her, making good on his promise to fill her well – sweat slicked his forehead, his gaze solely locked onto where their bodies joined and the slight hints of his spend she could feel leaking out of her around him.

After a few moments spent in the haze of each other’s warmth and embrace, peppered with kisses and sweet words mumbled in each other’s ears, Rhys pulled out – though not before gathering up what mess had dripped out of her cunt and indulging in a few extra moments inside her to fuck it right back in with a low moan. He slowly lowered her onto her feet, her legs trembling like baby fawn, barely keeping her up with the most satisfied look on her face. She looked down just as Rhys got to his knees, grabbing her soaked panties from the floor where they’d been hastily discarded and gently starting to coax them back onto her feet and up her legs. The span of his hands over her legs was comforting, the caring and delicate touches slowly bringing her back to reality as he helped her back into her stockings.

“We have to hurry Feyre darling; we’re going to be awfully late.” Rhys quipped as he stood up in front of her. She simply rolled her eyes with a laugh, lightly swatting his chest.

“As if you’ve started caring about that now.” Feyre fiddled with his hair, trying to form it back into something presentable as he tucked himself back into his jeans and made himself presentable once more – though not without a visible bite mark on him to match her own.

“What kind of partner would I be if I left my beautiful girl all empty and needy? Sometimes sacrifices have to be made for the greater good, you know.” He pressed a kiss to her temple, stroking her hair gently before stepping away to grab his phone. “Go do what you need to feel ready – I’ll call the Uber.”

She could feel her cheeks warm a little, but she was grateful for the extra time – she knew that the minute the two of them walked into Rita’s everybody would know why they were late. It wasn’t exactly the first time this had happened. But she at least wanted to look a little less messy – that was something she saved just for Rhys, and that was exactly the way the two of them liked it.

Before long she’d fixed her hair, slipped on her shoes and her thick black cardigan and walked with Rhys into the crisp night air.

It was already a little past eight-thirty when the two of them arrived, their circle of friends spotting them the minute they rolled through the door. Cassian had his brows arched dramatically sitting at the end of the booth, staring at Rhys as he tapped at an imaginary watch on his wrist. Azriel simply shook his head thoroughly with a smirk, while Mor looked far too satisfied for her own good at the whole affair. Nesta, Gwyn and Emerie couldn’t care less as they were thoroughly engrossed in trying to rope Amren into their book club. The attempt didn’t seem to be working.

“Wooow guys, over half an hour late? Shame on you two for making all of us wait! You’re lucky we haven’t ordered food yet.” Cassian’s tone was exaggerated and playful, Feyre simply grinning at his antics as she and Rhys slid in next to him the booth they had all piled into.

“They say patience is a virtue, Cass. You could learn a thing or two! We’re just trying to impart good values.” Feyre retorted, trying and failing miserably to keep a serious look on her face at him.

His façade broke after that, Cassian slinging an arm over Feyre’s shoulder to pull her into a tight hug with a wide smile and a laugh.

“So, what kept you two sooo busy, hmm? Important business I imagine?” Mor drawled, finger twirling around the rim of her cocktail with a ruby red grin on her face. She knew full well what kept them waiting, but everybody knew she loved getting a rise out of her friends.

Rhys didn’t hesitate, more than eager to rib back. “Well, if you must know, I was busy fuc-“

A crumpled-up ball of napkins hit Rhys square in the face as Nesta levelled a glare at him across the table, iciness in her eyes. “I’m glad my baby sister is happy, but I swear to fucking god, I do not want to hear about what you two get up to behind closed doors.”

Rhys responded with a jokingly smug ‘suit yourself,’ before he turned his attentions back to Feyre and the others at the table, everybody ordering enough food and drinks to feed what felt like an army – most of it almost certainly being consumed by Azriel and Cassian. Before long, they’d all worked up a pleasant enough buzz and Mor had dragged Emerie onto the dancefloor despite her many protests. This, of course, led to a chain reaction – Emerie begged for Gwyn to help, which led to Gwyn recruiting Nesta, which meant Feyre got dragged up too because no way was she going to be caught dead on a club dancefloor without as many people she could rope in as possible.

Normally Rhys and Cassian would opt to join them, Azriel having always preferred watching from the sidelines and wading into things at his own pace and Amren never forced into anything she didn’t explicitly want to do, but tonight they were suspiciously glued to the table in hearty but hushed discussion that Feyre could barely make out over the music. She didn’t pay it too much mind – it was likely about Cassian and Nesta’s wedding since it was just in a few months’ time, or how they were going to rope their respective partners into some harebrained idea that they’d cooked up together. Ultimately, whatever it was, she knew it wasn’t something to worry about and just focused on having a good time feeling the music in her bones and the alcohol in her body.

The time flew by as the clock ticked a bit past ten-thirty, Feyre sat squarely in Rhys’ lap and felt the exertion of the day catching up with her. As much as Rhys tried to look like he wasn’t feeling the tiredness seep into his bones, she could see it in the sag of his shoulders and the slight droop of his eyelids – it was time to call it a night. Before long they’d said their goodbyes, kisses on cheeks and all too-tight hugs from everybody who’d come.

“Can’t believe you’re not staying out ‘til the New Year rolls in. I think you might be getting old, sport.” Amren punched Rhys in the arm with a laugh, having always been a party animal when she felt like it – she was usually going one-for-one right by Rhys’ side through each and every drink.

“Am, you’re literally the oldest one here, are you sure your bones aren’t turning into dust?”

With a hearty laugh and an eye roll so fierce they could practically hear it, Rhys and Feyre headed home. As much as she loved the company of everybody, she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t excited to jump into her pyjamas and get comfy for the night. She stepped out of the Uber and back into their apartment building with a long yawn.

“Ready to wind down for the night, love?” Rhys stood behind her, arms wrapped around her waist to hold her close against him on the elevator ride up.

“Mmhm. Sometimes I forget how tired I am until it hits me all at once, y’know?” Her head rested gently against his neck, his chin resting in her hair. She always loved when he held her close like this – no matter where they were, it felt like safety. Like home.

The elevator dinged softly as it got to their floor, Rhys being ever the gentleman and insisting on unlocking the door and ushering her through into their apartment before him. Feyre did a little curtsey with her tennis skirt, possibly hiking the hem a little higher than she needed to. But that was neither here nor there.

“Why thank you, Mr. Sterling! And they say chivalry is dead.”

He chuckled lowly with a small bow at the waist toward her. “The pleasure is all mine, Miss St- I mean, Miss Archeron.” A flush crawled up his neck and onto his cheeks, only matched by the way her own face was almost equally as pink in turn. It wasn’t the first time he’d almost called her ‘Miss Sterling’, but it made her tummy do flips and tie into knots more and more every time. It had a certain ring to it that she more than appreciated.

Ever the one to commit to the bit, Rhys delicately took her hand and pressed his lips to her knuckles as he met her gaze. Instead of letting her hand drop however, he used it to pull her in close and kiss her softly. “Go hop in the shower, darling. I’ll get a movie and some snacks set up for us, perhaps?”

A dreamy little sigh escaped her as she looked up at him, face as soft and kind as it had always been to her.

Her Rhys.

“You’re too sweet to me, you know.”

“Not sweet enough, if you ask me. Now get.” He gave Feyre’s backside a light swat to send her on her way, making her burst into a fit of giggles as she set out toward the bathroom.

She made sure to pick out her comfiest set of pyjamas and the fluffiest socks she owned, letting the water help ease the aches and weariness across her body. Especially her hips, but she didn’t really have any wiggle room to complain about that one. Feyre put her hair into a simple braid over her shoulder, softly padding out into the living room again as she wrapped a hair tie around the end of it, but she almost forgot what she was doing when she saw what had been set up in her absence.

It felt just like when they were kids.

Their couch, one of those fold-out futons for when there were one too many guests, had been pulled out and stacked with pillows and blankets galore, including the ones from their own bed. It almost looked like an impenetrable nest from where she was standing. The room was lit by only the glow of the widescreen TV and a few warm lamps throughout, with Howl’s Moving Castle already on the screen and paused for the two of them to begin at their leisure. In the middle of it all was Rhys, in his own pyjamas instead of just an old t-shirt for once, with two bowls nestled in his lap and both of their Steam Decks right next to him.

Exactly like when they were kids, but for who they were now.

The thought made Feyre’s heart beat in double-time – she’d never quite known what she did to deserve someone like Rhys, but she wasn’t going to start questioning it now. She climbed into the bed of blankets, making herself comfy as she struggled to wipe the incredulous look off her face. “What’s the occasion?”

“Just because we’re having a quieter New Year’s doesn’t mean we can’t still have a luxurious one. Besides, we’ve both been so tired lately – I figured we deserved a bit of a treat.” He held out a bowl to her, spoon sticking out of a thick bed of choc-mint ice cream. As she took it he scooted a bit closer, sides pressed together as he clicked ‘play’ on the movie and began to eat his own bowl of ice cream – boysenberry.

Some things truly never changed.

Feyre tried to press a firm kiss to his cheek, but he was quicker and turned his head to catch her lips with his own briefly. She simply smiled against his mouth before turning her attention to her own bowl, and not long after they’d both finished, to finding the most comfortable position for them both to play their games together. Eventually they settled on sitting up right next to one another, Feyre’s legs draped over the top of Rhys’ as they snuggled up under god-knows how many blankets.

As the TV was busy with Sophie Hatter’s journey up the palace steps to see the King’s witch, Rhys and Feyre were busy trying to water all their crops and save up for a better barn for their farm in Stardew Valley. Feyre had insisted that all their farm animals be named after foods, while Rhys had been much more hung up on making sure their crops were optimised for the maximum profit during the season. Maybe it was because he was a detail-oriented guy, maybe it was because Feyre kept spending all of their gold on decorating the farmhouse – who was to say? Either way, it was one of their favourite games to play together and tonight was no different. But they were in the middle of the Autumn season on a stormy day, when Feyre could feel Rhys’ gaze flicking between her and the game.

“Honey, you keep looking up at me and running into walls – everything okay over there?” She paused her game, setting her Steam Deck aside before doing the same with Rhys’.

“Yeah, I’m alright, I’m just – I got reminded of something, actually.”

“That’s awfully cryptic of you, haha.” She lifted a hand to brush his hair from his face, a few stray locks having fallen into his eyes, before resting her hand on his cheek. He leaned into her touch, eyes closing for a moment with a contented hum.

“Well, it’s something that I wanted to ask you before the new year and I have…” He grabbed his phone briefly, glancing at the time on the lockscreen. “…About eight-ish minutes left.”

“You sound pretty serious.”

“It is, heh, but probably not how you’re thinking. Close your eyes for a second.”

She did exactly as he asked, hands over her eyes, though Feyre was more than a bit puzzled. She knew by the furrow of her brow and the nervous laugh Rhys gave that she wasn’t on the same page as him quite yet and he knew it. The rustling of blankets and the shifting of Rhys beside her only added to the mystery.

“Okay, you can open them now.”

Feyre pulled her hands away from her face, a little confused as to what was different – she was looking straight out at the TV, unable to spot anything out of the ordinary, but she could feel Rhys’ stare locked onto her. Then he gently placed his hand on her leg over the thick down blanket, bringing her gaze down with it.

Right down to a pitch black, little velvet box.

Her hands shook a little bit as she reached out for it, looking between the box and Rhys over and over. Was this a fever dream? Was she imagining all of this? This felt far too good to be true.

But the feel of the smooth velvet in her fingertips assured her it was, as did the glittering ring it held inside. A deep purple amethyst, so deep it looked nearly black, sat in the middle of a delicately adorned silver band. It was shaped like a four-pointed star, with two smaller circular amethysts nestled on each side. A few other gems lay between and around them – knowing Rhys, they probably wouldn’t be anything less than diamonds – twinkling between them like the stars in the night sky.

It suited her perfectly. Suited Rhys’ tastes, as well. As soon as she saw it, she knew he’d probably been hiding it for what would have felt like forever to him. Knew that it was almost certainly what they were talking about at the bar.

“Is this for real?” Her eyes were wide as she looked up at Rhys, a few tears escaping against her will. He simply wiped them away with his thumb before tucking his fingers under her chin, making sure she couldn’t look away from him.

“Feyre, I can’t tell you for just how long I’ve wanted to call you my wife.”

“Well, at least the past few months since you keep almost calling me Miss Sterling.” The two of them laughed together for a moment, Rhys nodding slightly at her.

“You’ve got me there. But I mean it with every beat of my heart when I ask you…”

Rhys took the ring from the box with the hand that had been under her chin, the other coming to hold her left hand with a squeeze.

“Feyre Archeron, will you marry m-“

She kissed him with so much intensity, cutting off the end of the question, that she wasn’t sure she could ever quite express just how much she loved him – both in this moment and every other.

“Rhysand Sterling, I will marry the shit out of you.” She said against his lips, matching smiles spread across their faces.

Feyre pulled away for a second, letting Rhys slide the ring onto her finger before she climbed her way into his lap and kissed him again. He wrapped his arms around her waist and held her close as he kissed her right back with just as much fervour as she gave him.

It wasn’t lost on Feyre just how lucky she was, and it certainly wasn’t lost on the rest of the apartment complex either with how loud they were that night.

No matter what life had thrown at them or would present them with in the future, they both knew a universal cosmic truth – one they’d known for as long as they could remember. Every time, every world, every situation, it was going to be Rhys and Feyre together against the world.

Always.

the end.

#feysand #rhysand x feyre archeron #fanfiction #rhysand #feyre archeron #acotar #acotar fanfiction #friends to lovers

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chaotic-neutral-knitter · 1 year

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I saw this post going around and got really curious as to how OP came up with their numbers because I could not replicate them at all.

I was going to reply directly but it was getting very very long and I didn’t want to wade onto someone’s post with a bunch of my own stats bc it seemed rude, so I’m putting my response here.

I’m going to preface this by saying that I’m fully in the camp of “write because you like writing, not for an audience response” because if you don’t like the process of writing, there is no level of audience response that will make writing worth it. But. I’ve seen a lot of folks agonize over Ao3 stats and get stuck in the weeds on Ratios™. And I think there are a few really common misconceptions around what these numbers mean.

The rest of this is going to be under a readmore to spare y’all but basically it’s a breakdown of trying to calculate my own percentages like the OP in the original post and then dialing down into why hits != readers.

Here’s the stats from one of my fics as of today, May 1st 2023. I am by no means a prolific or widely known fic writer - I happen to be in a big fandom and writing for for the main pairing in that fandom.

completed multi chapter fic, rated Mature:

So this one has three chapters, 2736 hits, 436 kudos, and 146 comments. Kudos divided by hits is 16%.

“Oh no!” I might say, seeing this. “Only sixteen percent of people liked my fic enough to leave a kudos? Either my stuff is shit, or fic-readers are a bunch of lazy fucks who don’t appreciate the work I’ve put into this. Either way, I’m mad now!”

But (and I say this with a lot of love in my heart, I promise) that’s silly. Not just for the philosophical reasons of writing what makes you happy and not caring about the response. It’s silly because it’s wrong.

On a multi-chapter fic, each person who finishes it is responsible for at least 3 hits but can only leave 1 kudos. Dividing the total hits by 3 gives you 912 hits. So, once you’ve corrected for number of chapters, the percent of people who have hit kudos is 47%.

“Holy shit!” writer-me says, “I’ve published original fiction in my university newspaper, original fiction that I poured my heart and soul into btw, and if approximately half of the people who read it sent me a little heart emoji, I would have died and gone to heaven. Fic readers are the Nicest, Most Generous, and Most Beautiful readers on the planet and I am so grateful to be in this community with them.”

But! 47% is still wrong. Here’s why.

Hits != Readers

I don’t how other people do this, but my process of reading a fic is often like this (each step is one hit):

open link from someone else's rec, try to click "mark for later"

realize I'm logged out. sign in to Ao3, go back to fic and click "mark for later"

come back to read fic, generating at least one hit per chapter

open a second tab so that I can write a comment as I go (again, generating at least one hit per chapter)

finish fic, create bookmark, and then navigate back to fic to mark it as read so it's taken off my marked for later page

if I really liked the fic, I'll end up opening it back up in a tag many times so I can rec it to people by sending them the link

if I really really liked the fic, I'll come back and read it again (this is doubly true for explicit fic, btw.)

I think I’m on the high end of generating hits, but it only takes a few of me to really dial up that hit counter. And most people are going to do one or two of these things - I’d argue that it’s pretty rare for someone to leave just one hit on a fic unless they nope out of it in the middle.

Formula for calculating number of readers from number of hits:

There isn’t one. And it would take a much better mathematician than me to make one. Because this is way more complicated than dividing by chapters. Most readers leave more than one hit - especially if they like the fic a lot. Short fics and explicit fics are more likely to be read multiple times.

“But what if I crave validation?” writer-me complains, irritated with math-me for not downloading statistics software, shoving a million Ao3 fics into it, and producing some kind of bullshit linear regression. “What if I constantly see people with higher kudos/hits ratios than me? This is all very optimistic but it really doesn’t jive with my deep seated belief that everyone secretly hates me all the time and they’re too nice to tell me about it. Do they hate me? They probably hate me, right? Tell me if you hate me.”

To which I say, listen very closely, writer-me. You can either decide that AO3 stats mean something and lose your damn mind deciphering what they mean, or you can be like that kid who got an avocado for christmas and say “it’s a avocado comment!! Thanks!! :D”

And that kid seemed pretty happy.

#fanfiction #ao3 #my nonsense #I was going to vacuum and then I spent TWO HOURS writing this #whoops

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fioooweeooweeeoo · 11 months

Text

Fiowee Presents...

Extraordinary You

Tags: Firstly I'd like to thank @teyamsatan for helping and inspiring me to make this fic!! Such a sweet gal and of course I'd tag her for this first chapter IN WHICH i have been cooking up for quite some time (months actually AHAHAH) EVRYONE WHO'S BEEN ANTICIPATING THIS FIRST CHAPTER PLS GO CHECK OUT HERS TOO!! LOTS OF GREAT FICS AND ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC WRITING ~~

Other Tags!!: @glimmering-darling-dolly

A/N: okay first part was rlly dedicated to my bestie who inspired me to do this. ( btw for dates it goes *mm/dd/yy*, hope yall don't mind I put a specific birth date for Y/N ^^ 7 is actually her bday) Other than thatt what i really want to say here is that to everyone whose been waiting patiently for this, I present to you the first chapter of EXTRAORDINARY YOU! With all that is said this is my first ever fic so if this isn't ur cup of tea you don't have to read it!! anyways lemme stop me rambles pls enjoy my first chapter xoxo mwuah ^-^

Warnings: Not much here except for some guns and a little bit of violence??? its not to big tho HELP soo its rlly just the introoo n stuff

Word count is: 5.6k WHEWW it took me weeks rlly

Chapter 2 - Till i met you

-------------------------------------- ♡ -----------------------------------

(3rd person POV *YOU'RE SAYING THIS !* )

Hey! Probably an interesting way of starting this story here, something like breaking the fourth wall? I don't know- forget about my rambles but, My name is Y/N Chacon, and I live in Pandora.

Yep- that's right- it's not every day you realise that you became apart of a world wide astronomical party to fly out to this foreign planet to make it liveable for every possible human being, well- that's basically how my parents got here, I was just born here. Now you're probably wondering why lil' ol' me right there- the one that's basically struggling to get a hold of a vine 10,000 feet above a floating mountain has come to this-? Let's rewind a bit-

1 year and a half ago.

4.6.2175

Wind whistling. Sounds of foreign animals around you. And the smell of an earthy and forest musk emanates as you breathe in. Your eyes peel to take in to the surroundings around you-.. Pandora. Is what you first think, the forest is beautiful, you stare up to the trees as they seem longer and you feel as you've gone tinier. You breathe out as if a sigh of relief has washed over you, but then you hear it- the sound of stick cracking.

Your body instinctively rises up, you heart rate slowly escalating each unfamiliar sound your now hearing, a low growl is heard from your left, you turn to look and see a pair of two yellow beaded eyes, curious you crawl to it, your genuine curiosity gotten the best out of you when the beast pounces at you and-

You wake up. What?.. you've realised your breathing was not matched and you're hyperventilating. You sweat as if you're hot but you feel cold. Your hand slides through your hair and you breathe in slowly and out deeply. Suddenly your room door opens.

"Hey there kiddo.. you alright there?" Max enters your room and knew that you are hyperventilating due to your watch on your wrist still checking for your heart rate.

"Yeah yeah.. no, I'm fine.. I'm... I'm good-"

"Hey hey- you sure about that? It's already around the start of morning, why don't you come eat breakfast with me, Norm and Lara?

"I- sure, yeah that sounds nice" you smile faintly, feeling a little calmer now that you've steadied your heart rate. You've come to realised it was normal for you to have these dreams, somehow you've always tried to decipher what could be the cause of it, you're unsure why, all you know is that you want to know, there's something about it- like it magnetises you.

"Max?" you call out to him, as he turns around with a questionable face

"Do you think- maybe I can- come with you guys to the outpost later? I just got some stuff left there-"

"Sure, kiddo. Me and your Aunt Lara will fix some stuff there too-" He smiles to you as he leaves shutting your door

You began to stand up and went to your bathroom checking on the mirror, brushing your hair and doing your normal skincare, as you do so, you look at yourself, staring blankly at the mirror. You sighed deeply both in and out, closing your eyes and re-imagining the dream in your head- but nothing comes up. You sigh in defeat trying so hard to remember- but you tell yourself that you'd worry about it in another time, you smile at the mirror and went on out

As your camera starts rolling you place it gently on the counter angling it right to your face creating a somewhat good angle showing your face, and as you're done prepping you go face-to-face with the camer.

"Hello-? Is this working-" *taps camera lens* "oh- oops- there it is" you giggle to yourself for your clumsiness, you bring the camera up to your face to video yourself then

"Hellooo wooorld! I am back! Well technically I'm in another planet and other stuff like that- but here i am! Back again, to show you- this! Voilà!"

You enter a room wherein both Norm and Max were checking files in large screens tapping away like they usually do to get things running in the lab incase they were needed by Jake and to produce other experiments for more of their researches. Thanks to Jake, most of the humans were allowed to stay and go about their ways unless they were needed by Jake, most of these being researchers and old scientist friends. As you were walking by you panned your camera to a tank, with a familiar avatar that was placed inside with water flowing inside it, keeping it normal, that being Grace's Avatar, it was no secret you've always longed for something like it, being able to walk freely without the need of a darn mask, and the ability to be outside without being prey to most animals around pandora, it was a struggle for you to be in a human body, never being able to go out as you want to, but you go out on rare occasions, because both of them obviously knows how it gets boring and makes you wanna go insane without having to go outside for long periods.

Norm looks up from his desk as he scribbling down notes, he pushes down his glasses as he was seeing you walk around the room eith a camera in hand recording the whole room

he chuckles and sighs contently

"No- 'Goodmorning, Norm!' today then?" He chuckles as you roll your eyes scoffing a little

"Goodmorningg, Normm!" you say in a teasing tone.

"And Max-!" Max pops out from behind the other monitor with one hand raised, you laugh a little as Norm nudges you at your side when you pass by, camera still recording

"And goodmorning to you Grace-" you pan the camera lens to yourself while behind you is Grace's Avatar in the tank floating, as you wave to the camera

"And so here we are- pamparampaam! The Lab! We got some old researches, scribbled notes that either Norm or Max have wrote and I have zero idea of what's in it-

(Max:) "that's my lunch order from the cafeteria Y/N-"

"Yeah- okay. Well- that does not look like lunch to me-" you deadpan as Norm chuckles but Max gives him a stern look

"Hey- Boys do you mind if you find the files for- Oh! Y/N- Didn't know you'd come here! Is this your first time in the lab-?" Lara says while fixing her goggles

Lara was sort of like your Aunt in a way that you guys aren't related as much, but most of the time she was like a parental figure to you- She grew fond of you ever since you had been born, she was a good friend to your mother and Grace, and was left devasted to the events of what led to their endings, and so with that, Lara had made a promise to both you and herself that she'd be able to protect you from whatever happens, no matter what.

"Hey! Aunt Lara- come 'ere for a sec-" *you tug Lara's lab coat as she gets surprised as you bring her near you to bring the camera to her face showing her a little fluffy and curly brown hair, her goggles hanging off her neck and her half-done makeup that's looked slightly rushed but it looked good for the most part- her olive green eyes look at the camera and she shrieks a little covering her face with one hand*

"Say hi to the cameraa!" *you squeal- as you giggle little form her hiding her face with her one hand*

(Lara:) "oh-! Hi~ sorry- honey- my makeups a little off right now-" *you blow raspberries and scoff a little*

"Oh come on- you look gorgeous right now! Even if you got off the wrong side of bed- i bet one of the other guys eye you everyday- especially Norm-." you whisper and snicker a little together with Lara as she scrunches her nose and giggles with you

(Norm:) "I heard that-!" he answers, as you both giggle even more

As you use both your hands to hold the camera properly, your watch beeps, you look at it with a small smile-

"Welp- gotta go guys- I will be filming again later- but this gal- gotta take her meds-! Mwuah-! Peace out-!"

as you place your camera down, you sigh a little, a small smile creeping up as you look back to Lara who was already looking at you with a warm smile

(Lara:) "How's it been sweetie?"

"Nothing much, just another day- stuck in a huge facility full of scientists and labs, and paperwork and all that jazz, ventilated with the only possible air for me because one step out there and I'm-" *you cut your sentence blowing raspberries, imitating that if you take one step put to pandora without the oxygen mask, then you'd die, pretty much*

(Lara:) "I know you're tryna' convince me to let you go out- but you know the rules-" *you roll your eyes at her statement*

"Spider gets to go out! Why can't I-?"

(Lara:) "Then ask him to stay with you when you go out."

"But you know how he gets everytime I see him- He always has that smug-ass shit-eating smile that always gets on my nerves-! And you obviously know what he says to me all the time"

(Lara:) "Language!" *you raise both your hands up in defense then slowly put them in an upright position, as you place your head in between ypur palms, sighing*

(Lara:) *She sighs feeling a little defenseless from what you said*

"... your turning 18 tomorrow right?-"

*you nod, eyes snapping to her still in the same position wondering what she'll say next-*

"Alright...- now I'm not saying I'm letting you go by yourself-" *eyes lighting up in excitement, your head snaps up like a dog getting alerted by an intruder, a smile slowly creeping up your face as she says this*

"Ah-! Wait- you can go- but I'm going to call spider for this occasion specifically- he's got some friends out there that would also be with you too- so you don't wander off to some other place, okay? Can I trust you?" *You nod to her words quickly in joy, like a happy child who was allowed to go play outside*

"Yes! Yes-! Don't worry- I'll be with them the whole entire time, just please let me go out this once! I'LL GIVE YOU MY BLOOD-" *you plead and shove your hand infornt of her face as if you would give her your blood*

"Alright! Alright- jeez you're like your mother- you can go, I'm calling spider in today so that both of you are prepared tomorrow morning-" *you squeal in excitement- jumping a little until you grab Lara in a big hug, she chuckles as she pats you in the head*

*you finally calmed down and patted yourself in a fancy way, you stood infront of her and breathed jn and out deeply*

"Thank you, Aunt Lara, I will be going to my room and wait until that day comes." *you bowed as she laughs at your antics, amused by your response, leaving the lab as you make your way to the door, and as the door closes, you squeal and scream in happiness, she snorts a little from the scene*

Norm scoots his spinning chair facing opposite to Lara, as she gets nudged at the shoulder by him gaining her attention, he smiles softly and cocks his head to the side

"Somehow she reminds me of her.." she says under her breathe, Norm huffs agreeing with her*

*you walk around skipping in joy as you went around a part of lab where you usually take your medicine, as you take out a red pill, and a cup of water as you drink and swallow the pill and as you were drinking the water, a monstrous like figure pops up infront of you, making your eyes go wide as rhe monstrous figure roars in a somewhat human like voice that you felt like you could guess it was either and only one other person, but your anxiety instincts got the best of you so you spit out the water to their face and immediately grabbed one of the labs tray pans that you see right beside you immediately scream*

"AHHHHH GET AWAY FROM ME- AHHH-" *You scream as the person then starts running away from you but you keep hitting them with he pan as they start screaming as well pleading for you to stop*

"Y/N- AHH- WAIT- STOP STOP STOP- WAIT- ITS ME- SPIDER! WAHHH-"

"SPIDER? WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY BROTHER- STOP POSSESSING NY BROTHER WHATEVER DEMON YOU ARE-"

*you continue to scream as two pairs of arms hold both of your hands up making you drop the pan, as you stop screaming, spider removes the mask and you sigh in relief*

"WHAT THE F- DUDE WHY WOULD Y-"

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY!-" *A crowd emerges from behind spider and surprise you*

As soon as you realize who these people were your shock turned into a surprised smile

Loak, Kiri, and Tuk come up behind spider and surprised you

"Wh- what're you guys-"

*Kiri immediately passed you a carefully wrapped object with banana leaves and hands you it, your confused but relieved at the same time*

"But it's not even my-"

"It's your gift-! We all have some gifts for you but I wanna give you mine before you see whatever Loak has for you-"

"What??!!" *loak shouts and you all laugh*

"Excuse you, but I for one have a very special and well crafted gift for her- y'know- cause we're close like 'that'" *Loak nudges you and wiggles his eyebrows*

*you rolled your eyes and scoff*

"If choking is called 'being close' would you consider it?"

"Which way?" *loak interjects with a cocky smile and wiggly eyebrows*

"GROSS-" *You yell out as loak chuckles*

"Nice one, dude" *Spider praises Loak as they both high five. Your eyes widen and you scoff, while kiri rolls her eyes, tuk left to wonder what they meant*

"So y/n... i was thinking-" "THERES GOING TO BE A HUGE HUGE CELEBRATION TODAY AND WE WANT YOU TO COME WITH US!!" *kiri excitedly finishes as loaks jaw was left hanging a little*

"Today-?.." *you say slowly as kiri speaks again "YEAH! there's gonna be food, dancing-" "and a hell of a lot of drinking" *loak says with his elbow placed on top of your head*

*as everyone talks about the celebration, you on the other hand is worried about what you were gonna say*

"Guys- i really really- and i seriously wanna stress this- i cant go-"

"Aww what-" *spider says*

"But what about us-?" *loak says after*

"Y/N." *kiri holds your hand between her large ones and has her cute pleading eyes on, the ones you've never said no to*

"Kiri- please, you know i cant do it- not today though-"

*Kiri's eyes light up* "What do you mean, Y/N?" *you sigh as you gave a bige wide smile* "LARA GAVE ME THE GO!" *Everyone gasps as they also cheer* "Y/N!? Your serious about this!?" *spider says with pure astonishment*

"Well- I had to convince Lara a teeny tiny bit AND IT WORKED IN THE END! I got permission to go!"

*everyone's cheers together*

"So if your allowed tomorrow why not today-?" *Loak asks*

"It's not my birthday yet so we'll have to wait-" *you say in return*

"Okay but since your birthday is tomorrow and it is technically midnight-" *kiri says his name warning him*

"It's technically okay to go out right now-" *Loak gets gutted by Kiris elbow*

"What?? I am right- am I not??" *loak says with furrowed eyebrows*

"Loak! If she can't go it's okay! There's always tomorrow anyway!"

"Cmon kiri it's just one night, plus I have an idea-" "please don't tell me your sneaking out-"

"Pfft! What!? No-......" *silence overtook the air as they were waiting for him to speak again*

"Okay maybe that's what i was thinking-" *kiri and spider groan*

"I appreciate the lovely and probably not so well-thought idea-" *Loak cocks his head to both Kiri and Spider*

"But- I can't do this- I mean, not until I turn 18 which is tomorrow and-"

"Tanhi- cmon- we'll be sure to be with you at all times, every second, minute, hour-! Trust me, tanhi, we don't want you to miss this one too!"

*loak places his hand on top of yours on the table as he gives you pleading eyes as well, you contemplate a little as you look from his hand back to his eyes*

"Loak- what if we get in trouble-" *spider says worriedly*

"Sometimes your kind of a buzz kill, spider" *you gave him a stern look as he says this and he rolls his eyes*

"Look- we'll get you back here as soon as possible, I promise"

"I hate to say this but Loaks right- we'll get you back real soon-" *kiri says back*

*you look between both of them- wondering what to do, then letting your eyes fall to spider with his arms crossed who's looking back to you*

"Don't look at me- I've been living my life by my own choices- it's time you make yours Y/N-" *He says with a soft smile, loak on the other hand squeezes your hand softly and he tilts his head giving you a reassuring look*

you sigh looking at all of them, as tuk runs to you and hugs you at your waist, despite your height, you and tuk seemed to be the same height

"Please please please Y/N!"

*she says with cute puppy dog eyes*

"Well...." *your cut your sentence short*

"Alright- I guess- but you promise to keep quiet doing it-?.." *they all nod with smiles on their faces*

"Okay.. let's do this-" *you say firmly with a smile*

‐-------------------------------

"Y/N- do you really have to take this long-" *Loak says with a groan, as he knocks on your door*

"Do you want me to die because I missed my meds while outside when im not supposed to?" *You say as loak turns and grumbles to himself, leaning against the side of the door with a small pout*

"That's what I thought- alrighty! All done-" *you unlock your door as everyone moves to see you, your wearing a small pale brownish off-shoulder top showing off your stomach a little together with shorts that are brown making you look more curvier and thicker with the clothes on, and your last piece being your sneakers that are white and little half-round sling-bag, holding all your meds and extras incase you need it, and of course your watch, checking your hearbeat and your alarm for those meds of yours, as you open the door holding on the knob, you gauge on their reactions with a small shy smile, as they stare at you with awe for sometime, loak and spider jaws dropped wide open, kiris and tuks with a big smile on hers*

"So... what do you guys think?" *you say with a shy smile on your face*

"AHH! YOU LOOK SO CUTE!" *Kiri squeals out*

"Damn-" *loak scoffs in surprise*

"Wow -" *spider says*

"Out of my way boys!" *tuk pushes loak and spider out of her way*

"We got this-" *as tuk grabs your arm and yanks you out of your room placing you in your chair as kiri stretches her arms and cracks her knuckles, carefully braiding your hair with beads and flowers for tonight*

*as minutes passed, tuk and kiri finally complete your hair, two braids hanging, from the front left and right sides of your forehead with two beads from each side, pink and blue beads in the left and green and purple at right , flowy hair hanging from the sides too, and from the back, two braids connecting to the middle to make one decorated with flowers from Kiri, all vibrant with beauty, your long flowy hair splayed behind you from the bottom of the braids behind*

"Okay all done!" *tuk announces while patting her hands together*

"You face to your mirror turning around checking yourself out, with jaw down and eyes somewhat close to crying*

"This is so beautiful.. I can't thank you guys enough-!" *you say in joy as you hug them*

*You made your way to the exit hatch where no one would be able to see you*

"You ready to explore the unknown?" *spider says side by side with you*

"Nope," *you pause looking from him to the door* "let's do it" *you say heading out with everyone as you step out to the cool summer ish breeze*

--------------------------------

"Loak..." "I know where I'm going jeez-" "its been 30 minutes we could've been there before 20-" "just let me do my thing!" "Alright!"

*as both kiri and spider argue with loak*

*as you walk around with awe, turning around in every step of the way to look back at the scenery, it's dark out yet the plants and nature around you seem to live on it's own, a bright aura shining from each step you take, as soon as you step backwards you stumble one a root and find yourself yelping from falling backwards until someone catches you and you look up to see who it is*

"Woah- slow down princess, wouldn't want getting a scratch on ya-" *loak says with a teasing grin getting you up, you roll your eyes*

"I can walk just fine y'kno- woah!" *as soon as your sentence cuts off, loak carries you placing your legs letting you sit on his broad shoulders placing your calves on his chest, you hold on to his head for support a little surprised by his actions, loak laughs at your antics*

"Not funny." *you grumbled as you nag him to put you down*

"You're very slow y'know- even spiders much faster than you-" *you smack the side of his head and he hisses*

"Watch it-"

*suddenly the crack of a stick disturbs the quietness of the forest around all of you, loak and kiri look at each their in slight confusion, and loak sets you down slowly to avoid any threat that may come to him while holding you with him.*

*loak follows the hush whispers that were somewhere ahead of them as kiri tries to urge loak to stay behind, he ignores her protests and sneakily hides behind a large bush when he sees something that could get them all screwed. Recoms. RDA Recoms. Holding guns and sashes of bullets wrapped around them in military uniform. You've been told stories of the the war that happened 6 or so years ago, when your uncle Norm had told told that spider won't be at the lab because he was with jake sully and their family, you were disheartened to hear about what had happened but you were thankful spider had returned home safely, you nearly crushed him when you ran up to him and hugged him so tightly it felt like you almost choked him, but he was alright. So was Loak, Kiri, Tuk, and Neteyam, they had visited the lab back from the war to thank Norm and Max for their help, but neteyam wasn't there, ofcourse he had fought in the war fearlessly, and brought great honor to his family and people as they returned home safely, so he had to make sure everyone else was safe to meaning he had thought of his people first before humans, they had sought refuge to the Metkayina Clan, what had felt like the longest battle in years, only now would it find its way to start again. Somehow it felt like you knew everything that happened, like you were there somehow, it felt crystal clear to you of when it happened as if you had been there, but your uncle had told you it might be you just imagining things. Which leads you up to this moment, the Recoms, the RDA, Quaritch.*

"Look at that... that's your dad's actual suit..-" *loak says to spider as they sneak to the bushes too*

"What the..." *spider scrunches his eyebrows*

"Loak you're gonna be in trouble.."

"Shh-" "for life-" "Shut up-" *their voices are quite unbearably loud worrying you slightly, as you look over the bushes, you see tall avatars searching around taking to one another, like a meeting.. whatever it was- your stomach makes you feel things because of your anxiety, worriedly thinking why the hell they're back. You whisper to loak*

"Loak we need to get out of here-"

"I got this- I've spotted before-"

*he presses his throat com button to reach to jake*

"Dad.." "where have you been, loak, what have I told you earlier-"

"I've spotted some recoms... avatars.. they look like avatars..."

"What-.. where are you right now..?"

"Uhm.. we're- we're at the old shack-"

"The old shack-? Shit- who- who are you with right now..."

"I'm with-" *He looks around all of you, and gulps slightly*

"Im with kiri-, spider... Y/n.. and... and tuk.."

"Tuk is with you!?.."

"Yes..-"

"Alright... Alright- stay where you are and don't go anywhere else- we're coming- alright stay put, got it?"

*silence comes from loak as he doenst know what else to do*

"Loak I need an answer."

"Yes sir.."

"Loak.. what's going on-" *you ask him worriedly*

"We're getting out of here- let's move-"

"What- loak- but dad said-"

"We need to head somewhere safer before they find us first-"

"I swear, if they find us your in so much trouble-" *kiri stresses to loak as they travel around the various bushes and leaves infront of them*

"Guys we have to hurry what if they find- AHH-!" *tuk screams as shes taken hostage by a recom, she squirms as rhe man holds her down from her kuru, making her cry and plead. As all recoms spread out and start surrounding us, spider unsheathes his bow, hissing and aiming his bow at them, loak tells spider to lower his bow, spider reluctantly puts his bow down, as kiri then gets tugged by a recom earning a yelp from her, tuk wails and cries, pleading for them to stop*

"Mawey... tuk mawey-.." *kiri repeats to tuk as she then gets pulled at her head by the recom, she hisses at them*

*You suddenly get trapped in the arms of a recom making you scream, you squirm your way trying to release yourself from them but your too weak to fight them off, everyone starts panicking in some way, spider tries to bite the recom but gets pulled at the hair instead, loak tries to convince the recoms he only spoke navi*

*another unfamiliar recom comes into view earning confused looks from all of you, he then looks between you and spider, a little surprised, you send him a glare as you huff in anger slightly trying to tug yourself away from them, but the recom pulls you back and shouts at you to stay still. He roams around everyone and spots loak*

"Show me your hands.." *he says in a deep and rustic voice*

*loak gets shoved by the recom behind him trying to get an answer out of him, he then pulls both of his hands out drawing the middle finger to the man infront of him, a little 'fuck you' message to him. You smile and snicker a little, at loaks antics but your hair gets tugged by the recom behind you asking you if it's funny, you then hiss and glare behind them*

"Hmm, so you are his..." *He smiles as he then looks up and nods at rhe recom to let him go, then taking looks kuru and tugging the braid along it, making him scream in pain, you wince as you see him get tugged at.*

"Where is he?" *He orders loak, loak hisses at him, but he continues to pull at his hair trying to get an answer out of him*

*Loak speaks in navi*

"Sorry.. but i don't speak your language.. to buttheads" *He chuckles at this sort but his braid gets pulled back again*

"Where is your father- now." *Quaritch speaks more sternly in navi, pulling the back of loaks kuru making him hiss*

"Leave him alone asshole-!" *you shouted to Quaritch as Loaks eyes went wide at your statement, Quaritch let's go of loak and hands him to another recom as he makes his way over to you, he snarls at you and pulls you by the hair, your breathe knocked out off your lungs as he forces you on your knees, taking a dagger out and holds it by your neck*

"LET HER GO- DONT HURT HER PLEASE-" *Spider yells at him*

"DONT FUCKING TOUCH HER ASSHOLE-" *Loak tries to run to you but he gets held back by the recom*

"And how are you- a simple human girl, can breathe in this fucking planet?.." *your heart drops, how did he know? he snarls at you and you squirm spewing curses at him telling him to let you go*

"Ahh.. I see- dad's a navi and your mom a human?-" *He says chuckling to himself as your anger is fueled even more*

"You don't know anything about me!" *you yell at him, making him hiss at you.*

"Colonel- we got him tracked." *A recom announces as he pulls a tablet up for him, he looks at the statistics and smiles greedily, everyone worries* "Everyone, keep your eyes on lookout, we've got company." *Your heart drops at that moment, realising what they meant*

"Shit-" *you curse under you're breathe, as they move you to another part of the forest you try and pry yourself away from the recoms but they keep you in place and snarl at you*

*You try to calm yourself feeling a little lightheaded of what's about to happen, your all but calm though, you feel tears threatening to spill, suddenly a recom shouts of a sighting of a navi, you and everyone else were pulled down to duck, as the recpms start aiming their guns at them, you shake as the sound of a guns terrify you, tuk being beside you, you hold her hand as she cries, she looks at you, fear driven in her irises, you calm her as the gunshots never stopped until you heard a yip. Loak then elbows the recom taking a smoke bomb distracting all of them, Loak urges all of you to run and follow him, suddenly all the recoms start to chase you, your hands still locked together by some kind of cuffs, you run together with loak, kiri, tuk, and spider. As you almost get close to clearing you stumble upon a vine catching you off and falling down, one of the recoms are close by just feet away from you as they found you vulnerable, they almost get to you until you saw it, two pairs of navi eyes looking directly at you and the recom infront of him, the recom doesn't notice until he gets shot by an arrow through their chest. You fight back to scream opting to cover your mouth instead whimpering in fear, the navi runs up to you and grabs you by the arm, undoing your cuffs saying in English "GO!". Your mind races with thoughts wondering why the navi had saved you, he could've mistakened you for a scientist ans would've killed you right then and there, but for some reason, it had felt like for a split second something about him felt familiar- but as you were too caught up in imagining, he held you by your waist and carries you, making you yelp in the sudden change as you hold on to his neck for support. He ran fast, dodging most bullets as you held onto him for dear life. But as you were close to the clearing, the navi man's ankle had caught a vine and sprained his ankle, making you both tumble over, the injury was bad and who knows how many seconds had gone by till they found you*

"Oh my god!? Shit- your ankle-"

*you try to think of a solution and immediately ripped both your pants in a half making it into shorts, the navi man stares at you confused and panting, you bring the fabric tp his ankle and wrap it securely, he hisses at the pain* "It's going to be fine, we gotta get out of here-" *suddenly a beeping sound was heard around both of you and you realised it was a bomb*

"SHIT! LOOKOUT-" *the navi man shouts as he rolls you both over to a farther place making you both roll over a steep part of the forest, he holds you close to him, engulfing you in his arms as to not get you hurt or scratched. Thankfully by the time you both reached the end, you both were at the clearing, as you both meet Jake, Neytiri, loak, kiri, and tuk.

*Neytiri gasps at the both you, seeing you and neteyam falling Iver the slope.* "Are you kids alright?!" *jake asks worriedly running up to you both as everyone huddles near you both* "Yes, sir- we're alright-"

*Neteyam says until he unwraps his arms around you seeing you unconscious, Neteyam curses under his breathe as everyone gasps in shock*

"Shit."

#neteyam sully #neteyam x y/n #neteyam x reader #neteyam x human reader #adult neteyam #atwow smut #avatar fanfic series #avatar x reader

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canichangemyblogname · 1 month

Text

And what’s wild about the whole, “No 😡. Ao3 is perfect. It doesn’t need to update it’s TOS or make blocking more robust” is 1.) it’s specifically in response to people asking to be able to *also* legitimately report—through the site—content that includes CSE material of non-real children, which would require Ao3 to update their TOS to be in compliance with relevant laws in the US, laws that also criminalize such depictions of non-real children, and 2.) the people arguing this are more than aware of the consequences of companies being over-zealous.

Right now, you can report people for harassment, non-fan work content, commercial activity, copyright, plagiarism, spam, doxxing, impersonation, viruses or misnamed content, a lack of appropriate ratings and warnings, and inaccurate metadata. You can also report for illegal activity, which the fics arguably could fall under (depending on your state), but Ao3’s TOS only gives the example of links to pictures of real children. And that, again, does not got far enough in most states, opening Ao3 up to legal challenges and scrutiny (something which it does every thing in its power to avoid, that’s why it will delete relevant fics in the event of a legal challenge, they literally tell you this in their TOS). If they can update their TOS to account for European data privacy laws, they can update their TOS to account for changes in the laws around CSAM.

The suggestion was for them to update their TOS to account for laws in relevant jurisdictions (in the US), making it clear that users can report sexual depictions of non-real children. And the suggestion was also to get rid of the anonymous feature as *one* way (but certainly not the only way) they can bolster the blocking feature, as the anonymous feature is what’s most frequently used in CSAM posting on the site.

The archive already has in place a policy where unverified reports and complaints are rejected. And I don’t see why that wouldn’t remain in place. “But what if it’s abused?” << It already is and can be. People make unverified complaints all the time. The archive’s policy is to reject them. Again, there’s no reason why that would change. No one’s arguing for that to change.

And, no one’s arguing for the archive to be shut-down whole-sale. That would *actually* be reactionary. No one’s arguing for Ao3 to purge fics or adult content (which CSAM is not btw). And no one’s arguing for Ao3 to create morality policies in its “Offensive Content Policy” section. And no one’s arguing for an AI recognition system that scrapes fan works for “evidence” of wrongdoing.

As a gay man whose only explicit fiction that he’s ever written was purged from a server—*poof gone*—for featuring an adult man calling another adult man “baby boy” during sex, I am very well aware of what happens when a company gets overzealous (and uses AI to find potential content violations). And I still don’t think the suggestions are unreasonable.

The burden of protecting and enforcing a block *should* be on the Archive and the Archive’s TOS *should* reflect changes in the law around CSAM in the US. The site is still in BETA, after all. The site has lots of bugs and is not perfect. Don’t start acting like it’s divinely incapable of changes, even small ones.

#csam mention #csa mention #and I know that all the people who are very ver convinced of the absolute morality of ao3– because their blorbos just means so much #will not change their minds #but I have reached out and asked the archive #about their plans to update their TOS to reflect changes in laws in the US

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ladysomething · 4 months

Note

atp I don't even know why I keep asking stuff as an anon. my identity has been revealed but fuck it.

one more time, let's do 5+1

1. Charles thinking he's the world's most clever person ever has me on the fucking floor. you go get them babe. yes, surely keeping the other idiot satisfied is only because you want to escape. of course sweetie. but question: are omegas more prone to their alpha, or that only goes so far and then they actually can control the feelings said alpha causes on them?

2. Max is an idiot, isn’t he? like, I actually want to open his brain to see how the fuck it works because I am amazed at its capacity (or lack of it/j)

3. I have a thing for the starved man comparision, and it's lovely to see such an accurate scenario for it. because Max actually short-circuited. he's just a man and Charles broke his brain in what? like, less than 5 minutes?

4. Carlos is a little rat, but I'm actually thankful that's he's not like. gross. (please, I'm begging you on my knees. don't make him or other drivers gross) I have this thing where I can kinda stand when oc are gross and little shits, but, even if some would consider said person a little shit (completely reasonable, people are allowed to not like drivers) I don't like it when on fics, they're outright assholes and disgusting craps, cause I don't know with certainity if they are like that irl. idiots and that I can do but over that is too much to bear for me. that's the point where I am reminded that they're real and that stuff. of course, is totally on you, and I don't expect anything, but picture me making puppy eyes at you on this one. and I was wondering, what is he? a beta or an alpha? it probably was said somewhere but I don't remember. because according to my reasoning, he's a beta because he was not in the auction. or was he?

5.I'm so fucking glad I chose wygig as this year's questionable fic. I love it and I have now developed a deep emotional dependence towards it. but haven't we all? (this is to say I love it)

+1. glad you're enjoying (I'm also trip anon btw) had I been in Italy, I would've loved to go to the bar to watch the race. even though I've never gone to watch a race at a bar in Rome, in Italy, depending on where you go, it can be really exciting and ehmmm... definetely an experience, may I call it that way. but sadly, first of all there's a four hour drive from Toscana to Rome and I would get my ass even flatter, and second I left months ago. maybe next time

and as you may have noticed, I gave up with trying to tell you how many points there will be in my ask. have a nice day Mads, enjoy your vacay hun!

look I'll honest. you say your identity has been revealed but you could be any of a handful of anons that have revealed their identity to me. so my terrible memory means that your secret is still safe!

wellllllll ... hm. omegas are definitely more SUSCEPTIBLE to their alphas e.g. with the alpha voice. but anything Charles feels is his real feelings.

haha Max IS an idiot, but so is Charles. they're two idiot peas in an idiot pea pod.

yeah no for real, Max's brain was completely broken. it was like Christmas morning for him haha

Carlos is a beta - basically everybody is a beta. there's only one person whose designation hasn't been revealed yet, but they're not a driver, so. you can pretty much just assume that everybody is a beta. as for making drivers assholes - I don't really do that in general, because usually it's too one dimensional for what I'm writing. it's fun in some scenarios (particularly shorter fics) but even the drivers who are currently 'villains' aren't outright bad people.

hahaha and at the rate it's going, it's length will mean it probably lasts half the year too haha

+1. yeah, I'm really excited!!!! I was kind of like ... if I can't go to Iola, then this is simply an experience I MUST have. cheering for ferrari while they're driving in Italy while I'M in Italy??? ahhhh.

thank you so much, you have a great day too!

#anon ask #where you go i go #wygig: max #wygig: charles

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lola-andheruniverse · 1 year

Note

hi hi, have a rec possibly for WIP saturday or our turn sunday! i re-read coffee & pies after you rec'd it last week and realized that one part of it (the daryl/merle subplot) kind of reminds me of rough & tumble by iliveatlast on ao3/9 lives. it's an au where daryl meets carol when she's working the night shift at an urgent care after merle breaks his arm, and from there we see them slowly building a relationship (btw the two of them and also sophia!!) and grappling with the legacies/cycles of abuse. i feel like i've read a ton of non-zombie aus where carol is still with ed and daryl saves her from the abusive relationship, but i've never actually seen it handled the opposite way before - even in stories like coffee & pies, merle is very much the b or c plot, and i love seeing carol be the one who has clawed her way out already and is pulling daryl with her - she's not a damsel in distress, canon has made that clear. it's updated decently regularly and currently at almost 100k so even though it's not complete i think it's def worth a read!! i also have to say, i'm a sucker for sophia - more time for our girl, gone too soon!! - and the relationship btw her and daryl in this fic is so beautifully drawn and delicate. and her and carol - breaks my heart, so loving and caring and makes the loss of her in the show hurt 10x as much. the author has a couple other aus that are ZA aus where sophia lives and i love that version of her sophia too - slingshot wielding badass in training! so just some recs for you if you want/need them. thanks for doing these lists, i'm really enjoying being reintroduced to fics i haven't read in a while and digging into some fics that are brand new to me!!!

Hi, giveusthesun! Thank you so much for taking time to rec a caryl fic to us all. First, let me say that I agree with your reflection about how fic writers can get a same plot/prompt and, working with the same characters, create very different, but equally excellent, stories. I'm currently reading Rough and Tumble too and I'm very happy to see it recommended by you. Writen by @iliveatlast, you can find it on both 9Lives and AO3. Summary: "How are people gonna sign your cast?" the girl asks. "If it's all black?" "Um. Dunno. S’okay,” Daryl says awkwardly when it becomes clear she’s waiting for some kind of response. “Ain’t like - don’t really think nobody’ll wanna sign it anyway. So." Instead of getting the kid to let up, this statement seems to somehow capture her interest. She uncurls in the chair a little, looking at him with a wide-open face. “Why not?" But he’s saved from having to answer that by Carol the desk lady, who breaks into a little half-run when she sees Daryl waiting. “Sorry, sorry - just had to step away for a moment, sorry about that, Daryl.” “S’fine,” Daryl mumbles. She doesn’t have to apologize to him for taking a piss or whatever, good Lord.

Rating: T / Teen and Up Audiences Word count: 92107 (18 chapters of ?) Published: December 02, 2022 - WIP Rough and Tumble is a story reflects on how complex abuse is by shining light on Daryl and Merle's very difficult and violent relationship with great detail. If Daryl's your favorite TWD character, you'll love how iliveatlast writes him - it's just really well done. Despite dealing with heavy themes, this is fic is also very endearing and sweet (Daryl and Sophia's bonding make me smile every single chapter). Dear fellow caryler, go and give this fic a chance if you have the time. As always, leave the author some kind of feedback to let them know that you appreciate their work and creativity. Love and kindness makes all the difference in having a positive fandom experience! Caryling on to our next rec!

#caryl #caryl positivity #caryl fic rec #caryl on #caryl fanfiction #caryl fandom #your turn sunday #my fic recs #our fic recs

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thetisming · 4 months

Note

since you asked me to answer all of thhe questions, you gotta answer all of the questions too!

💖 Which of your fics is your pride and joy?

probably zombie saga, although i also love 'i will vandalize your grave in your name', the 7+1 fic and some others that i think im forgetting. OH and 'we were staying in paris'

🎥 Pick a fic and I'll tell you the song I imagine playing during its movie trailer.

well this requires imput from other people. so.

but i'll choose zombie saga!! and the trailer song is Mamma Mia by ABBA. naturally

📝 How many words do you have posted?

approximately 162609

🤩 What's the most meaningful comment you've ever received?

that fucking ESSAY that Plankton wrote about iwvygiyn

🔮What's your favorite plot twist you've ever written?

ohh, this is an interesting one actually. definitely something in zombie saga but im not sure what!

👄 Your OTP are having their first kiss. What song do you imagine is playing?

THIS IS SO FUNNY AS A MUSICAL FAN. uh I Kissed A Girl. because that is what happens yeag

🎭What genre of writing comes easiest to you?

ANGST. it's so much easier than happy stuff lol it's like poetry for me

🙊Your coworkers or classmates stumble across one of your fics, but don't know you're the author. Do you fess up? Or keep quiet?

yeah i would tell them

🙌What's a line or paragraph of yours that you're proud of?

"Go to sleep, Lance, and now that she’s gone you sleep with your mistakes" from my fic 'don't speak (i know just what you're saying)', but also many different things from (especially the second chapter of) iwvygiyn

🦉Is there another author that helped inspire you to write?

@fen-the-magnificat !!!!!

👶Fankids: How you do you feel about them? Would your OTP have kids?

i dont have any fankids unless you count the Dubois brothers, but i think they're neat! i dont know if Frankie and May would have kids but they would be AMAZING parents, and i dont think Juliet and Romeo would have any. William and Anne already have kids, and Lance has kids too which make them Angelique's kids

🐗How do you handle trolls?

i havent had any trolls

🟥How long do you spend in edits?

like 5 minutes to skim over it when ive put it in ao3 idk

🏡What is your perfect writing envrionment?

uh. i dont fucking know

💪What motivates you to write?

someone needs to write about my blorbos!!!

🚿Where do your best ideas seem to strike?

well zombie saga happened because i sent some dumb asks to Felix, anything about the wedding happening just comes randomly, and iwvygiyn came from a page of the sandman!

🌠What are your top three most commonly used tags on AO3?

uhh okay i'll do top 3 for each ig??

ratings: general (39), teen & up (38), not rated (1)

warnings: no warnings (52), chose not to use warnings (14), major character death (12)

categories: other (61), multi (49), F/M (46)

fandoms: & Juliet (74), citc (27), community (16) (last two are crossovers with &j btw)

characters: Francois (59), May (54), Juliet (51)

relationships: Francois/May (61), Juliet/Romeo (41), Juliet & May (34)

additional: title from an ABBA song (19), zombie apocalypse (18), not beta read (9)

overall top 3 are & Juliet, maycois/other (lumping those together lol) and Francois

💻What do you write your stories on? Laptop, phone, paper, etc.

laptop and phone!

🤔What are some words or phrases you find yourself overusing?

'Francois snuggled (etc etc)', probably, among other things lol

📕How do you feel about people printing your fics?

yeah fuck it just dont claim it as your own tbh

🤷‍♀️What's a fic you didn't expect to be popular, but really took off?

honestly. none. my readers are 3 friends and my brother and they all love everything basically

🍎What's something you learned while researching for a fic?

sinhalese isnt very gendered at all! it was refreshing cause normally i use italian and french which are very gendered

🥘What wip are you most excited about?

ohh... i think the new saga chapters lol

🦗Do you write in sequence or jump around?

not sure what this means sorry

👀 Would you ever accept requests or commissions?

yeah!! i might not get to them but i will try (if it's a commission i definitely will though!)

😱What's your greatest fear as a fanfic writer?

the actors reading my fics.

☕Coffee or tea while you write?

neither i am dehydrated

📈Which are your top three most popular fics by bookmarks?

'they forever hold their peace', 'Flower Crowns & Royalty' and 'Glee!' all with three bookmarks

🎬One of your fics gets turned into a TV series. Which one is it and what network is it on?

ZOMBIE SAGA FOR SURE. idk what network though

🛌 What's a trope you haven't written, but want to?

there was only one bed probably

🐸 If you incorporated your OTP into a Disney movie plot, which would it be?

i dont know, i dont watch enough disney

👩‍🎓 Do you have an 'official' creative writing background such as a degree or previous experience publishing?

nope

⏳If you could go back in time and tell your younger writer self something, what would it be?

already answered

💯 What rating do you write the most? Gen Audiences, Teen, Mature, or Explicit? How many fics at that rating do you have?

gen audiences with 39 fics!

😁What makes you happiest? New fic comments, kudos, bookmarks, user subscribers, story subscribers, or Tumblr asks?

COMMENTS !!!!!!!! AND TUMBLR ASKS and BOOKMARKS with nice comments!!!!!

🐎 Would you ever do a medieval or pirate au?

ohh, that could be fun actually

👩‍🏫Pick a character and I'll tell you their favorite season and why.

requires a character to be picked. i choose Frankie though and his favourite is autumn cause it's cold but not too cold

🎵Do you make playlists for your fics?

only sometimes!

🌷What's one of your fics that isn't as popular, but you hold dear?

my fromeo besties fics :)

❓Insert your own question here!

(not counted)

#& juliet #& juliet musical #&j #and juliet #and juliet musical #juliet musical #fic writer

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shera-dnd · 2 years

Text

Good news, my dad just came back from surgery and he's doing fine. Recovery is gonna be a slow process, but the surgery seems to have gone pretty well for him and things are healing fine.

Bad news, that means that for the next 60 days it's all on me to keep this family afloat, so please I am asking for all the help I can get for what is gonna be this family's roughest couple of months.

I'd usually use my cute fursona and make a big deal about all the cool shit I can write for you guys, but right now I wanna have a more straightforward conversation.

I'll get back to making this a fun little fundraiser later, because I really don't like making things too bleak.

This blog has been my job for the past 3 years. It has paid the bills, paid for my meds, paid for my therapy, and for the past 3 years I've been a net 0 for my family. Sure I didn't bring much money to the table, but I wasn't costing them anything either.

And that was fine. My family was more than happy with that arrangement and so was I. I cannot express how grateful I am for all of you who have helped this be possible. I'm literally making my country's minimum wage by writing fanfiction on the internet, and that's a real blessing.

The thing is. My dad will spend the next 60 days recovering. He is self employed and he and my mom work together making furniture. Which means that if he can't work, she can't work, and if neither of them can work, then I am the only source of income for this household

For the next 2 months I'm gonna have to sustain four people all on my own. That means rent, bills, meds, therapy, all that stuff. We do have some money saved up, but I'm hoping we get to keep that and only use it for groceries or some emergency at the worst.

I did some math and that should add up to around a thousand dollars total (god bless dollar to reais conversion rates). But making a thousand dollars right at the end of those 2 months isn't gonna help anyone. Bills need to be paid and those have due times, and it would be very difficult for me to even access that money if my internet got cancelled by the end of those months.

So we're doing 250 dollars every two weeks. Seems pretty doable, right? Well today is the final day for the first 250 dollar goal, which will be used to pay for power, water, and internet bills this week, as well as the pain meds my dad has to take now that he's recovering.

We got 156 dollars down, which is pretty good actually, but it's not enough quite yet. I know it's a lot to ask for, but I really could use as much help as I can get right now.

I'm not expecting someone to swoop in heroically and drop 100 dollars on me right now. Honestly I don't want anyone to invest so much money on me on their own.

What I need is for a handful of people to throw some spare change my way. There are nearly three thousand people following this blog, so even if less than 1% of you guys see this message and toss me like 3 dollars at the most, it's still gonna add up FAST.

And if you can't do that then reblog this, boost it, send it to friends, give this enough reach that eventually someone will see it and will choose to help my family, even if it's with little more than pocket change.

Because when I say "any donation can make a world of difference" I MEAN IT WITH FULL HONESTY

The Emergency in the title of the "Weasel Den Emergency Fund" is not a joke, even if the cute little weasel makes it seem less urgent.

Her name is Snori btw. Blame @midnightechoes for that name.

Anyways. I think that's all I have to say in this little honest heart to heart.

I think tomorrow I'll get back to hyping up all the fics I can write and share the cute pics of Snori being adorable

Thank you all for your attention, as well as any reblogs and donations.

Hope y'all have a nice weekend

#update #kofi #kofi donations #fundraiser #emergency

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kiruuuuu · 2 years

Note

I really hope you make more Recruitverse fics one day, because it's honestly a CRIME to leave it on "and that 'we', once again, doesn't Include Jojo." like KIRU PLEASE HOW COULD YOU DO THIS

WELL, @noivoom, you are absolutely correct that I cannot leave my five idiots there! Your ask(s) were actually a large reason why I wrote some more recruitverse a while ago and now I'm finally getting around to posting it 😊 I hope you enjoy it 💝

It's from Shay's POV and also part of my ongoing advent calendar - this is day 5 ❄ (Rating T, chaos as usual with some emotional hurt, ~7.3k words)

The message comes out of absolutely nowhere.

Well, kind of. They have been exchanging texts all day, so receiving another one is hardly out of the ordinary, but it’s the content that catches Shay unaware: btw my flatmates are both gone tonite wanna come over?

And oh boy, does he ever. There’s no need for a saucy wink or an aubergine emoji, the intention is a flashing neon sign Shay plans to heed. Admittedly, Jojo’s coaching sensitised him to the topic and the simple rhyme of ‘home alone, she wants to bone’ stuck in his head so well he found himself scribbling it down in his notes absent-mindedly, earning him a stern talking-to by Thatcher of all people (and that’s a conversation he never wants to have again, ta very much), but all this doesn’t matter because it’s finally going to happen. They’re gonna do it. He’s going to get with a girl he really likes.

“I can’t believe it”, Valenti speaks up from the other corner of the locker room. Shay’s mind is so filled with everything Brittany-related that he instantly assumes everyone must be sharing his excitement and blurts out a thrilled: “I know, isn’t it amazing?!”

Three aghast faces turn in his direction, while Gian’s eyes are glued to the floor. They don’t look like they’re talking about Brit at all, oddly enough.

“Shay, shut up”, hisses Jojo – which, fine, he’s been holding a grudge over something Shay must’ve done a while ago as he genuinely can’t remember what it is, so his dismissive attitude comes as no surprise, but Ivan merely shaking his head in disapproval clues him in. Something bad has happened.

Hopefully not so bad that it cockblocks him. He quickly taps an enthusiastic reply before joining the others with an appropriately grim expression. “Can we do anything about it?”, he wants to know, because he’s first and foremost interested in a solution. A solution means he can leave early, and leaving early means he’ll get to see Brit sooner, and seeing her sooner means -

“You don’t know what is problem”, Ivan states, and of course he’s right.

The only one who takes pity on him is Gian, even paler than usual: “Through a series of unfortunate events, Jagriwo came into possession of my notebook.”

“Who?”

“You’ve really lived under a fucking rock this past month, haven’t you”, Jojo snipes at him again with more vitriol than Shay is used to, “I’ve been barred from saying ‘Jacob Griffin-Worthington’ all the time, so we’re calling him Jagriwo now. A name just as unintelligible as the asshole himself.”

“Ah, alright”, Shay nods, since it makes perfect sense, and only then does it hit him with the full force of a lorry: their self-declared nemesis somehow stole the very book holding all of Gian’s most intimate thoughts – or so Shay assumes. He’s never actually read a single line from it as he supposes it’s like a diary, personal and private. Valenti once reported accidentally skimming over a page and not understanding a thing, so it might be written in code, who knows. In any case, this is bad news. “This is bad news”, he states for everyone else’s benefit.

“We’re past the stage of shock and impotent rage already”, Valenti waves him aside, “it’s time for a plan. How do we get it back? Ideally before the prick reads it?”

“It is possible he remains unaware of the confused bags”, Gian replies with vague hope, “he and I carry the same make. Has he not yet unpacked his, we might -”

Just then, an eerie sing-song reaches their ears in the distance, uttered by an uncomfortably familiar voice: “Hey mo-rons! Come look what I ha-ave!”

They grimace in unison. There’s little better at uniting them than a common enemy, and the annoying wanker facilitates it immensely. “Guess that answers the question”, Valenti speaks what they all think. “Let’s go see what he wants.”

“Aren’t you guys a sight for sore eyes, thank you for turning up so obediently”, Jacob Griffin-Worthington drawls in an overdone posh accent, probably thinking it makes him sound cool. Their two groups are opposite each other in the already cramped changing room now, Jacob’s posse having joined them after Jojo willingly communicated their location – there’s four other henchpeople flanking Jacob left and right, two of which Shay knows a little. He wonders whether Jacob chose to make four friends in total to match them, just in case they’d ever have a dramatic one-on-one fight involving personal vendettas and experts in the same field clashing against each other.

“As I understand, I have a little something you would like back”, their fellow recruit continues and waves the familiar object in front of him, the small leather-bound book they’ve all seen a million times whenever Gian jotted down random thoughts or the events of the day or possibly tomorrow’s weather. It remains a mystery to Shay. “And I’m very interested in hearing what you’re willing to offer me in return.”

“So you’re blackmailing us”, Valenti summarises succinctly.

“Let’s not put it in those terms, this is merely a friendly … exchange, I would say, after all -”

“Are you doing this because you’re jealous that we’re actual friends?”, Shay blurts out and experiences a satisfying touch of vindication when their collective nemesis falters.

“Uh, no, I’m just -” And before he can regain his composure, Ivan Ivanovic has stepped forward and snatched the notebook out of his hand.

The ten of them stare at each other for a long moment. Ivan hands the book to Gian, who immediately shoves it into his pocket. Jojo performs a very rude gesture with both hands, reciprocating Shay’s grin once he notices it.

“Don’t think I didn’t take any photos!”, Jacob threatens with the pathos of a small child.

“Break his phone, too, Ivanko.”

“I do not like to destroy private property.”

“Oh, since when do you Reds care about that?”

Jagriwo’s comment earns him a dark look. “I do not extend same courtesy to noses.”

“What do you even want?”, Gian tries to move the conversation along. “What do we possess that you desire?”

This time, the others shift and exchange quick glances, the lone girl speaking up in Jacob’s stead: “You got into South Carolina. We want it.”

Oh.

Yeah, fair enough, Shay gets it – there’s a limited amount of spaces for the special training course in SC and Thatcher asked them to apply for it in groups, which explains why Jacob suddenly surrounded himself with these cronies to form a team of five. Until just now, they didn’t even know their nemesis wasn’t selected. No wonder his mood is this rotten. “You can have it, honestly”, Shay replies easily, shrugging; he’s not keen on the camp anyway, it sounds like way too much work.

Instantly, Valenti fixes him with a disbelieving stare. “No he can’t!”

“Didn’t you say it was a kindergarten trip for dummies who haven’t passed Rainbow boot camp yet?”

“But that was before I knew they didn’t get in!”

“I’ll gladly give up our spot”, Jojo agrees. “If they wanna crawl around in the mud for three weeks, let them.”

“They don’t even deserve it. If they weren’t chosen, they shouldn’t go.”

“Excuse me?!”, Jagriwo interjects, incensed, “You guys have been licking Thatcher’s and Sledge’s boots, which is the only reason you got accepted and we didn’t!”

“Allow me to correct”, Gian joins in as well now, “we lost a wager and involuntarily tended to their every need as a result. It was far from an attempt to ingratiate ourselves.”

“We betted that Valenti could go week without arguing during training”, Ivan adds with a side glance towards the very same.

“Hey, I tried to let it go, but that simply wasn’t how boules is played, you don’t try to hit your opponent in the head with -”

“This is why we lost bet”, Ivan interrupts the angry Frenchman, indicating him in his entirety. Which only fuels his anger.

“You know, this isn’t the time, but let me educate you on the sports of my people. It’s a long-standing tradition and I’ve played it with my sisters on every single one of our -”

“Just take our spot and we’re even”, Jojo addresses the slightly lost-looking recruits opposite them and Shay is all for it – the faster they get this resolved, the earlier he can ditch everyone.

“They don’t deserve it!”

“Do we not?” Jacob is genuinely miffed now. “How about a competition, huh? We’ll figure out which group is better at their jobs, and the winner gets to go to SC. If you win, I’ll delete the photos. If we win, we’ll get to do what we want with Giovanni’s notebook. And trust me, I’ve found things in there some of you would prefer to remain secret.”

Oh no. He hit Valenti right in the competitiveness, there’s no way he’ll let this go. They exchange a few glances, the upset Frenchman predictably determined, Ivan curious and Gian fatalistic. That’s two in favour already, and Jojo suddenly seems to have changed his mind and doesn’t look willing to concede anything anymore either. Odd. Normally, Shay would be on his side and ready to fight these tossers in a heartbeat, but today…

“I’m kinda busy”, he mutters apologetically, sparking an outraged expression on at least two of his friends’ faces.

“This is our chance to outdo these self-important wankers!”, Valenti hisses.

“You know we can still hear you, right?”

“Fine. Let’s do competition”, Ivan agrees on their behalf and with that, their fate is sealed.

“This is all my fault”, Gian sighs into their midst as they’re huddled together for warmth next to the running track. Winter is in full swing and while they’re not blessed with any more snow, the icy temperatures make for a poor substitute.

“Doesn’t matter, we need to talk strategy now”, Valenti shoots back. “What do we know about them?”

They’ve decided on five disciplines embodying skills all operators are expected to excel in, though Jacob invented a few extra rules: the teams can choose each other’s champion and nobody can be picked twice. Shay very much suspects that each team is secretly relieved about that last rule as they both have a weakest link.

… though he’s not entirely sure which one is theirs. Ivan Ivanovic surpasses them in nearly everything, Valenti comes very very close, Jojo is a skilled shooter, fighter and amazing with electronics, and Gian is just a jack of all trades, really. So Shay can’t really pick who’s worst.

“I don’t even know who the fuck they are.” Jojo is eyeing their opponents critically. “I know Jagriwo, but the rest?”

“The thin bloke with the full beard is Whip”, Shay offers his limited knowledge. “We got accepted at the same time and he’s alright unless you’re up against him, then he’s scary. I wouldn’t go with him for this.”

“How about the Asian? She is tiny”, Ivan suggests to which Gian shakes his head emphatically.

“I have had the misfortune of sparring with her in the past and though her physique is not the most imposing, she makes up for it in ferocity. I would only wish her on my worst enemy.”

“Jagriwo is a beast and that one dude is way too tall”, Valenti decides, “so it’ll have to be the Spanish guy. What’s his name again?”

“Maradona.” Since Shay has loosely hung out with most of the other recruits, he remembers some names here and there. “He’s Spanish, called Diego and a football fanatic, they had to give him that nickname.”

“Maradona it is then.” They shrug, unsure of what to expect, and turn to their adversaries to announce their choice.

“Your funeral”, Jacob Griffin-Worthington grins. “We’ll nominate Rogers.”

“Looks like they haven’t seen me fight”, Shay comments as Gian sighs and prepares to actually throw hands for his diary – Shay fancies himself the worst hand-to-hand combatant in all of the SAS and wears that title with pride. It’s not easy to stand out in their organisation.

“Darling, everyone has seen you fight. Mostly because you make the weirdest noises when trying to punch someone, so you draw a lot of attention.”

Jojo and he exchange a quick smile that warms his heart despite the biting air invading their lungs. The whole situation has an absurd aura, he’s pretty sure Jagriwo cares about this way too much and will probably harp on about their defeat forever (in case they lose, which doesn’t seem that unlikely), but for the first time in months, if not years, Shay is too disconnected from their shenanigans to bring himself to get into it. His thoughts are with Brit as are his priorities, and so he hopes all this will be over soon.

That said, Gian and his opponent have only just entered the ring they drew in the half-frozen mud, getting into position. The first challenge is about strength as much as it is about technique: leave the ring or fall to the ground, you’re out. A clever grip could mean victory just like a hard shove would, and the champions are of similar build and height, granting no obvious advantage. Gian blocks the kick aimed at his thigh and is, in turn, hindered himself before the two circle each other, cheered on by their respective teams. When next they lock arms, Shay realises this could take a while.

“Did you forget to get rid of your venomous snake?”, Shay asks when he spots Dante’s head poking out of Gian’s sleeve, likely wondering what the fuss is about and being confronted with a close-up of Maradona’s face.

The Spaniard no doubt catches sight of the snake and lets out an unmanly shriek followed by a defensive jump backwards – right outside the assigned ring.

Total silence for a few seconds. Nobody seems sure how to react, Jagriwo’s expression is utterly dumbfounded and his team isn’t faring any better.

“Let’s get a move on then, lads.” And before anyone can even think about complaining, Shay turns and strides away. He’s got places to be.

“Alright. The second challenge is all about technology. We may use it every day, but do you actually understand the devices you’re using?” Jacob Griffin-Worthington is probably going for a tension-building game show host of some sort though it’s obvious he’s shaken up by Gian’s near-instant victory half an hour ago. His group is falling apart, the only woman not even listening to him anymore and instead texting incessantly, Maradona and Whip still arguing quietly in the background – only the Swiss recruit whose name still eludes Shay is reticent as always, staring them down with a scowl surpassing even Valenti’s on a bad day.

“Just tell us what to do”, sighs the very same, visibly done with Jagriwo’s theatrics.

“No time for a little pizazz, hm?”

“Not when you’re basically blackmailing us into this, no.”

“Whatever.” Like a professional bully, the Englishman ignores the accusations and sets a laptop onto the table between them. They’ve relocated to the canteen, accepting the risk of getting spotted – not that they’re doing anything illicit, but if they ran across Thatcher he’d surely find a way of making them do work regardless of what it is they’re currently up to. “This belongs to Blitz. Don’t ask how I got it, I have my ways.” He wiggles his eyebrows and absolutely nobody is impressed. Everyone knows Blitz forgets his stuff everywhere all the time. “Whoever is chosen as champion has to crack the password and access the laptop under Blitz’ own account.”

“Why would we need to know how to do that?”, Valenti complains, not noticing how Jagriwo’s brows rise at the indignation in his voice.

“Guess we’ve already found our champion.”

Shay is just happy he doesn’t have to do this or else he’d probably end up disappointing Jojo even more. There’s something going on with him, their interactions don’t come as natural as they used to and Shay is convinced it’s his own fault. Because he can’t imagine Jojo doing anything wrong.

“Who should we elect?”, Gian mutters after they’ve withdrawn into their private circle. He’s livelier now, owed most likely to the fact that he won his round. “Jagriwo himself seems too knowledgeable and besides, I presume his real weaknesses lie elsewhere. I can only assume Whip acquired his soubriquet from the idiom ‘sharp as a whip’, therefore I would rule him out also.”

“How about woman now? She might be physically gifted, but electronics?”

As if on cue, they all turn around to stare at the Asian-American who looks thoroughly done with the incessantly whining and gesticulating Maradona. She seemed to have made the mistake of advising him to drop the subject, which he took personally and is now chewing her ear off while she stares at her phone screen even more pointedly. When Whip nudges her, she glances up, realises her opponents are looking at her, and the slight panic in her expression gives her away.

“I’m in favour”, Jojo mutters. “If only to get her away from that annoying blabbermouth. Nobody deserves that.”

“We’re choosing her”, Valenti announces, to which the short woman grimaces. “Okay, so how do we do this?”

“You each get increments of half an hour during which you can do whatever you want with the laptop. If you don’t manage to get into it, it’ll be passed over to the other person. Only your time counts: whoever does it fastest by their own time wins.”

“Are we allowed to talk?”, Jojo wants to know innocently.

“Sure, whatever. You can go first if you want.”

Shay’s best friend nods at Valenti. “Go for it. I’ll talk you through it.” And before Jacob Griffin-Worthington can object, Jojo has already pulled up the instructions on his phone and started guiding Valenti on what to do.

Well. Looks like they have it covered. Gian and Ivanko seem intent on listening and learning, but Shay has no mental capacity for a proper lecture today, so he wanders a little until Whip joins him and the two of them catch up on what’s been happening in their lives recently. Idly, they watch as Maradona throws another tantrum about how what Jojo is doing is cheating while Jagriwo tries unsuccessfully to argue with Ivan Ivanovic that Maradona is right (and he might as well have started a discussion with a brick wall, there’s no reasoning with the Russian if he does not want to be reasoned with).

Eventually, the opposing champion takes a seat next to Shay and eyes him curiously. “What’s your name again?”

“I’m Shay, howya. What’s yours?”

“Anna.” She looks up briefly to frown in the direction of the very loud, very oblivious group of fellow recruits. “This whole thing is stupid, isn’t it.”

“Yep.” Shay catches a glimpse of the brightly-coloured screen in her hands and adds: “Oh, I have that game. Wanna play a round together?”

“Yeah, alright. Whip, wanna join?”

And so the three of them spend about twenty-six minutes peacefully murdering waves of zombies while Valenti nearly starts crying from the pressure. Shay would feel bad for him, but really, it’s his own fault. Ultimately.

“Think it’s my turn”, Anna sighs when her leader barks her name in disbelief, immediately berating her when she joins their bubble again about ‘consorting with the enemy’ and ‘failing to prepare’ as well as ‘sabotaging the only people who care about her’ or something similarly ludicrous, to which she simply replies: “Shut up. I got this.” And with that, she marches right out of the canteen. Leaving behind a dumbstruck Jagriwo, a still expressionless Swiss bloke and a furious Spaniard.

“She’s nice”, Shay comments, to which Whip nods.

“Yeah. No idea why she hangs around with us.”

Jojo and Valenti are still celebrating when Shay joins up with them again, both of them looking like they just ran a marathon. “That was the coolest thing I’ve ever done”, Valenti beams, “and I never wanna do it again. But Shay, did you see, I was like a hacker in the films, all focused and cool and -”

“Is she… coming back?”, Gian wonders quietly as Valenti continues bubbling over in excitement.

About five minutes later, Anna does indeed come back. She makes a beeline for the laptop, types something in, presses enter and presents a now unlocked laptop to everyone.

Suddenly, Valenti and Jojo look like they’re going to lose their minds.

“I asked Jäger”, she shrugs. “Told him Blitz forgot his password again and sent me to get it. No lie, the IT security in here stinks.”

For a moment, it seems like Jacob Griffin-Worthington is about to propose to her, until Ivanko decides to poke the bear again and asks: “Is that cheating?”

Maradona bitches the entire way to the shooting range and Shay admires him for his lung capacity.

The following challenge passes by quickly and rather uneventfully: sharpshooting is the required skill, so Shay advises them to pick Whip for this as he knows the Welshman is notoriously bad at it. Their adversaries choose Jojo, not that it matters much as the only one of their group who’s miles ahead would be Valenti while the rest is somewhere close in skill. And though Jojo wins, the two of them end up almost evenly matched, to Shay’s surprise. It might have something to do with the few sentences Jagriwo mutters at Jojo in a voice so low nobody else hears, but when Shay asks about it afterwards, his best friend assures him that it had nothing to do with his bad performance – he claims he was still exhausted from the mental exercise during the previous challenge.

Odd yet again, but Shay doesn’t pry. He does notice Jojo’s hands shaking, however, which happens when he’s under a lot of emotional stress. He wishes he knew what was going on so he could help in any way. The only thing he can do is compliment Jojo’s hair to which the German looks at him like he just sprouted an additional head.

Well. He tried.

As soon as it’s obvious where they’re headed, Valenti falls back and surrounds himself with his own group. “Obstacle course”, he speaks what they’re all thinking. “There’s no doubt they’ll pick you, Shay, they have no choice, Ivan holds the record among us recruits. That means if we win this next one, it’s three out of five for us – it’ll be over. Now, I happen to know that Jagriwo’s best time is worse than yours, Shay, so we have a real shot at ending it right here, right now.”

“Of course you would know everybody’s times”, Ivanko comments with a grin, letting out an uncharacteristic chuckle when Valenti jabs him in the side with an elbow. “Do not worry. Even if you do not win, Shay, I will.”

Despite his assurance, Valenti’s words resonate with Shay: he could actually put an end to this madness. That means visiting Brittany sooner, which means -

“Don’t listen to him, darling, you got this. Make me proud.” Jojo’s voice is strained and still he manages a slight smile which is even more motivation. Yeah, Shay will do his best. He’ll win this round and therefore the whole silly game, he’ll get to do the do with his girlfriend, and he’ll make his best friend proud. A win-win-win situation, his favourite.

It’s much too fast from there: as expected, Shay is chosen while they pick Jacob in turn, the two of them get changed and warm up and suddenly, they’re next to each other at the starting line, Shay’s heart pounding in his chest as he considers the consequences of failing. Despite not caring much about the overall contest, now it’s his own skills on the line which doesn’t leave him cold; he relishes competition, or else he never would’ve made it here. A healthy nervousness has taken hold of him, a heightened state of mind, he’s alert and keenly aware of his entire body the way he is when on a mission.

He’s ready.

“If you lose, I’ll tell you a secret”, Jacob Griffin-Worthington says out of the corner of his mouth, making Shay frown in confusion.

“I don’t wanna know any of your secrets”, he responds, and then someone yells GO and his body moves of its own accord, springing into action with practised ease. He can’t count the times he’s run this course, to various degrees of success: when he was brand new and still bouncing between groups in Rainbow, he remembers how daunting he found this exercise, shivering even at the mention of it. It’s brutal, a demanding mix of precision and pure speed, horizontal and vertical movement, arm- and legwork. Most of his muscles used to burn for days after an intensive training unit here, and now he could probably do it in his sleep.

He’s off to a head start, his long legs a big advantage on the early sprints as well as shorter jumps, but as soon as climbing starts being involved, Jagriwo makes up ground. Shay concentrates on his breathing, the placement of hands and feet, the icy air in his lungs. Vaguely, he can hear his teammates cheering him on, and though he pays next to no attention to it, he somehow notices Jojo’s voice missing in the chorus. Odd. But Shay doesn’t have the luxury of worrying about it.

By the half-point, he’s still ahead and plans to stay there, Jacob not too far behind but audibly struggling where Shay has good reserves to fall back on. The ground is an active obstacle, an unpredictable mixture of mud and frozen bits, making Shay regret a few times not cushioning a fall more. Regardless, he’s doing great and getting closer to the goal by the second, keeping his panting to a minimum, instead opting for a steady pace, and then he slips on an ice patch.

It’s a mean one, he can tell instantly, the moment his foot just whooshes out from under him instead of providing support he knows he’s well and truly fucked. He manages an undignified squawk somewhere on the way down and instinctively brings his arms up, but even they can’t stop his head from smacking right onto the frozen soil. The loss of balance feels like a drop out of a fourth floor window, only much faster, and so he’s much too disoriented to get up and try to keep running, instead opting to blearily stare at crystal-covered blades of grass right next to his nose and contemplate existence.

Looks like he won’t make Jojo proud after all. Especially not with this splitting headache.

There’s cheering going on somewhere, exacerbating the pounding in his temples, and he understands right away that Jagriwo made it, that he was beaten. Someone pats his back with more force than necessary.

“Can you get up?”

He blinks up at two Ivans and stretches out his hand, getting pulled up with next to no input from himself and swaying unsteadily while holding on to the Russian. “My head hurts”, he mumbles, trying to correct his blurry vision. “I’m sorry. I didn’t make it.”

“You were at record pace, too. You had chance to beat my time.” Ivan Ivanovic inspects him for a moment, eventually deciding that he’s fine, so Shay stops worrying. If he’d been bleeding badly or anything like it, Ivanko would tell him.

It’s only then that he realises Ivan is the only one who came to his aid: Jojo, Gian and Valenti seem to be talking insistently among each other, with Jojo looking pale and shaking his head a lot. This isn’t right. “Ivanko, what’s going on with Jojo?”

A small pause. The Russian pats his back again. “Better get changed. You will catch cold.”

Shay doesn’t think thicker clothes will help with the vague frost settling in his insides. He doesn’t know what’s wrong. He’s not sure he wants to.

Though it’s getting late, the sun nonetheless shines down on their stupid little contest. By now, most of them are grumpy for various reasons, several pairs have formed and emit unintelligible grumbling as they complain about this or that, and despite Jacob Griffin-Worthington’s steadfast refusal to admit this whole thing was pretty pointless, even he seems to be losing the spring in his step. Regardless, he trudges on, leading them to the canal for some reason.

“Last challenge”, he proclaims loudly, ignoring a few passers-by giving them odd looks. “This is the one who decides the winner! It’s as gruelling as it is straightforward: submerge yourself up to your neck in the icy water. The one who stays in there the longest wins.”

Suddenly, Shay is extremely glad he was chosen for the obstacle course, even if he doesn’t appreciate the pulsing headache. Below them, the river seems deceptively pleasant, the water calm and clear – but it couldn’t be any warmer than just above 0°C. This is a daunting task for pretty much everyone.

“We don’t really have a choice who to pick”, Valenti shrugs, equally eager to be done as most of them are. “Go for it, Swiss dude.”

“My name is Köbi”, comes a quiet reply from the taciturn recruit, prompting Jojo of all people to reply: “Yeah well nobody can pronounce that.”

“Wait, wait, what are you doing?!” Jagriwo has noticed Ivan Ivanovic unzipping his jacket in preparation of the challenge. “It’s not your turn, mate, you’ve already gone. We choose – wait, who do we choose?”

His group exchanges confused glances until Whip speaks up: “He’s the only one left.”

Their leader turns away from their adversaries to hiss a very audible: “But then we lose. Ivan can’t be allowed to do this.”

“Try and stop me.” Ivanko keeps piling clothes onto a helpless Valenti as if all of this was just another Tuesday, unlacing his boots with practised ease.

It is now that Jagriwo seems to realise what everyone else has understood before they walked all the way to the river: he’s lost. With Ivan left as their last champion, there’s nothing he could throw his way that would tip the scales in his favour. Valenti’s triumphant grin from behind Ivanko’s folded-up trousers conveys as much.

“I, uh, wasn’t finished explaining the rules of this challenge”, he tries to delay the inevitable, floundering, “you also have to, um -”

“Let us go in.” Ivanko, clad only in his underwear, nods in the direction of the ladder leading from the promenade right into the water. Köbi seems hesitant but probably assumes Jagriwo’s wrath would be immeasurable if he chickened out now, so he quickly undresses as well and immediately starts shivering. This doesn’t bode well for him. Ivan Ivanovic even goes in first, opting to quickly glide into the icy river instead of dipping his toes, followed by his Swiss opponent.

Who curses heartily in what Shay can only assume to be a thick accent as soon as he touches the surface, and the cursing quickly morphs into barely-suppressed wails and moans. He sounds like he’ll start crying every second now.

Jacob Griffin-Worthington is livid.

“You don’t deserve this win!”, he rages. “You’re just a bunch of arse-kissing wankers who scrape by doing the absolute minimum.”

“What does that make you then?”, Jojo responds, words dripping with vitriol. “You lost to us. You don’t even belong in Rainbow.”

“And you do? I don’t know about the others, but I know how you got in. Did some favours to get your résumé looked at, didn’t you?”

Fucking hell. Shay frowns, notices his expression mirrored on both Whip’s and Anna’s faces (though he takes note of their silence), and asks: “Why are you such a sore loser?”

Gian’s muttered ‘this is hardly productive’ gets lost in Jacob Griffin-Worthington’s following fury. “You arseholes are really pissing me off! The only reason you won this is because you have one, one semi-competent fucker among you who keeps you afloat, the rest of you are worthless. You wanna know what your so-called friend wrote in his diary? You wanna hear some excerpts? Because I’ve got a small collection of quotes here, just stumbled over these, they’re everywhere.”

“Not really”, Valenti objects. “If he’d wanted us to hear them, he would’ve told us.”

Undeterred, Jagriwo pulls out his phone and begins reading off the screen. “Valenti, he calls you petty, ‘hindered by delusions of grandeur’, ‘desperate to belong’ – mate, he thinks you’re insufferable, that’s what I’m getting out of this.”

The author of the quotes looks pained, uncomfortable, avoiding their gazes. Shay has never seen Gian this ashamed, their gentle, thoughtful, caring Gian this distressed. He opens his mouth, likely to address the accusation, possibly explain himself, but Valenti is faster: “Well he’d be correct, wouldn’t he?”

Their nemesis blanks for a second. “Pardon?”

“I mean, I am those things. He’s not wrong. But I’d bet my life that’s not all he said about me. Right? You’re just picking things out of context and trying to upset us, it’s not gonna work.”

But instead of being defeated yet again, Jagriwo’s eyes move to a new target. And Shay suddenly pieces it all together.

Everything falls into place: their weird reaction when he implied that Gian’s diary being stolen wasn’t that big of a deal – everyone else seemed to know something he didn’t yet nobody clued him in. He wasn’t supposed to know, he realises belatedly. They all knew something he didn’t, which also explains why Jojo has been so withdrawn lately, why he kept talking with the others instead of Shay, why he suddenly wanted to win this competition so badly.

Jojo has some sort of secret involving Shay and absolutely everybody knows except for Shay himself. He assumes this is what Jacob meant when he offered to let him in on a secret at the beginning of the obstacle course. Gian had written about this hidden fact in his little book and Jagriwo is about to reveal it.

But what could it be? The only explanation Shay can fathom is him doing something unspeakable to Jojo, something unforgivable, something that would taint their friendship forever if he were aware of it. If he’d done something like that to Jojo, he wouldn’t be able to forgive himself, that much is true, he’d always feel like he’d owe him – and this, possibly, is the scenario they’ve worked to hard to avoid. Because it’d hang over the two of them like a sword of Damocles, no doubt.

And now that Shay knows this… is he ready to hear the truth?

“Don’t”, mutters Jojo, his voice a warning. His eyes are locked with Jagriwo’s.

“Or what?” He really savours the moment, ignoring all of Jojo’s body language (and he looks like a cornered animal, wild, hopeless) as he turns to Shay with a wide, shark-like smile. It feels like everyone’s holding their breath. Then he simply says: “Did you know your best friend wants to fuck you?”

The very first thought that enters Shay’s mind is one he remains convinced of for a solid second: that can’t be it. He believes it steadfastly until he turns his head and catches sight of the pure, unbridled horror on Jojo’s face, shame even more pronounced than on Gian’s a few moments earlier. No words are necessary, his expression shouts it louder than Jacob could – it’s true. It has to be, or else why would Jojo look like this, but… why is that such a big deal?

Jacob Griffin-Worthington is not satisfied yet. “He’s actually been in love with you for a while.”

Oh. Okay, well, that’s slightly different, yet Shay experiences nothing but all-encompassing relief: he didn’t do anything to Jojo. They’re still good. They can keep being friends, provided Jojo wants to, and, uh, well, this might be a problem, he realises much too late. Maybe Jojo doesn’t want to. Maybe he wants some space. And Shay has a girlfriend, he almost forgot about her, that’s complicating things even further, but -

All of a sudden, he notices everyone is staring at him. Everyone but the one who counts. “Right”, he says, still trying to process the consequences of this revelation, and then Jojo turns on his heel and walks away.

Gian is the one who stops him from following immediately, a steady hand on his arm and a slight shake of the head keeping him in place. “Allow him time to compose.”

Next to them, Valenti simply drops Ivanko’s clothes onto the promenade and tries to punch Jagriwo in the face, yet the lad saw it coming and blocked, and while a very one-sided fight breaks out (because of course, the others jump in to help Jacob) Shay only has eyes for the lone figure wandering by the canal, back turned and hands repeatedly coming up to probably wipe tears away, and all of this is wrong.

Being friends with Jojo has never been easy, he’d never call it an easy friendship like he would with someone like Whip maybe – it was never two mates hanging out, it was something more, and that something required effort. Shay had worked for Jojo’s friendship and still does his best to maintain it, he learnt how to apologise, how to compromise, how to listen. Jojo allowed him to grow by pointing out areas in which to improve, managed to do so without putting him on the spot and by taking him seriously. In return, he’d provided undying loyalty, an open ear with no judgement.

This isn’t something from which either of them can walk away. They need to work this out. And the longer his eyes are glued to the man he’s so incredibly lucky to know, the man walking much too close to the edge of the promenade, the one suddenly slipping on an icy patch and -

Shay’s fuck comes almost simultaneously to the large splash. He starts sprinting without wasting a single thought on it, clawing off his jacket mid-run, tossing his phone on it, dropping his shirt together with his wallet and keys, and next go the shoes (bloody hell the ground is frigid) – he doesn’t bother with the socks but the trousers need to go, and then he dives into what turns out to be much, much colder water than he’d anticipated.

He manages to keep his disbelieving gasp in until he’s breached the surface again, blinking against the cool air and trying to keep his body from locking up due to the shock. Next to him, Jojo lets out a litany of curses, half of which directed at him.

“- the fuck are you doing, you moron, there’s no fucking ladder, what did you think you’re gonna do?!”

Huh. The closest ladder is indeed a bit away and he’s already losing all feeling in his limbs. “I’m saving you”, he blurts out, stupidly, to which his best friend lets out an unamused-sounding laugh. Jesus fuck it’s cold, his feet are freezing and he’s having trouble staying above water.

“This”, Jojo pants, lips blue and eyes red, shivering just as violently as Shay is himself, “might be one of the dumbest things you’ve ever done, Shay, what did you think was going to happen? You give me a lift so I can climb the two metres back up?”

“We should probably move, we can’t get out here.”

“Oh really? I can’t swim, I can barely keep myself up, so what do you reckon -”

He’s interrupted by yet another splash next to them, icy water washing over them. The reproachful face appearing belongs to none other than Ivan Ivanovic, and Shay has never been gladder to see the Russian. “Hold on to me”, he tells them and they oblige without a single word of protest as he starts swimming to the nearest ladder, dragging two dead weights with him.

~*~

It’s only fitting that the day ends with them in front of Sledge’s office, as so many days prior. Shay, wrapped in a thick blanket and trying to will the frost out of his bones, listens to the muffled bollocking going on inside, and wonders whether they’ll get their share after the others are done. Köbi, Jojo and he were sent to Doc first while the rest of their groups had to explain to their superior what they’ve been up to all day, and now they don’t want to interrupt anything, so they’ve sat down on the bench outside. Except for Köbi, the winner of the last challenge, who was checked in with mild frostbite. There’s no doubt Ivanko would’ve won, but he came to Jojo’s and Shay’s rescue, opting to climb out and lose the challenge rather than wasting valuable seconds by swimming towards them instead of running.

So not only did Shay mess up his own contribution to the competition, he made them lose it all.

He barely dares to ask. “Jojo?”

“Hm?” His best friend has avoided any eye contact since their brief stint in the river, having chosen to treat Shay with nothing but silence. Now that they’re alone and perched next to each other, he seems more willing to exchange words though.

“I’m sorry we lost because of me. Did you actually want to win?”

This earns him an almost disgusted expression. “Of course not. Any minute I spend in Jagriwo’s presence is fucking wasted, he can fuck a cactus for all I care. His stupid little ego trip doesn’t matter.”

Oh. So he just really didn’t want Shay to find out. Find out… that he’s in love with him. The sentiment leaves him slightly giddy, as if someone Shay liked a lot told him that they like Shay back, only he can’t discern whether he feels flattered or confused or something else entirely. It’s a fluttery thing, similar to the beginning when he was flirting with Brittany (or trying to, at least) and couldn’t think about anything else.

Jojo fancies him. It’s… nice. It feels nice, knowing Jojo finds him attractive. That he likes him so much that he wants them to be more than friends.

And Shay -

He looks at Jojo who reminds him of a drowned rat, the usually styled hair wet and sticking to his skull, complexion blotchy, the corners of his mouth turned downwards. Their shoulders are touching. Shay just can’t imagine a life without him.

“I’ll break up with Brittany”, he hears himself speak before the words have fully formed in his mind – as so often he does.

Jojo’s brows draw together. “What?”

“I can break up with her. It’s okay. Then we can -”

“Shay, what in the world are you saying?”

“I like you too.” Instantly, he’s self-conscious, scratching the back of his head, trying his hardest not to backpedal. “That’s… what I’m saying. I like you, Jojo. I’d rather be together with you.”

His best friend is staring at him, mouth open, eyes wide. “You’d just – you’d drop her. Right away. Right now.”

“Yeah. If you want.” Shay nods. He’s already cancelled for the evening, it’d be simple to end their relationship as well.

For a few heartbeats, Jojo doesn’t seem to know how to react and what he eventually does isn’t something Shay would’ve expected. He gets up, blanket still wrapped around him, and tells Shay: “Just don’t talk to me. Don’t.”

And once again, he leaves. Leaves Shay behind on the bench outside of Sledge’s office, wondering whether he’s done something wrong this time.

It’s not even a relief when Sledge shoos him away later instead of admonishing him, because Valenti won’t look at him and Gian carries himself like a close relative just died. Even Ivan Ivanovic just motions for him to walk.

Of everyone filing out of Sledge’s office, it’s only Anna who throws him a sympathetic glance.

#rainbow six siege #fanfic #kac #recruitverse #valenti #jojo #shay #gian #ivan #some new 'friends' as well!#whip needs to stay around until I can finally reveal why he's called that #has anyone noticed a trend with names yet

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ao3feed-brucewayne · 2 years

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Fourth of July

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/eSM8n3U

by Grayhorne

It’s been five days since Jason has gone missing officially, six if we’re talking about the moment Jason left Bruce’s field of vision.

For Bruce, it’s been a grueling week. Jason was supposed to stay with his birth mother but by day two, he was nowhere to be seen and found. The number the mother gave him never turned on, ever since Bruce let Jason visit his mom, Sheila.

Doctor Bruce Wayne at Gotham's Wayne Memorial Hospital hears that Superman found his missing son's body.

The title is from Sufjan Stevens's song, 'Fourth of July'.

Words: 706, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: Batman - All Media Types, Batman (Comics), Superman - All Media Types, Nightwing (Comics)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: Major Character Death

Categories: Gen

Characters: Jason Todd, Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent, Dick Grayson

Relationships: Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson & Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson & Clark Kent

Additional Tags: Bruce Wayne is Not Batman, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Bruce Wayne is a good doctor, Dick Grayson is Nightwing, Jason Todd is Robin, Clark Kent is Superman, major character death is jason, Joker kills Jason, Referenced Child Trafficking, Bad Parent Sheila Haywood, No beta we die like jason (literally like in this fic), oh btw Clark Kent also lives in Gotham, Hurt No Comfort, dick and jason are brothers, NO ROMANCE !!!

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/eSM8n3U

#IFTTT #bruce wayne #batman #the dark knight #the cape crusader #gotham #dc universe #ao3 #ao3feed

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ao3feed-narlie · 11 months

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Memories

read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/LgNMK4O by drarryspring 23 year old Charlie Spring should be on top of the world. He has the singing career he has always dreamed of and is selling out stadiums faster than he can add tour dates. Charlie is not okay. Having run away from home at just 14 and having been cheated on in his last 3 (and only 3) relationships, he has gone through more than anyone should. On top of that he has the whole world watching his every move. After his downward spiral takes a dark turn, Charlie is contacted by his worried, estranged friends. Charlie decides it's time to do what he has been dreading. He stops running from the past and faces it head on in therapy. Words: 594, Chapters: 1/40, Language: English Fandoms: Heartstopper (TV), Heartstopper (Webcomic) Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Categories: F/F, F/M, M/M Characters: Nicholas "Nick" Nelson, Charles "Charlie" Spring (Heartstopper), Geoff (Heartstopper), Julio Spring, Jane Spring, Victoria "Tori" Spring, Oliver "Olly" Spring, Elle Argent, Issac Henderson (Heartstopper), Tao Xu, Sai Verma, Otis Smith | Omar, Christian McBride (Heartstopper), Darcy Olsson, Tara Jones, Benjamin "Ben" Hope, Original Male Character(s) Relationships: Nicholas "Nick" Nelson/Charles "Charlie" Spring, Nicholas "Nick" Nelson/Original Male Character(s), Elle Argent/Tao Xu, Tara Jones/Darcy Olsson, Tara Jones & Nicholas "Nick" Nelson & Darcy Olsson, Elle Argent & Isaac Henderson & Charles "Charlie" Spring & Tao Xu, Imogen Heaney & Nicholas "Nick" Nelson, Charles "Charlie" Spring (Heartstopper) & Original Male Character(s), Benjamin "Ben" Hope/Charles "Charlie" Spring Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Famous Nicholas "Nick" Nelson, Famous Charles "Charlie" Spring, Actor Nicholas "Nick" Nelson, Singer Charles "Charlie" spring, Mental Health Issues, Therapy, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Cheating, traumatic childhood, Charles "Charlie" Spring (Heartstopper) Needs a Hug, Abuse, Past Abuse, not necessarily to Charlie, Song fic, conan gray - Freeform, olivia rodrigo - Freeform, troye sivan - Freeform, Break Up, Charles "Charlie" Spring (Heartstopper) has Anxiety, Charles "Charlie" Spring (Heartstopper) has OCD, Charles "Charlie" Spring (Heartstopper) has an Eating Disorder, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, no beta we die like imogen's dog, Angst with a Happy Ending, there is a happy ending i promise, charlie is mexican american btw, this takes place in the states sorry read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/LgNMK4O

#IFTTT #ao3feed #fanfic #heartstopper #narlie #nick x charlie #nick nelson #charlie spring #narlie fanfic

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westanthewaterman · 2 years

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Care For You - Engineer!Mark & GN!Captain

Rating: SFW

Word count: 1500+

Request: hi 👋 could u maybe do a fic with the head engineer, where the captains gotten rlly injured but is hiding it from mark/the rest of the crew until mark realises something is up and hes like "huh"? and then he tries to bandage the captain up ? i love ur writing btw!!

Contents: blood and wound mentions, hints at a romantic relationship but can be read as platonic

AO3

As Head Engineer of the Invincible II, Mark has a lot of responsibilities on and off the ship. Whether it’s keeping up with the ship’s many, many systems or designing machinery to help the colonists down on the surface, there’s always something for him to do, something for him to fix. And he likes it that way. He likes being helpful, being needed.

Which is why he’s found himself here - doing laps around the Main Control console, checking the communicator on his wrist every few minutes, and trying not to feel helpless.

Gunther and the Captain have gone planetside to deal with a mob of hostile animals that has been terrorizing the colony ever since they’d arrived. Normally something so trivial wouldn’t be a job for the Captain but they’d insisted, desperate to get their boots on solid ground. Mark had asked to go as well but the Captain denied the request. After all, someone needed to stay to keep an eye on the ship and the only other person on board with the qualifications was Mack and the Captain would die before they left him in charge.

So Mark waited…and waited……and waited.

He was sure it had been hours, maybe even days. The Captain and Gunther were likely already dead, fallen prey to the aliens who would surely leave nothing but their bones left to be found. What if he never sees the Captain again? Who will run the colony? Who will captain the ship now that they were gone? Surely he couldn’t do it. He wasn’t ready for that kind of responsibility, that kind of pressure. Would they even have the resources for a proper funeral? Who would be able to fight off the monsters to retrieve their remains? Oh, ye cruel fate! They were so young! They were so-

Mark checks the time on his communicator.

It hasn’t even been an hour.

So…maybe it’s not the animals he’s really worried about. Maybe, and he feels silly even considering it, maybe not having the Captain at his side makes him a little nervous. From the moment they had been elected by the Board for the position of Captain, they had never been very far away, overseeing every detail as the Invincible was rebuilt. Mark thinks maybe that’s why the original ship didn’t make it through its maiden voyage, there was no one else on board to rival his meticulous care of the vessel as it was being built. And sure, maybe the Captain couldn’t tell the difference between a plasma contractor and an electromagnetic thruster, but they did their best.

And now, after what the two of them had dubbed the C.F.W.I. or Crazy Fucking Wormhole Incident, Mark made sure they were never more than an arm's width away. After everything they’d been through, he thinks he deserves to feel a little cautious, especially now that the two of them are…whatever they are to each other.

Which is why, the second his communicator pings, Mark almost falls forward as he stops dead in what feels like his millionth lap around the room to read the message.

Threat taken care of. Coming back up. Gunther needs minor medical attention.

Mark turns on his heel and sprints to the Hangar, stopping by the Medbay to let them know Gunther would be heading over shortly.

Soon enough, the shuttle docks. The Captain steps out of the ship, supporting Gunther’s weight with an arm tight around his waist. Mark rushes over to his other side.

“You said minor medical attention.”

Gunther waves him off. “I’m all good, just a flesh wound and all that. I’m just dizzy from the blood loss.”

Mark sighs with a shake of his head and helps the Captain get Gunther to Medbay. Once they’ve dropped him on one of the cots, Mark turns to the Captain.

“Are you alright? Did you get hurt at all?”

“I’m fine, Mark, really. Thank you for the concern.”

He squints his eyes, looking them up and down before nodding. “I trust your word, Captain. So how did it go?”

They shrug. “Nothing we couldn’t handle. It was nice to get out on the field again, I missed the action.”

The Captain’s eyes are beginning to droop, eyelids feeling heavy.

“Are you sure you’re alright, Captain?”

“Yeah, I just need to go lay down, I think. All this time in space has got me out of shape.”

“...Okay, but you let me know if there’s anything I can do for you, yeah?”

They reach out and stroke the side of his face gently. “Of course, Mark.”

It’s been four hours since the Captain left for their quarters and Mark hasn’t heard a peep from them. It’s unlike them to take naps, especially during working hours, so he decides to go check and make sure they’re okay.

Mark stops in front of their door, pressing the little button above the scanner to ping them. When there’s no answer, he frowns, sending them another message from his communicator. After waiting a few minutes with no response, Mark decides to just go in. Maybe the Captain would be grumpy at him for interrupting their rest, but at least he would know they were okay.

He presses his hand to the scanner and the door slides open. The room is quiet, too quiet. Usually, the Captain sleeps with white noise or one of the audiobooks Burt had recommended but there’s nothing.

“Captain?”

Mark tiptoes into their bedroom, heart freezing in his chest at the sight before him. The Captain is curled up in a ball on top of the sheets, face unnaturally pallid. They’re trembling and when he gets closer, Mark is horrified to see all the blood staining the sheets.

He cries their name, grabbing their shoulders and turning them onto their back.

“Captain? Captain, can you hear me?”

The Captain raises a hand, trying to push him away weakly.

“M’okay, j-just tired.”

“Like hell you’re okay! You’re bleeding!”

“Just a scratch, m’fine.”

“Yeah, sure you are. Why didn’t you go get patched up in the medbay?”

“Crew comes first.”

Mark sighs. Normally, the Captain’s care for the people under their command would be admirable if it wasn’t the reason they were practically bleeding out. He grabs the emergency first aid kit from the bathroom and sits down on the edge of the bed. Carefully, he pulls off their captain’s jacket and unzips their jumpsuit, pushing it off their shoulders.

“Buy me dinner first,” they mumble.

He chuckles. “Once the colony has a place for me to buy you dinner, I will.”

There are three long gashes on the Captain’s side. Thankfully, they’re not as deep as Mark had originally thought, missing all their internal organs. He gets to work disinfecting the wounds, shushing them when they whine at the sting. Mark’s touches are gentle and tender, careful not to cause them any more pain. He stitches the wounds up with a practiced hand; a small benefit of traveling helplessly through an infinite multiverse - you have an endless amount of time and opportunities to learn how to patch up wounds.

Once he’s done, the Head Engineer washes his hands in the bathroom and fills a glass with water, returning to the Captain’s side. He tilts their head up, helping them to take a few sips.

“We should really get you to the Medbay, Captain.”

“Later. Just sit with me for a bit.”

The Captain gives him their best puppy dog eyes and he sighs with a shake of his head; they know he’d do anything they ask of him when they give him that look. Mark sits down next to them with his back against the headboard, running a hand through their hair.

“You scared me, you know.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t want to worry anyone.”

“So bleeding out alone is the solution? You don’t think that’s going to worry people even more?”

“Well…”

“Captain, you’re allowed to be cared for just as much as anyone else on this ship. And if you can’t let anyone else do it, then at least let me. I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you. Well…I do know.”

“I’m sorry. It was stupid of me, wasn’t it? I can’t take care of the ship if I’m not at my best.”

“You’re worth more than your ability to take care of the ship, you have to understand that, right? Everyone on this ship wants you to be happy and healthy, not because it makes you a better Captain, but because we care about you. You’re worth caring about.”

The Captain doesn’t say anything at that, too lost in thought. Mark takes one of their hands between his and presses it to his lips.

“Promise me, you won’t do this again.”

“But-”

“Don’t.” He gives them a stern look. “Promise me.”

“I promise.”

“Good, now seriously, we need to get you to the Medbay. The longer we wait, the angrier Dr. Iplier is going to be with me for not bringing you down sooner. You don’t want me to get in trouble, do you?”

#iswm #in space with markiplier #engineer!mark #engineer!mark x gn!captain #engineer!mark x reader #x reader insert #ego x reader #west writes #sfw #anon request

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