#i had no idea what op stood for but like knew what it was referring too if that makes sense

[u23rg4y]

i just,,, had a spontaneous realization,,,,,, does op mean original poster,,,,, and not operator,,,,,,,,, 💀

[soft-mafia]

Buzzsaw [Buggy x Reader]

Part 1: Introductions, Troublesome Girl

warnings: fem reader, oc insert, slow burn, age gap mention(reader is 20), blood/injury, reference to violence and murder, set before the events of One Piece, not completely proof read

a/n: I decided to go through with the idea of making my own series since I’ve been inspired by all of the fics others have made! I hope you guys like this loollll I’ll try to make sure to update as frequently as possible. Also there’s this part where Y/n introduces herself with her last name first, I only did that because in OP a lot of the characters do that too. Tbh I don’t think I’ll continue this if you guys don’t like it😭so please feel free to send in any opinions or critiques!! (This fic is about anime/manga Buggy btw)

“What do we think, boys?” Buggy asked as his men kneeled down next to the unconscious body of a woman. She was still breathing, but was bleeding out slowly. Her clothes were drenched in blood, more noticeable on her white coat.

“She’s loosing a lot of blood. Should we take her back to the ship?” One of his crew members asked.

Buggy squinted, rubbing his stubbled chin for a moment as he looked up in thought, “Hmmm..” he looked back down at the woman.

“Oh what the hell, I am feeling a bit generous today.” Buggy said before kneeling down to gently pick her up. She was light, extremely light, he knew that she had to get medical attention fast before she died.

“What the hell was she even doing out here anyway?” Cabaji questioned, “This island is desolate, there’s no town here and judging by her clothes it doesn’t look like she’s apart of a tribe of some sort.”

“It is a bit peculiar. We can ask her questions once she gets fixed up.. well erm, if she doesn’t die on us, that is.” Buggy looked down at the girl in his arms. [H/c] hair fell over her face, her lips slightly parted, there was blood dripping down her face from a head wound. Buggy held her firmly in his arms, carrying her back to the ship.

•

When she awoke, her head was pounding. The smell of musk and sea air filled her nose and made her cringe upon consciousness.

Faint sounds of seagulls could be heard from outside. She sat up and looked around; she was in a dingy make-shift nurses office, but all of her wounds were perfectly bandaged and wrapped up.

She swung her legs over the side of the cot, then looked around some more until she caught the glimpse of a window. Where the hell am I? She stood and made her way towards the glass to look out at her surroundings; there wasn’t any land. “Shit..” she mumbled under her breath before stomping out of the room, wanting to get a better look at where the hell she was.

When she stepped out of the room she was met with a long corridor of other doors, but at the end of it was a bright tunnel of light that she followed. It led her to the main deck, she looked up, holding an arm over her eyes to block out the morning sun. The girl was met with a Jolly Roger with a big red dot where the nose should be. What the hell?

She ran over to the edge of the ship, putting her hands on the railing as she looked down at the sea, she saw her reflection in the water far below, her face was clean, and a huge bandage was placed on the right side of her hairline, where her injury once was. The girl looked out to the sea for a while longer, a small wave of relief fell over her, until she remembered what happened.

She stood there for a moment, her breathing shaky as it all played out in her mind once again, her hair blowing through the wind.

“Look who finally woke up! Sorry toots but we had to toss that coat of yours, there’s no way you’d be able to get all that blood out of it anyway.” A deep chuckle emerged from behind her, followed by creaking footsteps against the deck. The girl turned around to face the voice in both shock and surprise. She looked like a ghost at snuck up on her, making the man put his hands up innocently, “Sorry, sorry! Didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”

The man was tall, broad shoulders and an even broader torso; he practically casted a shadow upon her, making her feel slightly intimidated. The most noticeable feature about him though was right in the center of his face.

At first glance she thought it was fake, but the texture of it, and the fact that his nostrils molded into it made her eyes widen slightly.

“You should be thanking me, my crew found you basically half dead, if it wasn’t for us you’d probably be eaten by the crabs.” The man said, his voice was hoarse but deep, and has a menacing undertone. She looked into his eyes, a deep ocean green, his brow bone casted a shadow over them that just added to his chiseled features. Rough looking stubble painted his jaw.

She felt a warm feeling in her chest, she stood there in awe, not even realizing he was speaking.

“Hm?” The man grunted, confused by her lack of response.. she looked like a stunned possum, “Are you listening to me?!” He growled, “Stop staring at me like that and show some appreciation!! It’s rare for me to be so generous, especially to brats like you.”

“Oh- uh.. are you a pirate?” The girl finally spoke, slowly taking her arms off of the railing and turning her body towards him. The way she moved interested him, soft movements, but careful and wary, like a cat.

“I’m not just any pirate.” The man chuckled and crossed his arms, the sleeves of his red striped t-shirt squeezing against those muscular arms, “I’m Captain Buggy!” He said with a grin, surely this girl knew who he was. He was the most feared, flashy pirate around!

She just stared at him again, with those same big bug eyes. “Eh-.. Captain Buggy the pirate clown!” He frowned at her, narrowing his eyes a bit, “The flashiest, most feared pirate captain in all of the East Blue?!”

“I don’t-.. I don’t really follow pirate stuff.” She replied, making him grumble and press his palm to his forehead for a moment before looking down at her again, “Well remember the name because I’m the reason why you’re still alive! What the hell even happened to you anyway? What causes a little girl like yourself to just.. wind up on a desolate island, half dead?”

Buggy raised a brow as he noticed her demeanor change, she looked to the side nervously, suddenly becoming scared again before she whispered, “Buzzsaw.”

This made the clown’s eyes widen, “What?”

“I was.. kidnapped by Buzzsaw. Me and my friends.”

“Buzzsaw?! The serial torturer that not even the marines mess with?!” Buggy felt a cold chill run down his spine, “It’s rare for someone to survive a run in with him.. he’s gonna be coming after you y’know?”

“He killed all of them.” The girl said, looking back out at sea. Buggy was really starting to regret his decision of saving this girl.. “Your friends?” His voice cracked. What the hell was I thinking?! That maniac is going to come back looking for this girl and I don’t think I’m strong enough to take down someone like him!! Buggy panicked in his mind.

“When I escaped he- didn’t try to fight back. He just let me leave.” She whispered again, not actually speaking to Buggy, but she was trying to make sense of it all. Why did he let me leave?

“Yeah yeah that’s nice. Uh, where do you live exactly?” Buggy laughed nervously, clasping his hands together, “Just tell me, I’ll tell the navigator and you’ll be back home in no time to mommy and daddy!” He grinned, breaking a sweat.

“I can’t go back home.” She turned back towards him, “I have nothing left— I don’t have parents, and now that all of my friends are dead I have nothing.” Tears pooled in her waterline, making Buggy’s heart clench.

Don’t look at me with those eyes..!!

“Well um.. you can’t stay here.” Buggy swallowed, “Sorry kid, but I can’t have you here. You being here just put a huge target on my ship!”

“But you can protect me, can’t you? Like you said, you’re the most feared pirate ever. There’s no way Buzzsaw would come after me if I’m with you.”

Buggy cursed himself for trying to impress this girl moments ago.. Damn it!! Why did I say that!! “Umm. Yes, but.. as a captain I have the duty to keep my crew safe!!” He stood up straight, hands on his hips, “Sure, I can fend off that guy without a problem.. but my crew aren’t the sharpest tools in the toolbox y’know.”

“Then let me join your crew or something! Is there an application I can fill out?” The girl looked up at him again, stepping closer to him, a desperate plead in her voice. “Eh- err.. fine! Fine! You can be on cabin girl duty or whatever..” I need to get rid of this girl!!

“Cabin girl?! Isn’t that for kids?! I’m an adult!!”

“You’re so ungrateful!! You know I can just throw you overboard right?!” Buggy snarled, “You’re lucky I’m even letting you join my crew!”

Buggy and the girl glared at each other for a moment before she huffed and turned away, crossing her arms. “What’s your name, anyway?” Buggy grumbled out, looking her body up and down, Hmm. Not too bad.

“Y/n.” She replied, “L/n Y/n.”

“Do you know anything about being a pirate, Y/n?” Buggy asked her with a smirk. After a few days she’ll be begging to go back home, she looks so weak! She wouldn’t last a day on this crew, that’s a perfect way to get that Buzzsaw off my tail! “Not really. But you can teach me right?” Y/n looked up at him, still glaring, but her voice was soft with a hint of hopefulness. Buggy hummed and put a hand on his chin, “I suppose I could..” Just for now.. until she starts crying to be let off the ship.

Buggy then stepped beside of Y/n, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and holding her firmly to his side with a laugh, “Well here, let me give you a tour of the ship! And a run down of what you’ll be doing for me.”

Y/n couldn’t help but blush. He was so strong, and the way he held her.. she chewed on her bottom lip and looked down at the deck as he led her off, rambling about pirate stuff, but she wasn’t listening. Y/n’s mind began to wander as well, what was she going to do now? Was she going to spend the rest of her life as a pirate, hiding behind this captain for the rest of her life? She couldn’t get the blood curdling screams out of her head, the sound of her friends choking on their own blood, the haunting images of their mangled corpses.

“Are you listening?” Buggy interrupted Y/n’s train of thought. She blinked for a moment, then looked back up at him, “Huh?” She then looked at her surroundings. They were in the lower deck, crates stacked upon crates, some unopened, some not.

“Your first task is simple, take stock of every thing, make sure things are in the right boxes.. shouldn’t be too hard, right?” Buggy gave Y/n a firm pat on the back which nearly knocked her over. “What?! But there’s like a million boxes in here!! And I’m still injured!”

“Well in that case it looks like you’re gonna have a lot of work to do then, huh?” Buggy laughed before stepping out of the room, closing the door behind him and leaving Y/n to her own devices. That should do it! Surely she won’t be able to finish all of that so easily without a slip up.. and once she makes a mistake I can just kick her off at the next town without feeling like an asshole! Perfect!

The next day, Buggy walked down to the storage room, Cabaji and Mohji in tow behind him with a huge smirk on his face— but when he got there.. Y/n was asleep on top of one of the crates, everything looked clean and orderly. He then bent down to pick something up off the floor, “What’s this?” He grunted, squinting and looking at it as his eyes adjusted to the dark.

It was a clipboard, Y/n had written down each labeled box along with its components, “No way! No way she did this all by herself!! It’s impossible!!”

Buggy’s grumbling was interrupted by a scream from Mohji, then a loud thud as he fell to the floor.

“DON’T TOUCH ME!” Y/n shouted as she jolted awake. “I didn’t mean to wake you up!! I swear!!” The beast tamer scrambled to his feet, then brushed off dust from his chest.

Buggy stormed over to Y/n, “You- you did all of this?!” He pointed at the clip board.

Y/n rubbed her eyes, then took it from him, “Oh yeah, I did. I organized everything and took stock just like you asked.. how long was I asleep?”

Buggy grumbled and looked down at his wrist, “No idea..”

Y/n furrowed her brows, sitting up on her knees while watching Buggy as he checked his bare wrist as if he was wearing a watch, “What are you looking at?”

Buggy snorted softly when he realized what he was doing, he then jerked his fist down and then growled at Y/n, “That’s none of your concern!!!” He snapped before turning away, his coat swishing behind him flashily as he stomped out of the storage room.

[now-theres-a-spoiler-for-you]

Writing things down so I can refer back when I need it 😬

On Saturday, I had my first photo op with Alex. After all the online calls we’ve done, it was really like showing up at an old friend’s party where they’re distracted by everything going on around them but really excited to see you. I walked into the booth to wait for the guy in front of me to finish, then they sent me forward to stand beside her. It took about half a second for her to register that it was me standing there but when she did, she squealed with excitement and tried to hug me out of reflex. We’d already been warned by staff that we weren’t allowed to handle the guests and if we did, we’d be removed so I pulled back to keep us both from getting in trouble and Alex was like “oh no, we can’t! I really want to hug you!” We both laughed and I said it was fine, and that I was really just glad to see her at a decent hour for once and she said “yeah, not at f***ing 3 in the morning!”

My brain anytime I hear Alex swear is like this

The woman who was coordinating the photo sessions kind of suggested we move things along because we were holding things up so we cooperated (though we were still very giggly) and stood on the marker. Alex took charge and decided what pose to do for us (thank god because I’m not a posing person) and said “I’m wearing a long skirt so I’m going to go swoosh like a flamenco dancer” and lifted her skirt so I matched her energy. We ended up needing to go again because my glasses reflected weirdly but we’d also been told not to put anything down in the booth for health and safety reasons. I didn’t have pockets so I shoved them unceremoniously down the front of my dress and Alex erupted into laughter again. I was unsure whether my makeup had held up between wearing a mask and my glasses rubbing so I asked her if I was all good (I was) and then we ended up with this 👍🏻

A couple of hours later, I went to visit her again at her autograph table. The staff kept asking if I needed to write my name down for personalization but I wasn’t going to need my name written anyway so I declined and Alex already knew what my name was anyway so I figured I’d save them some paper. I didn’t actually need anything signed but needed to give her some things I’d brought along so I had the banana picture to serve that purpose and I told her it was a bit of a joke item, she was confused but laughed very hard when she saw what I’d drawn and was absolutely bewildered and impressed that I’d captured so many recognizable details like her jewellery and her outfit etc.

After she’d worked out what to write on the picture, I redirected her attention to the gifts I’d brought her and handed over the book (a little book of recipes that corresponded to the mood/theme of excerpts from Shakespeare’s work) and said she was very excited to read it because she loves Shakespeare. Inside my head at that moment was like

but I digress, I merely said “I know!” and then she told me about how she was going to be doing another Shakespeare play soon and that she’s scared that she’s not going to do it justice (she’s going to be the best Prospero ever) and I said I’d seen that news and was very excited for her, and that I really hoped it would be streamed because it’s one of my favourite Shakespeare works. She agreed that it would be a great idea for them to stream it and I told her to push them for it because I know it’s something a lot of people are hoping for.

After that, I pointed to the box that I’d made to house the main portion of my gift pile and told her that she could open it now and that it was for her to take home. I mentioned that she’d seen it before but it had been a long two years (especially for her) so I didn’t expect her to remember. When she opened it, she was stunned and kept squealing “NO” because she felt like it was too grand a gesture but I insisted she take her because I’d done it knowing that she would appreciate that specific type of thing. She almost cried as she took in all of the details and kept saying how much she loved what I’d done and that she was going to cherish it. This was before I’d even shown her that there was a second outfit and set of accessories in the secret compartment.

I decided at that point that it was worth shooting my shot and asking whether it would be possible to bend the rules and get a photo of her with the doll I’d made and Alex turned to her handler with a hopeful look but was told no and I said I understood but she did say that she would keep her on her table for the next Galaxycon chat and would pull her out to say hello to me when it happens. I asked if she knew when it would be because it had been ages since we’d been able to catch up properly and she said she wasn’t sure but she knew there’d be one because they’d already asked if she was open to it.

After that, I went for lunch with friends and then made my way home to rest up for day 2 (I did not rest up for day 2 lmao)

On the morning of day 2, my first mission was to get something personalized for a friend so I headed for her table and met up with another Kinglet I’d met at the con the day before. I missed Alex’s signing by minutes but my friend had just spoken to her and said that when she mentioned me, Alex started gushing about my doll again and asked if she’d seen it and told her to tell me she was still in love 🥹

When I was finally able to get back to her table, the staff handling Alex’s line both called me by name and I was like “oh god am I famous over here or something?” to Alex and she laughed at me. The woman with her then explained she remembered me from the day before. After Alex finished signing my friend’s thing, I said goodbye again and ran off, then we killed some time until her panel.

At the panel, Alex was very funny and charismatic. A lot of the usual questions were asked but there were a few interesting revelations and she did inadvertently share a concept she’d been developing if she writes a new River Song book so I’m really looking forward to that if it happens.

After the panel, I went for another photo with her because I’d bought a second token not realizing that my kids would be camping that day and didn’t want to waste it. I didn’t expect to get a goodbye hug for it since we’d been warned not to but I did anyway so thanks queen 👏🏻

That concludes my Kinglet dream weekend. I hope you enjoyed 😂

[bookishofalder]

Catfish & Sunshine

Frankie Morales x Fem!Reader Mini Series

Summary: Frankie is secretly in love with his best friend. Thanks in part to Benny’s shitty horror movie recommendation and stray ice cream, feelings come out unexpectedly during movie night. 

Warnings: Language, SMUT, little angst, lots of fluff, poor writer understanding of US military benefits/retirement. WC 8,215.

A/N: I dreamed this up after rewatching Triple Frontier about a month ago (for the plot, of course) and let it sit for a while. Became inspired to finish it off this week and share it with you all-so please let me know your thoughts!

For over a decade, Saturday nights were, for Frankie Morales, usually spent with his best friends over drinks at their favourite bar. When deployed, the bar was instead smuggled whiskey that they shared under the stars, an attempt to imagine they were anywhere other than the current hellhole. As Special Ops soldiers, Frankie and his buddies had been through the worst of the worst together, until one by one they retired or were forced to retire, and then they were back to regular appearances at the local bar, for a while the five of them, then four.

Until Frankie met you.

Had someone come up to him during one of those nights years before and told Frankie that one day he’d be bringing you along to the bar to join him and the guys, he’d have laughed in their faces. But for a while, that was exactly what occurred, until you and Frankie grew so close that you usually ended up making different plans, like going mini-golfing, or lounging at his apartment and watching movies. Not that you didn’t love the guys, all whom you’d met except for Santi as he had been off the grid for just over a year when you and Frankie had met.

It was thanks to the elder Miller brother, Will, that he had even met you at all. Working at the VA office, Will had learned of one of the few retirement perks they had for putting their asses on the line for their country-physical therapy. And you came highly recommended, a star PT who had worked magic over his friends' ailments. Knowing Frankie suffered from shoulder and neck pains, Will handed him your card and encouraged him to book an appointment.

He hadn’t called straight away. He’d popped your card onto his fridge and every day he’d pass by it, consider calling, and then talk himself out of it. Until the pain became too much to bear, his latest menial job just a little too physical for him, causing him to consider using again just to dull the ache. But he’d walked by your card moments later and instead of making a terrible decision he had promised himself he’d never make again, he called your office. Made an appointment with your friendly receptionist, who thankfully had his name already because Will had put in a good word for Frankie and asked that they try and get him in straight away, whenever he finally did call.

Two days later Frankie was standing nervously in the treatment room, looking at a wall decorated with your various degrees and certificates. He was anxious not only because he worried he’d get his hopes up that this would help the pain only to be disappointed, but also because he had no idea what to expect. Years of service as a pilot had made Frankie into a man who planned, meticulously, leaving little in the way of surprises. But he’d reasoned that calling the office back and demanding they give him a minute-by-minute account of what the appointment would be like was probably going too far.

And then you had walked in and immediately his worries morphed into concern over the fact that he required a beard trim, that he looked like he’d just rolled out of bed and popped his usual cap on, probably appearing a little gruff. And fuck, he almost couldn’t breathe when you gave him the most dazzling, genuine smile like you were greeting an old friend. You were bright, a rare energy radiating off of you as though you absorbed it straight from the fucking sun, and you were beautiful. No wonder Will had winked at Frankie when he’d handed you the business card.

You were observant, introducing yourself and seemingly sensing his overall discomfort. Instead of launching straight to business, you gestured for him to sit and spent a good twenty minutes casually chatting, pulling information you needed from him while putting him at ease entirely. He learned then that Will had already sung Frankie’s praises, given you the heads up that he was a worrier and even told a few stories that showcased his talents as a pilot.

If Frankie didn’t know any better, he’d think his friend was trying to play matchmaker.

All thoughts of Will Miller, and pretty much every other thing on the planet, vanished the moment you laid your expert hands on to Frankie. You zeroed in on the worst source of pain and slowly worked away, and he could only agree with Will that you had magic hands. He could have died happily right then, as you chatted away and brought him the most relief he’d felt in years. You would pause occasionally to check in with his pain levels and make sure he was doing alright, always asking him to look at you to answer and searching his face as he spoke to ensure he was telling the truth.

The care you gave Frankie in just one appointment was enough to start him falling. And he kept going back, multiple appointments a week that not only had him walking taller, feeling lighter on his feet and reducing his migraines to seldom, but also allowing him to get to know you better. You were the kind of sweet-natured person that cried when you saw a sad commercial, laughed freely to the lamest of jokes, and seemed to wake up on the right side of the bed every day. You were sunshine, literal, tangible sunshine, and Frankie thought you might not even realize it.

Though Frankie had convinced himself early on that a woman as beautiful and kind as you could never be interested in a grouch like him, with his crows' feet and a closet full of demons. The longer he knew you little seeds of hope would sprout whenever he made you laugh so hard you had to stop the treatment just to hold your stomach as you giggled. Or when you’d share something with him innocent enough but, upon reflection, he would think it wasn’t something a normal patient-provider relationship would find exchanged.

But there was the age difference, a decade between you both that, if nothing else worked, would successfully extinguish his hope. He had wondered if perhaps you were just a decent people person, that the friendship he felt was there was entirely one-sided.

Until one day, a few months into coming to you for treatment, Frankie sat waiting for you to come in the room only for you to appear looking entirely unlike yourself. He booked his appointments always for the end of the day, a routine that promised he would get plenty of uninterrupted time with you and the conversation could flow without a time constraint. He had been so surprised that you weren’t grinning as you stepped into the room that he stood abruptly, filling with concern.

When he asked, softly, if you were alright, you didn’t brush him off like he might have expected. You instead looked up at Frankie, your lower lip trembling as your eyes filled with tears, and sobbed unexpectedly. That sound had torn a hole right into his chest and he had pulled you straight into his arms and hugged you close before asking you to tell him what he could do to help.

You ended up explaining that you had come in that morning to the news that a regular patient of yours, an elderly man you’d known the entire time you’d been working for the VA office, had passed away in his sleep. And you’d apologized to Frankie while sniffling and wiping at the tears, telling him you’d held it in all day but couldn’t do that when your friend asked you, and he had been baffled to realize you were referring to him. As your friend.

He had cut off your apology to hug you close again, smoothing your hair gently as he whispered calming words and sentiments to you in Spanish. And though you didn’t speak the language, you had since told Frankie it had done exactly what he’d hoped and made you feel all the better. 

After his treatment that day, Frankie asked if he could take you for a drink to toast your friend's life. He waited for you to close up the office, and then you’d followed him in your car to drive over to his usual bar. And you both drank to the veteran who passed, then ended up ordering dinner and remaining at the bar until late, talking even more freely outside of the office. If Frankie didn’t already have it bad for you, that night sure sealed it for him.

After that, you and Frankie began texting regularly, sometimes even calling one another to share a funny story or talk about something in the news. He had joined you for your former clients funeral, his hand rubbing comforting circles into your back before he took you out for lunch, then you’d ended up at his place to watch a cheesy movie, ordering pizza when you both realized there was a sequel that, if it was as bad as the first, you absolutely needed to watch.

And just like that, Frankie saw his life altered completely when you became his best friend.  

Currently, Frankie was seated comfortably on his couch, where he frowned at the TV playing a horror movie that you had insisted was supposed to be good, because Benny had recommended it. Considering the younger Miller brother could barely sit still half the time, that was supposedly good enough for you. 

You were tucked into Frankie’s side, eyes fixed on the screen until a jump scare had you jerk, then twist your face to press into his chest, because you hated the gory bits.

“Fuck! How does this not scare you even a little, Frankie?” You whined, unknowingly causing Frankie to swell with pride when he heard the note of admiration in your voice. He had started to suspect that the reason movie nights were becoming exclusively scary movies was that you were determined to find one that actually frightened him.

So far, you’d had no luck. But Frankie didn’t mind, because though you were already a touchy person in general, you were especially clingy when you queued up the next horror flick as if you trusted him to keep you safe.

Frankie didn’t reply, his chest rumbling with silent laughter that made you teasingly poke his side. He jumped, because you knew exactly where to aim, then cleared his throat. The scene ended, and he began to extract himself from your grip. “My sweet tooth is calling, cariño. I’m going to get some ice cream.”

You let him go, your head popping up, a big grin on your face, “Can I have some too, please?” And he nodded, smiling at you before walking across the open concept apartment and into his kitchen.

He stretched his back before opening the freezer where he had some bars next to an off-limits pint of Ben and Jerry’s. You had put it there months ago, telling Frankie it was for days when you got together and one of you needed to cry over a bad date. You called it ‘emergency’ ice cream. Frankie considered it to be ‘fuck you’ ice cream, because every time he opened his damn freezer he saw that pint and ended up thinking about how neither of you had been on a date with anyone since becoming friends over a year before, then falling into the same circular argument with himself-that the friendship was too important for him to feel the way he did, that he was jumping to conclusions and maybe you had gone on a few good dates that you just didn’t tell him about, and he was out of his mind if he thought you would ever feel the same way.

“Here you go, Sunshine,” He plopped back down next to you and passed you your bar, watching as you beamed at him widely, the inevitable result of his use of the nickname he’d dubbed you with a long time ago.

He desperately hoped you never realized the amount of affection truly behind that nickname.

Because how could he even begin to explain that you were literally sunshine in his dark life?

“Thank you,” You pulled the wrapper off, glancing at the movie and frowning. “Uhg. Benny promised the one was good! I’m starting to think he only recommends movies if they have at least one pair of tits.” You took the first bite of your ice cream bar while Frankie nearly choked on his own.

Amused as he was whenever you joked about your shared friends, Frankie also loved it when you swore. You were a goofy, happy little thing most of the time and curse words just seemed so out of character for you, pulling laughter from Frankie any time you caught him by surprise. You spent your days around gruff veterans and never seemed to lose any light, no matter how many real horror stories you heard. So whenever you managed to sound so uncharacteristically blunt, he couldn’t help but laugh.

“Benny has always been a tits man,” Frankie agreed, and you giggled. He tried to refocus on the movie then, but it hadn’t captured his interest in the least. After a moment, you spoke again and he had to work on not choking.

“What are you, Francisco?”

Your tone was playful, light; Frankie’s head jerked in surprise to gaze down at you and you wiggled your brows, going for laughs. You seemed completely unaware of the roaring in his ears, the visceral reaction your words brought forth within him. You and Frankie had shared intimate tidbits like that before with one another, often during nights at the bar with the Miller brothers. After a few drinks and usually, because his friends knew exactly how he felt about you and tried to steer the conversations into dangerous waters and watch Frankie try to save himself.

Only, Frankie’s friendship with you during the last few months had become...deeper. After the operation Santiago had brought Will, Benny, Tom and him in on, your relationship had evolved. Because that nightmare had reminded Frankie just how dark shit could get in the blink of an eye, and he’d had to do things he thought he was done with when he retired from service. Worse, because they were just civilians using Santi’s connections and intel to rob a drug lord.

And you had no idea what he’d gone through, how hard he’d fought just to get home to you because he couldn’t-wouldn’t-tell you. Yet you still patched him up, physically and emotionally, when he’d come home three weeks later than he’d promised. You held him as he cried and never became angry with him, never questioned him for answers as to why he’d come home with one less friend and a whole lot of mysterious trauma.

After that, Frankie realized he was hopelessly, irrevocably in love with you.

So a simple, flirtatious little question? Yeah, it really managed to fuck Frankie up.

His friends had sensed the change as well, noticed how you held Frankie up when he felt like he couldn’t stand, how you comforted them all when they got home and cried along with them over Tom, over Santi not coming home even though you’d only met him once, briefly. You held strong for him at Tom’s funeral, which prompted the Miller brothers to tell Frankie in no uncertain terms that he simply could not let you slip through his fingers. If that fucking mission had taught them anything, it was that life was too short and you might as well live it to the fullest.

But the thing was, Frankie depended on you. Your friendship was the one real, good, pure thing in his life. And you gave it so willingly and unquestionably even after what he put you through that there was no fucking way he was risking it by telling you how he felt.

Christ, you even had a spot in his bathroom for your own toiletries, a favourite pillow on his bed for the nights you stayed, a fucking hook for your coat that he installed just a little lower than the other because you were so much smaller than Frankie.

And still, he wouldn’t look at what that might mean because he was afraid, and as much as you seemed to think nothing scared him, the truth was that a gory horror movie, or losing his friend, or even fucking live combat could never come close to the fear he felt when he pictured life without you.

You were Frankie’s Sunshine, and he never wanted to be alone in the dark again.

Aware he was still gazing down at you, Frankie found himself entirely at a loss for words. You didn’t seem to mind, simply waiting for him to respond while taking small bites of your treat. His cock twitched at the combination of your words, the innocent way you gazed at him, because Frankie hadn’t touched himself in quite some time and it didn’t take much to drive him up the wall.

His life with you had become remarkably domestic, routine. You often stayed multiple nights in a row at his place, preferring his company over being alone, and the shorter distance to your office. His spacious condo had one large four-piece bathroom, which meant there had been a few times where one of you was in the shower and the other came in, desperate to use the toilet before their bladder could burst. The shower had a thickly frosted glass enclosure, which provided plenty of visual privacy from both sides, the only indication that someone was in the shower was a very faint tint. This was never an issue until it was.

Exactly sixty-two days prior (not that Frankie was necessarily keeping count of passing time since his last orgasm), you had burst into the bathroom one afternoon unexpectedly. Returning early from your jog because you needed to pee, while Frankie stood in the shower. He listened to you tell him about a cute dog you’d seen outside his building. The thing was, Frankie had expected you to be gone longer, and you were in the middle of a three-day visit that had left him needy and horny because he hadn’t had time alone and yet you walked around in his fucking clothes, slept next to him in his bed, and he needed release.

He was grateful the tinted glass prevented you from having any idea what he was doing on the other side. And he had been close already when you came in, one hand fisting over his cock while the other pressed into the tile wall, and guilt sprang up in the back of his mind because he had been thinking of you as he touched himself. And you were just feet away, unaware and fuck if that didn’t lead him to the edge.

But it was when you had sat down to pee and he heard you give a little moan of relief that Frankie lost it, giving in to the most powerful-yet silent-orgasm he had had in fucking years. Rope after rope of cum, his legs violently shaking, and he’d wondered if he would pass out it felt so good. Then you’d flushed and continued speaking, washing your hands before telling him you were going to put on a pot of coffee. And the guilt Frankie felt was so immense that he vowed right there he wasn’t going to touch himself again. He cared for and respected you too much to reduce you to his graphic thoughts without your consent.

Sixty-two days later and you were testing his limits unknowingly.

“I, uh, I’m not sure,” He replied, keeping his eyes locked on yours. You frowned a little, kitten licking the ice cream absentmindedly. Frankie almost groaned, wondering if you were trying to kill him. “I guess, it depends on the person.” He was never, ever going to admit he was a you man, that your ass, your perfect tits, your pretty little mouth were everything he could dream and more.

He tried to shrug casually, as if indifferent.

“I guess it’s a funny question,” You said after a moment, laughing a little, “I mean, no one asks a straight woman if she’s an ass or cock girl!”  

Frankie took a too-large bite of his treat, the cold painful and giving him instant brain freeze but it was just the distraction he needed because seeing your plump lips wrap around the word ‘cock’ might just kill him. He coughed attempting to laugh at your joke despite the brain freeze, and you leaned closer in concern.

“Sorry, are you-ah, shit!” A piece of your ice cream bar, which you’d moved to hold higher as you were checking on Frankie, fell off and landed on your chest, instantly staining the pale pink t-shirt. You hopped up with a noise of discontent, catching the fallen glob and hurrying into the kitchen to toss it in the sink. “Damn it!”

Frankie reached out and paused the movie, standing up and intending to follow you. He took two steps, adjusting his cap as he moved, and then looked up to where you stood at the sink, running your shirt under the faucet. Freezing, he took it the sight of you standing in his kitchen, your shirt removed to run under the water, leaving you wearing yoga pants and a simple white bra. For a moment, he just shut down and stared at you dumbfounded, before internal alarms started sounding and Frankie’s eyes were sweeping over your curves, his eyes zeroing in on the lack of support your bra had, your breasts perky and full and fuck, he had to look away.

He looked up at his ceiling at cleared his throat “You uh, want me to grab you a shirt?” His voice came out much deeper than he was expecting. He hoped you didn’t notice, though with only being able to see your profile even if he did dare to look at you, he’d never be able to tell.

“Can I borrow your big sweater, please?” You asked him, and Frankie nodded as he hurried away, down the hall to grab the sweater he knew you meant from his room. He would have laughed at your suggestion it was his sweater when he barely got to wear it himself anymore, but he was trying to remember how to breathe.

Once out of sight in his bedroom, Frankie took a few steadying breaths before grabbing the sweater off the end of his bed. He was going to subject himself to a cold shower after he handed this to you because you were staying the night again and he could not climb into a bed with you this worked up.

One of the reasons that you and Frankie just worked as friends were your opposite ways of navigating life. Where Frankie was a detailed, meticulous planner, you flitted from idea to idea spontaneously until something landed right, and you seemed to enjoy pulling him along with you as you followed those random whims. And he let you pull him because he trusted you so completely. Even if he would still make a new plan in the back of his mind, it still felt like he was taking chances he never would have without you leading the way.

Planning was Frankie’s way of keeping control. Of keeping himself, his squadmates, his loved ones, safe and secure. After Columbia, where every bit of the plan had gone completely to shit, he’d needed to let you lead more often just so he could feel grounded because he didn’t trust himself any longer. And you had been happy to lead, to test his limits by pushing aside any planning he attempted and pull him from his comfort zone. You had taught him how to grapple with his instincts and his desires, giving him real-world methods to cope, including breathing as he was now.

So focused as he was on his breathing, Frankie hadn’t noticed you had joined him in his room, standing just inside the doorway. If he had heard you, he wouldn’t have spun around abruptly and take two long strides before realizing how close you were, nearly knocking you over as he did. He dropped the sweater when he reached out with both hands to grab your upper arms and steady you, and then he met your gaze.

Frankie couldn’t say whether it was the heat of his hands on you so unexpectedly, or the way you each shivered at the electricity that seemed to pulse from him to you. Maybe it was everything combined, years of friendship, longing and pining and then almost dying in the middle of the jungle only to come home and have you climb into his lap and sob in relief that he was home, and a million other moments in between.

But when Frankie met your eyes there in the doorway of his bedroom, he knew his expression was giving him away completely.

You were looking at him with wide eyes, your mouth slightly open in surprise, whatever words you were going to say long since lost. And then he saw it, was looking right at you when your expression shifted, no longer the innocent, playful woman but instead, one who was suffering just as much as he was, longing and love and this hunger on your face he’d never seen before.

Without hesitating, without thinking or planning his next move, Frankie tugged you against him and leaned down to slot his lips over yours, taken aback when he saw you close your eyes and stretch your neck up to meet him. When your soft lips connected to his, Frankie trembled and groaned, loving the feel of your body pressed against him, the way you smelled like something tropical, how even with your perfect curves you were so small compared to him. Kissing you was everything he’d dreamed and more.

He wanted to deepen the kiss, taste you, but even as he thought it his mind jumped ten steps ahead and imagined you on his bed and he had to stop himself from getting carried away. With great effort he pulled back, first breaking the kiss and then taking several steps away, panting heavily.

“Frankie?” You were out of breath, confused, and deliciously flushed. He could see your nipples tightened against the thin fabric of your bra, goosebumps along your skin. Just the knowledge that he’d had that kind of effect on you was enough to make him want to cum in his pants right there.

“Cariño, I can’t, I’m sorry,” It was physically painful now, his hard length straining against his jeans, but he was more concerned about you, and how afraid he was to lose you. “I-I’ve wanted to do that but you gotta know, I love you. I’m in love with you.” He couldn’t meet your eyes, instead choosing to look at his feet and rubbing his hands over his face.

You approached him again, just as quietly, taking him by surprise when you spoke from just inches away. “Frankie, look at me,” It was an order, a tone you rarely used but that always worked on grounding him, and he realized you understood he was struggling right now not to break down, terrified he’d fucked up the best thing in his life in a moment of weakness. He reluctantly met your gaze, swallowing thickly as he did.

“I need you to hear me right now, okay? Tell me.”

“I’m listening,” He confirmed, heart about ready to beat out of his chest, “I can hear you.”

“Good,” And you closed the gap between your body and his, pressing your hands into his shoulders. Frankie caught his breath. “I want you to do that again, and I don’t want you to stop. Please, kiss me again, Frankie, because I love you too and I’ve never wanted anything more in my whole life than I want you-“

Frankie cut you off, a growl ripping from his chest before he gathered you roughly into his arms and kissed you again, this time quickly swiping his tongue across your lips for permission to enter, and you gladly parted them for him, moaning when his tongue licked into your hot mouth. He slid one hand to the back of your head, his fingers weaving into your hair carefully before he pressed your face to his, needy to taste you more, to get drunk on you. Fuck, you were perfect.

When you whimpered against him, the sound almost lost in his mouth, Frankie moved, walking you back until you hit the wall and crowding you there. He ran his free hand across the bare skin of your side, heat coursing through his veins when you shuddered at his touch, keening for him. He hadn’t realized he was rolling his hips against you, his erection pressed into your stomach until one of your small hands somehow slipped between your bodies and ghosted over the front of his jeans curiously.

“Fuck,” He broke the kiss, this time simply to lower his head and kiss along your jaw, down your neck, “Sunshine, I fucking love you, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, sweet girl.” He licked the column of your throat as he moved to the other side of your face before biting gently. The sound that tore from you was so filthy he groaned again, dropping both hands to grasp your forearms.

“Frankie, fuck, don’t stop,” You were tugging at his shirt, and despite your request, he had to move back slightly to pull it over his head, his bare chest revealed to you and even though you’d seen him shirtless before, the intimacy of this time, of finally being with you after so long, made him self conscious. If you saw anything you didn’t like, you didn’t show it. Instead, you bit your lip as your hands tentatively roamed across his chest, trailing over his stomach lightly enough that he shivered. When you spoke next, you yet again took Frankie completely by surprise, your brows furrowing as your expression became more than just hungry, “Mine.”

You whispered it, but to Frankie, it was like you’d just announced it to the entire world. The possessive edge wasn’t lost on him, no, it shot straight to his core and snapped the final cords of his restraint.

“I should...I need a minute, Sunshine,” Frankie pressed his hands into the wall on either side of you, “I haven’t done anything in a long time, haven’t even cum, I don’t think I can be as sweet to you as I want to be.”

Your lust-blown eyes met his, “Why haven’t you cum?” He could hear trouble in your voice now, the not so careful way you spoke pulling dangerous images in his mind as he stared down at you, his jaw tense. When Frankie made no reply, you pressed your pointer finger to the middle of his chest, your eyes never leaving his as you slowly, lightly, moved it downward, trailing his dark hair. “Is it because you think of me? Are you that amazing that you won’t even let yourself cum because you think it’s wrong to think about me like that?”

A strangled noise was all he could respond with, his hands pressing desperately into the wall. You knew him too well, understood exactly what he’d meant without having to ask. And then you kept talking, and honestly, Frankie was floored at how dirty you suddenly were for him.

“I have to admit, you’re better than me, Frankie,” That finger trailed so slowly, closing in on his belly button now, “I’m not good like you, I think about you all the time. Especially when I touch myself, usually after I’ve spent a ton of time with you and I can’t fucking wait for a second longer. Wanna know what I picture?”

His voice was husky, a warning if ever there was one, “What did you picture, sweet girl?”

You moaned, your finger now closing in on the waist of his jeans, “You, bending me over the couch, that one is a favourite. Or waking you up with a blowjob, swallowing everything you’ve got because I know you taste delicious,” You unbuttoned his jeans now, sliding the zipper down with care, “But I think the winner, the one that always makes me scream your name, is thinking about riding you, Frankie. Climbing in your lap and just-“

Fuck, fuck he couldn’t hold back. He’d told you he couldn’t and yet you wouldn’t shut up and all thoughts of making love to you gently were out the fucking window, Frankie instead growled deeply and grabbed you by the arms, all but throwing you on the bed. You were smirking up at him, your eyes dark with lust and shining with triumph.

“Fuck, sweet girl, you wanna scream my name?” He removed his pants and briefs in one motion, his cock spring up, hard and leaking precum and you licked your lips, giving a little whimper at the sight of him. Frankie grasped himself, pumping his hand a few times as he stood over you, “Like what you see?”

“Jesus, Frankie-you need a new nickname,” You said, eyes glued to his cock, “Catfish makes no sense when you’re walking around with that fucking bat-wait!” He froze in the middle of removing his ball cap, looking at you with concern to see you bite your lip a little shyly, “Keep it on. The hat.”

Warmth spread through him at your request and Frankie replaced the hat on his head, then dropped to his knees next to the bed, his hands running up your thighs as you writhed. At your waist, he grasped the tops of your yoga pants and tugged them down, enjoying the way your body arched when you lifted your hips to help him. The only item of clothing either of you wore now was you in your bra, and fuck were you a sight.

Frankie gazed up at you from the floor in awe, his eyes roving over you hungrily as you watched him, propped up on your elbows. He started kissing up your thighs then, pushing your legs apart and spreading you, his hands kneading your flesh. “Sweet girl, you have such a pretty pussy, better than I imagined.” He moaned, biting into the soft flesh of your inner leg and drawing a whimper from you, “I can fucking smell you already, so wet and ready for me, fuck.”

“Oh god Frankie, please, touch me. I can’t wait anymore, I need you!”

“Told you,” Frankie climbed over top of you, his legs on either side of your body as he reached down and dragged you further onto the bed, his show of strength making you whimper, “It’s been a while. And you walk around here wearing my fucking clothes all the time. You don’t know what you do to me, Sunshine.” He grunted as he repositioned himself between your legs, his hands grasping the backs of them to haul your body against his, his cock pressed painfully against your thigh, “Gonna fuck you, sweet girl.” And with one careful, quick motion he thrust forward and each of you cried out at the pleasure of Frankie filling you.

“Frankie! Oh!” Your legs wrapped around him instantly, urging him as deep as possible as he split you open so deliciously. Once he was fully seated within you, Frankie dropped forward, propping himself on one arm, and cupped your face with his free hand. He looked into your eyes as he started a fast, hard pace, thrusting deep and reeling over how wet you were for him, how perfectly your velvet folds wrapped around him.

“Fuck, cariño, you’re fucking tight,” He grunted, kissing you sloppily as you threw your arms around him, hugging him close, “So tight for me, so perfect making those pretty noises, fuck.” Frankie groaned when you clenched around him as he spoke, “You like it when I tell you how perfect you are?”

“Ye-yeah Frankie, I love it. Oh, fuck!”

You were trembling now, squeezing him each time he whispered in your ear. Frankie kept up a string of praises and filthy words, taking note of the ones that had you gripping him extra hard.

He’d always had a casual enjoyment of dirty talk, nothing over the top, easy enough to shut off if it wasn’t enjoyed by the other person. But something about talking like this to you had his balls tightening that much faster, his thrusts becoming brutal.

Still murmuring in your ear, Frankie lowered his hand to your clit, experimentally rubbing, circling and pinching it to see what you liked. He was going to cum soon, and he’d be damned if you didn’t cum too. Though, as Frankie settled on circling you, both feeling and hearing how this was definitely how you liked it, his worries quickly dissipated when your hips were suddenly bucking up to meet his and you were screaming his name.

“That’s it, let go for me sweet girl,” Frankie’s thrusts were becoming increasingly sloppy as he neared the edge, “Are you-fuck, where should I?” He couldn’t even form a sentence now, he was so close and you were squeezing around him so perfectly as you closed in on your orgasm.

You understood though, your eyes meeting his as you pulled yourself together enough to reply, “Frankie, cum inside me please, please fill me up, pleasepleaseplease-“

“Fuck! H-here you go, perfect little thing!” He roared, dropping his weight over your and growling as he spilled inside you, as you bucked and writhed beneath him and screamed out, toppling over the edge and into oblivion with him. He heard himself cursing in Spanish as he experienced the most intense orgasm of his entire life, his hips slowing to continue to draw it out, still more cum filling you and you were a wreck under him, shivering and moaning.

“Yes, Frankie, yes.” You whimpered, your hands sliding into his hair-knocking his cap off-and tugging at his curls.

It took several minutes to recover, though Frankie had enough awareness to shift his weight so that you could breathe properly. Still hard inside you, he began to kiss you all over, peppering your face and neck before biting a few more marks into your neck, his tongue laving out to soothe. He enjoyed the way you whimpered when overstimulated, twitching when he pinched your nipple over your bra, squeaking his name when he pressed himself as deep inside you as he could one last time before pulling out.

Frankie collapsed on the bed next to you, then quickly tugged you into his arms and kissed the top of your head. His fear began to bubble back up now that the haze of passion was clearing, and he was starting to question every single moment that had occurred since you'd asked him if he was a tits man or an ass man.

What had he done? Was he going to lose you after this? Lose his entire reason for living for one amazing orgasm?

But it was like you could reach his mind, as only a few minutes had passed and then, with a little groan, you pulled yourself up so that you were on your elbow, looking down at Frankie. You took one look at his face and frowned, “That was quicker than I thought.”

Frankie stared at you, “What was?”

“I guessed it would take more than two minutes for you to start regretting this.”

Sighing, he pulled himself up, sitting on the edge of the bed. You followed, but crossed your legs and shuffled next to him. “I meant what I said, I love you,” Frankie explained, rubbing a hand over his face, “I love you so much, so fucking much it hurts. But the idea of messing this up is terrifying me, Sunshine. I don’t think I could lose you, I think it would kill me.”

“Frankie,” You crawled over him, straddling his hips and settling into his lap. You cupped his face firmly, looking into his eyes. Your expression was open, warm and vulnerable and a little incredulous, “You aren’t going to lose me, not ever. I want this-I want you, and everything you come with, okay?”

Though his heart was soaring, Frankie still worried, shaking his head, “I come with a lot of dark baggage, sweet girl. Not to mention the age difference.”

“Jesus, Frankie, do you really think I don’t know what I’m saying when I tell you I’m all in?” You asked him, not waiting for an answer before continuing. “I love you. Can I tell you when I knew?”

Frankie peered at you, his hands coming to hold your waist as he nodded.

“The boys trip.” You stated, using the term each of you agreed upon when referencing his three-week disappearance to Columbia. “When you first left, I knew something was off but I trust you, so I didn’t question it. But then after a few days, with no word from you, I started to really worry,” You paused, momentarily lost in thought, eyes dark now with the painful memory of his absence and the little information you’d come to learn about it since. “Did I ever tell you I booked a ticket to Columbia?”

This caught Frankie off guard because you most certainly had not told him that, “What, are you serious?”

“Yep. Booked it for the day after you ended up calling me. I don’t know what I was planning to do, but I knew you were there and, even if you were dead, I needed to be as well.” You stroked your thumbs over his cheeks, “After you called, and I knew you were alive and coming home, I realized that the way you said it meant you almost didn’t make it home, and I knew you weren’t saying something. I hung up and sat in my room for a minute and it occurred to me that you could have died and I would have never seen you again. That was when I knew it wasn’t just a crush.”

Heavy emotion filled his chest, rendering him unable to immediately respond. Frankie gathered you close and stood, clutching you against him and carrying you into the bathroom. He set you on the toilet before turning to his massive soaker tub and switching it on, fully intending on spending the rest of the night in there with you. When he turned around, you were carefully tidying yourself up. With a grunt, he grabbed a washcloth and ran it under warm water before kneeling in front of you and taking over.

“Why didn’t you say anything? After I came home, I mean.” His tone was light, as he didn’t mean to come across as accusing you of anything-it’s not like he had said anything to you. Good-natured as you were, you simply smiled at him, a little sadly.

“Too afraid, right at first,” You admitted, your eyes fluttering shut as he took care of you with the warm washcloth, “But when you came home you were a fucking wreck, Frankie. You lost your friend, Santi didn’t come back with you either, and Will and Benny had the same expression on their faces whenever I saw them. You saw some shit, did some shit, I don’t know and I’ll be real here, I don’t need you to ever feel like you should tell me what exactly happened. But after the first day you were back, I could see how much it changed you and I thought it would be selfish to tell you how I felt and add more emotional bullshit onto your plate.”

Frankie continued to kneel in front of you after tossing the washcloth into his laundry hamper. For a moment, the only sound in the room that of the tub filling. He stared into your eyes, seeing only how truthful you were being, how incredibly kind. He had never realized how completely he could love someone until he met you.

“I thought about you the entire time I was gone.” He admitted before carefully standing and checking the temperature of the water. He added a bath salt mixture that you’d bought a while ago, claiming it was a gift when really you were the one to use them, locking yourself away for hours to soak because you didn’t have a tub at your place. He shut the water off and held his arms out for you, which you eagerly stepped into and allowed him to guide you both into the water.

Once settled, your back against his chest, you replied. “Your face when you came home, I’ll never forget your expression.” His legs were on either side of you, and you began to lazily trace along his right thigh as both of you fell into your painful memories of his ill-fated trip.

Frankie sighed sadly, “I’m sorry I ever left, Sunshine. I never should have left you,” He tightened his grip around your waist under the water, one hand spread flat across your stomach, “It was just...fuck, everything went bad straight from the start. We had a moment of luck and then it was like nothing could go right. And I don’t know, I’m fucking gutted that Tom is gone, but it’s worse that Santiago won’t come home. He’s like my brother, and he blames himself for everything.”

Frankie knew you had no idea what he meant. You knew he and the guys were former special ops that served together, but when Santi had asked him to go to Columbia Frankie had only told you the basics-the country, who he would be with, that he might not have a lot of chances to call, and that it would be about a week. Santi had picked him up and you had been there to see him off that morning, and his friend had casually referenced a ‘boys trip’ while speaking with you as Frankie loaded his shit in the back.

Of course, you weren’t stupid. You worked with the VA, met a lot of former service members who ended up contracting out their skills after retiring or leaving due to injuries or lifestyle changes. And you knew Frankie, understood him like no one ever had before, which is why as he gave you further details you didn’t flinch or freeze up, you simply listened. When Frankie had gone quiet for a while, you eventually turned to gaze up at him over your shoulder, your cheek on his chest.

“From what I could tell,” You began slowly, your words cautious, “Whatever you did, what happened, you all put it aside to get Tom’s body home to his family. And considering the type of work Santi was doing out there for three years before he came here to ask you guys to join him, I figure you all must have almost died a few times each, probably took out some terrible men along the way.”

Frankie had to bite back his sob, turning his face away from you to stare, ashamed and remorseful at the wall. You reacted quickly, pulling yourself up and turning over, your naked body pressing over his as you grabbed Frankie’s head and gently turned him to look at you. “Baby,” You cooed, your eyes shining with concern, “Don’t do that, don’t hide from me.”

That was all it took. Frankie let the sob out and the relief of it was instantaneous, so much so that he let out another, then another, all while you held him and murmured soft, sweet words and pressing chaste kisses to his cheeks, his forehead, along his jaw. It didn’t last long, he’d cried so many times over everything that had gone down, but this was the first time you had revealed you sort of had an idea of what they had been up to, and you were still supporting him and loving him and it was all very overwhelming.

A short time later, Frankie wiped his eyes and shot you a grateful look, hoping you could sense how much he appreciated you. You settled into the water again, knees pulled to your chest as you faced him and trailed your hands comfortingly up and down his chest. “Sunshine,” He whispered, catching one hand and holding it against his heart, “I love you, thank you for being so fucking incredible.”

He tugged you closer, joining you in laughing when a little water sloshed up over the edge of the tub as you landed against him. You snuggled close and kissed him, your fingers carding into his curls and holding him steady. When Frankie took you to bed that night, there were no pillows between your bodies, not a shred of clothing separating you. He held you close, falling asleep faster than he had in years.

And for the first time in Frankie’s life, he felt whole and complete, like nothing could ever bring him into darkness again, not when he had you, literal sunshine, lighting his existence.

PART TWO

Permanent Taglist:

@mermaidxatxheart @paintballkid711

[anon-e-miss]

The drone spark

- Jazz. Jazz. Jazz. He just saved the bitties! He’s anything but a drone spark!

Though the Twins escape the centre with impunity, they did not escape their school classroom so easily. Jazz felt confident enough that they were going to be where they were supposed to be and thus he felt safe enough to drop in on Prowl. It was strange thinking of how comfortable his creations were with Prowl and how he had never noticed this before. He should have noticed, being perceptive was a rather important trait in his business but Jazz realized he had long had blinders on where so far as Prowl was concerned. His creations had not possessed the same blinders and Prowl had some how become one of their favourite mechanisms. How and why? Jazz had to wonder. How much time had they actually spent in his office with him, not just lying in wait?

It felt wrong to come empty-handed, Primus only knew why Jazz cared, he doubted Prowl would. Regardless the irrationality of it, Jazz picked up a box of the rust sticks Prowl always seemed to have around. Crystals would wait, Jazz shook his helm. Someone had told the Twins that giving mechanisms crystals when they were in the medicentre was traditional and they wanted to bring some to Prowl. They would be upset with him if he did not let them pick out the crystals, so it would have to wait. He had no idea if Prowl even liked crystals but the Twins were fixated on the idea and Jazz was well schooled in picking his battles.

"Good-cycle, Prowl," Jazz greeted as he strolled into Prowl's room.

The SIC looked up from the datapad he was holding and set it down on his lap. In a mega-cycle, nothing had changed. Prowl still looked rough, yet unflinching, mesh covered almost every centimetre of exposed plating. Still, his optics were clear and bright. Ratchet had found the right balance with his pain blockers, clearly. Jazz knew Prowl usually refused them, something about them addling his process. He did not look addled right now.

"Good-cycle, Jazz," Prowl replied.

"I brought ya rust sticks," Jazz said, showing Prowl the box. "Though, Optimus probably already did."

"He did not, actually," Prowl replied. He tapped the datapad on his lap with long digits that had been so cruelly twisted when Prowl had found him at the Vault. "He brought me drivel."

"'N y're bored outta yer processor so y're actually readin' it," Jazz guessed and Prowl ever so slightly canted his helm. His optics were calculating, they always were but for some reason Jazz was more aware of it.

"To put it mildly," Prowl replied. Jazz opened the box of rust sticks and gave them to Prowl. "Thank you."

Prowl was always polite. Even when he ripped into a mechanism he always did so with perfect language and empirical data to back it up. He might have been one of the pettiest mechs Jazz had ever met, he never failed to back it up with facts. That was probably one of those things about the mech that drove Bots craziest, Prowl was hard to call out when he made such a point of being right. Jazz and he had clashed on the manners front on more than one occasion, superficiality served no purpose to Jazz. He liked things straight forward.

"You have something to ask," Prowl guessed. "You are here to debrief me?"

"Pretty sure if OP wants ya debriefed, he'll do it himself," Jazz said. "If ya got somethin' ya wanna say, I'll hear it."

"There really is not anything," Prowl said. "I am pleased the Twins are intact. I am sorry they heard what they heard."

"They're doin' better after seein' ya in one piece," Jazz replied. "Sunny was more 'n half sure he'd killed ya... I don't know how ya didn't give'm the code after what he did to ya."

"I deleted and the scrubbed the code," Prowl explained. "Even if he had managed to hack the firewalls surrounding my battle computer, he would have found nothing. He is not an adept hacker. He has no patience. As it was, Vortex was quickly distracted from trying to get the code. He became more interested in garnering reactions from me."

"He wanted ya to beg," Jazz said. "Sideswipe said that. Ya didn't."

"It gave him something to work for," Prowl replied. "Something I could easily refuse him."

"Easily, Prowl?" Jazz asked.

"Nothing he did was particularly startling," Prowl said. "Vortex's methods were predictable."

Predictable. Jazz had heard Vortex described in a number of ways but particular had never been one of them. He had seen what Vortex had done to Prowl and it had been the worst of Vortex’s work that Jazz had seen where the victim had lived. It had been up there with the worst Vortex had done in general but Prowl was... stoic seemed like the wrong glyph. It did not feel like Prowl was trying to keep his shock and horror and fear under wraps, it really felt like Prowl just felt nothing and that just felt... wrong. Why was it wrong? Everyone, Jazz included, referred to Prowl as a drone spark. He never flinched at the casualties. He never served as a shoulder to lean on when his team lost one of their own. Prowl was unflinching like a girder. Why did Prowl carrying on as normal feel so wrong now?

“What is Ostaros?” Jazz asked. Prowl’s optics flickered as his intakes suddenly caught. Jazz flinched because if Ratchet turned up right now, he was a dead mech. He reached for Prowl’s servo and covered it. “Ventilate, mech.”

“Ostaros,” Prowl wheezed.

“Vortex said he’d tell ya where Tarantulas has it,” Jazz said. “Ya told ‘m he was full o’ slag.”

“He was,” Prowl said. “He has no idea where Tarantulas is.”

“Ya real sure?” Jazz asked.

“If Vortex knew where Tarantulas was, Tarantulas would be in a cage in Darkmount,” Prowl replied.

“I seen the list,” Jazz agreed. Vortex had almost certainly been blowing smoke out of his afthole and Prowl had been too Prowl to fall for it. “Tarantulas is up at the top. Is Megatron after Ostaros too?”

“I doubt it,” Prowl replied, sounding uncertain, at least by his standards. Jazz’s plating almost stood up on end. “Ostaros is nothing to Megatron.”

“If he did get his servos on it, could Megs use it against ya?” Jazz asked. Prowl jerked his helm and stared at him. He shuddered and Jazz could hear his fans revving. They were so loud Jazz barely heard his answer.

“Yes.”

“What’s Ostaros?” Jazz asked.

“My bitlet.”

[finiteuniverse13]

home is people, not a place 2/?

Part 1

Summary: Clay gets attacked on base. DEVGRU finds an issue in that.

TW: Blood mention, physical assault, canon typical violence

Tag: @rebelwrites @chibsytelford @bravo-four-seal-team @velvetcardiganbucky @supervalcsi @abby-splace @itsonautopilot @thegirlwhoisalwayswriting @pinkrockstar19 @softi92 @mrsmarvelous1995 @jayhalsteadfan-2417

Lisa is pissed. She has every right to be. Clay had been attacked in the Bravo cages.

She’d watched the kid go from a strap who couldn’t stay in his own lane to an operator who could lead Bravo – and Tier One, for that matter – into the future. And then he’d been attacked in his team’s cages, in his own cage. Blackburn was still at the hospital – he’d found the kid in a pool of his own blood; Lisa wouldn’t blame him if it took an apocalypse to separate him from the kid – making sure that the kid got appropriate care.

She pushed open the door to Bravo’s briefing room, not that it actually had any members of Bravo in it. Alpha, Charlie and Delta were all there, waiting on her brief on the situation. Echo would have been there, if not for them being halfway through their first deployment as a team. There had been hesitation about deploying Echo – the loss of the last Echo line-up still sat heavily in the Tier’s mind.

The three team’s Master Chiefs and 2ICs had sat in Bravo’s usual chairs. Full Metal and Derek sat in Jason and Ray’s chairs, respectively. Beau and his second in command had taken Sonny and Trent’s, while TJ was sat in Brock’s. Delta Two had distinctively chosen not to sit in Clay’s seat, instead sitting in a chair usually used for either Cerberus or a support staff member, depending on the op.

(It was very funny to watch Brock and Clay push a wheely chair with Cerberus on it between the two of them, and they’d pretty much mastered the art of doing it in the last few months. Cerb had found that if he allowed it to happen, he’d get belly rubs and treats, so he was unbothered about it)

The other seats had a random assignment, seemingly first-come-first-serve. The ones unlucky enough to have not found seats stood tensely, arms crossed and grumbling under their breath to each other.

Nobody sat in Clay’s seat.

All 18 operators looked up when she walked in, attention snapping to the person with the most information. As she walked in, her gaze caught on the table space in front of Clay’s chair. Clay had left his book on the table. It’s about as thick as a brick, and Sonny would probably take a glance at it and tell Clay it was as dry as one. The embossed cover didn’t read English, and Lisa had a feeling that there would be very few, if any, people in the room able to read any part of the book.

She stood at the front and pushed her emotions down. These operators were here for information, not emotion.

“At 0145 this morning, 4 Green Team members entered Bravo’s Cage room. At 0157, they left, and returned to the Green Team barracks. 0204, Lieutenant Commander Blackburn entered the Bravo cages. He dialled 911 and was assisted by Alpha Four-”

She cuts herself off for a few seconds, as various operators slapped Jordan on the back, mumbled thanks spreading through the room as they reassured themselves that one of their own had helped their kid.

“Assisted by Alpha Four at 0207. Ambulance arrived at 0215. The Green Team members were apprehended by Alpha and Delta at 0248.”

She pauses again as a ripple of thanks goes through to room, Alpha and Delta thanking their Master Chiefs and each other and Charlie thanking both teams.

“Petty Officer Spenser was admitted to hospital at 0224, and was assessed as having a concussion, a broken nose and 5 bruised ribs.”

Alpha, Charlie and Delta’s medics all take note of this. They’re probably going to be on Clay’s ass for the next few months about this, right behind Trent.

“Bravo arrived at the Hospital at 0243. They are all with him. Hayes has asked that he is included in any appropriate punishments.”

Full Metal snorts. “Bet he didn’t word it like that”

A series of chuckles and grins echoes around the room. He did not word it like that. There was much more swearing, and much, much less formal language. He’d implied murder no less than 5 times.

Lisa allowed a smile to pass through the stony calm façade she had up.

“Command has delegated these appropriate punishments to be carried out within DEVGRU and have stressed the importance of leaving an impression on future graduates. This cannot be a recuring event.”

TJ pipes up first, almost before she’d finished talking. “I say we let Metal work his magic, make sure nobody finds them.”

This gets mixed responses, but Lisa isn’t surprised when none are wholly negative. They all had a younger brother in the form of Clay, and they had all trained for years in the art of killing their enemies as swiftly and efficiently as possible, and these candidates fell wholly and completely under the title of ‘Enemy’.

Metal gives a faux hopeful look to Lisa, and Lisa can tell that he’s not entirely dismissed the possibility, even as he does a terrible job at pretending to still consider it an option that Lisa could authorize. Lisa plays into the joke – god knows that Tier One needs some light in this disastrous day – and gives him the look mostly used for when Bravo (usually Sonny) suggests a stupid idea that shouldn’t had even crossed their minds. Blackburn jokingly referred to it as her “bad dog” look, and it worked for its purpose, making the operators put their tails between their legs. A few faces form smiles, and a few look to be wavering on the edge of smiling.

“No murder, and no death.”

This gets her grumbles, and not all of them are joking. Clay had gotten all of them out of sticky situations. Every operator in Tier One had a handful story where Clay had needed to be briefed on their op, and all of them had at least one where he’d taking calls at 2am to translate over a connection that he could barely hear English through. He’d never berated them for waking him up, and had often taken time to teach various operators key phrases, if he knew they were deploying somewhere where he knew the language.

Beau goes next, possibly the most level-headed of the Master Chiefs – both in the room and not. “Advanced SERE?”

Now this, Lisa can work with. Something about her posture must change, a twitch in her face, because the room suddenly erupts in sound. Charlie Two, Delta Five and Alpha Three all are in close enough range to clap Beau on the back, and they do so in quick succession.

“Gentlemen.” She raises her voice to be heard by the room. There’s nothing gentle about the looks on their faces.

“I’ll leave you to figure something out. Report to me with a plan of action.” And with that, she gives them a single nod and begins to leave. Her turned back does not block out the whispers of violence, but it does hide the vicious smile that’s stretched itself out along her face.

Nobody would even think about hurting their kid. Ever again.

+

As Clay blearily opened his eyes, he realised that he’d succumbed to pain-med-induced sleep. A few hours had probably passed since then, based on the fact that sunlight was now filling the room. Sonny was sat on his right side, gaze focused on the room’s TV screen, which was showing a play-by-play of a football game. The volume was cranked down, and even as Clay becomes more aware; he can only hear every other word.

“Son?” The word passes his lips without him meaning it to. Sonny’s head snaps over to Clay, so fast that Clay fears he may have given himself whiplash.

“Hey Bam Bam, how ya doin?” The toothpick moves hypnotically. Stop looking at the toothpick. Stop it. Stop it. Sonny’s casual expression is betrayed by the slight waver in his voice, a sliver of raw emotion that Sonny couldn’t fully supress. Clay gives him a strained smile in lieu of answering and reaches his hand out. Sonny catches the hand before it moves very far, holding it in a tight grip.

Sonny’s thumb absently runs across Clay’s unblemished because he hadn’t even been able to fight back knuckles, and his spare hand turns off the TV, leaving them in silence.

“Kid.” Clay’s eyes widen slightly, and he almost pulls his hand out of Sonny’s grip at the softly spoken word. He tries to get in the apology, the explanation, before Sonny can tell him that Jason is punishing him for being unaware.

“I should have being paying attention. I know I should have been paying attention, I was just so tired.” I’m sorry I’m so sorry don’t kick me out please

Sonny freezes. What?

“Clay. Stop. Stop-” he has to cut himself off before he says something that includes those really touchy-feely-emotions he’s feeling. Thankfully, Clay doesn’t take the pause as an opportunity to continue. “Stop trying to defend yourself. None of us blame you, Blondie. You were on base. You should have been protected. We won’t fail you again.” Sonny gives him facts, because he knows that if he tries to do anything else he’ll make it worse.

“Son?” Clay recalls a voice calling through the dark, through the black water he was floating in, a voice he’d recognised; “Did Blackburn find me? He- he had blood on his hands”

For a moment, Sonny curses Clay’s blessings as a sniper. He’d always been able to notice the little things, the things none of them would notice. “Yeah, he was checking that none of us were sleeping in the cages.”

Clay nods, and then his brows furrow. He breaks eye contact with Sonny and frowns in the genal direction of his feet. His face makes what Sonny calls his ‘Brainiac’ Face, and Sonny can only assume that he’s thinking about what happened with Blackburn, not rationalizing with himself that the beating was somehow his fault.

“Son, can I talk to him?” Sonny doesn’t want to think about whatever that conversation is going to be, so he nods and begins to gather his stuff. His cap is hanging precariously from one on the bed’s corners, his phone on the bedside table. He stands and ruffles Clay’s head, laughing despite the stink-eye he gets for it. Clay doesn’t mind it, and he has the feeling the next few weeks, if not months, are going to be filled with various forms of physical contact to reassure his teammates that he was still with them.

And now he’d asked Sonny to get Blackburn. God what do you even say to the guy who had found you beaten? ‘Hey Boss, I’m sure that what you saw was horrifying, but I’m alright now?’ God help him. Sonny hadn’t given him a weird look, so he’d probably been expecting Clay to ask at some point.

Clay’s train of thought is interrupted when a soft knock sounds on the door. There’s a second of pause before the door opens. Clay can’t think of a time when Blackburn’s looked worse. There are dark circles under his eyes, and a vaguely haunted look in his eyes. His eyes have a red tinge, and Clay can’t tell if that’s from sleep deprivation, or something else. His hands are rubbed red and raw, and Clay can tell that Blackburn had taken extra care to get every fleck of blood off his hands. He’s in a jacket that looks too big for him, and Clay suspects that Trent had a hand in that. Since the injured person – Clay – wasn’t someone he could immediately care for, Trent had gone for the next best thing, a shaken Blackburn. Under the jacket, he’s still in his fatigues, and by the time he’s finished the assessment of Blackburn’s top half, he’d moved close and sat down, hiding everything below his waist from Clay’s view.

Blackburn reaches out, putting a palm on Clay’s forearm, Clay’s hand mirrors it on Blackburn’s arm, and tension bleeds from Blackburn’s figure. His shoulders slump slightly, and he leans forward.

“How are you feeling?”

Clay considers lying, considers saying that he’s not in any pain, considers easing Blackburn’s mind. He decides against it. Blackburn had found him in a pool of blood, it’s the least he can do to tell him the truth. “My ribs hurt. But I’m, I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you were there.”

Clay is the sometimes literally bleeding heart of Bravo, levelling out Sonny’s emotional constipation, and the admission is the balm of some of the burns on Eric’s soul. Eric leaned forwards, shuffling closer to the bed, trying to hide the blood on his knees. He hadn’t been home to change, a call to his wife at 8am had told her that he wasn’t going to be home for a while. She, like the amazing wife she was, had been understanding, and then grumbled at him to let her sleep. They’d both laughed and exchanged ‘I love you’s before his wife ended the call. Clay didn’t need the stress of knowing that Eric had knelt in his blood. Nobody needs that.

“Gave me quite a scare, gave all of us quite a scare.” Eric doesn’t tell him that he’d spent the last half hour scrubbing his hands raw, that Jason had needed to strong-arm him into the waiting room, that Trent had given him one look and offered up his jacket, that he’d had his head in his hands until Sonny had come into the room and told him that Clay wanted to talk to him. Doesn’t tell him that he’d stood outside for nearly a minute before he’d knocked, that he’d needed to barrel in before he lost the nerve to speak to his operator. He usually prides himself on staying calm, on being collected, but Clay had been attacked in one of the few places on earth that he could honestly and without reservation call home. That scared Eric. If he couldn’t keep his operators safe on base, where would they be safe?

“Davis is talking to command about adding locks to the cage room doors, make sure this doesn’t happen again.” If she wasn’t already talking to command about it, she would be soon.

Clay nods. He shifts and grimaces in pain.

“Do you want me to get a nurse?” It’s a safe question, one that doesn’t involve the emotions in the room.

Clay ignores the lifeline. “I’m alright as I am. Did you get the guys?”

Eric nods. Breaking the news to Bravo had been the highlight of his morning. “Command is letting DEVGRU work out how to punish them.”

Clay grins. “I bet Metal is having fun with that.”

It’s Eric’s turn to smile, and a soft chuckle makes its way out. “Davis is under strict orders to not accept a plan that involves murder. I’m sure Alpha’s disagreeing with that.”

Alpha was most likely to deploy with Bravo, and all were in line with their Master Chief’s ‘Bury-first-questions-second’ policy when it came to Clay. Eric had a feeling it wouldn’t take much convincing to get Delta and Echo behind the plan, and that Charlie would only argue on principle.

Tier One was a brotherhood that didn’t take kindly to injury, as the world would learn.

+

Echo One – Zack Greer – a newly promoted Delta Two, wasn’t a very outgoing man. One and Twos were meant to both complement and contrast each other, a precarious balancing act honed over years of living out of each other’s pockets. TJ had needed a level head, so his Two was calm in the face of crisis.

Echo Two, on the other hand. A Floridian man, Elliot Howe, promoted from Charlie Three, who was under strict orders to never drink unsupervised with Sonny Quinn, lest they empty a bar and then burn said bar to the ground. He’d chaffed under Beau’s tight ship, so when the opportunity to move to form Echo had arisen, he was hard pushed to say no.

Together with Echo Three (Alpha Three), Echo Four (Delta Six) and two Green Team graduates as their Five and Six, they’d created a tight brotherhood.

Echo Five, Dan Wilder, a multilingual K9 handler, had initially been lost at DEVGRU, not quite fitting in. He’d reached out to the youngest operator – Bravo Six – in order to get some advice. What he didn’t know at the time is that their languages had overlap. Together with Clay and Ares – his K9 – he’d been able to find someone to practice with.

Echo had long since lost count of how many times Clay had come into their cage room, with a well-loved book, offering it to Dan with a brief explanation of how it would interest him. The book was never in English, and neither was the explanation. For all they knew, Clay could have spent the last few months giving Dan anything from Harry Potter to The Anarchist’s Cookbook (he’d actually only given Dan one of those, and Dan was under strict instructions not to tell them which, and Dan had been recommending others back).

Sonny, on the days when they were hanging out after work, sometimes tagged along to these exchanges. He’d joked about a book club, and Echo Two had picked up on the joke immediately, and since then the pair had resigned themselves to the nickname.

Between Clay’s frequent interactions with Dan and the fact that all of DEVGRU was deadly protective of Clay, it was no surprise that when Echo had heard the news, they hadn’t been happy. Command had fought a battle with Echo to keep them deployed, and Echo had nearly won. Dan had been on many rants, talking to empty space in Pashto – Four only caught a few words, and those were all along the lines of murder and death. Ares was giving out a low, constant growl. Both of the DEVGRU K9s were as protective as their owners, it seemed.

The door to their dorms slammed open and Zack marched in. Echo looks up in sync, and if it weren’t so serious, Zack would be amused by how much his men look like Meerkats. “Got word from Virginia.” This sets his men on edge, Howe half-steps forward, and his shoulders visibly tense up. “They found the green team rookies. We’ve been asked to approve the plan of their punishment before it gets sent to be approved by command.” Malicious smiles break out among the barracks.

They may be 7000 miles away, but they wouldn’t let anybody off the hook because of it.

[dontcallmecarrie]

Ohhh I’d love to see the Doom POV!!! Justin X Doom has my vote

Loki would be cute too, much drama with the avengers

Honestly? This snippet mostly summed up my take on Victor von Doom in this AU, and I'm not sure how in-character he is considering my main reference base for him is the 2005-7 movies and a handful of comic book panels.

Apologies for any inaccuracies, I'm playing very fast and loose with how I would have made him fit in the MCU. Plus this AU's turning out a lot, lot fluffier than I'd originally expected, too, considering the original premise was supposed to just be 'SI-OC as a villain protagonist, let's see where it goes!' and not much else.

.

Okay, so if we're talking about potential crushes, then it's obviously very one-sided at first [because Justin's brand of obliviousness has him younger-sibling-zoning anyone remotely his age for the longest time].

After all, these two met in boarding school, and were only physically reunited years later but if we're exploring how this ship would work, here's how I think it'd go:

Victor von Doom didn't think much of his study buddy, at first.

Because at first, he just wanted a quiet place to read, and most other children his age were rowdy and kept trying to get him to play with them, or tried to pick childish fights over nothing, and he had no patience for anything of the sort because he was here, at boarding school instead of with his family, and he'd heard the whispers of growing tensions and he knew they'd sent him away for his own safety but that didn't mean he had to like it.

So he mostly kept his nose in a book, and focused on his studies, and just generally tried not to think too much about what was going on in his home country.

If that meant he was a bit more snappish than the average child, he didn't particularly find it in him to care. Sure, this place was lauded as where the social elites sent their spawn to network from an early age, so what?

...as such, he didn't expect to make any friends.

But he did, starting from the moment they wordlessly agreed to share the alcove because there weren't many other quiet places to study for the upcoming exams.

From there, what Victor would have expected to be a one-off turns into a strange sort of routine as they meet up week after week from then on, giving each other a brisk nod as they pull out their books and set to work.

It's...surprisingly nice, having someone to study with. Victor's not certain how old his companion is, but he's quiet and hardworking and generally less draining to be around than most children their age.

Their first conversation is several months after they've first met, when Victor didn't notice he'd forgotten to grab a pencil for his worksheets and his...schoolmate[?] lends him a spare.

From then on out, their friendship is something gradual, something comfortable. Victor's companion respects boundaries in ways he hasn't really seen outside of his family— is sensitive enough to his moods that he knows when to change the subject, and when Victor's struggling to articulate his feelings and just needs time to do so.

...it's one of, if not the thing Victor misses most, when he gets pulled out of boarding school.

Because after that, things only go downhill from there.

.

Latveria's civil war was... bloody, let's just leave it at that.

Brutal, with a laundry list of factions and alliances that were forged and broken from one breath to another and Victor hadn't set out to be the leader of his faction— but it wasn't like he had any other choice.

He was one of the last surviving members of his family, if there was any hope that his country would be anything other than a fragmented mess then he had to step up.

Even if that meant a teenager was the face of one of the most eminent factions of this damn war, someone nobody really took seriously, and if Victor hadn't had years of seeing his oldest friend's charisma at work then he honestly has no clue how he would've managed to get as far as he had.

And then things escalated even more, and Victor honestly hadn't expected to live to see the end of the fighting, let alone what came after.

One of his advisors was the one to suggest making one last attempt at buying their weapons through a vaguely legitimate source; nobody with any sense was selling to their region, but the black market favored some of their biggest rivals and things were getting desperate enough that Victor signed off on it.

It was a long shot, and they all knew it.

...as such, that first shipment of Hammer Industries weapons took them all by surprise.

.

Victor had never set out to become the new leader of Latveria.

But here he was now, loved and feared and reviled around the world and he doesn't know where to go from here, but... the fact that he's alive to even be able to think about a future after the war was an incredible boon as it was.

Now that he is where he is, he can afford to think about more than just surviving from one day to another, and apart from working on rebuilding Latveria, he's also got some personal projects going on.

Such as finding out who came through at the eleventh hour, because now that he has the time and space to look a gift unicorn in the mouth he's realizing just how many laws must have been broken for those first few shipments to have gotten there.

The paper trail is a dead end, but once Victor starts poking around it should be so, very easy for him to get answers.

After all, Victor was a warlord-now-technically-dictator with access to black-ops personnel and honest-to-goodness death squads, getting intel on what he wanted should not be this hard. Sure, Hammer Industries had good information security, but... apparently, Hammer Senior wasn't the type to get involved in this sort of mess, which meant Victor had no idea who was responsible and he wanted answers—

In the end, one picture is all it takes.

Actually— when he'd first seen the picture, Victor had been in the middle of a meeting with some of his most trusted advisors and generals.

...suffice it is to say, nothing productive got achieved after he recognized the face of the heir of Hammer Industries, once he realized he'd never actually gotten his childhood friend's full name.

The less said about his reaction to the picture, the better, too: Victor's advisors had seen him at his best and at his worst, why they'd freaked out so much was anyone's guess.

So what if he'd kept it, after the meeting was over? Those looks were uncalled for!

.

Victor owes Justin more than he can name— so when there's a ghost of a chance to reconnect, he takes it.

.

Regrets were had.

Everyone at the UN summit looked at him, and he gritted his teeth as he faced off against seasoned politicians twice and thrice his age and he knew what they were expecting, knew they called him a dictator where his country called him a hero and neither of them wanted him here but Latveria had to re-enter the international sphere somehow so they were stuck with him.

Until Zemo got his act together and finished that international relations course, at least. Oh, and got out of the habit of shooting his problems, that too.

Victor had managed to get them diplomatic immunity, but that'd be a hard sell.

...it's funny. Latveria's civil war was over, but... he found himself at odds as to where to go from here.

.

It's funny, how the more things change, the more they really, really don't.

Victor had been a quiet and antisocial bastard back in boarding school, surviving a civil war hadn't exactly done much for his temperament either.

Or his social skills, for that matter.

And just like always, Justin's mere presence was weaponized sunshine.

...Victor never stood a chance.

[heyitsyn]

Manager!Seijoh KYO ROUTE

a/n: AAAAA HERE IT FINALLY IS!!!!! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!!!!

THIS IS KYO’S ROUTE AND TBH, I REALLY WANT TO MAKE AN IWA ROUTE BUT I ALSO WANT TO MAKE AN OIKAWA ROUTE BC IT HAS BEEN BROUGHT TO MY ATTENTION THAT SOMEONE’S FAVORITE IS ACTUALLY OIKS AND I WANT TO GIVE HER THAT ENDING AND I WANT IWA TO HAVE AN ENDING AS A PERSONAL REQUEST HEHEHEHEHEHE

REMINDER, THIS IS A WHAT IF SCENARIO LIKE WHAT IF SHE ENDS UP WITH KYO AND HOW WOULD IT HAPPEN SO THIS IS NOT REALLY GOING TO BE PART OF THE MAIN MANAGER!SEIJOH SERIES

anon requests:  

 -i love the seijoh manager one and i was just wondering if i could please request one where she ends up with kyoken

-OH MY GOD Can y/n-chan and kyoubabie end up together and like how would the team react wawlndksndkfnkdndkfnkd im so soft

-I kinda like the idea after the time skip that Kyo and the manager end up together, he's still such a softie for her. I feel like after seeing how Kyo acts around her the team wasn't surprised that they ended up together and kinda expected it.

- what if manager reader and Kyotani kiss 😳👉👈

- hi I love your seijoh manager aus! They’re so cute and wholesome but also very chaotic 😭 I have a request,, if yn and kyo end up together then can you do a scenario where the boys find out and are like 👁👄👁 huh, u choose the dog?? NDJJS IDK KYO IS SO UNDERRATED BUT N E WAYS ILY AND YOUR SERIES YOURE SO TALENTED 😭💕

i totally not already planned this part from the last part 

tw: hint of abuse

ALSKDFJASDKJAFKLDSJFLKA HINATA SAID NYOOM 

so,,, yep lets start

hehehehehehehe kyo is so protective like bls be mine

even though miyo has been expelled and doesnt mess w you anymore, he still looks out for you and makes sure no one messed w you

like he actually goes to the first floor immediately and leans on the wall outside your class so he could walk with you to the gym or to lunch

at first, you thought it was bc oikawa told him to look out for you but when you found out it was competely all him, you were so soft for him and appreciative at him taking the time to go to you

like one day after class, you were planning on just eating lunch inside the classroom with kunimi and kindaichi but you were thirsty and felt stuffed in the room so you excused yourself to go eat at the roof

as you opened the door, you came face-to-face with the blonde upperclassman and you were so shocked that you closed the door on impulse

you said haha not today satan

but you realized who he was and hurriedly opened it

‘ohmagod im so sorry kyo-san!’

he shrugged

‘its fine’

you smiled apologetically and cleared your throat

‘so,,, what can i do for you, kyo-san?’

he shoved his hands in his pockets bc in truth, he didnt really know, but he caught sight of your bento on your hands

‘the roof?’

he asked making you look at him, impressed

‘howd you know?’

‘if youre not eating in there, the roof would be the only other place youd eat, right?’

you leaned against the doorway and reached forward to rub his arm

‘you stalking me now, kyo-san?’

he narrowed his eyes and looked away

but he grabbed your hand before interlacing your fingers and you were shocked to be dragged with him to somewhere in the school

‘the roof’

was all he said and you quickly kept up to pace with him until you arrived your destination at the top of the school

it was quite a cloudy day so the sun was actually out of view but it wasnt going to be a rainy day

the temperature was slowly getting colder since you were now transitioning from fall to winter but you didnt care bc it was still fresh air

you hurriedly tugged him forward and sat him down next to you so you both were seated together

‘do you not eat lunch kyo-san?’

‘no. i dont have time’

he pulled his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them while you laid your legs on a straight line in front of you so you could rest the box on your lap

kyo laid his cheek on his arm as he watched you excitedly unwrap the cloth and open the mint-green lid to reveal the rice and tamagoyaki with chicken bites inside

‘itadakimasu!’

you softly clapped your hands then positioned your chopsticks but you paused, head turning to kyo

he felt like he was caught stealing something lmao stealing glances get it so he quickly averted his gaze to the railing that surrounded the roof

you delicately placed a hand on his arm which gave you his attention and you raised a piece of the egg dish

‘one?’

you offered and he shook his head but you pouted at him making him sigh then open his mouth

now you were no gorgon ramsai im cackling sorry but you could cook since your mother believed that you werent a girl unless you knew how to cook

his eyes were shining as he chewed and you giggled before holding up another piece which he quickly snatched up

‘ill bring you your own bento tomorrow kyo-san~!’

and you did

the next day, you waited for him at your class and when you caught sight of him walking from your class window, you bounced up in your seat, startling kindaichi from eating his noodles

‘y/n?’

kunimi questioned but you werent even looking at him

‘ill see you later, aki!’

you waved and opened the door to go to kyo, who lowkey got scared when you just ran up to him

he raised his hand to ruffle your hair and you got closer to him and held out the blue box

‘here. as promised’

he held the box and stared at it, like it was the first time someone gave him this

you took his surprise as gratitude and grabbed his hand, swinging it as you talked about your lessons on your way to the roof

when he opened it, he lifted the first container and saw what was hiding at the very bottom shelf

it was a serving of famima chicken with its wrapper stil intact

‘how-’

‘saw you eating it when you first joined the team. then i started noticing you eating it whenever we go to the convenience store’

the fact that you were so perceptive towards him brought an unfamiliar feeling inside him that made his heart thump and stomach to tickle

‘dont worry, kyo-san! i made sure everything was good!’

your eyes closed due to the intensity of your grin and you raised a thumbs up to prove your word further

he blinked at you and truly thought you were an angel

an angel sent down to help a lost hope like him?

was that you?

were you his angel?

during practice, he was actually very calm and collected and wasnt pushing anyone at all which surprised everyone

iwaizumi even stared at him confusingly and if iwa was looking at him like that, the entire team knew something was up

‘oi, kyotani, you good? you sick?’

rip 2020 would like to know your location

the fake blonde turned to him and shook his head, face free of any glare or irritation

in fact, he looked like a completely different person if not for the hair

‘im good’

he answered

‘did they have a buy one get one sale on that chicken of yours?’

oikawa tested

if he answered him, something was definitely wrong

‘no. i dont think so’

yep, something was wrong

oikawa was screaming and shouting that the world was going to end while the others were laughing, panicking, and worrying while iwa just stood there, staring at his underclassman

you returned from filling up the bottles and was confused at the state of the team

‘i-um-what happened’

kyo’s ears perked up at your voice and he bounded up to you like a doggie seeing its owner come home

you smiled and reached up to place a hand on his shoulder with ease bc he was one of the shorter players therefore easier to reach

‘did oikawa-san break again?’

you asked and he nodded

‘hes being an idiot’

he mumbled

‘hes just being oikawa-san, kyo-san. you still have to respect him as your captain, remember that’

you said and he rolled his eyes but nodded anyways

‘fine. only because you said so’

iwa was watching this interaction with very wide eyes and his confusion only grew like 10 million times

kyotani kentarou never answered to anyone and if he did, that must be earned

as far as iwa knew, kyo was just so soft to you and treats you so different than the 7.8 billion people in the world

no person in the world could ever get kyo to act like that except you

and there had to be a reason

and iwa was pretty sure he knew

after practice, you were scheduled to look after the cats in shinsou’s house so you were going to walk with kyo

he was impatiently waiting for oikawa to finish talking to you until his patience just snapped and he grabbed you and lifted you up to his arms then just started walking, surprising everyone in silence

you instinctually wrapped your legs around him and held on to his shoulders tightly while his arms were bounded around your waist

‘OI! KYOKEN-CHAN! HOW DARE YOU STEAL Y/N-CHAN!’

oikawa was punching the air

you placed your cheek on his shoulder and let out a breathy chuckle

‘you couldnt wait for another second, kyo-san?’

‘the trash was starting to reek’

you laughed and grimaced at the laughter that bubbled out of you

‘so mean, kyo-san!’

your laughter made him subconsciously smile and he held you closer, placing his chin on your shoulder as he continued on the trek to the familiar purple house

once you did arrive though, kyo refused to let your hand go

ope reference?

‘kyoooooo~! cmon! let me gooo~!’

‘no’

he grumbled and continued to hold your hand tighter as you tried to tug it free so you could walk up the gates to your employer

‘i need to work~! pleeeease~!’

you whined but he scrunched his nose in distate, pulling your hand forward so you stumbled into his chest where he wrapped both arms to cage you in

‘no. i dont want you with that grape head’

he growled lowly making you laugh and you turned so your ear would be right above his heart

it was beating fast

his scent travelled up your nose and you closed your eyes, snuggling even further

cherry blossoms and vanilla with the slightest hint of sandalwood

‘i need to go’

you mumbled but he gripped your tighter

‘stay with me’

he whispered 

tbh you wouldve if literally hizashi-san didnt catch you at the front of his house cuddling

it was quite an embarrassing encouter when he wouldnt stop talking about it and you had to actually push him and aizawa out the door 

‘we were really rooting for hitoshi but do what makes you happy, dear!’

‘hizashi-san, please!’

you werent really aware of how clingy kyoken was and it only caught your attention when during one of your lunch (dates), he clinging on to you

your position has now shifted so you were sitting between his legs while you fed him food and he would rest his chin on your shoulder to watch the clouds and sky

‘kyo-san, did something happen? youre clingier than usual’

he shook his head and buried his face in your neck

‘allergies’

he whispered and you leaned your head on top of his, continuing on eating your food

‘hey, kyo-san, do you think it will snow soon? we’re getting into december already so it would snow soon, right?’

you asked and he emerged from his spot

‘i hope so. that would be nice. we need a little more snow now and then’

im SCREAMING RIGHT NOW AND TEARS ARE WELLING UP IN MY EYES HELP-

‘yea. yea. when it falls, i want to go out and stand in it. if we’re lucky, we could have a snowball fight up here. whaddya think, kyo-san?’

pls dont blast at me with the timeline bc tbh my timeline is so messed up and if i was to fix that, id basically have to scrap this entire series bc of how messy with the timeline it is

‘yea. we will’

he hugged you tighter that day

when he didnt show up for practice, you were frantically looking for him

did he skip?

you knew how he struggled not being able to play with the others and missing this opportunity wasnt something he would do

and you were worried where he was and he might be hurt somewhere

you ran out of the gym and out of the school grounds, running through the alleys and any secluded area bc he mustve had a bad day and wanted to get away

indeed, you found him in the alleyway and you were horrified at his bloodied face and ruffled clothing

he was seated on the floor, head leaning against the wall with his eyes closed, even oblivious to the dogs and cats that were worriedly nudging him

‘kyo-san!’

you shrieked and his eyes flew open and he quickly stood up to run but you were quicker and restrained him with your arms around his middle

it was so bad

his foster family,,,, everything was such a mess

he trembled in your arms and you felt his fear, his terror, and you gently, but firmly, held him so you could look at his face

he was staring at the floor angrily, tears welling up in his eyes and you shakingly placed a hand on his cheek, bringing it down so he could rest his forehead against yours

assuring words would fall deaf to his ears so you didnt even bother

instead, you tried to hold his hand, ignoring the flinching, but gently held it and brought it up to rest on top of where your heart would be

his eyes closed and your forehead nuzzled against his 

‘feel my heartbeat. recognize me, as it beats for you’

you whispered to him, his other hand shakingly touching the hand that was on his face so he could caress it and he moved his head, placing a kiss on your palm

‘its beating for kenta-kun,, no foster family, no volleyball team, nobody else and nothing else matters but my heartbeat, so focus on it. because this is everything i could give you so treasure it, please’

you whispered, your own tears falling, hurting for your love

okay im full sobbing

‘and the snow. it will snow soon and you and i,,, we will go outside and we will play in the snow. the world will turn white but your colors will still paint my sight. let my heartbeat be your colors and let me color your canvas during the snow, kyo-san. it will beat for you, and only you, for as long as you let it. your heartbeat has painted mine already and its the most beautiful colors ive ever seen’

he cried for the first time that day, not in pain or sadness, but in happiness, because he can finally see it

your love and your colors starting to brighten the black and red hes grown accustomed to and helping him see, indeed, the world was beautiful

but it was truly your colors that made him realize that

kyotani and you stayed in that position for a long time and yahaba, who went after you, saw and quickly ran back to the gym to assure that you were alright and kyotani was safe, in your arms

after the natsu fiasco, he was a frequent visitor in your house and your family gets the gist of yanno, his home life, and your mother even gave him the spare key of the house

‘if y/n-chan trusts you, i do too’

yall what 😭

at night, you would lay out at the backyard, laying side-by-side and pointing at the stars and making up stupid stories as to why that star was brighter than the other or why the moon was built like that

but kyo was more focused, much happier, that he can see everything so much clearer and better

he turned his gaze from the stars to you beside him, your hair spreading out beneath you and your eyes sometimes disapperaing when you would laugh too hard

‘i wonder why the night sky is blue instead of black like the universe’

you wondered out loud but kyotani whispered something you didnt think youd ever hear from him

‘because you let me paint everything with my colors and i refuse to let you see something that i suffered seeing my entire life’

you returned his gaze and this was the real kyotani kentaro

not kyoken,

not kenta-kun

kyotani kentaro

and my god was he beautiful

he kissed you that night

it wasnt anything lustful, nothing aggressive, but not exactly gentle

it was a perfect balance of need yet hesitance that made it so much more powerful and important because it relayed the unspoken words that he had the hardest time letting out

and that was okay with you

kyo’s eyes and touch said everything he wanted to say

there was no one in sight, no body to judge the violent boy and the kind girl, just you and him with the man in the moon, gently smiling that the so-called lost cause finally found his redemption

okay that serious and sad stuff is finally out of the way and no more crying this time so dont be sad anymore :(

your relationship was never something you flaunted around or bragged about bc you and kyo were pretty private people so nobody really knew bc kyo still acted the way he would when oikawa would flirt you but yahaba noticed

oh lordie he noticed

he noticed kyo was much angrier when oikawa does his antics and he would stick closer to you, exchanging bashful smiles with you

the team only noticed when you seemed to just glow

like not like a glowstick 

but like your,,, aura,,, 

you laughed more, you smiled more, you teased everyone more

you were so,,, you

they had a hunch that something happened between you and kyo but they were never really sure

but ehehehe they confirmed it alright

the third years: mattsun, makki, iwa, and oiks were walking down the hallway when again, someone peaked out the window and saw you and kyo by the shade and you were perfectly angled so they could see the two of you

you were pressed against the wall while kyo was hovering over you with an arm beside your head while his hand was caressing your hip

makki let out a chortled scream that caught the attention of the others and he pointed at you two wordlessly

omg WAS KYOTANI SMILING

they watched as kyo smiled then teased you by kissing your nose, then your cheeks

‘kyo, kiss me right!’

you whined but giggled

kyotani had a teasing smirk but continued kissing you everywhere but where you wanted

‘hm? here? or here?’

right below your ear was your ticklish spot and he knew that so his kisses there tickled you and sent you on a giggling spree

‘kyo~~~!’

finally, he relented and gave you a sweet, yet passionate kiss that always managed to leave you breathless

that was when oikawa went on a rampage

well, he waited until classes were over but during practice, oh girl he went on a rampage

‘Y/N, KYOTANI!’

everyone knew he was serious when he didnt call them with those ridiculous nicknames

ngl you were scared too but kyo just glared at him

‘what’

he grumbled but you instinctively placed a hand on his arm

‘are you dating now, y/n, kyotani?’

iwa gently asked but oikawa was being oikawa

oikawa glared at you then pouted

‘OUT OF EVERYONE HERE, YOU CHOOSE THE DOG?!’

everyone gave each other nervous looks bc they kinda expected this but oikawa asking it like that made them sweat

they expected kyo to blow up but it was you who glared at oikawa, standing protectively in front of kyo

‘and what about it?’

you hissed and oikawa jumped, a hand over his heart

‘REALLY, Y/N-CHAN?! HIM?!’

‘yea and whats the problem with it? how is it your business? why do i need to validate my feelings for him? who do you think you are?’

oml kyo had to drag you out of there bc you were seriously about to fight oikawa for even having the NERVE to say that to you

like kyo held you up with his arms under your armpits as you were kicking the air and wanting to go back in there

‘no! let me go! kyo! i will hit him! come on! baby please!’

you whined and continued kicking

as much as kyo wanted to see you violently hit oikawa, he knew you would feel bad about it later and be guilty for hurting your captain

‘puppy, please. youre too angry right now and i will not sit there and listen to you whine and be sad that you hit oikawa tonight’

you hmphed and crossed your arms

he finally set you down but he wrapped his arms around you from behind and he placed a kiss on your cheek

‘but im really happy though. im really happy that you would fight for me’

but you stayed mad, pouting and looking away with your arms crossed

it was a cute sight honestly

‘of course i would. i would fight anyone who says stuff about you because i love you’

you ranted, just realizing what you said when you finished

no one has exactly said the ‘L’ word yet so you were partly scared that you said it

but kyo laughed then kissed your neck affectionately

‘i love you too, but my puppy is a nice, gentle, kind, little angel’

every compliment earned you a kiss and your tough and angry act finally slipped and you were giggling in his arms

‘yanno, if someone were to see you like this, they would think youre an impostor’

you commented in between giving him little pecks

he shrugged

‘meh. i dont care. i have you so i dont really care what they say about me. but now about you on the other hand-’

you slapped him on the chest

‘you hypocrite! youd fight someone for me but not me fighting someone for you?! how mean!’

you faked a look of surprise but he silenced you with a last kiss

‘youre so cute, y/n. my baby’

the team was a little bit in shambles while you two were away with the third years basically crying and pouting but they really did see this coming so no one was genuinely surprised, even oikawa

‘she really picked him, huh?’

iwa mumbled, a sad smile on his face as if he was just realizing it now

it was something they shouldve easily seen coming and accepted as kyo was so different around you and you treated him so much more than the rest

but why did it hurt so much?

as i mentioned before, they were all really hurting though because in a way, you were their first love

but they wish you to be happy and for kyotani to treat you right because you deserved the universe and more

TIME SKIP!!!!

OH YES I LOVE THIS!!!!

so basically, from my estimation, the timeskip is about 9 years after the third years graduate

so you are like 25 while kyo is 26

lets say you got a job as an editor alongside some guy named akaashi keiji while kyo was still playing volleyball

you got,,,, married quite early like tanaka and kiyoko and you have some minis running around

god decided to give you twins as children like a year after yall wed and currently, you were,,,, having another one??

ehehehe this part made my heart balloon up

imma make it so that kyo actually went to see the olympics with you and your kids are like 3 and theyre actually volleyball fans due to the influence of their uncles and father and partly you

it was easy to get tickets bc iwa literally works for the team and tooru is literally a player and they really wanted to see their godchildren

ngl the team was salty bc you picked them two as godfathers but next time, theyre making you pick out of a hat for your future child

so here you were, each parent carrying a child, lets say the girl is naomi while the boy is naoki, and the girl was wearing a mini argentina oikawa jersey that he specially got for his goddaughter while iwa got naoki a mini kageyama jersey just to spite oikawa

they each were wiggling in excitement to see their uncles and omg imma switch it again that the whole seijoh team is literally there like the og gang is there and watching the olympics

naoki and naomi were excitedly looking around at the unfamiliar faces and kyo was laughing when naomi tugged his collar when she saw her godfather’s picture upclose

‘papa! its kawa! kawa!’

she giggled and he ruffled her mini pigtails

‘it is, isnt it, mimi-chan’

while your son was calmly in your arms, you watched your husband and child interact with each other and her giggling as he tickled her nose

‘y/n-chan! kyoken!’

a familiar shout from only one person made you turn and see oikawa with the others at the back

of course he was huddled in a jacket to not attract attention but the og seijoh volleyball team was back together after so many years apart

‘kawa! hi!!’

naomi wiggled and she told her dad to let her down so she could run up to oikawa who was a few feet away

naoki also caught sight of his idol and you let him run after his sister but crash into the strong arms of iwaizumi

‘hello zumi’

naoki mumbled

‘hey little man! how are you?’

you gave everyone hugs and went to go to a restaurnt nearby to be away from the chaos of the people and kyo could tell you were getting tired standing

he helped you sit on a chair but you kept on grumbling to him

‘kenta, ive been pregnant before, with two! im fine, okay? so stop worrying’

kyo scrunched his nose but flicked your forehead

‘of course i have to worry. you have a literal human being inside of you’

‘well-’

but he used his hand to scrunch your cheeks to prevent you from speaking

‘what? hm, what was it, doll?’

the team gagged 

‘seriously! we suffered 3 years of this already! stop it!!’

kindaichi whined 

you stuck your tongue out at him and everyone got settled on their seats before ordering their food

the children were being entertained by the others and you were giggling at the antics of your friends

‘honestly, you all are nearly 30 yet you still act like children’

you scolded but had a smile on your lips to show you were actually teasing

‘and you act like youre 50 just because youre married with kids’

kunimi countered with his tongue out

you gasped before trying to reach over the table and snatch the tongue out of his mouth

‘come here you litte-’

but kyo gently sat you back down with a stiff smile

‘baby, doll, darling, love, i swear you forget youre not 18 anymore. please youre gonna send your husband to an early grave if you keep acting like this’

he whined, fake crying and the team was so shocked to see him still acting like this 

‘oh my god, y/n-chan, how did you ever get kyoken-chan to be like this? did you brainwash him?’

oikawa mumbled

‘papa dont cry’

naoki tried to reach over the table from iwa’s arms to his father who he thought was really crying

yahaba shook watari in cuteness and mattsun turned to makki

‘can we get one?’

makki scoffed and hit him but still laughed

‘papa is worried that mama will hurt your baby brother, nao-kun’

kindaichi choked on his drink while oikawa screeched, holding naomi tighter

‘BROTHER?! ITS A BOY?!’

the guests in the restaurant were startled by the shriek from the argentina player and you gave kyotani a betrayed look

‘urusai, oikawa!’

kyotani snarled, face turning red at his blunder

‘CAN I BE GODFATHER THIS TIME?!’

‘YAHABA YOU IDIOT! ITS ME!’

‘WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?! YOU SHUT UP MATSUKAWA! ITS ME!’

‘OIKAWA YOU GREEDY LITTLE BIT-!’

‘SHUT UP OR I SWEAR TO GOD!’

you slammed your hands on the table, on your feet and glaring down at the men

naoki and naomi were already used to their mother yelling at uncle mattsun and uncle makki so they were snickering at their uncles terrified face

‘mama, they scared’

naoki commented, fiddling with iwa’s jacket zipper

‘its like y/n-chan and kyoken-chan switched personalities or something’

oikawa muttered, still looking wide-eyed at you

‘that’s it. kenta, hold my purse-!’

‘BABY, WHAT-!’

oh my god it was a sight to see

you have this <6 feet professional olympic volleyball player being hit by a pregnant short woman with her shoe and a bleach-blonde man trying to hold her hands so she alternated to kicking

‘y/n-chan! wait!’

‘nearly a decade later and 2 children later, y/n-chan still knows how to hit’

watari watched with a fond smile, reminiscing their old volleyball times

‘will y/n-chan be okay?’

yahaba worriedly asked but naomi gave him a smile that was a copy/paste of her father’s

‘no, uncle baba. its if kawa would be okay’

while everyone else laughed,

oikawa screamed

AND THATS A WRAP! if its not what you guys wanted, not gonna lie, i was even hesitant to write this part because as much as i love kyo, hes quite a hard character to understand and write for, but i didnt want him to be the typical brute caveman child, instead i wanted this to be like him showcasing that hes not just a screaming man but hes a scared boy whos awkward and doesnt know how to express himself. also, its not canon in the manga or the anime, but i put that he was in the foster system and they werent,,, nice,,,, so thats why he knew first aid bc he had to do it on himself and why he was so calm about her getting hurt and treating her. but thank you for reading this one and im about to write an iwa and an oikawa so expect that in the future!!!

[swaps55]

This Hole You Left (Anderson)

Pairing: mShenko | Tags: Canonical Character Death, Grief

Post-Alchera. 

This is a stand-alone scene from a larger work, but I’m very fond of it, so I’m posting it on its own. 

~

Captain David Anderson stares out at the repair crews moving around the Presidium. Here, from the safe retreat of his office, it doesn’t look so bad. Scaffolding covers the damaged bridge. Debris still floats in the lake, turning the serene blue water a murky brown. The air circulators have almost cycled out the smell of soot and burnt alloy, but a trace of it still lingers. If he leans out far enough, the tip of the relay Shepard had barreled through using nothing but an M-35 Mako just four weeks ago is barely visible on his right periphery.

He doesn’t lean. Just as he doesn’t look at the datapad in his hand. Hearing the words come out of Joker’s mouth was enough. Seeing the helmsman’s face was enough. Anderson had remarked once to Shepard that he’d like to be there the day someone wiped the smartass off Joker’s face.

Shepard had snorted. Not me, sir, he’d said. If he gives up the smartass that probably means I’m fucked. I’d prefer my pilot remain an asshole at all times.

Shepard had been right, of course.

Anderson wipes a thumb across the corner of his eye. It’s all right. No one here to see.

They came back around for another pass, Joker had said, in a voice that was dull, dead, about as far a cry as you could get from the insubordinate ass who’d gone off on the stand in Vancouver just two weeks ago. Shepard had to be to blame for that display. Politics had never been his game.

We lost gravity right as he shoved me in the pod. Momentum from the blast…kicked him the wrong way. I didn’t see what happened after the door closed, but I didn’t need to. Drive core implosion doesn’t leave much to the imagination.

Anderson’s fingers grip the datapad harder. No. It doesn’t. That doesn’t stop his mind from filling in the blanks anyway.

All Shepard’s training. All the hell he’d put himself through to earn that N7 designation. There couldn’t have been a person more prepared to live through the Normandy’s destruction. And in the end, the realities of space had still won.

At least it had probably been quick. Probably.

The door to his office hisses open. For a moment, Anderson expects it to be Shepard. It should be Shepard. That son of a bitch has been putting Anderson’s heart in his throat since he was fourteen years old, but he’s never had the audacity to actually die. Hell, the kid had taken a reaper to the face and shrugged it off.

Kid. Shepard hasn’t been a kid in a long time, maybe never really was to begin with. But to Anderson, some part of Shepard would always be that fourteen-year-old with the thousand-watt grin and a glimmer in his eye that usually meant Anderson’s heart was about to leap into his throat. The smile had faded over time, but not that damned glimmer. He’d last seen it right here on the Citadel, when he’d stood up from the table at Flux Casino with plans to steal the Normandy right out from under the Council’s nose. And Anderson had helped him do it.

This can’t be how it ends. It can’t.

A voice speaks up behind him, crisp, formal. “You wanted to see me, sir.”

His expression tightens, but he smooths it out before he turns around. Lieutenant Alenko stands just inside the door to his office, shoulders straight, hands clasped behind his back, chin in the air. Anderson can’t shake the feeling there’s an empty space next to him.

Probably because he’s never seen Alenko without Shepard.

Kaidan Alenko. Damndest thing.

Who do you want on your marine detail? Anderson had asked, after informing Shepard he was being transferred off the Myeongnyang and onto the Normandy.

You’re asking me?

I’m naming you XO. If there’s someone you want, just say the word.

Alenko.

Anderson hadn’t had a chance to blink before the name was out of Shepard’s mouth. Not another N. Not someone from the special ops teams Shepard had run when Anderson could pry him out of Captain Oseguera’s hands. He wanted the biotic from the ‘Yang.

Hackett was the one who’d argued for assigning Alenko to Shepard’s detail five years ago, when the dust from Torfan had finally settled. Anderson had thought it would be a mistake. Alenko’s file showed he could keep up with Shepard, sure. But Alenko embodied the kind of idealism Shepard would chew up and spit out.

If we’re going to put his mind right to get back on the front lines, he needs an anchor, Hackett had replied, with that calm, ice cold demeanor that has won him nearly every argument he’s ever been involved in. Alenko will do the job.

The old man had been right. Shepard didn’t get close to people, and that was before Torfan. But he’d gotten close to Alenko. Hell, Alenko probably deserves most of the credit for bringing Shepard back from the brink. Because after Torfan, Shepard had indeed been on the brink.

Alenko might be the one on the brink, now. There’s a look in his eye that Anderson recognizes, and it isn’t a good one.

“Sit down.”

Alenko shifts his weight. Not the sitting kind, then. Not today. Anderson’s going to take a wild guess that Alenko hasn’t stopped moving since the Marrakesh picked him up.

He sighs and remains standing, giving the lieutenant silent permission to do the same. “I thought you’d like to know we’re working with the elcor to get a salvage team to Alchera. We’re hoping they find the Normandy’s black box data. Be nice to get some clues on what the hell happened out there.”

“Yes, sir.”

Hm. Brick wall is not Alenko’s usual MO, but that’s sure as hell what he’s talking to right now.

“Joker finished his debrief an hour ago,” Anderson goes on. “I assume you’ve heard his version of what happened.”

More shifting. The uncomfortable kind. Shepard’s done it more than a few times in Anderson’s various offices over the years.

“I haven’t, sir.”

Anderson takes a good, long look at him. He’s spent fifteen years worrying about Shepard. It’s never occurred to him to worry about Alenko.

“I see.” He exhales through his nostrils. “The Normandy was attacked by an unknown vessel. Whoever they were, Joker says they came out of nowhere. Shepard got him into the escape pod, but the ship lost gravity. He…well.”

Alenko stares straight ahead, silent. Anderson looks for a tell, but he only knows Shepard’s.

Alenko isn’t Shepard.

If this conversation is going to be one sided, Anderson needs backup. He moves to his desk, fishes a bottle out of a drawer that’s already half empty after being new just yesterday, and pours two glasses. He pushes one of them across the desk. Doesn’t occur to him until after the fact he has no idea if Alenko drinks scotch. It’s just one of the things Anderson and Shepard always agreed on.

“Have it if you want it,” he says, not up for bullying the lieutenant into a drink. “This is off the record.” He swallows half of his in one go, then heads back for the balcony. A few moments later, Alenko joins him, hands empty, still avoiding his gaze. There’s a chip in the brickwork, though. Not much, but something in his eyes wavers.

Yeah. It might be time to worry about Alenko. Losing two ships in the span of four weeks would do a number on anyone.

Except he doesn’t think it’s about either the Myeongnyang or the Normandy.

Anderson leans on the railing, gazing out at the wreckage of the Presidium. He takes another sip from his glass. “I’m sorry. I know he meant a lot to you.”

It takes Alenko so long to answer Anderson thinks he isn’t going to. But then some of the starch fades from his shoulders.

“He did.”

Anderson side eyes him. Had it been Shepard standing next to him, he might press. He could get Shepard to open up if he was careful enough. Sometimes.

But this isn’t Anderson’s business. And his own grief certainly isn’t Alenko’s business. But while most of the galaxy is preparing to mourn Commander Shepard, the soldier standing next to him might be the only person he knows who’s grieving for Sam. He swirls the remaining liquid in his glass.

“He was the most reckless SOB I’ve ever met,” Anderson says, watching a hanar drift along one of the intact pathways below them. “I’m pretty sure half the shit he pulled over the years was just to piss me off.”

Alenko raises an eyebrow ever so slightly in surprise, but doesn’t turn his head. “He’s always at his best when the plan goes to hell.”

“Since he was a kid,” Anderson agrees, not missing the fact that Alenko had referred to him in the present tense. “First time I ever laid eyes on him he was four. He’d wandered away from Daniel on Arcturus and he called in the cavalry to look for him. You know where I found him?”

Alenko shakes his head.

“In a fountain, playing with a model ship. I asked him what the hell his spaceship was doing in the water. He said, ‘I’m about to find out.’”

Alenko’s mouth curves in a brittle smile. “I didn’t know you knew him that young.”

“I doubt he remembered,” Anderson says. “His father and I were good friends. I dropped in on occasion while he was growing up.” 

Before Shepard was a soldier. Before he was the Butcher of Torfan or the Savior of the Citadel. Back when he was still Sam, all knees and elbows, so desperate to please he couldn’t sit still.

Anderson still misses that kid.

“He said you kept an eye on him when they shipped him to Ares Station.”

Anderson huffs. “Told you about that, did he.”

Alenko nods, resting his hands on the balcony railing.

Then Shepard had indeed trusted Alenko. Only a handful of people knew about Ares Station and Guthra Tulak. Shepard had been one of five kids sent to biotically train with the krogan, and the only one to realize any potential.

Leave it to the Alliance to come up with a program even riskier than BAaT. Leave it to Hannah Shepard to volunteer her own kid to be part of it. Anderson always wondered if Sam knew about Hannah’s role in Ares, and how hard Daniel fought to keep it from happening.

To Hannah, Sam was a legacy. To the Alliance, he’d been a tool with astronomical potential. Someone had needed to look out for the actual kid. Daniel had tried, but.

Losing Daniel still stings. What would he have thought about his Spectre son?

Hell, Anderson knows exactly what he’d have thought. He would have feared this day, this ending, with every breath he took. He’d wanted anything else for Sam. Anything but this.

And Anderson had helped him become everything Daniel was afraid of. Hell, what choice did he have? You couldn’t dissuade Sam from anything. Once he was target locked on something there was nothing you could do but get as many obstacles out of his way as possible and hope for the best. So that’s what Anderson had done. Mentored him, advocated for him, taken a few hits behind the scenes on his behalf and cleared the path as best he could. Maybe you couldn’t take the target out of Sam’s sights, but you could guide his aim to make sure he hit it dead to rights.

“He’s come a long way since then,” Anderson says, wincing when he realizes now it’s him who can’t let go of the present tense. “I wish I’d been at the inquest. From the secure feed it looked like he put an entire roomful of admirals on their asses. Would love to have seen it in person.”

Alenko stills, expression frozen in place like a mask. Whatever nerve Anderson just touched is a big one, so he steers the conversation in a new direction.

“Though what I really wish I could have seen is what he found to gripe about being stuck in atmosphere. The entire time he was in Rio for ICT, he never once complained about the work. Wouldn’t shut up about how much he hated humidity.”

The fragile smile returns. “He hated going down a well without a hardsuit.”

“Know what almost kept him from qualifying for N1?”

Alenko shakes his head.

“Bugs,” Anderson tells him. “Not twenty-hour days, not hostile terrain, not crawling around in the mud without food or sleep. It was the bugs that damn near washed him out.”

A laugh escapes the lieutenant. It’s a rusty sound. “That…doesn’t surprise me.”

Anderson smiles at the memory. “He got over it. Made it through, like he always did. Wish I’d told him more how…proud I was.”

“You meant a lot to him,” Alenko says, so quietly Anderson almost doesn’t hear him.

The lump that forms in Anderson’s throat takes him off guard. “He had a way of affecting everyone he ever met. I forget sometimes it could go the other way. He made it so easy to think he was fine on his own.”

“He wasn’t.”

Alenko’s stare remains fixed on the view from the balcony. Not many people saw the side of Shepard that needed anyone. Even Anderson only saw it on occasion. Alenko was so far from the kind of person Shepard would let his guard down in front of, but clearly he had.

If we’re going to put his mind right to get back on the front lines, he needs an anchor, Hackett had said. Alenko had done the job, all right.

Problem was, it looks like that had gone both ways.

Anderson draws in a breath. Might as well get this over with. “I called you here to ask if you would speak at the memorial.”

It’s going to be a spectacle, the likes of which Sam would have hated, but the Alliance sure as hell isn’t going to be denied their PR opportunity.

Alenko shifts his weight. He’s so damn still. Shepard would be pacing the room until Anderson wanted to strangle him.

“Is that an order, sir?”

“A request.”

“Then I respectfully decline.”

Anderson finishes his drink. “Can I ask why?”

Alenko’s grip on the railing tightens. “The Alliance cares about the symbol. I cared about the person. I can’t give them what they want.”

Anderson can’t help but wonder what the lieutenant would have to say. Shepard was so many different things to so many different people. What, exactly, was he to Kaidan Alenko?

Why Alenko? Anderson had asked Shepard back on Arcturus, the Normandy’s hull gleaming and new out the shutters.

Shepard had thought a long time before answering, like there was too much to say and not enough words to say it.

Because he grounds me.

The older Shepard had gotten, the rarer it was to get glimpses of Sam. Sometimes Anderson wondered if Sam still existed, or if he’d been swallowed up by the mantle everyone demanded he carry. But that answer had come from Sam.

“Ok,” Anderson tells Alenko. “I’ll hand it off to Hackett.”

“Why not you?” Alenko asks, looking in his direction for the first time.

Anderson gazes down at his empty glass. Twenty years ago he might have thrown it against the wall just to watch it shatter. Nowadays he thinks too hard about the mess it would make, and being the one who has to clean it up. “Because I cared about the person.”

Heavy silence settles between them.

“You should take some leave,” Anderson says. “You’ve more than earned it.”

“I’m fine,” Alenko replies, but that haunted look is back.

Soon enough you’re going to have to stop moving, son, Anderson thinks. After Torfan, Shepard had hit the same wall Alenko is cruising right towards. But Alenko isn’t Shepard, and he isn’t under his command anymore. All he can do is give him a hand if he asks for it, and from the looks of it he isn’t going to ask.

Not that it would matter. Anderson’s got no anchor to give him that could replace the one he lost.

“Just think about it. And get some sleep.” He gestures towards the door, freeing the lieutenant from further torture. While Alenko makes for the exit, Anderson heads for his desk and the untouched glass. No sense in letting it go to waste.

Alenko pauses at the doorway and looks back over his shoulder. “Rain.”

“I’m sorry?” Anderson asks with a frown.

“You wanted to know what he found to gripe about on Earth. It was the rain.” He looks away without waiting for a response and walks away.

That empty space Anderson thought he’d been imagining when Alenko walked in feels even larger, now. Yeah. Shepard sure knows how to leave a hole in people.

[greenteaandtattoos]

Memories like Thorns: A Ruby Rose One-Shot

Ruby slung the red skirt and cape over the makeshift clothesline that she had made with some sticks she had found lying on the beach and rope she had stashed in her pockets after the incident with the Ace Ops and the Command Center in Atlas. 

The sand was warm beneath her bare feet, her boots drying nearby. Her belt, tights, corset, and forearm bracers were laid out on a rock. She hoped they would absorb the heat from the face of the rock and dry faster. She had used a sharp stone to tear off the long-sleeves of her dress and discarded them entirely. It was hot, and she didn’t want to suffer from heatstroke. Crescent Rose rested against a giant seashell. 

So, there she stood, in just her shorts and a now-sleeveless blouse. She sighed. 

How did it come to this? She remembered the cruel triumph on Cinder’s face as she loomed above her as Ruby clung to the leg of Neo, the girl who had been trying to kill her only moments ago. She remembered the screams of Blake and Penny. She remembered Blake’s grip on her as she attempted to rescue her. She remembered the feeling in her stomach as she and Blake fell after Cinder cut the ribbon on Gambol Shroud, sending them falling to their deaths. She remembered the feeling of free-falling, and then crashing into water, which she eventually discovered was the ocean of this world she could only assume was the afterlife. 

She had been lucky her father had taught Ruby and Yang how to swim at a young age. She had managed to swim to the surface of the ocean, spitting up salt water. Through her blurry and burning vision, she had seen the island not too far from where she had fallen, and had managed to swim to the surface. After lying in the sand for what felt like a couple of hours, she had managed to get to her feet and function properly. It was warm now, but who knows what it would get during the night, and she didn’t want to risk freezing. 

Not that I can die twice, she thought dryly. Gazing around, she finally took in her surroundings. The sand that made up the beach was tawny in color, and all around her were flourishing trees and colorful flowers. The giant seashell she had rested Crescent Rose against was just one of many that dotted the beach. A massive cliff loomed over her, and on top of that was a tree of gargantuan size, sporting rainbow foliage. Beyond that… she didn’t know, but she heard birdsong. 

“We should have asked for guardrails,” Ruby muttered to herself, mentally scolding herself for not thinking of everything like she had hoped. We made more than one foolish oversight, she thought, referring to how they had so easily forgotten that Penny wasn’t the only maiden in Atlas. 

Then, I wonder where the others are? Though she and Blake had lost hold on each other when they fell, she was fairly certain she should have fallen somewhat close to her. Yang… she had no idea. Weiss and Penny and Jaune, I hope they’re okay. Last she had seen, they were okay. 

Oscar. The thought of the former farmhand scorched through her mind, and she clutched her chest. She hadn’t been able to say goodbye to Oscar. 

All of a sudden, a horrifying thought entered her mind. Uncle Qrow. He doesn’t know what happened to us. When he does learn… Oh gods, he’s lost all of his family, now. The thought made her want to vomit and her knees weak. She stumbled and managed to catch herself on one of the branches she had used to make the makeshift clothesline. Her cape, still damp but warm from the sun, brushed against her cheek. She froze suddenly, a memory surfacing. 

The feel of velvet brushing against her face, a crimson swathe enveloping her, the warmth of familiar arms wrapped around her in a warm hug. Silver eyes flashed above her as her mother gazed at her, unending love swimming in them. She smiled widely as she clasped her arms around the child in a tight hug, bundling her in her cape. The warmth and the velvet were snug and the child couldn’t imagine leaving the warmth of her mother’s embrace. 

Ruby took a step back, her focus returning to the present. She stared at her own crimson clothes. She reached out to touch the cape that had been with her through thick and thin. She grasped it tightly, feeling the damp cloth wrap around her hand. 

Her mother’s hug before she left on her final mission was one of the only memories she had of her mother. Her final mission. She grit her teeth. Her final mission that led to her falling into Salem’s clutches. To be experimented on, to be subjected to horrors unfathomable. 

All so Salem could spit into Ozpin’s and the God of Light’s face, she thought bitterly. She could imagine the cruel glee that Salem must have felt when she discovered that she could turn the God of Light’s warriors into her own. Her hands trembled, out of anger or fear, she wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure of anything anymore. 

She remembered Oscar’s lament after they picked him up from the slums. “Every choice I made was the wrong one,” he had said forlornly. But it was her choices that had been wrong at every turn. It was her choice to lie to Ironwood, to waste time trying to put out a message with the naive assumption that help would come. Anger and regret surged through her forcing her to sit down. She criss-crossed her legs and stared up at her drying clothes. She wanted nothing more than to be lost in the red, like she was so long ago while in the embrace of her mother. 

When she was younger, she had tried very hard not to lie. After all, heroes in fairy tales didn’t lie. They were truthful and brave, and she wanted to be just like them. Of course, she had told little white lies here and there, like when she ate all the raw cookie dough that Yang had made to bake cookies. She remembered when she told her first big lie. 

It had been when she first got accepted into Signal Academy, and she chose her combat gear. When she returned home from shopping, decked in all red - and most notably - a red cape, the look on her family’s faces was unforgettable. Qrow - who had come over for a visit - and her father had looked at her with strange, twisted expressions, which in hindsight, she realized was because she looked so similar to her mother. 

Yang, on the other hand, had been so proud. “Copying Uncle Qrow, eh?” Yang had asked, in a knowing, teasing voice, jabbing her with her elbows. “The red suits you. Matches your hair.” 

The twisted expression had melted off Qrow’s face, replaced with immense pride. “You look good, kiddo. Everyone will know you’re my niece, all right,” he had crowed. Mischief glinted in his pinkish-red gaze as he added, “But don’t think I’ll go easy on you. No favoritism from me. Nope.” 

They had looked so happy, and Ruby hadn’t been able to remember the last time the whole family had been so happy, all together like that. Qrow and her father could rarely be in the same room without an argument breaking out, and Yang spent more time at school or hanging out with her school friends than at home. 

“Yeah!” Ruby had laughed with them. “I just wanted to look like my hero!” Qrow had puffed out his chest and stretched out an arm ruffling her hair. But deep down, she wasn’t laughing, because it wasn’t true. She hadn’t picked her outfit to look like Qrow. She had chosen the red-soled boots and the corset and the cape because when she thought back to her mother, all she could see was red. From pictures around the house, she knew her mother had a white cape, with a crimson interior. 

All she could remember of her mother was the warm embrace of arms hugged tightly around her, the feel of velvet on her face, and bright red. It had been like being embraced by rose petals. And so, when she saw the crimson cape hanging on the clothes hanger, nearly hidden by other capes of varying colors, she had picked it almost immediately. From there, she picked out the rest of her outfit based on the cape and complimentary colors. When she had put it on in the dressing room, it had felt so right. 

But she hadn’t wanted to ruin the moment, and so she lied. Guilt had squirmed in her stomach for days after. She had finally managed to dispel it after she convinced herself that by lying, she was keeping her family from feeling sad. She remembered quite vividly how her father got whenever she brought up her mother. He seemed to wither, and while pride and love glimmered in his eyes whenever he spoke of his former partner, his voice became hollow. 

Another lie, one that she kept to herself and told no one, was that she was jealous of Yang. She loved her sister more than anything, but sometimes jealousy burned hot in her stomach when she talked about their mother. Because Yang remembered her more than Ruby, and it made her feel emotions that she hated herself for feeling. 

It had been a new memory of her mother that had allowed her to activate her eyes against the Leviathan. She had been so excited about the new memory that she had told Yang. Yang had been so happy, and had gone on a long tangent about their mother in an attempt to jog some more memories out of Ruby. Ruby had once again felt the hot bubbles of jealousy in her stomach.

And when Salem had caused a new memory to surface, Ruby had never felt such despair in her life. She remembered the witch’s words, she had burned them into her mind. “Your mother said those words to me. She was wrong, too.” 

And then that attacked the Schnee Manor. She remembered the face of the Faunus that had been revealed to be the core of the Hound Grimm. Horrific scars and boils and patches of raw, exposed muscle covered his face and neck, and a strange white spider-web-like substance covered half of his face. Ruby could only assume that Salem had removed his eye on that side. His eye… She had noticed it right away, the dull flash of silver from his remaining eye. He had looked at her, his eye void of any emotion and yet full of an agony that he could not voice as he repeated the same sentence over and over. “Take. The Girl.”

The answer to the question she had asked for 15 years came to her in an instant. This was what had happened to her mother. This was why she never returned. When she had told Yang of her suspicion, for once, she did not feel any jealousy as Yang broke down. All she could feel was overwhelming sorrow and guilt as Yang attempted to comfort her because she knew. She knew why her mother had left her and her family to face Salem. 

It was because of her. Because she had inherited her mother’s eyes, and became a target that Salem would eventually come for. For once, she had cursed herself for the color of her eyes. She had previously thought of her eyes as a way to help people, but all they had done was sentence her mother, and indirectly, every silver-eyed warrior that came after her, to a fate worse than death. 

She shifted in the sand. A warm, moist wind blew through her hair. None of it mattered now. Because her eyes had failed her, and she had failed her friends, her family, and now she was here. She was dead. She took a deep breath of the salt-scented air. Her heart was rolling with emotions, but all she could do was sit there.

A new sound reached her ears, breaking the lull of birdsong. She instantly became alert. She quickly rose to her feet and snatched up Crescent Rose, brandishing it as her eyes scanned the treeline, where the noise had come from. 

A crack of a foot breaking a twig, the rustle of a body brushing against leaves. She tightened her grip on Crescent Rose. A thought suddenly came to her. Wait. I’m dead. Whatever is out there can’t kill me. 

The thought wasn’t very comforting, but she did relax her shoulders, keeping her eyes on the treeline, waiting for whatever creature was in there to emerge. Then she saw it, the flash of white, the gleam of silver in sunlight, and the furry black ears that twitched with each step.

Ruby lowered her scythe.

[katsuflossy]

For the Sake of the Mission

Pairing: Aizawa Shouta x reader

TW: obscenities, slight sexual scene, angst

Word Count: 2.3k

Taglist: @sunset-novice-writer @goatsenpaiultimate

A/n: I’ve decided to change it from 18+ because it really isn’t just please use descretion as there are uncomfortable scenes. Asides from that I’ve gotten this idea from some British show my mom was watching so props to y’all who’ll now the reference. Please enjoy!! (Edited)

The whirring of the vents took advantage of the silence in the room, making up most of the sounds in the metal chamber. It made the air cold, scattering goosebumps on your skin even though around you wore a black sweater. Walls showed no sign festivity, bare of any creative artworks, just reflective of where you currently are. A face devoid of any emotions looked back at you, but even without proper clarity you knew the purpose of the reflection; it wasn’t a giant metaphor to reflect on your mistakes and crimes nor was it supposed to be calming. Its purpose was to make sure you had nothing else left to blame. The only blame was to lay you and your “confessions”.

The interrogation room was like a confessional that didn’t allow you to come back from mistakes.

The contact of soft yet pointed footsteps on the tiles of the floor now dominated the mechanical drone of the vents. Like a sly fox purposefully tapping around its prey as a taunt. Your heart never raced harder before this scenario. Getting caught in the middle of a police raid will definitely pull you into more trouble than you are already in.Your eyes switched from the wall to the ominous black window in front of you. You can’t see them but they can see you. Hell, you don’t even know who is behind that window, gauging your entire reaction at this moment. But that wasn’t what struck your heart in fear.

The footsteps could be heard behind your seated figure. Its dynamic raised louder, practically echoing through the vacuum of a room. You swallowed with much tension as the knob turned, breaking the new presence in the room.

You wondered who it was and prayed it was a low ranking police man. If it was Naomasa, Kenji or any other high ranking officers, your cover would be blown and two sides would place, on your head, a hefty bounty, dead or alive.

Black boots stepped across your vision as you peered on to your own attire, crinkled and worn from the activities you were caught in. The whirring dominated the room again as he laid on the wall, one leg used to support his weight. Your eyes finally connected to his face.

“I spoke at your funeral, you know that right?” You stared blankly into his face. Aizawa wasn’t deterred from your deadpanned face however.

“Imagine making a eulogy for someone you care so much about, believing for 3 months they have died only to have her right in front of you again—” He moved to the chair on his side of the room, “not saying a word to you. Like it has just been a bad dream.”

You kept your tongue on a leash. Your gaze went to the window and back to the hero. He sighed in discontent before placing his hand on the recorder, lifting it up to show the lack of light on the device.

“The recorder is off and there’s no one behind there. So your words stay with me.” You sighed in relief however the situation now seemed more tortuous than what you were fearing.

“I know.” Your voice breaks in soft waves to Aizawa’s ears which croned to get more. After all, he went from listening to you everyday to straight radio silence. There was no explanation or your ‘death’ and disappearance and he had endured the worst. But now he has a chance to find answers.

“I did some little digging,” your head whipped back to his own as he went on, “the most I’ve found was a covert special ops able to infiltrate the League with only two members. One uses death to gain the respect of the league members in order to join their ranks and get a bulk of the information while the other stays on the side of the heroes. I’m assuming the former is you and the latter—“

“How did you get that information! You’re sleuthing around could ruin the whole mis—“

“You were dead.” His words ran echoes through your ears and sent chills down your spine, not in the ways that it used to. In three words his raw emotions shook you to your core and shook your trained mind. It seeped in back the old memories that had been blocked out for the sake of your profession.

“The latter, they’re keeping airtight, I’m assuming only the high members of the Commision have that intel.”

Panic began to whirl around you. If Aizawa had been able to collect such intel on you, others would too. And those ‘others’ are willing to go to any lengths necessary to find that information at the sniff of betrayal. Aizawa sat back and drank in your appearance. Your hair grew in the short but torturous span of 3 months and your skin accepted more battle scars. You should be seen as disheveled, crooked and less attractive but Aizawa thought you were the most beautiful person he’s seen in the past months.

“If you worry about your espionage being revealed, don’t. I used Shinso’s brainwashing quirk to get one of those Commission heads to confess.” Your eyes widened at his honesty.

“Shouta! You can get yourself prosecuted for that!” His eyes glared straight into your own as he scowled further.

“And the same goes for you. How many years do you think you’ll get for faking death and joining Japan’s most notorious villains.” As taken aback you were, you chose to defend yourself.

“It’s my job. You know well if I didn’t obey the Commission’s wishes then I would face even more serious consequences.” You paused your speech, abruptly realising how much anger you had concurred in such a short time with the League, something that should’ve never happened in the first place. You took a deep inhale of air.

“I had to do it for us. I did it for those kids. At the very most, I did it for the citizens of this country.”

His heart and mind were at their final battle. He thought about this reunion nearly everyday and how he would approach you. One route depicted his lashing out at you, the anger bursting through the mask of hurt. On the other route, he pulled you in a tight embrace, hands roaming all over your body to ensure you were in fact real. Now that his manifestations became reality, he couldn’t choose. The concealed pain in your eyes held up a black window like the one on the other side of the room. Only thing was that he was the only one able to see you, the real you.

What did the Commission drag you into? What have you seen?

His heart softened, sending him back to those free late nights, laying on each other watching stand up comedy with a bottle of liquor. You were just bubbly, cracking jokes that rivaled those of the comedian.

His hardened shell finally broke. He let out an airy laugh.

“To think that saving humanity would let us lose the ones we feel human around.” You hummed in dreadful agreement, stripping down a little of your wall as well.

“Indeed, I miss being able to walk outside fearless of any attack from the police or other villains.”

Your words made you sound like a true villain, but he knows you, your way of talking, your body language, your love language.

He leaned back in the chair, letting his back lay against the cold metal as you did the same, making yourselves comfortable as much as you can.

“Tell me. What have you been doing in the last three months?”

You began retelling your life as a spy in the League, how Shirigaki didn’t introduce himself to you until after the first month and the personalities of each villain. You made sure to redact certain information for the fear of roping Aizawa into the same situation they have forced you into, until you blurted out your recent command.

“The last drop off I’ve had they told me I wasn’t close to unfolding the master plans despite leaking various missions that could’ve led to disaster. I had to get close to the members, bond through hobbies, be their entertainer— shit those bastards said to use my womanhood to—“ Aizawa’s eye widened at your slip up, after noticing how careful you were selecting your words. You cleared your throat, heart beating at the speed of light.

“—basically just get buddy buddy with someone.”

“No, that was not what you were going to say. Finish your sentence.”

Your throat was suddenly dry as you tried to swallow down your fear. You took a second in attempting to gather yourself before responding.

“Shouta, I just said they want me to make a friend with one of them—“

“That was not what you were going to say—“

“Well that’s confidential Shouta—“

“I believe I should know when my girlfriend is forced to seduce one of the League’s members.”

You kept your mouth shut, allowing the vents, attempting to blow the tension out of the air, make up for your silence. Shouta stayed still, only moving he exhaled with shaking, tense shoulders, like a volcano ready to erupt.

“Which one is it?” His words came out with a sense of danger, a warning of eruption. You chose to stay silent.

“Shigarki Tomura?” You were silent.

“Dabi?” You were silent.

“Mr. Compress?” Your eyes darted to the side, in an attempt to avoid him from looking into your eyes. But he knew the answer already.

“Fucking shit!” He stood from his seat, a screech emitting through the air before he placed his hands on the table, calming himself down. His anger begged to throw the chair, break the table, punch the walls however he knew the outcome of that route. Many officers would rush in after the commotion before arresting you on sight.

So he breathed, he breathed until the thick humidity of anger evaporated off of his body.

Meanwhile you sat down, guilt gnawing at your heart without hesitation. Your eyes darted to the cameras, one at the corner of the room behind your back and the other on the table, turned off from seeing the look of despair in your eyes.

Your mind went back to the scene before the police raid. Atsuhiro’s hand gently holding your neck as the other laid on your hip. His body firmly pressed against yours, letting you feel the hard bulge on your lower back. He skimmed your ear, calling you a “pretty flower” before zipping down the dress from your back. The dress they bought for you. Just as he was about to kiss you, the police broke down the door of the hideout you were stationed in. Astuhiro escaped and you, along with the little lowlife villains, were the sacrifice.

Your head hung low, shame clouded your thoughts. You couldn’t even look him within the eyes and Shouta saw that. His heart hurt for you like how yours were hurting for him. He slumped his shoulders and let out a sigh. There may be another route he had to choose in order for a better reunion.

“I would’ve never fathom a situation like this. I don’t want you to do this and just the thought of another man touching you makes my blood boil.” You flinched at the harshness in his tone.

“But for the sake of our lives. Do what you need to do.” You snapped your head up to his face, confusion set on your features as he continued.

“It hurts me, like how it hurts you. And judging by your reaction, I know you don’t want to do this also. But if it is my feeling you are trying to protect, don’t, because I know you’ll come back to me at the end of this.”

Within this safe space Aizawa made, you cried. You cried for the first time in the last two months before being a part of the elite League members. The feeling of being human was brought to the forefront of your mind, showing the (Y/n) has known from before. His own eyes stinging from the tears on his waterline.

“Hey.” He lifted your chin to look at your face.

“Promise me you’ll come back to me.” Your cheeks dewy from your tears and your lips red from the blood rushing to your face.

“I will come back to you. I promise.” The corner of his lips lifted up in a bittersweet smile. He let go of your chin to walk towards the door.

“I’ll try to delete that tape from the camera, when I walk down the hall to the right, take the fire escape down the left. Okay?”

“Okay.” Your eyes looked at the camera’s peripheral vision, noticing it didn’t have a view on the front of the door.

In a haste you turned around and ran towards the pro-hero. As soon as he turned around, your fingers entangled in the strands of his hair, pulling down his head to mold your lips with his. A passionate tango of tongues danced within your maw, recollecting the feeling of old times. It wasn’t a goodbye; it was a promise. You both know it.

As your lips parted from his, you wrapped your arms around him, spanning the broadness of his back, and laying your chin on his shoulder. He embraced you with the same tightness. You whispered in his ear.

“For the sake of the mission?”

“For the sake of the mission.”

You released him and stepped back into the door frame, remaking the space you’ve left from three months ago. This time, a sense of hope will pull you through as you complete your mission. And an anchor will keep you grounded to the ones you loved, and not to the villains reaping your empathy.

As he turned to the down the right hall, his eyes met yours before disappearing past the corner. Your training kicked in, both physical and mental, and you ran down the hall to the left.

[rebelcap]

No, no, no, yes.

Bucky x oc. (Luna Vega, woc, slightly enhanced)

Sweetheart, I’ve been checking on you since 2014.

Luna does and Bucky knows, she’s been there since the beginning. When the winter solider becomes Bucky again. Even before Steve and certainly after Steve.

They start to wonder if…

PART 2

One.

The TV was silent, illuminating the little living space that goes up to the little kitchen, the light of the door was on. Bucky was lying on the floor, absently watching the TV, the news, and all going to shit since everyone came back—and some left.

His eyes perk up to the door when he hears the elevator door opening up and steps walking towards his apartment. Bucky stood up and heard a voice speaking from outside.

“It’s me, open up.” Luna talked from the back half of the hallway, knowing that he had already heard her coming. He groaned, annoyed as he looked around from some of his clothes. “Bucky,” she spoke again as she reached the door.

“One second!” He shouted and grabbed a shirt and some sweatpants from the one-seat couch beside his bed.

“Are you with someone?” She asked and Bucky opened the door and found her staring with a shit-eating grin. “Are you flipping your wig with some broad?” Luna wiggled her eyebrows at him, hitting him with the forties slang.

Bucky took a deep breath and stared at her face for a moment and declared. “I hate you.”

“No, you don’t. You need to get laid,” She exclaimed as Bucky moved to the side to let her in, he went back to the floor as she sat down on the couch.

“I tried, online dating is… overwhelming and weird.” He mumbled, looking at the muted television.

“Like Tinder?,” She asked, looking around for the remote, Bucky hummed. “You’re too old school for that.”

Bucky rubbed his face and observed the woman sitting on his couch, slouched and absently changing channels. “How did it go?” He asked referring to her latest mission.

“Could be better,” She said and Bucky rolled his eyes.

“Explain.”

“Intel was shit, my package got shot—he’s fine though.” She said without taking the eyes from the TV. “I tried to link up with the other guys,” Luna said looking at Bucky, talking about the rest of the Avengers.

“Had any luck?"

"Well, the kid, hulk and Clint, and the ant dude are doing okay and I don’t know about the ones in space because SWORD revoked my level 9 privileges that I had on SHIELD. And Wakanda is all good.” She made a face of disgust. “I can’t find Wanda or Strange. Probably doing weird shit around, whatever.”

“Now you’re checking on me?"

"Sweetheart, I’ve been checking on you since 2014.” She joked but they knew that it was real. They have history, the first time they met was obviously when Bucky was the winter soldier. She was a black ops operative on SHIELD, worked along with Steve, Natasha, and the STRIKE team. On her last mission, she started suspecting SHIELD was compromised by Hydra because her target had expressed it.

“You’re another HYDRA puppet, thinking you’re doing the right thing. SHIELD is not more.”

Before she could even press the issue and ask questions, her orders came through. No prisoners and was forced to terminate him. They sent her home on obligatory leave because she had sustained severe injuries in that mission. After Nick Fury was shoot, they brought her back, Secretary Pierce gave the order to put her on a wash down super-soldier serum to heal her injuries, something that she had no idea and they did that without her consent… but it worked perfectly and increased about a 25% her strength, stamina, and abilities —a little above average than the regular men.

All the pieces fell into place as soon they gave her orders to capture Steve, Natasha, and Sam. That’s when she knew that HYDRA had infiltrated SHIELD, at first she was only going to play along with them to gather intel that she planned to feed to Steve to bring them down. But it all cemented it together when she met The Winter Soldier, realizing that it was Bucky.

So she stayed for Steve.

But when Bucky pulled her out of the Potomac, injured and lost, feeling that he could only trust her—she helped him to get back on his feet and leave the country with a promise to not tell Steve that she knew about him.

“I won’t tell anything but keep in touch, Bucky.” She told him. They were in her car after she arranged a safe passage on a fishing boat to Europe.

“I will, Luna, I will.” He promise.

And he didn’t break that promise, even though she knew that Steve would never forgive her about it, not until after the shit that went down with the accords.

“I miss him,” She said almost in a whisper. They never talked about Steve, it’s been six months since he chose to leave their asses. “I still can’t believe he left us stranded here.”

“You still mad at him?,” Bucky asked.

“Yes, he just… left, no goodbyes, no explanation. Just…” She shrugged. “I know he loved her, I know. But we went through so much—” Luna cut herself off. “And then leave me with your traumatized ass.” She joked, Bucky laughed.

“Ah screw you, I’m doing therapy. Mandatory but still,” He rolled his eyes and turned around to look at the TV again.

“And how is that going?"

"It’s going. I…” He took a pause. “I’m making amends."

"That’s good,” Luna said and noted the expression on his face and knew what he meant with amends. “Who you killed?” she deadpanned.

“I can’t do anything illegal, I can’t hurt anyone—But I’m taking back the power I gave them, maybe bruising them a bit.”

“Hell yeah, do you boo. Hunt those sons of bitches,” Camila Smile, hyping him up. Bucky actually smiles as they high-five each other. “I’m on your make amends list?"

"I don’t have amends to do with you.” He frowned.

“You pushed me off the helicarrier.” Camila pointed out, which was true.

“You were annoying me,” Bucky said, which was also true.

“You almost killed me.” She made a solid point and Bucky shrugged it off.

“Sam grabbed you mid-air.”

“Yeah, then he dropped my ass too,” Camila explained and pointed out. “Because someone plucked the wing off his suit.”

Bucky rolled his eyes at her, again. Shaking his head and Camila smile.

“I ain’t telling you sorry.” Bucky smiled, playing along.

“I’m talking with your therapist.”

“She’ll put you on therapy.” Bucky looked at her, smiling. “You’re fucking crazy, you know that.”

“It’s a character trait, Bucky.” She laughed. “Besides, you like me a little crazy.” Camila teased a little.

“You know I do.” He agreed, looking at her with a smile on his lips. They both fell into a comfortable silence until Bucky blurted, without even thinking of the ramifications of saying something like this to her.

“I have a date tomorrow, at ten."

"What did you say?” Camila explained, turning her body to Bucky to hear him more correctly. “Did you say date?” Her short Bob fell exactly to her shoulder and bounced around as she hopped on the couch, kinda excited—acting like a freaking chihuahua.

“Yeah, I’m already regretting telling you. You’re gonna jinx it—

"What?,” She shouted, interrupting. “Aren’t I the one who’s been trying to get you laid all this fucking time?"

Bucky rolled his eyes once again, acting like a grumpy old man—well he technically was and said nothing. That was okay because Camila was going to answer it herself.

"Me!, so no… I’m not gonna jinx it,” She threw the remote at his chest and Bucky glared at her.

“That fucking hurt.”

“Don’t be a pussy. Who is she?, I know her? Is she cute?"

"It’s the girl from Izzy,"

"You asked her out?” Bucky looked at her and made a face and proceeded to tell her how Yuri set him up. Camila made a face and then laughed. “Look at you, finally you’re out of your millennial old dry spell.

” It’s just a date.“ He quickly interrupted her.” I haven’t had one since 1943.“ Bucky panicked a little, shuffling on the floor.

"Nah,” She hummed and shook her head, quickly getting up from the seat. “Come on,” Camila said waving his hand in front of him. Bucky frowned as he looked at her, confused.

“What?"

"You’re taking me on a date, I won’t let you go unprepared. You’re my friend I won’t let you fail.” She extended her hand at him and Bucky didn’t bulge. “Buck, come on” Camila pouted a little bit, giving him a little flirt and Bucky’s face got red. “Please?” She batted her eyelashes at him.

[driversmutbucket]

Kitten Part VII

Kylo AU x Reader

Here we go againnnnnn. Im not sure how the hell this fic has become so long. It’s going to start wrapping up in the next part. Enjoy friends!

Warnings: NSFW, oral sex, dom/sub dynamic, daddy kink, praise kink Tag list: @reyloaddict55​ @candycanes19​ @jediminddicks1000​ @finn-ray-nal-beads​ @maybe-your-left​ @thegreenmatt​ @morby​ @sydneyssmut​ @contesa-lui-alucard

To start this fic from the beginning, please refer to my masterpost. 

The week slipped by.

Your dress from Kylo arrived at work on Friday morning, no chance to back out of wearing it.

You took the garment bag and an additional box into your office and shut the door. 

You hung the garment bag on the back of the door. Too nervous to open it just yet. You had enough information to trust his taste, he had your sizing, but part of you was still nervous you would be faced with a dress 2 sizes too small that resembled a wench costume.

Exhaling through your mouth slowly you opened the box. 

You frowned. There were 2 separate parcels. Black tissue paper - of course. You almost rolled your eyes.

You removed the first parcel. Definitely a shoe box. You gasped when you removed the paper and opened the box. 

“Fucking hell Kylo.” You muttered. .

You had watched enough Sex and the City and read enough Vogue to recognize the unmistakable embellishment. Black Manolos. 

You stroked the shoe in wonder, marveling at the craftsmanship. 

You repeat your deep yoga breaths, trying not to panic. This was a lot. Extravagant. You knew damn well how much shoes like this cost. You purchased luxury goods from time to time, usually feeling nauseous after the transaction.

You moved to the next parcel, removing it from the box carefully.

Teasing open the tissue paper you broke into a grin. Black lace. A tiny scrap of a thong and a strapless bustier. You grazed your fingers across the fabric, it was beautiful, the bustier was mostly sheer, the boning visible. 

You were seeing the vision, and you were in support of it, chewing your lip as you imagined yourself in just the lingerie and heels. Imagining the look on his face when he saw you in your gifts. 

“Ok, let's do this.” You murmured to yourself, walking over to stand in front of the garment bag. 

Another deep breath. You slowly unzipped the bag. The first thing you saw was the label. You were going to kill him. This was too much. 

Alexander McQueen, fucking McQueen! You knew it was going to be perfect before you even had the whole bag open.

The neckline was an elegant sweetheart cut. The hourglass silhouette, midi length and black fabric exuded understated elegance. You turned the dress to find a back slit at the hem. 

You held it, staring in awe. It was beyond anything you could have expected. 

You hung it back up gingerly.

You sat at your desk feeling dazed. Overwhelmed by the generosity, unsure what it meant? Just- everything. 

-

You had agreed to meet at Kylo’s prior. 

You felt amazing, the dress fit like a glove. You had never worn anything so beautifully made. Everything you liked about your body was accentuated. The bustier clinched in your waist and pushed up your breasts just enough; you had stared at yourself in the mirror in slight amazement. 

And! the! shoes! So comfortable for a pair of heels, so much so that the price suddenly seemed reasonable. 

In a last minute panic you had had your hair and makeup done. You’d be damned if your cosmetic skills were going to let the team down. 

Your stomach flip flopped as you rode the elevator to Kylo’s floor, nervous excitement coursing through your body. 

You knocked on his front door and waited. 

The door opened. Your jaw went slack as you took in the glory that was Kylo in a tux.

“Wow.” You breathed, walking in the door. 

He was frozen in place, slowly taking you in.

He met your gaze, “Y/n, you look—..fuck you look amazing—...beautiful.” 

“I- this” you motioned at your dress and shoes, “this is too much-...what I mean is, thank you, it’s so generous, but-... fuck Kylo, Manolo’s? McQueen? I just about passed out when I op-”

He cut off your babbling by stepping forward and grabbing the back of your neck, greeting your lips with a bruising kiss.

“So you like them then?” He smiled, against your mouth. 

“I love them. I—” he again swallowed your words, his kiss slow and passionate.

He traced along your collarbone with his fingers, “should have got you a necklace.” He mused, breaking the kiss.

“No…” you shook your head, sighing as his soft lips kissed down your neck. 

“Stop being so oppositional.” He murmured, lips still planting delicate kisses on your décolletage.

You huffed. He stood up to full height, eyes twinkling. 

“Accept it, Kitten. I’m going to spoil you. I want to.”

You sighed, fingering the lapels of his tux, “it makes me a bit uncomfortable” you grumbled, “so much money…”

“I don’t have anything else to spend my money on.” He said softly. You felt a twinge of sadness. “Do you want to know why I got you that dress?”

“Mmmm why?” 

“The collection was inspired by art nouveau which you said you loved. Remember, you showed me that work by Klimt?  Also I knew you would look incredible in it.” 

You look up at him, right into the dark amber of his eyes. You were moved.

“Are you serious?” You murmured in wonder.

He nodded, eyes crinkling with a smile, notably chuffed at your reaction.

“Kylo… this is, wow—...I’m really touched. I have only known you what? 8 or 9 months and this is the most thoughtful gift I have ever….” you trailed off. Feeling a wave of emotion that made you choke up.

“Oh, Kitten, I didn't mean to upset you.” He soothed, pulling you into his chest, it felt so safe there, engulfed by his arms.

“It’s a good upset.” You sniffed, pressing your face to his chest. 

“Oh shit! Fuck!” You pulled away, “fucking makeup, You inspected his shirt and tuxedo jacket, relieved to find no traces of foundation.

Kylo looked at you amused. “I wouldn’t have been totally upset if we couldn’t go because my shirt got stained.”

“Behave.” You grinned giving him a playful smack on the chest before taking his hand, “come on, we better go.”

-

You stepped through the main door of the venue. People were milling around everywhere, beautifully dressed women and dapper men chatting loudly, armed with drinks.

Kylo took your hand and squeezed gently.

“What these things are good for is the booze.” He said as he steered you towards the bar. 

You were soon armed with generously poured cocktails. 

“I’m going to apologise in advance for the incredibly boring conversation.” He said in a low voice.

“It’s ok, I have to go to shit like this for the gallery all the time. Keep the patrons happy, fundraising and all that jazz.”

“Probably more interesting people than this bunch.” He grimaced.

As if on queue a deep voice boomed, “Dr Ren!”

An older gentleman ambled up to Kylo and whacked him on the back jovially. “How are you son?!” 

They shook hands, “great to see you again Sir!” 

The man turned his attention to you, you smiled politely.  

“Ren, who is this lovely lady you have with you?”

“This is Dr y/l/n, y/n is the director at the city art gallery.” He introduced you, a touch of pride in his voice. “y/n, this is Sir David Walker, chair of the medical council.”

���Lovely to meet you Sir.” You shook his hand.

“Likewise, likewise.” He smiled at you warmly. “Excellent to have such bright young minds among us old decrepit lot.”

You laughed as he turned back to Kylo. 

“So where have you been hiding this one, Ren, keeping her away from all this malarkey as long as possible?.” He joked. 

Kylo’s hand crept to the small of your back, where it rested.

You sipped away at your drink as they got into a conversation about the stock market, nodding when it seemed appropriate. 

You crept away at one point, getting another round of drinks for you both. 

You came back to find Kylo alone, you handed him his drink. 

“Told you.” He grinned.

“Oh stop, he was very nice.” You chided, sipping your drink.

-

2 hours later you were many cocktails deep and chatting away to whoever was around, Kylo was a few steps away with a group of men discussing the driest topics known to man. You had tapped out pretty quickly, opting for another drink and mingling.

 His eyes drifted every now and then, checking on you. If you caught his eye you would wink. 

-

It was nearing midnight when you came back to each other. 

You were leaning against a pillar, watching some of the guests dancing outrageously. Kylo came up behind you and slipped his hands around you. 

“You look sooooooooo fucking hot, Kitten.” He murmured in your ear.

Oh he was tipsy. Definitely tipsy. Handsy as well. His hands brushing the underside of your breasts.

“Hiiiiiiii baby.” You grinned, reaching back and stroking his face. “Are you drunk?”

“A little, I’m also hungry, all they have is fucking canapés the size of thimbles.”

“Oh god don’t even talk about food, I’m wasting away here.” Your stomach growled as if in agreement.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here and get pizza.” He decided.

“Now we are fucking talking!”

You were feeling rather tipsy as well, your feet not quite coordinating as you wished. You swore as you stumbled a little. 

“Fucking martinis.” You grumbled, as Kylo’s arm shot out to steady you.

-

You managed to get yourselves down the road and into a pizza shop. Collapsing gratefully into a booth.

Because you were both slightly inebriated, ordering 3 pizzas seemed like an amazing idea, because how could you ever choose? 

When the table was heaving with giant pizzas you realised the absurdity of your order. 

“Babe, smile- this is fucking ridiculous.” Kylo laughed, holding up his iPhone. You posed with your slice of pizza, grinning at the camera. 

He snapped a few, chuckling. 

You both did an impressive job at getting through most of the pizza. Glad to soak up some of the booze sloshing in your stomach. 

Feeling less like a legless teenager, you held Kylo’s hand as you walked down the street. A breeze picked up and you shivered. 

Pausing, Kylo took off his tuxedo jacket and draped it over your shoulders. 

“What a gentleman, thank you.” You smiled, kissing his hand softly. 

“Looks good on you.” He winked, as he opened the Uber app on his phone. 

The car pulled up within minutes. Kylo pulled your body into his, in the back seat, keeping you warm. 

-

You unlocked your front door, “welcome to my humble abode, it’s not quite Casa Ren, but I like it.” 

Kylo walked into your apartment and his eyes flitted around. 

It wasn’t small, but it wasn’t big either, somewhere in the middle. The walls were covered in art, well actually, anything that made you happy really. 

“This is so…..you.” He smiled, seeming much more relaxed than you had expected, “it smells like you.”

“I hope you’ll be comfortable here.” You said softly, tucking yourself under his arm. He kissed the top of your head, wordlessly. 

“Can you undress me Daddy?” You whispered, snuggling into him.

You felt him freeze, and exhale with a soft hum.

“Just let me know if i take it too far or something ok? I’ve never done this...er, roleplay” you looked up at him biting your lip.

He chuckled, eyes fiery “neither have I Kitten, but say it again.”

“Dadddddy.” 

“Fuck.”

“Show Daddy the pretty lingerie he got you, Kitten.” 

You took off the dress carefully. He didn’t take his eyes off you. You looked at him and twirled. 

“What do you think, Daddy?” You asked with a little smile. 

“Jesus Christ, come here.” He said softly. 

You walked and stood in front of him. 

“What’s that in your trousers Daddy?” You asked coyly gazing at his obvious erection, before being unable to control yourself and letting out a laugh. 

His hand landed on your backside fairly hard, making you yelp.

He was grinning, “why don’t you put your hand in there and find out little girl?”

You pushed him against the wall and worked his belt open. You watched his face as you put your hand into his briefs and wrapped your fingers around his cock. 

Sucked in air through clenched teeth and met your gaze. 

You widen your eyes, “so big Daddy!”

He smirked. You were both finding this whole roleplay comical, but it was quickly becoming insanely sexy, you were getting lost in the moment.

“Do you think you can fit it in your mouth Kitten?” He almost purred.

“I can try my best, Daddy.” 

“That’s my good girl.”

You hummed happily at his words, getting down on your knees and pulling down his trousers and briefs.

Wrapping your hand back around the base you began to kitten lick his tip. He leant his head back against the wall making a strangled sound. 

Flattening your tongue you licked him in one slow motion from base to tip, pausing to tease that one spot you knew drove him wild.

“Hhhhnggh good gi-... jesus!” You took him entirely in your mouth without warning, until you gagged.

You sat back on your feet and pouted up at him, “it’s too big, Daddy.” 

His eyes crinkled with amusement, “Shall i take you to bed, little girl?” he asked, kicking off his shoes and trousers. 

You nodded eagerly.

“Use your words, Kitten.”

“Yes, please Daddy.”

He motioned for you to stand up, when you were on your feet he picked you up. 

He carried you to your bedroom, your legs wrapped around his waist.

“Don’t fucking stop with this, it’s so fucking sexy babe.” he breathed in your ear as he walked. 

You chuckled, “this is fun, Daddy.”

He growled, before placing you gently on the bed.

He slowly took off his shirt, you watched, you could almost see his mind ticking.  

“What do you want me to do, Daddy?” you smiled, leaning back on your arms. 

“You can start by taking off those panties and showing Daddy your pussy.” he said casually.

You lifted your hips and slid the tiny thong off, kicking it at him. Leaning back on your elbows you spread your legs wide. 

“Touch yourself, tell me how wet you are.” he instructed, roughly. 

“Yes Daddy.” you purred, taking two fingers and running it through your folds with a little groan. 

He looked at you expectantly, now completely naked, cock angrily red and erect. 

“It’s very wet Daddy, what does that mean?” you asked with a smirk. 

“It means, little girl, that you are ready for Daddy’s cock.” he breathed.

You nodded in agreement, grinning as he got onto the bed next to you and lay on his back, then patted his thighs, “come sit here Kitten, Daddy wants to see your pretty tits bounce in the lingerie he got you.” 

You clambered over his thighs eagerly, dragging your pussy over his thigh greedily. 

He grabbed your hips and lined you up, so you hovered just above the tip of his weeping cock. 

He pushed you down onto his cock agonisingly slowly, watching your face intently as it contorted with pleasure, little whimpers tumbling from your lips as he stretched you out. It wasn't until he had you fully sheathed that he threw his head back with a loud moan. 

“Good girl, good girl, good girl.” he moaned. 

You used all your willpower to stay still and wait for instruction. 

“Fuck, Kitten, move baby girl.” he hissed, taking your hips again and setting a pace for you.

“Perfect, you’re perfect.” he moaned as you moved up and down, rolling your hips slightly. 

His eyes did indeed watch your tits bounce in the bustier, hands caressing your thighs. 

Your hands crept in between your legs, seeking your clit. He batted your hand away and replaced your fingers with the pad of his thumb.

“Oh god, Ky-..Daddy-” you cried out as he pressed firmly on your clit and began to thrust to meet your movements. 

“Need to cum Kitten?” he asked, pausing his thumbs movement on your clit.

“Mmmmm yes, yes please, Daddy, please!” you pleaded. 

He doubled his efforts, sending you barreling toward climax with a gasp. 

You came with a sob, chanting, “Daddydaddydaddydaddy.”

He flipped you both over, so you could lie bonelessly as he held your legs to his chest as he thrust into you to reach his own climax with a loud growl. 

He collapsed next to you panting, “That was…”

“Hot.” you finished before laughing and rolling over, tucking yourself under his arm. 

[buzzdixonwriter]

Hoo U?

A spirited discussion is raging on Facebook now, the good kind of spirited discussion, an enthusiastic exchange of ideas and ideals, not a snark fest.

The top is a deceptively simple one:  Who are the characters various actors played?

Let me clarify:   It began as a trivia challenge to name actors who have won Oscars for playing the same character.

And there in lays the debate.

How exactly are we defining a character.

This all sounds trivial, and to be frank this part of the discussion is, but it’s gonna get deep by the end.  

Trust me.

So here’s the kickoff:

Marlon Brando won a Best Male Performance Oscar for playing Vito Corleone in The Godfather; Robert DeNiro won a Best Male Supporting Performance Oscar for playing Vito Corleone in The Godfather II

Heath Ledger won a Best Male Supporting Performance Oscar for playing the Joker in The Dark Knight; Joaquin Phoenix won a Best Male Performance Oscar for playing the Joker in Joker.

(Trivia bonus: Kate Winslet and Gloria Stuart received Oscar nominations for playing the same character at different stages of her life in Titanic, and Winslet and Judi Dench were both nominated for playing the same character at different stages in Iris as well; plus Peter O’Toole was nominated twice for playing Henry II in Beckett and The Lion In Winter which technically counts as a sequel…)

The Facebook debate is over whether Ledger and Phoenix were actually playing the same character.

Now in the case of the former, The Godfather II is a continuation of the same story in The Godfather by the same creative team with much of the original cast reprising their roles, the Oscars going to two actors who played the same character at different stages of their life (BTW, where's the love for Oreste Baldini, who played Vito as a young boy?).

The two films were re-edited and combined with The Godfather III to make a nine-hour and 43-minute miniseries The Godfather Trilogy.

It is clear the creators’ intent from the beginning was for audiences to accept Baldini / DeNiro / Brando as the same person at various stages of his life.

The Ledger Joker and the Phoenix Joker cannot possibly be the same character for a wide variety of internal continuity issues separating the two films.  The creators of Joker went out of their way to state their version of the character was not The Dark Knight version.

Unlike The Godfather movies, you can’t link up the various live action Batman / Suicide Squad / Joker stories into a single coherent narrative (especially since you have to drag in the live action Supeman and Wonder Woman movies and TV shows as well).

. . .

Can different actors play their version of the same character in otherwise unlinked productions?

Of course they can.

Stage plays do it all the time.

If you start with the same exact text, then clearly any number of actors can play Hamlet or MacBeth or Willy Loman.

The problems arise when one goes afield of the text.

. . . 

In 1932 Constance Bennett made a movie called What Price Hollywood? that did okay but really didn’t set the world on fire.

In 1937 Janet Gaynor remade that film as A Star Is Born, the story changed to give it a tragic yet uplifting conclusion; her version was a big hit and Gaynor received an Oscar nomination.

In 1954 Judy Garland remade A Star is Born as a musical and that proved a big hit, and Garland received an Oscar nomination.

In 1976 Barbara Streisand took a swing at the material with a country-western version of A Star Is Born and while she got an Oscar nomination, audiences were unreceptive.

In 2018 Lady Gaga remade A Star Is Born and received both an Oscar nomination for her role and an Oscar win for her song.

Question: Are they all playing the same character?  Each played a character that started their film with a different name than the other versions, but the Gaynor / Garland / Streisand / Gaga versions all end with the central character proudly proclaiming they are “Mrs. Norman Maine.”

Same character?

. . .

There’s no argument that William Gillette, Basil Rathbone, and Benedict Cumberbatch all played Sherlock Holmes, even when their productions took certain liberties with the stories.

But Sherlock Holmes is not an idiot, and Michael Caine played Holmes as an idiot in Without A Clue.

Was he playing the same character as Gillette / Rathbone / Cumberbatch?

(Ironically Peter Cook played a very recognizable and wholly credible Holmes in his farcical send up of The Hound Of The Baskervilles with Dudley Moore.)

Did George C. Scott play Holmes in They Might Be Giants?  Almost everybody else in the story thinks he’s a New York banker who’s suffered a nervous breakdown and only thinks he’s Holmes, but Scott believes he is Holmes 100% and throughout the film other people he encounters accept him as Holmes at face values.

He functions as Holmes throughout.

And in the end, the audience is left in a weird place, not really knowing what his fate may be, not absolutely sure if he is a bonkers banker but maybe…somehow…he is Sherlock Holmes…

. . . 

Did John Cassavettes in Tempest and Walter Pidgeon in Forbidden Planet play the same character?  Were either of those roles Shakespeare’s Prospero?

Did Christopher Lee play the same character in Horror Of Dracula and its sequels, in Count Dracula, and in In Search Of Dracula?   (The producers of Count Dracula sure went to great pains to explain their version was a different and more accurate version than the Hammer version of the character, and In Search Of Dracula cast Lee as Vlad Tepes who was the real life historical figure Bram Stoker based his novel on.)

For that matter, is Count Orlok in Nosferatu:  A Symphony Of Terror actually Dracula?  A European court awarding lawsuit damages to Bram Stoker's widow sure thought so.

Along similar lines, was Bela Lugosi playing Dracula in Columbia's Return Of The Vampire? Universal's lawyers sure thought so.

Did Jim Caviezel in Passion Of The Christ, Max von Sydow in The Greatest Story Ever Told, Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke, and Michael Rennie in The Day The Earth Stood Still all play the same character?

Did Toshiro Mifune, Clint Eastwood, and Bruce Willis all play the Continental Op?

Did Clint Eastwood play the same character in all three Dollar films?

Did Vincent Price, Charlton Heston, and Will Smith all play the same character?

Did Leonardo DiCaprio play the same character Steve McQueen played in The Great Escape (even if just for one brief scene) or did he play a character who played a character Steve McQueen played in The Great Escape?

Ooh, here's a good one!

Lon Chaney Jr starts Ghost Of Frankenstein playing the same monster Boris Karloff played in the original Frankenstein / Bride Of Frankenstein / Son Of Frankenstein trilogy, but by the end gets Ygor's brain (Bela Lugosi) transplanted into his body and speaks / thinks / acts briefly as Ygor in Frankie’s body.

However, Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman while maintaining continuity with all four previous films cast Lugosi as the monster (because Chaney had to play the Wolfman, duh) without dialog.  Glenn Strange then assumed the role again in continuity with all previous films for House Of Frankenstein, House Of Dracula, and Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, occasionally speaking briefly in the role.

Who was Strange playing in his films?  The original Karloff monster or Ygor in Frankie's bod?  Are those two distinct characters?

. . .

All the above is fun trivia to debate, but it links to a much more serious question:  Who are you?

That’s not a trivial matter.  What constitutes out identity?  What makes us who we are?

I lost my father years ago to Alzheimer’s.  As my brother Robert observed, the only member of a family not affected by an Alzheimer’s diagnosis is the person suffering from it themselves.

I would talk to my father on the phone, and he was always pleasant and cheery, but about three years before he died I realized he had no idea who I was, I was just some voice on the other end of the line that mom wanted him to talk to.

My father was by nature and easy going kinda guy, and that certainly made his last few years easier for my mother and brother Rikk to cope with, but one night when I was visiting, trying to get their affairs straightened out so he could enter a nursing home, he got irritated with my mother as she was trying to help him and raised his hand as if to slap hers away.

My father never raised his hand against my mother.  

Ever.

He taught me and my brothers that was something no real man ever did.

He might sound gruff on occasion but he never raised a finger, much less truck our mother.

The fact he did so in the throes of Alzheimer’s indicated that whoever he once was, he wasn’t that person anymore.

We got him into a nursing home and he lasted a little less than a year there, his mind and his memory and his personality deteriorating rapidly.

Who was he at the end?

I didn’t go to his funeral.

What was the point?

The father I knew and loved had departed long before they buried his shell.

My grandmother, on the other hand, remained her cranky, irascible self until a week and a half before she died, finding the wit to crack one last memorable joke before her body began shutting down.

. . .

The question of identity is related to consciousness, and these are referred to as “the hard question” by physicians and physicists and philosophers alike.

What makes us “us”?

How do we know who we are?

What constitutes identity?

There are no easy, pat answers.

We have textbook definitions that dance around the issue of identity and consciousness, providing enough of a foundation for us to recognize what it is we’re discussing, but no one has yet come up with a clear, concise explanation of what either phenomenon is.

It’s like saying “apples are a red fruit.”

Okay, we know what you’re talking about, but we also know that description falls far, far short of what an apple actually is.

That’s why trivial discussion like whether or not Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix are playing the same character is a lot more important than it seems.

(BTW, they aren’t. Phoenix won his Oscar for his version of the Rupert Pupkin character in a violent remake of The King Of Comedy.)

    © Buzz Dixon 

[countessofbiscuit]

Suppressive Fire

(Sev/Scorch, E, 3.9k words)

Two bros, chillin' on a top bunk no feet apart 'cause they're vode. . . .

Fleet Support, Ord Mantell, barrack block 7 Alpha, six standard weeks after Geonosis

She’d be built like a tank. That was Requirement the First.

She’d be humanoid, or near enough. Her arms would number ... four. Yes, four arms, each of them doing something clever. Two to open my ass, two to pinch my nipples, her long tongue going to crazy town on my cock, burning off my pubes with her caustic breath—

Sergeant Draka. The near-human-tank was Sergeant Draka, sure as day.

Scorch grabbed this realization with one firm hand and tugged.

Her species was shab-if-I-know: some unhappy hybrid who’d washed up on the far edge of the Outer Rim and been scraped into one of those fringe clans that never removed their helmets. Her folks developed a reputation for ritualized kidnapping that didn’t sit right with Jango. He’d ripped Draka’s helmet off in a duel, apparently, and spending ten years training the spawn of her enemy was the price she’d agreed to pay to regain her honor. All those kids and nowhere to run: a bitter form of torture for both parties. Her trainees were an insular, silent bunch with a tendency to tactically acquire your shit when you weren’t looking, but they got the job done.

Scorch had first seen Draka at a parade for the prime minister when he was three. He’d never forgotten it: she had fangs and yellow eyes and ears that twitched at the tips like they were catching your current of fear. No wonder they’d encouraged her to keep a lid on.

Then Scorch was six and change and he’d stumbled upon her in a hallway. She’d had a cadet upside down, smoking him good for something. “What are you gawping at, Six-Two?” she’d snarled, her generous chest heaving, three spare arms tensing in his direction. “Shift it. Unless you want your balls torn off next.”

Scorch had been a little scared and a lot turned on.

Sergeant Vau didn’t have to use many words to put the fear of Fett under your skin. He was a conservative man. Sergeant Draka regarded a shebs-chewing as the highest form of oratory and her calling in life. Whenever Scorch stood downwind of her in the combat hall, he could feel his eyebrows being singed off a second time.

Sweating a little, Scorch’s core tensed as this fantasy tightened vividly in his holographic mind.

She puts two hands around my cock, one hand on my nipple, one hand clawing under my balls—

Scorch flipped her on her back.

She uses all four arms to spread her trunky legs, hairy as a man’s, wide in invitation—

“Knock it off,” barked Sev.

She was gone. In her place was the knowledge that his brother was clued in to what Scorch was doing on the bottom bunk and determined to make it stop.

But the pressure under Scorch’s balls held firm and his erection stood fast. Sev was an oaf with shit timing. There was a reason they gave Scorch the fiddly wires and det controls. He stretched his fingers and reset his grip. “Not happening, vod.”

“Do you have to be so loud about it?”

“Loud?” Had he said something? Lost control of his breathing?

“Yes. Loud. Like you’re slugging a hamm sandwich.”

Scorch frowned. “Have you ever had a hamm sandwich?”

“I don’t want one now.”

There was some improvement to technique needed there: Scorch was always open to feedback—to the challenge of reducing the marginal noise of a wank. “You embarrassed?” he found himself asking, strokes resuming. Less hamm-fistedly. His orgasm had slumped a little and he'd have to tenderly call it back up.

“I’m embarrassed for you,” Sev said.

Scorch closed his eyes, picturing something ...

Sergeant Draka was back, and now she was holding him and Sev upside down. The arrival of RC-1207 into the sim wasn’t throwing Scorch off. In fact, it was encouraging. Exciting. He even leaked a little at the idea. What was a commando without his squad? Chafed, apparently. He should’ve brought Sev into the game two nights ago, after they’d been rudely pulled from stasis in preparation for some op known only to Boss.

Scorch didn’t remember decant. But Sergeant Vau, who'd wasted no time rocking up to his watery exile when Jango had put out the word, said they’d been ugly, annoyed, and ornery. The nursery techs had given them mock, miniature Deeces to keep their fussy hands and mouths occupied.

Coming out of stasis had to be worse—they were issued Deeces again, but they weren’t left alone to soothe themselves to sleep with weapons. Now their waking moments belonged entirely to some Jedi named Zey. They’d been forced to run a gamut of proprioception and endurance tests, cleaned their spanking new Katarn and cleaned it once more for luck on Boss’s orders, and told to familiarize themselves with their upgraded HUD systems.

Scorch had and he'd found it wanting: no pre-loaded heavy-isotope bangers or high-definition tailhead reference holos. Did he have to do everything himself in this shabla army?

After submitting to all this with only mild complaint—Fixer had sworn in full sentences—the op order was still not forthcoming. Classic hurry up and fekkin' wait. Wait for instructions they didn’t even need. Coordinates, intel support, and a broad objective would have sufficed for a commando tasking: top brass still had a lot to learn. It had left Delta with more downtime than they liked and had left Scorch wanting nothing more than to take care of that perennial need in his groin. And each time, he had to get a little more creative.

“What’re you thinking ‘bout, Sev?” he teased, poking the boundaries of this sim. Longnecks hated that: it’s why they let the commandos have off-world field trips to forsaken places where they couldn’t peel back the corners without dying. “Something profane? Something a little non-regulation?”

“The shab is wrong with you.”

“I’ll tell you what I’m thinking ... ” The opportunity for candor—without Fixer on the opposite bunk telling him to pipe down or Boss around to make it happen—was interesting. And as far as Scorch knew, this slap-dash prefab of a support base didn’t have surveillance bugs like their dorms on Kamino. The range and assault course here weren't even specced for lasers; they had to waste live rounds on discs and be honest about getting locked onto. Not likely.

With nothing left to hide, Scorch rolled away from the wall and relaxed onto his back, his cock stiff and spry. He pulled his hood up and over his wet glans and back down again, as far as he could take it, skin smarting nicely at the stretch. He went on, “I’m thinking about Sergeant Draka.”

“Stop,” Sev said.

“Her thick thighs in my face—”

“Stop.”

Scorch spat in his hand and throttled his shaft. “Biting our balls … ” Okay, maybe that was a little weird. But if Fixer’s quick work of the base pyrowall in the anxious hours before chill-down was anything to go by, weird could be good. Better than good.

“Don’t make me come down there,” Sev growled. Not unlike Sergeant Draka, actually.

Scorch couldn’t help himself. “Oh yeah, do come down here ... ” He bucked into his fist, as if to jerk out that ball of bliss from behind his sack. The mass of him tensed rigid under one fixed goal. His fumbled around for something in the sheets with his free hand. “Come down her thick legs ... ”

If anything could singe Draka’s hairs, it’d be Sev’s spunk. Scorch loved a blast, but Sev would sprinkle baradium on his Oaties every morning if he could. Sev would spill like a gutted aiwha, animalistic and uncontrolled, and Draka would hiss and gnash her teeth and—

And suddenly, Scorch was over the line. His base clenched hard, choking his groan of release. He convulsed and came thickly into one of yesterday’s socks.

“Shab,” he croaked, his vision returning, his limbs pooling with pituitary pleasure. “Blew up real good.”

Somewhere above him, Sev huffed. “Three nights in a row. You’re disgusting—you know that, right?”

“Stasis, my shebs. I’ve never had such busy balls in my short life.” Scorch twisted languidly to the edge of the mattress and sat up, squeezing his cock clean. “Cooking blanks like they might get lucky.” The knotted sock got buried in tomorrow’s laundry and Scorch borrowed some of Boss’s wet wipes for the cleanup. Sarge wouldn’t miss them.

“The rest of us are fine,” Sev countered.

Scorch glanced at Sev over his shoulder. His brother looked like a corpse who’d taken up reading in the afterlife. Base bunks weren’t much cosier than a stasis pod, but something else was keeping Sev’s spine stiff. Something that might affect squad performance if it wasn’t addressed: a bad case of self-inflicted blue balls.

Scorch pulled up his pants and ambled over. “You know ... you say that. But this says something else.” He grabbed Sev’s perky junk.

Happily for his brother, Scorch’s grip was light. So when Sev knocked Scorch backwards at the throat, he didn’t take Sev’s sack with him. A scuffle ensued, half-hearted on Scorch’s side, though Sev was obviously in one of his fuck-off moods. He always was crankiest after a nap; it’d take him days to shake off stasis. And he was still pissed about Procurement’s theft of his helmet, with its authentic Gamma blood enshrined in red paint. That di’kutla squad had been shipped to Triple Zero, and until Sev butted heads with them again, he’d be as scratchy as a flea-bitten akk.

Using the shallow bunkrail, Scorch flung himself up and collapsed onto his brother, asking the cantilevered cot to bear the weight of two commandos. He was a trusting soul. The tussle continued until Scorch allowed Sev to secure a headlock, rather than drag them both onto the floor. They’d just gotten out of one unnatural bath and he didn’t fancy a dunk in bacta.

Scorch tapped Sev’s thigh. “Alright, alright,” he said hoarsely. Sev’s hold loosened a fraction and Scorch scooted out from it. Sitting up, he grabbed the holozine that had gotten pinned against the wall: some monthly edition of erudition that called itself Lasers & Blasters. “Didn’t know you could, Oh-Seven.”

Sev snatched the ‘zine to stuff it under his pillow. “It’s above your cadet-grade.”

“I think everyone knows you’re the knuckle-dragger around here, not me.”

“I think everyone knows I’m the hero of Geonosis, Killer of Sun Fac.”

Scorch made a theatrical noise that sounded like a broken, wet bes’bev. “Woo-hoo! You hit the broad side of a bantha!”

Now Sev really tried to catapult him onto the floor. But Scorch’s close-combat situational awareness noticed that his brother’s cockstand was holding strong.

“Sev,” he said, panting a little when they’d reached another stalemate, “the only people who know Sun Fac’s name are us, some spooks, and that random forward air controller.”

“Shove off.” Sev kicked him with his boot. He wore them to bed like an animal.

Scorch shook his head. “Not until you take care of yourself.”

“You have some shabla nerve, vod.”

“Rule 45: there should be no happier union than that between a commando and his weapon. But you’ve neglected yours.” He cast a judgemental eye at Sev’s tented pants. They’d been sleeping, shooting, and shitting cheek-by-jowl for their entire lives: Scorch didn’t know why one more bodily function would be that much worse. In that moment, he had more sympathy for his brother’s dick than his brother’s karked-up dignity. Or his own.

He glanced at the chrono. Boss and Fixer still had half an hour at the range and they’d probably hit the mess on the way back. Time enough for a little more equipment maintenance; Scorch believed he was being supremely generous offering what remained of his. He flopped over into a plank above his brother, who was still lying deathly prone. “If you’re not gonna help yourself ...”

“What?” Sev sneered. “You’ll do the honors?”

“Maybe I will. I am better than you, after all,” Scorch grinned. Suddenly, he sensed a game that he wanted to win. They were all like that. Competitive. Not so much against each other, but with each other. Getting screwy Sev off would be the ultimate victory: no one would lose and everyone would leave happy.

“You can’t.” Sev’s disinterest was as threadbare as his pillowcase.

“Alright, vod. I’ll take that bet.” Scorch dug the heel of his hand into his brother’s persistent erection. Sev’s eyelids fluttered. No greater tell in the book. “I bet I can get you off before Boss and Fixer get back. Just this once.”

Sev circled his hands around Scorch’s throat, hissing through perfect teeth bared tight, “You—can’t—Sergeant—Vau—would—”

Scorch scoffed. “You see Sarge here? He’s fucked off to his castle with his kaminii retirement fund.”

Vau had never promised he’d be there on the other side, but ... did he know they’d done a good job? That they’d been singled out for the assassination of the bugs’ chief lieutenant? That they’d survived—no, that they'd excelled, when hundreds of other squads hadn’t? Did he even care? Scorch had to wonder.

He shoved those thoughts aside with conscious effort; they wouldn’t do him any good. Better that Vau wasn't here anyway: he would sniff mightily at this interpretation of no brother left behind. “Hells, he’s probably rubbing one out to a portrait of the dead missus right now,” Scorch continued.

Sev’s grip tightened for their sergeant’s honor. “He wouldn’t—”

“He would. Stars love the old chakaar, Sev, but he’s only flesh and blood.” Actually, that’s all Vau was: cragged skin and blue blood twisted ‘round a frame that seemed to boast a few more bones than average. There must have been a heart in there, too—see: Mird—but Delta had spent their entire cadethood seeking it out to little good. Especially Sev, though he’d slot you for saying so.

Oh, Sev’ika: flesh and blood, plus a lot of bile and bad humor. He stank out the backend when he’d scarfed down too many ration packs, but what would splatter out the front? Scorch was beyond curious now, as he palmed his brother’s package through his clothes.

Sev’s hands held firm, but it was half-hearted, his thumbs only tickling his brother’s trachea. His nostrils flared. He was afraid. No, even better—he was desperate.

It was all the vindication Scorch needed. “That’s right—breathe. Relax. Six-Two’s got you.” He tugged Sev’s fatigues down, hitching the elasticene band behind his balls. Sev grimaced. Yeah, it might not be comfortable yet, but just wait; a little pressure there goes a long way.

“That hurts,” growled Sev.

“Gonna hand me the game?” If Sev had lost sight of his mission objective, he really was gummed up. “Jerking off through a fly feels like doing it in formation,” Scorch said.

Sev turned his head to the wall. If he’d done it at all, that was clearly how.

Scorch took his theoretically-identical brother in hand and felt the heft and heat of a dick that was still an inch left of familiar, however many times he'd seen it. Sev was throbbing. His hands fell away, as deliberately limp as the rest of him, like he was trying to absent himself from his body.

“So ... Sergeant Draka—” Scorch began, realizing he’d just been staring at his brother’s kad for longer than was right. He mentally constructed the fantasy again, deliberately this time, while he warmed up to the idea of working someone else’s shaft. Sev’s shaft. He imagined what Sev might like to hear, because Scorch sure as shab wasn’t keen on hardening up between his brother’s legs himself. That would just be strange. “She’s got you under two hands and a squawking bug under the other, honkin' great tits ready to smother the both of you ...”

Up until he’d found his brother’s cock in his hand, Scorch had fancied himself an honest commando. He really did. Then he had to close the dissonance between his not-insignificant-interest in Sev’s pink tip and, well, Sev: that awkward grump-a-lump who couldn’t look at a sapient or sentient, droid or organic, without scaring them away.

Scorch did it by telling himself this was just his own his cock in a mirror. A learning experience, if nothing else. And his tongue loosened to remember the bet. He began rubbing with intent. “She snaps its neck. Crunch. And isn’t that just your favoritest sound, Sev, ol’ boy?”

“Not her,” Sev said hoarsely.

Manda, he really was giving this to Scorch in the bag. “Who?”

“—don’t know—I don’t shabla know.”

“Easy, vod. You got a lifetime to find out. Well, half of one.”

“Shut. Up.”

Scorch changed the program and flicked a thumbnail right under Sev’s hood. Scratched out whatever dream Sev had building behind his scrunched eyes. It was irrelevant, whatever cleaned the pipes. If his brother didn’t want to say, who was Scorch to ask? The silky give of his hard-on and his nasally gasps vouched that Sev was having an a-okay time. Scorch wouldn’t have a hand, otherwise.

Sev bubbled from his tip. Scorch felt himself flush, but he was more intrigued than anything. It really was like watching a holo of himself. Obviously, Scorch was more handsome, mostly because he wasn’t a fucking psycho ... but a cock was a cock. He lengthened his movement with the slick aid of precome, fisting all the way down to Sev’s slightly lighter curls.

Suddenly, Sev’s fingers wrapped around his. For an alarming half-second, Scorch feared his wrist was about to be snapped. Goodbye dominant hand and superhuman reaction times.

But Sev just held on, eyes pinched shut, arm as unyielding as a barrel.

The situation became more straightforward. Emboldened by the team effort, Scorch stroked faster. Harder. He read the lines in Sev’s fierce face like a manual for a weapon he’d been handed five years ago. A clone lifetime. A batcher’s intuition. He shucked Sev’s sheath down as hard as he could. Twisted his wrist at the top further than Sev’s delicate skin wanted to go. Scorch figured his brother liked the bite of pain. “You feelin’ the heat? You gonna spill all over my fingers, Sev’ika?” he teased.

Sev heaved like he might throw up, and he coughed out only two words. “Do. Not.”

Yeah, he hates that kind of chummy osik and yakking. It was almost sad how much Sev knew what he didn’t want, but couldn’t voice what he did. Even Fixer grunted in approval when something wriggled across the ‘pad’s screen; at least he had some idea what kind of parts he fancied. It was a very broad pool.

Sev just looked embarrassed to be asked.

“Someone’s gonna love your shit, Sev,” Scorch encouraged, coming at it again from a different vector. If he didn’t show his wacky brother some love, who would?

Vau hadn’t been there to bestow that curt nod. They didn’t want to be spoiled. Scorch and his brothers weren’t Skirata’s pups: they’d survived Geonosis because they weren’t. But ... Delta was here and Theta wasn’t and Vau had no karkin’ clue what a close-run thing it’d been. Didn’t know how the knife-edge of his training had probably made all the difference and how chuffed they all were about it.

Or how Sev had made that one-in-a-million shot to Sun Fac’s fighter with half his visor splattered in bug spray. Scorch would remember that for the rest of his short life: angry tendrils of smoke rising behind Sev as he turned contemptuously away from his kill, his helmet gooey with Geonosian.

There were brothers, and there were your brothers: the ones who’d made you better just by being there beside you. Sev was one of those.

Scorch didn’t have to improv osik, now. The words came as easy as his muscle memory as he pistoned his palm along Sev’s angry cock. “Fuckin’ proud of you, Sev: bane of bugs and sniper extraordinaire. Wish Vau could’ve seen it, I really do. I’ll have CLONINT’s guts for rappelling lines for wiping Boss’s cache.”

Sev’s free hand had bunched into the sheet, his knuckles whitening. He stilled suddenly, tense as the second before the opening salvo. Here it comes.

“Ooh, so that’s how Sev breaks. Result!” Scorch had imagined Sev’s orgasm would be like squeezing blood from a stone. Not at all: it came as surely and naturally as his own. Scorch watched intently. Who knew their balls became one in the moment of triumph like that? As Sev’s practically disappeared into his taut body, Scorch had to think on his feet to save his brother’s freshly-laundered fatigues—or, on his knees and elbows, as the case was.

Thunking his other arm across his face, Sev lost the bet with a violent shudder—and without a sound, probably so he couldn’t say he’d enjoyed it. He squirted fully but cleanly onto the open spread of the ‘zine, thanks to Scorch’s management and direction. A long, messy line of cloudy white right across the cross-sectioned barrel of a Magna-Caster-100. Thank fuck for flimsi.

Shaking off Sev's hand, Scorch dropped the wilting cock. It was not attractive, and he prayed the ladies wouldn't think the same, warring with himself about whether he could succumb to the mortification of going limp in someone’s mouth. Maybe it was better to pull out and stripe them? It merited further research on Fixer’s ‘pad, just in case.

“Target softened. Should make things easier for you. Hope you took notes,” Scorch said, oddly transfixed by the description of the ‘Caster’s invisible quarrels he’d spotted on the page. He was growing itchy for a time-sensitive rummage—Scorch would wager his lower left nut that Delta could now go toe-to-toe with any of Draka’s squads for acquisition. With any luck, this mysterious upcoming op would net them some exotic toys.

He shifted his weight, feeling the need to move before that idea made him stiff again and everyone got the wrong impression.

“‘m not soft, di’kut,” Sev mumbled from underneath his arm.

Scorch patted his thigh. “Sure you’re not.”

“Getting soft will get us popped.”

Scorch was halfway off the bunk, but he stopped to squeeze Sev’s fucked-up head. “Hey, ner vod. Look at me—look at me,” he demanded. Sev let his arm fall behind his curls but he kept his gaze elsewhere. “No need to quote Sarge to me. Or go grey over stupid stuff like him.”

Stuff like distraction—a dirty word in Vau’s lexicon. What did they have to get distracted by, anyhow? Grainy holovids? They had enough room in their over-engineered skulls for a few of those, and if they ever got to touch the real thing, Scorch figured they wouldn’t lose their heads. Right? Civvies were so unexceptional, after all. Probably couldn’t tell a maranium blast from a benign xenon light sculpture. Brothers, especially your fellow commandos, were the only company worth keeping—even Vau said so, and Skirata had said Vau had wined and dined New Mando aristos and had bedded a fekkin’ princess in a past life.

Eventually, Sev’s sour mug puckered in something like thought. “If you fucked up my range scores, I’m going to piss in your pack.”

Scorch laughed, dumping his feet onto the floor and wandering in the direction of Boss’s ration bars. Mess was a whole two hours away and Scorch had a month’s eating to make up for. “Sev’ika, no one could fuck up your range scores. You just pregamed with Lasers & Blasters.”

The ‘zine smacked the back of Scorch’s head, wet side flat.

Yeah, we're still good, Scorch thought, as he finally manhandled his stroppy brother onto the floor. And we always will be.

(also on Ao3)

[shakespeareanwannabe]

Best Laid Plans

Santiago ‘Pope’ Garcia x F!OC

Summary: A sequel to ‘Protective Instincts’. The last 7 and a half months have been a whirlwind, and part of Pope still can’t fathom the idea of being a father. But now that his kid is here? All bets are off. *Still based off of the wonderful headcanons by @darksideofclarke*

Warnings: Pregnancy fic (so, again, if you aren’t vibing with it, don’t read it), swearing, references to birth (it’s nothing graphic, just mentions of water breaking, contractions, and epidurals), references to breastfeeding

A/N: Hi everyone! I was blown away by the response to ‘Protective Instincts’, so I wrote a sequel that’s based off of part of one of clarke’s headcanons. This was so fun to write, and I’m really wanting to write more about Bex and Pope, and Pope and Frankie, and the baby, so I’m hoping you all enjoy this as much as you enjoyed the first one! If you want to be added to the tags, please let me know. I just used the tags list from ‘Protective Instincts’ for this one.

                                                    **********

Pope was a planner. Not as good as Tom, mind you, but he could plan an operation with the best of them. That was, after all, how he had convinced his closest friends to help him take down one of Colombia’s biggest and most dangerous narcos.

“Just look at my work on it.”

That was the phrase he used on all of them, but he had been banking on their loyalties as well. He had known going in that Benny would only need him. He had figured that a tiny twist of Catfish’s arm and Pope’s record of getting into deep shit when Frankie wasn’t around to stop him would be enough to encourage Catfish to join them. Will had needed Tom, Tom had needed Pope’s workup of the mission. Planning. Having a rough idea in your head of how people will react was a big part of planning an op and putting together a team.

Bex’s birth plan was viewed in the exact same light. He hadn’t been lying to her when he told her that whatever she wanted to do, they were going to do. If she had demanded that she give birth while standing on her head, Pope would have found a way to make that happen, doctors be damned. So, Pope made sure that her birth plan was as detailed as any highly classified military operation.

That document became like a Bible to Pope. He sat with Bex as she painstakingly went through every single option, checking off certain boxes and rolling her eyes at others.

“I swear to God, babe. If they try to show me the birth through a mirror, I might kick a nurse in the face,” she had laughed. Pope had laughed as well, knowing his sweet tempered girl would never do such a thing but also knowing that, when the time came, if someone tried to bring a mirror into the room when his girl hadn’t requested it, he would be raising hell on her behalf.

Of course, he knew that things never ran as smoothly as you planned. Colombia had been proof enough of that, but he held tight to the birth plan, taking comfort in the knowledge that, by knowing what it was Bex wanted, he would be able to do some small part in assisting her through her labor and delivery. Of course, he would stay in the room with her (just him and the medical staff, no friends or family would even know about the labor until at least 4 hours after the kid arrived) and let her squeeze his hand and yell at him if she needed to, but Pope was a man of action. He faced situations head on, guns blazing. This...this was one situation where he would be almost helpless, watching as his girl fought to bring their kid into the world.

The birth plan was his tether. Bex had outlined every single thing she wanted to happen before, during, and after the birth.

“Of course, if things go south, you tell them to fuck the plan and do whatever they need to do,” she had reiterated several times over the course of building and rebuilding their plan. And when Bex’s water broke at 1 p.m. that cold November afternoon, Pope knew within the span of her first contraction that he would indeed tell the medical staff to fuck the plan if there was even the slightest notion of something being wrong. He was not losing his girl or their baby due to his stubbornness in sticking to a plan.

Luckily, it went as smooth as it possibly could have gone. Nobody brought any mirrors into the room. She had been able to walk laps up and down the hallway to help herself along. Bex had caved around midnight and begged for an epidural, which Pope had been quick to sooth her about.

“Baby, you’ve been at this for almost 12 hours,” he had whispered into her sweaty hair, wiping a cool rag over her forehead as she squeezed his hand and tearfully whispered that she wanted the injection. “You’ve done everything you can naturally. The laps and the breathing and the exercises…Baby, I know Marines who would have given up and asked for pain meds hours ago,” he had laughed. “You’re fucking Wonder Woman, baby. I’m so proud of you.” He smiled and kissed her forehead as she gifted him with a tired but grateful smile. “Our kiddo is just being a little stubborn right now, okay?”

“T…takes after their daddy,” she chuckled breathily.

“God help us,” he laughed, pressing another kiss to her forehead as she winced, another contraction overtaking her body. Pope hit the Help button by her bed and waited for the nurse to come so they could inform her of the change in their plan.

Finally, at three o’clock in the morning, Liliana Esperanza Garcia was placed onto her mother’s chest with an angry cry. Pope stayed right by Rebecca’s side the entire time, having no interest in cutting the umbilical cord and the idea of catching his daughter as she was born was more than a little terrifying to the seasoned veteran, so he remained at his post at Bex’s bedside and cried alongside his two girls.

                                                      **********

Watching the sunrise through their hospital room window, Pope sat with his little girl pressed against his bare chest and thanked god that they had decided on a hospital that allowed fathers to do skin to skin contact with their kids while still at the hospital. He reveled in the feel of her tiny cheek pressed against his chest, right over his heart. The feel of her heartbeat hammering against his skin was addicting and soothing at the same time. He had never known peace like this.

Frankie had been right. Of course he had been, he nearly always was. Holding Lily in his arms somehow made up for Afghanistan, Iraq, Colombia, and every other fuck up in his life. This little thing in his arms that couldn’t function on her own, that wouldn’t be able to for a long time, had already done so much good. It would be months before she could even hold her own head up, but, somehow, she had managed to erase all the red in his ledger, simply by breathing.

Of course, her mother helped. Pope looked over at Bex, asleep in the hospital bed beside him. His warrior queen. She had given him this gift, put her body through unimaginable change and pain for their little family, and she had done it with a smile on her face (most of the time). He would never deserve her, but he was so damn glad that she somehow saw the best in him, that she chose him on a daily basis.

“Remember when I said we have to be good to Mamá?” he whispered, brushing his lips gently over Lily’s dark downy baby hair. “She worked so hard to bring you here. We’re always gonna owe her, mija.”

“Knock, knock,” a soft voice called from the sliding glass door of their private room. Pope looked up and smiled, laughing softly at the sight in front of him.

Benny was weighed down by what looked like seven or eight large stuffed animals, an “It’s a Girl” balloon flying over his head. Will stood next to him, a look of fond exasperation on his face as the balloon gently bonked him on the head, and a bouquet of white lilies in his hand. Frankie, the one who had knocked, was slightly in front of them both, a kind smile pulling at his lips as he took in the small family in front of him.

“Hey fellas,” he whispered, carefully pulling himself to his feet with one hand and nodding to them to come in, eyes never leaving his daughter. “This is Lily.”

“She’s beautiful, man,” Benny whispered, his eyes growing shiny.

“Congratulations, Pope,” Will echoed, gently clasping Pope’s shoulder.

“How’s Momma doing?” Frankie whispered, maneuvering himself to stand just over Pope’s right shoulder so he would have a good view of the sleeping baby girl.

“She’s a warrior, man,” Pope peered over his shoulder at his sleeping girlfriend, and every single one of the hardened soldiers could see the love and awe in their Lieutenant’s eyes. “Fuck, I don’t know how she did it.”

Frankie choked back a laugh. “You’re gonna want to watch that language now, Papá. Little ears and all that.”

“The swear jar will end up paying for her college tuition,” Benny jabbed, jostling with his armload when Will gave him a smack.

“Benny, you can put those on the table over there, man,” Pope told him. “Just be careful not to wake Bex.”

“Too late…” a soft warm voice announced, making Pope’s heart flutter.

“Hey baby,” he sighed happily, turning back and slowly walking over to sit on the edge of her bed. “How’d you sleep?”

“Not long enough,” she laughed as she held her arms out. Pope gently deposited their daughter in her mother’s safe embrace before shaking out his hands. He’d carried loads ten times her size, but something about the position made his wrists ache. “Hey princess,” she cooed, running a soft finger over their daughter’s chubby cheek. “How long was I out?”

“Just over an hour,” he smiled as he leaned down to press a kiss to her forehead before moving to the recliner to put his shirt back on. “Look who’s here.”

“Hey guys,” she smiled tiredly at them. “Forgive me for not getting up to hug you but…” she shrugged as she nodded down at the baby in her arms.

“Congratulations, Momma,” Frankie smiled as he swooped in to give her a kiss on the cheek. “Charlie figured you wouldn’t want to eat a crappy hospital breakfast, so…” he held up the cooler in his hands. “We made a little feast for you, if you’re up for it.”

Rebecca groaned. “Oh my god, tell me your waffles are in there.” At Frankie’s nod, she groaned again. “Ugh, I am so up for it, Frankie. Thank you! Just, uh…” she trailed off as she looked down at her hospital gown clad body. “I think I want to take a shower first if that’s okay?”

Pope swooped in to relieve her of Lily and Frankie helped her stand up.

“You need me? Or do you want me to call a nurse?” Pope asked.

“You stay here with Lily and the guys,” she decided. “I think I can handle it on my own but keep an ear out?” Pope nodded and she smiled as she kissed him on the cheek. “Will, could you pass me my—” Will already had her bag extended to her. She laughed. “Thanks.”

“Milady,” Benny extended an elbow to her and helped her shuffle across the floor to the ensuite bathroom.

She winked as she began to pull the door closed. “See you guys in an hour,” she joked.

“Take your time, baby,” Pope called, quickly adjusting to softly shush Lily as she whimpered.

“Can’t believe you’re a dad now, man,” Benny laughed as he took a seat on the edge of the bed. “Out of all of us, I never would’ve had you down as a family man. I mean, c’mon. The guy who slept with every informant he had now has a daughter? Karma’s gonna bite you on the ass, dude.”

Inwardly, Pope rolled his eyes. Sometimes it was easy to forget how much younger Benny was compared to the rest of them. He hadn’t been anxious to settle down when he was Ben’s age either, but now? He couldn’t imagine what his life would be like without waking up every morning next to Rebecca’s smiling face. And Lily? She was less than six hours hold, and she already had Santiago wrapped around her little finger.

“Things change, Benny,” Will calmly informed his little brother. “Now, what do you say we go get some drinks for everyone? See if we can scrounge up some actual coffee in this place?” Ben shrugged but nodded as Will approached the bathroom door and lightly tapped on it. “Hey Becca? We’re going to get something to drink. Do you want anything?”

“An orange juice would be great, thanks Will!” she called back before the sound of the shower turning on pervaded the room.

As Will guided Benny out of the room, he turned back and shot a wink at Pope, causing him to laugh. They all knew that Ben was a lot to handle, and Will had gotten good over the years at judging when one of his friends were about to pop his little brother one. For all the MMA training and fighting Benny did, he was kind of clueless when it came to the tempers of his friends.

Pope settled down on the edge of the mattress, unable to look away from Lily, even as Frankie sat down next to him.

“I just can’t stop looking at her, man,” he admitted softly.

“Take it all in, hermano,” Frankie grinned. “You’re gonna blink and she’s gonna be off to kindergarten.”

“Malo,” Pope muttered to him under his breath and Frankie laughed. He dragged his eyes away from his sleeping daughter to smile back at his best friend. “You want to hold her?”

Frankie blinked and raised a hand to scratch at the hair under his cap. “You sure?” he double-checked hesitantly.

Pope slowly and carefully placed the sleeping baby in Frankie’s arms. She snuffled for a brief moment before falling back asleep.

“Hola, corazon,” Frankie whispered, stroking a finger over her dark hair. Frankie looked up to meet Pope’s eyes, tears glimmering in both their eyes. “Shit Santi…” he breathed.

“I know…” The two men sat for a long moment in silence, Lily’s quiet breaths and the sound of the shower in the background washing over them. “I…I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you, Frankie,” Pope started quietly.

“Huh?” Frankie didn’t take his eyes off the baby.

“When Mateo was born…I shoulda been here,” Pope scratched at the back of his neck.

Frankie shook his head at Pope. “Bro, stop. You were in Colombia doing what you had to do. And you’re here now.”

Pope sighed. “I don’t think I coulda done this without you, Frankie,” he whispered. “Shit, I might’ve just kept driving that night. I coulda missed all of this. I could’ve missed her.” Pope reached out a finger and slowly stroked Lily’s fist until she opened her hand and weakly grasped his finger.

“You would’ve come back, man. Don’t kid yourself. You don’t leave jobs unfinished,” Frankie said simply because, to him, it was simple. You didn’t follow a man into war zone after war zone without getting to know every facet of their personality. Santiago Garcia never left a man behind, and never left a job undone. It’s why he was Frankie’s best friend. There was so much loyalty, so much trust, between the two of them.

Pope laughed. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. I’ve got the kid, now I’ve just gotta get the girl.”

Frankie watched as Pope dug into his jacket pocket, draped over the side of the recliner, and pulled out a navy-blue plush box. Cracking it open, Pope tilted the box towards Frankie so he could see the square amethyst jewel sitting in a simple gold band.

Gently, Frankie unfolded one arm from underneath Lily and gave Pope a shove before quickly resuming his position.

“When?”

Pope shrugged. “I’ve had this stupid thing for months, man. But I didn’t want to give it to her then because I didn’t want her thinking it was just because she was pregnant. Part of me wants to give it to her now, but I don’t want her thinking it’s just because she just had my kid, you know?”

Frankie nodded sagely. “I get it.”

“Maybe in a couple of months?” Pope asked, looking between the engagement ring and his best friend.

“First date out without the kid could work,” Frankie agreed.

“Maybe Lily could spend some time with her godfather while her Mom and Dad go for dinner or something?” Frankie kept nodding. “Would you like that, Lily?” Pope murmured, leaning over his friend’s shoulder to speak to his little girl. “You want to spend some time with Tío Frankie?”

Frankie’s head shot up. “You mean…?” Pope chuckled, a smile pulling at his lips. “Dude, I was kidding about calling…You don’t have to…”

“Frankie…” Pope clasped his best friend’s shoulder. “There’s no one we trust more than you. Will you be Lily’s godfather?”

Pope watched as Frankie swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he stared down at the little girl in his arms as she began to fuss.

“Shh, corazon…” Frankie soothed, rocking her back and forth as he stood up to pace the room. “Tío Frankie has you.”

Santiago couldn’t help but smile. If someone had told him even five years ago that he would be at a hospital, just a few hours after his daughter was born, planning to propose to the mother of his child with the help of his best friend, retired Second Lieutenant Francisco ‘Catfish’ Morales, who was now a married man with a son and another kid on the way, he would have asked what kind of crack they were snorting and to point him in the direction of their drug dealer.

Guys like them didn’t get the happy endings. They got the beginnings of the fairy tale, the girl and the glory of returning home after war, but after the ‘Happily Ever After’, they got the nightmares and the divorces and the dual mortgages and the child support. They ended up like Tom, so deep in the trenches that they cave in and bury you.

At least, that’s what Pope thought when he signed on for private sector work in Colombia. He wasn’t ready to give up the thrill of the chase, the ‘good work’ he was doing, to face the shitshow that would inevitably be waiting for him at home. When Colombia had ended up being the shitshow, and Yovanna had seen right through him and sent him packing, he thought that was it. The end of his rope, the end of the line.

Moving closer to Frankie had been a godsend. Pope would always credit him with having literally saved his life. Getting to watch how Frankie handled it all, seeing him interact with Charlie and Mateo, standing next to him at the simple courthouse wedding. Frankie was living proof that life went on even when he didn’t have the flag on his shoulder anymore. Proof that ‘Happily Ever After’ didn’t have to fall flat. And, if Pope hadn’t moved close to Frankie, Charlie never would have gotten him the physiotherapy consult at her clinic, and he never would have met Bex. He never would have learned that guys like them could have happy endings, so long as they fought for them with as much vim and vigor that they fought every other battle of their lives with.

“Hey Papá,” Frankie called with a laugh, pulling Pope from his thoughts. He turned to see Frankie holding Lily out to him carefully as she started to cry.

He hurried to cradle his daughter against his chest, quietly humming to her in a feeble attempt to get her to settle. “Shh, baby girl. You’re okay. Papá’s here.”

Bex appeared in the bathroom doorway, her skin dewy from the shower and her hair thrown up out of her face. “I think she might be hungry, babe,” she called over their daughter’s cries. She walked over to get herself settled on the bed, wincing every few steps until she could lie back on the thin mattress, adjusting it so she could sit up.

“I’ll give you three some privacy,” Frankie muttered, clasping Pope’s shoulder in one hand and running his finger over Lily’s clenched fist with the other. “I’ll go see what the Millers found to drink. We’ll be back in a few.”

Pope nodded distractedly as his friend smiled warmly at Bex and left the room, closing the door with a soft click. He gently transferred Lily into her mother’s arms before perching on the edge of the mattress by Bex’s hip. “You want me to call the nurse?”

Bex nodded as she watched Lily nuzzle at her chest. “Yeah, they said they would bring the specialist in the first couple of times to make sure I’m doing this right.”

Pope kissed her temple as she pulled down the side of her baggy T-shirt in preparation of feeding their daughter. “You’re gonna do great, baby,” he whispered into her hair. “Wonder Woman, remember?”

She smiled softly at him as he pressed the Help button. “I love you,” she murmured.

“I love you more,” he replied with a soft look on his face as the nurse entered. It was a playful argument they had on a nearly weekly basis, but this time, Pope knew he had won. Pope knew he would always win at loving her more because, without her, he wouldn’t have any of this. And that filled his heart to bursting.

                                                     **********

“She’s so beautiful, Santi…” Bex whispered as she lovingly stroked her finger up and down their sleeping daughter’s arm.

All the tests had been run. Pope was over the moon to receive the news that both mother and child were healthy and strong. The small group of warriors had gorged themselves on the Morales’ world class waffles, bacon, and fruit salad before Frankie, Benny and Will had dismissed themselves from the hospital, all three promising to come and visit the following week once the new family was more settled. A nurse had come by every few hours to help teach Bex how to breastfeed, and teach Santi how to change a diaper, and teach them both how to swaddle. All things they had practiced in their parenting classes, but Pope appreciated the reminders. Especially since, the second he laid eyes on his baby girl, all the lessons flew out of his brain. Finally, a doctor paid them a visit and told them they would be free to go at the start of visiting hours the next day.

That had been twelve hours ago. Presently, the small family was bathed in the glow of the setting sun that was filtering in from the master bedroom window. Lily was asleep on the bed in between her parents, who were lying on their sides while holding hands above her head.

“She takes after her mother,” he smiled at her, glad to see he could still make her blush just over a year into their relationship.

“I hope she gets your hair,” she whispered back as she released his hand and reached out to card a hand through his short, thick curls. “I love your hair,” she sighed as she clasped his hand again.

“You want her going grey before she’s 40?” he teased. Bex shot him a playful glare. “I hope she gets your eyes.”

“…I hope she’s happy,” Bex breathed, tears pooling in her eyes.

Pope reached out and cradled her cheek in his hand, softly swiping at the falling tears with his thumb. “She will be, baby. Love her hard, show up, give a shit, and let her find her own path, right?” Bex nodded at him but the tears kept streaming. “Hey…” He stood and picked Lily up, carefully transferring her into the bassinet they had put in their room, before sliding back into bed and pulling his teary girlfriend into his arms. She quietly cried into his shoulder as he ran a soothing hand up and down her back. “You okay?” he asked gently as she finally pulled away, the grey cotton of his shirt stained black.

“Sorry,” she murmured contritely as she wiped at her cheeks. “Stupid hormones.”

“You didn’t answer my question, querido,” he observed.

Rebecca tilted her head back on his shoulder to look in his eyes. She gently ran her thumb over the laugh lines that crinkled in the corners of his eyes and sighed softly. “I feel okay, honestly Santi. My hormones are kind of all over the place, and my body feels like I was hit by a truck, but it’s not as bad as I thought it would be.”

Santiago shifted them so he was lying with his head on his pillow and she had her head on his chest. “As someone who has seen a guy after he got hit by a truck, I’d say that sounds pretty bad.”

She shrugged gently. “I mean, I won’t be doing it again for at least a couple of years, and I know I got lucky because some of the stories I read…” she shuddered lightly before meeting his eyes again. “But I feel better than I thought I would. Does that make sense?”

He nodded as she yawned. “Makes perfect sense, baby. Why don’t you try to get some sleep while Lily is down? We need to be up in about two hours to feed her.”

Rebecca smiled at him as she slid onto her own pillow, still facing him. “You really want to get up and watch me feed our daughter?”

“Mi alma,” he sighed, pulling her in to plant a tender, loving kiss on her lips before pulling back, pressing his forehead against hers. “I’ll get up for as many feedings, changes, crying fits that I can. I don’t want to miss a second of this.”

A bright smile pulled at her lips as tears pooled in her eyes again. “Damnit, Santi…” she laughed as she wiped her face with the hem of her shirt.

He pulled as close as he could and tangled their legs together. “I won’t apologize,” he declared, a soft smile on his face. “I love you so damn much, Rebecca. Te amo…te adoro…te quiero…te necesito…” Pope brushed a kiss against her temple, her forehead, her nose, and finally her lips in between each phrase.

Her eyes started to droop as a content grin graced her features. “I love you too, Santiago. More than any word in any language could ever express.”

He watched and listened as her breathing evened out and she drifted off. He couldn’t shake the pride from flowing through his veins as he listened to his two girls breathe in the fading light. He was never supposed to have this, but he would fight tooth and nail for anyone who tried to take it away.

                                                        **********

Tags list: @darksideofclarke, @writefightandflightclub, @eternallyvenus, @rae-rae-patcha