#i have no idea how this happened and i have no idea how to fix it | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kaybreezy3000 · 2 days

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(F-Reader, smut w/story, soft Five + our usual cocky Five, S4 fix-it)

Broken but breathing. Longing for something that always felt just out of his reach, Five was not okay.

With fates forever intertwined, a train, and a smile he would never forget, once again, the impossible became his reality, but like always, not without tragedy.

In the end, all that mattered are the people Five loved. For them, he would do anything.

Note ~I originally started this pre-s4 release as anon request for another headcanon like my last one, but after watching the show I decided this needed to more than that because Five deserved it. This is a full story, with each letter representing a chapter with something that relates back to Five, only with a new twist, you (female reader insert). For those concerned about the Five and Lila narrative, fear not, this story is not going that route.

~mature content so if not your thing, please stay away. TY.

Warnings and Tags: Rated R for sexually explicit content, Hurt Number Five, Alternate S4, Whump, Mental Break Down, Self-Doubt, Angst-humor-love, Uncle Five, The Deli Fives, Starts with Five in a very dark place, Not the end the show gave us.

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Amor Fati is a Latin phrase that may be translated as "love of fate" or "love of one's fate." It is used to describe an attitude in which one sees everything that happens in one's life, including suffering and loss, as good or, at the very least, necessary.

It's an idea that everything recurs infinitely over an infinite period of time.

A-Aim

Whether Five was setting his sights on saving his family, or when he was focusing all his attention on the crosshairs of his scope, his focus was always impressive.

From a very young age he took on every challenge with a ruthless level of determination, but that unfortunately made him come off disturbingly detached, and now, even though Five no longer needed to be that feral creature, his behaviors from the past were alienating him from his family, and the rest of the world.

It's not that Five didn’t have a very good reason for letting himself become so removed, but now, gone were the days when he had glorious purpose.

Sitting alone in a powerless world that Reginald had dumped them in while biding his time at the end of a bar with his face curtained by the dark fringe of his shaggy hair, Five was feeling exceptionally defeated.

He hypnotically swirled the amber liquid in his fingerprint smudged glass.

Over and over, he repeated your name in his head.

He liked the sound of it, but he liked the way you smiled at him even more.

Five saw you nearly every day on his way to work, but as much as he may have wanted to, he never said a word to you. When you’d look his way, and catch him staring, your eyes would come alive as your lips perked up just a little, as if daring him to crack.

He didn’t.

He couldn’t.

That was the way Five thought it had to be.

But then, something happened.

He could still feel that...

That...

He didn't know what it was.

Shutting his eyes, Five raked a hand through his snarls while disappointedly shaking his head. He knew he shouldn’t let himself do this but he couldn’t help it.

It was just another day, mundane as all the rest. All the seats had been taken by the time you entered the train. You were stuck in the middle, standing in front of him with nothing to hold on to. Less than thirty seconds into the ride, the air between you filled with static.

The hairs on the back of his neck prickled.

The train unexpectedly shifted.

You started to fall, and the next thing Five knew, he had you in his arms so fast it was as if he had his powers to blink again.

With the warmth of your butt pressed against him and your hair catching in the light stubble shadowing his chin, Five inhaled deeply, trying to ignore how oddly alive he felt as he discreetly as possible savored how good you smelled.

Before he could put together why he felt so amazing, or before you could tell him off for being too handsy, the train shifted again, only sharper this time, forcing him to hold onto you even tighter or you would have tumbled into the man in front of you.

“Oh, my god! I am sorry,” you’d gasped as you clung to him, your fingernails digging into the thick wool suit coat covering his forearms.

Realizing you weren’t mad, Five let his hands slide a little further around your midsection, firming his grip.

“Thank you,” you embarrassingly gasped as the train continued to aggressively rock your body against his.

“It’s my pleasure,” Five breathily chuckled into the fluff of your hair.

A second later, the train switched tracks, and everyone was flung forward again and your computer bag swung backwards, violently jabbing him in the dick.

Still at the mercy of the wild train, with Five doing his best to widen his stance to gain more balance so you both didn’t fall, you sheepishly cocked your head back at him.

“Are you ahh -"

“I-I am good,” he coughed, cutting you off.

Then, to your surprise and his, though still visibly in pain, he started laughing.

By the time everyone stopped getting thrown around, you were laughing too. As you turned to face him, Five reluctantly let his hands slip from the narrowest point of your waist, his fingers gliding along the fabric of your shirt a little slower than necessary.

Face flushed, you quickly introduced yourself, but he said nothing as he smiled at you with a dreamy look in his eyes.

“I am pretty sure we just took a detour to the moon back there, but I still can’t believe I just did that,” you joked.

At a loss for words, other than things he knew he shouldn’t say, Five’s amused smile began to fade.

“Thank you for saving me from a nosedive. Let me at least buy you a coffee or something… It’s the least I can do after stomping on your foot and nailing you in the-”

You looked down.

“Shit… That big scuff wasn’t there before, was it?” you asked, anxiously referring to the mark on Five’s shoe, not something notable going on in the dick region of his expensive looking dress pants.

When the handsome stranger staring at you still said nothing, you began to worry your bottom lip, sucking it in on one side.

Feeling so many things he’d never let himself feel, Five wanted nothing more than run his thumb over the alluring pink flesh and tell you that getting his dick assaulted and having his shoes ruined was well worth it because of the way you were looking at him with your face more beautifully flustered than he’d ever seen anyone’s.

He wanted to say that, but he didn’t.

The train slowed to a stop.

The doors opened, and without another word, Five took off. Stepping into the crowd of commuters that were rushing out the doors as they elbowed their way through the busy subway station, he'd never felt more spineless.

That morning, when it came to his unbreakable determination and legendary aim, he didn’t even shoot for it with you, so he could hardly call it a missed target. Still, he felt awful. Almost as soon as he’d hit the street above and he was inundated with the less than savory smells of the city, he knew he’d missed something huge.

Racing back down the stairs, heart racing, the rush of air blew past him as the train with you on it pulled away.

B-Boners (AKA Mistakes)

At this point in his life, as much as Five hated it, he still had boner issues. Your overactive dick in your pants kind of boner issues, and the other kind, such as when committing social blunders, like rudely blowing you off when you were simply trying to be polite.

Being young again, with hormones what they were, the first boner problem was an unavoidable way of life, and speaking of which, his thoughts about you once again drifted back to how good it felt when your body melted into his, your ass perfectly molding against the crotch of his pants as he held you steady.

Feeling things he shouldn’t be while perched on a barstool at a bar filled with other people, Five subtly shifted his legs apart. Willing his over eager cock to calm down, he looked up at the mirrored wall behind the bottles of liquor displayed along the back wall.

The young man looking back at him frowned, but his body remained aroused despite his sorrowful reflection.

Unable to hold his own hateful glare, Five looked back down at his almost empty glass.

Hopelessly horny, and far past slightly buzzed, he muttered a slurred sounding, “ Grrrrrr- ate . ”

With an irritated huff of air blowing his hair out of his face, Five yanked his tie even looser and tipped back his head, swallowing the rest of his drink. Feeling like he could breathe a little easier, he threw down an overly generous tip, assuring that even though he technically wasn't 21 yet, his ID said he was, and combined, he’d be served again.

Ready to go, his hot palms gliding down his tensed thighs, Five’s eyes fluttered closed for just a second.

His head spun, but not with the sickness of too much drink.

In his whirl of thoughts, he was back on the train with you.

He could practically feel your ass in his hands, his fingers groping greedily as he shamelessly ground his shaft between your legs from behind.

Sadly, at this point, Five still had never been with anyone real. Yet, the disconnect of not knowing what this would really feel like, or how he should be going about doing it, was doing nothing to ruin his bizarrely timed fantasy of animalistically fucking his rock-hard erection into the warmth of your curvy body in any way he could.

God, he wanted to touch his dick!

Opening his eyes, the room spun even more and not in a good way, but still Five refrained from doing that and instead clung to the pleasant visions in his head.

Over the years, with little to give him the feeling of satisfaction he so desperately longed for, Five had unwittingly become addicted to self-stimulation, and it was not just the thrill of that chase that tormented him. Five craved anything that gave him that all-consuming high, though when it came to bloodshed, he refused to admit how great it felt being so good at his job back when he was the Commission’s most celebrated assassin.

Feet hitting the sticky floor, Five’s thoughts blurred with an endless reel of bad ideas, only one of them being the idea of hunting you down so he could re-start your conversation from the train, this time pushing past his reservations for why getting to know you wasn’t an option.

Screw that!

This time Five was going to charm you, wine and dine you, and take you home so he could do all sorts of naughty things to you- if you’d let him, of course . He was a monster, but not that kind of monster .

A few seconds later, hand pushing the bar’s grungy advertisement-covered door open, the cool night air hit Five’s overheated face, but it did nothing to get his head on straight or make him realize he had no idea how to treat a real woman who could talk back or think on her own.

Yes, in this body and one that was much younger, Number Five Hargreeves hit on strippers and waitresses to get a rise out of them, but having an actual two-way conversation with them, followed by any form of true intimacy, no.

No, he’d never done that, but today, with you, he wanted to, so damn badly.

No matter how drunk he was, Five knew that letting himself think like this about you wasn’t right or helping the tent in his pants get any less prominent and he hated himself for it. With his bloodshot eyes struggling to focus, he dizzily turned towards the staggering reflection in the store window next to him, taking in the sad face looking back.

“Pathetic,” he grumbled, before trudging away with his chin lowered to his chest.

C-Cycle of Loneliness

Stumbling along the sidewalks while on his way home, Five felt trapped. He was finally free of all the death and endless killing, but that didn’t mean he felt like he could live, or that he even knew how to.

With his past what it was, he was unable to let anyone other than his family know who he really was and like before ending up powerless in Reginald’s new world, they were failing to see that he wasn’t as okay as he was pretending to be.

Like always, despite what Five felt about this, in most situations, he managed to keep his composure. He acted like he was fine. Putting on a stoic face of impassivity, he attended most family functions when asked. He’d gotten his PHD in record time and handled his work within the CIA professionally, but at the end of the day, he was merely existing and the reasons for it were becoming harder and harder for him to justify.

D- Distance and Diffidence-the opposite of confidence

When it came to shyness and a lack of confidence, most of the time Five Hargreeves would be the last person you would think of, but self-doubt had always plagued him. Growing up with a father that never thought he was good enough was the trigger that inflamed his insecurities, but even worse, after the trials of his youth and his lifetime alone in the apocalypse, he believed that if he’d never left and messed up the way he did, his family never would have died.

Never a day passed that Five didn’t tell himself, If I hadn’t lost it and jumped to the future and got myself stuck, none of this would have happened.

Knowing that none of his siblings were exactly thrilled with how things had gone for them over the last five years, nearly every time Five was around them, he couldn’t help but feel like that was all his fault too.

Ironically and tragically, long ago, Five was the one that initially distanced himself from his family, but in typical Five Hargreeves fashion, now he’d been overcompensating for his feelings of inferiority by lashing out on those he loved, only further complicating his problems.

Only twenty minutes from the suburbs where Allison and his niece Claire lived with Klaus, who was dealing with the aftermath of his sobriety in their bubble wrapped basement, since they’d been there, Five had only been to their house once.

Looking up at the four-story brownstone looming over him, no less drunk after walking the twelve blocks it took to get home, Five realized that not one of his family members even knew where he lived, and he was surer than ever that they didn’t care to.

They didn’t need him anymore.

E-Egotistical

Five knew he could become preoccupied with his own affairs, often showing others contempt by rolling his eyes at them in annoyance and boredom, or both, but his smug behavior wasn’t as simple as him having an exaggerated perception of his own worth.

Five never meant to become so estranged from his family. They were everything to him, and in addition to that, he never meant to treat you as coldly as he did by running off when you were merely trying to treat him like any other normal person would treat someone else.

No one would have believed it, but the truth was, Five was scared of rejection more than anything. All along he had been trying to protect himself with a mask of indifference as his mighty shield.

F-Fumbling, Fuck It

Fumbling with his keys, Five was confused by his own behavior, and even more bothered by his inappropriate thoughts about you when he didn’t even know you. He was hardly what anyone would call a brainless idiot, but the title seemed to fit as he tripped over his own feet while talking to himself like a total nutcase.

“Hi. Sure… No problem, it’s all good. My shoe and my dick are fine, really. Oh, and what a lovely name. My name is Five. Yeah, that’s right. It’s a fucking number,” he sardonically laughed, then dropped his keys when after several tries, he couldn’t get them to align with the keyhole.

Swooping down to get them, he tipped over, his head banging into the door, swinging the flimsy panel of wood wide with the force of his skull until it slammed into the wall inside his apartment.

“It wasn’t even locked, you dipshit!” he cursed himself as glass skittered across his shoes from the picture frame that just smashed to the floor, the one with a picture of him holding his newborn niece, Grace.

“Fucking, FUCK!” he cried, picking up the picture.

He started brushing off the tiny shards of glass sticking to it.

When a white line tore right over the bundle in his arms, ruining her little face that was staring up at him as if he were worthy of her look of wonderment, instead of angrily throwing a fist into his already crumbling plaster, Dolores’s familiar voice started to filter into Five’s mind, proving he was doing particularly awful that evening.

As his once beloved mannequin, the one who wasn’t even there, encouraged him to move towards this kitchen and set down the photograph before his bloodied fingers damaged it even more, the suggestiveness he’d created in her calming words had Five’s lips turning up in a drunken smirk of craziness.

You need to sober up, Five… You can’t keep doing this to yourself. Come to bed with me…’

Dripping blood in his cast-iron sink basin, thoughts of a totally different kind of self-absorption filled Five’s head, and with them, a renewed rush of blood went places that had hardly let him forget they were dying for his attention.

Acting in an alcohol induced form of autopilot, obeying Dolores, Five poured himself a glass of water from the tap, drank it, then clumsily navigated the darkness of his one room flat, heading towards his bed, where he fell like a ton of bricks into the rumpled bedding, still fully clothed.

With his knees digging into the bed, lifting him, hands racing to unfasten the buttons on his waist coat and shirt, this was one of Five’s many, many fuck it moments, not that he had much of a choice in how he landed with his head smashed into his pillows.

But…

As he rolled onto his back, his dick twitching from the mere pressure of being pressed into the bed, his hand slipped over his pants, and that was another matter at hand that was all him.

The dips and valley of Five’s abs flexed as he lay there, his youthful body bleached and pale in the slivers of light streaming in from between his blinds. As he let his hands wander and he began to stroke his cock through the layers covering him, the languid motion of his hand was weak in contrast to the sharp angles of pleasure contorting his face.

With the cool air in his room hitting his exposed chest, Five shivered. His eyes narrowed, locking in on the long shadow of his erection that was making a mockery of his pants.

It felt so fucking good to touch himself. He whimpered, as he dug his hand into himself harder, then let up again.

He didn’t mean to, but he lived for this.

In the apocalypse this was all he had.

Now, going at it at his desk, having spent a long day at work, the papers in front of him hardly stimulating enough to hold his interest, jerking off was just another part of his daily routine.

Lying in bed, in the shower, or even sometimes in the bathroom at work if he found himself unable to reign in his body’s needs, Five would stroke his dick, hard and fast, and before he knew it, he would be biting back guttural moans, head leaned up against a bathroom stall, coming all over a wad of toilet paper, or at his desk, dispensing his load in an already used shirt or anything else that he could reach that was expendable.

It was juvenile, and perverted as all hell, and he knew it, but just thinking about it, the wrongness, and about you, Five was getting harder, his balls filling with that delicious ache that made him feel alive.

“You can touch it, sweetheart” he whispered as he began to unzip his pants, trying to concentrate on the illusion that Dolores was there with him.

He teased himself, brushing his fingers lightly over the cotton still covering his cock.

As if watching it from outside himself, the resin covered peachiness of his beloved’s hand merged with the fleshiness of your real hand.

Palming himself with growing need, the face Five had been seeing looking down at him suddenly smiled the way you smiled at him as the visions in his head became a muddling array of unquenchable desire.

“Fuck, I want you,” Five groaned as his fingers snuck inside the fly of his underwear for just a second before pulling out again.

Acting out your part, he tightened his grip on his girth, making pre-cum begin to leak through his underwear, forming a darkened spot where the head of his cock was begging to be let free.

“Yeah, just like that. Go slow,” he moaned, his fingers wrapping around his length, moving over the stretched fabric as he began to pump, still gently as he possibly could.

Pictures flashed through his mind. His lips on your jaw, your eyelids heavy and expressive as his lips slightly parted, his hair flowing away from his face, tickling your silky skin as he held you from behind like a trusted lover.

At the phantom like sounds of your little laughs filling his ears, Five’s dick pulsed in his hand, blood flowing full and fast.

Unable to take it, he reached inside his underwear, giving in to touching himself more directly.

Five twirled his finger around the end of his cock.

Lowering your head, the heat of your mouth began to slip over the thickness of his leaking tip, tonguing the pool of stickiness gathered there.

“I knew the second you looked at me, you wanted me,” he arrogantly huffed as you went down on him.

Though Dolores had heard it all before, glaring at him on the sidelines of his mind, she suddenly looked appalled.

You can’t say things like that! she chastised him.

Determined to shake her, Five put all his attention on the feel of his cock entering your throat.

Snuffing out any remaining thoughts of Dolores out of his head, Five quickened his pace, drowning out the sound of her panicky warnings that were trying to make him see that this kind of fantasy was even worse than his others with her.

Five! You are only hurting yourself with this!

“I don’t care!” he growled.

He bit down on his lip and closed his eyes, only to be greeted by the memory of your hair falling over your shoulders as it brushed against his face when you were both back on the train.

He breathed in and he could smell you.

Then his brain trying to piece together what really happened, he saw your look of shock as he rushed away from you like you were the plague or worse.

“What’s wrong with you?” he heard you angrily yell, even though you had said nothing when he did that.

“Please don’t stop. I’m sorry,” he panted, mad at himself for hurting you, and even more panicked by his own madness.

Fighting back, he kept his pace, and just like that, you just as quickly forgave him, taking him to the hilt, your nose hitting his pubic bone.

Dark hair in his eyes as he watched his entire cock repeatedly drive down your throat, Five hissed, “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes-"

Dolores’s voice cried out. Five! You’re losing it again!

‘Go away!’ Five’s mind screamed at itself, proving she wasn’t wrong-he was losing it .

For the next few minutes, the sounds of Five sadistically berating himself as he violently masturbated were absorbed in the quiet of his dark, empty room.

Shame filling him, his stomach twisted.

He was so fucking close.

His shoulder blades flushed as small beads of sweat formed on the back of his neck. The muscles in his back and arms tensed harder and harder as he quickly moved his hand.

Angling his face to the ceiling, his eyes scrunched shut and his right arm dropped lazily to the side.

His butt cheeks clenched over and over as his bed springs creaked, his thrusts enough to make his headboard bang into the wall as he frantically pumped his body upwards into his hand.

“You-ff-fu-ah-cking lov-vvve my cock-fuck-you’re amazing,” he grunted and writhed, his sweat covered legs burning under the wool of his rumpled pants that were trapped around his ankles as he bent his knees up and his heels dug into the bed.

Already putting on an impressive one-man show of insanity, wanting more of your mouth’s wet heaven, Five let go of his dick, spitting in his hand. Returning to the length of flesh waiting for him, he thrusted up into his fist with louder and louder noises of slicked ecstasy.

Panting and moaning your name, sweat dripped down the curves of Five’s back. Through sharp propulsions of his hips, he cursed. Throwing his other hand back, he clutched and pulled at his own hair.

He held his breath as his mind screamed and his come poured over his fingers.

Lost in what he was pretending was the feel of your mouth accepting him, yet still wanting to spare his sheets, Five aimed his dick inwards, letting his seed pour out over the fine trail of hair leading up his abdomen, the white beads flinging across his otherwise unmarked skin.

Pulses of pleasure took him as he watched the eroticism of defiling himself.

His broken gasps got quieter and quieter. “FFFUUCC-ffff fff-mmmff."

His balls tightening as hips jerked more and more erratically, Five felt the betraying warmth of his tears pooling in the corners of his eyes as he rode out wave upon wave of the orgasm he’d longed more than anything for you to be part of, the defeated voice of his own creation ruminating in his head so loud he couldn’t ignore it anymore.

She doesn’t even know you.

“I know,” he whimpered back with the hand not on his cock, coming up, covering his red face.

G-Grief

Most of Five’s life was filled with intense mourning. He’d witnessed the death of everyone he’d ever loved, more than once. His anguish over having to bury his family left him in a state of ruin, not unlike the burning world he’d found himself in at the ripe age of thirteen.

Hours after he’d drunkenly cleaned up the mess that he’d made of himself, sucking in, mind adrift, Five suddenly couldn’t breathe.

There was too much ash.

So thirsty he could barely swallow, he ran his tongue over his cracked lips, only getting more of the bitter taste of powered cinders and the tang of his own blood.

The smell of burning flesh made him gag into the suffocating white of his pillowcase.

His stomach turned even as it growled with hunger.

Five was asleep, but the horrors he couldn’t outrun were creeping in like the maggots on the thousands of corpses he could see laying all around him, the sickness of it all wiggling into his periphery as he kicked out his legs and tangled himself in his blankets.

I'm going to die here!

It’s too hot!

I can’t get out.

He was being crushed.

Fingers clenching, hands shaking as his chest became tighter and tighter, it was as if he was the one that was dying even though it was the lifeless faces of his siblings flashing in front of his terror filled eyes that were darting around his dark bedroom, seeing nothing but the endless nightmare of his past.

H-Happiness

In another timeline, while not having a nightmare of the panic attack inducing kind, along a sunny roadside, Five had a very revealing conversation with the woman that had plucked him out of hell, only to throw him into a new one.

Ice cream truck stuck motionless, a bullet seconds away from rearranging Luther’s brain, Five stood there in his schoolboy shorts, his pistol pointed at The Handler as he said, “I'm not looking for happy.”

Like so many times, he watched her perfectly painted lips curl with a certain brand of mischievous cruelty that was all her own. “We're all looking for happy, Five,” she coolly corrected.

Looking away, Five tried in vain to hide his panic.

He did want happiness! That was the problem, only he’d given up on it for himself long ago and the Handler knew that pointing out his lie was the perfect way to break him all over again.

Not about to let her win, Five ground his teeth together and defiantly looked back up at her, not bothering to show is venomous disdain as she towered over him in her shiny red heels.

The world never cared what he wanted, but he’d be damned if he’d give up fighting to save it, but now, as he rushed from his bed to his bathroom sink, helplessly sobbing as he filled his hands with scoop after scoop of cold water, trying in vain to bring himself back to reality, who was going to save him?

I-Ignored

It was the day of his niece’s birthday.

Leaving work, after another day of reporting back to his superiors about The Keepers’s activity and them not giving a shit how far he’d gotten infiltrating their cult like secret society, Five looked down at the colorful invitation in his hand, then the package he’d wrapped the best he could in the other.

The shiny paper was lopsided, revealing an electronic toy puppy’s face peeking out from inside.

The last time Five ran into Diego and his family while out at the same store, his goddaughter had told him how much she wanted a very specific chunk of robotic plastic that was over in the nearby toy section.

“I know its the next Tickle Me Elmo or some shit, but we don’t have the money for that. You know that, Grace! Why do you always have to push and push this stuff,” Diego said, scowling at her.

Lila rolled her eyes at that, then unfazed by her look of disapproval, Diego kept moving, throwing more important items in their cart.

The twins, covered in groceries, fussed and cried in their car seats as their parents moved on, not saying anything else to Five other than a flippant, ‘see you later.’

Like always, they weren’t happy to see him and the little girl looking up at him shared his same look of disappointment.

Hating how let down she looked, Five smiled. “What do you think his name is?” Five asked, pointing to the barking box just down the aisle that said, ‘Makes chocolate poopies you can eat!’ in bold letters.

“I don’t know, Uncle Five,” Grace said, shyly looking down at her shoes. “What do you think he wants to be called?”

Turning back, looking even more irritated as she put back a box of sugar filled kids cereal that Diego was trying to sneak into the cart, Lila yelled, “Grace! Come on!”

The little girl ran off, but Five answered her question after purchasing the toy puppy, programming it to wag its tail as his voice came out through its recorder, saying, “I’m Mr. Pennycrumb and you are my best friend. You should listen to me even though I am a toy dog. Your parents are idiots, but I am still smarter than them.”

A few hours later, after his daughter excitedly tore open her favorite gift of the day, and he heard Five’s special message and Grace’s squeals of delight over it, as he envisioned karate kicking Mr. Pennycrumb into the rafters, Diego’s eyes damn near bugged out of his head as he yelled, “Really, Five!”

“What,” he said, shrugging.

Clearly Diego and Lila weren't happy with him, but it wasn't like it mattered. They were never happy with him.

Even while in the presence of his family, as Five leaned back against the rainbow ball pit’s netting, it felt like he might as well still be rotting away in the apocalypses still. While at the birthday party with Luther bashing the shit out of the pinata, their bickering and problems with each other never seemed to end. He tried his best, talking to Ben and the others, but once the small talk was done, it was as if he wasn’t even there unless he said something shitty.

Five was just a figure on the sideline, someone who his own family didn’t want to know.

All he wanted his entire life was to get back to them, but when he did, they had moved on. They didn’t understand him, and he couldn’t blame them for that, he didn’t even like who he was, but at least he was owning that. Jerks act like jerks.

If not for the sound of Gracie calling out to him as he was about to leave, Five would have ended up at a bar again, alone and miserable.

“Thank you so much for coming. I love you, Uncle Five,” she said after she ran over to him.

“I love you too,” he quietly replied, trying not to let her hear the crack in his voice as she put her arms up, silently asking him to come down to her level so she could hug him.

That little hug was all it took, and not much after that, Five found himself out in the parking lot with the rest of them, meeting a very strange man named Sy Grossman.

J-Judgement

Most of Five’s life was defined by punishment. He often mused that all the bad things had been inflicted on him as retribution for his many wrongdoings. As for which of his crimes he was paying for now, after finding Viktor, then having a night out at dinner with his family that went all sorts of wrong, the world was set to end again in twenty-four hours, so it didn’t really matter.

No matter how remorseful Five was, or how much he’d already suffered, or how he tried to make things right and move on without hurting anyone else but himself, it seemed that the sentence of this endless destruction would always be his penance.

K-Keepers

Five should have seen it. Both that Ben had tricked them with his sake toast, and long before that obvious con.

Sitting there dressed like an idiot, his fake mustache thicker than it had ever been when he’d been 19 years old the first time around, he had chatted it up in the therapeutic round circle of crazy people, going on and on about how he was walking around in a body not his own.

He was a 65-year-old man for Christ’s sake! This shouldn’t be where he was!

He told those weirdos that he’d lived through things people couldn’t even begin to imagine!

He lived off all kinds of nasty creepy crawlies, his teeth breaking through the crusts of their exoskeletons, the ooze of their insides almost impossible to swallow, but he did it anyway.

He’d brought on so much suffering to others as he traveled through time, briefcase in hand, murdering anyone he was ordered to eliminate.

Some days Five would look in the mirror and get so confused that he’d forget where or who he was. He didn’t know what was real or not anymore.

He didn’t have to pretend that he was nuts, that was why The Keepers let him get closer. That was why he had run into Lila out skipping book club, trying to feel the danger and excitement she’d once lived for before becoming a tired mother who felt like she was drowning in the monotony of her marriage.

Looking away as Diego fumed about catching his wife with her creepy little Greek boyfriend, Five angled his face towards the window.

His mind reeled. Diego was asking for his help! Him of all people!

Everything was falling apart.

After a van ride covered in puke, listening to Baby Shark on repeat, they were all being shot at.

Heart racing, he blinked, just as a shotgun shell was going to split his skull in two.

Only just then realizing he had his powers back, Five landed in a subway station that had not been under the street he was standing on when they got there.

L-Love

Narrowly fleeing from the set-up in psycho Christmas Town, The Hargreeves had escaped unscathed once more, only they didn’t. The marigold in their bodies proved they weren’t who they were before, and the mangled bodies lying all around at the farm they’d come to while looking for Ben verified that once again, they were way in over their heads.

Reginald couldn’t or wouldn’t help them anymore than he already did, and they couldn’t help themselves. Ben was going to die all over again and his love for Jennifer was a curse not meant to be broken.

Watching his brother doing his best cop impersonation, all Five could think about was they were never going to win; they weren’t meant to, even if that was what they were brought up to believe.

The Keepers and their purpose proved Five’s life new life was a shame. He failed to see that his direct report was one of them. He failed to listen to the things inside him that were telling him none of this was real.

No matter how much Five loved his family, it was never going to be enough to fix this.

Later, as Diego tore open filing cabinets in the abandoned office of Dr. Jean and Gene Thibedeau, Lila pursed her lips at Five for about the hundredth time that day, signaling again that she wasn’t happy with him. Hitting his arm, she quietly said, “I say we go off on our own and try to figure out what is going on with this new power of yours. Pull your big girl panties up and stop being a baby.”

Ignoring her, Five watched as Diego entered the next room, then feeling as if he was having an outer body experience he looked down at his hands. They tingled with energy.

He slowly walked to the window, looking down at the street below.

It felt like his heart stopped and he’d been sucked into a vacuum.

Everything went quiet.

There you were, walking down the street, the sun lighting up your face like a spotlight just for him. Stopping to tie your shoe, you stepped aside, excusing yourself to the person behind you.

You smiled apologetically.

Something inside Five broke.

It was the same smile you’d given him.

It meant nothing.

The feeling of something special happening when he’d touched you was as fake as the rest of this!

Of all the people he would see in a time like this, it was you! The one person he’d been dying to see since he’d first laid eyes on you.

It was like some cruel fate, same as the one always chasing him, nipping at his heels with imminent death. Everything was just another reminder that no matter how much he wanted things to be different, he had nothing, and he never would.

He wanted to know what it was like to be loved by anyone even a little, but good things weren’t meant for him.

“Five!” Lila loudly whispered, getting even more upset. “We need to try something other than digging around in garbage cans, like that idiot in there! Give me your damn hand and let’s do this already!”

She began to come his way, hand outstretched.

Lila’s voice cracked with emotion when he looked down at it. “Five, I need you…your family needs you.”

Knowing full well that they had no idea what they were going to do about the impending Cleanse, Five’s brows pulled together, and he shook his head, no.

In a daze, still looking at Lila’s hand, the sight of it filled him with memories from the night before, all of them laced with the same sickness and regret he couldn’t escape.

After a chance run in at the secret Keepers meeting, when a woman wearing a name tag saying Nancy, ran those same reaching fingers across a man named Jerome’s upper lip, tenderly wiping off the powdered sugar from his pastry, Five had thought of you and the one small chance he’d let go to have even a few hours of happiness by your side, just getting to know you.

Eyes moving to his brother, pain in his chest, in a flash of violet hued light, Five was gone, seconds before Lila could reach him.

M-Martyr

Five’s entire life was an example of sacrifice. So many times, he could have given up, or put himself first, but he didn’t.

Thinking of his family and their kids, stuck feeling like he had no other option, he stumbled out of his portal, his eyes scanning the musty subway platform and the train waiting for him.

N-Naïve

Five missed out on so many things that anyone should have the chance to experience during a life as long as his, and because of that, he struggled when navigating the nuances of anything normal.

There was no doubt that Five was full of wisdom, and he didn’t hesitate to pass that on or place judgment on others he saw as beneath him, but there was also an unmistakable childlike innocence behind his eyes, and an explosive immaturity in his outbursts and in his thinking that he could do this alone.

"How long do I have to suffer!" he screamed, his voice echoing down the subway tunnel, then out into the sky above as the light from the day and another apocalyptic world shone down on the filth covered subway steps in front of him.

Rubbing his grimy hands down the front of his tattered waist coat, he pulled out his journal.

It had been seven years, and he had been traveling the labyrinth of tracks, shooting from one timeline to another, each time trying to jump back to before Ben had been killed the first time.

He’d thought if he could just prevent that, it would finally fix everything.

Five knew his power didn’t work the same as before, but he thought it wouldn’t matter.

It did. It mattered big time, and he’d fucked up big time.

Most of the time, he couldn’t even jump backwards. Most of the time he’d climb the stairs, pull his hands together, trying to draw in the strength to do it, and he’d end up right back at the bottom of the steps, staring up at a world that was no more.

Some days, he’d prove he wasn’t a completely impotent imbecile. He’d reach out at the hands of time, yanking them backwards and he’d be thrown into the unimaginable ether that had always been his domain.

He’d find himself standing in a world with living breathing people again!

Racing to the academy, grabbing anything he could steal and stuff in his pockets or his mouth along the way, he’d feel a flicker of hope.

That never lasted long.

Never finding their real timeline, Five had been attacked, over and over once inside what had been his home, but clearly wasn’t anymore. Sometimes he wouldn’t even get that far, having found himself in a place that was at first glance not where he had meant to be based on floating cars or other bizarre things dotting the skyline.

Out of his mind with hunger and more mentally ruined than he’d ever been, he noted the marks on the floor, a long skid mark from something dragging and that there were three light bulbs out overhead. Fairly certain he hadn’t been there before, looking like a scraggly haired bum that was wearing some guy’s trashed business suit, Five jammed the notebook back in his pocket. Reaching in the other, he pulled out his pistol. Started talking to himself again, his feet stomped up the tiled stairs to the street.

“If I see that little fucker again, and he shoots at me, I swear this time I am going to go over there and choke the shit out of him,” he growled, referring to the fun of being shot at by another version of himself so many times before this that he couldn’t even remember how many times it had happened to him anymore.

His voice was cracked and hoarse, only adding to the pained sound in it as he cursed himself out. He was beginning to feel lightheaded again from lack of food and from how much his lungs were struggling to match up to the blood that rushed around his body from the mere effort of carrying himself out of the darkness.

When the first piercing sound of the other him’s rifle reverberated across the barren landscape, Five flinched, the full metal jacket projectile missing him by only a fraction of an inch as it blasted apart an already crumbling piece of concrete next to him instead.

Stepping forward, arm shaking as he held up his gun, Five screamed, "Just kill me, for fuck's sake, you asshole! I don't want to live like this anymore!"

Eye narrowed on his scope, the other Five, trying to survive, just like he had done when it was him, with no one but Dolores by his side to keep him sane, pulled the trigger like all the other Fives he'd come across did, for some reason, not even thinking twice about killing the first living person he’d seen in twelve years.

O-Oh, Shit!

“OH, Shit!” Five’s voice shrilly rang out as the solid copper tipped point of the projectile ripped through his left arm, tearing the muscle in his bicep clean through as it flew out behind him, zipping down the stairwell.

Refreshed clarity of the life and death kind hitting him hard and fast as the warmth of his blood drenched the inside of his sleeve, Five got down as far as he could, spinning towards the safety of the subway entrance.

“At least I fucking hesitated when I saw the Handler!” he breathed, just as another bullet ripped through him, this time nicking bone in his right thigh.

He dropped to his knees.

“Fuck you, you crazy fucker!” he screamed.

He’d asked for it.

It was dumb, but he did.

He knew that he was also a crazy fucker in this situation but that did nothing to make him want to kill the other him any less.

Bleeding out in two different places, Five’s fingers clawed at the ground, and he growled in anger, forcing his body to get back up.

Half falling, half running down the steps, the soft tissue in his upper left shoulder suddenly felt like he’d been stabbed with a zillion fiery needles as the spinning force of the next bullet went straight through his back and out his chest.

Lunging for the doors of the train, Five fell into the closest seat, his eyes wide as he looked down at the crimson bloom spreading across his dress shirt.

P-Pain

As a murky curtain of darkness moved into Five’s narrowing field of vision, he clung to the metal support rail attached to his seat. He knew that feeling the rocking motion of the train as it raced to the next station was a good thing because it meant his powers hadn’t failed him yet, but it wasn’t much to hold onto. Each tiny shift in the track felt like it might kill him.

It hurt to breathe.

Even if he made it to the next stop, there was no way he’d be able to jump back to a time when there may have been a hospital and someone living and breathing to get him there.

This was it, the end.

~~~

As you were disappointingly tossing another aluminum can with a broken seal, this one that had at one time held the syrupy sweetness of what you determined might have been peaches, the pile of rubble you were sorting through started to shift, the smaller chunks of debris skittering down the slope of junk.

“What the-”

Even more odd, you started to feel the ground vibrating under your feet, followed by the sound of a train screeching down the subway tunnel located in the subterranean level of your search area.

Your bag slipped off your arm, scattering your finds on the ground as you turned toward the subway entrance a few yards away.

This made no sense, so naturally you tried to rationalize what you were feeling and hearing.

There was no train.

There was no electricity.

There was no anyone, or anything anymore.

All around you, there was nothing but the remains of long ago destroyed buildings and the sun-bleached bones of the dead.

You lived in a world with no voices but your own, no horns honking, no smells of food carts wafting past.

“Impossible…” you breathed.

By the time you made it down the subway station’s cobweb infested stairs, the doors on the train that shouldn’t be there were opening. Hesitantly coming closer to what you were sure was evidence that you’d lost your mind, the humming of the train’s powerful engine slowed.

There was a feeling of static that shouldn’t be there in the dank air.

The hair on your arms prickled in warning.

Still, you came forward, your boots kicking up thick layers of dust. The fluorescent lights hanging above illuminated the tiny particles slowly swirling in front of you, making everything seem even more surreal than it already was.

The lights inside the train flickered as you came towards it.

You could see a pool of red liquid on the long fiberglass bench just inside the threshold. Even more ominous, there was an array of bloody handprints leading to the motionless blood covered body on the floor.

Creeping around to get a better look at the young man lying there, you kept your guard up, but other than him, the train looked empty.

Looking down at him again, your breath hitched.

He whispered your name just as his eyes fluttered closed.

You gasped his name back, then the lights went out.

Q-Quiet

“Oh, my God! Five!” you repeated, not believing your eyes as you dropped to the floor next to him.

He was conscious, but you could hardly see his eyes under his slitted lids, and his words came out so weak you almost didn’t hear them as he said, “You’re not supposed to know me.”

“What are you talking about!” you frantically cried.

His reply to that came as the quietest whimper.

“Five?”

He said nothing.

You lowered your ear to his slightly parted lips.

Thankfully, you heard the softest breaths coming out of him even though he was breathing so shallowly his chest didn’t appear to be moving at all.

Terrified, you did what you could to tighten the necktie that was already pinching the blood flow to his arm, and then you checked the belt he’d already tried to secure to his leg to stem the worst of that bleeding. Rolling him so you could lift the back side of his jacket, you saw the blood-soaked exit wound in his upper left shoulder blade. Having nothing but the scarf you had on to use as a bandage, you pressed it over the hole, wrapping it around him tight, then tucking the ends under his shirt and vest to add pressure.

Five remained unconscious as you readied him, and he stayed that way as you began hauling him up the stairs, then outside where you loaded him on your cart.

With his legs dangling and his feet nearly touching the ground, it wasn’t the ideal form of transport, but he wasn’t going to make it if you stayed there, or if you left him and then came back with something bigger.

“Stay with me,” you begged, checking one more time to see if he was still with you, then you shoved forward, pulling him along as you thought about what he just said.

Of course, you knew Five. It all started after the war that ended it all.

Dressed in his Umbrella Academy uniform, Five had been wandering for the third day straight, looking for anything he could use to help him survive the apocalyptic hell he’d found himself in. Exhausted, he was about to give up and go back to his blanketed shelter, but then he spotted what he thought was another person sitting over in the toppled mess that was left of one of the city’s shopping centers.

The person was waving at him with the only arm they had left, but as Five came closer, disappointment filling him as he looked down at the lifeless face of a female mannequin, he heard something.

Tap! Tap! Tap! Tapppppp-Tappppp-Tappppp. Tap! Tap! Tap!

The air around him swirled, ruffling his hair as it covered his young face in cinders.

He stopped and listened, but as everything became still again the eerie quiet of mass death was all he heard.

He started to walk away.

Tap, tap, tap. Tapppppp-Tappppp-Tappppp. Tap, tap, tap.

“Shit,” he breathed, stopping short as his mind processed the pattern. That wasn’t the sound of some random piece of metal flapping in the smoky wind.

Racing towards where he’d thought he heard the repetition of morse code, trapped in the darkness, under layers and layers of broken concrete, you started your distress call again, rhythmically moving a chuck of rock against one of the building's mangled trusses.

You were sure that you were going to die down there, just like everyone else that survived the initial blast only to find themselves buried, but then you hear something break through the quiet.

Someone was calling down to you through the cracks left in the massive pile of building material. You cried back, but it felt way too muffled for it to matter, but it did.

He kept calling out, telling you to look for anywhere you might see light, asking you all sorts of questions that at the time made no sense, like if there was room behind you or in front of you and how much, if you were pinned down, or if you could determine which way was up.

Then, one second you were alone in the darkness, dehydrated to the point of dangerously low blood pressure, your legs hardly having more than a few feet to move, and the next, you were blinded by a burst of light, something solid and warm was behind you and then you were weightless.

When your feet hit the ground back on level ground, your legs felt like jelly and your stomach flipped.

Dizzily trying to adjust as you looked at the boy holding onto you upright, your eyes slowly moved from his, to the famous Umbrella Academy crest embroidered on his blazer.

It couldn’t be…

The superpowered boy the world had known as Number Five Hargreeves had been missing your entire life, but there he was, looking about the same age as you even though that was way younger than he should have been.

R-Rain

Looking back at this older Five, his limp body rocking with each rotation of your cart’s wheels, your eyes blurred as tears streaked down your cold cheeks.

As if you didn’t know you had to hurry, the clouds in the west were moving in fast, meaning another storm was coming.

With the strap at your waist digging in hard enough that you could feel your skin rubbing raw, you forced your body to move faster. “Come on!” you roared, gritting your teeth with the effort of moving the weighted down cart over another deep washout in the road.

Years ago, Five had taken you down that same road.

You could still see it that morning, Five running back to your campsite, his straight white teeth flashing in the sun as he smiled with boyish excitement that made your cheeks feel warm.

Talking about a mile a minute, he told you that he’d found a structure that wasn’t completely ruined, and by some miracle, attached to it, there was even a greenhouse that still had most of the glass hanging in its windows. Even better, inside it there were all kinds of bags filled with unspoiled seed.

After years of fighting the elements and starvation together, you had found your first break from the burdens of the apocalyptic world you were stranded in.

If you could just get him back there now, it would be okay.

It had to be.

Your breaths were becoming more and more labored as you went, only becoming worse as you thought about the last day you were with Five.

That was over five years ago.

It was midsummer. You had been with him at the home with the greenhouse attached to it for several years at that point.

That night, like he always did, Five was sitting at the kitchen table, running over his numbers. He was getting close; he was sure of it. You were both going back very soon, and he was going to stop this all from ever happening.

Scratching his face as he concentrated, Five unknowingly smeared a smudge of black ink from his fingers down the narrow bridge of his nose.

“Fucking, fuck, mother fucker,” he mumbled as he angrily scratched out nearly half a page of his equations.

Even though you knew he was mad, you couldn’t help it, your breath started coming out of you in little puffs of amusement.

With the heel of his palm dug into his forehead, Five looked up at you through the fringe of dark hair hanging in his eyes.

“A genius with your captivating use of the word fuck, along with you being the savior of the world is sure to drop some panties when we get back,” you’d teased. “I hope you don’t forget me when you have all those other people to glare at.”

Not waiting for him to verbally retaliate, you turned and raised up on your tippy toes to put your dinner dishes up where the mice wouldn't walk all over them.

Within seconds, you felt the comforting currents of energy building in the air around you as Five blinked. The warmth of his mouth pressed against the back of your neck.

Brushing your hair aside with his face, his arms wrapped around your midsection, possessively locking you in his high voltage embrace.

“Forget you? Not a chance,” he said, letting his lips tickle the shell of your ear.

You wriggled and laughed as his fingers started crawling under your shirt. Hot palms claiming your breasts, he began a soothing circular motion, threading his fingers over your nipples until they were hard, and of course it all felt so good being taken over by him that soon he had you moaning his name.

“That’s right. I am all yours,” Five smugly hummed as he continued to pluck and pinch.

Your head dropped back against this shoulder as he kissed along your neck. Moving his awakening manhood against your butt, his fingers slid around your hip, going right between your legs.

“When it comes to panty dropping, your delicious cunt is the only one I’ll ever be interested in devouring, sweetheart,” he promised as his fingers moved faster. “I just need to get us back and then I am going to really destroy you with this thing.”

To punctuate which thing he was referring to, Five he rammed his cock into your ass.

Mind going bananas over the dirty things Five was saying and doing, your body clenched around his fingers and your legs starting to tremble.

So much had changed over the years.

You were no longer just two people walking the Earth, fighting to survive.

In that place together, you became each other’s everything.

The sun’s setting rays coming in from the window above the sink reflected Five’s beautiful face next to yours as he burrowed his face into your neck.

“As long as you’ll have me, I’ll never let you go,” he lovingly whispered.

And he didn’t let you go, not until hours later, when a rush of cool air coming in from the window replaced where he’d had his body warmly snuggled up behind you.

Rolling over, in the dim light of the bedroom, you could see Five bouncing around as he tugged on his discarded underwear.

Hard droplets of rain started pelting the floor next to the bed, but before you could move to do something about it, Five blinked over, shutting the window. Just then, something outside loudly crashed into the side of the house.

When he quickly started to head out the room, your eyes widened with worry. “Where are you going?” you asked.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be right back,” he chuckled. “I need to crank the windows closed in the greenhouse before it gets too windy. I just fixed the levers on the upper awnings, and I don’t want to have to go back to watering everything by hand out there when normally the lighter rains do such a nice job of it for me.”

You could hardly argue with that, or with what Five said next.

“Since you finally decided to let me hump the sweet fuck out of you, I have way better things to do with my free time then lugging around tiny watering cans,” he added, while shamelessly taking in the sight of you laying there naked, except for the thin blanket you’d started to modestly to tug in front of you.

Already getting to you by being ridiculously sexy, standing there with his hair sticking up everywhere, Five gave you a cocky grin that would make the devil blush.

“Don’t go anywhere,” he taunted.

Still wiping the sleep from your eyes, you dreamily replied, “I won’t.”

Looking as wild and handsome as ever, hardly dressed, Five disappeared through the bedroom door, heading out through the townhouse’s back kitchen.

Suddenly, lightning flashed, and the entire room shook so hard you were sure the roof over the less habitable parts of the house might collapse.

You sprung out of bed to the sound of glass smashing.

Running after him, at first, all you could see were darkened plants carpeting the raised garden beds.

Coming around the small table in the center of the greenhouse, fragments from the broken window above embedded in the soles of your feet, but you didn’t even feel it because Five was lying there on the cement floor, the rain drops dancing in the puddles of red all around him.

The long shard of glass that had sliced his neck clean open was still laying in the palm of his hand as his empty eyes looked up, staring off at nothing.

Nearly falling down as your foot got stuck in a rut in the road, you knew you needed to keep your mind in the present, but you couldn’t.

There was blood everywhere!

That was just like this Five! With him dying as he lay there on the floor of that train!

A cry that was part anger, part anguish crawled out of your throat as you turned, looking back at him on your cart.

“Please say something,” you begged, not sure if he was dead or not because he hadn’t moved or made a noise. “Five!” you screamed, when he didn’t respond.

The first icy drops of rain began to hit your face.

Then, just as you were going to run back there, Five quietly moaned your name as he slowly lifted his arm, pointing a finger at the sky. “You and the moon in the same timeline, makes sense…both always just out of reach for guys like me,” he said, choking on what sounded like a laugh.

On the verge of full hysterics, trying not to think about the horrors of what happened before, or what that moon and timeline stuff was all about, you dug the toes of your boots in, pushing off the broken blacktop as the deep purples of twilight disappeared in the blanket of angry clouds.

It was raining hard by the time you got back. By then you were both soaked, and Five’s complexion was cast in a deathly gray that made your stomach sink with bottomless dread.

S-Stitches

Other than that odd comment, Five remained mostly out of it as the cart bumped and bounced along on the debris-filled road, but as you lugged him inside almost an hour later, he woke up, full alert.

“FFFFUUCK!” he growled as you pulled him upright with his right shoulder under yours, lifting him.

Dragging his bad leg, you both staggered the few feet it took to get to the front door.

“I am sorry,” you breathed as you lugged him inside, kicking the door behind you to a continuous chorus of his breathy ‘fucks.’

A few seconds later, moving across what at one time had been the home's parlor but now served as the bedroom as well, collapsing on the bed, Five’s wet hair fanned out on the pillows.

Rushing over to place a fresh pile of wood on top of the dying embers in the hearth, Five’s face rolled to the side, watching you as he listlessly took in his shadowy surroundings.

Turning towards the adjacent kitchen area to get the medical supplies you needed, his eyes followed you again.

“Dolores?” he croaked.

Not done washing your hands yet, you turned. As you figured, he was looking at the mannequin sitting at the kitchen table, but for some reason Five looked oddly confused by the sight of her.

“I am sorry, Dolores,” he said, his voice quivering. “I tried. I really did, but it had been so long, and before that, it was- You know I was try- I was so fucked up. And I- I just couldn’t move on and I- They needed me and I-"

“It’s okay, everything is going to be okay,” you said, trying to calm him as you rushed back, setting your supplies on the bedside table.

Not stopping, your hands quickly moved over him, undoing the necktie on his left bicep so you could work his jacket off and remove his soiled dress shirt and vest.

Replacing his makeshift tourniquet, you lifted his right hand, placing a wad of gauze in it before pushing it down over the bullet hole just below his left clavicle. “Try to keep pressure on that if you can. You lucked out. That one missed your lung, but I need to pull these down to see what’s going on with your leg,” you said, having already unzipped his fly, your hands on his hips waiting for his consent.

Five nodded, so you undid the belt cinched around his upper thigh.

Carefully pulling down his blood-soaked pants, not far down you gasped, and not because he wasn’t wearing any underwear.

“Who did this to you?!” you asked, slipping the leather strap back around his leg to pinch off the blood flow again.

“An even more fucked up version of me did it back in the wrong timeline I landed in before this one.”

Something in your already tense expression must have changed to something much worse because Five’s dazed looking eyes moved away, looking at Dolores again.

“I’m my own worst enemy,” he said, deliriously trying to laugh about it before he continued to ramble things that made no sense. “That day you fell into me on the train, you were being so nice. I felt… I was- I don’t know… I wish I had at least had the courage to accept your offer to buy me a coffee. I wanted to, but I didn’t think I should. All I ever wanted was to have something like that in my life. Someone to talk to, someone to be even just my friend.”

His eyes misted over.

“I blew it, but it didn’t matter anyway. Everything went to shit. My powers don’t work right! I have been trying to get back for seven fucking years and I can’t, and that timeline is ending in a few hours anyway. Everyone was counting on me, and I failed them again.”

Before he said all that, you knew in any normal circumstance it would have been impossible for the Five laying on your bed to be the same one that was buried out in the yard, but your heart wanted to believe differently so badly.

He looked exactly like him.

He’d known your name.

He knew the mannequin neither of you were willing to leave behind, because if not for her, he’d have spent a life alone and you would have died.

But he wasn’t your Five.

Looking even more upset than you were getting about all this, he kept on trying to explain things, telling you about this other world he had been in, and something called ‘The Cleanse.’

Wiping the mess of blood off his cold skin, you smeared antiseptic around the jagged edge of the hole in his thigh. Not knowing what else to do to prepare him, you soothingly shushed him. “It’s okay, everything is going to be okay, Five. We will figure it out.”

You wanted to believe that, but you didn’t even know if he’d make it through the night.

Popping some long-ago expired pain pills in his mouth, then lifting a glass to his lips, Five swallowed your offering with no question, half the water going in, and the other half running down his chin.

As you pulled on a pair of sterile gloves, his fingers brushed against the side of your leg. "How do you know me?” he quietly asked. “I never told you my name and you aren’t supposed to be here.”

“Bite down,” you ordered, ignoring that question as you placed a rolled towel in front of his mouth.

Again, he listened, biting down.

“You are lucky the bullets that hit your arm and chest went right through you and didn’t hit anything important, but the one in your leg is still in there. I need to get it out before I stitch this one closed, and if you think it hurt when that other you filled you with lead, get ready, because something tells me this is going to be much, much worse.”

Lifting your sanitized surgical tweezer, you lowered the long-pointed ends to the seeping wound in his leg.

Not even close to the casing you needed to reach, Five was forcing air through his nose at a panicked pace and his legs were starting to shake.

Pressing down on his knees, you held him as still as possible as you dug deeper.

As the tweezers sunk into his flayed skin, kicking out, Five howled through the cloth in his mouth, “Ffff-rrrrrrrr-ffffuuuuCCCCCKKK!”

“Almost there,” you breathed as you felt the end of your tweezers tapping against something hard.

A few painful seconds later, after pulling the lump of metal back through Five’s torn muscle tissue, you dropped the bloody chunk of metal in the bowl on the table, then went for the needle and thread you’d already prepped.

“This is the worst one. The others won’t be as bad,” you assured, moving along gently as possible, with the point of your needle pulling through the mangled edge of his broken skin.

After the third stitch, as you began to pull Five’s skin together, his entire body started to quake so hard you had to move over, sitting yourself on top of his knees to keep his legs down.

“Just a few more,” you said, determinedly biting down on your lower lip as he brought both arms up, grasping the rungs on the headboard with a white knuckled grip.

Two more stitches, and one more pull, and Five’s sweat covered chest was heaving. The faintest sound, like the squeak of a small animal crept out from between his clenched teeth. One more pull and his eyes rolled back in his head, and he went completely limp.

T-Touch

Fevered nights turned into long worry filled days and you never left Five’s side unless you had to. Cleaning his wounds, and then his entire body, no modesty allowed in the state he was in.

Five was entirely at your mercy just like once, long ago, you were at his.

As he lay there with no shirt, and no pants on, covered in a mound of heavy blankets that smelled cleaner than anything he’d slept on in seven years, unable to avoid it any longer, you explained why you knew him.

You didn’t even come close to telling him all of it, but still, you could see that what you did say didn’t settle well.

Brining another spoon of thin soup to his lips, stopping you short, Five shook his head. “I don’t deserve this,” he quietly whispered as the shutters rattled against the windowpanes in the cold wind that blew outside.

Moving closer, you set the bowl down. Gently as possible, you pressed a cool cloth to Five’s sweat covered brow. He leaned his face into your hand, whimpering.

Five may not have been starving from hunger like he was the last time he’d found himself stuck in the apocalypse, but the things he’d told you happened to him proved that for his entire life, he’d been starved of almost any kind of touch from someone other than people who wanted to hurt him.

After he’d laid it all out there, you realized helping him wasn’t going to be as easy as closing his wounds. His life started the same as the Five’s you had known, only his took many different turns, all of them bad, leaving him a broken man in the body of a boy again. Then, him saying that he'd lived nearly a lifetime alone with no one there for him but Dolores wasn’t even the worst of it.

That wasn’t what killed his spirit.

In his own words, even before that, he had all but given up, and he regretted that part of his life more than anything. He’d mistakenly pushed his family away. He said that there wasn’t a day as he rode his time travel train to nowhere that he didn’t think of them, and you, all the while wishing so badly he was able to go back and do everything differently.

Laying down next to him, curling your body around his as much as you could without hurting him more, Five’s body trembled, trying to heat itself as the infection gnawing at him raged.

“None of this was your fault, Five,” you whispered as you watched his face twist with pain.

The fire crackled, the only sound filling the room as you felt for his hand, your fingers slowly running across his torso until you found it at his side.

You threaded your fingers around his. “Just keep fighting, okay?”

Shivering, he squeezed your hand back.

U-Unexpected

It was the start of summer, and the sun was shining in from above as Five sat at one of the chairs pulled up to the table in the greenhouse. Breathing in, his lungs filled with the sweet smell of hundreds of ripening strawberries.

It had been months since those first pain-filled nights, and as the days passed it was becoming harder and harder for him not to lose himself to the growing contentment he was feeling.

It was entirely unexpected, but then again, so were you.

Like the twist of fate that made you stumble into him that day on the train, like something out of a dream, there he was listening to you obnoxiously singing along to the CD boombox sitting in the next room.

‘Y o, I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want-’

The selection laying around was slim when it came to CDs that weren’t too warped to play, but watching you shake your booty as you danced around the kitchen made Five totally forget that he didn’t like pop songs.

‘If only I could keep finding batteries that fit the radio… ’ he silently mused while fighting the urge to start belting out the girl empowered lyrics with you.

Five had an endless supply of scenarios running around in his head of how this morning could go, only one of them was him coming in there, sweeping you off your feet while he sang the blaring lines about making it last forever as he also slammed his body down and wound it all around on yours.

‘You gotta, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta!’ you sang, waving at him as you reached for another handful of green beans to snap.

Thinking about how just a smile from you made him feel hot, and how much he wanted to be your lover, and how he sounded nothing like you or the Spice Girls when he sang, Five stretched his bad leg under the drape of the tablecloth. His muscles still complained but the dull ache was nowhere near what it had been, and even better, he could walk without needing you to help him, or without needing a cane.

Looking over at Dolores who was sitting across from him, Five’s smile soured. “I hated that cane,” he quietly grumbled. “All I needed was a monocle to go with it and I’d have looked like some younger alternate universe jackass version of that monster.”

‘Reginald was many things, an alien included, but in the end, he did try to help you, and you in no way looked anything like him with your cane,’ Dolores reminded him.

Averting his eyes from hers, Five decided it was not worth arguing with her. If he kept it up, you were for sure going to hear it and he didn’t need that happening again. You’d been very understanding when he’d feverishly admitted way too many things about his relationship with Dolores, but…

Yeah.

Sipping the herbal concoction you’d so sweetly brewed him that morning, Five looked down at the old notebook sitting there. It was filled with equations that were very close to getting the math right for getting back, only he was not the one that had done them.

No. He was not that Five, and at the age of 20, like that Five had been when he almost figured it out, he himself at that same age was nowhere near it. At that age, he almost died of dysentery.

Five looked down at his own journal filled with scribbled notes about stains on floors, broken vending machines and burnt-out light bulbs.

Spreading his fingers, palms warming in the sun, just the thought of blinking filled him with that familiar buzz of energy he used to live for. But no matter how many times he tried to blink himself even a short distance across the room, he’d still find that it didn’t work that way anymore, and then he’d be flung out of his purple-colored portal into the subway tunnel where you’d found him.

Five pulled his hands back in his lap and slipped the strap back around the leather journal, closing it as he tucked it away.

He couldn’t get back on that train.

“The only thing I can promise you if we get on there, is that we will be lost,” he’d told you when trying to explain it. He could do that to himself again, but he couldn’t do that to you.

He felt horrible about it, but you never pushed him on it. You never blamed him. You always said it was okay.

He didn’t get it.

Then, after coming back to the house a week ago from another failed jump, something happened. Hearing him kicking stones along the road as he cursed like a maniac, you dropped your garden trowel, ran over, and hugged him.

Smiling up at him, you said, “Five, you need to stop this. You are breaking my heart all over again by looking so pouty all the time.”

Five knew you cared about him. He knew you cared about the other him, but past your caring about either of them in a way that was more than survival based and simply supportive and platonic in nature, that he couldn't figure out.

You’d told him so many things about the years you were with the other him, but when it came to the details, he could tell you were holding back.

Not sure what to do about it, but knowing exactly how he felt about you, that afternoon in the yard, not more than a few feet away from his own grave, Five had hesitantly let his hand move up your back, hugging you back. He’d never done that before.

He figured, even if you didn’t feel the same way, it wasn’t like you weren’t already intimately familiar.

You’d held him before…

You’d seen him at his worst, fully exposed, laying there in a bloody mess of tears.

He’d told himself that desperately clinging to the person that meant everything to him, even if he’d fallen hopelessly in love with them was normal. Right?

Fuck, he knew it wasn’t… and neither was having to roll himself out of bed almost every night, taking off like a creeper in the night under the pretense that he needed to take a piss, when really he needed to take care of other personal business involving him grasping his dick.

Worried about him, you’d come outside to check on him more than once, and you’d come very close to busting him beating his meat, but Five wasn’t about to stop sleeping by you if you were willing to keep letting him, even if that meant he was constantly waking up hard with his hands on parts of your body that they shouldn’t be touching.

Trying not to think about that, and if you noticed him accidentally doing that or not, instead, as the sunny sky shown down on you holding him like he was a big man baby, Five tried to focus on the feel of your head resting on his chest and how you were soothingly playing with the hair dangling at the nape of his neck.

Of course that wasn’t really helping, and because of that, he totally missed that you were up to something more than indulging him like you usually did.

Seemingly totally unaware of what you were doing to him, other than that you were turning him into a worthless puddle of goo, sneakily reaching up, you aggressively started ruffling his hair into a chocolatey nest of fuzzy tangles and unruly waves.

Shocked by the unprovoked attack, as you pivoted away from him, looking about as tickled as you could be over how easy it was to get him, Five’s mouth opened, but nothing came out, and that got you really laughing.

“Oh my God, Five, I love you!” you breathlessly teased.

“Whhh-ahh…?”

Taken by either his inarticulate reply, or at how ridiculous he looked, Five wasn’t sure, you came back to him, looking up at him sympathetically. “Five, beating yourself up over this isn’t going to change anything.” You gently brushed a piece of hair out of his eyes. “Maybe let it go for a while and just try to live a little. You deserve that.”

With that, you leaned in, your lips feather soft as they pressed against his cheek, then you walked away, leaving him dying to kiss you back.

V-Voracious, a wanting, devouring, feeling emotions to an intense degree

After that day, and the many others that came after your spicy Spice Girls kitchen bean snapping show of cuteness, Five did let himself live a little more, and you teased him even more, oftentimes tickling him into submission, and to him, it seemed like you might be doing it for nothing other than the joy of watching him squirm. But maybe not.

As you smiled at him from the other room, Five felt what had become his normal feeling of butterflies in his stomach and that pitiful aching in his chest. Doing the daily domestic things, like watching you change the bedding as he busied himself in the greenhouse, he could almost forget about all the bad things that had happened.

His family were out there, yet not. They were frozen in time as far as the space time continuum and his fucked subway time travel loop were concerned. It had been almost eight years since he’d left them, only hours from facing their demise, but to them, if he could get back, they wouldn't even know that he wasn't there to begin with.

In many ways, they were gone, not him, and it had been that way for so long.

If Five could have gotten back, it would start all over. He’d have hours to figure all this out, but he had nothing figured out in the way of helping them. That should have tormented him incessantly like it had before, but now, feeling like he had no other choice but to accept this fate, the last thing on his mind when he looked at you was the Cleanse, or other timelines that were about to be destroyed.

Even more crazy, he didn’t hate himself the way he used to and that was because you didn’t hate him for any of it.

Also, crazy, if he didn’t think you might knee him in the nards, he had half a mind to come over there and toss you on that mattress and show you that you weren’t the only one who knew how to play dirty.

He may not have been able to do anything to help his family or the rest of the world, but fuck did he want to show you he still had some fight left in him by putting those old bed springs to the test, rocking his hips into you to the beat pumping out of the tiny speakers sitting on the table behind him.

Watching you bend over to pick up your growing pile of linens, Five’s smile grew. When you disappeared from view, he called out your name. “Hey, why don’t we leave this work for later? Come out here and join me. I’ll let you beat me at a game of chess, and you can even use the unicorn charm as your queen this time.”

Coming around the corner, you dropped the laundry on the floor and shook your head at him. “I’m the one that lets you win, and we both know you are the magical unicorn around here,” you said, pelting him in the chest with a large berry you just picked from one of the bushier plants near the door.

“Sure,” he mockingly drawled, as he began to water the plants again. “You know I love magically fooling around with this cute little watering can all day because I aim to please the lady of the house.”

Five grinned.

“You know…with me being pretty much worthless otherwise," he added, not even looking as he pegged you in the boob with a berry.

The song playing ended and another 80’s song about rains in Africa started. Using the music to cover your footsteps, from the corner of his eye, Five still saw you coming. Just as you were about to come up behind him to rumble up his hair until he looked like an asshole, he turned, tipping the watering can over your head.

The dribbles he let escape ran down the length of your hair, a few of them raining down on your perfectly stunned face.

“Oops,” he said, grinning even wider.

“Was that necessarily?” you asked, trying to scowl at him, but clearly having trouble doing it.

“Yes,” he smugly replied as he casually set the watering can down.

“Why?” you challenged, your eyes following his every move.

“Because,” He reached out, slowly running a finger across your wet cheek as he leaned in, whispering in your ear. “Maybe I just wanted to see if I could get you wet.”

You no longer looked like you were about to burst out laughing.

Five knew he was playing with fire, but he couldn’t take it anymore. He had to know.

He glanced up at the boarded-up window above, then his eyes met yours again as he quietly said, “I’ll never stop being sorry that I am not him, but-”

“Five-” you started to argue, no doubt planning to tell him it wasn’t his fault that he died and that now he couldn’t get you out of there.

“Shhhh,” he uninterrupted, pressing a finger to your lips to silence you. “I’m not done.” His smirk softened. “I know he loved you, and that’s because I love you. The question is, do you love me too? Like this?” he clarified, lowering his chin, the tip of his nose brushing against yours.

“Five,” your voice cracked with emotion.

Your lips pressed against his.

The softest sound crawled out of his throat, moving up through his nose as Five kissed you back, innocent, and beautiful in his not knowing exactly how to do it but doing it anyway. His hand moved behind your head as he parted his lips, letting his mouth move against yours, his tongue just starting to play along your teeth, pushing for more.

From there, with your hands reactively moving up into his hair, pulling him to you even more, his kiss grew deeper and more desperate.

Coming up for air several minutes later, you breathlessly whimpered, “I love you so much, Five. I always will. I just didn’t know if you wanted this with me. You kept saying things that made me think maybe, but then you-”

Hearing that, he frantically started pressing kisses down your neck, then down to your shoulder. “Fuck yeah, I wanted this,” he said as he took your breath away. His trembling hands played at the hem of your shirt before he suddenly stopped and broke away, peering at you.

“Is this okay?” he asked, his hands tentatively sliding up over the cotton covering your back as his excited smile exposed more of his charmingly boyish dimple.

Your reply came with you suddenly lifting the material in his way all the way up over your head.

Speechless, Five’s intense gaze fell over your naked upper body.

“Holy shit, I was not expecting that,” he breathed. Recapturing your lips a few seconds later, he kissed you two more times, then, still trying to kiss you, he mumbled, "I have imagined doing this for so long, just ask the flowers by the front door that have been watching me jerking off every night. They know just how badly I wanted to see these perky tits.”

You started to giggle over that new piece of information, but that quickly turned into you moaning into Five’s mouth from the feeling of him sliding his fingers over your nipples. Encouraged by that, he continued with his ministrations, slowly and softly caressing you until you moaned even more.

When he released your lips, you let out a small whine at the loss, but you were quickly placated as Five moved his kisses along your jawline, stopping for just a moment to nibble on your ear.

“Gah- ahhh,” you gasped, it felt so good, and to that, Five bit down on your lobe, his teeth stinging your flesh as he pinched your nipples at the same time.

You squeaked, your legs clenching together even tighter.

Five let out a breathy laugh as his lips moved over your ear, seductively whispering, "Was that good?"

“You really are still the same cocky little shit you always were, aren’t you?” you shot back.

Nodding his head yes, Five leveled his lopsided grin at you. “Probably worse,” he admitted

“Take your shirt off, “ you demanded, hardly able to believe how silly and hot he was being.

Happily obeying, Five tore off his emerald green sweater that matched his eyes, tossing it over with your shirt on the floor.

“Better?” he questioned.

“Much,” you replied as your fingers began to graze his skin, exploring the hard expanse of his toned chest, down his stomach, delighting in the lean ‘V’ of muscle leading towards his hips.

As your fingers played along the dark, almost jet black trail of hair leading into his pants, dipping below his waistband, then coming back up so you could rub your hand over his crotch, Five shuddered under your touch, so you increased the pressure.

“So sensitive,” you teased.

Ignoring that taunt, his left hand quickly found your breast again and his other clamped onto your ass, giving it a hard smack before he suddenly yanked your skirt up.

“You have really been enjoying fucking with me,” he laughed, then said, “and what the fuck is this song talking about!”

With his hand under your skirt, his fingers moved slowly, massaging his burning handprint, and he didn’t stop punishing you there. Five’s fingers stopped just shy of the heat between your legs. There, he rubbed the elastic panty line lying along your groin as he smiled like a fucking jerk.

“This song is talking about a man and his love for a girl, but he’s torn between her and the continent he loves, and please, Five! Please don’t stop!” you begged.

“There we go!” he laughed. “Just what I needed to hear. Keep it coming, honey.”

With that, memories of another Five being ridiculously obsessed with you getting you to cry out his name, blended with this one and his equally interesting quirks and many miss understandings about things that to you seemed obvious.

Before you could come up with an appropriate comeback, your brain gave out on you because Five’s fingers slid under the thin panty barrier he’d been toying with, moving between your folds, determinedly pressing into your clit.

“Fuck, you are wet. I guess watering you worked,” Five mockingly groaned as he gently kissed the side of your neck, letting the smallest scrap of his light facial hair tickle you.

Giggling and squirming even more, he gave your neck a little nip.

“Hold still, damn it, I am trying to finger fuck you to this stupid song,” he laughed.

Hand still jammed in your underwear, Five drew you back with him, the backs of his legs bumping one of the chairs next to the small garden table.

Taking your hand off the hard bulge in his pants, you moved it with your other, shoving him down in the chair with enough momentum to make the legs cry out in complaint as they slid across the concrete. Not stopping, you crawled over him, wrapping your legs around his waist.

“I missed you acting all adorable like this,” you said as cheekily as possible, while laughing at his lustful expression of bewilderment.

Not about to be out done, guiding you up against him even tighter, Five wrapped your lips in a warm kiss that quickly escalated into a heady, deep kiss. It didn’t take long just doing that, and you were both breathing much harder than normal again.

Seductively pulling at your lower lip with his upper teeth, Five looked up at you with his mossy eyes softer than you’d ever seen them.

“From that first day I was with you on the train, you were all I wanted. I didn’t even know what I’d missed until then. I thought I did, but not really,” he said. “I don’t know why or how this is happening to us over and over, but I know one thing for sure and that’s I am never letting you go again.”

That was almost exactly what Five said to you the night he died.

Jolting you from the moment, a near paralyzing fear hit you like another slap in the ass, but then, just like so many times when Five touched you, the next time he brought his lips to yours, your entire body tingled with a whole different kind of all-encompassing feeling.

The air felt alive.

As you eased your body back into his hand that was tracing lines up and down your spine, Five’s lips closed around one of your taut nipples and his hand lowered between your legs, moving again.

“Yesssss,” you moaned, rocking your hips against his, driving your bottom down against his erection.

Pinned under your weight, Five whimpered and his cock throbbed with so much need he felt like he might come in his pants. Not wanting that, his fingers moved faster, slipping up and down in the cramped space of your panties, and that got you to let up on him, which was both a good and bad thing.

You arched your back as he flicked one of your tits with his tongue. Scraping his teeth along your peeked flesh, he sucked it back inside the heat of his mouth and you ground down on him harder than before.

Unable to take it, Five’s mouth popped off. “Fuck. Keep. Doing. That!” he groaned as he started with your neck and earlobes again, trailing sloppy kisses down to your collarbone.

Flipping your skirt completely out of the way with a whip of his wrists, Five slid your panties to the side with a quick tug, then the tip of his index finger gently started pushing into your hole.

“Mmmm fff, Five,” you whined, as he moved deeper inside you.

“So…fah-king tight,” he breathed, equally taken by the feel of your body fighting him. He looked up at you with adoring eyes, his worry coming out in his soft words. “You okay?”

“Yes,” you said, your body opening for him more and more each second a part of him was becoming a part of you.

Once he was past knuckle deep, you started to work your body over the hard length of his trapped cock again, totally destroying his pants as his finger started to fuck into you, in and out, hooking and pulling, doing anything and everything he could to get you moving faster.

“Oh, ffff,” you cried as Five, with no warning, added a second finger and then started to dip in and out at the same punishing rate as his thumb circling around your clit.

You pushed yourself against his hand, biting your lip as your body quickly coiled and tightened around him. “Fff-vvvv!” you cried.

When your orgasm hit a moment or two later, your wet gasps filling the greenhouse, he couldn’t believe it.

Your forehead fell against his. You slowly unclenched your fingers, your fingernails leaving half-moon marks all over his shoulders.

“Did I do it?” Five excitedly asked.

Still hardly able to open your eyes, you nodded, panting, “Fuck yes you did. Fuck, Five…”

With his cock about to rip through his pants, Five pulled his fingers from your quivering cunt, bringing them to his mouth. Smiling as he tasted you, slowly licking a few more times for effect, he said, “I can confidently say that I have never done anything as amazing as that, and you taste so delicious I might never eat anything else ever again.”

Laughing at the absurdity of that considering you knew just how much Five liked to eat actual food, and he could in fact do the unimaginable by traveling through time, even if he couldn't do it the way he wanted to anymore, on doe like legs, you climbed off of him, letting your panties slip to the floor.

“Your turn,” you said, straddling your magical unicorn, your hands already starting to unzip his pants to the sight of his approving gaze of god-like sexiness staring back at you.

Carefully pulling him from the confines of his pants, you’d only given Five’s cock a few gentle tugs and his smug expression was gone.

“Thank you for this, fuck, thank you,” he quietly repeated, his eyes about rolling back in his head as you lazily pumped him, making him leak even more glistening fluid from the tip of his cock.

Lost in what you were doing to him, Five fingers dug into the seat on the wooden chair.

“That feels so fucking good,” he groaned as you twirled your finger over him, spreading his precum to make your hand move faster as it dropped down over the long veins feeding his impressive length.

When you moved forward, guiding the thick head of his cock through the swollen valley between your legs, Five couldn’t take it anymore. Frantically pushing his heels into the floor, he reactively tried to thrust upwards, but it did him little good because he wasn’t inside of you like his mind was telling him he was.

“Ah-ah-ah,” you warned. “Slow down, old man. I’ll get you there, I promise. I want your first time to be special,” you lovingly cooed.

“This is pretty fucking special. I have waited over 70 years for this,” he growled, trying to hump up into you again but clearly only doing it that time to watch your tits bounce.

Shaking your head at the craziness of it all because Five looked nothing like his real age despite him being that old, with one hand on the back of his neck, your feet fell flat on the floor, allowing you the leverage you needed to ride him. With his drizzling tip pushing all the way up to the height of your belly button, you lined him up, then started frotting, pressing the hot length of his cock against your swollen clit in a sinful game of slip and slide.

“That’s right, baby. Let me fuck you,” you praised, already feeling that lustfully addicting pleasure rising in you again. Yanking his hair to further the fun, Five moaned, but he didn’t fight it, and that only turned you on even more, because you knew how badly he wanted to.

Five Looked like a broken angel fallen from heaven. His beautiful eyes were cutely drowsy as he watched you fucking him, the sweet feel of your sex, your body rocking in his lap, all of it felt like nothing he had ever felt before.

The fall sun was shining down.

The heat building.

The strangest choice for a fuck song was playing on the CD player, the band Todo singing their topical ballad as your bodies worked together to the inspiring rhythm of the drums.

♫ I bless the rains down in Affff-ri-cAAA!

Five shut his eyes.

The pure love and acceptance he was feeling made the shadow of doubt hanging over him from his own death and from his horrible past feel like it couldn’t touch him.

“Five, look at me,” you ordered.

He did.

One look at you as you rode, unable to fight it, he let out a guttural groan of unrestrained pleasure. Unclasping his fingers from the chair, he ran his hands down, under your ass, lifting and pulling with you, making you move your hips and hand pinning his cock down even faster as you fucked him against you.

He was trapped and so were you, but Five felt anything but trapped as your thighs quivered and the tension built more and more with each pass of his cock thrusting up through your pussy lips.

“Kiss me. Please. I need you to kiss me,” you begged, your words breathless as you worked hard to give him the ride of his life while he sat there like the king of the world, watching you buck and pant.

The second Five’s lips touched yours, you locked your fingers on him tighter, pulling him as close as possible.

Your nails scratched along his scalp making him fuck up into you harder.

The chair groaned in protest.

You brokenly whimpered into his kiss, and again, Five felt that strangely familiar burst of energy in the air.

Your head flung back. You’d reached the edge and tumbled over it again; this time he knew it and he’d never felt closer to you.

He cursed a breathy gasp, his lips parted against your chest as he pushed his pelvis up and down at the same faltering pace as yours. Pulses of his release, a creamy white heat of pent-up pain and love started to spread against the silky expanse of your body as Five moved his cheek next to yours.

Mouth against your moistened skin, he groaned and hissed. “Ahhhffuuuuucccccckkkkk-ffffff-”

A sticky mess between you as his balls twitched under him, still out of breath, Five peered up at, grinning like a fool.

Just when he thought he couldn’t possibly deserve more, you brought your hands to his face, running your fingers over his flushed cheeks as you tilted his chin up. “I love you, Five. It will always be you.”

You placed the softest kiss along his jaw, then down his sweaty neck. Five’s entire body trembled, as much from the gentle sensation of you showing how much you loved him with the touch of your lips, as in what it meant to him hearing you say that.

You said it again. “I love you, Five.”

Tiny shivers danced up his spine as a low moan resonated deep in his throat. Your mouth continued to move over him.

“I love you too.” He exhaled your name slowly as you moved your way back up to his lips, your fingers soothingly playing with his hair.

Right then, no matter how many times you let him have this with you, Five knew he’d never get enough of it.

As he told you, you were all he wanted.

Now, nothing else mattered.

W-Why

Autumn days of sunlit leaves floating down from above passed by, and with them, Five’s mind and heart were at peace for the first time in his life.

Nights with you in bed, hot breaths against each other’s skin as you explored new ways to love each other were everything to him.

Laying on a blanket, under the stars as the white plumes of your breath made clouds of heat above you, Five was in heaven even if he was in a world of crumbling foundations.

He even had the moon this time.

It was perfect.

You had the greenhouse and a roof over your heads, but you still needed to scout for other food options. Just like the last time he was in the apocalypse, Five spent hours on end each day, searching for anything he could use to help get through the harder times. But now, as he wandered down the stairway into the old subway station he hadn’t been to in months, the pressure of getting back felt almost non-existent.

Maybe he could trap something alive down there, he’d thought. Rats were awful but you weren’t picky, and neither was he, and rabbits had been hard to come by lately with the colder turn in the weather.

Just thinking about bringing a rodent in the house and acting like he slayed a dragon for you made him smile.

You loved when he acted stupid, and he loved doing it for you.

Feet quietly moving across the debris filled landing, just then, when it felt like nothing was more important than finding new ways to make you smile, of course that was when fate decided to prove he was wrong.

Noticing a strange mark on the floor at the edge of the subway platform, one he’d never noticed before because the light down there was so bad, Five pointed his flashlight down.

There was something scratched into the tile, and it was done so poorly he could hardly see it, but it was there, and it was no accident.

Bending down, he slowly traced the intricate circles and paralleling lines done in an interlocking pattern that suggested a mathematical projection of infinite sums, or better put, infinite outcomes.

His heart sank as his finger cleared the grim from the interdimensional map, or that was what he’d suspected it was the first time he’d seen it tattooed on the chest of the ancient version of him that was dying in the paradox proof chamber back in the Sparrow’s timeline.

Looking around, he saw nothing else. Jumping down to the tracks, Five ducked his head below the small lip where the electrical lines were hung. There was a box that some of the larger lines fed into, and it was directly underneath where the sigil was placed.

Reaching his hand up, blinding feeling around in the cobwebs and dead bugs, he felt something.

“No,” he breathed, looking down at the leather-bound journal, his eyes rapidly moving over the pages.

All of them were filled in, unlike the one he had back at the house. And even more shocking, this one showed the way to get back.

“Five?” you called out, coming down the stairs.

“Yeah, down here,” he replied, quickly shoving the book inside his shoulder bag.

~~~

Stretching his toes under the sheets as his body came down from the feel of having his dick pushing down your throat, Five dreamily looked down at you nestled between his legs

“I love your hair, honey, but I like it best when it’s like that,” he teased as you looked back at him, stretching your jaw, your hair a total ball of fuzz ball from you romping around under the blankets.

You smiled. “Fuck you, Five.”

“Fuck me, you say… Sure. I am game to do that again, only it has to be roles reversed until I can get it up again.”

You rolled out of bed, escaping before he could pounce on you and throw his face between your legs.

“Aww, come on. It won’t take long,” he whined, watching you trot away.

“I know,” you called back, blanket dragging as you tiptoed the cold floor out to the kitchen to get a glass of water from the cooled boiling pot on the wood stove.

Coming back, you passed by the fireplace, tossing a few logs Five had brought in the night before. Moving on, you stopped at the bookshelf, eyeing up the selection that had grown substantially since Five had gotten there.

Still lazily lying in bed, he smiled, knowing you were going to pick something and ask him to read it to you while you snuggled on him in bed until mid-day. He loved the bitter temperatures that had settled in because it meant time outside was limited and there was more time for this.

While crossing his arms over his head, looking around the little home that he shared with you, Five started to smile again. The shelves in the kitchen were covered with canning jars filled with the evidence of how hard you had both worked to prepare for the winter. While he was thinking about how the massive amount of work involved in living this way did nothing to diminish how happy he was, something over by you hit the floor with a thump.

Five hadn’t noticed you stepping up on a chair to reach the highest shelf, but you had. Now you were getting down, looking at what had fallen.

His heart was suddenly beating so hard it felt like it might rip out of his chest. Too late, he threw himself out of bed, snatching his pajama pants off the floor as he rushed over, one leg in, and one out of the cold flannel.

“What is this?” you questioned, rapidly turning the pages in your hands. “Five?” you said again, waving the notes you’d just found wedged behind the other books.

“It’s my journal,” Five said, still pulling up his pants as the worried line between his brows grew deeper.

“I know it is, but it’s not that one,” you said, pointing to the other on the table beside the bed. “This one is…It looks like you figured it out…. The key to the subway map is all filled in.”

You quickly turned to the pages that Five already knew were there, the colorful triangles and circles and squares and numbers that had made no sense were all noted with his handwriting, explaining what they meant and how to navigate them. Trying to make help sense of it, you’d looked at it so many times, but like him, you’d gotten nowhere.

Five reached for the book, and as if you’d lost all your strength, the journal fell into his hands. Your voice tremored. “Where did this come from?”

“I found it under the edge of the subway platform, next to the tracks.”

“When?”

“Months ago,” Five flatly replied, his voice coming out steady, even if he wasn’t.

Your eyes glossed over. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

As he looked into your hurt filled eyes, he felt like he was dying as he said, “You know why.”

“Five,” we can’t stay here pretending there isn’t something we can do,” you said, saying exactly what he knew you’d say.

“What can I do!” Five all but screamed, making you jump back, and that only made him look even more upset.

Ashamed that he’d just done that, his entire body shaking, Five’s hands came up, covering his face, the journal falling to the floor as he started to ramble, “I can’t lose you! I can't help them! I-”

He breathed your name, much quieter before starting again.

“If we go, there’s no telling what we’ll find back there. My family and I didn’t know what to do before I left, and I don’t know what to do now. Having you with me is the last thing I want if I go back to that place. Don’t you get it!” he cried, losing it again. “That timeline is just another like this one that will be destroyed, only this time, nobody is going to survive!”

“So this is it?” you quietly asked.

Five looked up and only then did he see the tears rolling down your cheeks.

“Isn’t this enough?” he asked, his voice cracking.

You came closer. “Five, you will always be enough for me, but-”

When you didn’t finish the ‘but’ and instead chose to wrap your arms around him, Five sucked in a panicked breath, his entire body shuttering.

Feeling worse, but slowly getting a handle on himself and what this meant, eventually Five forced himself away from the safety of your embrace. His voice lacked any signs of weakness from his melt down when he looked at you and said, “We are going back.”

X- X-factor, as in an exceptional quality or talent that sets someone or something apart. Not so much what the gang is displaying here.

Escorting you along the snow-covered sidewalk leading up to Diego and Lila’s house, trying to be optimistic, Five said, “Maybe they figured it out after all. Everything looks normal.”

Opening the door, Diego’s eyes widened as they moved from you to his brother. “What do you know? Five finally decided to join us and he’s not alone!” he called out just as Klaus came to join him in the entryway, shoving a handful of trail mix in his mouth.

“And who’s this,” he questioned, wiggling an eyebrow at you.

Five was still trying to introduce you when Lila came over interrupting. “Awwww,” she said, scowling at Five. “It looks like hell really did freeze over because you brought a real live, non-plastic date. You’ve clearly been busy, though not surprisingly busy doing nothing to help us figure this stuff out with Ben.”

“We don’t know where Viktor is, or Benny and his Jenny,” Klaus chimed in, “but that doesn’t mean this Cleanse stuff is happening. Dad lies all the time.” Looking puzzled, he looked down at the floor. “Actually, I don’t know what’s going on. Allison and Claire Bear just dug me up from a pet cemetery. I’m still feeling a little shaky about all that and for other reasons too, so I haven’t really been much help either.”

He glanced at Claire, and she smiled. “It’s okay Uncle Klaus. One step at a time We’ve got your back.”

Coming your way, dressed in a track suit that way too small for him, Luther said, “Hi, I am Luther. Not sure if Five told you about me.”

“Five, told me all about you. It’s so nice to finally meet all of you,” you said, smiling at Luther, then Five, who was already looking like his head might explode.

Luther turned his goofy grin at Five, giving him a not at all discrete thumbs up as he whispered, but not quite enough that everyone else didn’t hear it. “Nice job!” Suddenly looking confused, he added, “Are you together, like together-together? Not that it matters, it’s just Lila is right. You don’t date, and we’ve never seen you with anyone other than Dolor-”

“Woopsie,” Allison said, walking past, smacking Luther on the back of the head.

Letting out the breath he’d been holding, Five angrily spat, “She already knows about me and Dolores! And not that any of you give a shit about my life, but yes, we are together! I am madly in love with her and for some reason, she loves me back!”

“Ohhhh. I love this… When did all this happen?” Klaus excitedly asked, totally engrossed in the drama unfolding as he sat down on the couch with his bowl of trail mix on his lap.

“Recently.” Five heatedly replied. “And that wasn’t all I was doing, Lila!”

Five raised his voice as he glared at his sister-in-law but that only made her challenging smile even brighter.

“I have been gone for almost eight years,” Five raged at her. “I tried to use my powers to go back in time to save Ben but instead got myself trapped in the apocalypse again where I topped off that series of epic mistakes by getting shot by another me. I would have died if not for her being trapped in one of the apocalypses I ended up in, and believe it or not, that one was on me too! So go ahead, start lying into me about how this is all my fault! Sloane! Your discontent in marriages and your fucked up lives! The Cleanse! Everything! Let me have it. I have heard it all before!”

“I told you that you needed my help,” Lila irritatedly huffed, as she pulled a sticky chunk of red licorice off the front of her shirt.

As Five moved his bitter gaze to Luther, the big guy frowned. “I never meant to blame Sloane on you,” he said very sheepishly. He looked at the others for help but wasn’t getting any. “I am sorry… I was so… And I didn’t mean to-”

“Wait. Hold up…” Claire interjected from the sidelines where she’d been quietly watching the showdown. “You tried to save us, all by yourself?” She looked from her angry Uncle to her mom, clearly confused.

Allison smiled at her daughter. “Believe it or not, you Uncle Five is the most selfless jerk you’ll ever meet, and he’s right. We have been pretty awful about things since he’s been back, and that’s because like him, we are jerks whose lives are a mess, but that is not his fault.” Turning to Five, she said, “We love you, Five, and I couldn’t be happier that you finally found someone, even if it was in a place you never should have been to begin with. Funny how that shit works. I can tell you all about it and Ray would too if he were still around, but…he’s NOT.”

She raised her drink, pounding all of it as she flopped down on the couch next to Luther.

“I am sorry, buddy. I didn’t even know you were gone. We love you; you know that right?” Klaus said, coming in for a hug.

Just then, totally taken off guard because he was looking at you grinning at him with that, I told you so look he knew was because you’d told him time and time again that his family love him, Five was ambushed by his ghost whispering brother’s smothering affections, double cheek kisses and all.

“I am so glad your apocalyptic badass woman saved you, little guy,” Klaus gushed as you started to giggle over what Klaus had just called you, and at Five trying to get away from Klaus’s impressively strong clutches.

Ducking out of his grip, just then, Grace came running in. “Uncle Five! You have to see what Mr. Pennycrumb can do! He can blink just like you.”

“Hey, kid,” Five breathed, coming down to her level to watch as she excitedly flew her electronic dog around extra fast, hiding him behind the Christmas tree before popping him back out again.

As soon as his daughter was done showing off, looking serious, Diego pulled Five to the side. Just as fast, you were surrounded by the rest of his siblings, having gotten pulled down between Luther and Allsion on the couch, with Klaus on the floor at your feet, all of them firing questions at you about your time with their brother.

Scrunching his lips in a way that made his dad mustache look extra dorky, Diego said, “That sounded bad, minus the badass chick saving you part. You okay?”

“Perfect,” Five shot back, trying to smooth the rumbles out of his suit. Giving up, he muttered a few curses, then hearing something about if you were married or not, he looked over at you, tensely flattening his lips as the muscles in his jaw tensed.

He was about to angrily spout off on all of them again, but looking flushed by amused, you shook your head, warning him not to do it.

About to lose his mind and not sure what to say about the marriage thing anyway, Five’s mouth snapped shut.

“Oh, my God!” Lila cackled. “I think I love her already,” she laughed, nudging Five in the shoulder before coming over to you, asking, “Do you have superpowers too, because the way you shut down that little ankle biter without saying a word was bloody brilliant. You have to teach me that trick!”

“Ahhh. No powers here,” you laughed. “I think Five and I just have a good understanding of each other.” You looked at Five, widening your eyes comically at him because you could totally see why he maintained that his family were a hard pill to swallow.

“So... I did the CIA thing,” Diego said, moving right along.

“And how did that go?” Five breathed, overwhelmed, but trying to dial it back for the kid’s sake and yours.

“It didn’t. Turns out, it’s not for me. Lila and I had a talk, and we are doing better. My life with them means everything, I just needed a reminder. Thanks for giving it to me,” he said, looking down at his oldest, who was sitting on the floor in front of the TV. Slapping Five on the back a second later, he asked, “So, are you still the oldest virgin alive, or did you guys S-K-R-E-W?”

“That is not how you spell screw, dad,” Grace corrected as Diego pulled a condom package out of his wallet, then pulled open Five’s back pant pocket, stuffing it in.

“Just in case you need it, man,” he clarified as if Five didn’t get it. “Kids are great, but not sure you're ready for all that complicated stuff yet with you being a scrawny teenager still.”

“I am not a teenager!” Five raged, “I’m 26 for the 2nd fucking time, so that makes me 71! I shouldn’t be surprised by any of this, or you not getting that, but I am! And that means for a room full of people given powers not typically seen in any other humans, all any of us can claim is that we’ve excelled at being extraordinarily stupid! There is nothing exceptional about any of us! The world could still be ending in a few hours and Luther is over there shoving whole popcorn balls in his mouth!”

“Thaaairr-rrealleeegoo,” he mumbly defended

Unfazed by her dad being stupid or her favorite Uncle flipping out on everyone, Grace pointed at the TV screen, asking, “Is that Uncle Viktor hanging out with all those weirdos surrounding the mall?”

~~~

Hours later, blinking out of the way of the gigantic blob monster Ben-Jen thing, portal violently crackling, Five reappeared in the subway station, his back slamming back down on the cement as you landed on top of him, knocking the air out of him.

Heart racing as he choked on the air fighting to get back inside his lungs, with his useless gun still in his free hand, Five rolled over, pulling you up.

“I’m sorry,” you needlessly apologized, hardly able to walk as you clung to him.

Your head was spinning from the jump, and from getting thrown out over the second-floor mezzanine by Luther just before an arm like appendage of the Ben-Jen Cleanse blob latched on to Five, who had just wrapped his arm around you to blink you out of there.

Not stopping, Five helped you inside the waiting train, the doors closing as he sat you down, and then he joined you, staring at the ground as he gently ran his hand up and down your back.

“I am not abandoning them,” he said, almost a whole minute later, finally looking up.

“I know.” Feeling less green, you moved closer, lowering your head to his shoulder.

“I can’t save them in any other way but by leaving. I need to buy us some time,” he explained even though he didn’t need to, you were there. You saw it all.

Viktor tried to pull the marigold from Ben, but it was too late. They all had fought back, but they were losing badly. Like Five had told you in the first days he was with you, they were never meant to win.

His head dropped back against the side of the train as it swayed, aimlessly moving through the tunnels.

Five couldn’t even begin to pay attention to the stops as they came and went, another gloomy station of nothingness, and then another, and then another.

With no clue what to do, he sat in silence with your hand in his.

At some point, your mental exhaustion got the best of you. Slumping against him, you drifted off to the feel of his shallow breaths against your temple.

Y-You

“Five, what is this place?” you asked as your sleep filled eyes followed his towards the glowing sign that said, “Max’s Delicatessen.”

“I have no idea,” he breathed, cautiously stepping out of the train.

At the unexpected sound of someone saying your name, Five pivoted, protectively throwing you behind him.

The dark-haired young man you hadn’t noticed was sitting on one of the benches near the tracks laughed, then he said, “Don’t worry. I mean neither of you harm, and to answer your question since he can’t. This is the place all of us end up at some point when our time is up. That’s if we make it this far. Most don’t.”

Getting up, the suit-wearing stranger who was a mirror image of Five, folded his newspaper under his arm and strode your way, extending his hand.

“Hello again.” He gave you a charming grin, his eyes mischievously sparkling. “It’s been a long time, but I see that your pretty smile hasn’t changed.”

You hadn’t been smiling, but now you were, and that only made the Five at your side look even more hostile.

Unbothered by that, the other Five turned on the heel of his shiny dress shoe, casually waving you along as he said, “Come inside. We need to have a chat.”

A second later the steel bell hanging above the door rang and at least a dozen more Fives inside the deli looked your way, all of them eyeing you with open interest.

The Five you were following sat down in one of the open booths in the middle, gesturing for you to join him. Still shocked into a silence that was making you all the more nervous, Five moved into the opposite seat, pulling you in next to him on the inside of the booth.

The Five that had greeted you flagged over a waiter version of himself as he rushed by, and he swiftly leaned in, filling the cups in front of everyone.

No sooner was it poured, than next to you, Five picked up his white porcelain cup, tipping the entire contents back in one long slug.

“It’s been a long time since you’ve had coffee this marvelously shitty, I take it?” The Five across from you chuckled as the still hovering waiter came back around. As he refilled your Five’s cup, his fingers brushed past yours on the handle of your mug.

“Need some sugar or some cream in that, sweetheart?” he asked, as the dimple in his cheek deepened.

Your Five turned his glare at the Waiter Five. “She can get her own cream, so fuck off, and yes…” he hissed at the Greeter, “It’s been a while since I had coffee.”

Five was looking at the Waiter like he might kill him, so you squeezed his leg from under the table. After that, he took a much more civilized sip of his drink, but the warning in his eyes remained as they darted around the diner, meeting the curious eyes of all the other Fives.

“I am betting the lack of caffeine wasn’t nearly as awful this time around when you had such a lovely companion there with you in the apocalypse. She was with you, I presume…? That’s if your story parallels that of some of these other lost boys in here.”

To that, your exceedingly twitchy Five glanced at a very young looking Five wearing his Umbrella Academy uniform. He was sitting next to the door with Dolores. Staring back at the kid version of him’s baby face, Five’s own features pinched with confusion.

Seeing that they weren’t going to get any juicy details on his relationship with you, the Greeter said, “Okay, cutting to the chase then…?”

“Please,” Five cooly replied.

Obliging, the Greeter said, “Every one of us here tried to fix this mess and couldn’t. Now we are here doing anything we can to help the other Fives who still have skin in the game. Which are the lucky bastards like you. So, how can we help?”

Flipping his hair out of his eyes, Five asked, “Will going back to our first timeline and then jumping back to prevent Ben’s death change any of this?”

“No,” the Greeter Five replied.

“Would stopping the original Reginald from releasing the marigold in the first place be enough to fix this?”

“It would be, but we can’t do that. He didn't release the marigold on Earth. He did it on his home planet and then it got here many years later. We don’t have the ability to jump from one plant to another, and Reginald’s ticket here was one way. Doing that also means we will never be born. So again. No.”

With his foot agitatedly tapping under the table, Five shook his head. “What else is there that we can work with?”

The Greeter laughed. “Us. We are the problem.”

“Explain,” Five shot back.

Tiling his head to the side, the Greeter grinned at you then looked back at your Five and sighed. “The marigold that caused our births was the catalyst, and we were the by-product that never should have been. We set it all in motion by existing. Our births are what caused a ripple effect that split the timelines. They never should have happened, and because of that, we get an endless cycle of nature trying to correct itself.”

Five’s hand tightened around yours. “The apocalypse and the Cleanse.”

The Greeter nodded. “Exactly. Every one of them, and on and on it goes. We are at one million five hundred thousand, eighty-two tries to stop it at this point and we haven’t, but we are still going strong.”

He laughed at that, his eyes moving to the Five in the corner booth who was tipping back a bottle of whiskey with about half of it running down his chin.

“Well, most of us are still trying. Drunk Five, not so much,” the Greeter cynically added.

Not happy about that, the Drunk Five, sloshing his bottle all over his table started in. “You are missing shit as usual! There are things bigger in this world than new elements that can spontaneously create superpowered assholes and then later devour them for no good fucking reason other than an arrogant alien asshole named Reginald had zero foresight!” he shouted.

“It was Abigail who created it,” one of the Fives playing cards flatly corrected, while dealing another hand to the Five across from him.

“Whatever! Still an asshole!” Drunk Five insisted, getting even more worked up. “Real power has nothing to do with what they gave us! It’s in here, only all you self absorbed morons have no idea what it means to feel it!” he declared while trying to point a finger at his heart, but when he almost dropped his bottle, he ended up dumping booze on his crotch instead.

Looking like he was about to cry, the very drunk Five looked over at you. “I- I’m,”

He said your name, proving the Greeter Five wasn’t the only one who knew your name.

“I tried to save you. I tried to save all of them, but I didn’t see the right way to do it until it was too late,” he sobbed. He set his bottle down, ringing his hand through his hair as he looked down at the table. “I would have done it. I would have sacri-”

A Five wearing an apron stepped out of the kitchen, slapping a hand over his drunk doppelganger’s mouth as he said, “Zip it before you fuck this up royal, nob shine.”

Looking at you with a gleam in his eye, the kitchen Five bent down, whispering something in his captive’s ear, then having quieted the Drunk Five, that Five came over, placing his elbows on the back of your seat, joining the party, and again you were greeted with a smile and excited green eyes.

Reaching over to playfully twirl a piece of your hair around one of his fingers, the Five from kitchen looked to the Greeter Five then to your Five, saying, “Perhaps while you boys continue this conversation, it would be best if I take the lady in back to show her how I tenderize my meat?”

“Not a fucking chance,” your Five snapped back as you let out a small but very hysterical sounding laugh.

“Actually, that might not be a bad idea,” the Greeter agreed.

“She isn’t going anywhere with any of you!” Five fumed, standing up to get in the face of the kitchen Five that was invading the booth.

Someone in the kitchen who sounded like Five laughed, yelling something about soup and sore his meatballs, and just then, the bell above the door chimed.

A much older, white-haired gentleman with a mustache came in, throwing his hat on the coat rack as he took in the scene. “Jesus fucking Christ, why does it always have to be a freak show in here,” he grumbled.

The very young Five at the booth with Dolores tipped his margarita at him in agreement as your Five opened his mouth, starting to flip out again, but right then, the Waiter Five appeared from the kitchen, plate in hand, swinging by your table to drop a thick sandwich stacked with pastrami in front of the Greeter. “Here you go, extra sauerkraut, as you requested.”

The Waiter looked over at you, his wicked grin grew.

“Why do you always have to fuck shit up, Briket Five?” the Greeter snapped at the Five still playing with your hair. “Nobody wants to eat this shit covered in fermented slop but you!”

“Shut up and just eat it,” he replied while giving you a naughty looking wink.

“Brisket Five?” you asked.

The Five in question nodded. “Yes, but you can call me whatever you want, love.”

He got up and walked towards the kitchen, after your Five swatted his hand away, but getting him off of you made Five look no less pissed by the exchange. “We need to get you out of here,” he said as he started to slip out of the booth, but coming past your table, the old mustached Five nearly plowed down the Waiter, who then rammed into your Five blocking his path.

As he looked at the commotion going on at your table and all the Five’s sizing each other up, the older Five gruffly said, “Not sure what these morons have been telling you, but I am so sick of their shit that I am about ready to shove that mop up someone’s ass. Nobody is going to enjoy that other than Janitor Five, so I’ll give you some straightforward advice that might help us all out of this mess instead. Don’t try to save the world this time.”

The Five with the mop laughed. “True on both accounts! I’m down with an anal mop fucking as long as you go gentle on me, and when it comes to fucked up shit I haven’t tried, not saving our asses is the only thing I haven’t done, so I say yes to that too,” he shouted, then went back to moping the mess under Drunk Five’s table.

Mentally on overload, next to you, in his head, ignoring what the weird mop fucking stuff was all about with the Janitor Five, your Five repeated the words that had been haunting him since the first time he’d heard them coming from another much older permutation of himself who was dying in a paradox proof bunker.

Don’t try to save the world…

As if that wasn’t enough to shake him, still reeling with deja vu, the Drunk Five called over, “We need to destroy the marigold!”

“Please shut him up before he really scares her even more than h already has!” Greeter Five shouted.

With all the other Five’s too busy glaring at each other, the Drunk Five went on even louder, this time declaring his love for you, and because of it, you looked even more rattled by the chaos of all the versions of Five scattered around you, mostly all of them losing their shit or making lovey dovey eyes at you.

Coming out of the kitchen with a frying pan in hand, Brisket Five said, “Holy shit, someone should have thrown him outside hours ago.” A second later, he pulled back to swing, and a second after that, DONG! Drunk Five was lying face down, drooling on his placemat.

“To that, we agree,” the Greeter said, looking at you worriedly.

As if Brisket Five hadn’t just potentially concussed or killed the inebriated version of himself, the Waiter Five shimmied back into the mob around your table, refilling all the coffee cups, acting like all this was all totally normal.

Next to you, Five looked like he was about to blow a gasket. Unable to get out of the booth, he was about to vault the back of your seat and start stabbing out the eyeballs of the other Fives with his sugar spoon.

Coming over, Brisket Five said, “As you’ve noticed some of these lesser evolved douche bags in here aren’t that well-mannered, and Old Five is not much of a socialite, but he’s not wrong, and neither is Drunk Five over there. They are onto something, but our gracious Greeter here, and some of the others like to think there still has to be another way that doesn’t involve our way of thinking.”

“It makes sense that statistically, there is!” the Greeter Five growled, to the dickish brush off wave of the frying pan that Brisket Five just gave him.

After threatening the Greeter, Brisket Five, looking at you in a way that made you feel all sorts of warm, he said, “Did you know that there is a quantum entanglement thing going on between us?”

“There is nothing going on between you two,” your Five snarled.

“Sure, there is,” he reaffirmed, giving the Greeter a pointed look that made your Five and the Greeter suddenly look much less sure of themselves.

Coming too, looking even more upset now that he just got his head bashed in, looking at you, Drunk Five started rambling. “We have something that binds people through time in ways that no one will ever understand. It’s why we ran into each other in the first place, and it was why you were there to save me, and I was there to save you! It’s an inevitability… It’s as simple as that! We just need to believe in that this time and maybe-”

“It’s wishful thinking and we need more than that,” the Greeter interrupted.

Looking very annoyed, Brisket Five said, “There are some of us that like to pretend it’s horse shit based on fairy tales and lovesick delusional nonsense, but the concept of a love-based entanglement is very real.” He looked at you again. “No matter how far or how we get pulled apart in the mess of time, we will always remain connected. It’s like that with a love as strong as ours.”

“You don’t know her and you don’t love her! I do!!” your Five snapped

Brisket Five looked at the Greeter, both of them smiling knowingly, no longer looking like they might kill each other.

“Five, what is he talking about?” you asked.

“I don’t know,” he shot back, clearly so upset that he didn’t know what to say anymore.

“Sure, you do,” Brisket Five confidently replied. "Let me ask you this…have you ever felt things you can’t explain?”

Five nodded, yes.

Brisket Five reached across the table, placing his hand over yours as he smugly smiled at your Five while asking, “Have you felt it with her?”

Heat flooded your face.

Your Five said nothing, but he didn’t need to, the other him’s smile turned into a full-on smirk. “Has she told you that she feels it too?”

Five glanced at you, and the other Five’s all trying their best to charm you with their bullshit smiles that made him want to punch himself.

“Ahhhh-haaa,” Brisket Five laughed. “I suppose she might not have told you she has felt that invisible tether that pulls at her heart when you're there and even when you’re not, but Drunk Five’s stories can’t all be bullshit, and I can attest to it because I feel it right now. Something tells me that she’s the special one here, not us, and it has nothing to do with marigold.”

Pulling his lips to the side, looking upset, Greeter Five said your name, pulling your attention his way again. “Hey, why don’t we let them talk about all this crap alone? I am sick of the fighting, and I bet you are hungry for something that is actually edible.”

Getting up, he offered you a hand. When you got nothing from your Five other than silence, the warmth of the Greeter’s fingers curled around yours, sliding you out of the booth to join him.

Directing you towards the display case filled with pies, Greeter Five said, “It really is a lucky day. There’s one more piece of strawberry fluff with your name on it.”

Behind you, Brisket Five leaned into your Five’s ear, talking extra quietly. “Look, you’re the first to ever come in together, and I think that means it’s time to end this the only way we can. Our family doesn’t have to make it to the end to get what you want, just the people we love do. We are linked to them, and them to us by something none of us can explain but it is real. Maybe that matters, and maybe it won’t, but at least they will live, and this will stop,” he said, eyeing you as the other Five’s intentionally dominated your attention so you didn’t hear that part.

Your Five’s eyes widened as he realized what the other him meant.

“All your numbers and asshole logic aren’t getting you anywhere but here again, buddy. You need to let go,” Brisket Five added, trying to smile again but the sadness in his eyes and the pain he felt about it was impossible to hide.

Getting up, he left your Five alone at the booth.

“Just do as that old dipshit said to do this time,” the Five with Dolores yelled out, loudly slurping his margarita to the bottom of the glass.

“Why don’t you give me Dolores and you got stick your dick the pickle jar again and fuck it,” a particularly grumbly looking Five interjected before going back to scowling at his crossword puzzle.

“Five, what do they mean, don’t try to save the world this time?” you said, breaking away from Greeter Five as you came rushing back.

Just then, Drunk Five started in again, this time getting up from his booth, heading your way, cutting you off. “Don’t worry. We can help. We will come with you this time. Then-”

He almost fell, his hand swinging out to catch him on the divider between booths.

Dizzily looking at all the others, then you again, he said, “We will keep the Cleanse busy, distracting it, and we will get Ben and Jennifer out of it.” He looked at your Five, a silent understanding happening between him as he lied. “You get everyone back to the academy. Viktor will have time to pull this shit out of you, dump it, and then you get the hell out of there. If you win, we all do.”

Reaching down, instead of vomiting, which he looked like he might do, Drunk Five pulled up two heavy double barrel shotguns that you had no idea were sitting next to the mostly quiet CrossWord Five who was now also suddenly getting up, pulling two guns from his shoulder straps.

“I’m in,” the Waiter Five said, dropping his coffee carafe in favor of the potato peeler he just pulled out of the bin full of dirty dishes sitting on the next table.

Greeter Five walked over to the fire box, smashing open the case, pulling out the ax. “Fine, Let’s fuck that blob up,” he said while giving you an extra cute grin that left you even more speechless over how quickly they’d all came together.

Almost all the Fives were suddenly packing, Brisket Five included, grinning at you from over by the check-in desk as he twirled a large butcher knife around, pointing it at his head, trying to get you to laugh over how crazy they all were.

Drunk Five swooped in, wobblily kneeling at your feet, his puppy dog eyes imploring you to believe him. “It’s going to be okay. I promise.” Feeling drawn to him, as you shakily wiped a tear from his cheek, he said, “I won’t let you down this time.” Letting your fingers gently run across his temple, Drunk Five’s eyes fluttered closed, his long lashes fanning his cheeks. “I still feel it,” he whispered as that spark of something lit up inside you, his eyes opening to meet yours, his focus entirely on you, unwavering as he was in his heart. “We’ve got this, sweetheart, we always did. Just hold on to me, okay? In here. Don’t forget how much I love you and we will always be together.”

He reached up, placing his hand over yours so he could pull it over his heart.

As your Five slowly, almost hypnotically moved in, looking down at the other him with a heartsick look in his eyes, Drunk Five handed the much older, very resolute looking Five who’d also came over his other shotgun.

“Enough fucking around! Time to end this, boys!” the white-haired patriarch said.

~~~

“See you on the other side,” Brisket Five said, while giving you both a look that was nothing like his haughty expressions he’d been maintaining for most of the conversation inside the deli. To you, his small smile seemed to be saying something by saying nothing at all, then he ducked into the other train car that the other Five’s had chosen to ride in.

Stepping in the doors you had come out of when you got there, you watched them a car over from yours, all the different versions of the man you loved as they found their places to either sit or stand, none of them saying a word.

They looked like they meant business, like the violent ax swinging, hell bent on retribution kind of business, and it was a stark contrast to how out of control they’d been acting inside the deli.

“I promise, we can do this,” Five said, his eyes not leaving yours even though he was aware he had an audience in the next train over.

His heart was beating so hard. He felt like he could jump out of his skin but there was no way he was going to tell you that.

He knew all of the Fives felt it. It was in the air all around them, permeating every fiber of their being. It was the accumulation of all of it. The weight of their endless devotion to the people they loved, the pain of enduring so much for so long, and it was the bitter taste of so much loss and the loss that had yet to come.

You let your fingers trail down the gully between Five’s ab muscles until they touched his waist. “Five, I am so scared.”

He wasn’t anymore.

He looked over at the other car, then back at you, shaking his head. “We have about five minutes, give or take. What should we do with it?”

You said nothing, and tears started to run down your cheeks.

Five kissed you.

His eyes met yours right as you grabbed at his leather belt, pulling his hips against you.

“I need you,” he said, his voice breaking.

The smallest noise escaped his mouth as you snaked your body against his. The warmth of your body flooded his senses, tingling from his toes all the way back to his groin.

The rapid rise and fall of your chest matched his as you kissed him with equal desperation, shaking him to the core.

With a suppressed moan, Five took you by the shoulders, pushing you down on the seat. Coming down to his knees in front of you, making is where some of the others couldn’t see you, he settled his body between your legs.

He pushed your knees apart even more, then locked his mouth on yours again, his tongue thrusting inside urgently.

Clutching his shirt, you slid closer to him, until your hips met his.

Reaching for his pocket, Five closed his eyes and swallowed.

He pulled out the condom Diego gave him. Realizing what he was about to do, you snatched it and chucked it over his head, then immediately started unlatching his belt, sliding his zipper down to gather him in your palm.

“There is nothing that can ever come between us,” you said, nearly repeating what all the other Five’s had been saying but saying it meaning so much more than that.

Five’s body involuntarily fell forward as you stroked him.

“I love you,” he breathed. It came out unsteady, a streak of hot liquid slipping from his eye no matter how much he willed it not to.

You fisted the back of his pants, drawing him closer, the deed earning you a low mewl emanating from deep within his throat.

You kissed him and brought your legs up around his waist.

His pants, already undone, slipped down his thighs, catching in a bunch of material above his knees as his cock bobbed between your bodies, fully erect.

Five moved his forehead against yours. He lifted the bottom of your dress up as you swept a finger over his leaking slit, spreading the liquid gathering down his shaft.

He hissed with pleasure.

Unable to stop himself even though he saw Brisket Five peeking over his shoulder for a second, Five took his cock in hand, and getting ready, your hands moved down behind you on the seat to keep you from slipping backwards. You arched your back, letting out a broken whimper the first time Five’s cock slid up against you.

“Holy shit,” Five breathed in on shaky air as he rubbed his tip across your clit a few times, then he positioned his cock lower, his slicked thickness gently pushing and prodding as he worked it over your hole like he’d never allowed himself to do before.

“Fuck,” he cursed, because that was exactly what it felt like as he tried to sink into your warmth but the tightness starting to surround him instantly fought back.

Gripping his length with more determination, his hand trembling, Five pushed harder. Sweat breaking out all over his body, he felt the pressure surrounding the sensitive bulb of his swollen flesh as your body started to let him inside. He felt your body clenching repeatedly around him as it adjusted and even that was almost enough to do him in.

“Tell me if I’m hurting you,” he anxiously breathed.

Biting your lip as you tried to relax, looking up at him staring back through the dark strands of hair dangling over his eyes, you nodded, encouraging him along with one of your hands winding around his neck and your other sliding around his hip, gently but firmly pushing him to take more.

Five’s lower lip quivered as he did, his hand gripping his base moved out of the way as he opened you, moving so cautiously, as he forced your body to take him.

You sucked in a breath as his hips jerked forward just a little, then back again.

“Oh, fuck, that felt- Fuck,” he groaned.

He drove in, kissing you for just a moment before breathlessly breaking away again.

“We stay together until the end,” you frantically said, “You and me. If you go, I go.”

Five knew why you were saying this. He knew your heart was breaking, just like his. They were all trying to hide the truth, but you saw right through him.

You always did.

There was only a fraction of space between your faces. With your breathy words on his lips, Five whispered back, “You and me, always, love.”

He slipped out and then back in, bottoming out in one swift motion.

You gasped and he pulled back, then completely stilled until you quickly moved your hands down his back, pulling at his waistcoat so he was forced to dig himself inside you again.

“Don’t stop,” you begged.

One more small thrust in and out and again he buried himself full deep, jolting your body as his fingers dug into your ass, locking you to him as much as he could.

Like he needed air to breathe, Five needed to be a part of you in every way he could in the minutes he had left. Audience of horny Fives be damned. Your heart and your soul was his.

He had to bury his face in your neck to stem the flow of his breathy curses over what his body was feeling as it took yours, claiming it completely.

“You feel amazing,” he puffed against your skin. It took him a few seconds to regain himself, but when he did, you brought your hand up to his hair, slowly carding it through your fingers as you drew his lip to yours. Your kiss was soft and soothing. After a moment, his body reactively started moving again, and your kiss deepened, letting him know he should keep going.

Five pulled his hips back, withdrawing halfway before pushing back into your perfect warmth as slowly as he could manage. But as you started to lift your hips to meet his, his pace got faster, and more confident, and again it felt so fucking good that he had to pull back from your lips to breathe. He went for the skin at your neck instead, tasting it, licking you as he nipped and sucked and wildly drove himself into you with his hips rocking and his thighs thrusting forward, the tips of his dress shoes digging into the floor as he wildly plowed you.

Fighting the urge to let himself come, Five growled, “Fuck this world, and fuck all of them, you are mine!”

The cheers of the other Five’s hearing that, all of them unable not to notice the show he was putting on, only made your Five get louder, increasing the madness of it all.

“You are mine!” he said again, getting angrier, but also not, because his diabolically cute grin said something else entirely.

“Five!” you cried out as he fucked into you harder and harder, shaking your brains loose.

Out of his mind, but somehow still in control enough to bite back the pressure building, Five suddenly started to move in slow, deep thrusts that were sweet and intense, and at first, very calculated. That abrupt change got you moaning like he was slowly killing you, your fingers clawing at his ass as he undulated his cock in and out, deliberately dragging his tip back and forth where it made you cry out his name the loudest.

Despite Five’s valiant efforts to control himself and prolong the thing you’d both been denied for so long, he could no longer hold back when your heels dug into his back.

When he dipped forward, laying over you as much as he could while fucking you on edge of the bench, you kissed the hollow of his throat, your hot tongue slick against his skin.

Just like he finally knew what he needed to do, Five knew that no matter what, he would always have this, even if you didn’t remember it.

A weight lifting that he’d been crushed by for so long, wrapping his arms around your waist, Five lifted you forward with animal-like passion, bucking into you.

Like free falling, the heat of your release caressed his length as he continued to swiftly move in and out. You were lost, eyes closed, your mouth wide against his shoulder, silently crying out as your walls trembled around him, the feeling of ecstasy not letting up because he wasn’t.

Not until his rhythm began to break and Five could no longer hold back the rising tide did he tell you to look at him.

He locked eyes with you, his hips shunting forward in a stutter of broken motion he could no longer control. “You are the best part of me,” he panted as he started spilling deep inside you.

The whisper of his name on your lips served to move his hips once more, then as you cried his name, another spasm came to close his eyes as his body weakened and his face dropped to the side of your neck.

For almost a minute, Five stayed in that spot, waiting for his heart to slow. But all too quickly he had to withdraw.

As you were both righting your clothes, one of the Fives banged on the glass between the cars. “Button it up! Time to go!”

The train was slowing.

Placing your hand on his cheek as you fought back the start of more tears, you gave Five that beautiful smile that would forever touch his soul.

~~~

Before setting out of the train, Brisket Five put a hand on Drunk Five’s back as he said, “It’s been an honor watching you slowly trying to drown yourself.”

Pulling his eyes from the floor, Drunk Five looked at the other him who was holding the butcher knife and smiled. “It’s been awful eating that shit you call food.”

Swinging his ax to his shoulder, Greeter Five kicked the Five with Dolores on his lap in the ankle. “You watched the whole thing, didn’t you? Just look at your pants,” he said pointing to his crotch and the boner that he was trying to use their beloved mannequin to hide.

“What,” he questioned innocently while turning Dolores towards him, looking for support. “Can’t blame a guy for being curious… If you fuckers wouldn’t have gotten jealous and started beating off like a bunch of pervs over it, Dolores was game to join in the fun. Weren’t you, honey?”

Smirking as he pushed his back off the side of the train, one of the Card playing Fives let out a little laugh. “He’s got a point.”

“I am not going to miss you fuckers,” Old Five said, smirking at he rolled his eyes.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Big Damnit here guys...

Okay so readers, I am so sorry, but Tumblr cut me off here and won't let me post more, and all we have left is Z!!!! It's so frustrating because it almost all fit on here. The end is worth it I promise, so please read it, it's not that long. I am not doing a separate post on here to end it because those get lost in the ether. So, please forgive me and head over to A03 to this link (Chapter 26, Z-Zion) to go directly to the final part of this story.

Long live the Umbrella Academy and its awesome fans. ❤️

Share your thoughts if you like but just know one way or another, thank you for reading this. It means so much to me.

Link to my MasterList

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bitchesuntitled · 1 day

Text

Broken Hearts Mended

Pairing: Dieter Bravo x F!Reader, Joel Miller x F!Reader

Warnings/Tags: 18+ Minors, get out! Language(at this rate, just expect it. That's just me), Pregnancy, Dieter trying to fix his past, sad!Dieter, dad!Dieter, smut, pinv, oral(m!recieving), wedding crasher!Dieter, TIME TRAVEL, OFC

a/n: This is for the Roll-A-Trope Challenge by @burntheedges I got Time Travel! Never dabbled with that before but it was fun and sheesh, Kate- this is the longest story I've ever written! This could be considered a part two of Some Broken Hearts Never Mend but can be read as a standalone! The OFC is based off my bestie IRL @hessofather - thank you for being you, for helping me with the witchy stuff, and love ya bitch! Thank you @beefrobeefcal and @jay-zzle(for the moodboard &) for your eyes on this one! Love you both!

Masterlist||AO3

dividers by @saradika-graphics

He’d been staring at the clock for an eternity or what felt like an eternity. Today was the day, the day Dieter’s been dreading since he found out.

Today is your wedding day.

In typical Hollywood fashion, a friend of a friend let it slip when the wedding was. Saturday afternoon, 3 pm to be exact. Mark was supposed to be on standby to ensure Dieter stayed at home today and didn’t do something stupid, but what Mark didn’t expect was to be locked in the pantry with Dieter sitting outside.

“Dieter, come on man,” Mark pleaded, “Think about this before you do something dumb.”

“Would it really be that bad if I went?!”

“Yes,” Mark sighed, “Dieter, you need to let her go. If you go to that hotel all that will happen is you make a fool of yourself and embarrass her!”

“Embarrass her?!” Dieter scoffs, looking at the closed door with offense. “I got sober for fucks sake! For her and she didn’t even let me see my kid! Instead that bastard is playing daddy to my Lexi! My peanut!”

“Dieter!” Mark shouts, slamming his fists against the door, “Let me out and let’s talk face-to-face about this.”

“Sheesh Mark, calm down,” Dieter says, glancing at the clock, “If I go, maybe she’ll see me and remember how much she loved me. I gotta try right?”

“Dieter, please,” Mark sighs, “Don’t do this. It’s not a good idea.”

“I have to try, Mark.”

“Damn it, Dieter!”

More punches are being thrown at the pantry door as Dieter slowly backs away from it.

“If I don’t try now, I’m just going to spend the rest of my life wondering what if!” Dieter shouts, “Mark, you gotta understand that man.”

—

Dieter was able to bribe a waiter into letting him in through the kitchen, he had tried the front but the hotel staff quickly guided him right back through the front door. The place was gorgeous, decked in all navy blue, gold, and white, and the flower petals spread down the aisle he stood in front of. Joel is standing next to the officiant, fiddling with the gold cufflinks on his wrists. The bridal song began and everyone looked back at Dieter.

He stood there frozen, unsure of what to do until he heard the door behind him open, he turned slowly. There you were, standing before him in a gorgeous flowy white gown.

“Dieter?” You asked, confusion painted across your face before it turned into a silent rage.

“I- I need-“ he began, trying to think of what to say.

“Jesus Christ,” your father muttered under his breath before shouting for security.

“Wait-“ Dieter gasped, as two men in suits grabbed his arms pulling him towards the hall, “Please! Let me just ha-“

“Wait!,” you shout panicked, before clearing your throat, “Sorry everyone,” you announce, “Let me just take care of this real quick then we’ll be ready to get this wedding started.”

Dieter was dumbfounded. You were actually going to listen to him. You wanted to hear what he had to say. He knew it! He still had a chance. You let go of your dad’s arm and looped it around Dieter’s, leading him out into the hallway with a polite reassuring smile to your guests.

In another life, this would be the way it went. You in your gorgeous wedding dress, walking down an aisle on his arm, smiling politely to your guests before he whisked you away to ravish you the entire night. Once the doors closed, you stepped away from him clearing your throat.

“The fuck do you think you’re doing here?” You hiss, the rage in you tipping over its boiling point.

“I wanted to-“ he starts softly before you interrupt him again.

“Wanted what Dieter?!” You seethe, “Did you not feel it was enough when you showed up at my home? My work? Lexi’s fucking school?”

“I didn’t think-“ he winces, knowing immediately those are the wrong words with the laugh you let out.

“No Dieter, you didn’t fucking think,” you scoff, “You’ve spent the past six years not fucking thinking and it’s shown plenty!”

“Baby-“ Dieter tries again.

“Don’t you dare call me that!” You stop him, “Dieter, you need to leave. I’m marrying Joel and Lexi finally has a dad who wants her and loves her.”

“But I do love her,” Dieter says, tears blurring his vision, “That’s why I stayed away from you both. I love you both so much, I didn’t want you wrapped up in my shit and I’m trying to change!”

You shake your head with a sigh.

“You just have to give me another chance,” he whimpers, the tears steadily falling down his face.

“No,” you say quietly, “You’ve had enough chances.”

—

You were officially done with his shit and let him know he’d be hearing from your lawyers on Monday. His heart broken, his mind felt numb, and Dieter’s legs began to move. He felt like pins and needles were pricking all over his skin, trying to ignore the feeling, he began to speed up. He’d be fine as long as he kept moving. His chest felt like there was a weight on it, trying to catch his breath.

He needed to find somewhere with air conditioning, maybe it’s the heat finally getting to him. Standing outside a store called Vixen’s. Huh, he thought, a sex shop would be the perfect way to distract his mind. A dinging sound chimes as he enters the store.

“Good afternoon!” A cheery feminine voice calls out from the back, “I’ll be right with you.”

Dieter stood next to a counter, focusing on his breathing. The place smelled like sage, rose, and lavender. This was definitely not a sex shop. His hands held onto the counter in front of him as he closed his eyes and took in the sweet aroma of the shop. Whatever it was, it was working to help calm him down.

“Sir?” A feminine voice called out to him, “Ya alright?”

Dieter looked towards the voice to see a short woman with auburn hair standing next to a door that stated Employees Only. He gave a short nod, signaling he was okay. He just had to focus on his breathing.

“Fuck!” She gasped, flailing her hands in the air, “It’s you! C’mere!”

“Huh?” Dieter asked in confusion, trying to catch his breath.

“C’mere!” She said more sternly, motioning for him to follow her, “Been expectin’ you to show up any day now and you’re finally here!”

Dieter began to follow the stranger apprehensively down a hall, passing multiple doors, as she began to talk more.

“The names’ Willow Vixen. Now that you’re here, maybe I can finally stop using the rose.” She states, wrinkling her nose, “Not my favorite but that’s what the ball suggested for your arrival. Considering it doesn’t give me much of a time frame I figured fuck it and just started making sure it was around at all times.”

“Ball?” Dieter asks, his legs taking over, continuing to follow Willow until they meet a door that has her name on it, “I’m sorry but do I know you?”

“Not yet, Dieter,” Willow hums, grabbing a key ring from her belt loops, and unlocking the door, “When we get inside I’ll explain.”

Once she opened the door, he was hit with a powerful smell of sage and rosemary. She ushered him in, closing the door behind her.

“Sit,” she commanded, pointing to a table in the middle of the room.

He wasn’t sure what he was even doing here. Following a stranger into some back room of a store sounded like the beginnings of some ritual sacrifice and by the way her office was set up, it looked like it, too.

The room was dim before Willow fluttered about lighting candles while humming, beginning to shed more light on her space. He could see a table covered in an emerald green cloth with four chairs surrounding it, and a crystal ball sat upon a perch in the middle of it with dozens of candles surrounding it.

“So… uh,” Dieter hesitates, hands scrubbing through his hair. The fuck is he doing here? He should leave. Willow continues to hum while she lights more candles by a thick open book sitting on a desk, flipping through the pages before she stops.

“Ah-ha!” She announces with a joyous clap, “Would ya look at that! Found it on the first try.”

She looks up to see Dieter still standing by the door with a nervous energy about him.

“Gah damn it, Dieter,” she grumbles, approaching him, “Ain’t gonna hurt ya. I’m here to help ya. Now go on, sit,” Ushering him to the table, lightly patting him on the shoulders, “Let me just get a few more things ready before I truly start this process, alright?”

“Help me?” He asks, watching Willow move in the space around them. She grabbed a bottle and began spritzing it around the chair he sat in.

“Duh, I told ya,” Willow said with a raised eyebrow smirking, “Oh wait, maybe I didn’t? Did I?”

Dieter looked at her in bewilderment, continuing to watch as she placed the spray bottle of liquid beside him and grabbed incense instead, placing them in their holders and lit them.

“T- tell me what?” He asked nervously, placing his hands in his lap and beginning to fidget with his fingers.

“My apologies, sir.” Willow bows, “I am a witch! Well, kind of a-a witch. I’m a witch practicin’. My great great great great grandma was one and it kinda skipped a generation or two cause my folks decided we should follow Jesus instead. Ya in any sort of religion? I’ve been involved with… too many.”

Dieter shakes his head. Fuck, this is how it ends, he was right. She’s gonna sacrifice him.

“I’m spraying lavender right now to try and get your ass to calm down,” she states matter of factly picking the bottle up again, Dieter flinches when she sprays some directly onto his hair, “Your energy is thick with nerves. Now what was I sayin’?” She asked, stopping in place and staring at the table cloth.

“Oh yeah! Sorry, I have a disorder where my memory ain’t the best. Think Dory from Findin’ Nemo,” Willow smiles brightly, “I’m a witch and this here crystal ball-” she taps a finger against the clear ball in the middle of the table, “-showed me to be expectin’ ya.”

“Sh-showed you?” Dieter asks, cocking his head to the side with wide eyes.

“Yeah!” Willow exclaims, “Showed me you comin’ here, us doing some magic and then you fuckin’ off to whatever it is you’re tryin’ to change!”

“Wait,” Dieter stops, eyes widening, “What am I changing?”

“Beats me,” Willow shrugs, fanning the incense around before plopping down in the chair across from him, “Alls I know is I’m supposed to help ya get there.”

Dieter looks at her and then the ball in between them. It starts sparkling inside as the clear crystal becomes dense with a weird purple fog, swirling around the inside of the crystal.

“Oh shit! It’s doin’ the thing again!” Willow shrieks in excitement, bouncing in her chair, “I told ya the thing showed me what I needed to do! Maybe it’s trying to show you what you need to do.”

Dieter stares at the ball before the swirling fog reveals you lying in your shared bed years ago. He remembers this morning clear as day, it’s the morning before he went to that stupid party and relapsed.

“It’s her,” he chokes back a sob, “What kind of sick fucking trick is this?!”

“It’s not a trick!” Willow protests, “I’m tellin’ the truth! Just watch the damn thing!”

Dieter continues watching the fog swirl within the ball, seeing himself join you in bed. Dieter perks up as he watches himself undress you and begin worshiping you like the goddess you are. Willow clears her throat turning her head.

“Ope,” she murmurs, cheeks becoming flaming red, peering at the ceiling out of privacy, “Don’t think I’m supposed to watch this bit.”

Dieter is entranced, watching the two of you, reliving that entire day. Except in this version he never leaves the house, he stays home with you instead. That’s what he should have done, stay home and hang out with you instead of go to that stupid fucking party.

The purple fog disappears and the crystal becomes clear again, leaving Dieter even more confused.

“Wait!” He shouts, gripping the ball with both hands, “Come back! Show me more!”

“Now hold on just a damn minute,” Willow scolds, pushing his hands off the ball, “Don’t break my damn ball. It’s the only one I got.”

“But I want to see more,” Dieter lets out a pathetic whine, “How can I see more. Make it show me!” He demands.

“Not how it works, bub,” Willow huffs, “But, from the looks of it that’s where the ball wants me to send you.”

“S-s-send me?” Dieter stutters out with a scoff, “How are you gonna send me back to the happiest time of my life?”

“Time travel, duh,” Willow snorts, “The hell do you think you showed up here for?”

He looks at her with bewilderment. How the fuck is this girl supposed to help him go backwards in time?

“Now, now,” Willow says, clicking her tongue in annoyance, “I recognize that look. Ya don’t believe me,” she adds with a roll of her eyes, “I’ve got everything ready.”

She stands making her way to a small tea kettle, filling it with water from a jug before placing it on her desk beside the book. Willow moves through her office with a practiced ease, opening and closing cabinets, grabbing the things she’ll need for this ritual. Taking one last glance at the book on her desk before clearing her throat.

“Now, I’m gonna brew this tea for you to drink. It’s got some cloves, rosemary, garlic and cinnamon in it,” she explains, plunking and sprinkling the herbs in the kettle, “Oh shit!” She laughs, opening a desk drawer to pull out a small hot plate, “Ain’t gonna get very far without boilin’ it.”

Dieter watches as she softly hums, flitting about the room as the tea gets ready.

“Now, I got white sage and mullein burning already,” Willow explains pointing at each, “Helps with clarity.”

He nods, still confused and a little scared. He has no clue how this is supposed to actually work. Time travel isn’t real, this isn’t some movie like Back to the Future. Although, he thinks tilting his head, would be pretty cool to drive the DeLorean. His thoughts are interrupted by Willow chanting something over the tea right as the kettle lets out a shrill whistle. Willow pours the tea into a little cup bringing it over to the table, placing it in front of Dieter.

“Ain’t gonna lie to ya,” Willow grimaces, “Probably gonna be nasty as fuck with the herbs I had to use but it’s what the book said to use.”

“Probably not the worst thing I’ve ever ingested,” Dieter shrugs, “So how’s this work? Do I just drink it?”

Willow nods, “I said the spell, I have the scents going, all you have to do is keep an open mind,” she continues with a smile.

Dieter nods, staring at the cup. What’s the worst that could happen? His life is already fucked. At least he can say he tried if it doesn’t work, grabbing the cup and downing the drink. Willow was right- it’s rancid, he begins to cough placing the cup back on the table.

“Now what?” Dieter asks with a grimace, glancing at Willow.

“Now,” a grin spreads across her face, “We wait.”

- - -

The sun’s rays shone through the curtains causing Dieter to wince as he woke the next morning. How was he supposed to know if the ritual worked? Willow said they just had to wait. Wait for what though? Hearing a soft groan next to him he peeked one eye open at the sound, looking around he noticed this wasn’t his room. Well, more so not his room anymore. The soft yellow walls and white curtains had all been replaced after you left with dark grays.

Glancing next to him, he felt like his heart stopped. There you were, snoring softly next to him. Maybe he was dreaming and his mind decided to torture him, it wouldn’t be the first time it had happened but then you reached for him. Your hand laying on his chest above his heart. Dieter didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, shout with joy or all three at the same time. His palm reaches out, gently touching your face.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispers to your sleeping form as he rubs the apple of your cheek with his thumb, “I was such a fucking idiot.”

You crinkle your nose and let out a huff as you sleep. A grin plastered across his face, he can’t believe it actually worked. If he ever sees Willow again he’s going to have to thank her. She may not know what for, with traveling back in time, but he’ll thank her anyway.

“You’re staring,” you let out a sleepy grumble.

“Can’t help it,” Dieter whispers, grinning like an idiot. You open an eye to look at him, raising your brows.

“Why are we whispering?” You giggle, scooting closer to lay your head on his chest, listening to the thump of his heartbeat.

Dieter takes a deep breath into your hair, shrugging his shoulders, wrapping his arms around you and holding you tight. Afraid if he loosens his grip you’ll be gone again. His hands begin to roam under your shirt, feeling the softness of your skin, the roundness of your belly. You’re still pregnant, grinning to himself as he sits up and moves you to lay on your back, rubbing his hands down to your hips. You’d always complained of them hurting with the added weight of Peanut, their little Lexi who would be coming into this world.

“Mmm,” you let out a soft moan, as his hands gingerly massage your hips, your fingers digging into his thigh, “Dieter.”

He couldn’t stop smiling, unable to believe this is actually happening again. Being with you, being back in your shared home, being here during the happiest time of his life. Dieter leans over your belly, pulling up your shirt to expose your bump, placing a soft kiss there.

“I love you,” he breathes out, his voice cracking before trying to get a grip on his emotions.

“Babe?” You ask, concern lacing your voice as you reach for him, “What’s wrong?”

“Missed you,” he says, kissing your bump again, “Both of you.”

“Babe,” you laugh, “All we did was go to sleep.”

“Yeah,” Dieter huffs, rolling his eyes, “Just went to sleep,” he hums, lifting your shirt more to uncover your breasts, his lips placing a trail of open mouthed kisses until he meets one of your nipples, sucking it into his mouth. You let out a soft hiss as your fingers tangle in the soft waves of his hair. There’s one thing Dieter knows he can’t fuck up, sex. He’ll figure the rest out later.

You moan as he spends equal time on each of your breasts, sliding a hand down your front into your underwear. Dieter lets out a groan when he feels the wetness already collected there. He needs this, to you it was yesterday, to him it’s been six years since he’s felt you around his cock.

“I need you,” Dieter grunts, pushing you on your side, flopping down behind you and pushing his boxers down. His stiff member pushing into your ass.

“Jesus, Dee,” you giggle as he quickly pushes your underwear down enough to get to your core, “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Please don’t,” he whispers into your neck, slipping his length between your folds, coating himself in your arousal. Dieter grips his dick, slowly pushing into you, simultaneous moans spilling from both of you.

“Fuck, baby,” you moan, throwing your head back against his shoulder, “So fucking big.”

Dieter pants, feeling your walls constrict around him, stopping himself when he’s fully sheathed inside of you. He doesn’t want this to end before it’s even begun.

“Oh god,” he whimpers, grabbing your hand, lacing your fingers together, “Missed this.”

“Dieter,” you pant, hips squirming against him, “I need you to move, baby.”

He nods against your head, slowly pulling out, his tongue laving against your pulse point as he sharply pushes back in.

“Fuck,” you cry out, gripping his hand tighter. He knows it’s your favorite so he keeps the same rhythm, pulling out slowly before plunging back in. He can’t stop the words flowing from his mouth as he thrusts into you. His pace grows quicker as he speaks.

“Please don’t leave me,”

“I need you,”

“I love you,”

“I won’t fuck up again,”

“I promise,”

“I love you.”

Every phrase punctuated with a sharp thrust into your wet heat, producing a moan from your lips.

“Dieter,” you moan, “I’m gonna come, baby, I’m gonna-“

Dieter can feel the fluttering of your walls, gripping you tighter he moves faster, unable to control himself any longer.

“Fuck,” Dieter groans, “Look at me, baby.”

Your head lolling against his shoulder as his hips snap into you, he grips your face turning you to face him. Slotting his lips over yours, smothering your cries as your orgasm rips through you.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Dieter grunts, grinding his hips into you as your walls constrict around him, warm ropes of his come painting your insides. He kisses you softly while both of you try to catch your breath.

“You okay?” You ask, eyes gazing up at him.

Dieter nods, keeping his arms wrapped around you.

“Bad dream,” he murmurs into your hair.

“I’m sorry babe,” you give him a sympathetic smile, giving him a quick kiss before moving off of him with a hiss, “Wanna go look at stuff for the nursery?”

“Hmm,” Dieter hums, wrapping his arms around you again before you can leave the bed, “Let’s stay in bed all day.”

“We just woke up,” you squeak out with a giggle, as he pulls you back against him, “Already need a nap?”

“After that workout?” He laughs, kissing your neck, “Uh… yeah!”

Dieter’s eyelids are heavy. He felt calm, more at peace than he has been for years, having you back in arms, the comforting weight of you next to him. The hint of your perfume surrounding him, causing him to quickly drift back to sleep.

- - -

“Dieter wake up!” Mark shouts, “Time to go.”

Dieter jumps, how long had he been asleep? The room is dark as Mark flings the gray curtains open allowing the sun to burst in.

“What the fuck?” Dieter groans, covering his face with the pillow next to him, blocking the sun from his eyes. His sleep-addled brain hasn’t registered what’s happened.

“Come on, man,” Mark says more sternly, grabbing the covers to pull off of Dieter, “Gotta get Peanut.”

“Peanut?” Dieter asks, flipping the pillow off his face, sitting up taking in his surroundings, “No, no, no. This isn’t right.”

He looks around at the gray bedding, the curtains, the walls. Where’s your house? He was just there, wasn’t he? Was it just a dream after all?

“Yes. Peanut,” Mark says, giving him a confused look, “Lexi, Your daughter.”

“I know who Peanut is, Mark.” Dieter snaps, “But she won’t let me see her.”

“Dieter,” Mark scolds, “Do not tell me you've been using again.”

“What? No!”

“You’ve had your daughter every other week for years now.” Mark explains, “Are you sure you're not using anything?”

“You mean, I have custody?” Dieter asks, beginning to choke up, tears threatening to spill from his eyes.

Whatever Willow did, it worked, well kind of. If Dieter had some sort of custody of Lexi that means he must have changed something going back in time.

“I gotta go see Willow.”

“Willow?” Mark asks, shaking his head, “Dieter, you don’t have time to go on some wild goose chase looking for whoever it is you’re talking about.”

Dieter rushes out of bed, grabbing random clothes he finds throughout his room to throw on, running down the stairs to find his crocs.

“Dieter!” Mark shouts after him.

“I gotta fix it, Mark,” Dieter yells back, finding his car keys, and opening the front door, “I gotta fix it!”

—

“Willow!” Dieter bellows, bursting into Vixen’s, “It worked! It kind of worked!”

He hears a crash a couple aisles over and a gah-damnit!, before Willow appears at the front of the shop.

“The hell you comin’ in here yellin’ about?” Willow asks, rubbing the top of her head, “You made me drop a jar of Dragon’s blood on my damn head. I do not need any more feminine power right now!”

“Sorry,” Dieter chuckles, “I think we need to do the ritual again. I have custody!”

“Custody?” Willow asks, confused.

“Custody of my kid, Willow!” Dieter says, gripping her shoulders giving her a little shake, “All I did was fall asleep, had a crazy vivid sex dream about my girl and now I have custody! I’ve never even met my daughter!”

“Alright, alright, alright,” Willow says, wiggling out of his grip, “Don’t touch me and I don’t wanna hear about your weird sex dreams but come on back.”

He follows her through the dark hall, to her office, the white sage and mullein is lit, the tea is brewed while Willow chants the magic words. He chugs it again. The warm liquid tingled in his throat as it went down.

“Not as bad the second time,” he sputters out through a cough, “Should you make extra so I can take it home?”

“Not how it works,” Willow chuckles, “Gonna have to come see me. Door will always be open.”

“I don’t understand how this is working at all,” Dieter admits, “All I did was go to sleep?”

“Maybe in your sleep is when you’re traveling,” Willow shrugs, “I won’t lie, I’m not sure how it works either. Remember, I’m new at this.”

—

Dieter leaves Vixen’s, feeling on top of the world as he makes his way to your house. He cannot believe he’s about to see his kid for the first time, well maybe not the first time but it is for this Dieter. He pulls up to the address he found saved into his phone under your name, taking a deep breath before getting out of his car.

He makes his way to the front door. It’s a different house than the last time he showed up, hoping you’d forgive him for running off and taking forever to get his shit together. Taking a deep breath he presses the doorbell, hearing the chime inside.

“Daddy!” He hears screeched from behind the door before it opens. A little girl looks up at him with wide brown eyes and soft curls.

“You came to get me!” She exclaims, grabbing his hand with both of her little ones and pulling him through the entrance.

“Y-yeah, I did,” Dieter murmurs, unable to stop staring at the back of her head. Her hair bounces with every step she takes as she continues babbling at him about something.

“Hey Dieter,” you smile at him from the couch with a book in your hand, “She’s been super excited for you to get her this week. Thank you again for keeping her an extra week.”

“Extra week?”

“Please don’t tell me you forgot,” you groan, “Dee, you promised me you wouldn’t forget! This is super important! Joel’s taking me to meet his family.”

“Joel?” Dieter asks, clenching his jaw, fingers flexing of his free hand against his thigh. Of course, Joel is still present.

You study his face, taking in the tension rolling off him in waves, putting your book down and getting off the couch.

“Peanut, baby,” you say in a sweet tone, “Why don’t you go upstairs and get your stuff ready so you can go have fun at Daddy’s?”

“Okay,” she chirps, climbing the steps to the second floor. Leaving the two of you alone.

“Dee?” You ask, approaching him, “You doing okay?”

“Yeah, fine,” Dieter lies with a nod of his head, “Just forgot you have plans next week.”

“Look,” you start, gripping his hand, “I know this whole thing is weird for you but I know one day you’re going to find someone to love,” Dieter’s thumb begins to rub against your fingers softly, noting the absence of a ring on your hand.

“You don’t get it,” Dieter scoffs, shaking his head, “It’s you. I want to be with you.”

“We tried Dieter,” you say, giving him a sympathetic smile, “We just aren’t meant to be.”

- - -

When he wakes next, Dieter is blinded by the brightness of the room, closing his eyes again, not ready to get up.

“Daddy,” a little voice says, poking his cheek with tiny fingers.

He groans feeling a weight on top of his chest. He can hear you humming softly downstairs in the kitchen, little fingers continue poking at his face trying to wake him.

“Peanut,” he chuckles, “Why are you poking my face?”

“Time to wake up!” She announces, standing up on chunky legs before plopping her butt back down. Dieter lets out a grunt before opening his eyes, spotting the soft yellow walls of the room. He can’t stop the smile forming on his face. He’s back to where he wants to be, this timeline seeming to be much better than the present.

“Come here,” Dieter playfully growls, tickling Lexi’s sides. Her high pitched squeals echoing throughout the house.

“Breakfast is ready!”

“Hear that Peanut?!” Dieter asks enthusiastically, “Momma made breakfast!”

“Breakfast!” Lexi shouts, throwing her arms up in the air, “I hungry!”

Dieter scoops her up as he gets out of bed, carrying the toddler with him down the stairs to the kitchen.

“Morning,” you hum, smiling at both of them, “The contractor was supposed to be here earlier but he overslept so said he’d be by soon.”

“Oh?” Dieter asks, setting Lexi down into her booster seat as if he’s done this every day, “Who’d we hire again?”

“Dieter, I swear,” you laugh, rolling your eyes, “You’d be so lost without me.”

“You have no idea,” he murmurs, kissing the side of your head as he grabs the plates of food you had set out, giving one to Lexi and sitting down next to her to eat his own.

“It’s Miller Bros,” you huff, “And no, they’re not like the Mario Brothers from Nintendo,” you add after seeing Dieter’s head perk up. You always were good about knowing what was on his mind.

“So, what’s the plan for today?” Dieter asks, stabbing his fork into the eggs, “Besides the contractor coming, I mean.”

“I don’t know,” you say, shrugging. The rest of the meal went on, the scraping of silverware against plates and random chatter from Lexi the only things to be heard. It was eerie how quiet you were, Dieter stared at you as you scrolled mindlessly on your phone. He can’t pinpoint what’s going on but he feels there is something different here. Lexi finishes her breakfast, scooting off her booster and running off to watch TV.

“Is everything okay?” Dieter asks, fidgeting with the fork in his hand, he can’t risk losing you but he needs to know the answer.

“No,” you admit quietly, “I just- I don’t know what to do anymore Dee.”

“What do you m-“ he tries, the doorbell chiming interrupting his sentence.

“That must be the contractor,” you sigh, “Wanna start the dishes while I get the door?”

“Uh, yeah,” Dieter nods, “Sure.”

He gathers the dishes, rinsing each item before putting them in the dishwasher, hearing you speak with the contractor.

“I’m so sorry ma’am,” the contractor says with a gruffness in his voice, “Would’a been here earlier but my idiot brother wrote the time down wrong.”

“No worries,” you reply in a cheery tone, “You deserve the extra sleep, you work so hard.”

Dieter hears a deep chuckle from the man and a thank you, you’re too kind darlin’. It makes his stomach twist, he knows who this is. Joel fucking Miller. Can he not escape this guy?

Dieter slams the dishwasher closed, pacing throughout the kitchen. In his present time, the man is there. Now in his supposed past the man shows up too?! He wishes he could call Willow but a quick google search shows that Vixen’s doesn’t exist just yet, groaning as he tosses his phone onto the counter. What is he supposed to do?

He sees through the doorway how you look at Joel, the sparkle in your eyes, the way you seem almost bashful as Joel continues to talk about the most mundane things. Dieter can’t help the idea that’s popped into his head as he makes his way to the couch, sitting with your shared daughter as she watches cartoons.

It wouldn’t be the craziest thing he suggested, he’s Dieter Bravo. He’s definitely said worse things in interviews. He continues watching the two of you, the slight smirk on Joel’s face, the shy smile gracing your own.

Maybe if you fucked Joel you’d get it out of your system.

Dieter sees the attraction to Joel, of course he does. He’s rough, burly, and has that southern charm about him. The way his shirt hugs his biceps, his jeans clinging to his thighs. Joel clears his throat and Dieter snaps his head up, finding Joel staring directly at him, having been caught ogling he can feel his face turning a shade darker. You smile at Dieter, covering your mouth while a giggle escapes your lips.

“I’m gonna get started on the bathroom,” Joel says, eyeing Dieter on the couch, “Don’t let me interrupt your morning, Hollywood,” he adds with a wink.

You make your way to the couch, curling into Dieter’s side.

“So,” you giggle, with that sparkle still in your eyes, “Joel, huh?”

“Joel,” Dieter smirks, wrapping his arm around you, nodding his head. He brings you closer to his side, kissing your temple, before he scoops Lexi into his other side, keeping both his girls close to him.

- - -

“Dieter,” Mark says, giving Dieter’s shoulder a shove, “Need to wake up, you’re home.”

“Home?” Dieter grumbles, scrubbing his hands down his face, he feels metal on one of his fingers. Eyes popping open, he spots a band on his left hand. Married. He’s married?

“Yeah, home,” Mark chuckles, “And don’t worry. I took care of everything so the three of you could spend some time together for the next couple days.”

Dieter grins, saying your name out loud quizzically, he needs to make sure it worked this time. Mark nods, he gets to spend time with his girls. His girls. Dieter hops out of the car, grabbing the duffle bag from the backseat.

“Thanks for the ride Mark,” he hollers as he makes his way to his front door, shaking with nerves as he stands there. Taking a deep breath he opens the door to find the house covered in darkness, flipping on the light he takes in the room before him. Toys, books, and small shoes scattered around. His smile grows wider as he hears a noise from upstairs.

You must be upstairs waiting for him. Dieter sets his duffle bag down next to the door before flinging his crocs off on his way up the stairs. The door of the master bedroom is opened by a jar and he can hear grunts coming from within.

Fuck, Dieter thinks, manly grunts can only mean one thing.

He tiptoes to the door opening it more, seeing you naked on your knees before Joel. His thick cock in your mouth as you bob your head faster along his length.

“S’it baby,” Joel groans, throwing his head back as you take more of him down your throat, “So fucking good at that.”

You’re moaning as he grips your head, holding you on his cock.

“Fuck,” Dieter whispers, feeling his dick twitch with interest, watching you gag on Joel’s length. Joel’s head snaps towards the doorway.

“Ya just gonna stand there Hollywood or ya gon’ join?” Joel smirks, eyeing Dieter up and down, “We’ve missed you.”

You moan, pulling off Joel's cock with a soft pop, twisting your body to see Dieter.

“Hi baby,” you purr at him, “Glad that you’re home.”

Dieter stands there frozen, watching you stroke Joel’s shaft with a sly grin.

This present time is nice, Dieter thinks with a smirk on his face, I can live with this.

#dieter bravo #dieter bravo x f!reader #dieter bravo smut #joel miller #joel miller x reader #joel miller smut #dieter bravo fanfiction #joel miller fanfic #roll a trope challenge

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the-s1lly-corner · 2 days

Note

ADMIN IM NOT THE ANON WHO ASKED BUT I WANT IN ON THIS TOO

Artist!Reader asking the slashers if they can pose naked for a still life drawing please!!/non sexual

Jason, Michael, Brahms being asked to pose nude for artist!reader

chat dont tell anyone this but i keep misspelling michaels name and always rely on the red squiggle line to remind me to fix it i keep putting e before a notes: reader is gn, including their reactions and general feel for the request, non sexual post, short post cws: nudity

JASON

he has mixed feelings about being nude- on one hand he knows its just his natural body, but on the other hand the only time hes seen others nude is when theyre doing something sexual so naturally he cant help but tie that to his own nude body... it also makes him feel... vulnerable to you

if he does agree to it hes not going to be fully nude, and its going to take him a long while to warm up to the idea- dont pressure him, of course... will be wearing the mask, honestly hes probably more likely to get naked in front of you before he takes the mask off

tries his very best to stay still but even if hes covering his bits up he feels flustered under your gaze... even worse if youre really focusing and your face happens to scrunch- shoot him a smile and reassurance and he loosens up enough to not make his position ridged

lots of scars and markings on him to take into consideration... he does feel a certain way if you capture them correctly- a good way, of course!

MICHAEL

honestly? i can see him not caring about you seeing him naked in any context, its just him... so whats the fuss? so he agrees

stands as still as a statue for as long as you need him, it can be hours and he will remain in the same position youve asked him to get into

the mask stays on, though, you can pry it form his cold dead hands... assuming you can catch him dead in the first place... you... may have some explaining to do if someone were to find the piece.. though the odds of them escaping the house alive after is low

pretty solid choice all in all, but good luck getting him to stay if he decides to do something else, hes not going to stop any plans to stand nude for you

BRAHMS

oh you want him naked? hes already stripping down.... hey why arent you getting naked too/hj

keeps changing positions because hes never satisfied, its going to take a minute until he finds something he likes... from laying on his side on the couch to propping his chin on his hand in a mock attempt at the thinker statue- you might have to guide him into a pose that works for you... you... cant help but think it was a ploy to get you to touch and guide him how you want

lots of body hair, if youre not used to drawing it its going to give you a fun little challenge- and its everywhere, too

the only one who might take his mask off, will make eye contact the entire time youre drawing him so hopefully youre fine with that

#jason vorhees x reader #jason vorhees imagine #jason voorhees x reader #jason x reader #jason voorhees imagine #michael myers x you #michael myers imagine #michael myers x reader #brahms heelshire x reader #brahms imagine #brahms heelshire imagine #brahms x reader #slasher x reader #slasher x you #slasher imagine #slashers x reader #slashers x you #slashers imagine

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coco-cinnamon · 3 days

Text

Safe With You | JJ Maybank

୨୧ Warnings: Cursing, smut, angst, soft!sex, unprotected sex, soft!JJ, abuse, violence, has a fluffy ending, 18+ MDNI.

୨୧ Pairings: JJ Maybank x Female Kook Reader

୨୧ Summary: In which JJ helps his girlfriend get away from his father when she goes over to his home to see him.

୨୧ Word Count: 1.5k

୨୧ Author's Note: this fic is from my old blog @babeydollx. this and most of my other fics will be reposted over here to my new blog. Also I fr have no idea why this fic is written from my pov and not Y/N's because that isn't usually how I write but I was too lazy to fix it, sorry! Maybe someday lol.

I arrived at JJ's house to see him. JJ and I rarely got time to see eachother since we were on different sides of the island. My parents always had me busy with some shit all the time. It was exhausting and annoying.

I never had time for JJ anymore and I hated it. So, I decided that I would surprise him at his house to see him. I missed him so much and I knew that he missed me too. I couldn't wait to see JJ again and be in his arms.

I walked up to the house and knocked on the door. I waited for a minute or two but there was no answer. I could hear movement inside of the house so I knew that someone had to be home. You decided to try and open the door.

When I turned the door knob the door easily opened. I slowly walked inside and looked around. The house was messy and I could smell beer and weed. As I looked around, I jumped when I herd glass shatter.

What the hell was going on? Was JJ okay? Was someone trying to hurt him? Millions of questions and thoughts flooded my head as I looked for JJ. The sounds were coming from the backyard. I dashed out to the backyard to see JJ on the ground with an older man on top of him and punching him.

"Stop! Stop hurting him! Please!" I screamed as I ran over to the two men in the backyard. I couldn't pull the older man of of JJ so I grabbed a empty beer bottle off of the ground and smashed it over his head.

Luke stopped punching JJ and got dizzy before collapsing on the ground. JJ sat up on the ground and looked over at me in shock.

"What the hell are you doing here?!" JJ asked.

"I- I came to see you.." I said.

"Didn't I tell you to not come here?" He asked.

"You did but, it had been so long since I saw you so I thought I could surprise you. I didn't expect for any of this to happen. Who is he? Why was he hurting you?" You asked.

"He's, uhm... he's my dad." JJ mumbled. 9

"He's your father?!" I asked in shock. JJ nodded. "Why would he hurt you?!" I yelled.

"I don't know. Cause he is constantly drunk and high I guess." He shrugged. "I'm use to it by now, he's been doing it for years." JJ said. I could feel tears pooling in my eyes. This was absolutely heartbreaking. How could a parent do this to their child?

Before I could say anything else to JJ, someone tackled me to the ground harshly. I screamed when it happened.

"GET OFF OF HER!" JJ yelled. Luke was on top of me. I tried to fight Luke off but he began to hit me hard. I screamed and cried more as he continued to hit me. I could hear JJ yelling and trying to pull his father off of me.

Finally, JJ had got Luke off of me and began to beat the shit out of Luke. I scrambled to my feet and watched the scene go down. I could feel tears streaming down my face still and I was in pain. After a few minutes of JJ beating Luke up, he finally got off of him and ran over to me.

He hugged me and I hid my face in his chest. I finally felt safe. I knew that even if Luke woke up again that JJ would keep me safe, he would make sure that Luke wouldn't hurt me again or worse.

"Are you okay, Y/N?!" JJ asked worried as he checked me for any terrible injuries.

"I'm okay." I said with a sniffle and nodded.

"I am so sorry that this happened to you. You shouldn't have had to see any of this." JJ said with a frown as he hugged me again.

"I'm sorry that you have had to go through this for years.." I said with a frown. "Why didn't you tell me this was happening to you?" I asked.

"Because I didn't want you to worry. This isn't your burden to bare, Y/N.." He said.

"JJ.. we're a team. You can tell me anything and everything, okay? Whatever you are dealing with, I want to be there for you to help you." I said. JJ nodded slowly. "Anyways, did you want to stay the night at my place tonight? My parents are out of town so we have the house to ourselves." I said with a smile.

"That would be nice. Thanks, Y/N." He said with a smile.

"Anytime." I said as JJ and I get ready to go to my house.

We arrived at my house and went inside together. I got both of us a water bottle and then we both went upstairs to my bedroom. I gave him his water bottle and sat down on the bed beside him and we talked for a while. After we both chatted for a bit, we both went silent not knowing what to do next.

"So, what now?" I asked looking over at JJ. He sat there thinking for a moment before looking back over at me. A smirk spread across his face.

"I have a few ideas." He said with a smirk. Before I could ask him any questions he kissed me passionately. I kissed back, melting into the kiss. The was he kissed me was magical. He always knew how to make me feel a certain way without even trying.

As we made out, he gently pushed me down onto my back onto the bed. I ran my hands through his soft, blond hair as the two of us made out. Once we got both of our clothes off and out of the way, JJ was positioning himself between my legs.

I held onto his shoulders tightly and sucked in a breath as JJ slowly pushed inside of me. I gasped and moaned out softly. He groaned quietly as he bottomed out. He then began to thrust into me.

I gently threw my head back and groaned out. I held onto him tightly as he fucked into me, slowly picking up the pace. He continued to slowly pick up the pace until he was fucking me at an ungodly pace.

I moaned out even louder than I did before. I arched my back off of the bed and moaned out, almost screaming at this point. I could feel that familiar knot bubbling in the bottom of my stomach and I knew that I was going to cum any second now. I then clenched around JJ, signaling to him that I was going to cum.

"Fuck, you gonna cum, princess?" He asked as he groaned out.

"Yes, fuck! I'm gonna fucking cum!" I yelled.

"Come on, cum for me." JJ said. With that my eyes rolled back and my legs began to shake as I came hard on JJ's hard cock. He thrusted into me a few more times before coming himself, shooting his load deep inside of me.

JJ pulled out of me and I laid their trying to catch my breath. He laid down beside me and he was also trying to catch his breath. After we both took some time to come down from that, JJ smiled and gently pulled me over and snuggled me.

I giggled when he did so. I always loved to be in JJ's arms. He always made me feel so safe. We both laid there together and talked for awhile while we were tangled in each other's arms. After we both talked and snuggled, we both fell asleep together.

I woke up the next morning to see that JJ was no longer in bed with me. I sat up and rubbed my eyes before looking around my bedroom. No sign of JJ. As I was about to go look around the house for JJ, I saw a note on my bedside table.

I took the note off of the table and unfolded it before reading it.

Thanks for letting me stay the night at your house, Y/N. Again, I am so sorry that you had to witness all of that yesterday and go through that. I promise I will come back later, I just have a few things to sort out with my dad. I love you, Y/N.

- JJ

I smiled at the note that JJ left me. I thought it was so sweet that he had decided to write me a note. I missed JJ so much already but, I couldn't wait to see JJ again.

Author's Note: tysm for reading, lovies!

82 notes · View notes

hungermakesmonsters · 2 days

Text

Devotion & Desire

Chapter Four

Plot summary : When you, a lone omega, move in across the hall from alpha Bucky Barnes, he knows that his life is about to get a lot more complicated, but he has no idea just how much you’re going to turn his life upside down. You’re both devoted to fixing your past mistakes, but will desire for something more get the better of you?

Pairing : Alpha!Bucky Barnes x Omega!Reader

Story Rating : R

Warnings : [This is a fic for 18+ only, minors DNI] Explicit smut and omega heat stuff. All chapters will contain the usual omegaverse and A/B/O tropes, and explicit smut. Please check the warnings on each chapter if you choose to follow this story.

Word Count : 6.2k

A/N : 😅 still trying to walk the fine line between plot and smut

CHAPTER ONE | CHAPTER TWO | CHAPTER THREE

MASTER LIST

Chapter Four

It felt like a fever dream, like some terrible nightmare that started to fade from memory the moment your eyes opened. Only, it wasn’t. It had happened.

Bucky had -

No.

You didn’t even want to think about it. Regardless of how much it had helped, and how much you might have needed it at the time, you felt nothing but regret. Closing your eyes, you were assaulted by vivid memories of the way he’d touched you, the way you’d moaned for him, and perhaps worst of all, the way you’d kissed him.

Hours later, his scent still lingered in the room, mixed with yours, making you feel dizzy, giddy.

Somehow, you managed to pull yourself from the crude little nest you’d throw together with little more than sheets, sofa cushions and a couple of towels.

Everything ached and just the exertion of standing up and pulling on your leggings had your skin coated in a layer of sweat. You felt awful. And, as you took a step away from the bed, you felt like you were going to fall down. But you couldn’t stop. You needed to find Bucky. You needed him to know that it had been a mistake.

Staggering, you made your way to the door, weakly pulling it open and almost falling through it. But then another scent assaulted your senses; another alpha, someone you didn’t recognise.

He looked up at you, an easy smile pulling on his lips and, for a second, there was a faint hint of recognition. You thought you recognised him. But you couldn’t place how or where from. Your mind was a haze, the fog of your heat making it difficult for you to think straight.

“Hey, I’m Sam,” he said, clearly noticing your confusion. “I’m a friend of Bucky’s.”

“Where is he?” You asked, gripping the doorframe for support.

“He needed to go out, didn’t tell me where. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but he’s not exactly an open book,” Sam answered, letting out a warm sort of laugh that told you he and Bucky were close. “He asked me to keep an eye on you, in case you needed anything.”

Your eyes widened, thoughts heading in an unsettling direction. He’d asked another alpha to take care of you?

“Not like that,” Sam quickly clarified, holding up his hands, wanting to make sure there was no confusion. “I brought you some things.”

He gave a nod of his head towards two bags on the floor, a backpack, and a shopping bag filled with womens clothes.

“There’s some of my sister's clothes in there, she’s a beta and a bit bigger than you, but they should be alright,” he explained and you offered a muttered thank you.

You decided to keep your distance, clinging to the door frame while your legs trembled beneath you. Your eyes dropped for a moment, struggling with a strange mixture of feelings welling up inside you.

You felt abandoned by Bucky, even though you didn’t want him around in the first place. And you longed for him, despite hating him. Shaking your head, you tried to clear your mind and stop all the racing thoughts and unsettling feelings. It was just your heat making you feel things that you knew weren’t real, your biology trying to make you into a good omega for an alpha you had the misfortune of craving.

Looking at Sam again, you realised he was watching you, and recognition finally sparked within you.

“Wait... you’re the Falcon... or is it Captain America now?” The confusion was clear in your voice, only sounding half convinced that he was who you believed him to be.

“Just Sam is fine,” he replied with that easy smile.

You weren’t sure what it was about him, but he felt safe, like he was the sort of guy to wear his heart on his sleeve, unlike Bucky who was gruff and guarded. How the two of them could be friends, you couldn’t even begin to understand. So, you asked.

“Why is Captain America helping the Winter Soldier?”

“Because Bucky isn’t the Winter Soldier anymore,” Sam answered. Clearly the look on your face gave away that you didn’t believe him so, a moment later, Sam continued; “he told me what happened to you - to your brother - but you have to understand that while it might have been him, it wasn’t Bucky.”

“You think just because he was under mind control that he’s any less to blame?” You answered back, unintentionally allowing some of your anger to slip into your tone.

“Do you maybe want to take a second to think about what you just said?” Sam asked, his voice still calm and friendly. Your gaze dropped, hating that some part of you knew he was right to call you out. “I know it doesn’t change how you feel and it won’t bring your brother back, but if you think for a moment that it doesn’t hurt him almost as much as it hurts you, then -”

The sound of the door had him falling quiet. For whatever reason, he didn’t want Bucky to know that he’d just been defending him to you.

Stepping into the apartment, Bucky looked at Sam before noticing you standing in the doorway to the bedroom.

“Are you okay?” He asked. “Should you be up?”

“We were just getting to know each other,” Sam decided to answer before you got the chance.

Bucky grimaced. “What did you tell her?”

For a moment he looked at you, seeming so genuinely concerned that his friend might have told you something terrible, and you wondered if that was just how their friendship was or if Bucky was so unsure of himself that all he could do was jump to the worst conclusion.

“He didn’t say anything I don’t already know,” you answered.

It earned a surprised look from Sam, and it was as close as you’d ever get to actually agreeing with what he’d told you. But agreement and acceptance were two different things, and you still hated the Winter Soldier and, by extension, Bucky.

“Where have you been?” You dared to ask Bucky, realising that he was carrying a familiar looking box in his hands.

“I was in the neighbourhood, so I stopped at Gracie’s for a pie,” Bucky said, finally stepping further into the apartment.

“You’ve got ex-Hydra agents looking for you and you stopped for a pie?” Sam asked, like it was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard.

“It’s - it’s really good pie,” you said, your grip tightening on the doorframe, as a wave of cramping hit.

“Did you ask her about Rumlow yet?” Sam asked, seemingly from nowhere.

Your legs almost gave in beneath you at the sound of his name. Pressing yourself against the doorframe was the only thing that stopped you from falling.

Bucky was in front of you in an instant, before Sam was even half out of his seat. He reached for you to steady you, but you did everything you could to pull away and remain standing under your own steam.

“How do you know about Rumlow?” You asked, eyes moving between the two alphas.

“The guys that tried to take you, they used to work with him. We thought Rumlow died in Lagos years ago, but -” Sam explained, stopping when you shook your head.

“No... he’s alive,” you said.

“How does Rumlow fit into any of this?” Sam asked. “How do you know him?”

Your eyes drifted to Bucky, an uncomfortable feeling twisting your guts.

“He promised to help me track down and kill the Winter Soldier but he - he lied to me,” you explained without explaining, not wanting to say anything more than that.

“Why would he be after you now?” Bucky asked.

“I don’t -” a sudden surge of pain cut you off and almost had you doubling over.

Before you could even think to try and stop him, Bucky had hold of you, sweeping you off your feet with ease and carrying you back to bed. Moments later, he was gently placing you back down in your nest.

“You need to rest,” he told you softly, his fingers tenderly brushing your hair away from your face.

You struggled to keep your eyes open and Bucky took that as a sign to leave you. But, when he started to turn, you reached for him, weakly grasping his sleeve.

“We need to talk,” you told him, and watched as he glanced to the door making sure Sam wasn’t listening in. When you were both satisfied that you wouldn’t be overheard, you spoke. “Don’t go getting any ideas about last night. It - it shouldn’t’ve happened, it was just -”

“I get it,” he cut in. “I’m an alpha, you’re an omega. It’s just biology. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Good ‘cause it can't happen again,” you said, barely able to even look him in the eye as you spoke.

His jaw clenched and, for a moment it almost seemed like he was angry - or maybe he was disappointed. It was hard to tell. Either way, it seemed like your words had more of an effect than you’d anticipated.

“Fair enough,” he said, his tone quickly becoming more distant, somehow colder. “I was just trying to help.”

“I don’t need your help.”

It was a stupid thing to say because you both knew it was entirely untrue but, at that exact moment, you believed your own bullshit.

“Clearly,” he remarked sarcastically, “you seem to be doing great on your own.”

When you didn’t seem to have a witty response for him, Bucky pulled away from you, breaking your hold on him, and you watched as he left the room, pulling the door shut behind him. All you could do for a few minutes was stare at the door, wondering if you’d somehow managed to hurt his feelings. “She seems -”

“She’s a pain in the ass,” Bucky finished the thought for Sam, stalking away from the closed door. Sam just watched Bucky for a moment as he grabbed the box with the pie and headed towards the kitchen. He waited a beat before following after, watching Bucky as he removed the pie from the box and cut himself a large slice without offering any to Sam.

“Okay, this is passive aggressive even for you,” Sam remarked, nodding at the pie, indicating he wanted a slice.

Bucky huffed before cutting his friend a slice significantly smaller than his own and stalking back into the den, taking a seat on the sofa to eat.

“Listen, if this is getting to you, I can watch her and you can go do... whatever it is you do when you go off on your own,” Sam offered cautiously as he took a seat.

Sam was too busy breaking off his first bite of pie with his fork to notice the way Bucky was glaring at him but, the moment he looked up, he had his answer.

“Okay,” Sam said, deciding it wasn’t worth starting an argument over, so he changed the subject. “Torres got back to me, he says he still hasn’t found any trace of her or who he really is, but he found out about Berlin...”

The statement was allowed to hang in the air between them, not speaking until Bucky gave some indication that he wanted to hear it and, even when he received that slight nod, Sam hesitated for a moment more.

He pulled out his phone and opened the file that Torres had sent him.

“It was in February, 2009. There was a tech conference in Berlin - but not for your run-of-the-mill iPhones and games consoles. It was all military grade tech,” Sam explained, watching Bucky for any negative reactions or flickers of recollection. “We’re talking big like Stark Tech, Hammer Industries, A.I.M. -”

“I get the picture,” Bucky interrupted.

“Well, there were rumours about some new satellite tech, something that would have allowed whoever had control of it to spy on anyone, to break into any system, to watch anyone they wanted. It was years ahead of its time. From what we can tell it was the sort of thing that a group like Hydra wouldn’t want falling into the wrong hands.”

“So they sent me,” Bucky sighed. “What else did you find out?”

Again, Sam hesitated for a few seconds.

“The crime scene report from the hotel; it says her brother checked in under a false name, assumed to be travelling alone, and the crime scene photos... they show that he put up a fight...” Instead of explaining it, Sam handed his phone to Bucky, watching as he took in the crime scene photos and the evidence list before going very quiet and very still. He let a minute pass in silent contemplation before he spoke again.

“He was hiding something,” he sighed, his eyes closing for a moment and his head hanging forward, the memories flooding back to him. “I was sent to get everything he had. I got the drive with the schematics but I - I thought he was holding something back. And he was. He was protecting his sister while she hid. I tortured him and he refused to give her up...”

Putting Sam’s phone down, he stood, his slice of pie forgotten and abandoned.

Sam didn’t say anything as Bucky walked towards the window, putting his back to his friend, not wanting Sam to see the pain and self-loathing on his face. But Sam wasn’t prepared to let him wallow.

“So, what now?” Sam asked.

“What do you mean ‘what now’?”

“What comes next, Buck? You know why she tried to kill you, now how are you going to make amends?”

“Don’t start with the therapy-talk, Sam. I’m not in the mood,” Bucky snapped.

“Well you better get in the mood, because there’s a person in that room who needs your help, and if you’re not willing to look after her -”

“I never said that.” Bucky turned back to face Sam, conviction clear in his voice. “Of course I’ll look after her.

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

You lost track of time the moment you were placed back in bed. You thought that you could hear their voices through the door but maybe it was just delirium from the fever playing tricks on you. Everything hurt. Your muscles ached and your joints felt stiff, and your temperature continued to climb.

Turning this way and that, you tried to get comfortable, tried to find just the right angle to lay at to make the pain stop.

It wasn’t long before there was something else beneath the pain, that desperate longing that you couldn’t control, that need that had your hand pawing at your thighs, desperate to touch yourself but knowing that, once you started, you wouldn’t be able to stop.

The more you denied yourself, the more it hurt, until it felt like your insides were burning.

You reached for the water bottle on the nightstand, only to clumsily knock it onto the floor and, when you leaned down to try and retrieve it, your vision started to swim.

The next thing you knew, you were on the floor. There was no telling if it was the sound of the bottle falling or your knees hitting the floor that alerted Bucky, but he was at your side in seconds, swearing and placing his hand on your forehead to feel how hot your fever was running.

“You should’ve told me it had gotten this bad,” he muttered as he scooped you off the floor and started to carry you through the apartment.

“Where are you taking me?” You asked, the words feeling heavy on your tongue.

Bucky didn’t answer, but it soon became clear.

He took you into the bathroom, carrying you into the shower and quickly started up the cold water.

A relieved gasp left your lips at the feel of the cold water on your skin, soaking into your sweat-drenched clothes. Your head dropped onto his shoulder, letting him hold you under the water for what felt like hours. You tried to mutter something, an awkward thank you, but the words came out as little more than incomprehensible babble. Bucky simply shushed you, his arms holding you a little tighter.

It didn’t even cross your mind that you were both still dressed or that the cold must have been uncomfortable for Bucky. It finally felt like you could breathe again, like you weren’t being smothered by the fever. Your eyes closed and you relaxed in his arms, coming to the uncomfortable realisation that moments like this were why omegas needed alphas.

You shifted, moving your head, barely even noticing that you were doing it until your nose was pressed to his gland and every breath you took was him.

Somehow you managed to fall asleep in his arms, and you had no idea how long he held you under the water before drying you off as best he could and returning you to bed.

But you didn’t sleep for long and, when your eyes opened again, you found him sitting on the floor beside your bed, glancing over his shoulder at you as you reached for the fresh, cold bottle of water he’d left on the nightstand for you.

“I remember,” he told you cryptically, looking forward again, facing away from you.

“What?”

“Your brother. That night in Berlin… everything I did...”

There was something in his voice, in the slump of his shoulders, that had you remembering Sam’s words to you, and it made your stomach twist uncomfortably.

“I’m sorry,” he added a moment later. “I understand why you hate me so much now.”

It sounded genuine, it sounded like he really was sorry, like the memory of what he’d done was causing him as much pain as it did you. And you didn’t want to hear it. You weren’t prepared for any of this; after years of seeing him as a monster, having your brother’s brutal murder as your only frame of reference, you found that this contrite, apologetic Bucky didn’t fit the role of the man you wanted to blame.

And it left you annoyed. It left you feeling like all the time you’d spent, the years of your life you’d wasted and the terrible things you’d endured to get to him, to make him suffer, had all been for nothing.

How could you hurt this man who seemed so pained by his own existence?

An awkward, uncomfortable sound escaped you as you laid back, your frustration bubbling over and leaving you at a total loss.

Bucky had no idea what was going through your head, he could only assume that you were still in pain.

“It’s going to get worse, isn’t it?” He asked with a noticeable hesitation. “It gets worse after the halfway point, right?”

“Have you been Googling heats?” At any other time you would have taken a mocking tone, but you were too exhausted and overwhelmed to even think about it.

With Bucky so close, you found it harder to control your baser desires, the omega part of you that craved an alpha, that craved him. But Bucky didn’t even seem to notice.

“Yeah, I -” he let out an awkward sigh, “- I’ve never had to deal with anything like this before and I know last night wasn’t... I mean, I know you didn’t...”

Not wanting to watch him struggle, you decided to put him out of his misery and move the conversation along, if only because talking was better than thinking and you needed something to keep your mind from straying too far.

“You’ve never had an omega before?” You asked.

“Not... not like this,” he said but didn’t go into any detail about what that meant. “In the decades that I was with Hydra, they mostly kept me on ice, and I didn’t exactly get to meet anyone.”

Silence fell and he moved, lifting himself onto his knees and turning to face you. Before you could ask what he was doing, you saw him reaching for the bowl of water and the washcloth. He gently pressed it to your burning cheeks and, for a few minutes he seemed content to remain silent, but it didn’t last.

“It’s because of the suppressants, isn’t it? That’s why it’s so bad,” he asked, and you confirmed his suspicions with little more than a glance. “Why did you take them for so long?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.”

“Because being an omega fucking sucks,” you said with a sigh. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to feel weak and helpless all the time? To have people look at you like you only exist for a single purpose?”

He took an awkward breath, then answered. “More than you know.”

For a moment you considered his words, considered the implications. He’d been a killer, Hydra’s attack dog, only ever let off-leash when he was needed to kill someone. It had been his life, his purpose. The sense of understanding you felt was uncomfortable, further confusing how you felt about him. And you hated it. You didn’t want to feel sorry for him, you didn’t want to feel anything at all.

“At least you’re an alpha,” you said grimly, “you get to fuck instead of being fucked.”

“It still doesn't explain the suppressants.”

“I started taking them because I didn’t want to get stuck being some alpha’s omega again...”

“Wait...” it took a second but he finally seemed to start putting it together. “You and Rumlow?”

You gave only the slightest of nods. Bucky didn’t say anything, but his silence made it obvious that he wanted you to explain.

“I was trying to track you down the Winter Soldier. I didn’t realise he was Hydra when I tried to buy information from him.” You couldn’t look at Bucky as you spoke, as the anger started to slip into your voice. “He promised he would help me, he took me in and - I was young and stupid, and by the time I realised I was trapped, it was too late. He wanted to claim me, but I rejected him, so he did the next best thing and kept me...”

From the corner of your eye, you caught sight of his vibranium hand curling into a tight fist.

“He disappeared in the blip and I got away. Since then I’ve done everything I can to present as a beta.”

“Why is he after you now?” Bucky asked.

“I don’t know. I guess when you were looking into me, it must have flagged something somewhere, and he came looking,” you answered, feeling your stomach knot at the thought. “Brock, he - he doesn’t like to lose and he doesn’t like to be told no. He thinks I’m his...”

“Well, he’s not getting you back,” Bucky stated with an angry certainty that you didn’t understand.

You looked at him, not sure you wanted to ask and, by the time you’d decided that you probably should, it was too late. He got to his feet and headed for the door, telling you to shout if you needed anything.

For a time you just lay there, staring up at the ceiling, trying to make sense of everything that had happened, everything that was still happening.

You had wanted Bucky to suffer for killing your brother, but you wanted to be the cause of that suffering, not his own remorse over his actions. And, again, you found yourself thinking back to your conversation with Sam, the way you’d had to concede that it hadn’t even been Bucky who killed your brother.

Round and round, there was no escaping all the thoughts and questions in your head, all the things that made you angry and the things you couldn’t control.

And, soon enough, it became hard to think about anything but the torture your own body was putting you through. Your temperature started to rise again and you squirmed awkwardly, pressing your thighs together, slick starting to soak through your underwear.

Then you remembered the bags by the bedroom door, the clean clothes Sam had brought for you.

On shaky legs you made your way out of the bedroom, expecting to find Bucky on the sofa but, instead, you could hear the shower running again - why was he showering again? The thought quickly left your mind as you started rummaging through the bags. One bag was filled with womens clothes and the other -

Fuck.

The backpack was basically a bio-weapon, filled with Bucky’s clothes, shirts and sweatpants that hadn’t been laundered. And, before you knew what you were doing, you’d taken one of his shirts and were heading back to your nest with it, not thinking to close the bedroom door behind you, suddenly consumed by your baser urges.

Falling onto the bed, you pressed his shirt to your nose and inhaled his scent.

You hated yourself for how much you craved him, how much you wanted to be wrapped up in his scent, in him. You twitched and squirmed, that awful, longing ache burning through you again. It wasn’t long before your hand was reaching between your thighs and soft whines started to escape you.

At some point the shower stopped, and your eyes opened to find Bucky in the doorway, wearing nothing but a towel slung low around his waist, his eyes fixed on you. Just the sight of his exposed chest and abs, still damp from the shower, was enough to cause a dramatic spike in your arousal.

Despite your embarrassment, your hand kept moving, fingers strumming your clit through your slick-soaked panties while you held his shirt to your nose. And Bucky watched.

“Bucky...”

That moan was all the invitation he needed to cross the room. Even as he came to stand over you, your fingers didn’t stop, in fact they got faster, desperate. More little whimpers and moans escaped you, but he didn’t touch you, didn’t attempt to give you what you needed, what you craved. He just watched and his gaze alone was all it took to break your resolve.

“Please?” You finally begged.

“You sure you want my help again, little mouse?”

You nodded. Despite everything you’d told him after the last time, you nodded. Desperately. Enthusiastically.

Bucky didn’t need any more than that, climbing onto the bed and kneeling between your legs. His hands felt cold as they slipped up your thighs to pull away your wet panties. (Somewhere in the back of your mind you realised he’d been having a cold shower, but in your needy, muddled state, you couldn’t understand why.)

Without hesitation or ceremony, a cold metal finger ran through your folds before sinking inside you, moving slowly, as if he thought you needed warming up.

Your head dropped back on the pillow and your hips started to move against his hand, desperate for more. You were so caught up in the feeling, in the need for more, for everything, that you didn’t realise he’d lowered his head until you felt his heavy breath against your inner thigh and you felt the slow drag of his tongue over your thigh gland.

A desperate moan tore from your lips, your eyes opened and you looked down to see him between your legs. The sight alone was enough to cause you to clench around his finger and leave you on the precipice of orgasm.

Without thinking, your hand reached for him, tangling in his hair. His eyes stayed fixed on yours as his tongue ran along your gland again, this time licking higher, groaning against your skin, letting out sounds that made it seem like he was the one in need instead of you.

You jolted, back arching the moment his tongue found your clit. His free hand pressed on your stomach, pinning you down while his vibranium hand continued to slowly fuck you with a deliberately teasing pace. His tongue moved just as slowly, causing you to whimper and keen, your fingers tightening in his hair, trying to pull him closer.

The pressure built up in you slowly and the sounds you were making got more desperate and eager.

You just about screamed when he started to suck your clit and bent his finger inside you, finding that sensitive spot, causing you to come almost instantly. As you trembled and shuddered, your hand reached for his hand on your stomach and pulled it upwards, pushing up your baggy tee-shirt and placing it on your breast. Your other hand remained in his hair, holding tight, ensuring that his head stayed between your thighs.

He stilled for a few moments, letting you ride out one orgasm before starting to lead you towards the next. A second cold, metal finger slid inside you with ease, your back arching a little, your own fingers twisting in his hair and tugging harder.

You’d told him never again, but after the second orgasm pulled from you by his fingers and his tongue, some part of you knew you wouldn’t survive if you never got to experience this bliss again.

After the third orgasm, he finally lifted his head and slowly started to move up your body, and you let him. No, you encouraged him, tugging on his hair until his face was only inches from yours. You both hesitated as he looked down at you, his fingers still fucking you at that delicious pace.

“It’s just biology,” he muttered softly, as if he was giving both of you permission to give in to each other.

Finally, you lifted your head, your lips clumsily crashing into his and igniting a desperate kiss that seemed to go on and on, until a final fourth orgasm was pulled from you. Even then, as his fingers stilled and finally slipped from your trembling body, his lips lingered against yours, and your fingers remained tangled in his hair

When your body slumped back, exhausted, Bucky remained above you for a few moments more before finally withdrawing, getting up and leaving the room, and leaving you more confused than ever. But at least some of the pain had subsided. He wasn’t gone for long.

After a few minutes he returned fully dressed and with two plates, each with a slice of pie.

He placed one on the bed beside you before sitting back down on the floor next to your bed. Despite what you’d just done, now that it was over, he seemed to want to maintain a polite distance.

“Gracie’s apple pie?” You muttered, tired but definitely hungry enough to eat.

Bucky gave a hum of acknowledgement. “She said it was your favourite.”

You fell silent, staring at the pie, thinking about the life you could have had; the murder plot aside, you’d liked working at Gracie’s and you liked the friends you’d made. But it was all gone now. You couldn’t go back and tell them you’d been lying to them about who you were just to get close to Bucky.

You were going to be alone again.

And that thought hurt.

“At least I get to have it one last time,” you muttered as you sat back against the headboard and started to eat.

“Last time?” He repeated, confused.

“It’s not like I can go back after... y’know all the lies and everything,” you said.

“I think they’d be a lot more understanding than you think,” he offered through a mouthful of pie.

“Right, I’ll just come out and tell them that the sweet little omega act was all a lie, and I was only being nice to them so I could get close enough to kill you,” you retorted.

Honestly, you might have laughed if it hadn’t made you feel so pathetic and alone.

“Sometimes people are willing to forgive a lot if you apologise,” Bucky shrugged.

You weren’t sure if he was suggesting that you should forgive him or trying to let you know that he’d already forgiven you. You didn’t ask. Both of you fell silent while you ate. And, not long after finishing, you managed to fall asleep again.

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

The sound of muttering woke you up. You quickly realised that it was Bucky. He was laid on the floor in his boxers with nothing but a pillow for comfort, thrashing and grumbling in his sleep, obviously having a nightmare. He must have decided to sleep on the floor to be close in case you needed him in the night and - fuck, you didn’t even want to think about how that made you feel.

All you knew for certain - all you were willing to admit - was that you hated seeing him like that. As someone who knew what it was like to be plagued by nightmares, you wouldn’t have wished it on your worst enemy.

You half-fell out of bed, landing on your hands and knees, before slumping down beside him. Moving closer, you pressed yourself into his side and draped your arm over his body, your face against his neck, nose inches from his gland.

He quickly stilled and you heard a sharp inhale as he woke up.

“What -” he started, sounding exhausted and confused.

“Shut up,” you half-demanded, half-begged, not wanting to explain it to him.

He didn’t say anything else. A moment later, his arm was around you, pulling you closer. Instinctively, your leg moved over his thigh, tangling your bodies together. His hand pressed against your cheek for a moment before brushing your hair away from your face.

“You’re burning up,” Bucky muttered, “do you need -”

“No, just - just don’t move,” you whined, wanting to hold him, wanting to feel safe in his arms even though you knew it was the most dangerous place for you. “Just... please don’t move.”

“Okay, mouse...” he muttered softly, shifting just a fraction so you could share his pillow.

Slowly but surely, you felt him relax and, as he did, you did too, shifting closer so his thigh was pressed between yours. Right then, you didn’t need or want more than that, you were content just feeling his body against yours.

But, like every other still moment that you’d managed to find during your heat so far, it didn’t last.

After a few hours you woke to that awful, cramping sensation in your stomach. He was still sleeping, still holding you so tight, and you didn’t want to wake him but his thigh between yours became impossible to ignore. You started to move slowly, grinding yourself against him, slick quickly soaking your panties and his thigh. At first you tried to be gentle, but it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t what you needed.

Bucky woke to find you desperately grinding against his thigh like a feral, horny animal. If you hadn’t felt so desperate, you would have felt your cheeks burning with shame. But you were desperate and you needed something to stop the pain. You needed him.

He didn’t speak, didn’t ask what you were doing, he just pressed his thigh against you and turned his head toward yours. As your head fell back, his lips pressed to your throat, kissing, licking and sucking their way towards your gland, and causing you to let out a desperate moan.

You pressed closer still, until the only way you could get close enough was to straddle his lap. You weren’t shocked to find that he was hard - it barely even crossed your mind, too deep in your own desperate needs to think straight anymore. His hips lifted, pressing against you as you both started to move, each of you seeking something from the other as you slick quickly soaked through your panties and began to wet his boxers.

Leaning back, you pulled off your top and led his vibranium hand to your breast, moaning as a cold metal thumb brushed against your nipple. You kept him trapped beneath you, your hands on his chest, holding him down, as if you really thought that you could restrain him. But Bucky let you, he stayed exactly where you wanted him, letting you take what you needed from him.

Your moans got wilder and more desperate, his name slipping from your lips over and over again as you neared orgasm. His flesh hand gripped your hip as he continued to grind up against you, letting out little grunt and groans of his own as he stared up at you through the gloom.

As you came you felt his cock twitch between your thighs and heard his own gasped moan, and you realised that he’d come too.

You collapsed on top of him, your body trembling from your release, slick now coating your thighs and his, and something else, something soaking through Bucky’s boxers. Sprawled against his chest, you buried your face against his neck, breathing in his scent, and clinging to him, not willing to let go. Bucky’s arms wrapped tight around you, holding you as you shook and shivered, and finally fell asleep again.

End Note : Anyone who doesn't read my Billy Russo fics, and didn't see me mention it there, I just want to give a heads up that I broke a key off my laptop (the T key for anyone interested) so I'm having to use a laggy bluetooth keyboard to write atm. Sorry if any weird typos have slipped through, it's probably because of the keyboard. Anyway, hope you enjoy this chapter!!

And thanks so much for the likes/comments/reblogs on the last chapter, it really means a lot to me!

If you'd like to be tagged in future chapters, let me know!

Tag List : @greatenthusiasttidalwave @bighappypiels @maddiedrmr @dreadfulxives18 @scott-loki-barnes

@thecraziestcrayon @silas-aeiou @danzer8705 @notpotatocap

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x female reader #alpha!bucky barnes #bucky barnes imagine #marvel omegaverse #tfatws #devotion ff #bucky barnes fanfiction

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miraculouslbcnreactions · 2 days

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While I don’t think the senti-kid story necessarily works if the writers wanted to keep the show focused on kids, I think it would’ve gone over a bit better if it was just Felix who was the senti, rather than also Adrien and Kagami (especially Kagami, she was a complete retcon in that regard).

Picture this:

Gabriel, Emilie, and Natalie find the Miraculous (Butterfly and Peacock) because they have an expensive hobby (archeology/collecting rare items, as wealthy people like to do), not because they need the magic at all. They just heard a rumor of an old Tibetan monastery and wanted to check it out, got lucky in finding the two jewels. The Peacock doesn’t even have to be broken.

We can keep the basics of the backstory shown in Representation- minus the detail of Adrien being made with the Peacock. Gabriel and Emilie conceive Adrien normally, but Colt and Amelie aren’t able to like in canon, so Colt has that same jealous outburst at Gabriel. Because Emilie feels bad for her sister, and Gabriel sees an opportunity to make a deal, they lend, or maybe trade, the Peacock to them to create a child. As in canon, Colt uses it, and his jealousy makes Felix a physical copy of Adrien.

Emilie gets sick for non-magical reasons. (I wouldn’t mind having her use it for funsies and not realizing it was broken, but it’s very obviously cracked, and I can’t imagine at least one of their two kwamis not giving them a warning.) As for what happens to Colt, I’m on the fence about him being alive in present times because that kind of abuse is really heavy, so maybe he just dies for unsaid reasons (though I vote Amelie poisoned him or something).

This version would allow for a really cool contrast between Adrien and Felix’s stories and characters. You have Adrien, a normal human, capable of disobedience, but who bends easily under others and is a people-pleaser. Versus Felix, a senti being magically compelled to obey orders of whoever has his amok, but fights to be free every chance he gets. That contrast would also further Felix’s frustration and jealousy of Adrien, in addition to his own father’s hatred of him and being identical to his cousin, because Felix would kill for Adrien’s free will, but he squanders it. But then there’s also the issue that he’s essentially victim blaming Adrien, not realizing that magic isn’t the only way to force obedience- not to mention ignoring the times that Adrien did stand up for himself (like running away to school). I think that would be a really great discussion of free will, how jealousy can blind you, family conflict (and resolution), and how different kinds of abuse/trauma aren’t automatically better than each other just because they’re opposites (ex: someone with heatstroke shouldn’t be jealous of someone with frostbite. Both suck.) The intensity might be worse for each circumstance (since Felix has magical abuse and physical+verbal abuse), but he would be in the wrong for saying Adrien has it easy.

(I think at this point my ADHD is over-explaining, so I’ll leave it at that lol)

Do you think a route like that would’ve improved the show at all? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

The sentiplot has many issues and one of the big ones is that it's not a great fit for a show where Marinette is the one and only main character. They've given Kagami, Felix, and Adrien this massive weight that begs for them to take center stage for at least a few episodes, but probably a whole season or two. The show isn't going to do that, so it's near impossible to really fix the sentiplot without truly massive changes to canon.

That being said, I think that this idea would have vastly improved the sentiplot in its current form! Right now, the senti thing truly doesn't matter to Adrien's character. His mom could have gotten sick for any random reason and the only meaningful change would be that Gabriel couldn't use the rings to keep Adrienette from kissing that one time. Outside of that, Adrien's status has no meaningful effect on the story. It doesn't even keep him out of the final! He does that on his own! The senti thing is just there for cheap drama.

There's also the issue that the current storyline makes the Agreste's look awful which is clearly not the story's goal. Emilie is supposed to be an angel and Gabriel is supposed to be a grief-stricken man who loves his family. That doesn't fit with the kind of monsters who would make a magical designer slave to be their child and then wear his control rings around as daily accessories. Remember, they picked their freaking wedding rings for his slave collars! Most people wear those every day. The implications are nasty!

It makes way more sense for the Agreste's to have the peacock for more mundane reasons and for Colt to get it somehow. Maybe even have him steal it after he finds out about it to really remove the Ageste's from the perfect slave child issue. This allows for the contrast between Gabriel and Colt that canon so clearly wanted, but failed to write. It also makes Felix's actions towards Adrien make way more sense. It feels like canon Felix hates Adrien and we still don't know why that is.

As nebulous as Felix's character is, he still feels like the kind of character who needs to be tied to something like the sentiplot. It's part of the reason I don't think I can use him in my own stuff. The sentiplot is - or at least should be - such a major, defining thing for him that the only possible way to use him is to keep that plot or to give him a plot about freeing the Kwamis since they're also slaves and his abusive childhood could make him feel a bond with them.

Focusing the sentistruggle on Felix instead of spreading it out to include Adrien and Kagami would also keep the sentistuff from dominating the story. Making the male romantic lead an artificial being without true free will whose creation killed his mother is a massive thing that needs to be the focus of his character for the rest of the story. People are on the edge of their seats waiting for Adrien to learn the truth and want this to be a big plot. I do not think they're going to get that, but they should.

Having a side character be the artificial human allows this to be something that is dealt with and then Felix either leaves or fades into the background once his story is over because his story allowed to have an ending whenever they want it to. That's not true for Adrien. Adrien's ending is happily every after with Marinette and the sentiplot needlessly complicates that plan because it means that Adrien's character is always going to be center stage, making people want the sentiplot to mean something since it's apparently impossible for him to ever be a real boy who has true free will. That's such a massive thing that it begs for Adrien to be the main character, which is an asinine writing choice. I have no idea why they keep giving Adrien all this massive narrative weight. You don't do that if you want the female romantic lead to be the main focus! You do it if you want them to be true costars or if you want the male lead to get the majority of the focus. This is writing 101!

As you said at the top, I'm not sure how well this works for a show aimed at five-year-olds because it's still a pretty heavy stuff, but as a general idea, I'd be down to watch it! I didn't have a ton to add to this one because your pitch was already excellent!

#senti salt #nixthelapin #ml writing salt #ml writing critical #felix deserves better

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caplanbuckybarnes · 1 day

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Leaving Me Behind (Jason Todd)

Summary: you question why Jason left you all alone.

Warnings: Angst

WC: 940ish

Read on Ao3!

The night air was cold, biting at your skin as you stood on the rooftop of the old safehouse. The city of Gotham stretched out below you, alive with its usual chaos, but for the first time in a long time, the chaos wasn’t your focus. Jason stood across from you, his helmet discarded on the ground between you, revealing his dark, disheveled hair and those piercing blue eyes that always seemed to pull you in no matter how hard you tried to resist.

But not tonight.

Tonight, you were angry. Confused. Heartbroken.

He had come back—after weeks, months even—without a word. No messages, no sign of him. He was just gone. And now he was standing here, like nothing had happened, like you were supposed to pick up right where you left off.

“I’m sorry,” Jason said quietly, his voice almost swallowed by the wind whipping around the building. His expression was serious, a mix of guilt and something else, something he was trying to hide.

You stared at him, your heart pounding in your chest as the words bubbled up before you could stop them.

“If you’re sorry, why did you leave me?” you asked, your voice cracking at the end.

Jason flinched at the question, his eyes dropping to the ground. For a moment, he looked as lost as you felt. His hands curled into fists at his sides, and he let out a deep breath.

“I—” He started, but he stopped himself, shaking his head like he didn’t know where to begin.

“No, Jay,” you cut in, stepping forward. “You don’t get to walk back into my life after all this time, say you’re sorry, and think that fixes things. You left. You disappeared without a word, and I had no idea if you were alive or dead.”

“I know,” Jason said, his voice strained. “I know, and I hate myself for it.”

“Then why?” The pain in your voice was clear now, the anger giving way to the hurt you had been carrying since the day he vanished. “Why did you leave me?”

Jason’s jaw tightened, and for a moment, you thought he wouldn’t answer. But then he looked up at you, his eyes filled with something raw and unfiltered.

“Because I didn’t want to hurt you,” he said, his voice low, almost a whisper. “I didn’t want you to get caught up in my mess. I thought if I left, you’d be safer. That you could move on, live a normal life without worrying if I’d come back in a body bag one day.”

You blinked, shocked by his words. Of all the reasons, you hadn’t expected that.

“So, what?” you scoffed, shaking your head. “You thought leaving without a goodbye was better than letting me choose? You thought breaking my heart would protect me?”

Jason winced, the guilt in his eyes deepening. “I didn’t think it through, okay? I thought I was doing the right thing. I didn’t want you to spend your life waiting for someone who might not make it back.”

“I didn’t care about that,” you said, stepping closer, the tears burning in your eyes now. “I didn’t care if it was dangerous, or if I had to wait. I just wanted you, Jason. I just wanted you to stay. To trust me enough to let me be part of your life. But you didn’t even give me that chance.”

Jason ran a hand over his face, his shoulders sagging as the weight of your words hit him. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, his voice barely audible now. “I thought I was doing it for you. But I was wrong. I was scared.”

You swallowed hard, your anger fading as the truth of his words settled in. Jason Todd—the Red Hood, the man who faced death and worse—was scared. Not of dying or fighting, but of losing you, of letting you in.

“Jay,” you said softly, taking another step toward him, your voice trembling. “I get it. I do. But you should have talked to me. You should have trusted me to make that choice with you.”

“I know,” Jason said, his voice cracking with regret. He looked at you then, his eyes searching yours, desperate. “I’m sorry. I don’t deserve you, I know that. But I came back because... because I couldn’t stay away. I tried, but I can’t. I need you.”

Your heart ached at the raw honesty in his voice. He wasn’t just apologizing—he was pleading for another chance. And despite everything, despite the hurt and the months of wondering if he was gone for good, you still loved him. You always had.

You took one more step toward him, close enough now to reach out. Slowly, you lifted your hand to his cheek, your fingers brushing against the rough stubble on his jaw. Jason leaned into your touch, closing his eyes for a brief moment like he was savoring it, like he was afraid it would disappear.

“I’m still mad at you,” you whispered, your voice thick with emotion. “But I love you, Jay. I always will. Just… don’t leave me again. Not like that.”

Jason opened his eyes, and they were filled with so much emotion it took your breath away. “I won’t,” he promised, his voice hoarse. “I swear, I won’t.”

He wrapped his arms around you then, pulling you into his chest. The warmth of his embrace was familiar, comforting, and for the first time in what felt like forever, you felt at peace.

“I’m here,” Jason whispered against your hair. “I’m not going anywhere.”

And for now, that was enough.

want to be tagged in my work?

EVERYTHING PERM: @nekoannie-chan @kjs-s @notyourtypicalrose @mistressofallthingsgeeky

DCEU PERM TAGS: @other-fandom-reblogs

#jason todd x reader #jason todd x you #jason todd x y/n #redhood x reader #redhood x you #redhood x y/n

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thebadjoe · 2 days

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BAD JOE'S DRDT CH.2 CRIME SOLVING THEORY FINALE

Hello! It's me again, the pretend-detective-that-will-prove-once-and-for-all-that-my-solution-is-the-closest-to-the-truth.

Oooo boy, we're getting very close to the end with chapter 2, eh? Man... episode 14... that was quite the episode!

I got a lot to talk about, so I'll try not to waste too much time this time around. And of course, this is MAJOR SPOILERS WARNING OF DANGANRONPA DESPAIR TIME CHAPTER 2.

Let's talk!

As you can see in the title, this is pretty much the last time I'll be talking about my theory for good. The reason as to why should be obvious. We're getting really close to the end of the chapter as well as getting close to having the truth revealed by the series itself.

So in other words, this is my very last attempt at solving the murder mystery. So since this is most likely my last time (until there's another murder mystery I want to solve), I better go out with a bang, right? :D

For those who read part 5, it's mostly similar as part 5, but I added a few more things to support my theory. The main difference will be things that I really have to fix.

Anyways... this latest episode revealed a lot of things. A lot of these things are affected by my theory too. I will split those in three categories : The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

The Good

Then MonoTV explains that broken and missing things take longer to replace and...

So there you have it ladies and gentlemen. It is now confirmed 100% that the tape was truly missing since the murder attempt. We could even say that because of this on top of how the narrative is going with this episode, there is no other form of grippy tape inside this killing game aside from the one that came from the pull up bar.

Phew! I'm so glad it's finally cleared up, even though it should've been so obvious! (Well, the clue of when the tape was missing was subtle, but you get what I mean, right?)

It was honestly blowing my mind when people were claiming crazy things about the tape... such as "Well, it's a design error by the dev! There's supposed to be a tape there, they just forgot about it!"

So, I'm actually glad and happy that I was absolutely right on that matter, especially since I was the first person who vocally pointed out the missing tape ever since... episode 9, I believe?

It's possible that there were a few people who noticed it before me or around the same time as me, but I don't recall seeing anyone else posting about it. Nonetheless, for those like me who discovered the moment of the missing tape a long time ago? Honestly, kudos to y'all! Amazing job!

Another thing that's also considered good for me is something regarding the attempted murder that I deduced correctly.

"Ace had woken up and was struggling"

I deduced that at some point during the attempted murder, Ace woke up. The reason why I firmly believed that was the case is because of this picture!

If you take a closer look, you can see that there's blood on Ace's fingers. Since those are not finger injuries nor would Nico have a reason to stain Ace's fingers with blood, then the only logical conclusions would be that he got blood on his fingers because he touched his neck wounds, therefore, he woke up at some point during the murder attempt.

Another W for me, let's go! Hurray! Speaking of W... another good thing for my theory happened. In regards to Eden being innocent because the BDA triggered when Teruko, Eden and Whit saw the body at the same time.

YES! FUCKIN YES!!! THANK YOU DAVID! THANK YOU FOR SAYING THOSE WORDS THAT I WANTED TO HEAR SO BAD! I LOVE YOU, BUT ONLY AS LONG DISTANCE FRIENDS!

You guys have no idea how much it heavily supports my theory thanks to what he just said. It was also something that I deduced for a very long time too! There's of course a lot to talk about on this matter, which I will discuss another time.

But for now, let me savor what I consider to be the biggest W of my crime solving theory of this murder case. Things are looking really good for me.

But of course, I have other problems that crossed my way in exchange, so let me show you what I mean.

The Bad

Let's start with the elephant in the room. Nico is sole person responsible for the attempted murder of Ace.

Before I forget, here's my theory post as reference so that you can have a fair idea of what's been debunked.

Anyways, this truth shatters a good chunk of my theory post, especially regarding the attempted murder itself. Because... according to my theory, I thought that the person responsible for the attempted murder was the same culprit as whoever killed Arei. Thinking it was Eden who did the attempted murder on Ace.

But this theory of mine on that matter has sadly been completely denied. Eden did not attempt murder on Ace, that much is a fact that I can't ignore.

But that's not all. It's practically confirmed that the wire found in the gym was indeed Hu's custom weapon.

This shut downs my idea that Eden must've gathered some kind of wire inside a grandfather clock.

I'm well aware that I was kinda pushing it with this idea (even though there were a conversation supporting this idea), but mannnnn.... IMAGINE HOW FRIGGIN SICK IT WOULD'VE BEEN IF THAT WAS ACTUALLY WHAT HAPPENED?! IT WOULD'VE BEEN SUCH A 1000 IQ MOVE ON MY END!!!

Haha! Sorry! I got the hype get the best of me there! I mean, to be fair... I was under the assumption that Eden's must've done the deed and that she must've gathered that wire some other way. You can't fault me for being this creative!

But at the very least, from this narrative, we can deduce that the DRDT Dev may not try to pull a move where we need to imagine something that could've existed somewhere, they probably never intend to make us go for something far-fetched unless there's enough clues to suggest it. I think that will be something very important to remember whenever we get to watch chapter 3 in a future time.

Moving on!

Nico is the person responsible for stealing the turpentine.

This may not seem much at first, but it's actually very bad for my theory. Reason why is that to have my Eden!Culprit theory work, I need a way for Eden to subdue Arei in some shape or form.

The best way to do it would be by knocking her out with the turpentine, but unfortunately for me, Eden initially didn't have access to the turpentine. Nico did. This means that I lost my prime way for Eden to subdue Arei.

Eden obviously can't overpower Arei for obvious reasons... on top of having no signs of struggle on Eden and Arei's body like bruises and such.

So because of it, I need to figure out a way for Eden to be able subdue Arei without having to steal the turpentine as it was Nico who stole it initially. I'll discuss more about it later.

There is also another problem with my theory, not something the episode directly showed, but it's still very noteworthy. Since Eden is not the culprit behind the attempted murder of Ace, my plan of having Arei locked up and hidden in the relaxation room no longer works anymore. Therefore, I currently don't have a way to explain the purpose of the ball of clothes since my whole murder attempt theory is crushed.

So these are the bads, one of them being a lot more problematic than the others. Anyways, I don't even think that's the worst of it all. The worst comes with...

The Ugly

"It's you two, isn't it?"

I'm happy that we finally got Teruko to actually accuse someone... but NOT LIKE THIS!!!

God friggin dammit!

I get it though. I understand why the creator did that. It gives a lot more suspense and a much better reveal at the end of it all, but aaaaggghhh! This is literally the worst case scenario!

Instead of having people try to figure out why this one person is the culprit and how they did it, we now have the community practically split in two to decide which one between Ace or Eden is the culprit of the murder case.

Ugh.... what a pain in the ass! I can't believe you've done this, DRDT dev! Not giving us the final answer until the very end. I will admit though... that was very unexpected and a very cool twist. That makes it much different from what we're used to see in the dangans and fangans! So yeah... well played, dev! But you should know by now... you're not fooling me with this. I know very well what the heck happened behind this murder case! I remain undaunted.

So are you saying that...

Yes... I still believe that Eden is the culprit behind the murder case of Arei. Ace has nothing to do with the murder of Arei and there's absolutely no one else but these two suspects who could've possibly commited murder.

I'm sorry to say this to the people who believe that a third party is responsible for the murder, but that's just impossible. Only these two could've taken the tape and they had absolutely no reason to give it to someone else. Nor did they get it stolen.

Otherwise, why would they not reveal it at all? It wouldn't make sense no matter how you put it. Not only that, but it would be so unsatisfying of a plot twist especially considering that with all the clues we've been given so far, only the people in the gym at a specific time could've taken it, which still comes down to Ace and Eden.

It's also practically confirmed that there's no other source of grippy tape. I understand that you guys are trying to do this because there's a lot of issues with solving the case if eitheir Ace or Eden is the culprit, but instead of going for an unrealistic scenario of who else could've done it, you guys need to figure out how eitheir of these two suspects managed to pull it off despite these problems!

And that's exactly why I'm still dead set on accusing Eden. Because despite all these problems I've encountered since the beginning of it all, I figured out a lot of ways to solve these issues and it's going to be the same thing here. These new problems I have encountered... I will solve them... all of them!

Therefore, being open-minded is crucial in solving this murder case, a complex one at that!

Alright, with these news out of the way, it's finally time for me to solve this murder case! Although, unlike the giant recap that I did on part 5, I'm not going to do that. I will begin by discussing with you all the biggest mystery of this entire murder case.

The Biggest Mystery?!

What are you talking about? Are you referring to the fishes? The broken lights? The ball of clothes? Their murder motive?

Nope! There is something that's been brought up very few times at the very beginning of the trial and never again... even though there's something seriously strange about it.

(I'm sure there's other moments where this was brought up, but I couldn't find them.)

But yeah... there are two suspiciously strange things about this (that people simply brushed it off as nothing wrong happened) and I seriously think we need to look into this.

During lunchtime of the day before the BDA, Arei was seen in the cafeteria, but didn't utter a single word.

Aside from the "conversation between Arei and David in the relaxation room", no one saw Arei from lunchtime up until the BDA.

Let's face it... Arei, who's usually a loudmouth, didn't say a single thing at lunch? That's just incredibly weird! It doesn't make sense! You guys know very well that she would, at the very least, say something mean or troll someone at least slightly.

But even weirder than that is the fact that no one else saw her since lunchtime! There is absolutely no way that Arei would've spent the rest of the day eitheir hiding herself in her dorm or just simply avoiding contact on anyone. That is just so out of character!

Well... maybe Arei was deeply concerned by David's actual secret and was being secluded up until it was the right time to visit David. I mean, David and Ace clearly saw her that evening, so it's fine, right?

Yeah, I don't think so. Let's say she was deeply concerned by David's secret since lunch, why didn't she try to contact David much sooner than that? Doesn't quite make sense now, doesn't it?

Oh! I know! She was spending time with Eden because they're friends now, right?

I'm sorry, but that's not gonna work eitheir. Let's say Eden was the culprit in that scenario... why would Eden lie about not seeing her since lunch?

Well... suspicions would've been thrown at her, that's why.

And why would that be the case? Remember that during that day, Eden spent time with Hu from the evening up until the night time. And since we're under the assumption that the murder occured in the morning of day 4 (the day of the BDA) and that she spent time with Hu as said earlier, her supposed time spent with Arei in the afternoon would be irrelevant to the murder case!

Besides, wouldn't someone at least have noticed that the two of them were spending time together in the afternoon?

And even if we were to presume that Ace is the killer there, it's the exact same thing! Eden would have absolutely no reason to lie about spending time with Arei if that were the case.

Well, maybe Ace intimidated Arei and stayed quiet this whole time because of it!

...really? We all know very well that there's no way Ace would be able to intimidate Arei, of all people!

Then maybe-

I'll stop you there! Let's face it, there's no normal reasons to explain why Arei didn't talk at lunch nor why she was missing for a considerable amount of time. Besides, if it was something irrevelant or completly mundane about what was happening with Arei, what would be the point of doing all of that? Why make it seem like it was a mystery if "nothing special" happened.

I'm sorry, but it just simply doesn't make sense. Especially if the fact that she was missing was brought up multiple times. There is no way that this is unimportant, no matter how you look at it!

This is also one of the reasons why I firmly believe that Ace is not the culprit. It is impossible to give a reasonable answer to this mystery if you go for the Ace!Culprit route.

It's unsolvable! You can't solve it even with Eden as the culprit!

No! That's wrong!

For those who read part 5, I'm sure you know already what the answer to that is. As for everyone else, there is a very interesting and logical way to solve this mystery.

But before I reveal it, let me first bring back a topic from earlier that I wanted to talk about.

David Chiem...

Okay... so what? He's clearly lying about it, as stated by Nico and J!

And why would you assume that he's lying? Is it because he's a lying and manipulative asshole? Is it because you don't believe in anything he says? Is it because you don't understand him? Well... to be fair... he's rather complex and a bit hard to understand his gameplan, however...

Doesn't that statement feel too important to simply disregard it? I'm not just saying this because his quote is in gold and bolded text, but also because of the timing and what he said earlier.

Also... shortly after that, after he asked Teruko, Whit and Eden if they saw the body at the same time and that Teruko answered with "What are you getting at?", here's how he behaves...

Isn't it peculiar? Like... doesn't it feel like there's a sense of emergency behind his defense and reaction? It's almost like... he's been waiting for the right moment to reveal that piece of information. Whether he wants to help or just want to make Teruko despair for the sake of exposing Eden as the culprit, it doesn't matter. He wanted to reveal that information.

His statement that he saw the body first is clearly wrong because he couldn't have seen the body in the morning, he had an alibi at 7:30 AM and it's physically impossible for David to instantly search the playground, find the body, do nothing and go back without being seen by eitheir Teruko, Whit or Eden.

Well, of course, he's lying about seeing the body in the morning. It's literally impossible.

Huh? But why are you insisting that-

David is the first person to find the body, but he discovered it at an earlier time. It doesn't make sense for anyone else to have found the body first. Otherwise, they wouldn't have hidden this piece of information at all, there's no reason to. But if we're talking about David however... it's whole different story. I also have plenty ways to support the idea that he found the body much earlier.

This is after Ace tells the group what he witnessed and after David gets his secret exposed and decides to reveal himself.

Ace claimed that he witnessed David and Arei having a conversation about David's secret during the evening, the day after the attempted murder.

David claims that he's a lying piece of shit and an unreliable witness.

Ace couldn't possibly have lied about the secret he heard from the conversation since that was indeed David's secret. So what else could David be referring to when he claimed that Ace is lying?

Lying about where he heard the conversation wouldn't make sense eitheir, it wouldn't really change much. And we already know for a fact that David visited the relaxation room that day.

Therefore, by process of elimination, the logical deduction would be that Ace lied about when he heard that conversation. Also, doesn't that weirdly coincide with the reveal that he found the body first?

So if you match his body discovery information with the logical possibility that Ace lied about when he heard the conversation with also David's confession that he did indeed meet with Arei that evening without revealing what the conversation was about, we get this amazing solution : David didn't have a conversation with Arei in the evening of the day 3. He had a conversation with her in the evening of day 2 instead, the day of the attempted murder on Ace. David found Arei's corpse in the relaxation room in the evening of day 3.

I know I had many people who used to believe that this can't be true and that David is lying about his claim that Ace's a liar and all that... but quite frankly... can you still make that claim after watching episode 13 AND 14?

In episode 13, we learn from David's memory flashback that there was more to David and Arei's conversation than what Ace let on, which already gives a sign that Ace is hiding something.

And in episode 14, there's of course the reveal that David was the first person to find the body. Let's be real here everyone. I seriously doubt that this is a mere coincidence after all this time.

Anyways, now that I've explained my point regarding David, it is time to connect the dots!

Connecting the dots...

Going back to the biggest mystery...

As I said before, I stated that there's a way to solve this mystery with Eden as the culprit. There's also a very good reason why I brought up the idea that David must've found the body at a much earlier time.

Let's think back on the mysteries regarding Arei.

She did not talk at lunch and she was never seen again since then.

We've already established that it wouldn't make sense for her to stay silent and not be seen again for a long period of time. So what would be the most logical way to explain that discrepancy?

Something wrong happened to Arei that day. If you think back on my idea regarding David, he found Arei's body in the evening of day 3. Then, if you combine that with the fact that Arei was mysteriously missing since lunchtime, we can then deduce that Arei was actually dead for quite some time. It would make sense to deduce that Arei must've been dead during the whole time she was missing.

But Ace witnessed the conversation betwee-

Nope! Remember, I made the deduction that Ace lied about when he witnessed the conversation. He most likely witnessed the conversation happening in the evening of day 2. Therefore, Arei was alive during the evening of day 2.

(FYI, by day 2, I mean the day of the attempted murder while day 3 refers to the day after the attempted murder. Day 4 is the day of the BDA)

Okay, but what does that have to do with Eden being the only culprit that can explain the mystery behind it all?

Don't worry, I'm getting there.

So with the idea that Arei was already at least dead after lunch, it changes a lot of things, but it still doesn't answer the other oddity regarding Arei... Why was she being silent during lunch time?

Before I propose the crazy (and repeated) idea, let me share a fact with you all. During lunch time, Eden was nowhere to be seen in the cafeteria.

Combine everything I've shown you and then we get this beautiful conclusion : Arei was silent during lunch time because that was not Arei. It was Eden disguised as Arei. Arei was already dead during lunch time.

I'm sure you have a lot of questions or things to object to this, but let me first state that it would perfectly explain a lot of things. Not only would it solve perfectly that big mystery I've just shown, but it would also explain why David claimed that he was the first person to find the body. It would also explain this little goofy event in the morning of day 3.

To give a small recap, Teruko wakes up at 8:00 AM, but still feels sleepy. So she's like "5 more minutes."

Then, we get a black screen saying "4 hours later", so she ends up waking up at around noon instead. Funny 5 more minutes turns into oversleeping for hours instead joke, that one! (Let's face it, it's relatable)

Anyways, this little scene right there could be an extremely subtle way to indicate that Arei actually died in the morning of day 3 and they made us unable to witness her death thanks to Teruko oversleeping. It also helps with camouflaging the possibility that Eden was taking the time to set up her disguise trick.

But if you have issues with the disguise trick, I've already explained it many times in part 5 with clues and hints found throughout the series on top of reminding everyone that this is a work of fiction, so as long as there's plenty evidence to suggest it, then it can be possible.

So for that to work, Eden needed to kill Arei in the morning of day 3. So first, she would need to sneakily knock her out with turpentine as it is the only way to-

HAH! YOU IDIOT! IT CAN'T WORK!! IT WAS NICO WHO HAD THE TURPENTINE! HOW COULD EDEN POSSIBLY GET HER HANDS ON IT?! YOUR THEORY STINKS!

Ah, right... the turpentine! Nico stole it from Rose...

That's no problem! Eden got her hands on the turpentine anyways!

WHAT?!?!

Turpentine, where are you?!

You're not possibly suggesting that there was a second turpentine, RIGHT?!?!

Of course not! I'm not that crazy! Come on now! Do you really think I'd make such a claim even though I made the claim that there doesn't exist any other source of grippy tape aside from what we've seen thus far? The same applies with the turpentine.

It is true that the fact that Nico had their hands on the turpentine first is truly troublesome... but then I learned some more facts about the case and realised that there is indeed a way for Eden to get her hands on the turpentine.

That's impossible! Nico had their hands on it!

Nico may have gotten their hands on the turpentine first, but did they actually keep it forever?

Think about it. What else do we know about the attempted murder that we know is true and confirmed by Nico themselves? Nico stole Hu's custom weapon : the wires.

And what was the reason for stealing the wires? To pin the murder on Hu. They were trying to get away with murder, after all.

Now, if we follow that logic, there is also another way to further pin the blame on Hu. Nico could've dropped the turpentine in the dress room, close by Hu's old uniform. It's also possible that they used some of Hu's clothes to knock Ace unconscious with the turpentine.

That way, if the crime actually succeeded, then there would be much more than Hu's wires to pin her as the culprit. But alas, as we all know, Nico's murder attempt failed. So whatever happened to the turpentine in that scenario?

Nico most likely didn't run back to the dress room to grab it back, that's for sure. Which means that in that scenario, from the time Nico knocked Ace unconscious up until Teruko runs into Eden in the dressing room, Eden had an opportunity to grab the turpentine that Nico might've purposefully dropped in that room.

But how could she possibly know that there was turpentine in here?

That's the thing. I don't think she knew that she'd find the turpentine here... well... unless she saw Nico knocking Ace out and has been quietly sneaking since then.

Why would she even bother going there this late at night to somehow stumble on the turpentine if she didn't know that she'd find it here to begin with? That makes no sense.

You're right, it wouldn't make sense. If anything, that was simply an incredible coincidence that she managed to find turpentine, something that she would clearly need to succeed in her murder plan.

I don't get it! If finding the turpentine was mere coincidence, then what was the point of Eden visiting the dress room this late at night?

Initially, before episode 14 was released, I thought for sure that she was there because she orchestrated both crimes on top of locking Arei inside the relaxation room during nighttime. However, both of these ideas are denied.

So by eliminating the impossible, only one truth remains : Eden needed to place Hu's and Teruko's old clothes inside the relaxation room before 10 pm so that they can get covered in sticky starch next morning.

It is a known fact that the "ball of clothes" is covered in starch. We also know that the only source of information we have that could potentially have a source of starch is from the enriched formula of the water misting of that plants for the relaxation room. We also know for a fact that Eden was indeed in the dressing room past 10 pm on day 2.

I highly doubt that she went there late at night only for the sake of being nice and retrieving Teruko's spare uniforms. Therefore, the only way to explain her suspicious presence in that room is if we were to believe that she's the person responsible for the "ball of clothes".

There is no other logical or reasonable way to explain it. This is the only conclusion I could arrive at. Therefore, it has to be the truth!

Alright then... what was Eden trying to do with these starched clothes then? What was her plan?

At the time I'm currently typing this... I do not know.

WHHHHHAAAT?! YOU DON'T KNOW?!?!

That's right... I don't know yet. I have a few ideas, but I don't like them just yet. So by the time I keep working on this post, I'll figure out a proper solution, I promise.

What are you saying?! Are you seriously trying to solve this problem as you are writing your theory post?!

...That's right... I'm still working on it as I'm typing this. But pay no mind to it, the solution will come to me eventually, I'm pretty sure!

...You are out of your mind, you know that?

Yeah... I know. For now, let's just say that having the clothes in that room so that they get starched was very essential in her plan for unknown reasons. At the very least, I found a reasonable way to explain how she get her hands on the turpentine.

For that matter, I know there were people asking me why Eden would even bother grabbing the tape. The answer is fairly simple. It was very convenient for her to get her hands on the tape as it would be necessary in her murder scheme.

In fact, she probably wanted to get her hands on the tape earlier than that, but Nico was already occupying the gym. She must've heard the sounds of Nico setting up something inside the gym (since the walls aren't soundproof) and must've waited inside the dressing room for some time... until the gym was clear. But of course, instead of that, Teruko runs into Eden.

So with that, I believe that I explained every mysteries regarding the attempted murder. Eden was indeed on the second floor on the night of day 2 for a suspiciously specific reason that I've already explained.

So... while I'm trying to figure out the most logical purpose of this ball of clothes, I'd like to give more points that further supports the idea that Eden is indeed the culprit.

Take that, Eden!

Let's start with one of my favorite observations in episode 14.

Ah... that scene was very touching, wasn't it? For a moment there, I almost believed Eden... up until someone in the youtube comments pointed out something really interesting about this scene. Doesn't this remind you of something? ....no? Let me help you out!

Hmm? What does that have to do with anything?

A lot of things, actually. Like... the pictures I've shown you from episode 3, Eden claims that relationships aren't transactional, that she didn't do something good so that Teruko would return the favor. Eden also claims that she wants her to be her friend, but not because Teruko feels obligated to.

Then, in episode 14, Eden asks Teruko to help her, because friends help each other. She also says that Teruko is her friend.

I know most of you will say that Eden was being desperate and in big need of help, maybe there is a tiny bit of truth to it. However, I just find it rather strange because as far as I'm aware, from the beginning of chapter 2 up until the trial, Teruko never showed any signs of wanting to be friends with Eden. So why would she now claim that Teruko's her friend and then ask for help when initially, Eden didn't do something good simply just so that Teruko would do something good in return?

In a subtle way, they're kinda like opposites to each other, the scene between episode 3 and episode 14, I mean.

To further prove my point, I'd also like to point out that during these two scenes, they both played the exact same background music. Coincidence? I think not!

Another point I'd like to talk about is something I've already brought up in the past, but it's still very important to remember it...

This happened in the morning of day 4, before the BDA was triggered. She said this a little bit after Whit made a silly comment about Arei hanging around the playground.

You could brush it off as simply Eden being not ready to seeing the corpse of Arei in here, since all the other rooms were explored on that floor, but of course, I don't believe that one bit.

Whit's comment made Eden panic considerably because for a few seconds there, she really thought that her murder plan was about to be ruined because she thought that Whit was the first person to find the body of Arei.

If Whit was the first person to find the body, then the BDA wouldn't trigger which would be dangerous for Eden. As I stated before, someone else discovered the body first and it was David Chiem.

Also, that reminds me. Timing wise, it was impossible for Eden to bring the fishes from relax room to the playground. It was also impossible for Eden to hang the body by the swing set, she's most likely too weak for that. Meaning that Eden never brought those fishes nor did she hang her by the playground. That was never in her plan to do that. She hid the body behind the curtains of the relaxation room.

Therefore, the only person who could've transported the fishes as well as hanging Arei's corpse is the first person who found the body. David is responsible for those two actions during the evening of day 3. He did it for his own selfish reasons, of course!

But wait... if David hung the body during the evening of day 3, how do you explain the body swinging during the morning of day 4?

Ah, that! It's something I've already brought up in part 6, but I'll explain it a little.

There was a reason why she put so much efforts into disguising the time of death by putting on a disguise and building a solid fake alibi from 7pm to 10pm. Eden's main goal was to have the BDA triggered during the evening of day 3, not the morning of day 4. She was hoping that someone would run into Arei's corpse that evening, which that person would go gather help to trigger the BDA.

If that actually went according to plan, Eden's alibi would've been perfect. !!! Come to think of it... the letter would make a lot more sense with this idea in mind.

Since she had nothing to do with the fishes, the initial plan was to bait the people into thinking that eitheir Arturo or someone who may have overheard the conversation would be the one who tried to lure Arei to the playground.

Except that compared to what we've seen in part 1 of chapter 2, the letter was actually supposed to properly display 7:30 PM rather than just 7:30. It was part of her grand scheme to further solidify her alibi.

(There's a missing corner, as you can see, which is very convenient to where PM could be written)

Wait, hold on... if that was the case, then Arei wouldn't be having a meeting in the playground in the morning, but rather the evening! That doesn't work! You said it yourself that she was murdered in the morning of day 3!

Hah! That's not a problem! Eden didn't need to lure Arei with a letter. She simply needed to call her out vocally. Hell, she didn't even have to be calling her out in the morning of day 3 eitheir.

She could've knocked to Arei's door right after the exchange between Ace, Levi, Teruko and herself after the attempted murder. It could be something as simple as : "Um... Arei? There's something really important I need to tell you, but I don't wanna say it here because the others might hear it since the dorms are so close to each other. Besides, it's getting really late. Can we meet up in the playground early in the morning?"

But of course, since the BDA didn't trigger in the evening of day 3, there were a few change of plans. She needed to go back to the second floor in the morning of day 4 to find out what's going on.

While she's heading there that morning, she figured that she should bring back Arei's monopad. Arei's monopad was essential in pulling off the disguise trick as she needed to gain access to her dorm to wear her spare uniform. Initially, Eden arrived to the second floor possibly a little bit before 8:00 AM, thinking that the corpse would still be hidden inside the relaxation room.

But it turns out that Arei's body was actually hanging by the swingset, in the playground. And there's fishes for some reason? (Just saying this based on the culprit's perspective)

Eden figured that it would be way too risky to mess with the crime scene even more than what she was originally going to do.

And what was she doing here in the morning of day 4?

It's simple! Eden put the Arei's monopad back inside the victim's pockets and she retrieved the letter and tore the bottom right corner of it, removing the PM on that letter. She then tore the rest of the letter and threw it in the trash bin. It's also possible that the reason why she tore the rest of the letter is to disguise the fact that the killer purposefully removed a corner of the letter.

Wouldn't it be more beneficial for Eden to not tear up the pm part since she had an airtight alibi at the time?

Not really, no. Since everyone else would be discovering the corpse at around 8 am in the morning rather than last evening as intended, there's no telling how the group would actually attempt to solve the trial.

It's possible that if the PM part was still there, they might believe that the time might be fake, especially since the body would be found next morning. In fact, if they presume that the murder happened in the morning of day 4, they would suspect anyone who had an alibi last evening because of that part of the letter. That's also practically what happened earlier in episode 12.

Levi : Is it possible that the killer tried to confuse us all on the time of the murder to create a false alibi? In that case, we should be suspicious of the people who do have an alibi in the evening but not in the morning?

Teruko : That's another assumption that would lead us astray. Forget that thought.

Levi : Why?

Teruko : We're only guessing that the killer created a false alibi to their benefit. But it's still entirely possible that it was just coincidence that we mistook the murder as taking place at a different time. The killer might not have cared as much as we do. [...]

Charles : Are you not simply dismissing the idea that the killer intentionally falsified the time of the murder?

Teruko : I'm not dismissing it. But it's far more dangerous to dramatically narrow down our suspect pool based on speculative evidence, especially when we barely understand the murder at this moment in time. In other words, we can't consider Levi's idea as evidence unless we have proof.

And there you have it. If the PM part remained on that letter and they realised that the murder could've happened in the morning of day 4, then that whole letter would've been proof enough that the killer purposefully faked the time of the murder, even if the murder didn't happen in the morning of day 4.

Anyways, if touching Arei's pockets wasn't enough to keep the body swinging, it's also possible that Eden accidently ran into the hanging body on her way in or out because she was still in a little bit of a hurry as she didn't want anyone to catch her in the act.

Hmmm... interesting... how very interesting...

What now?

Well, the idea (that I recently came up with) that the letter always displayed "PM" and that she tore up that part of the letter because her plan didn't fully work as intended... it just gave me another amazing idea.

People have been wondering for quite some time what could be the decisive evidence to pinpoint that someone is truly the blackened... I think I finally figured out what the evidence is.

Well, out with it already! Show us what will prove once and for all that Eden is the culprit!

Gladly! I used to think for a long time that the roll of grippy tape would be the ever so decisive evidence for it, since it was practically a smoking gun type of evidence. But alas... you saw what happened in episode 14, so...

HERE'S THE DECISIVE EVIDENCE : THE TORN UP CORNER OF THE LETTER CONTAINING "PM"

Think about it. We know for a fact that Arei's body was swinging in the morning of day 4 and according to my theory, only Eden could be the logical explanation behind this event happening.

Therefore, Eden most likely visited the second floor in the morning of day 4. Since her original plan was to have the BDA trigger in the evening of day 3 but it failed, she needed to remove the part of the letter that mentioned "PM".

Now, here's the fun part : what could Eden possibly have done with it afterwards? She couldn't really dispose of it in the trash bin, that's where the rest of the letter was. Eden still needed that letter to build up her narrative to make her seem the least suspicious.

She couldn't hide it anywhere else on the second floor. She didn't want to risk having someone stumbling upon a piece of paper that just happens to perfectly match the rest of the letter.

She couldn't really dispose of it anywhere on the first floor eitheir. While it might've been a logical way to get rid of that evidence, it would've been incredibly risky. By the time Eden did her finishing touches on the second floor, it should've been 8:00 AM by then, if not really close to it.

Every participant was supposed to meet up in the movie screening room for the secrets reveal, Eden couldn't risk doing something slightly suspicious when she should be heading straight for the movie screening room. She couldn't have gotten rid of it during and after the investigation eitheir, there were witnesses close by.

So by process of elimination, there is only one remaining place that Eden could've make the corner of the letter disappear. She hid the torn up corner of the letter in one of her little bags on her belt!!! It's still there as we speak!

How's that for a decisive evidence, eh? :D Take that, Eden Tobisa!

Yeah, yeah, whatever! That's cool and all, but at the end of the day, all of it doesn't really matter if you can't manage to explain what was the point of the starchy ball of clothes! If you can't explain it, then your theory just crumbles!

...heh! :D

Y-you can't be serious... there's no way you managed to-

It took me roughly a day of thinking about it, but you BETCHA that I managed to solve the issue with the ball of clothes! I have a very good idea on what Eden might've done with this piece of evidence during the murder of Arei.

The sticky situation of the ball of clothes

As I mentioned before, I used to think that the clothes were used as a way to protect Arei from the water misting if Eden were to lock her up inside the relax room. But of course, that no longer works because of the actual truth behind the murder attempt.

Yet, Eden clearly placed those clothes for a night inside the relaxation room, so surely it must've been really important to do that, right?

The answer to that is YES. It was a very necessary step in the murder scheme. In fact, I'm willing to bet that without it, her plan wouldn't have worked.

It's just some starchy clothes. Why would it be that important?

Well, as we already know, there's no way Eden could pull off the murder mechanism as shown in episode 13 (aka the drop hanging murder idea) as it would require a good amount of strength that she doesn't seem to have.

So, for her be able to murder Arei, she would instead need to use a murder mechanism that doesn't require a lot of strength. And not too long ago, I finally realised that using the starchy clothes would be incredibly helpful in pulling off that kind of murder without much troubles. Let me elaborate.

Do you guys remember my murder mechanism in part 5? If not, that's alright, let me give you all a reminder.

(Yeah, I recently added those pink lines as compared to my previous picture, just bear with me.)

Here's the order of how that murder went according to my theory

(The pink line is the longer rope and the green line is the shorter rope)

While waiting for the body to be available, she threw the longer rope above the rafters by using the roll of tape as anchor.

She then uses one end of the long rope by tying it to the filled water jugs, by the handles.

She tapes up the bars of the carousel and then keeps some remaining tape for later.

She then ties up the other end of the long rope to the carousel

She drags the victim's body out of the relax room and brings it close to the seesaw.

She places the victim's arms through the gap between the pillars of the seesaw and the tapes her wrists together.

She ties one end of the shorter rope to the victim's neck while placing the other end of that rope very close to the carousel.

She then spins the carousel on one side, let's say counterclock wise. By spinning it, the long rope would get pulled which would pull the water jugs upwards.

She keeps spinning up until the water jugs are high enough. Once it's high enough, she keeps the carousel from moving.

She ties the end of the shorter rope (the one that was close to her already) to the bars of the carousel.

She then spins the carousel clockwise, making the water jugs fall at a rapid while the shorter rope is quickly getting pulled.

The shorter rope keeps getting quickly pull up until it can no longer pull... up until it reaches the victim's neck, which would serve as a brute stopper.

SNAP! Her neck breaks and the handles of the water jugs also break from the sudden stop.

By using this method, it explains the purpose of the taped wrists as well as the scuffed marks on the ground, which happened to be in proximity of the victim's legs. Because of the sudden pull of the neck, the rest of the body would follow, the legs would be what would move the most since it's not restrained, thus creating those marks.

By keeping her arms locked up by the seesaw, it ensures that her whole body wouldn't follow along of the rope pull, which would instead result in a rather funny ragdoll moment, which would probably not kill the victim if her arms weren't restrained.

It sounded really good on paper. Like I seriously thought that I finally figured it out, I thought that it made so much sense. Unfortunately... there are some issues with it.

Ha ha! Your method is flawed! I'm looking forward to these issues!

...very well. For starters, this might cause bruises on Arei's body with this murder method, especially around the arms and shoulders. The only thing that was really restrained were her wrists, so anything else would be violently moving.

But the reason why it could bruise the arms and shoulders especially is because her head and the rope are in the way of her arms. Her head could potentially hit her shoulders and arms... or it could be the other way around too. This becomes a discrepancy since we know for a fact that apart from her broken neck, there is nothing else noticeable about her body.

Next up, the distance between the scuffed marks and the seesaw is fairly long... most likely longer than Arei's height as well. I was aware of this issue in the past, but I simply brushed it off as "it works because it's a work of fiction."

But the more I look into it, the more I feel like it would be incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to prove that the marks were caused by the movements of the legs. We also have to keep in mind that the rest of the body would surely move, so why would nothing above her legs leave no scuffed marks? That doesn't quite make sense. If the marks were way closer to the seesaw, it'd be a whole different story, but alas... that's not what happened.

And finally, it is very doubtful that the legs' movements from the killing blow would be causing all these marks we've seen back in episode 8.

As we can see from this picture, there's a lot of traces on the left side, a faint trace in the middle and a few traces on the right side. I don't think there's a valid reason I can come up that would explain why one leg would be leaving more marks than the other. On top of that, it wouldn't explain why there's a faint mark in the middle and gaps between the others.

Unless I were to presume that her legs did a few skips somehow, but I honestly think that's a stretch at this point. But that's not all, from the way the victim's body would be positioned according to my theory, it would actually be physically impossible for her legs to leave marks in such manner.

As you can see in the picture, the dragging of those marks are going up and down rather than left and right. If we follow the logic of how the victim's body would be positioned according to me, then the legs should be making those marks sideways, not what we're currently seeing.

Dang, those are pretty big flaws. Are you sure that your murder method is correct?

I used to think it was back then, but not anymore. At least very least, the idea of the pulley mechanism sounds right while the body setup and positioning is entirely wrong.

But honestly, my idea mainly didn't work because I forgot to factor in a really important element to this equation : the friction! That's right! To make sure my murder method works, I need to find some way to add friction so that the body wouldn't move as much. And how do you make that happen? With the help of starched clothes, of course!

Huh?! What do you mean by that?

This line is very important because we also know for a fact that the turf in the playground uses the same exact materials as the one in the relaxation room. Meaning that a wet turf in the playground would get sticky too.

I can't believe I let this go unnoticed after such a long time, but the stickiness of both the wet turf and the starched clothes played a major role in all of this.

Here's what I believe the culprit did with the starched clothes : Eden placed the starched clothes under Arei's body and above the turf. Basically, the starched clothes in that scenario would serve as a double sided velcro of sorts.

Would the victim's body really stick to the clothes?

Hard to say, but based on my deductions, it has to, right? We don't quite know how sticky it is, but it must've been sticky enough so that it would add friction, at the very least. I don't think it'd make her completly restrained, but rather her movements would be drastically reduced, I'd imagine.

But hold on! Wouldn't only one side of the clothes have starch on it?

Most likely, yes, but the clothes would probably be wet still. So the double sided velcro idea could still work.

I don't think so! MonoTV clearly stated that at 8:00 AM, the turf in the relax room is completly dry so it's safe to walk on it. If the turf dries up by then, so does the clothes!

Hmm... maybe, maybe not. It's true that the ground would be dry, but it's hard to say that the same would happen with the clothes. But if it is truly how it was intended, then that's no problem! Eden just needed to dip one side of the clothes into the pond and they would be wet again.

Okay, but was there enough clothes to cover the whole body?

Hard to say, probably not, if I'm being honest. But I don't think the culprit intended to lay out these clothes so that it would cover the whole body. No, I think Eden mainly wanted to place the starched clothes under the victim's head and the victim's legs.

The head and legs are pretty much what would be moving the most from sudden violent pull of the short rope attached to the neck, so putting the velcro there would be most effective. They might still move somewhat, but definitly not as much as without the adhesive. In fact, I believe that having the velcro effect under Arei's head would make it even easier to ensure that the rope pull delivers a killing blow.

You forgot something : THE ARMS!!! What about the arms?! Wouldn't they just be flailing around everywhere?!

Oh, that? Well, the wrists were clearly taped up and then-

Then what, her arms are restrained under the seesaw again? You already said that it doesn't work!

Heh, of course not! That's not what the culprit did at all! Arei's body was not placed next to the seesaw for the murder. I've already established previously that there's major problems with it. It wouldn't make sense. Therefore, she must've been placed somewhere else.

There is only one specific place that would perfectly explain the scuffed marks on ground. The area where there's scuffed marks? That's exactly where the victim's body was positioned! Arei died on this specific spot!

W-whaaaaat?!?! That makes no sense! How does that even explain how her arms were restrained from moving anywhere?

Don't worry, I'm getting there! :)

So... when we take into consideration the position of the scuffed marks, there's really nothing close by that can be used to restrain her arms, right? And placing her arms above her head like I did in my year old theory wouldn't quite work eitheir. We'd still have the same issues as what I pointed out already.

So from there, we can deduce that the victim's arms must've been positioned somewhere differently than my previous idea in my older theory. And I believe I found the perfect position to place those arms of hers.

The culprit placed Arei's arms behind her back and then taped her wrists. That way, since her back would be facing the turf, it should keep her arms mostly steady. They might move, but her back should be moving along as well. Her wrists were bound because there was still a risk that her arms would free up from her back since their movements wouldn't be as restrained.

That's ridiculous! There's no way that can be right!

...heh! :D Are you sure about that? Let me give you a reminder of how I briefly described the scuffed marks on the ground. There's a lot of traces on the left side, a faint trace in the middle and a few traces on the right side. If we combine everything I've deduced so far, we get this!

Be mindful that even though I just showed you how the victim's body would be positioned, the body part themselves isn't what fully caused those marks, it was mostly caused by the starched clothes' stickiness below the legs and head.

That would certainly help explain those odd shape and patterns on the ground. As for the wrists area, it could eitheir be caused by her hands or the taped up wrists.

But yeah, as shown in this picture, her head would be moving a bit, but not too much since that's where the culprit needed to make sure remained stable. Her wrists wouldn't be moving too much in this scenario since they would be stuck under her back. As for the legs, even though there would be adhesive below, there would still be a fair amount of movement since her legs have more freedom of movement than her head or wrists.

Just to remind everyone, by movement, I'm referring to the drag caused by the rope making a violent pull on Arei's neck.

And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen! This is my final solution to this complex, yet incredibly fun murder case! I don't know if you've noticed, but everything I've said in this post, it would match up perfectly with a heck load of clues and information that we've been provided in this fangan.

So with that said, I only have one more thing to say : The only one who could've commited this crime is you, Eden Tobisa, Ultimate Clockmaker!

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Thank you everyone for reading this till the end! There's probably a few things I unintentionally left out, so I'll try to add up anything missing if that's the case. But otherwise, I think that was most of it. If there's anything you don't understand or feel like there's something that may not work, feel free to ask me anything!

And don't forget : because it's a work of fiction, as long as there's enough provided information, then it can be possible!

#drdt #drdt spoilers #drdt theory #drdt solve #drdt final solution

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