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loganjameshowlett · 29 days ago

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SWALLOWTAIL

02: OVER TROUBLED WATER

pairing: joaquín torres/ex-widow!reader summary: the team stages an ambush. you and joaquín learn to trust each other a little bit more. word count: 8k+ series masterlist | previous installment | next installment

Madripoor’s neon skyline blazes like daylight, even– or especially– during the cloaked late night, early morning hours.

It dazzles you every time. In your line of work, a trip out to the City of Anything Goes is not uncommon, but it feels like a treat all the same. Madripoor buzzes with an undeniable kind of energy. Stepping foot on its soil feels as separate from the rest of the world as would stepping on the moon. And, really, the necessity of boldness here is a breath of fresh air from the bundled up norm of your current home. Every time you’re here, you’re chasing down a lead or doing reconnaissance, but if you ignore that bit it feels a little like a good excuse to wear something nice and drink something that probably glows in the dark.

“You have an apartment here?” Bucky asks. The alternating purple and green lights on the building in front of you bounce off his face, casting him in a pallor.

“It’s a spider web,” you tell him, punching in the door code. “Escaping the Red Room is hard, but it’s usually not as hard as holding onto your freedom after the fact. We ex-widows have a network– information, safehouses. We do what we can to help keep each other free.”

It’s not some luxury Hightown skyscraper, but the building does alright. High ceilings and tall windows that wash the floor in a rainbow of neon lights. An air conditioner that at least partially works against Southeast Asia’s heat and humidity. You spent two months here after Maria Hill had broken your conditioning but before you made the decision to work with SHIELD. The memory draws close and complicated around your heart.

You unlock the door, and your trio of superheroes files in on silent feet. Bucky’s eyes dart around in that familiar way, sweeping the open living/dining area for danger. In contrast, Joaquín traipses in and drops his gear bag gently on the floor next to the couch, stepping towards the wall of windows and letting out an appreciative whistle. The first hints of sunrise are blotting against the seam of the skyline blue turning to pale gray.

“We’re meeting a friend of mine tonight at the floating markets,” you tell them, readjusting your own gear bag on your shoulder. “You might as well catch some sleep before you have to make yourselves presentable.”

With that, you cross the kitchen and close yourself into the larger of the flat’s two bedrooms down the hall. Your gear bag lands next to the door with a thud, followed by the thump-thump of your boots being haphazardly kicked off. You fall into bed still in your clothes from the tarmac. The clinging scent of gunpowder and pine sap is momentarily overtaken by the sweet citrus smell of the sheets– comforting and familiar. You fall asleep almost immediately in the warm cradle of the bed.

When you wake up, the sun is a fat yellow yolk low on the horizon: late afternoon. You stretch, jostling the sore shoulder you were sleeping on until it no longer twinges with every movement, and then move to open the bedroom window. A humid breeze tumbles in, dancing with the curtains and carrying with it the ever present symphony of sound that is Madripoor. For a minute, you pretend that this is just life– just your apartment, just your evening to fill how you want it. Just a woman in her city, all kinds of unfamiliarly unburdened. You close the window just as fast and make for the shower.

There’s a cache of your clothes still in the closet from your few months calling this place home. You idle in front of the open door for a minute, clutching the front of your terrycloth towel and trying to make a choice. The floating markets are more casual, and one of the most touristy things in this neighborhood. Also colder, what with being on the river. It will be best to lean into the tourist thing. Some brighter colors or patterns, like someone who hasn’t thought a second about whether or not they’re blending in with the crowd, because why would they?

You settle on a maxi shirt dress, navy blue and drenched in little white flowers. It hugs nicely at your waist and hangs artfully loose on one shoulder, exposing a bare expanse of collarbone. Pretty good ease of movement, and the button-up aspect of the whole ensemble allows for your throwing knives in a thigh holster. You finish everything off with a sturdier pair of brown sandals. You feel underdressed and overdressed at the same time– you’re always far too conscious of wearing a disguise. You throw one longing look at a more comfortingly familiar pair of pants spilling out of the top of your duffel bag, before opening the door and heading for the living room.

Sam is standing by the wall of windows in a button-down you can only describe as at least mildly garish. He turns at your footsteps and gives a teasing whistle.

“Well, someone cleans up nice,” he says, and you resist the urge to roll your eyes. Leave it to a man to still not understand the importance of utilizing fashion for fitting in, even after spending as much time as Sam has on the run.

“You could learn a thing or two,” you retort. Bucky laughs from the kitchen and you whirl on him, taking in his gray t-shirt and black utility pants stuffed into heavy black boots.

“This is not gonna work,” you tell him matter-of-factly. “We’re trying to blend in with the tourists, not get an award for most suspicious group of people at the market.”

“So, what do you want me to do?” he asks with a not my problem kind of shrug.

“Put on some jeans, at least,” you tell him. “And I’m sure Sam has another one of these fugly shirts lying around.”

“Ha, she called your shirt fugly,” Joaquín chimes in as he comes out of the flat’s second bedroom. He’s wearing a dark green pair of pants and a beige shirt with some embroidery in a different shade of the same color. You nod to yourself in approval. At least one person gets what’s going on here.

He stops short when his dark eyes land on you, the teasing smirk sliding off his face. They rove quickly down your body before shooting back up to make some embarrassed eye contact, as though he’d only just realized what he’d done. You prop up one eyebrow at him, and find yourself oddly self-satisfied at the color that floods his cheeks.

“This is a great dress,” he says, voice a little dazed like his mouth is working independent from his brain. “Uh– I mean– you look great. Really.”

“Uh-huh, thanks,” you say, before turning back to Bucky and pointing a finger at him. “You– change. We’re already late.” Bucky grumbles about it, but heads into the second bedroom with Sam to find something else to wear.

You stand in the living room, arms crossed comfortably over your chest. Joaquín is two feet away from you, dark hair and bronzed skin gilded in pink-gold early evening sunlight. He seems to be making a concerted effort to stand casually, but even you can tell he’s fidgeting to talk.

The desire wins out, and he turns those dark eyes back on you. “So, what are the floating markets like?”

“Busy. Troublesome,” you tell him. “It’s a whole chaotic mess of docks and boats selling anything you could ever need. The lights are too bright, the music is too loud, and they upcharge everything because tourists come for a taste of the ‘dangerous lowtown nightlife’ they’ve heard so much about.”

“Good food, though?” he asks after a moment.

“Good food, though,” you concur.

—

The sun has almost entirely set by the time you reach the floating markets. They are the exact riot of color and sound that you remember, sardine-packed with tourists and perfumed with the mouth watering scents of a hundred different kinds of food being cooked all at once. A part of you longs for the time to amble through the market looking for old favorite stalls and finding new ones, sampling every dish you can get your hand on, but there’s not time. You promise yourself that when this is all over, you’ll come back and stay in the flat for a week or two before heading back to Prague. It’s probably a lie, but it makes you feel better.

“Don’t get lost,” you offer to the three men trailing behind you, before you slot your way into the surging crowd. You expertly maneuver around workers and tourists alike, stacked boxes of supplies and wares. When you reach an old favorite laksa stall, you spot her.

Just as promised, Mali Boonmee’s head of dark, shaggy hair sticks out among the patrons– a family of sunburned and freckled ginger tourists. She’s unusually tall for a Thai girl, a collection of long, muscled limbs and a face with high, wide cheekbones that narrow into a sharp chin. You haven’t seen her since you were living in the flat, and you fight down a surge of near-overwhelming affection when she shoots a smile at you, unfolding herself from her stool to come greet you.

“My girl,” she coos, her arms engulfing your shoulders in an instant. “How are you?”

“Good, all things considered. You?” You return her hug in full force, squeezing her forearms when she finally pulls back.

“Very good lately. We’ve had two widows through the web in the last few months, and I understand one of them was your doing.”

“Zarela. Took me two months, but I finally ran her down in Svalbard and sent her this way. She’s doing alright?”

“It was a rough time, the first couple weeks. But we sent her to Dahlia in Granada. She said she wanted to be home, even if she can’t ever really be home. Helping Dahlia out is close enough,” Mali shrugs. You nod, pleased to hear that your last rescue project had found a semi-permanent home, at least. But you all know that pain. Madripoor is the closest Mali ever gets to actually going home to Thailand, setting up shop here like a moon orbiting its planet. You, historically, have stayed much farther away from home. That’s one wound you’re not quite willing to face, even now.

“Right, well,” you move slightly to the side so that Mali can get a better look at your companions. “Mali, this is Sam, Bucky, Torres. Guys, this is Mali Boonmee, our trusted contact and my good friend.”

“I’ve seen you, of course, Stars and Stripes,” Mali says with her winning smile. “Good to meet you all. Find a spot and I’ll get you some laksa. Then we’ll talk.”

“She’s charming,” Sam says sincerely as Bucky shoulders his way to a cramped, empty table.

“We tend to be,” you respond with a languid, one-shouldered shrug. Joaquín liberates a couple of unused chairs from a neighboring table, and you drop into one of them.

“She’s an ex-widow, then?” Joaquín asks.

“Aren’t you quick on the draw.”

Bucky huffs out a laugh at your words, and you feel a little spark of pride. It’s easier to make him laugh these days than it was when you first met him– you chalk it up to having Sam by his side– but it feels like a real feat each time you manage it nonetheless. A minute later, Mali makes it through the labyrinth of tables and bodies, her arms laden with four bowls of laksa. She distributes them with elegant speed, before slotting into the last empty chair.

“So, I have good news and bad news,” she says immediately.

Sam pauses with his spoon halfway to his mouth. “Good news first, thank you very much.”

“I located your Aetos Device,” Mali responds. “The bad news is that it has already changed hands, and the group you tangled with back in Prague has melted back into the shadows.”

“Who has it now?” Joaquín asks.

“There’s an underground group that operates here called the Golden Diadem. Mostly deal in stolen arms, the kind of shit most people think is still totally in the realm of science fiction. It’s a tight operation– usually a lot of security due to the nature of the goods. I have it on good authority, though, that the Aetos Device is going to be traveling through Lowtown and into Hightown tomorrow night. There’s a big auction at the Black Opal. They’ll be trying to get the device there at any cost.”

“Whose authority is this on?” Bucky asks, his face transformed into that familiar look of stony skepticism. His laksa sits untouched in front of him. You roll your eyes.

“I brought us to Mali because we can trust her. So either do that, or don’t. But this is the only lead we have,” you respond before Mali can get the chance.

“We have a good chance here,” Joaquín cuts in, clearly willing to trust Mali’s intel from the outset. “The bridge between Lowtown and Hightown is long. If we can ambush them there, we might have a chance of getting the device without them getting away.”

“Exactly what I was going to suggest. Good thing one of these guys is smart,” Mali says. Her eyes sweep Joaquín with a newfound appreciation, which goes entirely unnoticed. You can tell he’s all in his head now, trying to plan out the ambush.

“I’d feel better about this if we had more details. I don’t like the idea of any of us going in so blind,” Sam says finally.

“I’ve seen the Golden Diadem do this before. Depending on the payload, it’s usually one or two armored trucks and an escort of armored cars. I’d stake out the bridge earlier in the night, but they don’t usually move until two or three in the morning,” Mali details. “That’s all I can offer. They’re being more tight-lipped about this operation than usual, evidently.”

Mali reaches into her bra and produces a slim black usb drive. You open your hand and she drops it into your palm, before you quickly secrete it into a small pocket in the inside lining of your dress. Mali nods toward it. “It’s a file I’ve been keeping on the Golden Diadem for the last year and a half, including what I have on the auctions that go on annually at the Black Pearl. If there’s anything else helpful for you to know, it’ll be in there.”

“Thank you for your help, Miss Boonmee,” Sam says.

Mali nods at him, but her eyes are on you when she speaks again. “Sure thing. Drop a line if you need anything else while you’re in town.”

You all stand from the table, half-eaten bowls of laksa abandoned. Mali comes around the table and grabs your wrist before you can get away without a goodbye, pulling you into a bone-crushing hug. When you separate, you’re surprised to find an involuntary smile stretching across your face.

“Come see me in Prague someday,” you tell her, finding that you mean it. “I’ll take you to that three story club.”

“I’ll take you up on that someday, sister,” she says, before turning around and disappearing into the crowd.

When she disappears from sight, you turn and start to move in the other direction.. “Let’s go, boys. We have studying to do.”

–

Back at the flat, Joaquín took no time in setting up his little tech center at the small dining room table. He spread two monitors and a cache of other unrecognizable gadgets across the painted wood and was sitting locked into his screens before the rest of you had barely gotten through the door.

“USB please,” he calls, blindly reaching an open hand out behind him. On one of the monitors in front of him, tiny-fonted code scrolls by in a blur. On the other, three windows of equally small text overlap upon each other. When you fail to produce the USB for him within a nanosecond, he waggles his fingers impatiently, casting those dark eyes over his shoulder for just a moment before they return to his screens.

“God, here,” you say, digging inelegantly in your little pocket and slapping the little black rectangle into his palm with some force.

“Can I take this off now?” Bucky asks, gesturing to his garish borrowed shirt.

“Back to your uniform, Barnes. We’re doing stealth for the rest of the day,” you affirm.

“This file is big as hell,” Joaquín mutters.

“We don’t have time to read through all that– we need to be in place on that bridge by midnight, preferably with a plan,” Sam says. Arms crossed and brows furrowed, he looks all the part of the concerned and a little bit brooding leader.

“We have all we need, Sam,” you assure him. “The bridge is the perfect place for an ambush, which we all seem to agree on. We know that we’re looking for armored trucks, and that we have a relatively short window of time for them to be passing through the bridge. All we need to figure out is the logistics of the ambush, and with four big brains in this room, I’m sure we can get our shit together in time.”

“Aerial assault is the way to go,” Bucky cuts in as he emerges from the front bedroom, comfortably back in his familiar black t-shirt and black utility pants.

“We don’t want to draw any more attention than we have to, Buck,” Sam counters.

“I’m not sayin’ we bomb the bridge. You and the kid have wings, so let’s use ‘em. You get in quick and take their tires out from the air. We’ll have a much better chance if they’re stranded.”

“How are we getting into the armored trucks?” you ask.

“Metal arm?” Bucky responds quickly, lifting the arm in question.

“Ookay then. Sounds like we have a plan in place,” you say, turning to Sam.

He sighs. “You know, I don’t love the way you two operate together.”

“Maybe don’t drag me into your next problem, then, Cap.” You pat him on the shoulder twice as you pass him on the way back to your room.

Once the door is closed behind you, you close your eyes and take a breath. Most of the ops you’ve been doing lately have been a lot smaller than what this one is shaping up to be– everything inside of you flexes nervously like an unused muscle around the scope and severity of it. With any luck, you’ll be able to swipe the device tonight and be back in Prague before you even start to miss it.

You change quickly into a black pair of pants and a matching shirt that you know won’t restrict your movement, and a pair of work boots that you wear almost every day without fail. The soles have been worn smooth in several bald patches and you’ve been meaning to get a new pair, but you always put it off because you hate breaking new boots in. You grimace at the slide of them across the smooth floor and hope that your procrastination isn’t about to cost you this op or your life.

When you return to the kitchen, Sam and Joaquín are nowhere to be found. Bucky stands at the island, back in his first choice of outfit, a mug of black coffee on the counter at his hip and a tablet in his splayed hand. From the concentrated furrow of his brow, you assume that he’s reading over some of the data dump that Joaquín had filtered from Mali’s datastick. He looks up as you come in, blue eyes meeting yours briefly before focusing back on the tablet.

“Coffee?” he asks.

“Please,” you nod, sidling up to the island across from him. “Anything pertinent from the data dump on there?”

Bucky plucks a maroon earthenware mug from one of the sparse cabinets and fills it from the carafe. He looks over his shoulder at you for a moment, eyes squinting in some sort of analysis, before dropping two spoonfuls of sugar in and stirring.

“There’s no cream,” he says as he brings the mug over to you, like he knows, somehow, how you usually take it.

“Thanks,” you nod, bringing the mug to your lips. “So?”

“Your friend told us the most important stuff already: time and place. There’re a lot of details about the Golden Diadem in that file, but mostly stuff we won’t ever need to know. I take it you know your way around here?”

“Well enough. Lived in this flat for a few months, once upon a time,” you affirm.

Bucky nods once, decisively. “Then we defer to you tonight, alright?”

“You mean I get to wear the captain suit? Wings and all?” You grin, and Bucky lets out a snort.

“Don’t push your luck, kid.”

You snap your fingers in mock disappointment. “All of the responsibility and none of the fun, huh?”

Bucky indulges your joke with a smile, before his face turns serious. You steel yourself, unsure what he’s thinking about, or what he’ll say next.

“I know that you know how to run an op like this successfully,” he says. His thought seems unfinished, but the silence stretches on so long that you feel the need to fill it.

“Exactly. You can trust me, Barnes. That’s why you dragged me out here,” you respond, brows furrowed in slight confusion.

“I know we can trust you. We do trust you. That’s not what this is about,” he assures you with a wave of his gloved metal hand.

“Then what is it about?”

He’s silent for a little while more, considering. When he speaks, his voice is an order gentler, and the unexpected softness grates at you. “Getting this tech back is extremely important, yes, but– don’t get yourself killed tonight, alright? I know how you were taught to operate, but this isn’t that anymore. This isn’t even SHIELD anymore. The team’s personal safety is a priority on an op like this when you’re working with us.”

You swallow against the quick, unexpected butterfly flutter of emotions welling up in your chest. It’s the kind of sentiment that you would have scoffed at coming from almost anyone else, but not Bucky. Not the only person you got to work with in a professional capacity who understood everything that came before. He knows, intimately, what it is to be nothing but a gun in hand. Painfully aware that you are a body and only a body, that anyone you’ve ever had the courage to care about is only a body, that everything can be ripped away across the measure of one sharp intake of breath. It had taken all of your time with SHIELD to curb the bone-deep impulse to throw yourself recklessly in front of every bullet– the idea of your personhood in and of itself having a certain inalienable value is frankly something you are still learning.

“No one’s dying tonight, Buck. I promise,” you tell him, nodding your head as if to convince both of you.

–

“Let me take that,” Joaquín says from beside you, extending a hand. Enclosed in his helmet and the rest of his Falcon suit as he is, his muffled in-person voice melds strangely with the crisper version of his words coming through your earpiece.

“No, quit asking me,” you snap back with a huff. You readjust the strap of your duffel bag of gear on your shoulder defiantly.

“Bet we could move faster if you let me carry it,” Joaquín asserts, shimmying his shoulders in a clunky and weirdly sensuous way when you cut a glare at him.

“Insinuate that I am incapable again and I will neutralize you before the Golden Diadem ever gets the chance,” you promise.

Joaquín holds his hands up in surrender. “Did not mean to offend and I am fully aware that you could carry out that threat with ease. I just want to be helpful.”

You bite back another remark because, infuriatingly, you know that he’s being genuine. Back in your SHIELD days, you’d had to work with plenty of men who were condescending– purposely or unconsciously– at every turn, even when they knew your background, which, frankly, was an opinion of yourself that took a lot of balls to uphold in the face of a Red Room graduate. You were not surprised in the slightest by the number of men whose egos were that inflated, especially in your line of work, and over the years you’d gotten very good at spotting them before they even opened their mouths. Joaquín isn’t one of them, even if sometimes you catch yourself wishing that he was.

“Take the damn bag, bird boy,” you grumble, sliding the duffel strap off your shoulder and shoving the whole thing at him. You can see his self-satisfied grin through his faceplate.

“If you two are done, scope out your spot and report back when you’re in position,” Sam cuts in over the comms.

“On it, Cap,” Joaquín answers. The two of you are roughly halfway across the bridge into Hightown when you stop walking. The plan is that while Sam and Joaquín will be taking turns patrolling aerially and looking for the convoy to give a heads up, you and Bucky will be setting up some ready-made traps– tire spikes, the likes– to stop them before they can make it across the bridge. Vehicles disabled, the four of you will descend on the convoy, grab the device, and get the fuck out of there.

In theory, at least.

“Best spot we’re gonna get,” you announce, looking up at the bridge’s support tower. It takes three seconds for you to knock out the service light, shrouding your small corner in as complete a darkness as one can come across in Madripoor. Joaquín dumps the gear bag on the ground and retracts his face plate.

“We’re posted halfway down the bridge,” he says into his comm.

“Saw you knock out the light. Setting up directly across the bridge,” Bucky answers. Joaquín acknowledges, before turning back to you.

“So, we got, what? Two hours to kill? Three?” he asks, leaning against the great metal tube of the support beam.

“On the low end of that, if we’re lucky,” you say, dropping to your knees and unzipping the duffel. You pull out two coiled up strips of tire spikes and set them on the ground for ease of access. In the dark, your hands ghost over the bulletproof vest that Sam insisted you take (“You’re the only one without a suit of armor or the super soldier serum, so you’ll wear the damn vest!”) and hesitate for a few seconds before you grab it and slip your arms through it. It’s more constricting than what you’re used to working in, but some part of you recoils at the thought of dishonoring someone’s care for your life. Finally, you grab a pair of slim binoculars from the bag and straighten up to your full height.

“You ever done something like this before?” Joaquín asks. At your quirked brow, he elaborates, “An ambush, I mean. Or like, was it more… stealthy, before.”

“You can call it the Red Room. It’s not a dirty word,” you inform him, toggling the night vision off the binoculars and sweeping them out towards Lowtown.

“Oh, yeah, okay,” Joaquín shrugs. “I didn’t want to bring up any memories for you or anything.”

“I remember them anyway,” you say, voice softer than before. The small kindnesses thrown your way today are beginning to pile up, and you aren’t quite sure how to hold them, or where to put them. Joaquín nods once, and silence balloons between the two of you.

“So, ambushes? Yes or no?” he asks into the night a few minutes later.

You swallow down a snort. “No, a teenage girl’s spywork did not typically include many ambushes.”

“What about with SHIELD?”

“Don’t you have to patrol?” you ask, gesturing up toward the sky.

“Nah, Sam said he’d go first,” Joaquín responds, shooting you a childish grin.

“Lucky me,” you mutter. Silence reigns for a while more, the pair of you watching neon traffic race across the bridge from your little smudge of darkness.

“How’d you meet Sam?” you ask, the words out in the air between you before you even realize you’ve said them.

“The Air Force,” Joaquín answers. The corner of his lip ticks up fondly at the memory. “Run of the mill op, we met and became friends, sort of. I don’t think he fully trusted me like– well, like he does now– until I helped him with all the Flag Smasher stuff.”

You nod. “I remember that. He spoke highly of the Intelligence kid that helped out with that situation, but I didn’t realize it was you.”

“So, you worked with him after that?”

“Before, after. I’ve helped these two out a couple times,” you shrug. “Met them both in my SHIELD days, but it wasn’t until I– or, you know, all of us– came back from the Blip that I ever worked closely with them. SHIELD was gone, half of the country’s heroes were on the run, and I found myself taking my own directives for the first time.”

“Tough thing to come back to,” Joaquín remarks. You nod, keeping your eyes on the traffic. Sam and Bucky idly chatter in your ear, and the breeze off the river freezes the sweat on the back of your neck. You’re suddenly all too aware of just how much you’ve divulged about yourself to this virtual stranger. It’s halfway mortifying– a little too much time on your own and you’re spilling your guts to the first person who will listen.

“Got through it. Made a life for myself outside of any of it,” you respond finally. Joaquín turns to face you, those dark eyes roving your face in profile. You count the bright, neon-lit cars racing past, pretending not to notice.

He seems about to say something more, but Sam’s voice cuts through the comms, calling his name.

“Torres, up in the sky! Keep an eye on the wider avenues– they’ll need the room to get a convoy of trucks through.”

“Got it,” Joaquín says, his faceplate locking once again over his features. He turns to you, tapping the side of his helmet approximately where the comm speaker is. “Ring me if you need me?”

“I can hold things down here,” you deadpan.

He grins. “I know you can.”

He steps up onto the bridge’s waist-high railing and launches out over the river. In seconds, you’ve lost him in the sultry cloud cover over the island.

–

The convoy materializes in Lowtown an hour and a half into your surveillance. Four armored trucks, just as Mali described them, and an escort of sleek black escalades in front and behind.

“We’ve got incoming from Lowtown, central avenue,” Joaquín’s voice crackles to life on your comm. His voice is giddy when he tacks on, “I’ve always wanted to say that!”

“Central avenue is bold,” Bucky comments back. In the dark across the bridge, you see a sliver of his metal arm– where jacket just fails to meet glove– flash back the reflection of the sparse passing headlights.

“Because they know they run this shit more than the prince does,” Sam answers. “I’m taking flight. Ground team, are you in position?”

“Ready,” you pipe up. You move further down the Lowtown side of the bridge, coil of tire spikes in your hand. Joaquín updates the convoy’s position every few seconds in your ear until you can see them yourself, dark, expensive cars like a herd at the mouth of the bridge. They stand out in their ordinary darkness among the colorful, neon-bright Madripoor traffic.

You toss out the tire spike right before the leading pair of expensive escalades reaches you. Their tires pop, and at the speed they’re traveling, they both go skidding forward, half out of control. The first one screeches to a sideways halt, trying to regain control, and the second slams into its passenger side, sending both of them a few yards further down the bridge in a shower of sparks. The first of the armored trucks slows momentarily in surprise, and you take the opportunity to launch yourself at the back of the truck, grabbing onto a handhold and pulling yourself flush to the metal.

“Swallowtail, what the hell are you doing?” Sam’s voice comes in through your comms, sharp with either anger or panic, you can’t tell which. You don’t answer, because– well, you’re not sure what you’re doing. You don’t have Bucky and his metal arm on hand to actually rip into the truck, so there’s no way you’re getting in. You push the thought to the side for the moment, using the handholds studding the back of the truck to climb up until you can see over the top of the truck.

“Oh fuck, they’re not gonna stop,” you say aloud, watching as the truck continues to barrel directly towards the escalades. The cars have emptied of their passengers already, black-suited men with guns like ants across the asphalt. You loop your arm through the handhold and hunch over the top of the truck, hoping to shit that you won’t be thrown off at this speed. The truck bursts through the wrecked escalades without losing hardly any speed. Once past, you unholster your own gun, turning around and aiming a few shots at the ants; you cap one in the chest and he goes down in a splash of red across his white shirt. The rest of the convoy blocks the way before any of the others can aim a gun at you.

But that doesn’t stop the lackey in the passenger seat of the armored truck behind you from leaning out of his window and training his pistol on your head. You know it’s about to come down to who can shoot the other more accurately from a moving vehicle first. The wind whips, stinging and frigid, at your face as you do the best you can to aim one-handed and swaying, hanging halfway off the back of a truck. Not exactly the best spot you’ve ever been in.

The lackey gets in a shot, which pings off the metal above your head. You grunt, taking a shot at him in return, which smashes through the windshield and embeds in the seat upholstery.

Before he can try again, a figure swoops down like some kind of vengeful pterodactyl. Joaquín’s wings pass a shadow over the convoy, blocking out the bridge’s bright lights. He grabs two fistfuls of the lackey’s jacket, ripping him easily from the truck and letting him drop to the road like so much discarded trash. He lands on top of your truck next, impossibly steady against its speed, and offers down a hand to you. In the swatching light-dark-light as you pass beneath the first street lights of high town, he looks incredibly like some kind of gallant knight in shining green armor.

You grab his hand and allow him to pull you up. Immediately, he sets you down in front of him, his body and outstretched wings between you and anyone who might try to take a shot at you.

“I had that handled,” you huff.

You can see his grin through his stupid orange visor. “Totally, totally.”

You take advantage of the relative safety of Joaquín’s wing shield to assess the situation; hanging off the back of a truck wasn’t exactly conducive to knowing anything that was going on. In the minute or so that elapsed, the armored convoy seemed to have converged around one of the escalades, herding it up through the streets of Hightown.

“Fuck,” you say thoughtfully. “Cap, Barnes, these trucks aren’t our target. It’s the escalade between them– they’re trying to protect it.”

“I see it. We need to isolate it from the convoy,” Sam’s voice rings through your comms.

“Ahead of you,” Bucky answers, with a not-miniscule amount of groaning and metal-meeting-flesh sounds lurking in the background of his voice.

“Watch my six?” you ask, turning to Joaquín.

“Always,” he answers, a question in the furrow of his brow.

“Great,” you say and turn, jumping off the side of the truck.

Maria Hill gave you a gift once. Just once, in the roughly two years you knew her. Back when you were still tightly-wound and spasmodic, a wind-up doll of a girl. You hadn’t quite gotten the trick of being a person yet, and being comfortable around a team was a long way off. Hill knew it, and she also knew there was one way she might be able to reach across the chasm between her reality and your own and make you feel a little less tense.

You don’t take the vibranium knife out often, but it’s always sheathed on you for moments like this. Angling for the roof of the escalade, you draw it out of its sheath in one swift motion and grip it in both hands, landing the blade with as much force as you can muster on the sunroof. Bulletproof glass is well and good, but it’s nothing against vibranium, and your knife goes through it like butter, anchoring you to the car’s roof even as you slide back and forth on your stomach with the movement through the streets.

“Hey–! What’s the plan here?” Joaquín’s voice comes through your comms. He’s hovering in the air between the truck and the escalade, keeping pace with both vehicles, as though he dove after you.

“I’m getting inside this damn car,” you respond, grunting with the effort of pulling the knife out of the glass and stabbing it back into one of the weak, spider-webbed spots before you can go sliding off the back of the car. You repeat this a few times until the glass is sufficiently compromised, and then use the butt of the handle to knock the glass inward.

“This is a terrible idea,” Joaquín says, landing on the roof beside you. The weight of his armor sends a shudder through the car.

“I’m getting that damn device,” you tell him, maneuvering until you get a grip on Joaquín’s leg and pull yourself into a sitting position, angling your feet at the mouth of the smashed-in sunroof.

“Stay out there, or I’ll shoot!” A tense, accented voice calls from inside the car.

“Do you promise?” you yell back. Joaquín gives you a look, gesturing as if to say see? You turn to him, pressing your lips into a thin line. “Hey, I promised the old man that nobody will die on this op, and that’s still true. Trust me on this.”

“Fine,” Joaquín says, though you can still feel the hesitance in his voice. “I’ll be up here, and you call if you need me.”

You nod and slide yourself in through the sunroof, dropping low to the floor of the interior as soon as you do. A shot rings out above your head, lodging into the upholstery of the back row of seats. Keeping yourself low, you lunge to the side, pinning the gunman to his seat. He fights back, but his movements are sloppy, panicked. Someone in the higher ranks of the Golden Diadem, if you had to hazard a guess. Not one that usually needs to use his gun; he has lackeys for that. Probably used to have to get his hands dirty, but years separate him now from that version of himself. He’s forgotten what it’s like to have to face a threat head on.

Getting the gun from him is easy. Instead of taking out your own, you point his gun back at his pallid, fearful face. The driver pins you through the rearview mirror, fury spitting in his eyes. He keeps one hand on the wheel but the other is clearly on his piece, hidden out of sight.

“Make one fuckin’ move and I shoot him in the forehead,” you promise. He doesn’t take his eyes off of you, but he doesn’t move either. Clearly, the man he’s chauffeuring around is too important to lose to what most likely looks like an ambush of random thieves. You scan the interior of the car quickly. Beside the driver and his man, there’s only one other thing inside: a shining metal briefcase lying on the seat next to the guy. You snatch it up with your free hand.

Joaquín’s helmeted head pops over the top of the sunroof, clearly alarmed by what you just said. You’d forgotten, momentarily, that the comms were on still. “Alright, that’s enough of that.”

“Take this, bird boy,” you tell him, thrusting the briefcase upward. He grabs it immediately, the silver rectangle disappearing up onto the roof.

“Okay, you next. C’mon,” he says, reaching his hand back down. You give one last glance toward the driver and the sickly green Golden Diadem operant, before tossing the man’s gun up onto the roof and bracing your hands on either side of the hole you made, hoisting yourself up. Stray glass scrapes along the inside of your arm at your hasty movement, and you hiss at the sting of pain. Once you’ve half clambered out yourself, you allow Joaquín to pull you the rest of the way onto the roof. He had evidently clipped the briefcase to an attachment on his hip, and you felt a flutter of satisfaction. You’d done it, and now you could get the fuck out of this place.

“Shit’s getting too hot, we gotta go,” Joaquín says. This time, he doesn’t wait for you to attach yourself to him, simply scoops you up around the waist and launches himself into the air.

–

The sun is up by the time the four of you make it back to your flat in Lowtown. It had been a whole thing: Sam insisted that he and Joaquín couldn’t just fly you back to Lowtown on account of Madripoor being more awake at night than it ever was during the day, and you had to concede him the point. But the workaround had been stashing duffel bags in some rotted out boathouse along the shore a quarter mile or so from the bridge, with civilian clothes for all of you. The clothes were musty and damp from the briney air by the time you made it to them, and you all still looked conspicuous toting around two duffel bags stuffed with the elements of Sam and Joaquín’s suits. The saving grace was that people carrying around strange, lumpy bags is kind of par for the course for Madripoor.

The walk through Lowtown was hell, even though your flat isn’t all that far from the bridge. The excitement of the night had taken a lot out of you– more than you thought it had, until your adrenaline started to crash.

You’re exhausted and aching as you stumble through the door of the flat, wanting nothing more than to make a beeline for your bed. Sam and Bucky wrestle the duffel bags through the door, Bucky’s metal arm doing the heavy lifting of the one you guys had managed to squeeze the silver briefcase into. The pair dump the bags unceremoniously on the dining table, but nobody makes a move to unzip them.

“Man, what a night,” Sam says, scrubbing a hand down his face.

“Have you been bleeding this whole time?” Joaquín asks from beside you. It takes a few seconds too long to realize that he’s talking to you, and only then do you remember the glass scraping against your forearm. You lift up the offending appendage to find an alarming swathe of rivulets of blood in varying stages of dryness down the length of your arm. The wound is a couple inches in length and thankfully seems rather shallow, though it is still languidly oozing blood.

“Well, I suppose I have been, yes,” you say, turning to look at him. Joaquín’s dark eyes are slightly wide with alarm, which doesn’t fade from his features in the face of your nonchalant response.

“That needs to be cleaned right away,” he says, pointing to your arm. “We’ve been marinating in a whole host of water germs for, like, two hours.”

You have a hand dismissively. “It’s fine, I’ll scrub it in the shower. Good as new.”

Joaquín fixes you with an unimpressed glare that reminds you all too much of your own favored facial expression. “Let me help.”

You hesitate, wanting more than anything to dismiss the whole business. You’ve had nastier wounds in the field before by far, which also did not get cleaned and bandaged in a timely manner in half the cases. You’re still alive to tell the tale.

“Let the kid help you while we work on busting open this case,” Bucky calls decisively from the dining table, half way through pulling the silver briefcase out of the duffle bag. He fixes you with a look over the backs of Sam and Joaquín’s head that does the job of reminding you about everything the two of you had talked about yesterday evening, or a thousand years ago.

“Alright, alright,” you concede, allowing yourself to be herded down the hall and into the bathroom by Joaquín. It’s a cramped fit, and the buzz of the bad lightbulb pierces you with a headache almost immediately.

“First aid is under the sink,” you tell him, and he nods gratefully. You have to suppress a laugh at the sight of him trying to fold his muscular body down into the space between the sink and the tub. He pulls back the little curtain beneath the sink and snaps up the red box wedged in between pipes and bottles of soap. He sets it precariously on the thin edge of the sink and clicks it open, before turning back to you.

“Sit,” he orders, and you comply, perching on the lid of the toilet. His hand is calloused and warm and impossibly gentle when it cradles your wrist, bringing your bloody forearm closer to his face.

“You’re lucky, this isn’t too nasty,” he says after a quick examination. With one hand still cased around your wrist, he uses his free hand to grab a rag and run it under some cold water from the tap.

“I don’t usually make such rookie mistakes, for the record,” you respond, trying for humor. It’s true, though– a rucked up sleeve and the vulnerable expanse of your skin against glass, all of it is just dumb, and you still can’t believe you were so careless. He’s right, you really are lucky it’s not any worse than it is.

“Were you a little distracted?” he asks, mouth stretching into a shit-eating grin. The rag rasps against your skin, clearing away flakes of dried blood, as you glare up at him.

“We needed to make a quick getaway, if you’ll recall.”

“Mm. I recall some other things, too.” The stupid grin fades into something smaller, more real.

“Yeah, so do I,” you hum. “Thanks for having my back out there.”

Joaquín shrugs. “S’what we do. You know, on a team. Not so bad, is it?”

You huff out a laugh, rolling your eyes. “Yeah, whatever.”

Joaquín puts the rag aside and grabs an alcohol wipe from the first aid kit. He rips open the packet with his teeth and takes it to your wound with practiced precision. You hiss at the sting, and Joaquín absentmindedly rubs his thumb across the red, irritated skin of your forearm. The tiny, careless comfort sends your heart stumbling over itself. He doesn’t even look at you as he does it, like it’s nothing. Like such small acts of care are common and expected in his life and for the people around him. The thought floors you.

Sam’s head pops into the bathroom as Joaquín is rummaging in the kit for a correctly sized bandage.

“You guys are gonna want to come out here,” he says, his brows drawn and serious.

“What’s wrong?” you ask, fighting the urge to shoot immediately to your feet and directly into Joaquín, standing as close to you as he is.

“We got something in that briefcase, but it’s not what we’ve been looking for.”

#joaquin torres #joaquin torres x reader #marvel #marvel x reader #the falcon x reader #sam wilson #captain america #bucky barnes #the winter soldier #TFATWS

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souliebird · 10 months ago

Text

[[and then I met you || ch 26]]

Series: Daredevil || Pairing: Matt Murdock x Fem!Reader || Rating: Explicit

Summary:

A one-night stand years ago gave you a daughter and you are now able to put a name to her father – Matthew Murdock. Everything is about to change again as you navigate trying to integrate your life with that of the handsome and charming blind lawyer’s and Matt realizes he needs to not only protect his new family from Hell's Kitchen, but from the world.

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Depression is a funny little emotion.

It starts as a seed planted in your stomach by some inconsequential action that slowly grows throughout the day until it is strangling you. Tendrils sprout and creep up your sternum, creeping through your airway and constricting your lungs, making it just a little harder to breathe. Your chest feels tight and no amount of closing your eyes and counting slowly will make the feeling go away. The vines go for your heart next - weaving between the arteries and veins and squeezing until you are hyper aware of every beat it makes.

You know you cannot let anyone know what germinates inside of you, so for hours and hours and hours do you pretend you can function properly. You ignore how heavy your heart feels or how much your throat stings. You turn off the urge to cry and scream and beg because you know there is no point to it. There is no relief. No amount of comfort will free you from the jungle forming inside of you. All you can do is wait.

Wait until you are finally alone, and the growth is finally allowed to bloom in your brain. Thorns pierce you, pumping their poison into your thoughts. Sap leaks from your eyes as stems force their way up your throat until leaves sprout from your mouth. You are consumed from the inside out until you are a hollow husk of a person.

And who would want to be around that?

Who would want you?

No one is the answer.

It has always been no one.

Your parents were the first to show you the truth. There was no care or comfort in your childhood - you were set aside and ignored.

You’ve never blamed them for this. As much as it hurt and as much as it messed with your self-worth, you’ve always understood they were not meant to be parents. You are sure they loved you in their own way, but the lack of affection left your soul to wilt.

College was no better. You made a few friends but quickly learned the meaning of superficial. They did not have time for your awkwardness and personal issues - this was their time to grow and blossom. So, you buried yourself in your studies and were always grateful when they were kind enough to invite you somewhere.

When you started having romantic relationships they warped your mind even more. A few sweet words would lure you in, then you would become a caretaker and a warm body. Their needs were always top priority and yours were never to be acknowledged. You were strung along to a breaking point or told you were no longer needed, even when you were still heart eyed over them.

A few rounds of this showed you your niche in the world.

You’re a background character. A friend of a friend’s girlfriend. A one-night stand. Minnie’s mom.

You don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. You are meant to assist others - meant to raise your daughter to her full potential.

You’ve long accepted this, which makes it all that much harder when Matt smiles at you like he does.

You believe he cares for you - he is full of love - but you know there isn’t anything deeper in it.

You are the mother of his child, a child he is head over heels for - it is natural for him to grow affectionate towards you. He finds you physically and sexually attractive and you yearn for that.

But you know you are nothing but a placeholder.

You have his attention now and you want to bask in it, but next week, next year, or maybe in two years, that attention will move onto someone who deserves it. Someone who is exciting as he is - someone who is smart and passionate. Someone who understands his life and what being Daredevil entails. Someone who cares about the injustices on the streets and does something about it.

Someone who isn’t broken.

Someone who isn’t a shell going through the motions.

Someone who isn’t you.

You want to cover your ears and pretend you don’t know the truth. You want to bury yourself in the three little words you thought you heard, but you know you can’t.

You can’t do that to yourself again. You can’t handle another heartbreak. Another disappointment.

Another reminder you are Nothing.

You can allow yourself to enjoy your time - enjoy the touches and kisses and moans - but your heart must remain locked away.

Matt can have all of you but that. If you allow yourself to have hope it will hurt all the more when you have to let him go.

And you’ll let him go easily when that time comes. You’ll step aside without a fight because his relationship with Minnie is more important than you will ever be, and you are not going to be the reason for a rift between them. You are not going to deny Matt time with his daughter because his destiny is with someone else.

It will hurt, but it has never mattered if you hurt.

You just want them to be happy.

----

The progress bar on your screen is finally full and you now have the option to select ‘continue with install’. You click on the button, then warily eye your laptop as new windows pop up with technical information you do not care about.

Work is pushing a bunch of new updates through their system, and because you are remote, you have to play IT to get your machine up to spec. They sent you an email with everything you need to do, which is to sit back and click a few prompts, but they failed to mention the process would take hours and that your laptop would be useless during that time.

It is nearing two in the morning, and you are starting to run out of steam and patience.

Between installs and reboots, you have cleaned pretty much everything in your apartment that you could without risking waking Minnie up. You did dishes and dusted. You cleaned out the pantry and washed the windows. You even swept the carpet to get out any lingering dog hair.

You’ve tried to sit and watch something, but it left you fidgety and you couldn’t pay attention to what was being said and you had no chance in hell of following a plot. You attempted to play around on your phone, but you became angry at yourself for not having the funds to buy things that were advertised to you. After Minnie’s birthday and your hospital bill, your bank account was getting dangerously low.

You want to turn off your brain and do your job. You don’t have to Think when combing through orders and producing invoices.

You don’t want to Think anymore. You are so tired of Thinking.

You slump into your chair and bury your face into your hands. You’ve got no way to calculate how much longer all this technical setup is going to take or how much longer you are going to have to stay up. The only relief you have is knowing you are being paid for this time, since the email specifically told you to be on the clock while running everything.

You debate going over to the couch and trying to nap. You could set an alarm so you can periodically check on your computer, but you might disturb your sleeping toddler. The alert could be set to vibrate only, but would that wake you up if you really fell asleep?

Your only solution is to stay awake and try to find something to do to distract yourself.

As you start to consider deep cleaning the linen closet, your phone lights up with a call from an unsaved number. It takes but a moment for you to recognize the sequence and your heart leaps into your throat as you answer.

“Hello?”

“You’re up late,” Matt teases as a greeting, his voice a few octaves lower than normal and sending a delightful sort of chill up your spine. “Working hard?”

“Hardly working,” you groan in response, but the mere fact he is calling has your lips turning up into a small smile. “My computer is doing updates and I’m waiting for it to finish. It’s been going for hours.”

Matt hums in sympathy and you wonder if he is just getting home. The fact he is a superhero is still very hard for your mind to wrap around. Sweet Matt, who lets his daughter put star stickers all over his face, is the same man who so routinely breaks people’s arms that local ER staff have a monthly betting pool about it - a little fact you learned from Karen. The man in videos dangling someone off a high rise or a bridge is the same man who becomes a clingy octopus when asleep.

You understand his need to protect the city and you admire it, but fear and uncertainty gather in your belly when you think about Matt out on the rooftops. You are terrified of him getting hurt, despite the fact you trust him and his abilities. You know there is always a bigger threat out there as well as the possibility of an accident. Matt may be amazing, but he can’t fight a random act of God.

Three light knocks from behind you rip your thoughts and you turn in your chair to see Daredevil, in all his red suit glory, standing on your fire escape. He cheekily waves at you as he snaps his flip phone shut and stores it in a hidden pocket. You scramble up and over to the window, yanking it open. He waits patiently, though a bit smugly by the smirk on his lips, as you figure out how to remove the screen. He climbs through with ease and once he is inside, he starts removing his gloves and helmet.

“What are you doing here?” you ask as you close the window again. You aren’t opposed to him coming by, but this is the first time he’s done so, and you aren’t exactly sure of the protocol. Is it a social visit? Does he have some Daredevil news to share with you?

Before he replies, he shakes his head much like a wet dog would. His hair is damp with sweat and the skin that was previously covered is glistening. There is a slight tint of red to his usual paleness and you wonder if he is hot to the touch as well. You try not to squirm at the thought.

“I always check on you before ending patrol,” he finally says, like it is the most obvious thing in the world. He sets his helmet, gloves, and batons on the window-blocking table, then steps to you, reaching up to cup your cheeks when close enough. “I need to make sure my girls are okay.”

The words come out of him so easily and you want to melt into them like you do with his touch, but your mind is quick to remind you that you’ve given him reason to have to check up on you. This isn’t him being sweet - it is him making sure you haven’t somehow managed to kill yourself.

Before you can mentally chastise yourself and pull away, Matt is closing the distance. He brings you into a sweet and slow kiss and for a few wonderful moments, your mind goes quiet. His lips are so soft against yours and you can just barely taste the salt from the sweat that has dripped down his face. It ends far too soon, and you try to tell yourself you are not disappointed.

Your thoughts kick back into hyper drive, and as you notice how damp Matt’s hair really is you imagine he would appreciate some cold water. You gently pull away from him, turning as you do to head towards the kitchen.

“Did anything interesting happen tonight?”

“Nothing out of the usual,” he answers as he moves to follow you. “There was a kid breaking into cars that stuck out, though. He should probably be on his school’s track team if he isn’t already - he made me work to be able to catch him. It was actually a little impressive.”

That would explain the sweat then. It is already warm out and racing through the streets in leather sounds exhausting. It makes you want to shower just hearing about it.

You find Matt’s designated cup and fill it using the pitcher in the fridge. As you pass it over to him, you question, “what did you do once you caught him?”

He doesn’t answer, instead taking the water and downing it all in just a few gulps. Since it is clear he is in need of it, you quickly refill the glass.

“I gave him a warning and let him go,” Matt says after taking another sip, “He seemed like a good kid just getting into the wrong things. I think being chased by the Devil will scare him off crime, at least for a while.”

That warms your heart a little - you like Matt’s sense of justice and how he does not have a hard stance on what is black and white. He truly wants to help the community and not rule it.

You have to turn away as he drinks his second glass of water. You want those brief moments of mental silence back and watching his throat work only makes you want to kiss him again. You think he wouldn’t mind it if you threw yourself at him, but it isn’t the time or place, and honestly you are a bit scared of the idea that has that kind of effect on you.

It is something to crave and ask for and get addicted to. If he can turn off your brain so easily, all you will want to do is touch him.

Ever on high alert, you see Matt roll his neck and shoulders as he goes to put his glass into the sink. The movements look a little stiff and anxiety takes hold as you hyper analyze every movement he makes, “Are you alright?”

He pauses at the question, clearly confused by it. He tilts his head back and forth in minute ways like he does when he’s searching for something before answering you.

“Why do you ask?”

You feel yourself start to flush at the counter, feeling a little silly. If there was anything actually wrong with him, he has a competent nurse on call, but you can’t stop your worry. It courses through you like your blood and you know it will fester and nag if you have any doubt. But you are still hesitant as you vaguely motion to your own neck, “I don’t know, you were out all night. I just…I want to make sure you’re, okay?”

You know that Matt is analyzing you, listening for something you’ll never hear. His lips dip into a frown for a microsecond before lifting up into that soft, beautiful smile you are becoming so fond of. “I’m fine, darling. Just a little stiff is all. It’s hard to have good posture when crouching on a rooftop.”

You take in the words, and you can easily picture Matt on the edge of a building, sitting like a gargoyle. It does ease your own tension that he isn’t injured, but your head just keeps spinning.

Matt came all the way into Chelsea to check on you, the least you could do is make it worth his while. Offering yourself up for sex doesn’t feel appropriate at the moment, but you have more up your sleeve than just that.

The words tumble out of you before the idea is fully formed, “Do you want a massage?”

The shock on Matt’s face is nearly priceless. His brows shoot up his forehead and his mouth parts just slightly and a small voice in the back of your head wonders if anyone has ever offered him one before. You know his upbringing was as barren as yours, but given he is a fighter, you would have guessed someone would have given him one.

Finally, he nods, his smile starting to come back, “That sounds amazing. If it’s okay with you - I know it’s getting late.”

“I’ll be up anyways,” you tell him quickly, not wanting him to think it is any inconvenience to you. “And it sounds more enjoyable than more cleaning.”

“Okay.” His boyish grin gets even bigger, and your stomach does a funny twist. “Where do you want me?”

You direct him to sit in front of the couch, on the ground, and as he removes the top half of his armor, you go to fetch wet wipes and lotion. You do not want to be rubbing Matt’s sweat all over his back - you are going to be trying to help him relax and that is a little bit disgusting.

As you come back to the living room, you have to remind yourself you aren’t supposed to throw yourself at him. It is not fair how good he looks shirtless - he’s well defined and muscular, but not so overly buff it is gross. It’s clear his muscles are for athletics and not to show off how cool he is. His scars only emphasize that. You have no idea how he got them all, but you very much want to lay him down and run your tongue over each and every one.

Your view changes as Matt plops himself down in front of the couch, seemingly unaware of your various mental crises. You tell yourself to Behave before your feet start moving again. When you get to the couch, you maneuver yourself to be behind Matt and have to bat away all your thoughts again at the sight of his shoulders.

You force yourself to focus on the task in front of you. As you grab the wet wipe to start cleaning off Matt’s back, you advise him, “Let me know if I go too hard or if anything starts to hurt, okay?”

Beneath your hands, he huffs, “Darling, I don’t think you’ll be able to hurt me. If anything, the harder, the better.”

Your face heats up a little at his words. You remember he said something similar when over you on the couch just a few nights ago. He likes things a little rough.

Once his shoulders are mostly sweat free, you get to work.

You start with smoothing your hands down his neck, then fanning out to the edge of his shoulders and back. You aren’t exactly an expert at this, but long ago in college, one ex liked to play video games while you rubbed his shoulders and you had done your fair share of research to make sure you were doing it right. You still remember most of the tips.

You add some of Minnie’s scent free baby lotion to your hands, then dig your thumbs into Matt’s neck. The muscles are tight and as you begin to push and pull at them, a deep, pleased groan comes from the man under you.

“Mmm, that feels so good.”

You can’t help but smile at the praise and it only encourages you to make sure the entire experience is enjoyable.

It is surprisingly easy for you to get completely lost in the massage. You focus in on one area and mentally picture different little arrows telling you to rub up this way or swirl your thumbs in a certain motion. Matt’s shoulders quickly become a grid for you to complete and not a laborious task of trying to bond.

Under your unskilled fingers, the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen melts. Whenever you find a knot - and there are many - he grunts and sighs and you can tell he is starting to relax. The tension in his shoulders fade and you actually get to see the moment his jaw unclenches. He opens his mouth and scrunches his nose, making the apples of his cheeks plump up. You peek at the television to catch his reflection and your heart warms at the pleased look on his face.

You wonder if it would be possible to get him to fall asleep like this and decide that is a challenge for another day. Right now, you want to pamper him.

You slowly work your fingers back up towards his neck, then decide to take a chance based on what you know he likes.

As you reach his hairline, you tilt your fingers forward so your nails are against his skin, then begin to slowly scritch at his scalp like he’s an overgrown cat.

The results are instantaneous. Matt pushes his head into the touch, a low guttural moan coming up from his throat.

It is Filthy. It goes right to your core, making you clench around nothing, and you can’t stop yourself from asking in a soft, teasing voice, “Feel good?”

He hums in an affirmative, tilting his head back far enough that he needs to lean against the couch for support. You keep your fingers where they are, as it's clear he is trying to direct you to where it feels the best - the top of his head. You scritch there, smiling as you fluff up his hair even more.

Matt looks absolutely blissed out - his eyes are closed, his lips are parted, and you are pretty sure if you keep at this, he might just turn into Jello.

Which is exactly what you want.

He works so hard for everyone, running himself into the ground to bring justice to Hell’s Kitchen, and you think he needs some time to just relax.

So, you begin to plan.

As you gently drag your nails through Matt’s hair, you let your mind begin to think up ideas for a nice family spa day while your laptop and dark thoughts sit on the dining room table, forgotten about.

---

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@two-unbeatable-beaters @kiwwia-wiwwia @1988-fiend @xblueriddlex @loves0phelia @ninacotte @lovelyygirl8 @littlenosoul @ednaaa-04 @ astridstark13

@lovingkryptonitehideout @moongirlgodness @soocore @bluestuesday

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@nennia-2000 @seasonofthenerd @abucketofweird @mattmurdockstateofmind @imagineswritersblog @hazelhavoc @smile-child-13 @allst4rsfall @hashcakes @kezibear @mapleaye @sammanna @gamingfeline @moon-glades @nightwitherspring @phoenix666stuff @dare-devil

@ladyoflynx @hobiebrowns-wife @sarcasm-n-insomnia @lillycore

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@theclassicvinyldragon @aoi-targaryen @lunaticgurly @nikitawolfxo @shireentapestry @snakevyro @yondiii @echos-muses @honeybug-victoria @the-bisaster @ristare

@mrs-bellingham @eugene-emt-roe @cometenthusiast @stevenknightmarc @yes-im-your-mom @hunnybelha @actorinfluence @capbrie @prowlingforfood @jupitervenusearthmars

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#soulie writes #fanfiction #matt murdock x reader #daredevil #and then i met you #daredevil x reader

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merakiui · 3 months ago

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I saw Eldricht Horror Riddle and… You’re so big brained 😔

Eldritch horror Riddle who doesn’t know how to use his bottom half yet, so he just uses appendages and his mouth to overstimulate you. Maybe if all you can think about when you think of this house, is pleasure, you’ll never want to leave him :(((

- 🎨📝 anon

👁️ 👁️ omg this is brilliant!!!!

Appendages holding you down while he’s between your legs, sloppily pleasuring you. You try to protest, to pull yourself free of these slimy tendrils, but they’re too strong and sticky,,, like tree sap. He doesn’t talk much, only lifting his head and peering at you with those big eyes of his, pupils blown even more wide with a feral sort of excitement. Those same appendages will latch onto your nipples, and within no time you’re tossing your head back and sobbing. It feels too good,,, you don’t even know this creature’s name or what he is, but he doesn’t seem to want to hurt you. Only keep you here in the house, looking after and protecting you, pleasuring you…

And he can’t be satisfied with wringing just one orgasm out of you!! You’re boneless, begging him to stop after hours of blissful, torturous overstimulation. If you manage to pull yourself out of his hold, hoping to scurry away, he’ll latch onto you and drag you right back to his mouth. >:)

He’s seemingly everywhere in the house. In the bath, those tendrils are in the tub with you, fucking into you until you can hardly stand and he helps you out. Or in the kitchen while you’re preparing a meal (he’s helping) and those appendages are curled all over your body. Now you’ve learned to wear just an apron if you want to avoid your clothes being ripped and ruined in his haste to have you naked. ^^;;;

Maybe you can help him learn to walk if it’s possible,,, or make him feel good in return? <3 he’ll love you either way.

#twisted chit chat #🎨📝 anon #n/sfw #tw: dubcon

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mattsundaes · 2 months ago

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not to be a whore with a capital W but i've been thinking of nothing aside from oliver learning that reader has never blown a guy before, and instead of going feral, he opts for a more gentle approach.

i imagine him cupping your face to have you look up at him, and smiling at you sweetly, before letting you take him into his mouth slowly. no rush and no pressure. and the whole time he keeps a hand on your head to guide you, and his other hand is enterwined with your free hand because he's a sap too from time to time and and and AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA and the fact that this works for matsukawa too is so sickening i actually need to get it together before i combust 😞

nonnie baby u have arrived in whoretown!!!!! whore behaviour is mandatory!!!

oh no oh no this is taking me OUT :') because i can just see oliver thinking about the girls that he's been with before who have either not liked giving blowjobs period, or ones where the whole act just felt like more of a means to an end than anything else.

oliver doesn't want that for you.

he wants you to enjoy it. he wants you to want his dick in your mouth just for the sake of sucking it, not with the express purpose of making him cum. (and especially if he catches onto your oral fixation beforehand, your tendency to get all doped out and pliant when he puts his fingers in your mouth. he wants you to use his dick like that, too.)

—think about when you finally take him balls deep, you're inhaling slowly through your nose, drool spilling out past your lips as your eyes water slightly. but oliver's keeping an iron grip on his hips, careful not to jostle your throat as he looks down at you with a soft smile, cupping your face and telling you how good you're doing.

#💌 inbox #anon #also YES YES YES IT'S ABSOLUTELY ISSEI TOO

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avelera · 5 months ago

Text

(Writing Meta) Syncing Opposites: The Stuff of Popular Ships

I've been thinking about some of the fandom-darling most popular ships in my orbit and noticing patterns.

For example, many popular ships tend to pair together two opposites, the Red Oni x Blue Oni, or the traditional Odd Couple pairing (often a comedy duo). Indeed, pretty much ever buddy act in media inevitably gets shipped, even if it wasn't intended, from Mulder and Scully, Kirk and Spock, to pretty much literally any cop duo.

But it's not quite as simple as setting up two people to be opposites, especially if you're a writer trying to make the ship work. To my eyes, the actual formula is this:

Character A x Character B 1) What they have in common that is central to the overarching plot (or their character's individual plot) or theme. 2) A concept that is central to them or their story in which they are polar opposites 3) Bonus points if their character or overarching plots eventually close the gap on the differences between them OR swap entirely.

The similarities and differences are not limited to one each. Let's go through some examples.

Wicked (Musical): Elphaba x Glinda

1) What they have in common: Magic. Both women are interested in improving their skills at magic, one is naturally gifted, the other wants to learn. Or, they both arguably want to be at the center of important events. These desires force them into proximity with each other. 2) Concept central to their story or themes in which they are opposite: Popularity. Elphaba is so unpopular that it's almost comical, whereas Glinda is THE popular girl. There's a song about it and everything. This concept has thematic resonance throughout the story of Wicked, which enagages with themes of popularity, personal presentation, propaganda, and societal injustice. By putting Elphaba and Glinda on either side of the concept of "popularity" we can more deeply explore these themes.

Arcane: Jayce x Viktor

1 ) What they have in common: Science. Science brings these two together into the story and they share the same level of obsession with it. It drives their desires in the world.

2) Concept central to their story or themes in which they are opposites: Physical ability, or arguably, how they are received by others. Jayce is extremely physically able and appears to be something of a generalist who is good at everything he touches. Viktor by contrast has a degenerative illness sapping his life away. He is also introverted and a specialist, more interested in deep-diving into science. He doesn't go outside his lane.

3 ) How the concept swaps: By the end of S2, however, Jayce and Viktor have swapped on who is the able-bodied one. Jayce has been horribly injured and is a ragged shadow of his once "Golden Boy" image, whereas Viktor becomes a beloved popular figure as the Commune Leader and healer of the undercity, he is fully able bodied and indeed enhanced by magic and science (we learn for the worst). This swap is central to Jayce and Viktor's themes of human imperfection being beautiful.

Pacific Rim: Newt x Hermann

1 ) What they have in common: Science (noticing a theme in the ships I like?). Both Newt and Hermann are obsessed with science and, on a more nuanced level, science as a way of saving the world.

2 ) Concept central to their story or themes in which they are opposites: their approach to science. Newt is chaotic and free-spirited, Hermann is methodical and buttoned up in a classic "Odd Couple" pairing.

3) But, by the end, they learn to overcome their differences and, indeed, by the second film they've even swapped places apparently on who is the chaotic one and who is the "buttoned up" one.

The Sandman: Dream x Hob

1 ) What they have in common: Immortality. They visit each other periodically every century in order to talk about Hob's life.

2 ) Concept central to their story or themes in which they are opposites: Approach to life and/or power. Dream is at least passively suicidal at the point he meets Hob whereas Hob wants to live forever. Also, Dream is extremely powerful as a god whereas Hob is just a human being, though he has moments where he has more or less power as a person. While these two never swap in their desire to live, the desire to live is central to their interplay with one another, which allows them to explore the deeper themes of the story of what does it mean to live forever, whether you want to or not.

Eh, I could go on but I'd be more interested to see how others apply this to their ships and to hear from others.

#writing #maggie rambles #newmann #gelphie #jayvik #dreamling

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forgottenphantom · 6 months ago

Text

Hey y'all! I have finished a very rough draft of my fic and wanted to see what thoughts or ideas could go into this first chapter! So anything that you like/dislike/would like to see, the air is free.

Update:

The sunlight made his skin tingle, a gentle warmth running through his body but almost felt like a poison that was trying to cure itself from his being. The flowers surrounding him gave off beautiful hues of blues and yellows, they danced softly to the breeze. His dark gloves cupped in front of him with a small bug resting, he couldn't remember what it was. Someone had told him.. Who was that… Them? Nine of them? Who were they again? Lifting his head as the group was far from him, were they just a mirage? One was waving at him. Closing his eyes as he felt himself fall back, awaiting the feeling of flowers to cushion him. Only to feel an icy cold wave crash over him.

Chains rattled from above his head, the pitter-patter of water dripping from the stone ceiling onto the floor. His head hung down as gravity pulled onto his muscles, his wrists aching as the metal braced into inky flesh. His shoulders burned, joints felt like they were dislocated out of the sockets as his fingers buzzed due to the loss of feeling. Feet dangling meters above the floor, his body was suspended. A wheeze broke the trance of the water dripping, his conscience slowly fading back in. The air was stale as it invaded his senses, his lungs constricting for any relief. The dark miasma wrapped its tendrils around his throat, squeezing against his windpipe before letting go. A warning of what is to come…?

His hat fell onto the ground.

Who put him here? … Demise.

A pained whine.

What is pulling at his skin? … It H̴͉͙͕́͒͠U̴̺͇̐R̷̮̤͊̑͂T̷̺̱͇͛͌͝Ś̶ͅ…

Heavy fog filled his mind.

Where did he lose this time? The echoes of a war…

The cries of soldiers stabbed his brain.

How did he get back here? He lost again…

A Goddess hum vibrating his bones.

Why is this his destiny? His purpose…

Death?

A groan rumbled through his chest as his eyes fluttered open, the glow of red piercing the darkness of his cell as his eyes groggily shifted around. Unable to focus his vision as he pried his head from gravity’s hold, his head loping to the side as the chains closest to his eyes had a red hue glowing off them. Freedom. Glancing around as his body dissipated into the shadows to escape from the freezing chains that caused his body discomfort, reforming on the ground as his body crumbled onto his knees and hands.

“Shit..” It felt like energy was being sapped out of him, even shifting into the shadows felt like a blinding light had slashed through him. His forehead rested against the cold floor as he racked his thoughts, his memory was walled up. He couldn't remember why he was placed here again, why this room again. He had to have failed, that was the one reason he was being punished. A hand patting himself down as a hiss left his lips once he touched his stomach, a soreness of a wound that was recently healing.

Holding back his tongue as his fingers grazed over the spot again, the stinging running down his spine as he slammed his head against the floor. A push against the psychological wall, a dam being broken as his nails dug into the spot. He was sliced down by that dawned sword… Nails broke the skin as each flare of pain brought more and more. Cia had summoned him to fight her war. Using him as a tool to defeat the Hero, using him as a shield to stop herself from falling. She treated him like a tool, like a puppet. Just like that Sage. Just like Veran.

SLAM…

His head slammed onto the ground. His lips curled as his eyes squeezed shut. He was just a puppet to them. Something for them to use over and over. A Sage learned about his existence and proceeded in using him as some sort of test for a damn Hero that the Goddess had graced. He was nothing but a test, he was just a pawn in the grand scheme. No one cared as his body was continuously stabbed through as his blood sprayed onto the ground, how the so-called Hero didn't take a second glance. All they cared about was that damn Triforce, not him. Not someone they killed.

SLAM..

Veran forced his body to split into four and used him for her own health, how the Hero sliced through him with ease in a weakened form.. He barely was healed from the last time and she had no regrets in using him, all to revive Ganon… Bullshit.

SLAM.

The Master sword sliced into him each time Cia forced his body to block her. She didn't care if he had fears or wishes. Each version of him burning into the next. The Hero looked down at him as his pitch-black blood fizzled off the sword, his curse being rejected. Even the Goddess knew he was nothing. He wanted to be something.

SLAM!

A tool. A tool. A tool. A tool. A tool. A too-

CRACK-

Stars lined his vision as he threw his body back, sitting up on his knees as his head was tilted up towards the chains that he was once suspended from. His eyes shifted left to right as he saw multiple sets, he must have overdone it this time.. His blood trickled down his face as laughter bubbled deep in him, his lips trembling as his cackling bounced off the walls. His hands reached up towards his heart, his fingers gripping onto his tunic. The cell around him warped to that dungeon, to the room with the lone tree. Endless water as his punishment for failing… He could hear the Heroes mocking him, laughing as his body was cut down. The Goddess burning his existence over and over, waiting to snuff out the last of his life. No one was in the cell but he swore there were pairs of eyes staring at him, five sets. Each set was staring with murderous intent. Footsteps echoed between his ears, twitching up towards the sounds with whale eyes. Five different Heroes surrounded him with their blades held high above his head.

Was this real? Was he imagining this? The Heros' mouths didn't move but they laughed. They screamed. They yelled. They cried. Did they know he was praying to the Goddesses that this was real? His lip wobbled as he closed his eyes, accepting his fate. Swallowing. Something burning the back of his eyes, he knew it wasn't blood. His hands trembled.

Why was he so afraid?

»»——— +=={:::::::::::::::::> ———««

The world was created by three Goddesses, each containing an incredible amount of power. Din, the creator of the mountains and valleys. Nayru, filling lakes and oceans with wisdom. Farore, placing life with courage to survive across the planet. They left room for other deities to form, one of light that was given the Triforce to protect, Hylia. But when there is light, there is darkness. The corners of the Earth shrouded in eternal suffering, The Demon King Demise. His corruption turned people and the lives on the land to turn onto each other, his own army slaughtering thousands for the taste of destroying the peace.

His existence flickered awake as Demise was being sealed away by Her, his eyes opening to the blue sky as the Goddess took her final breath.

»»——— +=={:::::::::::::::::> ———««

Dark Link kneeled before the destroyed throne, spots in the walls warped from different places as the Dark world's distortion became stronger. Bowing his head as his God gave him an unimaginable task. Attempting to conceal his expressions as he blinked, his eyes scattered around the floor. Surely he heard wrong, surely he didn't hear that Demise wanted him to take down nine different Heroes of the ages.

“Sir, how would I manage to attempt that? There are unimaginable amounts of timeliness to jump through. Not to ment-” His head rising up to be met with multiple large hands of concentrated malice, eyes barring deep into his as he could feel his own breath brushing against him. Able to see his own reflection, he was showing too much emotion. Swallowing his words as he tried to look past the threats, he never saw these before. Puddles of the concentrated power seeping around him as Demise grew more and more impatient. A cold bead of sweat sliding down his back as the hands circled around him, their eyes watching his every movement as the potent corrupted burned his legs.

“Do you dare question your God?! Do you believe I would give you an impossible task, Slave?” The voice boomed through the room, the ceiling shaking as pebbles rained from above, pelting him in the back as he held back coughing from the dust invading his airways. He could feel Demise's patience wearing thin, the Red Malice was seeping into the corners of the room. Smaller hands appearing. Somehow Demise was growing stronger by the minute.

“No-no Lord Demise, never. I just simply wan-” He sputtered as one of the hands grabbed his jaw, stopping his sentence. It's grip had no mercy, for it wasn't a creature that could think. He could feel his lower jaw cracking, his body instantly trying to repair it. ‘Fuck.’ He could only watch as Demise grew tired of him. He slipped up. He was going to die.

“Want? You suddenly want now?” A condescending tone. Mocking Dark Link, mocking something that can't have its own thoughts. “You have no wants, no worries, no fears. I created you as a puppet, a tool!” The hand that held his jaw threw him back as he rolled against the floor, his shoulder taking the blunt force. Biting his tongue as his stomach burned, gripping the spot as his head hung down. He didn't dare look up to see his Lord. The hair on the back of his neck prickling as the skin on his face healed shockingly slow, something about the Red Malice was not normal at all. “The Witch had put multiple Heroes on a quest together, that will be how you will take them down.” Dark didn't dare speak another word, he held his head down as he nodded. Demise would only continue this torment if he gave any more of a reaction, he had to hold himself together. “Failure will not be an option, if you return here without it. I will disassemble your very essence piece by piece. Understand, Dark?”

“... Understood, Master.”

#lu dark link #dark link #linkeduniverse #linked universe #loz #legend of zelda #wip #ao3 writer

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deceit-and-knowledge · 3 months ago

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*Waves*

Hey, Sage... I hope you have some time to spare. Truthless Recluse wants to talk to you.

*Gives Truthless Recluse a thumbs up and a pat on the head before hopping out of a window to give them space.*

- Egg Anon

t: ...goodbye..

f: ...

t: ....

why must you be like this. You let the words of others get to your head? That's not what the virtue of knowledge should be, you shouldn't cast aside your wisdom for insecurity. You know better than th-

f: YOU DON'T KNOW ME!

t: don't yell at me. Don't be a fool sage, *gently caresses sage's cheek* I may not know much about you but what I do know, is you're casting aside your truth for comforting lies. Lies will only hurt you in the long run. You can't see them and accept them as loving. You may not ever become that monster however the path you're on now will only force fates hand to be true. I gave up on the truth but you don't need to. Deceit, truth.

*backs up*

None of that matters but what does is who you are deep down, you are sage. A kind hearted loving figure of academia, the face and founder of many magics and even a teacher of such. Do not look me in the eyes and tell me that doesn't matter. It's not the life you chose but you choose to continue it. You fear failure, yes? Well you're failing yourself right now being some needless sad sap over the words of a single cookie that you took a liking to because of your own selfish jealously and crave for love.

This isn't how you get it. You be you. You aren't being you, you're being violent and sad. I like the you that's true to himself not some version burdened by words.

i told you I would accept you even if you became a beast, I lost love for the cookies and this world but I'll make an exception for you.

...

I care about you. I've grown to care. Because you remind me of who I was, a happier time for me.

I forgot that feeling..

f: .....

...I.. don't get it..

t: what do you not get? What is there to get, why I care? Why anyone would care about you? Don't pull that on me.. you deserve to be cared about. *Puts hand on sages shoulder*

f: ...ghk..i..mph.. *shakes head* no..

t: no? You don't think you do?

f: *shivering* ...i....

t: *noticing sage is trying to not cry* ...*sighs* do not avoid your emotions. I will not judge you..you are not what the beast says .

f: I AM THAT'S THE ISSUE.. HES RIGHT.

t: ....

f: how can I call myself a teacher when I cry more than my students and I've taught Kindergarteners!!

t: .....why yes, he's not wrong. That's just who you are. You're emotional but that's fine. You'll learn to control your emotions one day but doesn't everyone still have growing up to do...don't be coy or act insolent. Cry. I plead you.

bottling it up will only make you feel worse. Let your emotions free.

Don't. Be like me.

Do not ever be like me. Lose your emotions because you casted them aside.

You casted aside everything you stand for because of a failure and loss of yourself and someone you cared for. apathy isn't great. You feel no more burdens but you feel nothing.

cry.

I will be here.

f: .....

*hic*.. *sniffle* ..n..no I c..

t: *brings sage into a hug* cry. *Gently rubbing his back and running his hands through sage's starry yet milky hair* I'm sorry. I know I can't fix what's been done but I'm sorry. You hold so much pain in your heart and you're damaged but I can help pick up the pieces.. maybe I'll pick up my own if I'm lucky....

f: *crying*

t: I'll help you and you'll help me. Okay?..

..friend..

f: f-friend....?

#Ooc: posts that kill people who are invested in tr and s's relationship #THEY'RE FRIENDS GUYS #cookie run rp #crk rp #crk au #crk roleplay #cookie run au #cookie run roleplay #shadow milk cookie #pure vanilla cookie #cookie run kingdom au #rp blog #crk truthless recluse #truthless recluse #pre corrupted shadow milk #sage of truth #fount of knowledge

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blue-disco-lights · 21 hours ago

Text

A little ficlet for Gallavich Week 2025 - for the Rainbow prompt 💕 Thank you @gallavichthings!

Preview above the cut, and the rest is below... full story on AO3.

Mickey is flat on his back - and not in the way he likes.

Their anniversary weekend, so Ian insisted on another one of his moonlight picnics in the old dugouts. As always, he’d come prepared with a soft blanket, dinner in to-go boxes, and of course, a six-pack of Old Style in his backpack. Because you can’t fuck with tradition.

His husband actually wanted to look for shooting stars. The sap.

Ian’s warm hand finds its way into his. And as they lay there, watching the sky (and likely due to the top-tier edibles they enjoyed for dessert), Mickey thinks about color.

How, from the day Ian burst into his life, his world had exploded in it. He closes his eyes as memories take over….

Mickey pounds his fist into his baseball mitt and wonders for the 100th time why his dad all of a sudden cared about them having “afterschool activities.” Not like they were some normal TV family. Mickey’d been in charge of himself since he learned how to walk.

The only reason he got roped into this Little League shit was to fuel Terry’s ego, that much he knew.

It’s bad enough getting into this dumbass uniform, but he has to listen to Coach drone on about “team work”. And getting yelled at when he doesn’t perfectly follow the rules.

“Milkovich, get back on base or consider yourself benched for the rest of the game!” comes the booming voice, and Mickey just about loses it then. He doesn’t need this, he gets yelled at enough at home.

So he does the next best thing to raising his middle finger in Coach’s face. He unzips his fly and pisses right on the base. He’d never felt more free in his short life.

He looks around the field, smirking at Coach’s fury, the stunned, laughing faces of his teammates - and catches sight of this one kid, absolutely losing his shit on the next base over.

He’s laughing so hard, he’s doubled over, tears streaming down his little freckled face. He swipes the baseball hat off his head … to reveal the brightest red hair Mickey has ever seen.

Mesmerized, he barely remembers zipping his pants back up, before Coach storms over and leads him off the field.

Mickey knows he’ll be in trouble with his dad after pulling that stunt… but seeing that kid made it all fuckin’ worth it.

====

Every memory of their life together after that is in technicolor.

His ratty green scarf, and the blue Gatorade at the Kash & Grab. The red comforter on Mickey’s old bed. The orange glow of the cigarette they shared in the dugouts right after he got out of juvie that first time. Telling Ian he was “fucked for life” and actually believing it.

The hot yellow sun beating down on them as he watched Ian run around the obstacle course, training for the Army. Ian’d green camo pants, how much shit Mickey gave him for looking like such a dork, but loving the way they looked anyway.

The pulsating lights in the Fairy Tale after he’d finally found him there. How they lit up his face when they were standing on that stage together, Ian’s eyes full of challenge. Make your move on me. And so he did. He still remembers how it felt to kiss him in that moment, bathed in blues and indigos.

And all the moments after that – the orange and pink flowers on that dress he wore at the border. That green tank top Ian wore when he was really sick. Those heinous yellow prison jumpsuits. The orange juice on the Gallagher’s kitchen table. The rainbow Fruit Loops always on tap during Covid.

The bright blue of the Stargazer Lillies at their wedding. The green of Ian’s tomato garden on their patio, in their home.

Mickey looks up at the violet sky, minutes from turning pitch black. The stars are almost visible.

He turns his head and looks at Ian. Their eyes meet, and he can’t help thinking what a beautiful life they’ve had together. And wonder what vibrant moments lie ahead.

#gallavich things 2025 #GW2025 #a celebration of all the ways they used color on this show!#and how certain colors make me think of different points of their story #gallavich fanfic #ian x mickey

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azsazz · 1 year ago

Text

Comets

Lucien x Reader [Starfall Week Day 7]

Summary: @starfallweek Day 7 Prompt: Character A and B spend Starfall in a different court, learning all of the traditions.

Warnings: None

Word Count: 1,339

Notes: This one also goes out to the anon who was begging me for some Lulu action 💙

_________________________________________

The wind brushes his copper hair over his shoulders and the sun makes the freckles dusting his nose shine. You watch your mate spread his arms wide and throw his head back, drinking in a deep breath of the crisp, fresh Autumn Court air.

He never thought he would be back.

It has been a long many years since he was exiled from the Autumn Court on the happenstance of falling in love. Falling in love with someone that his father didn’t approve of. Falling in love with someone who wasn’t his mate.

Lucien had every intention of marrying Jesminda, lower fae or no. His young heart leaped happily in his chest whenever she was around. They were both blind to their problems as a couple, brushing off their arguments to roll around in the grassy fields, watching the leaves change color over their heads.

It had taken a long time to get over her. He never really did, honestly. Of course, the love that had been so fiery and new, scorched him when she died. But it was nothing like how it is with you, his true mate.

Lucien turns his head over his shoulder, tears lining his russet eye. The mechanical one whirs softly, and the smile on his lips shakes a little, making your heart ache in your chest. He holds a hand out to you, wanting to share this moment with you.

The moment he can freely cross back into Autumn Court territory without fearing for his life.

While your mate had found a new home in the Night Court, found you in the Night Court, this isn’t a moment he’d allowed himself to think about, no matter how many promises his older brother made in their passing moments at meetings or gatherings. Their father is finally dead and Eris crowned the new High King of Autumn.

He swears he can hear it, the joy across the lands carried on the winds blowing you closer to him. Lucien smiles sneakily at that look you give him. So he used a little mixture of his Autumn and Day Court powers to sweep the wind up. He wants you in his arms, how can you be upset at that?

You reach up with your free hand, caressing Lucien’s face, wiping at the lone tear rolling down his cheek.

“Are you ready?” you ask, with a soft smile.

His throat works around a swallow and he takes your hand, kissing your palm so sweetly. “With you? Of course.”

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•

The Autumn Court is everything you thought it might be, but even more so because Lucien looks like he’s never left.

There’s something about being in the territory that has awoken something long lost in your mate. The air, fresher than the other courts, filling his lungs with the scents of pine and sap, cinnamon and pumpkin. The black you thought he looked striking in is nothing compared to the hues of the autumnal clothing he’d almost immediately switched them out for; the olive greens and deep navy’s, crimsons and nutty browns.

Your first pit stop had been the bakery his mother always took him to when he was young. He missed their sweets deeply, and you laughed at the amount of pastries he tried buying. Lucien had hand fed you a caramel treat and your eyes widened at the burst of flavor that hit your tastebuds. There was no stopping either of you from spending a pretty coin on the treats filling your arms sky high.

“This one, my love, is a Starfall tradition,” he explains, handing you a sample of the warmed treat. It looks something similar to a Night Court treat you remember your mother making. Popping it into your mouth you nearly melt at its deliciousness.

“Luc, we need to buy all of these,” you say in amazement, not waiting for his answer before you’re opening your mouth to speak to the worker. Lucein’s chuckle warms you to your very bones but you pout as he guides you away from the shop.

“There will be plenty more at the Woodland House tonight, my love,” he says with a grin. “My family hires a specific baker every year during the month of Starfall to make sure they never run out. Trust me, with seven boys running around, they were constantly in low supply.”

You laugh with your mate, enjoying the shining of his eyes at the fond memory. You want to hear more of the good times he’s had in his home court. It’s not something he often speaks about, because there are more bad than good, but when you do get to hear one of his favorite memories, it always makes you smile.

“So, what does tonight have in store for us?” you ask, popping some of the chocolate and caramel drizzled popcorn into your mouth. Another Autumn Court staple. Your mate is going to turn you into a sweet-tooth yet.

“First, we have a formal dinner with the family,” Lucien explains, and you can see how the joy melts into nervousness. He hasn’t seen the entirety of his family since the day he was chased out of the Court, where two of his brothers died at the hands of him and Tamlin. He’s not sure how the remaining brothers besides Eris feel about him. Pyrolas doesn’t care about anyone’s presence besides his own, but he is the son so much like his father. Conleth never wanted problems with anyone, and Oakland was ever the rational one. If any of his brothers might have missed him, he would put his coin on those two.

“We don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” you offer softly. You would never make Lucien do something that he didn’t feel comfortable doing. You’re sure there’s a nice place the both of you can hide out until the party afterwards begins. Or perhaps you can check into an inn and celebrate Starfall in the streets with the rest of the peoples of the Autumn Court.

“No,” he shakes his head and rolls his shoulders, straightening his spine. “I’ve missed out on Starfall dinners for long enough. I’m ready.”

You nod, offering him the tin of popcorn. “Want some?”

“Thank you, my love,” Lucien smiles, taking a handful. “Besides, Eris mentioned that he was pulling out all of the stops this year. Told me that it is going to be the best Starfall this court has ever seen.”

You hum, wondering just what that sly, new High Lord might have planned.

“What happens after dinner?” you ask, trailing along a path leading up to the Woodland House. You’re not sure how far it is, but you don’t mind the walk with your mate, drinking in the scenes the court has to offer.

“Then, we’ll congregate on the outer porches and there will be drinks of all kinds,” Lucein explains, perking up again. “You’re going to have to try the cinnamon one, my love. It’s my favorite.” Your mate laughs at your grimace. Cinnamon in the form of alcohol is not your favorite. “There’s also one that tastes like Yulemas. You’ll love that one.”

“Don’t let me drink too much, Lucien Vanserra,” you tease, “Or I won’t be able to participate in the after Starfall activities.”

You squeal as Lucein drags you off the path and presses you against a nearby tree, dipping down to taste the taunt from your lips. His tongue brushes the seam of your lips and you part easily for him, moaning when he presses his quickly thickening cock into your hip.

You’re breathless when he straightens, feeling as giddy as ever, like the first time you and he ever kissed.

“How about some pre Starfall activities, my love?” he asks, licking the remnants of you from his lips. His russet eye glows bright and his mechanical one clicks softly.

You take his hand and pull him away from the tree, dragging him back up the path. “Come on then, Vanserra. Show me what you’ve got.”

#lucien x reader #lucien vanserra #lucien vanserra fluff #starfall week 2024 #acotar #azsazz #acomaf #acowar #lucien/reader #lucien vanserra x reader #lucien vanserra x you

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mostbelovedaewwrestlertournament · 7 days ago

Note

After Miro beat Darby for the TNT championship I tweeted at him that i hope the next meal he has tastes bad and gives him diarrhea and I got a 24 hour ban for it!

So then i put a bounty on him, whoever can beat him and take the belt off him would be my "new favorite wrestler" and I'd buy 1 of their shirts from the shop.

Well I'm not sure if we remember how that all played out but Miro pretty handily beat a list of guys i would've been happy to call my favorite. in the end it was Sammy fuckin Guevara who inexplicably beat Miro and, being a man of my word, I became a contractually obligated Sammy fan. I kept the bit going too until I couldn't even do it in good faith anymore because Sammy just really sucks as a person.

So I was at the laundromat one day and I pulled the "spanish god" shirt from the dryer and looked at it. Then i looked at the lost and found hamper, the back to the shirt. I retired the shirt then and there. Some poor sap in Erie PA got a free Sammy shirt and I washed my hands of him.

And that's why I have personal beef with Miro. Looks like he's on the run of a lifetime over there in WWE now OH WAIT he's had one match against Otis and has disappeared again from what I hear.

It could've been Eddie Kingston and I'd still be walking around in a "redeem deez nuts" shirt

If I learn nothing else from doing this tournament, I've at least learned this story and that in itself has made it all worth it

#most beloved aew wrestler tournament

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marshmallowprotection · 1 month ago

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I wanna make Ray laugh and then tell him he has an adorable laugh.................hehe.........

"So, what you're saying is this character is... silly?"

"Mhm! I know you're not too big on jokers since their personalities tend to bother you, but I think you'll like this one if you give him just an itty bitty chance."

"Well... he is my favorite color, after all. I suppose I could give him a chance for your sake. For what it's worth, I don't hate jokes when it's something where I can make the punchline instead of someone else."

"Oh? This is the first I've heard of this, Ray! I didn't know you liked to tell jokes!"

"Well, I'm not that good at it. But, I had a lot of fun playing that prank on the RFA the other day," his lips curled into a bemused smile. "That is the kind of joke I like to make. A punchline where someone has to see the ruse over their eyes slowly crumble... now, those are what I would like to call funny. None of that nonsense those people spout in the chatroom."

"No knock-knock jokes, then?" you asked.

He shook his head, "Well, I'm sure I would laugh if you told one. You have a way with words, [Y/N]. Your jokes would never fall flat."

Ray's smile was contagious and he was none the wiser to that fact. It might not have occurred to anyone else to beam ear from ear as soon as he entered the room, but they didn't know him the way you did. He had a laugh that could charm someone's socks off because when a giggle graced his lips, it meant that he was comfortable enough to be vulnerable with you.

Mint Eye was dreary, dark, and devoid of joy even though it was sold as a haven for those who wanted nothing more than to smile instead of frown. It sapped away at someone's life force until there was not a thing left but a hollow shell that only knew how to breathe and follow orders.

You'd seen that look in Ray's eyes before, and you weren't very keen on seeing it stay. You wanted it gone. You wanted him to laugh for as long as he wanted to, not for as long as he was allowed. A smile was such a simple gesture and yet, it was held at arm's length despite his desire to do it more. Being with you made him happy, but being that way in a place that wanted to destroy him would only serve to hinder him.

He couldn't smile, laugh, or sing when he was with you on the off-chance someone would punish him for it later. You hated that fact. The last thing he deserved was someone punishing him for such a simple thing. What crime was it for someone to be happy when he was promised a paradise of bliss? This bliss was nothing more than Rika's kingdom of lies.

So, you decided you would give him a reason to smile in a den of hungry wolves. He needed to laugh, to smile, and to know that he could have fun in ways that didn't hurt him or other people in the process. "What do you call a flower magician that only knows one magic trick?"

"Hmm. I don't know, what do you call them?" You giggled, "A one trick peony!"

It took him a moment to register the joke but once he did, he begin to laugh that fruitful chuckle that made your heart swell. Sure, it was no better than a dad joke but you didn't care about the quality. You cared about his amusement! His eyes sparkled with sincere mirth and your heart... well, it felt warm all over again. This was the happiest you had felt in days because he sounded happy, too.

He pressed a gloved hand to his lip but it did nothing to muffle the sound. "Hehehehe. That's a good one, prince/ss."

"Your laughter is adorable," you complimented. "I can't lie, I wanted to hear it again. Thank you for humoring my joke."

His cheeks began to burn. "If it will make you happy, my dearest one... I'll listen to every joke you have to tell, even if it's ridiculous because seeing you smile makes me feel good. Knowing that my laughter could make your day brighter... I could learn how to laugh more just for your sake."

"We'll laugh together," you said, taking his free hand in yours to make a point. "Don't just laugh for my sake, Ray. Make sure you're laughing because you want to laugh sometimes, too, okay?"

"...I'll try."

"Thank you."

#sensetenou #ask #mod kait #mystic messenger #mysme #saeran choi #mysticmessenger #mm #choi saeran #ray choi #choi ray #ray mm #ray mysme #mysme ray #mm ray #mystic messenger ray #ray mystic messenger #drabble

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rooks-dagger · 6 days ago

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Dragon Age OC Demon Tag

Oooh this one got me thinking! Thanks for the tag, @master-of-the-elements! 💜

Gently tagging @themildmahariel @in-the-drowning-deep @dancing--lights @litchigaming @fatagenda and @grimrevolution if you'd like to play / lowkey cry about our OCs' struggles lol

How to play: Pic (if you want) of your OC a little blurb about them and what demon would be attracted to them and why. Use the demon's codex entry if you’d like and tag some peeps!

Ember "Rook" Mercar - Despair Demon

Ember would absolutely attract despair demons. She desperately wishes her answer could be Rage or Desire or even Fear. Because hope is the last thing she can afford to lose if she's going to get her team out of this mess alive.

Once upon a time, we classified these as demons of sloth, but we learned that despair demons are something quite different. They are not the antithesis of justice or valor, but rather of hope. They form nightmares tearing away the foundations of self and purpose. When brought into the world, they are most attracted to places the downtrodden populate: alienages, slums, prisons, and the like. The miasma they spread can lead to extreme behavior. We look for a rash of unexplained suicides, men and women so filled with grief they lash out. The most intelligent of these creatures are to be feared, for they not only feed on despair, they understand its causes... and seek to bring it about. From the shadows they ruin lives, drinking the tears of those who have no idea the cause of their misery is not random chance. —From a lecture by renowned hunter, Ser Hayward of the Templar Order [via Dragon Age Wiki]

Ember succumbing to a despair demon really would be her most tragic path. She'd either lose herself and her will to fight, or she'd lash out and fight without any purpose other than to harm and be harmed in return. Either way, she wouldn't be who she needs to be to lead her team against the gods.

And Ember knows this. She's struggled with despair a few times in her past but always managed to claw her way free, so she fiercely guards the hope she has now.

Look closely and you'll see Ember set her jaw and steel herself when she comes across a despair demon in battle. She hates them. Or, more accurately (as Emmrich would encourage her to reflect on her visceral reaction to spirits and demons), she hates the doubt that creeps into her mind after the fight, like a chill that won't go away. And if she doesn't find time to talk to Varric or spend time with one of the companions, that chill will only spread.

Honestly, they did a great job with the design of despair demons in this series. How they start hunched over, alone and on their knees. Their shrieks and cries once you get too close. The numbing cold and beams of ice that sap your strength and life force (heyyy depression~). How they isolate Rook from the other companions, forcing them to fight alone in the dark...

Also, can't stop thinking about this post that points out how despair demons ALWAYS single Rook out as a prime target. No matter how well Rook puts on a brave face for the team, these demons will sense their struggle like a beacon on the battlefield. And I just... *incoherent tea kettle noises* 😭

Anyways, hate fighting these bastards (*side eyes that Desperate in Dock Town side quest with THREE of 'em*) but they're a great enemy type.

#ember mercar #oh ember. she has her rough days but she always makes it through #me?? projecting on my oc? it's more likely than you'd think!#oc tag game #rook mercar #datv #dragon age

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glassrowboat · 10 months ago

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Kiss Me (Kill Me). Dottore.

Summary: And then his breath halted. Nails slotting into the same marks she had left in the leather as he gripped it tightly. One sentence was enough to have his synthetic heart beating wildly, pounding as he took in the most simple phrase possible. After all, how can one mistake the words sitting neatly right before him?

Series warnings: suicidal ideation, gore, Dottore, the author trying their best to write a psychologist without any formal studying themselves, suicide, self harm, drug abuse, unhealthy relationships, depressed reader, reader is her own character, eventual smut, religious symbolism

Chapter one:

Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

Matthew 11:28-30

Pages were pinched between deft hands, crinkling them with ease as if the words printed out on them in a rushed, messy scrawl meant no more than a spider being crushed to death under a white tissue. All without so much as a hint of protest, for what could paper do against merciless hands?

It was merely a dead tree at the end of it all. Torn from its root, broken off and left to dry in the heat of a warm day, sapping it of all the life it had only to be dunked back into water. Boiled; down to its most basic properties and pulped. All to be formed into something new: the base that starts a creation. From books, art, or scrawled secrets in a diary.

But the dead do not praise the almighty that snuffed it out, nor do any who go down into silence. So the plant it had once been withers away.

A page was torn, a sound that grated on his ears. Dottore almost recoiled on instinct, having gotten so used to the distinct rip of paper that was torn asunder after hours of work had been documented only to turn out fruitless. A waste of his time and effort as a trash bin would slowly fill and tip over.

A scowl grew on his lips.

Now just what was she doing?

In the matter of a few long strides, Dottore had moved from his spot, leaning against the doorframe to her, grabbing her wrist with ease. Capturing her attention. The woman he dared to whisper the pet name habibi to in the dark of the night between rumpled sheets and had long since dubbed Beauty jolted back, looking up at him in a manner he was well used to by now.

Her gaze was as analytical as always; from the very moment they first met to now in their silent reverie. Observing him in the very same way Dottore looked down at a subject below his eager fingers or a piece of Khaenri’ah's legacy left behind in fragments scattered across Teyvat; breaking them down and building them back up so he may understand every last piece. How it works, how it moves, how it falls, and watch it all come together again with a newfound piece of knowledge to utilize.

But contrary to those moments hidden away in his laboratory, there were no gloves separating Beauty from him like there always was with those who lay strapped down on a stainless steel vivisection table. Nay, there was only the warmth of skin against skin he had so greedily chosen to relish in for he was a man who has never tasted sweetness being drawn in by the red sheen of an apple, pointed teeth biting into it for the first time as its juices befouled his maw. Not even the snap of blue rubber against his wrists could save him from the heat of her touch.

That was something Dottore had learned long ago.

“This is the first time I've seen you out of bed in days, and it's to tear apart your work?” Dottore questioned.

At least, that's what he assumed it was. She hadn't even given him the proper chance to peek at the pages he was expecting to see littered with bullet points and breakdowns of this subject or that one all in glittery ink before her free hand was brushing it all away. Nearly knocking it off the desk as she formed a measly excuse of a stack. Ruffling could be heard, but that paled to how her fingers were splayed wide to block his prying eyes.

Only a few messy words had caught his attention, drawing him in before she ripped everything right out from under him. Sheets of paper a rug his feet weren't even planted on suddenly throwing him off balance.

Tilting his head back to thunk against something all with the gentle scoff, she huffed, not even looking up at him as “peeking now” was asked in an accusatory tone.

“Could you blame a scholar for being curious?”

“Yes, I can.”

He felt her swatting at his chest, touch as light as the gentle caress of a falling feather, as she tried to get Dottore to give her some space; if not an ample amount. It's just like she's been insisting on for days now. Endlessly. Assurances of how she's fine, that they're fine, and everything is simply peachy besides the fact she's simply been feeling a little under the weather as of late have been stuffed into his ears again and again like cotton swabs. Soon, no doubt, they would pierce the tympanic membrane and leave only blood in their wake. For today, it had reached the two week mark, and Beauty was still insisting she was “fine.”

It took no effort on Dottore's part to capture the offending limb.

His thumb ran over her wrist, over her racing pulse, until he was tracing the lines on her palm. Mapping out how they curved around them and shifted with each flex of her hand. “Someone's nervous.”

“You..” Beauty's voice trailed off, fading down to a whisper only from uttering one word. But still, he stared down at her, waiting for a proper answer on what this entire debacle had been about. “And you know I don't like you going over my work when it's incomplete.”

Dottore's fingers twitched, threatening to tighten his hold on her before he let her go.

“Then I suppose I should have come home at my usual hour then. That way, you would have had the time to hide this”- he gestured to the mess on the vanity- “away.”

Of course, she jumped, nearly throwing herself off a cliff in the process, at the chance to change the subject. “Actually, I was wondering why you're back early. You're usually so wrapped up in work.”

Which would usually end with Dottore trudging through their bedroom door after a long day, only to slip his coat off as silently as possible to drape it over a lone chair off to the side. A dull blue light would always fill the corner as he came back, flickering over his face and hers as Beauty laid in bed, illuminating the way her eyelids twitched in irritation at the sudden glow; still, she always pretended to be asleep anyway.

Never stirring from the covers.

Not even as he pressed a kiss to her forehead and slipped into the bathroom to get ready for the quiet night that awaited him; one of Dottore staring up at the ceiling while she slowly fell into the depths of the dream world he had once been ecstatic at having access to when he first ripped the Akasha from his ear and called it what it truly was: a limitation. An inhibitor. A chain wrapped around the necks of human beings like they were dogs to be shackled by Celestia's will.

The very same irking feeling at the thought greeted Dottore tonight like an old friend, beckoning him as he made his way downstairs, pulling her along with him and away from her supposed work and the wooden vanity so they could have dinner together.

Though she had first insisted on cleaning up, on getting rid of the “trash” she had “dared to pen down in the first place.” Her purple bound leather notebook with loose, torn pages sticking out of the sides was suddenly shoved into a nearby waste bin and quickly taken out to be dumped by one of the maids as they worked. All before he could even make out the design stamped into the front.

It was so unlike her, but she always did have a way of confounding him.

A reticent meal had taken up his evening; one Dottore never would have imagined bothering with five years ago, not when he could have been down in the lab with the sounds of metal clanging or the gentle hum of a machine running as he tinkered with a ruin guard. Rust would be filling his nose rather than the scent of roasted duck as he was left with something that would at least make eye contact (or the closest a ruin guard can get to such) without Dottore having to draw its chin up to look at him.

Her eyes boring into his before she pushed Dottore's hand away and told him to eat lest he let another meal go cold before he finished it. Again.

So he laid in their shared bed, the taste of mint still on Dottore's tongue from brushing his teeth after dinner, and once again started counting each dot in the ceiling above as he stared up at the all too familiar sight.

When he was younger, before he knew the truth about the false sky and the lies it whispered to him, a little boy with wide eyes and his mother’s favorite blanket wrapped around his shoulders to keep off the starving cold had done the same with the stars. No matter how itchy it had been, he would have tugged it closer, welcomed its warm embrace, as he wordlessly mouthed the words:

One thousand forty-three.

One thousand forty-four.

One thousand forty-five.

Until he was dragged inside by a hand that grabbed him a little too tightly to do the very thing Beauty had now: to fall asleep.

Her breathing steady, as unshakable as those devout to prayers and a lifetime in pews as Beauty laid curled up against one of the many pillows littering the bed, taking more comfort in the foam stuffed inside it rather than Dottore and his awaiting arms. Comfortably, her nose sat buried away in the shirt she had stolen from him, again, and her legs coiled themselves up in the sheets. She always did have a way of taking them from him in the midst of slumber.

It would be so easy to pull that damnable pillow from her clutches, to throw it off to the side and hold her close until the morning came, and he'll have to leave when the sun rises. Casting its glow across her form lying alone. Only an imprint of his body in the mattress for company, but the few words he has been able to catch scratched out from the mess of papers have been worming at his brain the entire time he had laid there counting away.

Maggots to a corpse.

Feasting on curiosity he had in spades.

One thousand fifty-two, Dottore counted.

His name had been painted across the pages. Dottore, Zandik, and the nickname she called him. Matching the one he had for her. Back then, she had a smile on her face that had halted his breath, just the way it did as he stared at handwriting he could recall all the way down to every flick of an E.

Observations, no doubt, for human behavior was her bread and butter; the very air she breathed; and the ink spilling from her pen as she wrote down every sin he dared to confess.

He had received hundreds of reports from her by now, far too many to count but stored away nonetheless, about the latest test subjects detailing every last thing she could think of. To the point that he already had a vague idea of what she would have written about him, but it was more than that. It had to be. For she wouldn't have tossed that damn journal out otherwise.

Cast it aside like dross.

With one last lingering glance her way as Beauty snored against the sheets, Dottore got out of bed.

The floorboards didn't even so much as creek below him as he walked to the door and shut it with a silent click.

A book of all things was haunting him. Causing Dottore to leave his chambers in the middle of the night to make his way down chilled halls. The presence of the cryo Archon herself decorating each corridor, each twist and turn, with the cold he had worked so hard to combat a few centuries ago with heaters so hot to the touch you couldn't even graze past one without it leaving a burn on any trace of exposed flesh. (As learned from personal experience).

Zapolyarny Palace's rubbish room should be…

The flutter of his white jacket followed Dottore as he pulled it on, having only just plucked it from where it hung before the door had smacked him in the face he made his way down a flight of steps.

Briefly, Dottore could hear his segments over their shared network prying into what he was doing. Or arguing with themselves, really; that seemed to be their favorite hobby. They always had something to say. To jabber about to the point that tamping each voice down had become second nature.

Shutting them out was easy, something he had done millions of times by now. And that was just this past six months.

The last thing he heard, flickering out as the connection was temporarily cut to dull the ache in his head was Epsilon. Petulant, as between the radio static Dottore caught something about “and you say I'm the one who should mind their own business.”

Then, all Dottore was left with was the loud groan of the trash compactor. A sound that had welcomed him time and time again after all the times he had been down here. His shoes had always hit the floor louder than necessary as he had to deal with tossing supplies that unfortunately hadn't lasted through his experiments.

It creaks a nostalgic hum.

But that wasn't why he was here.

Flexing his hands, the leather of his gloves moving with them, Dottore set to digging through the plastic bags in front of him. Tossing anything that wasn't his goal out of the way, cluttering the floor with paper cups, shredded files, and whatever else had been used and forgotten. A lesser man might have been disgusted, but this was just another Tuesday.

And then his fingers met the stained purple leather.

Kalpalata lotus print embedded on the front.

A white figure huddled over trash stood in the middle of the room, a reverent touch grazing over the cover of the journal covered in scratches and fingernails prints worn into the leather just like the flower marking the front from having gripped it too tightly.

Surely, if someone came in now, they'd look at him as if he was crazed. Maybe even shout about ghosts suddenly intruding on the palace; to which he'd only laughed.

Taking the treasure in his grasp, Dottore turned it over methodically, studying just how well worn it was. Threadbare, down to the bone as the binding threatens to fall out on him, the first page already hanging out of the book as he opens it to read his habibi’s name claiming this as hers all with one simple signature staining the surface; in a way that he couldn't find himself to mind even with the occasional drops of ink.

It was enough to have Dottore pulling his gloves off, throwing them to the floor to collect later so he could trace over each word. Even with the splatters, it was still so much neater than his own notes written down in a crazed frenzy.

And then his breath halted.

Nails slotting into the same marks she had left in the leather as he gripped it tightly.

One sentence was enough to have his synthetic heart beating wildly, pounding as he took in the most simple phrase possible.

After all, how can one mistake the words:

Wouldn't it all be easier if I was dead?

In pure black ink. No colored pens, no glitter, not even doodles in the margins or a little heart just for him, a sight Dottore had grown well used to seeing in her reports to him.

The sight made him want to hurl the book into the shadows of the room around him. Let it be forgotten between heaps of trash and plastic bags. They could hide the pages, cover them in scraps of food, and soak in the drops of half finished drink until each letter was blurred beyond recognition.

She did, after all, decide it was trash.

So wouldn't it make sense he let it be treated like it was? As long as it meant never seeing those words again.

His arm was already extended, waiting to toss it into the foul abyss and say good riddance, but what would that do, really?

In the end, he still knew.

Dottore could sit here, close his eyes, and picture that damned sentence again all because he knew.

That simple fact was enough to have Dottore grimacing in annoyance. Mind telling him the obvious, just as always, even in this moment where his emotions were stirring into a storm. Clouds in his veins and behind the eyes, raining down as he flipped to the next page.

Thursday, May 13, 1675.

Graduation was today.

I sat with a few other people in my Darshan in the cheap chairs they set up (one I swear gave me a splinter) and watched as people took their scrolls with smiles on their faces. Years of work finally came to fruition.

Good for them, really. Good for me. Or, at least, that's what I tried to remind myself as I climbed up on stage and faked a smile as I was congratulated for making it this far. But even then, I was glad to cast that hat aside, the yellow Vahumana badge staring back at me as I put it away for the last time.

Another page.

Wednesday, May 19, 1675.

I have everything packed up and ready to go for my trip back home. My clothes were cleaned and folded, books were stored in cardboard boxes (I never noticed how many I've bought or been gifted over these past few years until I saw three boxes stuffed full), knick knacks wrapped in paper for safe travel, and the key to my room set out to be returned to the dorm mother tomorrow morning.

Everything is ready for me to leave and forget these hallowed halls.

Just like my roommate already has.

She didn't even say anything to me other than a passing goodbye as she left. It's not like I was surprised. Still, you think someone you have lived with for so long would be missed despite the harsh tension between us, but maybe that's just my own feelings.

Regardless, I'll be heading back to my family home soon, at least. So that is some comfort for whatever it's worth. Even if that does mean I'll have to prepare answers for the questions they will undoubtedly ask.

And another.

Saturday, May 22, 1675.

I have just arrived back home and already I want to leave.

My family was all smiles as they welcomed me in, told me to unpack what I could before dinner, and then barged into my room to talk.

What were your classes like? What did you do while you were gone? Did you make any friends? ….And I couldn't bring myself to tell them that no, I don't think I did. Not unless you count the someone I kept bothering for the sake of helping me translate texts full of the old Sumerian dialect for my papers.

Sunday, May 23, 1675.

Sunday dinners are the same as ever, I see. The last time I had to deal with this was when I was a freshman and visited for the first official break between semesters. From there, I decided I would prefer to stay in the dorms even when it's the holidays.

But tonight, I sat before a plate full of sabz meat stew and rice and watched everyone bow their heads as my family prayed in thanks.

The entire time I refused to even blink.

Friday, May 28, 1675.

I need to find a job. At least, that's what I've been telling myself for the past five days.

The very idea of getting up and searching is draining, but so is putting a smile on as someone pops their head into my room (without knocking, mind you) and asking how I'm doing. To which I always respond with I'm fine.

I’m fine.

I have to be.

Monday, May 31, 1675.

No more heads have been poking into my room, not since I told them I was going to join the Fatui despite all the other places I applied and got accepted into. The looks I got when I told everyone over dinner, right after they all prayed, had been priceless. Completely, utterly, stupefied, and I had to keep myself from laughing.

At the very least, this new job will keep my mind distracted. I won't be able to sit at home staring at family photos from when I was younger and- all that matters is I can keep my mind distracted.

A busy mind is a good thing, keep it from wandering, so I intend to let it stay that way.

And lastly:

Friday, June 13, 1675.

Dottore traced his fingers over the date, one he knew well. Not that he'd willingly admit that. If anyone did dare to ask, they would be simply dismissed, waved away as Dottore tells them something along the lines of “I have no need to pay attention to anniversaries.”

The thirteenth of July. It was the first day she started working for him.

Dottore found himself walking back inside, journal tucked into his jacket to make sure Beauty wouldn't see it in case she was awake and sleepily tripping over her own two feet in an attempt to find him to drag him back to bed. The door to his steady swung open without so much as a creak and closed just as silently. Lock turning in place before Dottore sat down in the couch chair he so rarely used these days; not when she was always there nagging him about how it would give Dottore crooks in his neck if he fell asleep there one more time.

Her hands lingering on his shoulders and lips pressed to his mask…

Dottore pushed the wry grin that threatened to grow on his face down, opting to lean back into that same chair that threatened to swallow him into the cushions the same way the open book did its pages.

Devouring his attention.

Settling in had been…far from fun, but I unpacked what I needed for the night and left it at that; the rest can be dealt with later. Besides, compared to the day I had a few cardboard boxes barely mattered. After all, what could compare to meeting the elusive Lord Harbinger Il Dottore himself?

The endless white halls had already started to blur together, forming a maze in your head as you tried to map out each and every turn of a corner as you followed behind the man in front of you. The stray posters tacked up on the wall about lab safety barely differentiated one place from another, not even with their cheesy lines and reminders to use basic common sense. All you could rely on at the moment was the one dutifully leading you along, giving you a tour inside the depths of Zapolyarny Palace like it was nothing.

For him it surely must be.

But you were stuck watching the swing of his badge as every step you both took it moved back and forth, taunting you. It was in Snezhnayan, not common, meaning you were left glaring at symbols you couldn't understand all because you hadn't heard the man's name properly when he introduced himself after giving you a pair of safety glasses.

Lab mandated, apparently.

They would take time to get used to and you can already see yourself forgetting to take them off at the end of the day, but for now you were focusing on the tour you were being given as you chewed over the idea of just simply asking for his name again.

But by now, it felt a little too late to ask again. Even if it just was for clarifications sake.

The tapping of shoes came to a halt as you both stopped before a pair of open doors leading to a giant room. It was mostly bare, but it had three practice dummies close to the wall currently falling from the pikes they had been strung up. Keeling over onto the black stained floor beneath them covered in ash.

A lone boot print stood in the inky black, leaving a patch of white into the inky abyss.

And more boot prints trailed a path along the floor until they fully disappeared.

“And here is where we run physical trials for test subjects.” He shot you a look as he said: “but I don't think you'll be here much.”

You only nodded in response.

Another room came after another hall to add to your mental map you had long since lost track of as everything seemed to wander off into dead-end alleys and dark dungeons. All as the sound of rustling clothes filled your ears and mindless chatter about how working down here had been for him. Even in a place known as Heresy’s he managed to seem carefree as a door was pushed open to an archive.

Hand above your head to give you the chance to peek in to see stacks of books right from the moment the door swung open with a loud groan.

You could already see yourself spending far too much time in here as your eyes scanned over the seemingly endless rows, but you weren't given much of a chance to take it all in before you were on to the next stop.

You both passed by a few labs. Some seemed calmer than others, some had posters about safety lining the walls, but all of them had you pulling your head away only seconds after sticking it in the doorway to scrunch up your nose as the smell of disinfectant and other chemicals you couldn't place assaulted you.

For a moment, you heard your tour guide mutter a “bless you” as you sneezed (again) before walking on ahead to another sector of Heresy's.

One full of hustle and bustle as people in lab coats moved around the room with an ease that only came from knowing a space inside and out. Shuffling around giant crates, pieces of machinery you couldn't name but certainly recognized from a few constructions in Sumeru you had been told not to stray near, and steel tables all currently occupied with Fatui.

Faces hidden away by metal masks.

Just like the ones who openly walked around under the Tsarita's employ back home, never sparing you a glance.

The masks were only lifted away long enough for a light to be shined in their eyes, ones you always questioned as you passed them by on the streets or in Lambad's tavern, and then their faces were hidden away again. Blocked from sight so the individual fell away, and they once again belonged to the mass. To the service. To the worship of their beloved cryo Archon.

Would there be mercy in the eyes of the neighboring nations' people as they fulfill Her orders? Dutifully listening to whatever they're told simply because someone divine uttered a word or two.

The only thing that halted your train of thought with a resounding screech, breaks pulled back and forced to kick up sparks along well worn rails that lit your mind afire was the same man's voice who had been showing you around calling your name. All so your gaze could follow his pointed finger towards one figure in the room.

Pointing, pointing, and pointing towards a head of blue hair and a black mask.

Funny, you could have sworn you saw that same distinct shade in a few of the other sectors before you had been encouraged to keep up with the wave of a hand.

But the man at the other end of a finger and its broken nail was standing tall as everyone moved around him. A lone figure unbothered by the crowd that already had your shoulders tensing as someone passed behind you with a quick call of an “excuse me.”

“It's rude to point you know.” You said, trying to make a joke as you took everything in at once.

Between bustling figures was an earring like beryl only for it to glow the same way the flicker of a flaming torch lighting up the darkest of nights would, clothes ironed but clearly rumbled from today's work, and a mask with the gleam of burnished aluminum as this man stood before an occupied steel table. (You had later been told the correct term is vivisection table). A hand over a random Fatuus arm, checking for something or another with rippling skin as the limb was turned this way or that; discolored, but against the pale skin the bruises looked like the ice cold ocean you had sailed upon as a boat took you further and further away from your home.

You didn't even register your tour guide, saying that being rude was the least of your worries as that mask turned towards you. The end of its beak, birdlike as it was, stabbing at the air between you and who you could only guess was-

“Lord Harbinger Dottore.”

An arm was dropped, forgotten about with ease as Dottore himself moved to stand before you.

The man beside you bowed his head in respect, and you followed his example.

Head lowered, safety glasses sliding off your face and only stopping thanks to your ears as the sound of a multitude filled the air. All from a sentence so short it barely came across as a sign of acknowledgment.

“You must be the new hire.”

“I am.”

“I hope you prove your worth then. I would hate to have wasted my time bringing you here only to have a lack of results from bringing in a psychologist for my test subjects.” A pause. “But I am sure you understand. After all, you are only here temporarily. A trial run if you will.”

And as you looked up, meeting Dottore face to mask, all you could see was your own reflection staring back at you. Dark circles under your eyes from the lack of sleep you were able to get last night having tossed and turned in an unfamiliar bed before you slowly succumbed to the constant pull at your mind to let it all go.

To simply rest.

For humanity, after all the time you have sat back with a colored pen and a notebook in hand, it has spilled its secrets to you. That it is afflicted in every way; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.

And you could only say you long since stopped hoping for destruction to turn a blind eye to you.

“Well, I am honored to be here as a trail run, Lord Harbinger.”

You didn't miss the way his lips curled up, twisting to reveal pointed teeth as Dottore drawled out. “Good. Then we're on the same page."

#hoyoverse #genshin impact #genshin x reader #x reader #genshin impact x reader #fem reader #banner by cafekitsune #dottore #il dottore x reader #dottore x reader #zandik x reader #/glasswrites

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domesticatedford · 3 months ago

Text

Breaking the Altar

(A good ending story)

“I need my arm for a moment, Kitten.”

D hesitated before releasing his grip on H's limb. The emperor closed the obnoxiously thick report he'd been combing through and shuffled a few objects on the table. He opened a much thinner folder, tugging out a few sheets of paper and setting them on the desk before him. With everything in place, he returned his arm to his side, where D could wrap around it once more.

D hadn't been feeling well recently. He’d been trapped in the sort of all-encompassing grief that felt like a physical injury. Learning, finally letting himself learn that his god had been nothing more that a demon who had stolen half his life was. Difficult. It sapped him of his will to speak, move, live… D didn't know how long he'd been stuck in the thick of that malaise. No one seemed keen on telling him, and he wasn't particularly interested in learning, himself.

He was making an effort to pull himself out of it. It was hard to know why, exactly. The fact that other people seemed to want that for him was the clearest argument he could muster. H and Stan, in particular, had both seemed elated that D was leaving his room again. They both hovered about him, as if they were scared he would disappear again, or perhaps shatter entirely. That was good. D didn’t want to be alone anymore.

D didn’t realize he’d been dozing until a thin finger poked his nose.

“You’re drooling on my arm, Kitten,” H said, his voice sweetly teasing. D responded with a pained frown.

“... M’sorry,” he murmured.

“No- … no, you’re fine,” H reassured him. “You’re just tired. Please, go to bed.” D squeezed his friend’s arm tighter.

“I don’t wanna be alone,” he confessed after a pause. H twisted awkwardly to pet D’s thick, gray curls with his free hand.

“I don’t want that, either,” H said. “You can sleep with me in my room tonight. I’d like it if you did.” D hummed, unconvinced. He knew how late into the night H worked. He didn’t want to be alone for that long. In H’s bleak, sterile room, with nothing to look at, to distract him… D usually didn’t mind the other man’s taste in decoration. In fact, its understated elegance suited him well. It was just too bare for him right then.

A gentle kiss brushed D’s cheek.

“Please,” H said, his voice a soft rumble. “I won’t be much longer. I promise.” With a long, deep sigh, D unwound himself from his friend and stood. He trudged to the door, pausing to look over his shoulder at H. His companion smiled and made a shooing gesture. With another loud sigh, D exited into the main hall of H’s suite. He stared at the floor as he made his way to H’s bedroom. A mane of gray hair hung around his shoulders; he hadn’t bothered to tie it back. He didn’t really like touching it, or thinking about it at all. Bill was dead, and Pyronica was in prison, so there was no reason to keep it at its current length, but…

It was another change.

An unexpected scent met D as he opened the door to H’s bedroom. It was fresh, light and floral. It smelled nice. The second thing D noticed was the twin blue flames dancing in the dark.

They were so familiar.

Heart hammering, D flicked on the light. Fear and revulsion burned up his spine, through his veins, scorching him. There, on a table across from H’s bed, was an altar. Blue-flamed candles burned on either side of a terracotta axolotl. Sweet, verdant smoke flowed from its mouth like a waterfall, curling around the other pink-brown figures, depicting the aquatic god in various poses. Cool candlelight flickered off a small, shallow offering plate filled with clear water, pearls and lotus petals.

It was a fucking god. There was a god in H’s room; it had been let in. It was going to eat his life, spit him out, use him-

A scream ripped from D’s throat. He charged across the room, to the table. A line of choking smoke cut the air, and the axolotl was on the floor, smashed. The smaller ones were next. D chucked them against the floors, the walls, or simply crushed them with his fists. The offering plate was upended, soaking the woven mat. *The fucking god was on that, too.* D tried to tear it in two, but it was too sturdy. With a furious growl, he dashed it to the floor and stomped on it.

D was panting, shaking, staring wide-eyed at the mess on the floor. A small, strangled noise sounded behind him. He whipped around to see H in the doorway.

“What- what did you…” H’s voice was choked, his face a mess of lines that scrunched into something, something-

D was too furious to say what it was. He gestured wildly at the sundered altar.

”What the fuck was this doing here?!” he screamed, panic turning his voice keening and grating. “Did- did someone put it here? Did you notice before now??” H was silent for several long moments, his face going blank. He stared at the shattered terracotta. D’s frantic heartbeat thundered in his ears.

“It’s mine,” H said at length. “I’m sorry it upset you.” His voice was small and toneless. D grabbed wads of his own hair and tugged it. He hardly registered the pain in his scalp.

”WHAT?! No… no, it wasn’t here before! I remember! I-I would remember that!”

H made for the closet, his movements stiff. He pulled out a broom and dustpan.

”I would remember that!!” D insisted as H moved back to the mess. His face remained blank as he swept the broken expressions of faith into the dustpan.

“I set it up recently,” H explained as he headed for the trash can. The sound of clay falling against metal joined D’s labored, rasping breaths.

”WHY?!?” D shrieked, storming to H’s side. He didn’t understand. He couldn’t understand.

H gripped the dustpan’s handle a bit harder. He took in a long, slow breath that D could scarcely hear.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought it would help you.”

”WHY?!?” D screamed again. He was hunched, clawing at his shirt. He needed to grab something. ”WHY DID YOU THINK A FUCKING CULT WOULD HELP ME?!?”

H flinched. He was staring at the floor, his face twisted.

… He was scared…?

No. No, no, no. D stumbled back, his heel crunching bits of shattered clay. H couldn’t be scared. Not right now. D needed him, he needed someone, and H was so strong, and so loving, and he had called out to a fucking god in his bedroom, where it was supposed to be safe.

D’s head spun. He felt like he was going to throw up. H stood still, like he was dead, like he was never going to talk to D again, staring at the floor-

D choked out a strangled, incoherent sound and bolted into the hall. He clawed at the handle of the door that separated H’s suite from the rest of the compound, tried to open it, but it was locked. D slammed bodily against the door, which didn’t budge, before he remembered that he could simply unlock it from this side. He did so with shaky fingers and exploded onto the stark, bright hall of the compound. He slammed into Stan, his Stan, who staggered back, a lungful of air forced from him.

“What the hell’s goin’ on in there, Ford?!” he barked, grabbing D by the shoulders and looking him up and down. “The door was locked. We couldn’t get in! Are you okay?!” D shook in his brother’s arms. Was he okay? Was he okay? Was H okay?

He wasn’t.

And he wasn’t.

D’s knees went weak, and he slumped. Stan moved to hold him up.

“Phospho!” Jean-Paul cried. D hadn’t noticed him.

Phospho, Phospho, D, Ford…

He didn’t want to be him.

D pushed out of Stan’s arms and pelted away from his brother, down the hall, back to his room. He slammed the door shut; didn’t turn on the lights. He crumpled to the floor, clawing at his face. People outside were shouting for him. He shakily locked the door and crawled down the hall, to his bedroom. He curled up on the floor and tried not to think.

—------------------

D sat on the floor, with his back against his bed, poking morosely at the lunch Jean-Paul brought him. He couldn’t tell if he was hungry, and he really didn’t feel like eating. Jean-Paul was perched on the edge of the bed, his tail brushing against D’s shoulder. D rolled a cherry tomato across his plate with a fork. The room’s dull lamplight cast a warm sheen on its smooth surface.

“There are a lot of people out there who want to see you, y’know,” Jean-Paul said. D hummed noncommittally. He hadn’t left his room since he ran from H. He thought it had been a few days, but without a natural light cycle, it was hard to tell. Jean-Paul lapsed into silence for several long moments, his tail twitching. “This isn’t the best way of handling stress,” he said. “Or guilt.” D’s frown deepened and he tightened the ball he was curled into. “It’s okay if you can’t help it,” Jean-Paul added quickly. “But I think you should try.”

The tomato rolled off the plate and bounced to the floor. D stared at it.

“It can be… hurtful. To other people.” Jean-paul continued. “They’re left ruminating on what happened. They don’t know how bad you feel; if you feel bad at all.”

“I do,” D mumbled into his knees.

“It might help H to hear that,” Jean-Paul said. “To know that you didn’t mean to hurt him.” D gripped the rumpled fabric of his pant leg (he hadn’t changed since the other day.)

“I didn’t,” he murmured. “D-didn’t mean to. I… I didn’t…”

He still didn’t understand. Couldn’t understand. The altar, the blue flames… in his bedroom…

“I know,” Jean-Paul said, shifting his tail to brush D’s cheek. “I’m sure H knows, really. This is just… difficult for him. Because of his past.”

D finally looked up, staring with curious concern at his polymorph friend. Jean-Paul’s ears flicked.

“It’s… not the first time something of his has been broken by someone he cares about,” the raccoon said, hesitating a bit at first. “He probably, um, associates it with being in trouble. Doubly so if it’s followed by being left alone. I know you didn’t mean to, but…”

Oh. Oh, no. D’s stomach dropped and his eyes widened in horror. That was what Bill had done. That was what Bill had done to H. D scrambled to his feet, nearly knocking Jean-Paul back onto the mattress. He had to fix this. He couldn’t be like that. Couldn’t be like the god. The demon. He flung the door open and strode through the hall. He had to fix this. He had to get to H.

—————————

H ford belongs to @alexthebordercollie

Pet guy is @is-it-cute-gf-au-edition

#domesticated ford #gravity falls au #d ford #official fanfic #text #h ford #good ending #but things are not good #d rage #alexthebordercollie #hand of god #good ending d has religious trauma #gay asexual husbands who are the same guy #pet guy #d Stan

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