#i prefer to work on the Loudspeaker fic

[black-and-yellow]

Silly stupid insect fic, send shivers down my spine.

[ellivenollivander]

So, your healer!sebastian post really got me thinking. If you want to, would you maybe write something about seb as a healer working somewhere, he had lost touch with MC, but she comes in gravely injured one day. He saves her and they reconnect?

@skittish1807 Thank you for your patience, I know it has been way too long since you requested this. I love you and your endless patience, pal. Special shoutout to cold brew, sweet tea and ambient world on youtube for helping me finally finish this fic. Rating: 18+ (Mildly NSFW for insinuations) TW: Blood, Injury, Death Mention. Word Count: 8,635 (I know, i'm sorry.) A/N: This is my first Sebastian Fic, please be kind lol

Reconciliation

Sebastian didn’t know exactly how things ended up the way that they did with MC, he just knows that sometimes in the quiet moments of his now hectic life, when he’s left alone with his thoughts, she creeps in from the recesses of his mind.

He can hear her voice when he’s working in the Alchemy room at St. Mungos, criticizing the technique he uses to prepare his ingredients. The hint of a smile tugging at his lips as he stands alone in the dark room, dropping his sliced dittany into the bubbling cauldron. Wouldn’t you prefer chopped? It brews so much more quickly. 

When he’s blowing off steam in the cellar of his home, taking out his anger of losing a patient on the training dummy he paid off an Auror for. He can feel her fingers wrapping around his wrist, adjusting his aim or her hand on his hip, correcting his stance. 

The soft morning light brings him the smell of her shampoo, from the nights she’d slept in his bed. After long, late nights of studying and searching for anything, tucked behind his closed bed curtains. She’d claim the walk back to her dorm was much too far and crawl between the covers, enveloping him with the scent of her. He would wake up and she would be gone, but the smell of her shampoo would reside on his pillow, proof of her presence. 

None of these soft memories made him feel like he did now, lying on a cot in the room designated for Healers to catch up on their sleep during their long shifts at St. Mungos. Sebastian rarely slept, but he tried. He had found an old daily prophet, shoved beneath the pillow, undoubtedly left by one of his fellow healers and decided to try and bore himself to sleep with whatever mess the Wizarding World had found themselves in today. 

He found the classifieds, black ink advertising Cruppies - Free to a good home! and Stay Warm with BOGO Self Warming Scarves and Gloves at Twilfitt and Tattings!, as his eyes moved from advertisements to job listings. The memory of how he and MC had spent many of their meal times at Hogwarts hunched over the same paper, talking animatedly about what they could possibly do with their lives after graduation, made his heart constrict. 

If he lets himself think about it, her, too much he finds himself spiraling. Desperate to find her, desperate to make things right. Despite being an orphan, and no longer having any family to speak of, he thinks the pain of losing the girl he was in love with for three years of his life might hurt worse. 

The knowledge that she was alive and well, and just not here with him, a fate worse than death. 

There was nothing he could do about his parents or Anne or even Solomon, they were gone. Never to return. Sebastian wonders if the pain hurts worse, because it was exacerbated by hope that they could be together again. That she’d come back to him. 

Which is why he pitches the newspaper against the wall opposite, before punching the tattered pillow he’s shoving his face into, silently pleading for sleep to take him. His attempts only last about ten minutes, before the loudspeaker above the door alerts him to an incoming patient, being transported to the Potions and Poisoning ward.

He heaves himself from the bed with a groan, stretching out his tired limbs and makes his way to the third floor, taking the stairs two at a time. He pauses for just a moment, when he arrives at the patient's room. His eyes watching the brass plaque alongside the door frame materializing with his name, a sentimental pride filling him at the sight. 

Healer in Charge: Sebastian Sallow

It had been five years since he’d graduated from Hogwarts, three since he completed the Healer training program. His career choice had been heavily influenced by the desire to feel like he was doing some good in the world, healing instead of hurting. The hefty knowledge he already possessed in his fruitless search for a cure for his ailing sister had just been a benefit, aiding him along in the program, impressing his instructors. 

He didn’t pause long enough to think about how it had been five years since he had seen her.

Sebastian pushes open the door, the clipboard instantly pulling itself from the wall and into his hands, greeting his patient with a small smile, his eyes on the clipboard.

“Hello, I’m Healer Sallow, I’ll be getting you sorted out today. What seems to be the problem?” 

He studies the intake form quickly as he speaks. 

Casper Doolan. Age 9. Potions Accident. 

Sebastian’s demeanor shifts slightly when he sees the age of the boy and he relaxes his shoulders, plasters on a smile as he finally takes a look at the patient; A freckled blonde boy, who seemed to be sprouting leaves across his body, sat cross legged on the bed looking as though he had not a care in the world. His parents standing behind him, looking much more distraught, and a teen girl red faced and teary eyed. 

Sebastian lets his hand drop the clipboard, which slots itself right back into place on the wall, and he steps closer to the family. 

“Hey pal, Casper right? I’m Sebastian. I’m going to get you all fixed up. Alright? Mind if I take a closer look?”

When the boy shrugs his shoulders, he gently lifts the boy's chin to get a better look at the foliage protruding from his face, keeping a small smile on his face. “Mind telling me what happened?” He directs the question to the adults standing above him, as he’s leant down examining Casper.

The clipboard comes back from the wall, levitating in the air and the quill begins recording the words of the Doolans’ recollection of the events of the day. Their daughter had been practicing her potion brewing when Casper had been overcome with curiosity, and had taken a swig from her concoction. An hour later they had been sitting in the St. Mungo’s waiting area when no antidote or healing charm rectified the effects. 

Sebastian let out a puff of air, nodding along to the story. 

“Can’t say it’s the first time, and I know it will not be the last. Are you in any pain, Casper? Does it hurt? Be honest, no being brave. It’s important that I know.” 

Little Casper shakes his head, relaying that it just feels funny. Sebastian gives him another wide grin, before turning towards the older sister.

“Can I ask what you were trying to brew?” 

She tenses under Sebastian’s gaze, and he realizes he sounds a bit more accusatory then he had meant too and he clears his throat, holding his hands up. “I just need to know to help your brother… I’m not upset. This really does happen all of the time. Our little patients are notorious potion drinkers.” He smiles back down at Casper who blushes a bit at the comment. “He’s going to be just fine.” 

She relaxes, her blush unfading. 

“I…uh, I was working on a fertilizer… for herbology, it’s my worst subject in school… It was never meant to be drunk.” She shoots her own accusatory glare in her little brother's direction, and Sebastian has to bite back a laugh. 

“Did you follow a recipe or were you just experimenting?”

The quill was poised to take down the information beside his head, his mind already moving in a million different directions on how to move forward with Casper’s treatment based on the information he was being given. 

“O-of course I followed a recipe. It was the standard recipe for dragon dung fertilizer…” 

At the words dragon dung, Casper’s face blanched at the realization of what he had consumed. He whipped around to face his sister, cheeks red with fury, the leaves in his skin shaking violently. Before he could start screaming at his sister, Sebastian spoke calmly, questioning if she had substituted any ingredients from the standard recipe. The scratch of the quill near his ear, oddly calming. 

“No, I stayed true to the recipe but I hadn't added the mandrake yet, it was still stewing when pea brain here decided to take a swig.”  

The quill continued recording and Sebastian nodded along appropriately, unable to keep back the playful grin at the name calling between siblings, his heart twinging in grief for just a moment. 

“Good news is I think he’ll be just fine. Just have to allow the brew to run its course, I’d say. Let it pass through his system. Could give him a tonic to help it along but since he’s not experiencing any discomfort and he seems to be in good spirits, I’d hardly say that’s necessary.” 

At the cheery diagnosis, the tension in the room seemed to immediately dissipate and the Doolan patriarch smacked Casper upside the head. As if he had been lying in wait to be told his son was indeed not dying, before he chastised him. 

Sebastian bid the family goodbye, with a comment on lessons learned and to please come back if Caspers condition seemed to worsen in any way. Though before he left, he shook Casper’s hand like a man and slipped a candy into his palm. Before taking his leave with a small playful wink in the boy's direction. 

The remaining hours of his shift included a disgruntled Auror who had been stuck feeling the effects of a tickling charm for a week, an elderly woman who had mistaken a Jarvey for a stray cat in her garden and suffered a particularly nasty attack and finally, another Hogwarts student who had botched a polyjuice potion and had found himself stuck between looking like himself and his next door neighbor. 

Sebastian finally stood outside of St. Mungos in the summer rain, exhausted and desperate for a drink. He made his way to Undercroft, in hopes of finding some pretty little witch to help him forget the one everything in his life reminded him of. 

If only for a night. 

~*~

He had, and she did. 

Though the only evidence of her presence in his home was the tiny bit of parchment she left on the pillow beside his head. 

The pub had been lively, as usual. A popular spot for the younger wizarding demographic. Those that were out of school but not quite ready to hang up their hats and reminisce on their youth. 

Sebastian had slid into his stool at the end of the bar, tucked into the corner. A whiskey sliding into his hand before he could even greet the barkeep, his best friend. 

Ominis had purchased the building and opened his pub shortly after graduation, with the money left to him from his Aunt Noctua. He had been the sole heir to her estate, something he had only discovered on his seventeenth birthday in their seventh year. A ministry official knocking on the boys’ door in Feldcroft, bearing keys and paperwork. 

He and Sebastian had spent an entire night drinking and laughing on the floor of the empty building, brainstorming names until they finally decided on Undercroft. An ode to their schooldays, to their little shelter in the storm of their youth. Hoping the name would inspire Ominis’ pub to be a similar sort of sanctuary for others. A place to unwind, to celebrate, to come together. 

The Undercroft at Hogwarts had, of course, been where Ominis and Sebastian had spent a similar night of bonding. When Ominis had found him, crying in a corner, clutching Solomon’s last will and testament. 

It had been the catalyst to the mending of their once thought ruined friendship. The guilt had overcome Sebastian, at the realization that Solomon had planned on giving him everything upon his death. The words had poured out of him with shaking sobs, dumping all of the trauma inside of him onto the boy who had just come to retrieve a forgotten textbook.

They had been inseparable ever since, Ominis had even officially moved into the home in Feldcroft, finally able to escape his family. He had sat with Sebastian when he received the news of Anne’s demise, tears of his own mixing with his on the quivering parchment in his hand. When he discovered how she had passed away alone and far from home at some London inn. The Aurors who found her only knowing to alert Sebastian by a folded up bit of parchment in her robes, A letter Sebastian had written to her just after he returned to Hogwarts after she had been cursed. 

And Ominis had stayed when MC did not, her presence in his life fading more and more as the weeks passed after the night in the catacomb. Even more so, after Anne’s death when Sebastian had spiralled into the darkness of his mind. Swathed in guilt and grief with no foreseeable way of escaping it all. 

He had been too caught up in his own pain to mind any attention to hers, and he had lost her completely. By the time he had relearned how to be alive again, she was gone. The situation too tedious to try and mend. He had let her go, knowing she’d be far better off without him, and by the time graduation came around, she was hardly more than a memory and had become yet another ache in his heart.

It was Ominis who had put him onto the pretty little blonde, a rag tossed over his shoulder as he leant across the bar to tell him all about how she was french and looking for a good time that Sebastian was all too happy to give. 

Sebastian finally pulled himself out of his reminiscing, and out of his bed, to ready himself for his shift. The girl from last night already fading into just another memory of a good time.

~*~ The chill of the late morning air and the smoke in his lungs steadied Sebastian’s racing heart as he stood upon the roof of St. Mungos.

His morning had been taken up entirely by a handful of Aurors who had walked straight into a trap laid by a cell of dark wizards, led by a tip from an informant who had been playing both sides. He and his fellow Healers had managed to save most, but the one he had not is what had sent him up to the roof to clear his head, and settle his stomach. Every one of his failures twisted in his gut like a blade, making him want to crawl out of his skin.

Sebastian closed his eyes as he took another long drag of his cigarette, willing the vision of the aurors final moments from his brain, though he knew he’d be stuck with it until he drew his own final breath, just like all of the others. 

He was pulled from his morbid reverie by a trainee healer, summoning him back inside from her place at the door, her arms crossed over her chest, an instinctual attempt to shield herself from the cold. Sebastian flicked the half finished smoke from his fingers as he turned to follow her back inside, the cigarette disappearing before it hit the ground. 

The trainee quickly filled him in on his call as they descended the stairs, two at a time. 

“Another Auror.. Got splinched when they attempted to apparate her here, away from the scene. Suspect her body was too weak to handle apparition. Had to arrange for an emergency portkey, she’s in a bad state.” 

Sebastian nodded along, his heart racing once again, with a mix of adrenaline and dread. 

Their feet landed simultaneously on the landing of the fourth floor, and the elder healer slammed through the door, to a small crowd and a blood bath. Right there in the corridor. He pushed his way through the onlooking Aurors in varying states of distress,  to the figure lying on the floor, writhing and gasping in a pool of her own blood. 

He had been so lost in taking in the damage, the hurt, his mind whirring a million miles a minute at the prospect of what he was walking into, he hadn’t taken a moment to register her face.

A face he knew, a face that had him stop dead in his tracks. It was as if ice water had replaced the blood in his veins as he stood over MC, convinced his racing heart had now stopped completely. 

“MC?” 

He allowed himself no more than a half second hesitation before he kneeled beside her twitching form. His eyes roamed her injured body, avoiding her face, unable to force himself to witness the pain there. As his hands found a wound in her abdomen, he knew this was more than a splinch, the mutilation was more than simply severed flesh. 

Sebastian turned to look at the Auror standing closer than the others, trying to ignore the sounds of his old friends choked gasping. He had to bite back an exasperated laugh as he stared into the face of Leander Prewett. 

“Prewett.” He closed his eyes, fixing his tone, the greeting had come out much more venomous than intended. The shock and terror he felt about this situation clouding his mind. “Can you tell me what happened?”  He tried keeping his voice steady, as he always did when he took on the role of calm and collected healer as he questioned the man standing above him, who looked as panicked as he felt. Leander gave Sebastian a polite nod before recollecting the moment of MC’s injury. 

“She’s..she's a scout. She went in first, surveyed the area… she knew it was a trap before any of us realized… one of the bastards ran her through with a blade… he came out of nowhere. Then.. it was just chaos… we were surrounded… After things were under control, we tried everything to stop the bleeding… to fix her. Wiggenweld, essence of dittany, every healing spell they teach us in the program. Nothing worked.”

Sebastians seemed to brain click back into place, and he shook off another laugh of realization as he lifted MC into his arms and off the stone floor, the sight of his lime green robes spreading beneath him a striking contrast against the pool of blood he had been kneeling in. 

“Cursed. I’m positive the blade was cursed.” He nodded his head at the trainee healer who had been standing behind him, observing his work and she sprinted off for the alchemy lab, the knowledge she had absorbed from Sebastian at this point in her training made a verbal request redundant. Sebastian turned to push through into a hospital room to lay MC on the clean cot. He tried once again, to ignore the sight and sounds of the girl fighting for her life, the girl he once thought was the love of his life. Leander followed them inside, planting himself on the opposite side of the bed, his eyes never once leaving MC’s bloodied form. Sebastian couldn’t help the passing thought that the two Aurors were together, or the jealousy that suddenly roared inside of him at the thought. 

He moved to the cabinet above the bed, his touch letting the lock release and the door fall open. He grabbed a small glass vial and turned back to Leander and MC, setting it down on the small wooden table beside him. 

To ease Leander’s mind as much as his own, Sebastian welcomed the habitual way he slipped into a calm recitation of what he knew to be the issue, and how they could resolve it. Even now, amidst the chaos and fear, Sebastian felt a swell of pride and peace fill his chest, knowing he had found exactly what he was meant to do with his life.

“Suspect the blade was cursed to make the wound untreatable, to prevent any common healing rectification to take hold, unfortunately I also suspect it’s why we can’t heal the splinch either. The curse affects the entirety of her body, including new injuries. So this..” Sebastian holds up the small glass vial. “...Will hopefully slow the bleeding, while I do my work, the counter charms tend to take a bit of time, time that we do not have.” 

Sebastian expected Leander to pelt him with panicked questions, or threaten his life if he did not manage to save MC. Reactions he was accustomed to receiving by loved ones of his patients, instead, the redhead simply nodded, his face stoic and determined. The Healer couldn’t help but wonder if the Auror was simply still in shock, numb from the battle. A part of him wished Prewett would yell or curse or panic, then, at the very least the only sound in the room would not be the sounds of their dying friend. 

The Healer had no time to psychoanalyze the Auror, instead he put him to work.

“Alright, Prewett. Would you mind giving me a hand holding her head back?” 

Leander didn’t hesitate as he gently took MC’s head in his hands, and tilted it back so Sebastian could pour the potion down her throat, with shaky hands, trembling with anxiety at seeing his former friend in such a state. Prewett’s hands on her head ensured she didn’t choke them back up or spit them out in her fight for breath. 

Despite Sebastian being finished feeding her the potion, Prewett didn’t move his hand away from where it rested on the top of her head, his fingers trailing through her hair in what could only be interpreted as comfort. 

Sebastian stamped down the bubbling angry jealousy at the gesture, and set the empty vial into a hole in the wall, where they promptly disappeared, knowing it would reappear back in the alchemy lab instantly, ready to be sterilized and reused. 

He returned to the side of the bed, pulling out his wand, and began softly muttering the necessary charms and counter curses. So lost in his work, he didn’t notice his trainee return, setting the necessary potions for the course of the treatment onto the table, at his side. 

He wasn’t so lost in his work, however, that he didn’t hear when Prewett finally spoke up, his voice quiet and soft, words directed at the trainee. His gaze was on MC who was still in a state of agony, her gasping still the only sounds in the room until he had begun to speak. 

“I told them we shouldn’t have tried apparating with her, that we should wait for a portkey or summon for a healer to come to her.”

The trainee shook her head in sympathy, her mouth opening and closing, completely unaware of what to say, how to help the man who had brought MC to them to be saved. Sebastian understood this was one of the hardest parts of the job, of their careers. Dealing with the patients' friends and family. When MC’s body seemed to be wrapped up in a golden light, he exhaled softly, and lifted his wand from where it rested centimeters above her body, its tip lit with the same golden light. Then, he sent his trainee out to assist the other healers with their work. 

He attempted to crack a joke, to lighten the mood now that he knew he could fix her, heal her. 

“Turns out some Aurors do have brain function. Wouldn’t have expected it to be you though, Prewett.” 

Sebastian felt a bit of satisfaction when his playful jab pulled Leanders gaze away from the girl in the bed, and on him with a roll of his eyes and a small smirk. It wasn’t Leander who returned the banter, however. The choked words and sound of MC’s voice made both men startle. 

“Fuck off, Sallow.” 

Sebastian couldn’t help the grin that split his face, and Leander wore a matching one as he looked back at her, quickly pulling his hand away from where he still had it laid on her head. She was still twitching slightly and her face was still contorted in pain, but the curse leaving her body and the slowing of the blood flow must have had her pain dissipating just enough to be coherent. 

“Well, seems she’s at least in good spirits.” 

Leander spoke first, and Sebastian knew he had to pull himself together. His mind already running with hope that this could be what brings MC back to him, this could be his chance to redeem himself to the last person alive he still felt indebted to do so.

When MC met Leanders gaze, and her pained look twisted into an almost smile, Sebastian swallowed thickly, his arm moving to pull out another potion from the cabinet. 

“You two together, then?” 

Before either Auror could respond to his query, a knock on the door pulled all three of their attentions towards it. It opened slowly, revealing an older, official looking wizard, who barely glanced at the girl in the bed before turning his stoic gaze on Leander. “Prewett. Boss wants your statement. Now.” 

Leander stiffened, his eyes flicking between the man in the door, MC and Sebastian. Who was torn between wanting information and wanting to be rid of the one thing standing between him and being alone with MC. He continued his work, pretending not to pay any attention to the exchange as he gently applied the potion to the two gaping wounds in MC’s abdomen. 

MC hissed at the sensation of the liquid dripping into her body through her lesions and she spoke to Leander through gritted teeth, her voice tight with pain, assuring him she would be fine. Prewett rolled his eyes, but patted her arm gingerly, and made his departure with a small scowl. 

Sebastian kept his gaze on his work on the injuries, smiling when he watched the essence of dittany do its job, stitching her flesh back together. His grin grew wider when it stayed that way, his mind now reverting back to what he could possibly say now, with his work nearly done, the girl beneath him nearly healed. 

“Merlin, that feels so weird every time.”  MC’s voice sounded lighter, less tight and laced with pain as she commented on Sebastian’s healing work on her damaged body. Sebastian tilted his head to smirk down at her, another playful glint in his eye.

“Finding yourself injured quite a bit then, MC?” 

Clearly uncomfortable with the seemingly imbalanced power dynamic with Sebastian standing above her, MC tried to raise herself up into a sitting position with shaky arms, ignoring his teasing comment. Despite the pain dissipating with the disappearance of her wounds, she was still quite pale and Sebastian could see the dizziness in her eyes. He instinctively grasped her shoulders to lie her back down on the bed, earning himself a scowl that brought him right back to age 15 when he’d try and steal from her Honeydukes haul.

“Oh wipe that scowl off your face, I’m trying to help you, you know. I’ve already saved your life.”  Sebastians tone was firm, but laced with a familiar playfulness he always felt with her.  “You’ve lost a lot of blood, MC. It’s why you feel so weak.”  MC, in fact, did not wipe the scowl from her face, but she did lie back down. Sebastian was grateful for the small victory as he popped the cork of the last vial, the one the trainee had fetched for him from the alchemy lab. 

He offered the vial to MC with a small smile, and an expectant look.

“Drink up, Buttercup.” 

Her scowl deepened, but she obediently took the vial with shaking hands, but before she tipped it back she looked back at Sebastian. 

“Am I at least allowed to ask what this is or am I just supposed to trust you?” 

Sebastian knew she meant nothing more from her choice of words, but they stung just the same. His mind ran off with memories of everything he had put her through with her trust in him. How he had lost her trust, her friendship, her love for him with his reckless pursuit in their adolescence. 

He recovers quickly, with a roll of his eyes as he tilts the vial up to her lips with two fingers.

“It’s just a blood replenishing potion, I promise. Now, drink before you pass out.” He crosses his arms, watching her expectantly, before cracking another joke and making a move to stop her from downing the vial. “On second thought, if you do pass out I won’t have to put up with your sass.” 

MC shoots him an unconvincing glare as she swallows the dark red liquid, wincing at the taste. It was hard to believe that it had been nearly six years since the two had seen one another, and had been even longer since they’d had a proper conversation. Yet, here they were, falling into easy banter as if no time at all had come to pass. 

As Sebastian brings the vial back to the depository to send it back to the Alchemy room, MC clears her throat, and with the effects of the potion already settling into her system, she sits up in the bed using arms that are now much more stable. 

“We aren’t… together, just so you know. Leander and I. We’re just friends, partners at work, but not… together.”

When Sebastian doesn’t respond right away, because he’s lost in a sea of thoughts of everything more this could mean for him, for the hope he had slowly building inside his heart. She speaks again, her voice sounding much more irritable. 

“You asked, before… which is why I’m telling you. You asked.” 

Sebastian gives her another teasing grin, quirking an eyebrow at her ready defense as he returns to her bedside.

“Ah, and here I thought you were simply coming onto me. Wouldn’t be surprising if I'm honest. Happens all the time, when I save pretty little witches from their untimely demise. Quite common for Healers actually.” 

MC scoffs, crossing her legs beneath her on the bed. Her strength and personality slowly coming back to her again, with an adequate amount of blood now pumping through her veins. 

“Clearly your ego hasn’t dissolved with age, Sebastian.” 

Sebastian manages an easy laugh at her retort, the clipboard coming from the wall and into his hands. His mind running off with thoughts on just how long he could keep her here, at St. Mungos, under healer advisement. Keep her here with him, take away any chance for her to bolt back out of his life, give him a chance to make things right.

“Quite the opposite, really. I’m surprised I don’t fall over with how big my head is.” 

MC rolls her eyes, muttering something about it’s so full of air I’m surprised you don’t float away. Her gaze falling to the clipboard in Sebastians’ hands.

“You’re not keeping me here, are you?” 

Sebastian glances away from the form in his hand, and at MC’s scowling face ready for a fight. He lets out a heavy sigh as he drops the clipboard, and crosses his arms over his chest, giving her his best stern look of authority.

“You were cursed, MC, and you lost a decent amount of blood.” 

The Healer should have known better than to expect MC to see logic and sense. She bristled at his words, swinging her legs from the bed with a look of determination. Sebastian half-hoped she’d wobble as she stood, then he could at least feel justified in his desire to keep her here.

No such luck. MC stood in a firm stance, and then pranced around the small room. As if to prove she was well and able to get the hell out of this place. Sebastian couldn’t stop the chuckle that escaped him at her antics that were bordering on playful. She continued moving around, glaring at Sebastian all the while. Though luck was back on his side, when she attempted a spin. The motion giving way to a bout of dizziness that had Sebastian catching her with a small, exasperated, laugh. 

Sebastian guided her back to the bed, a look of triumph on his face as she blinked slowly, trying to steady the whirling inside of her head. He raises his arms in innocent submission when he tries to help her onto the bed, which had earned him a deadly glare. 

“Habit, MC. This is my job after all.” He defends himself with a signature smirk, the corner of his mouth tilting slightly upward. MC made a sound in her throat, as she settled back on the bed, her glare unsubsiding. 

“Yes, well. I still feel as though I’m alright to leave, Healer Sallow. I promise not to spin in circles like a buffoon for the foreseeable future.” 

Sebastian hummed thoughtfully, doing everything he could to avoid looking at her face, each time he had since her return to the world of the living, it felt like the vice around his heart tightened further, stealing the air from his lungs. He busied himself with his clipboard, flipping the pages of parchment as if searching for something. 

“Oh? No apparating? No traveling by Portkey? Going to travel like a proper muggle are you?” When his words got no snarky defense from the girl lying on the bed, he forced himself to look at her and fixed his tone back to Healer, rather than something akin to a friend. “I can’t force you to stay, MC, but I’d feel much more comfortable if you, at the very least, stuck around for just a few more hours. Until I am absolutely certain you are alright.” 

MC heaved a dramatic sigh, huffing and puffing as she made a show of getting comfortable on the bed. Her eyes narrowed in his direction all the while, looking much more like a petulant child than a fearless Auror. Sebastian took her silent movements as an agreement, under the assumption this is the best he would get from the prideful girl. 

“Oh come now, MC, no need to pout. Come on, sweetheart,  give me a smile.” That did the trick, Sebastian thought, as he watched the fire light in her eyes once again at his words, her head whipping around to face him. Though, before she had a chance to speak or curse, Sebastian continued on. “Would you like to hear a joke? Always seems to cheer up my pouting patients, though they’re usually children… but I suppose with your current behavior you’re one and the same.” 

He gave her a cheeky grin to counter her deadly glare.

This is nice, he thought to himself, Just like we’re fifteen again. 

“If looks could kill…” The Healer muttered, his smile unfading. “Now, What’s a vampire's favorite ship?” He let the start of his joke hang in the air, completely aware that MC would not offer up the punchline. He delivered it with a theatrical grin and open hands.  “...A blood vessel.” 

MC met his joke with a loud groan, her eyes closed but the hint of an exasperated smile on her face. 

“Please, Sebastian. Six years later and your jokes still suck?” 

Sebastian’s heart pounded in his chest, six years, since they had seen one another. It had been even longer since the two of them had been anything that could be considered remotely close. He knew this, of course. The thought plaguing his brain whenever he was still, whenever he couldn’t fill it with his work, or distract himself with pretty witches he found in pubs. 

It was hearing it from her mouth, in her words, that had his hands pausing from where they had been scrawling a note to send to the Alchemy lab. They trembled now, with a mix of anticipation and dread. Sebastian took a deep breath, his exhale slow, the sudden reality settling on his chest and clearing his head of anything but his need to fix this, to bring her back. He tapped the parchment with his wand, watching it fold itself up into the shape of a bird before flitting towards the door. He walked over to release it into the corridor, allowing it to continue to its destination. 

Sebastian slowly shut the door, turning back around to face the girl he had been desperately and painfully missing for the better part of a decade, who was now two feet away from him with a small smile on her face, from his dreadful joke. The click of the door closing again seemed to suck all of the air out of the small room, and that smile was fading now, MC picking up on the sudden, awkward tension.

He ran his hand over the back of his neck, awkwardly. Wondering how the hell one even starts a conversation such as this. He decides that’s exactly where to start. All these years later, after all of the mistakes and avoidance and emotional immaturity, the only thing that needed to be said was the truth, and Sebastian decided that would start now. 

No matter how awkward and tense the conversation may be, Sebastian was not going to give up this chance, perhaps his only chance at saying what he had been wanting to say for years. He had to do it for himself, and for the hope that still flickered in his heart for them, together. 

“MC… I… I don’t even know where to start with this… with me… and you… and us.” 

He clears his throat again, forcing down the growing lump of emotion that was threatening to overcome him. His gaze flicked from where he had taken a sudden interest in the stone floor, to MC, who was now white as a sheet and her chest heaving, in quick and short bursts. 

Sebastian continued on, certain that her demeanor was from him, his words, and not remnants of the curse she had befallen. He pulled the chair meant for visitors of patients, and slid it close to her bedside, seating himself on it. Moving his eyesight to his sweating hands clasped in front of him, away from the girl staring at him with wide eyes.

“Suppose the best place to start is with an apology… though I don’t think there’s anything I can say or do that would even come close to proving to you how sorry I am. For how I treated you, how I let myself pull away from you… and never even tried to come back.” 

He paused to swallow, to try and work something into coherency in his head. He startled when MC swung her legs off the side of the bed to face him head on, her voice seeming much louder than it was in the silent room.

“What are you talking about, Sebastian?” 

Her words left him reeling with confusion, and he managed to make himself look at her, slightly above him with her position on the bed. MC’s face was concerned, laced with confusion that only served to deepen his own.

“I.. um.” Perhaps she had forgotten? Or this had only been a heartbreaking journey for him? Perhaps his last two years in school, drowning in grief had addled his brain? His recollection? 

He didn’t know the answers, and his racing pulse seemed to quicken even further. Still, he had to keep trying. He couldn’t, wouldn’t let her leave again. Not without hearing everything he had always meant to say, before it had been too late. Sebastian ran his hands down his face, as if to wipe away the confusion, the anxiety and he heard her take a deep, shaking breath just as he had minutes ago. 

When he removed his hands, MC was meeting his gaze. Her eyes now swimming with tears of her own. They were mirrors of one another. Hands clasped in laps, pulses racing, cheeks twinged pink, eyes filled with tears threatening to fall. The Healer was certain, if he concentrated just hard enough, he would be able to hear the sounds of their hearts pounding in the silent room.

They kept a locked gaze for a beat, before she closed her eyes, a look of anxious determination crossing her face as she did so. As if willing herself to trudge on. 

Then, she touched him.

She leant forward, to curl her fingers around his shoulders, over the stains of her blood still present on his robes, as if to steady him, steady both of them. Despite the air leaving his lungs at the feeling of her hands on his body, no matter how innocent the touch, He felt his pulse evening out. The look in her eyes was full of hurt and concern, not anger or resentment. 

“Have you… thought this… us… was your fault all this time? That you were solely responsible for… this?”  

Her words settled in his mind, exacerbating his confusion, because of course he was. This was all his fault, just as everything that had transpired in their schooldays was his fault. The look on his face must have betrayed his thoughts because as his mouth opened, ready to spill everything. She cut him off with a laugh, an incredulous look on her face as she looked past him. Sebastian could nearly see the gears turning in her mind, he waited for her to return from whatever recesses of her mind she had retreated too before he tried speaking once again. 

Once again, being cut off by the girl he knew he was still desperately in love with.

“I’m sorry. I’m not laughing at you, not really anyway. I just… am baffled that you have spent the better part of ten years believing that the death of our friendship rested entirely on your shoulders.” 

Sebastian was the one feeling dumbfounded. He had been the one to seal himself away from anyone who tried to show him the tiniest bit of kindness after Solomon’s death. He had been the one to disappear nearly entirely when he got word of Anne joining their Uncle in an eternal rest. It had only been Ominis that he allowed to stand by his side as he buried her beside Solomon, if only as yet another offering of remorse for his actions that brought them all to that moment. 

Of course the distance between Sebastian and MC was entirely his fault. He was the one who put it there, drove a wedge between them with his grief and his guilt. When he opened his mouth to say so, to explain, to accept the responsibility his voice was soft, and sincere. 

“Because it was, MC. I was the one who disappeared. Who created this distance between us, built a wall and didn’t let anyone behind it. It was all entirely my fault. You were the one always chiding me about accepting the consequences of my actions, of my choices. That’s what I’m doing. Hoping that by doing so, we can… start over.”

MC took his admission with another breathy laugh, and a roll of her eyes. It had Sebastian contemplating what he possibly could have been missing from this equation. Why was she acting as though he was innocent? As though he had done nothing to cause this rift between them? Was it Pity? The thought of the girl he had pushed away, pitying him was enough to create a pit the size of a graphorn in his stomach. When he spoke again, his voice was soft and shaking. 

He steeled himself, and said the one thing he had always, viscerally, wanted to say. 

“I loved you, MC. I still love you. Even when I was acting as though I couldn’t care less about you. I was in love with you. There’s a part of me that thinks that I always will be, which is why I need you to listen to me. Let me try and fix this! Because there’s also a part of me that still believes you love me too.” 

His voice raised an octave, as passion flowed through him and his speech. Sebastian took another risk, taking her cold hands into his, his thumbs gently caressing the unbelievably soft skin on the backs of her hands. 

“Please.” 

The tears that had been building in her eyes finally fell as Sebastian stared into her face with impassioned determination. He watched as they raced down her cheeks, falling onto their clasped hands. He watched as she took another shaky breath, squeezing her eyes shut tight.

“No, Sebastian. It was me. I left. I could have tried harder to be there for you when… after… Well, everything. But I didn’t want to. I was sick over how much you had lost because of me. I should have listened to Ominis when he told me not to encourage you with the relic.  I should have stopped you from… I should have stopped you that night in the catacombs with Solomon. I could have and I didn’t.” 

She takes a beat, to breathe deeply again. 

“Then, Anne. Merlin. I… I just couldn’t… I couldn’t bear to… to be around you after she. After I couldn’t save her. The guilt of everything that was my fault, and seeing how hurt you were because of it all. I just… I distanced myself from you. It was me, Sebastian. I wanted this, because I was selfish and couldn’t accept what I had done, that I had played a part in all of your pain. Because I loved you too.” 

The room was silent once again. Save for the sounds of their shared labored breathing, both of them trying to catch their breath after their passionate confessions and exclamations. Both of them trying to absorb the other's words. They had lived entirely separate lives, distanced themselves from one another because they both believed themselves to be at fault. If they could have just talked to one another, all those years ago, perhaps it wouldn’t have had to be this way. Perhaps MC wouldn’t have had to face death to see Sebastian again. 

Sebastian was about to shoulder more blame, tell her how he could have chased her, could have tried harder once he had crawled out of his hole of grief stricken depression. Though before he could say anything, he was smiling softly, his eyebrow quirked with mild amusement and curiosity. He gave her hands a gentle squeeze. 

“Loved? As in past tense?” 

Despite it all, that incessant hope in his heart flickered still, and he held his breath while he watched her expression soften. Her hands dropped his, and she caressed his face with gentle fingers. “Don’t think I let myself think about it too much, or for too long… because it’s painful too. But I think you know that I do, still, love you, Sebastian.” 

He did know, deep, deep down, but still, he wanted to hear her say it. It had been worth it, hearing those words from her mouth had his heart feeling like it was going to burst forth from his chest. The tears of guilt and anxiety now replaced with tears of joy he had not felt in a long, long time. It felt as though the weight of the entire world was lifted from his chest, like he was breathing fresh air for the first time after months underground. 

Sebastian stood up, to hold MC’s face in his hands and stare into her eyes, hoping that she could sense his sincerity.

“We were both stupid kids. Didn’t know what the hell we were doing, I’m still sorry, and I will forever blame myself for us being in this position now… but we’re not kids anymore. Do you think… Do you think we could do this? Fix this? Be together?” 

He was nervous to ask, but the look in her eyes wasn’t dowsing his hope, it was igniting it. Her lips slowly curled into a smile, and her voice was soft, and as sincere as he felt. 

“I’d like to try.” 

No sooner had the words left her mouth when his lips were pressing against hers, his fingers moving to tangle into her hair, still caked with her own blood. Some part of Sebastian expected to feel sparks, or some dramatic swell of emotion that made him weak in the knees, but the kiss settled into his heart like he’d been dosed with a calming draught, like this is where he had always meant to be, with her lips on his. 

Sebastian had been so lost in the moment, in this reconciliation with MC, he had forgotten he was at work, on shift, as a Healer. The thought had managed to weasel its way into his mind, ruining the passionate moment with MC, and it felt like he had been doused with ice water. 

He pulled away with an apologetic smile, and his fingers still on her chin. 

It had been just in time, as at that moment the door swung open, revealing his Trainee Healer, having returned with more vials of blood-replenishing potion he had ordered for MC. He hoped that the position they were discovered in could be seen as an innocent exam.

Sebastian managed to ignore the teasing grin MC was giving him, with her back to the Trainee. He met his fellow Healer halfway into the room and accepted the vials with a smile and a thank you before she left once again, shutting the door quietly. 

When Sebastian turned back around, to set the vials onto the side table beside the bed, MC had laid herself back against the pillows, playing the role of innocent patient well. 

He stood beside the bed, unable to fight his smile or the urge to caress her hair as he stood at her bedside. Sebastian tried putting himself back into the role of Healer, and not lovesick former school friend. 

“My shift is up in a few hours. Will you behave and be a good patient until then? Please? We can… talk.” 

MC gave him a mischievous grin, and made a show of settling herself into the bed. 

“I suppose I can stick around for a few more hours. I’ll be sure to be the most needy patient you have ever had the misfortune of dealing with.” 

Her teasing comment seemed to bring the oxygen back into the room, the tension dissipating instantly as he rolled his eyes and pressed a soft kiss to her forehead. The tender moment making his heart swell, one he had had many a daydream about. 

“I’d expect nothing less.” He slid the bottles of potion across the wooden side table, and closer to MC. “I’ll be back to make sure you take these. One every half an hour until I’m certain you have an adequate amount of blood back in your body.” 

MC rolled her eyes, and Sebastian returned it with a grin before moving towards the door of the exam room and slipping outside. Before he fully left the room, he peeked back inside. 

“Hey MC?” Once he had her attention, he said what he wanted to say. “I’m glad you got cursed today.” 

Sebastian managed to close the door with a loud laugh, and made his way down the corridor towards his next patient,  before he had to endure whatever scathing retort or hex MC undoubtedly had for him.

[odyssean-flower]

The Winding Path of Fate Chapter 4 - Spring: Moving In

Masterpost Pairing: Neuvillette x Female Reader Summary: You move into Neuvillette's (surprisingly modest) house Warnings: None except for restrictive gender roles, also for some reason Fontaine’s regency england (sort of) now? Note: I update this story on AO3 first so please subscribe to the fic there if you’d like to read it faster Note 2: If you want to be on the taglist for this fic, please make a reply to this post, send a message or send a private ask

Have a pic of neuvillette standing on the skull of the guy who failed to prevent his birth (or something like that)

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Neuvillette had a busy schedule today, so he couldn’t accompany you to his house. So, he had the Melusine Liath show you the way. Come to think of it, it was kind of funny how you didn’t even know where he lived even though you were married to him now.

“I have to go back home to get my things first,” you told Liath.

“Sure thing, Madame Neuvillette,” Liath said cheerfully, dropping her voice lower when she called you Madame. Madame Neuvillette. Those words gave you a sense of vertigo. Better get used to it for the foreseeable future.

Liath had been quiet during the earlier ordeal, but now she was humming and skipping alongside you.

“Congratulations on your marriage! I do wish that there could be a grander ceremony, though, and that all my sisters could be there as well. Hehe, they were so jealous when I told them that Monsieur Neuvillette asked me to be the witness.”

“Ah...sorry about that,” you said. “It must have been very dull and underwhelming for you.”

“No, it’s fine. I know how busy Monsieur Neuvillette is. I don’t think he would hold an extravagant ceremony even if he did have time. He prefers to stay out of the spotlight, you know?”

You thought about the first time you met him and your subsequent run-ins with him and had to agree. It was a strange quirk for someone with such a high-profile job, but perhaps he simply wanted to avoid the public gaze after spending most of his time being at the center of it. But why take such a job, then?

“Yes, I can tell,” you said. “I can relate to that.”

You and Liath went down the elevator and headed for the direction of your boarding house. No one looked or paid much attention to you at all. You had half-expected a giant spotlight to shine down on you as soon as you left the Palais Mermonia or a loudspeaker to announce that you were Neuvillette’s new wife. The world hadn’t changed after your marriage, even though the new ring on your finger felt like a shining beacon.

Of course, you weren’t so naïve as to assume that this would remain the case for the rest of your marriage. It would certainly get out sooner or later. You had no idea what you would do when that time came but opted to leave that aside for now.

“You know, Madame, I’ve seen you at the Palais many times before. To tell you the truth, I was a bit afraid to say hello to you because you always had that scary look on your face, but now I can see that you’re not like that at all. You’re a bit like Monsieur Neuvillette in that way. Humans are always too intimidated to approach him, but he is really very friendly.”

This wasn’t the first time you were told that you had a face that put people off. You honestly didn’t understand what they were talking about. As far as you knew, your expression was just how you always looked. But it might be a problem when it comes time to teach children. You made a mental note to work on it later.

“He is certainly more approachable than I expected,” you nodded, slowing down a little bit so that Liath wouldn’t be left behind. “And thoughtful to boot.”

Liath beamed. “Ah, that’s just what I’d expect from Monsieur Neuvillette’s wife! You really do understand him well!”

I wouldn’t go that far, you thought, but said nothing. You knew that the Melusines were close to Neuvillette, but how much did they really know about the truth behind this marriage? Should you try to find out what Liath knew?

But before you could say anything, you had arrived at your boarding house. It was a small, old building that housed twenty or so young women at any given time, and it had been your home for more than a year.

You asked Liath to wait outside and went in. You had already paid the remainder of your rent to the landlady, so all that was left to do was to get your already packed suitcase and sign out. Most of the other girls were out at work during this time, so you thankfully didn’t have to worry about running into anyone and having to make awkward conversation about why you were leaving.

A respectable young lady of a noble family technically should have found lodging with another family of similar rank. But you didn’t have any connections in the city that could take you in, and though you would never admit it, it was kind of fun having to live on your own and being responsible only for your own needs. Having to scrimp and be frugal wasn’t the most pleasant thing in the world, but that feeling of freedom, of having to assert yourself? It was like breathing in cold air after spending a long time being suffocated.

To think you wouldn’t be able to experience that feeling again for a long time, now that you were married to the most powerful man in the nation (a fact that you still couldn’t wrap your head around). And even after this marriage was over, your job as a governess meant that you’d be at the mercy of whatever family you were assigned to.

Don’t think about it too much, you told yourself. Just keep looking at what’s in front of you and keep moving.

Your room was small and cramped, with most of the space dominated by the bed, closet, and desk. But it at least had a window, which made you more fortunate than some of the other boarders. Plus, you didn’t need to share it with anyone.

Your belongings were packed into your battered leather suitcase. You hadn’t brought much with you when you moved here, and you hadn’t bought many new things either. You wouldn’t need help carrying your suitcase, at the very least.

Picking up your suitcase, you turned back to look at your room one last time. The covers were neatly tucked under the mattress, the floor was swept clean, and everything you owned was in your hands. It looked just like how it was when you first moved in here, like there was never anyone living here at all. It probably wouldn’t be long before someone else moved in.

There was a weightless, hollow feeling in your chest as you walked down the narrow hallway that led to the front door. You felt like a ghost haunting the place where you once lived, like your existence had already been erased. This was a familiar feeling, one that you had felt at balls, dinners, and other social gatherings. A feeling that was your constant companion when you studied alone in your room while everyone else was out. You suspected that you would become even more acquainted with this feeling in the coming days and months.

Stop being so dramatic, you shook your head to get rid of this mood. You knew what you were signing up for. Just grit your teeth and get through it like you’ve always done.

Just then, you ran into a girl who was coming out of her room. “Oh, hey,” she said, then took a better look at you. “Wow, you’re dressed nicely today. And you’re moving out too. What’s the occasion?”

You weren’t exactly friends with this girl, but you had gone out with her and some other boarders for desserts from time to time, and it was fun listening to them gossip about the latest trends or scandals, even if you barely contributed. You wonder if she’d remember you for long after you leave.

A ready excuse was on your tongue, but you hesitated. The hollow feeling welled up inside you once again. But for some reason, you somewhat felt like defying it.

You looked the girl straight in the eye and said, “I got married.”

Liath was chattering away as you two walked to Neuvillette’s house, but you couldn’t concentrate on what she was saying. Your heart was beating too quickly as you finally came to terms with what you had done today.

I’m actually married. I’m actually married to the Chief Justice of Fontaine.

You snuck one quick glance back at the receding boarding house. A surge of sudden homesickness welled up within you. You shook your head to clear it away and tried to think about something else.

At least you could enjoy the nice weather today. For the past week before your marriage, it had been cloudy and downcast, which hadn’t really helped your mood or nerves. You closed your eyes and tilted your head towards the sun, basking in the warmth.

The scenery around you gradually changed from familiar and welcoming shopfronts and apartment buildings to the stately and gated mansions of the Fontainian elites as you ascended towards the upper part of the city. The houses here weren’t as big as the country homes outside the city where the nobles spent most of the year, but they were still impressive. You tried not to gawk at all the finery around you, but it was difficult not to make comparisons to your small family home, located in a sleepy village just outside of the city.

I’m Madame Neuvillette now, you told yourself. Act more like it.

You straightened your back and stared directly ahead.

“We’re here!” Liath said, stopping in front of a wrought iron gate. “This is where Monsieur Neuvillette lives!”

There was a long white gravel path that disappeared up ahead, lined on both sides by trees. Neuvillette’s house was more isolated than you imagined.

Liath took out a key from her pocket and inserted it into a small door set into the gate that you hadn’t noticed until now. It was just the right size for a Melusine. Did Neuvillette have that installed for them? That’s really sweet, you thought with a surprising rush of warmth.

“I’ll run ahead and tell Ms. Marie that you’re here,” Liath told you. “She’s the housekeeper.”

“Okay,” you nodded, and watched as Liath ran down the path.

Left alone, you sat down on your suitcase. It was quiet here. All you could hear was the chirping of birds and the hum of bees. You had already gotten used to having the chatter of your boarding house neighbors and the sounds of activity outside your window as your daily background noise. This silence was discomfiting.

I want to run away.

That thought suddenly appeared in your mind. It wasn’t the first time.

You tapped your feet on your ground, trying to reason yourself to calmness. There’s nowhere for me to go. I can’t return home, especially after this whole affair, and I don’t have the money to find another place to live.

I want to run away.

“Shut up,” you growled to yourself. “You can’t change anything now.”

“Pardon me, Madame?” A woman’s voice came from behind you.

“Ah...” you jump up and spun around. Liath was back, accompanied by a middle-aged woman with brown hair and a friendly-looking face. “Hello,” you greeted her. “I’m--”

“I already know who you are, Madame Neuvillette,” the woman interrupted with a smile. Then, before your amazed eyes, she curtsied deeply. “I am Marie, Monsieur Neuvillette’s housekeeper. Welcome to your new home.”

She unlocked the gate and let you inside.

“I’ll be taking my leave now. I must get back to my post,” Liath announced.

You felt a jolt of shock upon hearing those words. You hardly knew Liath, but with her departure, you would truly be left all alone. There would be no going back.

The feeling of distress was so acute that it must have shown on your face, because Liath smiled at you reassuringly. “Don’t worry, Madame. Ms. Marie is really nice, and Monsieur Neuvillette’s house is incredibly comfortable. You’ll settle in quickly, I’m sure. And I think Monsieur Neuvillette would try his best to come home early today.”

Take me with you! You wanted to shout, but instead you plastered on a smile and said, “Thank you, Miss Liath. Have a safe trip back.”

“Bye!” Liath waved, then skipped off.

Marie closed the gate, then said, “Shall we go, then?” She picked up your suitcase and started walking back down the road. You hurried after her.

The white gravel road was somewhat dark due to the shade of the tall verdant trees on both sides. However, dappled sunlight still shined down through the leaves. It would be a calming, peaceful walk under any other circumstances, but you were a bundle of nerves. You should probably be asking Marie a million questions right now or at least making friendly conversation, like a proper lady, but try as you might, you couldn’t get the words out. Funny, you hadn’t felt this nervous when you moved to the city by yourself for the first time, or even during your marriage ceremony.

Marie didn’t seem to find your silence strange, though. She simply looked back and gave you friendly smiles every now and then and didn’t attempt to strike up a conversation. Perhaps she could tell how tense you were, which made you feel worse. The ability to maintain a veneer of calmness was one of your strengths.

Eventually, the road reached its end. Before you stood an elegant two-story mansion, yellow-bricked and blue-roofed. It had a wraparound porch that looked out onto a prettily arranged flowerbed, as well as a birdbath. The mansion was encircled by trees that cast their shade over it, giving it a somewhat gloomy appearance.

All in all, it was certainly a stately mansion, if a bit plainer than what one would expect for the residence of the Iudex.

“Huh...” a breath slipped out of you.

“Not what you were expecting, Madame?” Marie laughed.

You felt your face turn red. “No, no! It’s just that...I assumed that there would be more floors, and columns, and such...” you cleared your throat. “There must not be very many servants working here, then.”

“Not at all. It’s just me, and occasionally some hired help for the garden.”

“Just you?” you exclaimed.

“Yes. Monsieur Neuvillette prefers a solitary lifestyle, and he does not stay at home for very long due to his busy schedule, so there is no need for a lot of hands here. Ah, perhaps that will change now that you are here.”

“Oh, no, I doubt it. I can take care of myself just fine. There’s no need to change anything just for me.”

It was true, even back home, your family only had a single elderly housekeeper who had been around since your grandfather’s time, so you were already used to cooking for yourself and doing household chores. The thought of having to manage servants gave you a headache, so this came as a relief.

“You’re a lot like him, so humble and self-effacing. I can see why Monsieur Neuvillette took such a liking to you,” Marie said.

You smiled awkwardly but said nothing. This was the second time so you had been told something like that to you today. Does Marie know the truth about this marriage? I need to ask Monsieur Neuvillette about this later.

There were too many unknowns here for your liking.

You followed Marie inside the house. The interior was tastefully decorated but not ostentatious like the mansion that held the ball you attended last month. For someone with such a complicated outfit, his taste in fashion does not seem to extend elsewhere, you thought.

“I’ll bring your suitcase to your room, and then I will show you around the house, if that’s all right with you, Madame?”

“Yes, that sounds good, Marie,” you nodded.

You climbed the wooden staircase to the second floor. There was a set of double doors at the far left end, which you presumed to be the master bedroom. But to your surprise, Marie headed to the right and opened a door at the end.

“This is your room, Madame,” she announced, setting your suitcase down on the end of the queen-sized bed.

The room was much bigger than your old room at the boarding house. It consisted of a large bed with a floral bedspread, a wooden desk, an empty bookshelf, a vanity, and a closet. There was a closed door in the corner. You caught a glimpse of a window seat behind lacy curtains. Everything looked elegant and little-used.

It suddenly struck you. You had been so preoccupied with the marriage of convenience itself that the fact that you would have to sleep in the same room as your husband never occurred to you. But you supposed that you didn’t have to worry about that now.

“Monsieur Neuvillette wished for you to be comfortable during your stay here, so he had this guest room prepared for you,” Marie said, as though reading your thoughts. “I’m glad to see it getting used now.”

The word “stay” caught your attention. Stay implied temporality. Did Marie know everything? Before you could ask her, she gestured towards the closed door. “That’s where the bathroom is.”

Marie went on to show you around the house. As you guessed, Neuvillette’s private quarters, including his bedroom and study, were in the left wing. The drawing room, kitchen, dining room, and Marie’s room were all downstairs. There was also a garden in the back.

After the tour was done, Marie told you that lunch would be ready in a few hours. You decided to rest in your room. You were suddenly feeling exhausted.

Once you got to your room, you closed the door behind you and flopped onto the bed. It was incredibly soft and comfortable. It felt like you could sink down into it forever.

Is this what it’s like to stay in a hotel? You thought. You had never had that experience, but you thought that this was what it would be like, this mixture of giddiness from being in a new environment and the distant acceptance that you wouldn’t be here for long.

After lying on the bed for a few minutes, you decide to unpack your things and look around. The closet was far too big for your few articles of clothing, which looked tragically out of place inside the mahogany interior. You placed your books, including your beloved Remurian history books, on the bookshelf. You went into the bathroom to put away your toiletries and was greeted with the sight of a large, claw-footed bathtub, neatly arranged shelves of bath products, and a wide marble sink.

You closed the door firmly behind you and flopped back down onto the bed. The thought of moving again sounded like torture.

How did things turn out this way? You thought. I’m completely out of my element here.

The hollow feeling returned, stronger than ever. You buried your face in your pillow.

It would be one thing if you were brought here to work. But being a wife? Such aspirations, if they ever existed, had died out long ago within you. You weren’t sure you could even pretend to be one anymore.

It was funny how fate, seemingly so straightforward for you, could take this unexpected turn. You devoted yourself to becoming a governess out of the belief that you would never marry, and yet here you were, married to the Chief Justice himself (albeit temporarily). All the uncertainties and anxieties about the situation whirled through your mind. What would happen if people found out? Would you ever get hired by a family after this was over? Neuvillette said he would keep this marriage a secret as much as possible, but considering how it was the Hydro Archon who ordered him to get married, that would mean that you would have to meet her one day, as well as whatever high-society friends you had. Not to mention the fact that when all of this would inevitably come out, how would you deal with all that attention?

You buried your head in your pillow. It felt like you had dug yourself into a deeper hole.

Something your mother said came back to you. It had been during one of your arguments over giving up your future, when you had tried to explain that it was your destiny to become a spinster.

“Fate isn’t something so set in stone, my dear. Anything can drive it off course.”

You weren’t sure you believed that. In your opinion, some people were just destined to serve certain roles in life.

Role...

Yes, being Neuvillette’s wife was just another role. You needed to just think of this as a side path to your true goal. Sometimes, you had to go through temporary obstacles to achieve something. One year wasn’t so long, after all. Perhaps whatever you gained from this side path could help you in the future. You could try to make connections with the upper-class people in Neuvillette's circle, securing a good placement for yourself after this was all over. Or at least this could make for a funny story to tell people much later in life.

You sat up on the bed. Just like how you brute-forced your way into mastering all that a governess needed to know, you could brute-force your way into learning how to act as the wife of the Chief Justice. You wouldn’t be like Remus, panicking after something unexpected happened and making the worst possible decisions, leading to his downfall.

No, you would prepare as best as you could and keep moving forward. There was no other way.

The pile of paperwork on Neuvillette’s desk didn’t decrease in any way, which was to be expected even after his marriage this morning.

Neuvillette methodically made his way through them. After a few hundred years of doing this, it had almost become second nature for him. What was different this time was that he found his mind wandering more often than not, and not towards the usual subjects.

Well, it is only natural for someone to be distracted when they got married a short time ago, he mused.

Neuvillette had been invited to many weddings in his time and even officiated some, so he knew that this one wasn’t particularly standard. But he thought that it was a pleasant one that suited the tastes of everyone involved. If possible, he would have liked to have the ceremony near a nice, quiet body of water, preferably in the shade, but there was no point in regretting things now.

The image of Miss [Name]--no, his wife—flashed through his mind. He hadn’t told her at the time, because he sensed that it would only make her even more uncomfortable, but he thought that blue brought out the color of her eyes and cheeks, giving her a more cheerful and sprightly air. She should wear brighter colors more often, he thought, but suspected that she would only give him that dead-eyed stare again.

It only occurred to him now that she might have chosen to wear blue today to match him. That made him feel pleased. It meant that she was going into this marriage with no hard feelings. There was something else to that feeling of pleasure as well, but Neuvillette couldn’t quite pin it down. That wasn’t anything new, though. Perhaps he would identify this feeling sometime later.

As Neuvillette signed more documents, he could keenly feel the weight of his ring on his hand, even though it was plain and simple enough that his glove could fit over it without issue. He had the rings made a short while ago and was glad that they were a good fit.

He could still remember the sensation of his wife’s hand against his own skin and the focused look on her face as she put the ring on him. How long had it been since someone had touched his skin? It wasn't an unpleasant feeling, though.

That was a good way to describe this whole affair. Not unpleasant.

He wondered how she was doing right now. He hoped she was settling in well. Though he had no doubt that she would get along well with Marie, he still couldn’t help but feel a bit anxious. Did the room suit her taste? Should he have consulted with her beforehand? There was still so much he didn’t know about her.

For example, part of the reason why he had chosen her to be his wife was because she seemed to be a person of little emotional ups and downs. In his line of work, he often had to deal with intense emotions, something that could still overwhelm him at times. However, after getting to know her better, he learned that she wasn’t as calm and placid as he expected. There was a raging turmoil underneath that seemingly tranquil surface.

But it wasn’t all negative. He smiled slightly as he recalled her spirited speech about Remuria. There was something so charming about seeing a serious person lighting up in that way.

Neuvillette moved on to the next document, which wasn’t a document at all but a note. He sighed, recognizing the handwriting. It was from Furina.

He skimmed it before putting it aside. He already knew its contents before opening it. It seems that she wishes to continue her daily harassment of me even in writing, he suppressed a sigh. Furina had a packed schedule for this month, so she probably couldn’t find the time to storm into his office, hence the note. But eventually, he would have to tell her about his marriage and most likely introduce his wife.

He decided to put such thoughts aside for now. There was no use in worrying about possibilities.

At the very least, I hope I can look forward to a peaceful time at home today.

Previous | Next

Taglist: @just-simping-over-genshin, @xalphafox, @jqnehr, @favficdump

[electrasev5nwrites]

Happy pride month! If you'd be interested, I'd love to see a soulmates!AU fic for either Cass/Steph or Tim/Jason.

I love this ask, happy Pride month! Here's chapter 1 of 3 for the Tim/Jason ask. It's angsty, so if you wanna wait for the happy ending, you'll want to read when chapter 3 is up. The chapter is also below the cut, for anyone who prefers to stay on Tumbly.

TIM 1

Tim woke up in a cold sweat, panting and disoriented. He stared at the shadows moving on his wall for a moment to acclimate.

There had been nothing that night. No dreams. Tim had just laid down at night and woke up in the morning with a blank space stretching in between.

That was, he figured, a pretty good metaphor for his life in general.

That was the weirdest Sunday of his life. He wandered around his house in a daze. It felt like the color had been ironed out of his life. But at that point, he thought that something was wrong with him.

He didn't actually worry about his soulmate until the second night it had happened. His dreams were often hard to get a handle on. When he'd been little it had been hunger and pain and a demented carnival of ugly adult faces, dirty alleys and a brown sofa that meant safety. For a golden year, the dreams had been of free fall and neon lights, bleeding knuckles and French food and a library.

Tim splashed water on his face and looked at himself in the mirror. His stomach twisted with a fear that he wouldn't think about. Dreams, he thought, were not the most practical soulmate connection. He wondered what he gave his soulmate back. He didn't think he was enough of an open book asking to be loved to be a name on a wrist, but he probably wasn't emotionally rich enough to be passing on dreams.

"Not that this life isn't worth seeing at night," Tim scoffed wryly. He slung his backpack over a shoulder and drank juice out of the container. He shoved a poptart in his pocket and stumbled out the door to catch his bus.

He ate the poptart on the bus, hunched over so that the driver wouldn't yell at him for leaving crumbs. They landed on his pants.

With a sigh he leaned his head back and closed his eyes. The rocking of the bus lulled him back to sleep. Tim welcomed it. Maybe this would fix whatever had gone wrong in the connection, like turning a computer off and on again.

He woke up again without seeing anything.

By the time he got to school, he had worked himself into a panic. He chose to be late to first period in order to go to the library to find a reference about soulmate troubles. The teacher gave him a disapproving look when he slipped in, but let it pass without comment.

He was sneakily looking at the header "signs your unmet soulmate has died" when the morning loudspeaker announcement started.

"I have some sad news for you today," said the Principal.

Tim closed his book and looked up. The homeroom teacher was frowning slightly, looking around the classroom. He didn't seem to know where this was going.

"Over the weekend we've had a loss."

He felt his back tense.

"It is with the heaviest of regrets that I must inform you that 3rd year student Jason Todd-Wayne has passed away. The school counselors welcome anyone who would like to talk about this. I understand that…"

It became white noise to Tim. Students around him were reacting with gasps and whispers. He leaned forward and put his face into his hands, reeling.

This was a bad way to find out that Robin had been his soulmate. Too late to do anything about it, and with no way to prove it.

The next months were manic. Batman went off the rails. Tim did, too. He traveled to Bludhaven and begged the first Robin to come back. He stayed up for days on end and then he crashed and lost 20 hour stretches of time to the void of dreamless sleep. He was late to school and sleeping on the bus. He was confronting Batman and stealing a Robin costume and taking his soulmate's old role as the guiding light to Batman's self imposed darkness.

He didn't tell anyone about his connection to Jason. It felt like a lie even if it was true. It felt like something he would be saying to ingratiate himself and make them love the cuckoo in the nest.

Tim regretted that when the dreams came back 6 months later.

"Maybe they were in a coma?" Dick suggested, not without sympathy. He reached out to ruffle Tim's hair. Tim ducked unsuccessfully. "I would have thought they were dead, too, but the dead don't come back."

Tim fidgeted. There was a heaviness in Dick's voice that probably meant Jason.

That was awkward, since Tim had been sure that Jason had been his soulmate.

'I should have said that months ago.' Tim was kicking himself for that. 'It sounds so messed up now. I'll give Dick nightmares if I tell him I think Jason crawled out of his grave and then didn't even come here.'

Well. It was worth saying even if it wasn't about Jason.

"I hope this isn't too much information," Tim said, "but last week I dreamt about digging my way out of the ground. With a belt buckle."

Dick looked a little ill.

"That sounds like…" he trailed off, because it felt crazy to say. It sounded like his soulmate was a zombie? A zombie whose dreams had been of the suffocating dirt and bleeding fingers, and then beeping. Endless beeping and the harsh likes of fluorescent lights overhead.

It sounded like his soulmate was in the hospital, Tim had to admit. The grave thing was probably some kind of vivid nightmare.

"It sounds like a terrible dream," Dick sympathized. Tim let Dick pull him into a hug. "Have you tried reaching out? Maybe your mark on your soulmate is one of the more literal kinds."

"I can write on myself in marker and see what happens," Tim said. "But I don't think that's it."

Dick huffed against Tim's hair. "You're not that easily read, no," he agreed wryly. "And I guess it won't help you reach out if marks on you echo onto your soulmate."

Tim thought about it. "Not unless we can bruise me in a coherent message," he decided. "Technically it could work? Cutting a note would be easier but if it scarred that would be embarrassing. So, bruising. It would have to be something simple, though, and they might get mad about it-"

"We aren't bruising or cutting a message into you," Dick cut him off. He shook Tim lightly. "Precious baby bird. Delicate cargo."

"Bruises like banana," Tim offered practically. He was thirteen now, he was definitely old enough for the soulmate connection to go both ways.

Dick extended his arms to frown at Tim from a distance, tilted his head, and then picked Tim up to whole body toss him on the sofa and roll him into a protesting blanket burrito.

"Police brutality!" Tim hollered.

Someone opened a door. "Alfred, stop him!" Tim shouted. "Help." He wiggled and nearly fell off the couch. Dick caught him.

"Hey, Bruce," Dick said stiffly.

The door closed. Tim was a burrito until time for dinner.

Dick was gone on a doubtlessly tense patrol with Bruce and Tim was ready for bed by the time he realized he'd been deliberately distracted. He sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair. "Maybe he's right. It's probably… It's not a dead boy that came back."

He tried to sleep. He really did. The sick thought that maybe he was hallucinating the dreams because he wanted Jason to be back wouldn't leave him alone.

"I wouldn't want that for him." Tim tossed and turned to mumble directly into his pillow. "That would be terrifying. Waking up in his grave, alone. I don't want that for him," he insisted.

He felt guilty and generally bad. He got up, left Drake manor, and went to the Batcave to wait.

He didn't end up sleeping, so he should have just gone on patrol anyway, Tim groused internally. Bruce and Dick didn't agree when they got back, but he thought they were secretly relieved he was there to yell at instead of working out their irritation with each other.

He moved like a zombie through his morning routine and dredged up the smallest amount of energy for his semester finals.

Life stretched out that way. Tim avoided sleep as much as he could. When he did sleep, he never liked the dreams. The hospital turned to a nightmarish litany of blood and death and crying in the dark.

He eventually gaslit himself into believing he'd imagined his soulmate dying. Tim felt vaguely ashamed when he thought about it. He was a creep. He'd fixated on Robin so hard that he'd convinced himself his soulmate was the dead Robin.

'I hope I never meet my soulmate,' Tim thought on his 14th birthday. 'They deserve someone better.'

The dreams turned to busy urban streets, ticking bombs, guns, and a green haze. Tim was optimistic that this was better than the crying, but he was still concerned. He'd do a welfare check if he knew who they were.

'Maybe that's why I'm Robin,' he thought wistfully. 'Maybe I need to save them.'

Eventually, there was a new criminal in town, and he had Bruce and Dick at odds. At first they fought viciously over whether or not Red Hood's methods were effective. Later they fought over the same thing they always did: who was in control.

"I'm not saying I'm fine with the murder!" Dick threw his hands up in disgust. "I'm just saying that crime rates are down, the city is safer right now."

"Crime rates are down, except for all the people who've been murdered." Bruce didn't even look at Dick. "Murder remains a crime."

Tim did his level best to become smaller. Maybe if he didn't move at all, they would forget he was there.

"You know what I meant," Dick shot back. "It's not that black and white, Bruce. He's trying to get the crime under control. I think we should seriously consider whether or not the situation is more stable with him in it or not."

"He's a mass murderer," Bruce said. "I want both of you to stay away from him." It was an order.

Dick made a sound of disgust and stomped up the stairs. "Why would I seek him out?" He shouted over his shoulder. "I don't live here. I'm going home."

Batman looked at Robin.

Tim put his hands up. "I'll leave him alone," he agreed. It was easy. He didn't want to get near the Red Hood. He thought both of them were right: the city was safer now, and the Red Hood was a mass murderer. That was out of Robin's league.

Bruce grunted and turned back to the computer, apparently satisfied that at least someone was listening to him.

JASON I

"Cover that shit up." Dad looked at him with disgust. "You're being dramatic."

"I'm not." Jason muttered it, but Dad still heard and gave him a dangerous look. He put his hands up.

"Don't show your mother." The door slammed.

Jason was left alone to poke at the bruise.

It looked bad. It spread all over his left knee and mottled down his shin. It should hurt. It didn't, because it wasn't his bruise.

He smoothed a hand over it.

"I wonder what kind of person you are."

It probably didn't mean anything healthy if you were the type who only left your hurts on your soulmate, Jason decided. Probably meant you couldn't communicate your needs. It seemed like a particularly plaintive soulmark. Like it was silently asking for help.

He stripped off his shorts and tossed them on the chair. He dragged out a pair of jeans and pulled them on even though it was hot as hell out. It was easier to pretend they were his bruises. He didn't want to share anything from his soulmate with his Dad.

Over the years, he didn't actually get that many secondhand bruises. The first time he saw the gaping impression of a cut without any blood around it he felt vaguely ill, but it was only a scrape.

"Maybe she's a skater," Jason thought aloud. "It's always knees and elbows."

He liked that thought. He liked the simple, innocent marks he got. He hoped that he didn't leave the same type of soulmark. If he did, he'd be passing on black eyes and hangnails and blisters that popped and got infected on his feet from shoes that didn't fit. It made him feel dirty, diseased, like he'd taint his soulmate.

When he looked at the needle marks on his Mom, he had to push down a thought that was much uglier than even the shame.

Years later, his soulmate may as well have been a ghost. Jason poked at his arm in class with a mechanical pencil as if that could prompt his soulmate to give a sign of life.

'Probably quit skating,' Jason thought. He flicked his pencil back and forth.

Of course he wanted to know who it was. But it would happen eventually, right? And now that he was Robin he had something else to live for. He stopped checking for bruises and scrapes.

One day after peeling off the costume, he was surprised that the dirt he tried to scrub away from his upper arm was actually a soulmate bruise.

He'd actually forgotten. Jason stopped for a moment. He'd forgotten about his soulmate. What kind of person did that make him? Something strange churned in his gut.

Bruce eyed him. "What happened there?" He pointed.

"Nothing." Jason said too quickly and covered the bruise with his hand. It was private.

Bruce looked massively unimpressed. "Show me, Jason," he sighed. He loomed closer like the great honking bat he was.

Jason scowled at him. "It's nothing," He complained.

"Then why are you trying to hide it?" Bruce grabbed his arm and lifted it, squinting at the bruise. He paused. His expression and tone went painfully neutral. "This looks like a hand."

Jason blinked. "Huh." He twisted to look at it. "It does," he agreed, honestly surprised. It took a moment for the penny to drop. "It looks like an adult's hand." He reeled at that. His soulmate couldn't be much older than him, right? Who was dragging them around hard enough to bruise?

They were silent for a moment. He knew Bruce was thinking back through recent patrols, trying to figure out when Jason could have been manhandled.

"It's not my bruise," Jason said suddenly. This was private, but- he wanted his adult to know this. He felt- he didn't know how he felt, but it was a lot.

Bruce paused. "Ah."

The air felt heavy.

"Do you get a lot of those?" He was still using that careful tone. Jason hated it. It was too cautious, it was like he thought Jason needed special handling.

"I haven't noticed bruises for years." Jason yanked his arm away and huffed. He straightened his back and reported like a Robin ought to. "I don't remember anything that raises red flags. Scrapes and bruises on elbows and knees. I assumed they skate or something."

Bruce made a sound of acknowledgement. He let Jason pull back. Slowly he raised a hand and ruffled Jason's sweaty hair.

"Gross." He complained without any heat in it.

He made a note of it. He harbored the quiet ambition that he wanted to save his soulmate. He was Robin for a brief shining moment, and then he was choking on hot blood while a clock ticked and a clown laughed and it hurt, it all hurt-

Fin.

He woke up in oppressive silence after the end. He screamed and banged until his fingers bruised to the bone. He begged with gods he didn't believe in. He tore his belt buckle off, broke through the coffin (oh god, he was in a coffin, oh god, why had they left him here?) and he used the buckle to dig through dirt and he was suffocating on it, it was in his lungs and it hurt so bad, he was sobbing and praying and he burst out into the rain slimy and newborn, filthy and alone. Alone.

He lost time. He lost a lot of time.

He woke up again. He was bigger now, and he fought for every inch of freedom under Talia's fist. His body was alien to him now. It was huge and muscular, powerfully framed in a way that a boy who grew up hungry shouldn't end up. He felt like a hulking monster. He'd died a boy of 15 and he woke up somehow 18. Frankenstein's monster was cheated out of childhood.

The shadow injuries did not help with the way he felt about his body. The paint job on his ribs and limbs changed daily with ugly bruises and scrapes and gashes that didn't hurt him at all.

He learned to ignore them. He didn't think about them. He was too feral to remember what they meant, and when he did remember, he was too wild to care. His soulmate was having a worse time than he remembered but it wasn't his concern now. He'd never find them. He'd died. Surely they'd given up. Surely they were meant for the boy who had died and not the thing that had crawled out of his grave. He didn't get a soulmate.

Jason didn't take that part too hard.

He didn't get a lot of things. He didn't get to graduate high school. He didn't get to grow up. He didn't get to be loved.

But Batman didn't get to replace him. He didn't get to put someone else in the costume Jason died in, like none of it really mattered, like he wasn't Bruce's son once.

He went back to Gotham, the shithole that birthed him and spat him into the jaws of a monster, and he became honest in his own monstrosity. He put heads in a bag and bullets in faces and an ultimatum to Bruce and eventually, he put old pass codes into Titan Tower.

[stereksecretsanta]

Merry Christmas, yorit1!

For @yorit1. I hope you enjoy this little Christmas gift.

I made a playlist to accompany the fic: listen here

Read On AO3

*****

Make the Yule-tide Gay

"We should get a tree.”

Stiles blinks down at his half-eaten sandwich, unsure if he heard that right, before looking up at his father. The sheriff, clad in his uniform, sits opposite him by the breakfast table with his eyes firmly in the newspaper. It’s an innocent statement on its own, but Stiles knows it’s not. They haven’t had a tree in six years. There’s less than a week until Christmas Day and there’s not even an errant bauble to be found in the Stilinski household.

“Seriously?” Stiles asks.

“Seriously,” his dad confirms. “It’s time. I’ll dig out your mom’s decorations from the attic later.”

There’s a thick lump in Stiles’s throat and he swallows around it, forces his next words through it.

“You have an early shift Friday, right? Maybe we could go pick one up after school.”

His dad looks up from his newspaper then and his smile is as wobbly as Stiles's.

“Sounds great, kid.”

---

The parking lot in front of the Christmas tree sale is absolutely crowded. The sheriff finds an empty spot to squeeze the cruiser into at the edge of the lot and Stiles has to shimmy out from the passenger seat not to scratch the car next to them. While he had approached this day with careful anticipation, he could feel the excitement surge with every step closer to the trees. His dad seems to notice as much, because he chuckles and throws an arm over Stiles’s shoulders, squeezing him lightly.

It feels like reclaiming something once lost.

The fresh scent of the trees is nearly overwhelming. There must be hundreds of them, ranging from tabletop trees to some that Stiles would estimate are more than twice his own height. People mill through the trees, chatting and surveying the supply. A couple of excited kids nearly run both Stiles and the sheriff down in their game of chase through the trees.

“Alright, remember, no taller than 7 feet or so or we'll have to saw a hole through the ceiling,” his dad says and Stiles nods.

“Yeah, yeah, I know.”

They’re just about to make their way into the trees when someone calls out for the sheriff. They both turn in time to see Deputy Parrish make their way towards them. At any other time, Stiles would be over the moon for a chance to make googly eyes at Deputy Parrish, but right now he feels like he’ll vibrate out of his own skin at any second. His dad squeezes his shoulder again before letting go.

“Go pick out a good one,” he says, smiling. “I’ll join you in a sec.”

Stiles shoots his dad a blinding grin before saluting a rather puzzled Parrish and darting into the trees.

There’s a loudspeaker system set up across the lot that’s currently blasting out Tony Bennett’s Winter Wonderland. While Stiles has never seen snow in real life, the afternoon is uncharacteristically chilly for December in California and it adds to the atmosphere. He can nearly imagine the cold biting his cheeks.

He makes his way down the rows of trees, letting his fingers skim across the needles, occasionally feeling them prick at this skin. He stops in front of an impressively sized balsam fir, lips falling open in awe as he tilts his head back to look it up and down. It’s far too big for their living room, but if he was a wealthy oil magnate with a mansion, this would one hundred percent be the tree for him. Stiles is so enamoured by the tree that he doesn’t notice someone approaching until they speak.

“Do you need any help?”

Stiles will never admit to yelping, but in  reality that is his reaction. As if appearing out of nothing, like an angelic Christmas spirit, there’s Derek Hale. Senior, captain of the basketball team, prom king Derek Hale. In a green vest and Santa hat. Stiles doesn’t know when he fell into a portal leading to another dimension where Derek Hale works at a Christmas tree sale, but here he is.

Derek squints at him and Stiles realises he’s been staring.

“Oh, uh, yeah! Do you have like… this tree, but in a more pleb size? Ya know, for the commoners.”

Derek’s lips twitch ever so slightly in what could be amusement and Stiles feels such an immense sense of accomplishment that he nearly goes lightheaded.

“We’ve got a couple of smaller balsam firs in another section,” Derek replies and nods to the left. “Follow me.”

Winter Wonderland has turned into Ella Fitzgerald’s Sleigh Ride and Stiles’s legs have turned to jelly. They stumble over themselves in their hurry to follow Derek through the next three rows. He thinks this might be the longest time he’s ever spent in High School King Hale’s presence and it’s thrilling and daunting all at once.

“You go to Beacon Hills High, right?” Derek asks and Stiles jumps to attention at his side.

“Uh yeah. I’m a sophomore.”

“Thought I recognized you. Aren’t you on the lacrosse team?”

Stiles squirms, hand flying up to scratch at the back of his neck.

“ Technically, I guess. I’m more of a bench warmer,” he admits, a splotchy blush creeping up his cheeks. He’s far from the physical wonder that is Derek Hale. It looks like Derek’s pectorals are trying their very best to bust out of that hideous green vest.

“Why? You look fit enough,” Derek replies, his eyes flicking down Stiles’s gangly limbs and Stiles would take it for a joke, he really would, if Derek’s face didn’t show anything but complete seriousness. He stops so suddenly that Stiles nearly bounces off his thick bicep.

“Complete lack of coordination, as you clearly can see,” Stiles says, hiding his embarrassment behind a grin.

The hand Derek places on his shoulder, to steady him, is so warm it seeps through his jacket immediately. Jelly legs once more, even though Derek removes his hand quickly.

“This row has pleb-sized balsam firs,” he explains and gestures down the row. “Want help picking one out?”

“Yes!” Stiles exclaims, too quickly and too loudly considering the concerned looks thrown their way by an elderly couple passing by. “I mean, you’re a professional, and we haven’t had a tree for years, so it needs to be a good one.”

Derek’s lips twitch again and this time Stiles is sure it’s with amusement. It makes Stiles’s heart flutter.

“Alright then. Do you prefer a long one or a girthy one?” Derek replies and that makes Stiles’s heart race instead and judging by the face Derek makes, he’s completely aware of it.

“Are those two mutually exclusive?” Stiles replies before his brain has the time to catch up with him and Derek grins, blindingly, beautifully, absolutely devastatingly.

“I’m sure we’ll find something to satisfy your needs,” Derek replies and it sounds like a promise.

---

Somewhere between Let It Snow and Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas , between Stiles dubbing a particularly thick tree as pure quali-tree and Derek breaking into laughter, Stiles finds himself between a solid brick wall and another solid brick wall called Derek’s chest. He’s grateful for it too, considering that the hot, soft press of Derek’s lips against his own has brought on the return of the jelly legs. He’s not sure that he would be able to stand up on his own, not without his arms wrapped around the back of Derek’s neck for stability. Derek’s hands, so warm and steady, are placed on his hips. His pinky, clearly a weapon of mass destruction, has found its way beneath layers of flannel to rub against Stiles’s sensitive skin and it feels like he’s being branded.

“Make the Yule-tide gay, fuck, Judy Garland really knew what Christmas is all about,” Stiles gasps while Derek trails kisses down his cheek and neck, stays there when laughter bubbles almost involuntarily from his lips.

His shoulders shake with it and Stiles clings to him tighter still, breathless and giggling too. They’re hidden away behind a majestic Colorado Blue Spruce, as secluded as it could possibly be at a Christmas tree sale.

“I’m Stiles, by the way,” Stiles adds, as an afterthought and it makes Derek pull up from his hiding space by Stiles’s neck. He immediately misses the feel of Derek’s warm breath against his skin.

Derek’s Santa hat is lopsided now and Stiles reaches up to right it.

“I know,” Derek replies, brushing his nose against Stiles’s.

“You know?” Stiles exclaims in disbelief, eyes widening, but his lips seeking Derek’s like a moth to a flame.

“‘Course. The cutest benchwarmer Beacon Hills High has to offer.”

Stiles didn’t know that he was capable of blushing harder than he already was, but apparently he could.

“I know who you are too,” he says, in lieu of anything else, since the idea of prom king Derek knowing who he is is so ludicrous.

Derek shrugs.

“Everyone knows who I am.”

It’s so arrogant, so conceited and so absolutely true that Stiles has to push on his rock hard chest in protest.

“Oh my god, you did not just say that,” Stiles says, but he’s laughing and so is Derek when he stumbles back a step. “Asshole.”

“Dick,” Derek replies and it sounds like a term of affection.

“Yeah, but you’re into it,” Stiles bites back and Derek looks as if he’ll reply, but they’re interrupted by the sheriff’s voice.

“Stiles? Are you here?”

Immediately on high alert, Stiles pushes on Derek’s chest until they both stumble out from behind the spruce tree. Stiles notices that he has needles stuck in his hair. The sheriff stops, eyes narrowing at the sight of them both, flushed and panting.

“Did you find a tree?” He asks, despite looking like he wants to ask something else entirely.

“Uh, yeah! Derek here uh, helped.”

“Mm, I’m sure he did.”

“It’s a balsam fir,” Derek supplies.

“Yeah, a balsam fir, very… girthy,” Stiles adds, because if there’s something he excels in, it’s digging his own grave deeper.

The sheriff rolls his eyes so hard Stiles fears he might suffer permanent damage.

“Let’s just pay and go home,” he says and pulls his wallet out of his jacket.

---

Stiles’s dad pays and Derek helps them carry the netted balsam fir across the parking lot to the corner spot they had parked the cruiser in. Once the tree is safely tied to the roof, Derek turns to Stiles and the sheriff pretends valiantly to busy himself with inspecting the tied rope.

“Give me your phone,” Derek commands and Stiles hands it over readily. Derek taps on it for maybe half a minute before returning it, his fingers lingering against Stiles’s. “Text me next time you’re warming the bench.”

Stiles can’t do anything but nod eagerly as Derek backs away. It’s not until he’s halfway across the parking lot that Stiles finds the words he’s looking for.

“You have a tree-mendous Christmas!” He yells.

Derek’s shaking shoulders is reward enough.

“Alright, Romeo,” the sheriff sighs good-naturedly. “Let’s go home.”

Stiles can’t stop his silly smile as he climbs into the cruiser, clutching his cellphone tight in his hand. The sheriff turns the key and puts the cruiser in reverse. The radio plays It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas and Stiles can’t help but agree.

[thran-duils]

Watch Me Burn (P.4)

Title: Watch Me Burn (Part Four) Summary: Fem!Reader x AU!Cas. Fem!Reader x AU!Sam. This fic was inspired by both parts of “Love the Way You Lie” by Eminem & Rihanna. Castiel and the reader are toxic for each other and keep falling back together until the reader moved away. It’s been years and now she is back home, waltzing back into Castiel’s life. She is determined to do better this time, to make them work, but outside forces as well as the scars the two have left on each other weave their way into their reconciliation. Will they be able to overcome the past and new threats to their sustainability? Words: 1,984 Warnings (for the fic in entirety): Extreme angst, domestic violence, smut, unprotected sex, dom/sub dynamics, BDSM trust breaking, fluff, language, alcohol abuse, !!! eventual !!! happiness Author’s Note: Italics are the past!

Chap 3 || Chap 5 || Masterpost (mobile) || Fic masterpost

Sighing loudly, you pushed yourself away from the bathroom sink. Luckily, you had been able to sneak into the bathroom before anyone intercepted you when you walked into the office and were able to apply your makeup. You had woken up late and could not miss the incoming bus, otherwise you would have been late to your job. And you could also not afford to lose this job; it was a huge opportunity for you, especially without having a graduate degree.

Makeup tucked into your purse again, you left the bathroom ready to go to your desk now.

Turning the corner, to walk through the door into your office, you came to an abrupt stop seeing Sam, a junior partner of the company, standing there. He had been over your shoulder from the moment you had walked into the office months ago. He was not subtle about his advancements towards you and you had found ways to politely ignore them. It had not proven successful in deterring him yet though. You were on the fence about jumping into something so soon after moving here and especially with a coworker. He was handsome, yes, and had money. But there was something… off.

He blocked your way, his hand planted on the door and his arm barring you from going forward. You were forced to look up at him and he smiled down at you in response.

“So… how are you today, Y/N?”

You felt pressured to answer his question. “Tired. I didn’t sleep well last night.”

“Hmm, couldn’t tell by looking at you,” he told you. You felt blush coming to your cheeks. “You found your gym yet you were looking for?”

Small talk.

Nodding, you said, “Yes. On Guadalupe Street. I got the membership a couple weeks ago, but I haven’t managed to get there yet.” He raised his eyebrows expectantly and you explained, “I’ve been busy. The deadline is tomorrow for my project.”

“Ah, that does dig into your personal time. Hopefully you’ll be able to get some rest after that is done and submitted.”

You nodded again, smiling softly. Highly doubtful considering the rat race this place had set you in but you could hope.

Sam’s eyes fell to your dress. “Valentino?” He questioned.

You forced a smile, “No. No. Can’t quite afford that.”

Sam reached out, touching the fabric at your elbow and traced his fingers down. Your breath hitched, uncomfortable that he felt the permission to cross that boundary but… simultaneously, your eyes locking with his made your stomach flutter. His eyes were alight, taking you in and when they met yours, his lips curled up into a small, satisfied smirk.

“Well, wherever you got it, it looks the part.”

You would not dare tell him you picked it up at Goodwill.

“You seem to have an eye for the fashionable and expensive…” He leaned in closer. “If you play your cards right, you may always be able to afford both.”

His gaze was piercing, his lips parted slightly, watching you to see how you reacted. It was a game to him, seeing what the key would be to getting you open up to him. You did not want to insinuate that the door would be closed forever, leave a sliver of hope.

With a little laugh, you said, “Let’s hope I am that smart.”

<>  <> <>

“It is quite a different atmosphere.”

Charlie reached across the table to grab the salt back from you. Mouth full, she asked, “What was it like there in Austin, then?”

Exhaling, you told her, “Stifling.” You picked up your fork and took a bite of your lunch.

Charlie snorted, “The heat or the misogyny?” You shot her a look of surprise and she outright laughed this time. “Oh, Y/N. I’ve visited the office. I know how the men are down there. And trust me, they all think they have the right dick to ‘turn me straight’.”

“O-oh,” you stammered, balking at her comment.

She laughed again, waving you off. “Sorry, I’m too candid sometimes with my feelings. But that has been my experience down there. And I would be damned if they ever asked me to transfer. I much prefer it here and I am not ashamed to say because Tara is my boss, and she doesn’t feel the need to try to hit on me. Granted, she is married to a wonderful woman so that might have something to do with it, but I digress.”

“No. No, I know what you mean…” you trailed off, staring down at your plate. You had dreamt about Sam again last night and had woken up feeling sick. You simply told Castiel you had a nightmare and he had rubbed your back before getting up to make you some eggs while you showered.

“That why you left? If you don’t mind me asking.”

You slipped back, memory flashing.

The night was warm, humid. You had dressed accordingly, wearing a maxi, wrap dress.

You were sitting next to Sam, a few drinks in. You had inched closer and closer to him as the night wore on. He was a gravity – sinking into him was a weight, not an anchor. But it was still luring you in, coaxing you to descend. You had always been attracted to the depths and god forbid you would go against your nature now.

Sam leaned in, his mouth close to your ear, sending shivers through you. “Mind getting us a refill? I feel like these shenanigans are going to go on for a while.”

He was, of course, referring to the ultimately boring stories being shared between other coworkers.

You turned your head, your face unbearably close to his. Your lips were merely inches apart. His cologne encompassed you, forcing you to focus all more clearly on his hazel eyes boring into you, waiting expectantly for you to respond.

“Of course,” you whispered.

His lips curled into a smile. “That’s a team player.”

Refraining from letting out a laugh, trying to let go of the sexual tension that had just coiled itself tightly deep inside, you finished what was left of your drink. Standing up, you meant to turn around to hold your hand out for his glass but were stilled. You felt a hand at your ass, gripping ever so slightly and ghosting the rest of the way. You turned back now, looking back down at Sam still sitting there.

He merely returned your pointed look with a wink and a sultry smile as he brought the glass to his mouth, finishing it in one gulp. He reached up, holding it to you, to fetch him another drink.

“Y/N?”

You snapped back to reality.

Charlie was looking at you expectantly and you quickly remembered she had asked you a question.

“Oh, right. Yes. Um, partially? I also wanted to be home.”

“With your man?” She teased, taking another bite of her burrito.

“That wasn’t a set-in stone thing.”

“But it seems to have worked out.”

“It has so far…”

“Anything you want to talk about? You seemed lost when I asked you about the shit there.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean… me talking about the rampant sexism and you agreeing but then dodging the question. And floating off into space for a couple moments, lost to your thoughts, like I said.”

“Oh… well… you know…”

Charlie shrugged, “I mean, I do. But I also know from a different perspective. They knew they were not going to realistically bed me. They could imagine it and dream for it – I am quite dreamy – but it was not going to happen. But you… you, Y/N. You were attainable. I can’t imagine the difference in treatment.”

“It wasn’t anything I haven’t dealt with before. It was tiresome at times but I got through it.” You cleared your throat and asked, changing the subject, “Would you like to come to the bar? Hang out with us?”

Slapping her hand on the table, Charlie exclaimed dramatically, “I have been dying for you to ask, Y/N.” You laughed at her theatrics. “You don’t know how hard it is to make friends in this city. Especially being a transplant. Yes. Of course, I will.”

<> <> <>

“He’s cute!” Charlie told you over the game blaring over the loudspeakers in the bar.

She had gotten more and more outspoken about how much she adored you and Castiel together the more she drank. Not that you minded really, you welcomed the validation. Proving you had made one right choice so far in your life despite all the missteps you and Castiel had had before.

“I thought you didn’t like men,” you teased.

She gave you a light shove and took another sip of her drink. “Oh, come off it. You know I can still appreciate human beauty. Plus, he looks like a rock star. And that’s got to be fun to be riding.”

“Oh, seriously?” you gasped, shooting her an incredulous look.

“He can’t keep his eyes off of you.”

“That’s nothing new.”

“Full of ourselves, are we?”

“Always.”

Her eyes traveled around the bar, taking in the décor. Castiel had an eclectic taste but that is what made his bar his bar. You had helped him pick out a lot of the wall art and it had warmed you when you had come back that he had not taken them down out of spite or mourning.

“He’s owned this place for a while then?”

“Yeah. Before we even met.”

“You mean, you willingly gave this place up? I mean it, Y/N. You got this bar and then an apartment above. You can get drunk as you want and then escape to your bed so close. Plus, you’ve got him.”

Castiel smiled at you from across the bar, giving you a little wave that you returned. Your attention fell to the hallway where the locked door was leading up to the stairs to his place. Yes, you could escape up there whenever you wanted to, imbibe as much as you wanted without worrying about getting home.

Or sneak back down here to indulge…

“What do you mean you don’t want me to go back downstairs?” Castiel’s voice echoed, scornfully.

You reached out, grabbing his arm, “Cas, don’t. You’ll have to replace the alcohol!”

Castiel yanked his arm away and argued, “It’s just going to be one drink!”

“That’ll turn into five!”

“Stop being such a fucking buzzkill, Y/N.”

“You would stop me too. Come on, don’t be a fucking idiot, Cas.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Castiel snapped, shoving you away from him and turning to go back towards the bedroom.

You sucked your teeth, pissed off he had laid hands on you, yet again. But, if it stopped him from going to indulge more on his own stock downstairs… and god knows he had stopped you from doing the same countless times too.

“You love him.” It was a statement, not a question and it drew you from the past. Charlie was smirking at you knowingly, a bright light in her eyes. She nodded when she saw your tight smile and no rebuttal to her point. “You do. Or otherwise you would not have risked coming back here, without any concrete plans.”

Swallowing sharply, you chanced looking up over at the bar again without trying to look desperate for his attention, watching Castiel interact with the customers. His smile was wide, and you wished you could kiss the corners of his mouth, slowly coming to envelope him to you.

“Yes,” you breathed, knowing that Charlie would catch it. She was listening intently. “Yes, I do.”

“Then I for one, am happy for you,” she declared. “And I’m glad you came back up here too. Come, raise your glass.” You amused her, and she held up hers in return, beaming. “Cheers!”

You smiled in return, clinking yours to hers. “Cheers.”

~~~

CASTIEL FOREVER TAGS: @willowing-love @perseusandmedusa @greenappleeyes @afanofmanystuffs @earthtokace @shikaros-blog @marisayouass @splendidcas

[pengychan]

[Good Omens] Winging It - Psalm 91:4

Summary: Shockingly, attempting to destroy an angel without consulting God first comes with consequences. There is more than one way to fall, and a thousand more ways to inconvenience an angel and a demon who just wanted to be left in peace. Characters: Gabriel, Crowley, Aziraphale, Beelzebub, Michael Rating: T  

Prologue and all chapters are tagged as ‘winging it’ on my blog.

A/N: If you think I have an actual plan, ineffable or not, for where this fic is going, think again. 'Winging it’ is not just a title: it’s precisely what I’m doing.

***

Aziraphale had no intention whatsoever to open the shop that day. 

He hadn’t even planned to stay in it, because a new Korean restaurant had just opened in Holborn and he was dying to try it, metaphorically speaking. Normally it would take some twelve minutes via the Central like - or the Piccadilly line if he felt like walking for approximately one minute and fifty-seven seconds longer from his shop - but that day, according to the radio, there were severe delays on all Tube lines due to signalling issues. 

‘Signalling issues’ meant, in that one specific case, that all screens were inexplicably showing obscene phrases while loudspeakers refused to broadcast any announcements, opting to blast out I'm In Love With My Car at full volume instead. Engineers had yet to figure out how to make it stop, as turning off all power hadn’t worked. Signals meant for train drivers kept blinking quickly, spelling out SOS in morse code over and over.

Aziraphale was… reasonably certain it had been entirely Crowley’s work, both because it would fit his style and because, the previous evening, he did tell him not to bother with the Tube. 

“No need to get underground, Angel. I’ll come pick you up in the morning,” he’d said. 

And now he would be late, most likely, lamenting the insane traffic he’d be caught in after forgetting, somehow, that traffic jams tend to happen when London’s public underground transport grinds to a complete halt.

Would he ever learn better? Aziraphale rather hoped not. He found it endearing, although he wouldn’t subject Crowley to the humiliation of being told as much to his face; and, right now, it gave him some extra time to pop into one of his favorite bakeries and have a bit of a late breakfast before Crowley got there. He’d get an extra croissant for him to try, he thought as he went to open the door and stepped out. Maybe he’d eventually get him to chew his food instead of swallowing it whole like a snake, wouldn’t that be--

Before he could finish that thought, Aziraphale fell. Azirafell, if you will. He stumbled, really, on something right at the doorway - a heap of clothes, it looked like. Not as bad as a fall from Heaven would be, but the meeting with the pavement was still an unpleasant experience. 

“Ooow! What was-- oh. Oh dear.”

What he’d mistaken for a heap of clothes left at his doorstep was, in fact, a heap of clothes. Only with a body in the clothes. Not the dead kind of body, hopefully. But really, it was a bit worrying how someone stumbling over him hadn’t even made him stir. 

Oh please, sir, don’t be dead, because then I’ll want to miracle you back to life and that is frowned upon without permission. Not that I know precisely what my standing with Heavenly authority is at the moment, but I’d really prefer not to meddle with it any more than necessary. 

Lifting himself from the pavement - he’d miracle the smudges off his clothes later - Aziraphale went to crouch next to the man, put a hand on his shoulder, and shook him. “Sir? Sir, are you-- oh.”

Aziraphale had always found the smell of blood uniquely unpleasant and if not for his angelic nature, the sight of his own reddened palm would have made him feel physically sick. But at least the man was alive, because he had felt life, beating steady in his ribcage. Who knew how he’d come to be hurt like that - stabbed, perhaps, knife crime in London was getting quite awful - but he’d come to the right place. He’d heal him, and be on his way. 

A quick glance - no, no close enough to see anything yet; but oh, how many people had walked past without even noticing him? - and Aziraphale lifted his hand to heal the man. Only that he chose that moment to stir weakly, to turn, and the blessing he’d been about to utter died in Azirapale’s throat when he saw his ashen-pale face. Or at least, a good part of it.

It was Gabriel, and not the Gabriel who occasionally delivered him a nice dinner when he was peckish but too enthralled by a book to get out to a restaurant. It was the Archangel Gabriel, passed out at his doorstep. Wounded, bleeding and absolutely, entirely, impossibly-- human. 

No. No, it couldn’t be. It was unheard of - surely, he was wrong. It was only someone who looked an awful lot like him, Aziraphale thought. But as he reached for his face, and gingerly pulled up his eyelid, he found himself looking at a familiar, distinctive purplish eye. Only that now the pupil shrank at the light, and he made a choking sound, still unconscious. His brow was covered in cold sweat, hair sticking to it. 

The blood on his back. Where his wings would be. 

Celestial nature or not, Aziraphale found himself feeling… vaguely sick. Not sick enough to return his rather delicious dinner to the world, but enough to decide he could do without croissant that morning.

“Gabriel?” he called out, mind reeling. There was no reply, except for a shuddering breath when he turned him, accidentally putting pressures on… whatever had been done to his back. Whatever had been done to his wings. 

You know what’s been done to his wings.

“Sir? Is everything all right?”

Ah, of course, the curious chap. There is always a curious chap - no curious enough to check on the man motionless in a shop’s doorway, but enough to wonder when a second man is kneeling over him and it might already be too late. With a brief shake of his hand, Aziraphale miracled the blood on his palm away and turned to glance back. He smiled. 

“All is going wonderfully,” he said, causing the man to pause and blink, his expression turning vacant. “Actually, if you could help me bring this gentleman inside and then forget everything that happened to go your merry way, that would be brilliant…”

***

Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies and Prince of Hell, looked displeased.

In itself, that was nothing out of the ordinary: perpetual brooding was only fitting their position, after all. It would be a very cold day in Hell when demons went around looking pleased, and that was not the day: temperature was holding steady at around 62 degrees Celsius, which would be 143 degrees Fahrenheit for fellows across the pond. Not quite the fiery burning pit mortals imagined, but still hotter than the highest temperature ever registered on Earth, despite humans’ clear determination to match it in the near future.

However, something was slightly out of the ordinary. Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies and Prince of Hell, looked extremely displeased.

“An angel fell.”

“So it’s been reported, my Lord.”

“And it’s not here.”

“No, my Lord.”

“Why. Is it not. Here.”

Beelzebub growled. The flies around their head buzzed. Dagon looked at Hastur. Hastur looked… very uncomfortable. Good. He squirmed. Even better. 

“I… I don’t know, my Lord. I only heard whispers, you know they never speak the names of the Fallen again--”

“Because they’re not our names anymore,” Beelzebub said with an impatient wave of their hand. “We will name it. It is ours. All the Fallen are ours.”

“But it should have-- landed here,” Dagon spoke up. “All the Fallen do.”

“Maybe it’s not Fallen?”

Two pairs of eyes, plus the fragmented ones of several flies, turned back to Hastur. 

“I mean, cast out of Heaven, but didn’t turn up in Hell? Maybe it fell, but didn’t Fall.”

A fallen angel, yet not Fallen. It would be unprecedented, an amusing puzzle to solve… and Beelzebub hated amusing puzzles to solve almost as much as they despised fly paper. 

“If it was cast out of Heaven, it’s ours. The other side doesn’t get to change up the rules now - I demand an explanation, and a new soldier for Hell,” they snapped, and stood. Not much of a difference in terms of height, but it did make Hastur step back reverently. “Bring me the Messenger,” Beelzebub ordered, their voice a low buzz.

Hastur blinked.

“... The phone, for Satan’s sake,” Dagon snapped. “Bring us the phone.”

*** 

“Come ooooooooooon.”

Crowley’s phone rang while he was in the middle of a long groan, forehead firmly pressed against the wheel. The result was a long, continuous honk that was lost in the midsts of dozens more long, continuous honks. Bloody traffic.

“I don’t deserve this,” Crowley mumbled, ignoring the fact he was the cause behind all of it and perhaps he did, after all deserve some of it. Why had he done that, anyway? He didn’t really have to do anything, with Hell doing its best to forget he even existed and thus not sending out any orders anymore. It was a matter of mere habit, at that point. Everyone is supposed to have at least one bad habit, demons most of all.

Maybe he should take on smoking, but Aziraphale would so protest the smell and-- ah, right. Aziraphale. Phone. He was late, wasn’t he? With a sigh, Crowley tapped the screen to take the call, face still burrowed against the wheel - though he muted the honk for the sake of being able to speak.

“Bit of traffic here, Angel. I’ll be there in-- give me half a hour, and--”

“I, uh, think we might have to reschedule.”

Aziraphale, suggesting they delay trying out a brand new restaurant? That alone set off more alarm bells than a gang of chimps in charge of putting out a grease fire. Or Boris Johnson in charge of managing Brexit, which was basically the same thing. 

Crowley immediately sat up straight, turning his full attention to the phone. “What happened?”

“Nothing! It’s just... oh, I suppose something did happen. You see, I was about to walk out - you know that really good bakery across the road? It opened where that Patisserie Valerie used to be, a small independent business, and they make the most delicious croissants. They use less butter than they would in Paris, they’re a bit more like an Italian cornetto, and I thought you’d--”

“Angel.”

“Right, right-- I’m getting side tracked. As I was saying, it’s a small independent business and they have it so hard these days, I figure that if needed I could give some help--”

Crowley sighed, rolling his eyes behind dark lenses and drove the car forward for a grand total of three meters before stopping again. It was the greatest gain he’d made in fifteen minutes.

“Aziraphale. I am in the middle of one of the worst traffic congestion this city has ever seen--”

“Oh, I do wonder who caused it. Clearly the work of a wily demon who did not pause to consider consequences. Or did he?”

“That’s entirely beside the point,” Crowley protested. “What I’m saying is, we are going to that restaurant. We can miracle the bakery some clients if need be, no reason to reschedule--”

“Ah, it’s not about that.”

“... No?”

“Gabriel is here.”

Oh. That arse - the utter and complete bellend who had tried to have his angel destroyed in Hellfire. The memory of his words as he believed he was sending him to his complete annihilation - Shut your stupid mouth and die already - was enough to make Crowley hiss in fury. He’d have been worried, too, if not for the fact Aziraphale’s blabbing about bakeries wasn’t the sign of someone in distress or in imminent danger. And he probably wasn’t listening to the call - maybe he was outside the shop.

“Fine, fine, change of plans - we’re meeting at rendez-vous point number 3. Then we’re going--”

“Listen, it’s best if we reschedule and you come here. Gabriel--”

“Has no business being there. Tell him to go to Heaven,” Crowley snapped. 

“Well, I don’t think he-- can.”

“... Wait. What?”

“I’m not sure why-- well, this is unprecedented.”

Crowley blinked, mind struggling to grasp what he’d just heard, and he didn’t even realize immediately that the line of cars ahead of him had begun moving. The car behind him suddenly honked, and Crowley waved his hand. The BMW’s engine died in a sputter of sparks and smoke, and the Bentley moved another couple of meters.

“Did he - Fall?” he asked. It seemed absurd - no one had Fallen in so long - and he was too surprised to have time to feel any sort of satisfaction over it. 

“Yes and… no.”

“... Did you drink?”

“Only tea. Just… try to get here.”

“All right. Then we’re heading out, because whatever happened to him we’re not rescheduling.”

“Crowley, he’s in quite a state. I can’t just walk out and leave him here in the shop like this.”

“Of course not. First you kick him out.”

“Crowley.”

A sigh. “Fine, fine. I’ll come see what this is about.”

“Thank you. I am quite confused--”

“So I can kick him out.”

“Not while he’s like this! It wouldn’t be-- nice.”

“I’m a demon, not being nice is usually my thing. And he tried to destroy you.”

A pause.  “... When he’s better, surely, it wouldn’t hurt.”

Crowley grinned. “Now you’re talking,” he said before ending the call and advancing another bloody meter, wondering just what the Heaven was going on.

***

“That is classified information.”

“Don’t classified me, Michael.”

“It is policy and you know it.”

“You were always ready to throw policy out of the window when it suited you, though. Or else this back channel wouldn’t exist.” 

Beelzebub’s voice was odious as always, buzzing through her brain, oozing malice. Michael clenched her jaw, but had nothing to retort to that other than empty phrases and falsehoods. 

Gabriel was always best at those - “There are no back channels, Michael” - and that was why, between the two of them, he was the messenger and she was the warrior. They worked well together. But Gabriel was no longer there, nor one of them: for all intents and purposes, the Archangel Gabriel had ceased to exist the moment he’d been cast out of Heaven. His duties were divided up between herself, Uriel and Sandalphon; his name would be spoken no more.

“I know one of yours fell,” Beelzebub was going on. “Don’t bother denying it. What I do not know is why has it not showed up here, in its rightful place. It’s been a long time since we got a new Fallen. We’re ready to throw it a party.”

“With sulphur involved, I imagine.”

“Our side quite enjoys sulphur.”

Not Gabriel. He would hate every second of it - but there is no more Gabriel, is there?

No Archangel Gabriel. No back channels. Michael shifted the phone on her other hand, trying to block out the memories of cries and pleas, ripping noises and ragged sobs. 

“Plus, since when do you concern yourself with what a demon would enjoy? This one is no longer your concern, and given that Crowley has gone native-- yes, Hastur? Ligur who? Oh, yes. Him. Given that we lost two demons last week, it seems only fair we claim this new one.”

And do what with him? Michael’s mind went back to the trial of the demon Crowley, of the test they had made to ensure what she had brought truly was holy water. She remembered the usher being thrown in, screaming, pleading, asking what it had done to deserve destruction.

Wrong place, wrong time.

Please! Please! No!

Michael hadn’t thought much of it, then; it was the kind of thing demons would do, and she would not flinch for the fate of a lowly hellish creature. Mercy was not for them. But now…

It hurt it hurts it hurts please stop it stop it please–  Michael, please!

“He’s not yours.” Michael’s voice rang out suddenly, sharp as glass - sharp enough to make Beelzebub fall into a confused silence for a few moments. When they spoke again, their voice was a low buzz full of anger… and what might have been genuine curiosity. 

“Oh? And how come?”

“Because he’s not like you.”

“... Do I hear an Archangel defending the honor of a demon?”

“He’s not a demon,” Michael snapped, causing them to fall silent again on the other side of the line. “He’s not one of yours. You can’t have him.”

Another few moments of silence, followed by furious buzzing. “We’ll see about that,” Beelzebub seethed. “I’m done wasting time with you. I demand a meeting with Gabriel, at least he can--”

“He is unavailable,” Michael snapped, and ended the call before throwing the phone on the ground and crushing it under her heel.

***

After putting the phone down, Aziraphale could only sit and… well, wait. 

The shop was silent, the way he liked, except for the slow, regular breathing of someone sleeping in the middle of the room, where he’d miracled a carpet into a mattress to lean Gabriel onto. His breathing hadn’t been that quiet only ten minutes earlier, when he and the… volunteer had laid him down on his stomach: it had been labored, short gasps and shuddering exhales.

Once alone with him again, Aziraphale had miracled his clothes away and he’d seen… precisely what he’d expected to see, really, but that didn’t mean he’d been prepared. 

On Gabriel’s back, over the shoulder blades, there were two gaping, bleeding wounds. Something had been torn from there, leaving behind a mess of mangled flesh and, Aziraphale was rather sure, the tiniest glimpse of exposed bone. It was unsightly and quite serious, but healing it was, for an angel, a simple enough matter. 

And he had healed them: a gesture over the wounds, and they closed… but marks had remained, dark and ragged scar tissue where angelic wings had been torn away. Those were not the kind of wounds dealt by a mortal, or a mortal weapon; those were wounds only a supernatural being - angel or demon - may have caused. It wasn’t like anything mortal could harm an angel like this, and of course the missing wings were only a part of it.

Along with them, Gabriel had been stripped of his celestial nature. It seemed impossible, but proof was before his eyes. How could that have happened? Who had done such a thing? And why--?

“Nnnhh…”

Gabriel had groaned, shifted weakly. He hadn’t lifted his head, despite having been healed; Aziraphale suspected he had not yet adjusted to his new condition. Going from angel to mortal would probably feel like going from the power of a nuclear power plant to that of a depleted battery in energy saving mode. 

“Gabriel,” he’d called out, crouching next to him. Gabriel’s barely open eyes flickered towards him, the only part of him to move, cheek still pressed against the mattress. He seemed to struggle to put him into focus, but then there was something - a spark of recognition. He’d known who he was, at least. “You’re safe here,” Aziraphale had said, like he had the slightest idea of what or who had caused it. His shop didn’t even have the defenses to keep a crazed old nipple-counting witch hunter out while he was on a conference call with the Voice of God. Maybe he should take precautions, given the fate he and Crowley barely avoided by deception.

If this had been a trap, I would have been fooled entirely. 

Gabriel had worked his jaw, but not a word came out. He’d tried to lift his head, and Aziraphale pushed it down. “No, no. Don’t try to get up,” he’d said, and glanced briefly at his back again. “... What happened?”

For a moment there was no reaction, then Gabriel’s eyes shifted back on him. He looked dazed, but this time he managed to reply. “My wings,” he rasped. “Can’t feel my wings.”

“Yes, that would be because-- er.” He’d made a vague gesture and tried to change the subject. He ought not to feel sorry for him, after what he tried to pull with Hellfire, but ah, he was soft. Maybe it was a good thing that Crowley was coming. He was the one there when Gabriel had tried to destroy him, after all. He would have more sense than him. Maybe they should kick him out before he caused them problems.  “Who did this to you?” he had asked instead.

Part of him had expected the name of… some sort of demon, perhaps; for what reason they would do this to him he couldn’t begin to imagine, because it just wasn’t how they operated, but-

“Michael,” Gabriel rasped, and Aziraphale blinked down at him, not comprehending. 

“Do you want me to call Michael?” he’d asked. Just what he needed, dealing with her now. Was she going to blame him for this? Of course she would. He had no intention to drop by in Heaven and face her, but maybe a quick phone call--

“Michael--!”

Gabriel had tried to rise, faltered, and fell heavily on his side. His eyes were wide open, staring at him and yet at nothing, chest rising and falling quickly. It was so uncharacteristic of him that it had taken Aziraphale several moments to recognize it for what it was: absolute, blind panic.

“No no no no no--”

“Shush,” Aziraphale had said, and he’d held out a hand in front of his face. The panic had faded and his features smoothed in a vacant expression. “Now, you’re going to sleep. And you’re going to have--” the most wonderful dream, he would usually say in such cases, but he’d held back. All right, he may be soft, but even he could tell Gabriel did not deserve wonderful dreams. “... A reasonably pleasant dream,” he’d finished lamely.

Oh, Crowley would be so disappointed. 

And Gabriel had gone to sleep, sure enough, naked from the waist up and scars on his back in plain sight. Aziraphale had put a blanket on him - so he wouldn’t get cold, he thought, but the truth was that looking at those scars made him uncomfortable - and then he’d called Crowley. 

And now he waited. As the minutes ticked by, Aziraphale leaned his chin on his hand, staring at the still, sleeping form of what had been an Archangel until very, very recently. He thought back of his expression, the name that had left him, the terror in his voice. 

Michael. Did Michael do this to him?

The thought seemed absurd, but then again he’d never truly expected her to gift Hell some Holy Water to destroy a demon; he had never truly expected his own side - no, not my side anymore - to try and destroy him with Hellfire. He’d never known them as well as he thought he did, and how could he? He was on Earth all along while they stayed in Heaven, pulling the strings of a world they did not understand or care about.

But I was the odd one out. The curious fellow who’d stay on Earth rather than take promotions to go back upstairs - Gabriel was one of them. 

Why turn on him? Why cast him out? Why make him human, instead of having him Fall the traditional way - and why would they be so brutal about it? What reason could there be? His thoughts kept going in circles and oh, that was going to give him such a headache, wasn’t it?

Well, for Heaven's sake, we are meant to make examples out of traitors.

Crowley had quoted Gabriel’s words to him with a shrill, mocking voice over a glass of wine; while the thought of what they’d barely escaped was rather chilling, it had made him laugh. It made him chuckle now, some tension leaving him. Crowley was on his way, however slowly in the traffic, and it made him… a bit less worried. They’d figure something out, they always did. 

They had worked out how to face the wrath of Heaven and Hell and come out unscathed; dealing with an ex angel who hadn’t fallen as much as landed squarely on his face on Earth shouldn’t a huge problem. 

He wasn’t wrong on that. It would turn out to be a huge annoyance.

***

"He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart." Psalm 91:4

***

[Back to Prologue]

[Next]

[lil-creatorwritings]

Phone Call [Mitsuhide Akechi]

Fandom: Ikemen Sengoku Pairing: Mitsuhide Akechi x MC (Natsuki) Word Count: 1842 words--how many text messages would you need to send that? Warning: NSFW! As if that was a surprise? A/N: (gasp) My very first IkeSen fic that I uploaded! Someone brought up this AU on a Discord server, and welp, my brain stuck to the snek man instead of an IkeRev suitor. So here’s some snek smut that no one asked for! Also, Natsuki isn’t my OC, it’s actually @xathia-89 ‘s OC. xD Look, I don’t have OCs yet so don’t hunt me down. Addendum, modern AU because of phones, and a slight dom!Mitsuhide??? And if Mitsuhide is too OOC for you here, you can shut your piehole. I tried okay!

---

Mitsuhide knew who was calling even before he looked at the screen.

“Hello.”

“You told me you’d finish work early today so we can have dinner today.”

He laughed softly, switching to speaker mode as he resumed to pace around his desk, staying close enough for her to hear him. “Natsuki, I thought I already sent you a text explaining why.”

Being the head of accounting for Oda Industries was no easy job. The typical daily grind wasn’t this bad, but the absurd amount of workload was expected from the upcoming project that they intend to release in 4 months. The sudden announcement of their leading competitor of a similar product caught all of their attention, and he had expected this sort of complication would come sooner or later. Nobunaga Oda was one ambitious man--he valued Mitsuhide’s opinion and assessment on how to launch their project earlier than the competition without going into the red.

“I know, but I’m still upset at your boss. Making you all work into the night on a Friday.” He could imagine just how sulky she was just from the tone of her voice.

“Don’t pout, you know you look too adorable when you do.”

The short silence told him that she was indeed pouting, just as he expected. “Tease.” A clang of utensils could be heard over the line, followed by the solid click of the stove knob. “I was really looking forward to tonight.”

“I do miss your cooking.” He slipped his fingers on his tie, tugging on it to loosen the knot.

“Have you eaten?” Her voice was now full of concern. Working late nights like this wasn’t new to Mitsuhide, but knowing that someone was waiting back for him at the apartment made a staggering difference to what he felt. Natsuki knew that there would be days like this. Even for her, working with one of the most prestigious law firms was a taxing job. There had been days when it had been the opposite, with him fetching her from the building as late until a few minutes to midnight.

He glanced at the clock. 8:29PM. “I’m sure Masamune’s up to something in the pantry for the emergency meeting.”

“Do you know how long it’ll take?”

“Knowing Nobunaga, until tomorrow would be a good estimate.” That is, if he crunched the numbers right and predicted the competition’s next move. He sat down on his chair, leaning back to relax a little.

The rustle of fabric sounded like static to him, the sound of the evening television sitcom playing faintly in the background. “So, how are you going to make it up to me?”

Mitsuhide didn’t miss the teasing rise of her voice. It’s been a hectic week for the company, which meant they barely had time to spend with each other. Which also meant that neither of them were getting the appropriate amount of physical release they obviously craved.

“Mm, I’ll gladly pay you back once we’ve settled the problem.”

“But I can’t wait that long, I miss you too much.” The hint of neediness in her voice made him raise an eyebrow. Was she really going to use that card? “I miss your touch already.”

“Alright. How about we play a game to tide you over until then, my little mouse?”

“What kind of game?” Playing innocent just made him want to play, to tease her even more.

Switching off the loudspeaker, Mitsuhide picked up his phone. “A game where you follow my instructions over the phone.” It’s not the first time they’ve done this, but the thrill of hearing her come undone for him was always a delight. “And if you manage to finish until the end, you win.”

“What do I get for winning?”

“You’ll find out when I get home tomorrow.”

“And if I lose?”

“You’ll also find out tomorrow.” The little whine she gave him only made him smirk.

“Okay, I’ll play along with you.” He swore he could hear the word master at the end of that sentence.

On the other end, Natsuki knew she would be fidgety the moment she heard his voice. There’s just something about the way her name rolls off his tongue that lights a fire in her. It’s been days since they’ve last had each other, and she was getting frustrated. She knew that Mitsuhide was as well from the gruff tone of his voice.

“First, I want you to wear your earphones for me.”

She reached for them on the coffee table, securing the earbuds before speaking into the mic. “I’m wearing them.”

“Good. Now, I want you to tease yourself for me.”

Leaning back on the couch, Natsuki trailed her fingers along her thighs, making her body shiver. She slowly slipped them in her shirt, letting out a soft whimper as she cupped her breasts. “I know where your hands are. Give it a good squeeze and run your thumbs on your nipples.”

The sensation of her own hands made her cunt pulse. She remembered how Mitsuhide loved snaking his hand up her body, his warm hands on her, his palms rubbing her nipples until they hardened.

“Mmm, you’re perking up just like how I want you. I wish I could take both in my mouth, biting and licking them. Pinch them for me.”

Her fingers moved on their own accord, following his voice. Natsuki let out a sharp gasp. The chuckle that followed only licked at the heat pooling between her legs. “Ahh.. Mitsuhide..”

“You sound so delightful.” His voice was like chocolate, smooth and warm. “And I’m willing to bet that you’re absolutely soaked.”

She didn’t need to check; she already knew. Closing her eyes, it felt like he was right there, breathing against her ear. Tilting her head back, as if waiting for his teeth to run over her skin, leaving bite marks. Marking her.

“Spread your legs open for me.”

A groan. The soft fabric of the sofa did nothing to soothe her desire. “Mm, that’s a good little mouse. I can already smell you from here. I just want to go down and devour you right now.” The ravenous tone he used to punctuate his words only spiked her arousal higher.

“Fuck.. Yes please..” Natsuki moaned into the mic, making sure he could hear her. How she wished he was there between them, doing things to her with that wicked tongue of his. Her fingers would tangle in those silver locks, tugging him closer, wanting more. Needing him inside her.

“So wet and ready for me, aren’t you. You’re just begging for me to touch you.” She whined at him as a response. “Push your panties aside and touch your clit with light strokes.”

She tugged on her damp underwear, an index finger running along her slit. Her fingertip grazed the sensitive nub, rubbing it slowly with minimal pressure. Soft moans of pleasure escaped her lips, trying hard to follow his command. “M-Mitsuhide.. I want more..”

“I know you do.” He replied with complete confidence. “Press harder. I’m allowing you to slide your fingers in that wet cunt.”

Natsuki rubbed tighter circles as she easily pushed two fingers in her pussy. Her walls squeezed around them, and her mind imagined it was his fingers inside her.

His voice brought her back to her senses. “You feel so good around my fingers, tightening up like that. I haven’t moved them and yet you’re dripping down my hand. And I know you can slip a third one in.”

It didn’t take much effort; she was so wet that it slipped in smoothly.

“I want you to thrust those fingers fast and deep. But you can’t come unless I tell you to.” The words or else was heavily implied.

She obeyed him, his voice seemingly hypnotic to her. Her hips bucked against her hand as her moans grew louder, not caring if any of their neighbors heard. What she wanted was for him to listen, to hear just how much his words and voice affected her. Natsuki wanted to keep moaning for him, telling him how much she craved for his mouth and hands on her.

“Natsuki.”

“Ahh, fuck..!” She cried out, feeling her orgasm building up. Natsuki shut her eyes, focused on fighting the urge to give in.

Mitsuhide’s voice was tight. Restrained. “Such a good little girl for me. I know you can hold off a bit more as I grip your thighs apart, thrusting my cock into you. Filling you up and stretching you.”

“P-Please..!”

A pause. “My mouth will be all over your neck, biting you hard. Fingers playing and tugging on that clit as I fuck you. You feel amazing like this, so needy and hungry just for me.”

“Mitsuhide..! I can’t..” She was so close. “Please I want to cum..!”

“Cum for me, Natsuki.”

As soon as he finished his sentence, she sobbed his name into the empty room as her climax came hard. Pleasure wrecked through her body as Natsuki kept thrusting her fingers, her walls squeezing around them as she rode out her orgasm. Her moans softened as she slowly came down from her high, panting for air as her heart beat wildly in her chest.

“Well, that was quite a lovely show.”

Her cheeks were flushed as Natsuki tried to calm her breathing. “That was.. That felt so good..”

Mitsuhide laughed, the sound of the chair creaking as he got up. “You sound well fucked.”

Now it was her turn to laugh. “I’d still prefer it if you were here.”

“I’ll certainly try by tonight, but I don’t promise anything.” He had that teasing tone back. “I do have to hang up for the meeting now.”

“What? But what about you?”

“Hearing you cum so beautifully is enough for me.” She heard the rustle of paper from his line. “The faster we find a solution also means we get to leave soon.”

“Mm, okay.” Natsuki made the effort to clean her fingers noisily, moaning quietly as she slipped them in her mouth.

“Tease.” He grinned over the phone. “I love you.”

She giggled, her voice giving him some determination to finish work instead of jumping to his car and speeding home. “I love you too.”

Mitsuhide hung up first, pocketing his phone before pushing the door to the conference room open. Everyone was already there, including Nobunaga.

“It’s not like you to be late.” Masamune eyed him curiously across the table.

“I had to make an important phone call.”

That earned him a long wolf whistle. “Sounded like an interesting conversation if it took you that long to take it.”

“Will you stop it? I’d like to get home within the day, if everyone doesn’t mind.” Ieyasu spoke up, running his hand through dishevelled hair.

Nobunaga stood at the head of the table, giving Mitsuhide a nod. “I don’t want to keep anyone here longer than necessary. And I suppose you’ve already come up with a plan of attack?”

He couldn’t help but smirk. Of course he had.

[narkinafive]

fic draft for a sw/rvb au i have w @evaceratops​; i’ll post it here to get it out of my system, then clean it up and put it on ao3, so comment w your thoughts if you want!!!!

ghosts that linger, 3k, gen, ft. ezra, kanan, and kallus

Not for the first time, Kanan regretted saving Kallus’ life, if only because the man forced them to change bars every time they met. Kanan had really liked the bartender at the last one. 

Tonight’s bar was cleaner, classier, a hell of a lot more expensive. Crowded, too--women and men with dangerously low cut tops and glossy lips hang off the arms of their increasingly drunken patrons, identical smiles painted on their beautiful faces, delicate fingers drawing patterns in the sweet, fruity smoke that permeated every corner of the room. Kanan knew that smoke well; just one pack of Shento cigarras would cost him about a fifth of a good smuggling run. He preferred the cheap shit, not because it tasted any better, but he didn’t refuse the one the tall, pretty Togruta boy offered him, flipping him a fifty-credit chit and a wink in exchange. Kallus already had his lighter out by the time he turned around to face his dinner guest. 

“I was under the impression you were trying to quit,” he said, one blond eyebrow carefully raised, a familiar opening to a familiar routine. Normally Kanan wasn’t one to back down from a verbal fight, but tonight, something felt… off. The air was thick with more than expensive smoke and pheromones; there was an itch between his shoulders that he just couldn’t reach. Beneath their table, his leg was bouncing so violently you could almost see it in the glow of the cigarette, vibrating despite his steady hands.

Kanan took a long, long drag of the cigarra, held it, then released, and it did absolutely nothing to calm his nerves. “Any word?”

Kallus hmmed, thoughtfully. Usually a bad sign. “Down to business, I see?”

“Got a girl at home for a few days,” said Kanan, flicking ash into the crystal tray in the center of the smooth, dark table. “She doesn’t want me to stay out too late tonight--said she had a surprise for me if I made it back in time.” He grinned a leering, toothy grin, one he had perfected over years and years of sexual conquests, though he and Kallus both know full well that he hadn’t slept with anyone in months. “So, any reason you insisted on seeing me tonight? You wanna join us?” He felt himself smile wider, baring his teeth.

Kallus rolled his eyes, Kanan detecting a hint of sincerity behind the action, then slid him a thin, beat-up data pad he had pulled from his jacket, a silhouette of a pretty young thing painted in black, scuffed in that telltale way of repeated re-recording. “Far be it from me to encourage your predilections,” he sneered, “but here: the video file you requested.” 

And only now did Kanan finally understand the reason for tonight’s setting: Cinisia Club was one of the last places on the planet that didn’t regulate the sale and exchange of sensitive or explicit information. Hiding extremely confidential Imperial data in a porno-vid? Honestly, it was genius. Kanan groaned appreciatively, loud enough that even the eavesdropping droid would be convinced. “Fuck yeah,” he breathed, “the little miss and I are gonna enjoy this one.” The droid, satisfied for the moment, turned its attention elsewhere.

But as Kanan made to slip the datapad into his pocket, Kallus stopped him with a hand. “As much as I disapprove of your little hobby,” he said, each word perfectly shaped, perfectly chosen, “might I suggest enjoying this one without your, ah, little miss? I fear it may be a bit too… much for her, seeing a family member like that.” 

Kanan froze. A split second, but he froze. Kallus’ face revealed nothing, perfectly composed as he sipped at his drink. “What the hell does that mean?” 

“It means,” said Kallus, “that this video might upset your lovely date, and then who would warm your bed for the night? Certainly not I.”

His heart beat so hard in his chest that he thought it might pop out. He knew. He knew about Ezra. He knew what they were looking for. “Anything else?” he asked, mouth dry enough that he was surprised he could even get the words out.

Kallus shook his head. “Enjoy.” And with that ominous blessing, Kallus returned to the remains of his drink, dismissing Kanan without so much as a second glance. 

Sliding out of the booth, Kanan thought for a second that he might faint, then thanked the god he no longer believed in as the lightheadedness passed without incident. But he was sure everyone could see his pale face, his trembling hands, his sweaty brow. It was like every set of eyes in the club tracked his every step as he made his way to the exit, each mocking smile haunting him with the question: do they know, too?

He took his speeder to the opposite side of town, ran a loop around the back alleys, just in case someone decided to follow. No one did, as far as Kanan could see. The lights were always on in this part of town, illuminating the unceasing river of sentients crossing into and over the space port, leaving very little shadow to hide in. Imperial propaganda sounded triumphantly from every corner, an overlapping cacophony of music and commands, screens cheerfully brandishing shuttle times and wanted posters. Helmet on, he waited in a dim corner, eyes fixed on the screen as it worked through its roster of suspects. Senator Mon Mothma, it read. General Jan Dodonna. Saw Gerrera. Admiral Gial Ackbar. Travia Chan. Cham Syndulla. Fulcrum, real identity unknown. 

No “Kanan.” No “Caleb” either, for that matter. No other names.

Though who knew how many names there would be tomorrow.

He watched it cycle through again. “If you see something, say something!” Chirped a woman’s voice from the loudspeakers, her words echoing across every surface, broadcast as far as it could possibly go. Kanan could still hear her as he sped away, twenty minutes later. He heard her even as he got out of range, her words ringing in his ears as loudly as any alarm.

Kanan had docked his ship in the bad part of town, but he hadn’t been worried. The Kasmiri wasn’t anything too flashy; spacious quarters had been sacrificed for smuggling compartments long ago, and Kanan had had her repainted as soon as he was sure Janus Kasmir wouldn’t be able to track them down again. Still, his heart lifted somewhat as he approached, lowering the ramp to reveal the soft, warm glow of the cargo bay. Despite her rough exterior, she was still home, a home he hadn’t had in a long, long time.

As Kanan ascended the ladder to the galley, he found that Ezra was still awake, and apparently helping himself to a late night snack, pilfered from Kanan’s emergency stash. “Where were you?” he demanded, perched on the dejarik table, mouthful of a half eaten ration bar.

“Out,” was all Kanan replied, even knowing full well that such a vague answer would do absolutely jackshit to nip Ezra’s curiosity in the bud. “Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

Ezra swallowed. “Were you out with Fulcrum?”

“You, bed. Now,” he ordered at Ezra’s glare.

“Did you get any info?”

“What part of ‘bed’ was a little too hard for you to understand?”

Hopping off the table, Ezra followed Kanan to his bunk, dogging his heels the whole way. “You reek of Shento smoke, and the only place on this dirtball high rolling enough for cigarras like that is going to be the Cinisia Club, which I know for a fact that you refuse, on principle, to even go within three blocks, so the only reason you would go into Cinisia would be to meet with your contact, and the only reason you would actually physically meet Fulcrum instead of just comming them would be because they have something really important to tell you!” He was practically jumping up and down, pacing the very short length of Kanan’s cabin. “Am I right?”

The kid had been hanging around him for way too long. “Not even a little.” Ezra harrumphed, crossing his arms. “Seriously, you should get some sleep. We’ve got an early morning tomorrow, be ready at 0500, sharp.”

Eza groaned, throwing his hands up in the air. “And now we’re running away!” He turned on his heel and stalked out, heavy footfalls and bitter muttering echoing off the walls.

Kanan almost thought about calling him back. He had promised the kid to keep him in the loop, and if this file was what he thought it was… but Kallus’ warning surfaced in his memory. A family member. 

How in the hell did Kallus know that he was looking for information on Ezra’s father? Moreover, how in the hell did he even know Ezra existed? How the fuck had Kanan let that happen? He thought he had been so clever, so careful, and he had failed, and it was only a matter of time before--

He shook his head. Kallus wouldn’t betray him, Kanan’s leverage was too strong, at least for now. Once again, Kanan regretted saving the man’s life: even if having an ISB agent in his back pocket was ridiculously useful from time to time, he was certain that, eventually, the secrets he knew would cease to be a good enough threat to keep Kallus from talking.

The ancient datapad booted up agonizingly slowly, heat radiating off the back of it. The screen was scuffed and distorted, laser-pixels clumped together at the corners, but the picture was as clear as it could be. The dark windowless room, the slanted table with attached restraints, the sharp, yellow grin of the Grand Inquisitor, it was all a horribly familiar scene to Kanan. “Prisoner Oh-five-seven-seven-four,” he said, his back to the struggling man on the table. “Ephraim Bridger, is it? I understand that you and your wife once had a son. Ezra, yes?” The man--Ezra’s father--Ezra’s father--spit at the Grand Inquisitor in lieu of an answer. “According to our records, he died in the riots at the age of seven. A shame, really; he showed remarkable aptitude in his Academy exam. With the right training, he could have been a great asset to the Empire, had his mother not foolishly chosen to--”

Ezra’s father swore in his native language. “Don’t you dare talk about her! Don’t you dare!”

Kanan paused the vid, listening out for footsteps around his door, and heard nothing. Good. Ezra couldn’t keep quiet to save his life, usually. He did not want the kid to see this. Hell, he hardly wanted to watch it himself.

He hadn’t been on the assignment, but he remembered the incident well. Kanan had been twenty-two, and so green, relegated to desk work while his superiors thought of ways to fix his “problems,” but he had been called out to the scene anyway. Sometimes he could still picture the scene in his mind, perfect in his memory: the dark night, the wet, hard ground, Mira Bridger’s body. The way her arms had been outstretched, like she was reaching for something. The tear tracks on her face, the slackness of death unable to hide her terror and despair. 

And he remembered his orders. Sit on this one, Dume, the Grand Inquisitor--then the Counselor--had coldly informed him. And then, The Director sees no need to include that information in the incident report. And then, You have been taken off this case. Moving forward, this will be handled by more qualified agents. 

Ephraim Bridger’s face snarled at him from years ago, eyes blazing. He’d seen that same look before, on Ezra’s face as he saw Troopers harassing those street kids on Garel.

Kanan pressed play again. 

“Very well,” said the Grand Inquisitor, “What would you like to speak of, Mr. Bridger?”

“I know you took my son,” Ephraim growled, weak, defiant.

The Grand Inquisitor smiled, thin as the interrogator droid’s needle, and just as sharp. “Mr. Bridger, your son has been dead for years.”

“You lie,” he said. “We knew you wanted him for your little cult, and when Mira and I wouldn’t simply lay down and let you take him, you killed my wife and stole him!”

The needle moved, and Ephraim writhed on the table, the twitch of his jaw as he struggled to hold in his shouts evident as the clenching of his fists. “You are mistaken, Mr. Bridger.” 

And on it went, for forty-eight minutes. Forty-eight minutes of torture, and lies, and the strength and ferocity of Ephraim’s will, unyielding against the Grand Inquisitor’s attempts to break it. “Don’t lie to me,” Ephraim gasped, face thunderous. “Why did you take my son?”

“Your son died in the riots, Mr. Bridger.”

“Where is he?!”

Kanan paused the vid, scrubbing a hand over his face. It just didn’t make any sense. The JEDI program had been dissolved when Palpatine took control, so why would the Grand Inquisitor be looking for new recruits? And if they were looking for new soldiers, why didn’t they take Ezra? The kid was smart, quick on his feet, great with machines--he should have been a prime target for the JEDI. Could they just have completely missed him?

No, Kanan decided, this was deliberate. Maybe it was because of his parents, but he didn’t see how leaving alone the child of two known insurrectionists would have benefitted the JEDI; if anything, it would have made him even more of a prize, a big fat slap in the face of the movement. So why leave him alone? And why, if you’re going to leave him alone, go through all the trouble of relocating him?

Too many things didn’t add up, he wasn’t nearly drunk enough for any of this, and outside his cabin was the telltale shuffle of someone listening through the door.

Sure enough, he palmed open the door, and Ezra was there, jerking away from the hole where the wall used to be. “Did you say my name?” he asked, smiling like he hadn’t just been attempting to eavesdrop.

“No.”

“I heard my name. What were you watching?”

“Why aren’t you asleep?” Ezra was a right terror all the time; a tired Ezra even more so. “I told you we had an early start tomorrow.”

The transformation was startling. Where once had been an obstinate teenager, a kid who enjoyed glaring daggers at him from across the dinner table, disobeying orders in flight, and refusing to come to blaster practice, stood a repentant child, his eyes wide in that rarely-seen puppy-dog way that he never outgrew from the street. “Look,” he said, arms raised, placating, “I’m sorry for snooping. You’re the boss, and your business isn’t mine. You’re entitled to your secrets, and that includes not telling me what you were up to tonight, even though you promised not to hide information from me if I thought it was important. Right?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Okay,” said Ezra, unperturbed, “but I just think--”

Kanan groaned.

“I could really help you out!” 

“Ezra--”

“I’m still pretty small, I’m quiet, I’m awesome at pick-pocketing,” he counted off, “I could be a really great spy!”

Kanan sighed, the telltale signs of an Ezra-induced headache beginning to manifest, a subtle throbbing beneath his temple overcoming his need to stay as rational as possible. “We’ve been over this,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose, “and under no circumstances will I use you as a spy. You are not getting involved!”

“I’m already involved!” Ezra said. “You think if you got caught then they wouldn’t arrest your ‘mechanic’ for treason, too?”

He was right, of course. “Ezra,” said Kanan, bringing his hands down on his shoulders, tilting his head up to look him in the eye so that he could see, so that he could understand, “you listen to me. If there is the slightest chance that you can get out of this with your nose clean, then you take it. Do you understand?”

“Kanan--”

“Ezra!” He shook him. “Do you understand me?!”

“Fuck you!” Ezra roared as he shoved him off, nearly knocking Kanan into the strut of his bunk. “Just, fuck you! They were my parents, and I have the goddamn right to know why they died!”

“I know!” Kanan shouted back. “Of course you do.”

“Then tell me what’s going on!” Ezra advanced, hands balled into fists, jaw clenching with barely contained rage. Just like his father.

He couldn’t keep this from him for much longer.

“I don’t--” He broke off, willing the right words to come, “I don’t want to be wrong about this.” Ezra faltered at that, his shoulders losing some of their rigidity as his anger started to bleed out of him. “I have my suspicions, but that’s all they are right now: suspicions. This isn’t just a simple matter of corruption. What I’m--what we’re investigating might involve people so far up the chain of command that they could take us out in broad daylight and walk away without a single scratch on their reputation. These people,” for Kanan knew them well, knew them so intimately it still made him sick sometimes, “these people don’t care about right or wrong, or justice, or anything like that. And they certainly won’t think twice about killing you for what you know.” 

Heavily, Kanan sat on his bunk, the lumpy bed sinking even further under his weight, under the weight of the goddamn world. He was so goddamn tired. 

The mattress dipped as Ezra sat beside him, never taking his eyes off of him. “I can’t sit by and do nothing, Kanan,” he said, softly. “They were my parents.”

Something tried to crawl its way up Kanan’s throat, sitting heavily. This kid. “I know. And I promise, I won’t keep anything from if I think it’s important enough for you to know. But right now, the less you know, the better.”

His mouth twisted, but, eventually, he nodded. “Can…” he looked away, arms coming up to hug himself, the scrape of fabric on fabric seeming to center him. “Can you at least tell me what was on the vid?”

Kanan’s stomach plummeted. He closed his eyes, breathing in the scent of recycled air, dirty laundry, the lingering stench of Shento on his skin. When he opened them, Ezra was looking at him again, the bright blue of his eyes somehow dimmer in the low light of his cabin.

He would rather have the obstinate teenager than this.

“It was an interrogation archive,” Kanan said.

“The Grand Inquisitor?” 

“Yeah.” Ezra shuddered, and one hand rubbed at his wrist, almost subconsciously. “I thought it might have some new info, but… he was just torturing the prisoner. Trying to make him forget something he had seen.” Which was true. Nothing in that vid was news to Kanan.

Beside him, Ezra dipped his head, dark hair in his eyes, and tilted slowly until it could be said that he was leaning on Kanan. Kanan’s shoulder twitched, but he knew better than to try to hug the kid. “And the prisoner?” he asked. “What did he know?”

“He knew…” Kallus’ voice in his head, again. “He thought he knew why they were targeting your mother.”

“Did he?”

“Honestly? I don’t know.” And the truth was, he didn’t. The Rebellion, the JEDI, the Grand Inquisitor, the Bridgers, and their son; every answer to every question revealed a whole new web of entanglements, of money and power and depraved individuals, and Kanan was still so lost, adrift in the void of space without a heading. “There’s so much that just isn’t adding up, and I want--I have to be sure, beyond the shadow of a doubt, before I can go any further with this.”

He felt, rather than saw, Ezra’s nod. He wondered what Ezra could feel from him, if he could tell that Kanan still, despite his promises, was lying to him. 

[connorssock]

Id love to see a sort of AU of sorts of that super cute/badass fic you wrote where Gavin got sponsored in gymnastics so when he got kicked out he had somewhere to go (with the sponsor?) And eventually competed world wide before retiring to become police

I spent so long thinking about this and I tried to make sure Gavin still ended up on the police force but…I hope you can forgive me for taking this idea and twisting it a little, Nonnie! I’m not going to lie, this turned into an Olympics AU that nobody really asked for.

For those curious, this is the post being referred to.

Much like in the other post, Gavin’s 18th birthday present is a pre-packed bag and being shown the door. But this time, he’s got somewhere to go. There wasn’t any money in the backpack and Gavin doesn’t exactly have much in the bank, so he figures that as the weather is good, he can walk for a couple of hours to get to Hank’s.

The house is silent when he gets there. Perhaps he should be concerned that he knows where his coach lives and that it’s not the first time he’s been there, but Gavin’s got his heart set on the Olympics and Hank was one of the few willing to work with him. Maybe the way they’d met wasn’t quite conventional either. Gavin had been aware of Anderson’s fame in the heyday, knew he was destined for great things in the gymnastic world. He’d been a role model to many right up until the fateful crash that shattered his elbow and robbed him of any future in the sport. Even worse, his son was killed and Hank all but dropped off the face of the planet.

As luck would have it, Gavin lived in the same town Hank had run away to. There were rumours at the club about the great fabled Anderson living locally and Gavin decided to take matters into his own hand. He’d done a bit of detective work and tracked Hank down, only to knock on his door unannounced one evening after school.

The man who opened the door reeked of alcohol and yelled at him to piss off. His words slurred and Gavin was torn. The person who could have gotten him to the Olympics was nothing more than a washed up drunk. But something nagged at him, urged him to come back. So Gavin did, he pestered Hank until the man finally snapped. Told him that if Gavin could do an Arabian Flip then and there, he’d consider taking him on.

There was a stunned silence when Gavin dumped his bag on the ground, took a step back and did a wonky Arabian Flip on Hank’s front lawn. His landing didn’t stick, the twist wasn’t a complete 180 but it was good enough when not warmed up, stressed and put on the spot. Gavin shoved his phone number and training regime into Hank’s hands and ran before did something stupid.

Three days later, Hank was by the sidelines at the club when Gavin arrived. He even wore an ugly shirt.

Despite the rocky start, Hank proved to be a better coach than expected. Sure, he pushed Gavin hard, put him through his paces but it meant that by the 2020 Olympics, Gavin had secured himself a spot in Tokyo. He never expected his parents to shatter his hopes by not signing the form that would have allowed him to travel. All Gavin remembers of the Olympics that year was sitting on Hank’s couch and getting progressively more drunk together as some haughty Russian took the gold he’d wanted to badly.

A couple of months later, Gavin waited for Hank to get home from wherever he was. At least it was still only cool and not cold, sitting on his doorstep with a bag between his feet. When Hank finally rolled up, he took one look at Gavin and wordlessly let him in.

Within a matter of weeks, Gavin had his own place. He didn’t mind sleeping on Hank’s couch, but it didn’t do his back any favours. All the same, Hank had pulled some strings and suddenly Gavin had a couple of sponsors, a bit of money in the bank and a place to call his very own. It was the best possible outcome for his situation and he was content.

Training and competitions came and went. Gavin built up quite a name for himself and by the time 2024 rolled around, he was comfortable in the knowledge that he had earned a place in the competition and his parents wouldn’t be able to stop him from going to Paris.

The trip to Europe was a bit of a blur. It was Gavin’s first time on an aeroplane and he couldn’t quite wrap his head around it. Next to him, Hank snored merrily with an eye mask shutting out any light. There was a small part of Gavin that was jealous of his easy sleep, but at the same time, he didn’t want to miss anything about the trip.

Once they’d landed, got their luggage and were outside the airport, they made their way to the Olympic village. Hank had warned him numerous times that it was all a bit hectic, a bit crazy. People were doing things they wouldn’t normally do. In the end, all Hank had said was “what happens in the village stays in the village” with a grin that spoke of many memories Gavin was sure he didn’t need to know about.

Of course, Hank had been right. It was absolute chaos. There were petty cat fights followed by makeup sex, sometimes in a rather public setting. Gavin would have loved it if he could say he had only once walked into one of the communal lounges to find an archer bent over the back of the sofa by a shooter muttering about true aim.

In all of this, Gavin tried to keep his head on straight and was down at the practice grounds every day. It was inevitable he’d run into his competition, including the defending Russian champion. Now, Gavin could admit when someone was attractive, he might have even slurred something along those lines to Hank four years back. They’d even passed each other in a few competitions but they never struck up conversation. The problem was that up close, he was more than handsome. Even worse, Hank had nodded along but mumbled something about liking them a little softer and approachable.

Everybody called him Nines because of his average score. His trainer was Amanda Stern and she looked every bit the harpy. It was a matter of luck that their rooms were opposite Gavin and Hank’s. To make things a little more confusing, some mornings Gavin swore Nines looked a little different. Shorter and more willowy. He snorted when he realised Nines must wear fake contact lenses to get the piercing blue eyes.

It didn’t help that one morning Gavin stumbled out of his room to find Hank leaning against the wall a little too casually and was chatting to Nines. Jealousy wasn’t quite the emotion that flooded Gavin, but Hank was fraternising with the enemy. The enemy that he himself may or may not have quite a strong attraction to at that. Hank glanced his way and smiled before he turned back to Nines with a smile.

“I better get going, catch you around, Connor.”

That was not Nines’ name. Gavin blinked and watched as Hank waited for him to puzzle it out. No explanation came to mind and all Gavin could do was let out a confused “ehhhhh?” and wave.

“That’s Connor, Nines’ brother and fencer. Was going to be a gymnast but Amanda almost destroyed his and Nines’ relationship with her training regime and constantly pitting them against each other. So he saved their relationship and decided to take his frustrations out by hitting people with a sword instead,” Hank shrugged.

Suddenly Hank’s words about preferring them softer made more sense. Because Connor was softer than Nines and there was no conflict of interest either which definitely eased things. Gavin idly wondered how long Connor and Hank had been friends.

“His English is pretty good,” Gavin tried to probe gently.

“Father was Russian, mother was American. They were orphaned here so Amanda took them in when they were around 8. For all intents and purposes they’re Russian but…well, they could apply for US citizenship if they ever wanted to.”

It was impossible to miss the wistful note in Hank’s voice and Gavin knew exactly what he was thinking.

Training and avoiding parties became Gavin’s focus as he prepared for the competition. It was suddenly all too real and he needed to prove himself. He was in the last three minutes of his allocated practice time, tired and frustrated when his landings wouldn’t stick no matter how much he tried to keep his knees soft. All it took was one moment for his concentration to blip out and he was flat on his backside with a groan.

A hand was offered to pull him up and Gavin blinked in surprises as Nines backed away.

“Your left foot isn’t completely straight, it’s why your landings aren’t good enough.”

Before Gavin reply, Nines stalked away.

He began to see more and more of Nines. Watched his routine as the crowds screamed for him, how the judges nodded along. It was infuriatingly seamless and he was shot straight to the top of the leader board.

When it was Gavin’s turn, he stood nervously, palms damp with sweat despite being covered with chalk. His name was announced and his mind went blank while his body took over and went through the familiar steps of his routine.

Gavin would never be able to remember much of what happened, it was all a blur of anxiety that warred with the comfort of knowing what he was doing. He was where he’d always dreamt he would be and nobody could take that away from him anymore.

He remembered Hank hugging him tight, his name being called again on the loudspeaker along with a score. It didn’t beat Nines’ near perfection, but it was a personal best. Gavin was even tactful enough not to mention how Hank’s cheeks were tear streaked when he released him from the bear hug.

“That was a very credible performance,” Nines shook his hand when Gavin stepped into the changing rooms.

From there, they watched the rest of the competitors together. Cringed when the guy from Denmark landed wrong and twisted his ankle, cheered when the Chinese gymnast rescued a flip with an inch to spare from crashing out. Neither of them really knew when the space between them decreased or when they decided that dinners and holding hands in private was a great idea, but it made them happy.

They stood next to each other on the podium, Nines with his gold medal and Gavin with his bronze.Neither of them could keep the happy grin from their faces.

Like with everything, things came to an end. They exchanged contact details and agreed to try and stay in touch. Their e-mails were infrequent and secretive, Nines never said it out loud but Gavin knew that if Amanda found out about them, it would be a disaster.

He almost had a heart attack when, after a training session, Gavin dropped by Hank’s place and thought he saw Nines. But it was only Connor sat on Hank’s old couch with Sumo’s head in his lap.

“I have something for you,” Connor said and quietly slipped into the bedroom.

Gavin valiantly didn’t think about the fact that there was only one bedroom in Hank’s house and all of Connor’s things seemed to be in there. Any such thoughts vanished from his mind when a soft parcel was pressed in his hands. He didn’t open it in front of Connor, but the next time he went to practice, Hank was there with Connor at the club. It was fairly obvious that Connor had no clue what he’d brought over for Gavin, but his eyes widened when he recognised the hoodie. Thankfully he didn’t say anything.

In an effort to stay in touch, Gavin looked into more international competitions, managed to grab spots at a couple Nines was at. Their stolen moments were even better than beating him to first place on the podium.

By the time the Olympics came to LA, Gavin was excited. He waited at the airport for the plane to land from Russia. Connor was at his side, vibrating with excitement at seeing his brother again. He never did tell them what had happened, but a year after Paris, he retraced his mother’s heritage and moved over to the US. It was going to be the first time he was competing against his old Russian team in the Olympics and he was nervous.

“Brother,” Nines greeted him with a squeeze to his shoulder before he nodded at Gavin. “Nice to see you both.”

Gavin offered to drive while Connor sat in the back with Nines. They were catching up when Connor suddenly switched to Russian. Whatever he said got a very terse and annoyed reply from Nines and all conversation ceased.

Much like in Paris, the Olympic Village was manic. But this time, Gavin knew what to expect and was grinning wildly at the fact that Nine was his neighbour this time. Something told him it wasn’t pure luck it worked out like that. Especially when on Hank’s other side Connor moved in.

The tabloids were going nuts over the athletes. They speculated romances, feuds and delighted in mulling over tragedies. Oddly enough, Nines and Amanda became a frequent topic. They were often caught arguing in hushed tones, both looking furious. Nobody knew the root of the problem but it was obvious that the Russians were in a pickle.

The day of the competition came and Gavin settled in to watch Nines. A hush of anticipation fell over the hall as Nines took up position. His first landing was botched, his flips messy, timing deliberately a little off. Gavin held a hand to his mouth to hide the noises.

“What is he doing?” Hank hissed next to him.

With a final sloppy cartwheel, Nines finished, stood straight with his arms in the air. Both his middle fingers extended as he did a quick turn towards where Amanda sat and with a sneering smile took a mock bow before marching out of the arena.

“Holy shit, that is one heck of a statement.” Hank’s voice was lost in the mutterings of the crowd.

Needless to say, Nines crashed out of the competition in the first round. He looked smug as he sipped something that was in all likelihood alcoholic while lounging on one of the communal sofas.

“What the fuck was that about?” Gavin asked when he found him, Connor and Hank hot on his heels.

“An artistic expression of what I thought about Amanda. I thought the message was quite clear,” Nines shrugged. “Incidentally, Connor, you don’t have a couch I could stay on for a bit? I have a feeling I’m not returning back to Russia once the games are over.”

It was one heck of a way to declare his intentions but Gavin couldn’t let Nines distract him. He was competing the next day and needed to keep his focus. All the same, he was filled with warmth when he spotted Nines next to Hank in the trainer’s box just before he walked to into the arena. The small wink Nines sent him made him flush but then there was no room to think as he began his routine.

Gavin stood proudly on the podium, a gold medal around his neck. There were flashes of the cameras going off around him, people calling his name. It wasn’t something he ever really truly expected to experience despite wanting it for pretty much all his life.

He ginned when he saw Nines walking towards him and stopping in front of him.

“You’re actually taller than me for once,” Nines mused before crooking a finger at him.

Gavin leaned down and almost dropped his bouquet when Nines grabbed him by the medal and tugged him down for a kiss. If Gavin thought the cameras were going wild before, it was a veritable lightning storm now. The tabloids were full of the picture of them kissing, mulling over whether it was a kiss of affection or a Russian threat.

All in all, it was a great thing to giggle over, the two of them entangled on Gavin’s couch and giggling before returning to filling out Nines’ application for citizenship.

[schneeplebro]

Hey! So, I always thought a Schneeplebro Speak Now AU would be cute, but it was always kind of just a background idea I didn’t know what to do with until @dead-inside-mcgee wrote this amazing fic which got me thinking about Chase and Stacy’s wedding, so thank you so much for the inspiration!

This is also on ao3 if you’d prefer to read it there :) 

“I hear the preacher say ‘speak now or forever hold your peace.’ There’s a silence, there’s my last chance, I stand up with shaking hands, all eyes on me...” - Taylor Swift, “Speak Now”

“Oh my god. Oh my god, I’m gonna fall. Or puke.”

“No you aren’t.”

“You’re right. I’m gonna fall and puke. Which should I do first? Fall, right? If I’m on the ground, maybe less people will notice when I puke.”

“I will make you a deal: hold onto my arm. If I let you fall, you have my full permission to puke.” He was supposed to walk just behind Chase anyway; who would really notice or care if they went side by side? He offers his arm and Chase links his own without hesitation. “I feel like I am giving you away.”

“What?”

“Um, because we are standing like this. It is like I am a parent, giving you away.”

“Oh.”

He changes the subject quickly. “Are you alright? Being in front of people doesn’t usually bother you this much. You are not nervous, are you?”

“Yeah, I’m nervous. I’m very nervous. Is that bad?”

“No, I am sure you are fine. It is normal - remember what a wreck I was before my wedding?”

“Henrik, your marriage lasted seven months.”

“Yes, well, my point still stands.”

The music starts up. “Oh fuck, oh fuck,” Chase whispers, and the words ‘you don’t have to do this, you know’ are right there on Schneep’s lips, but he can’t say it. It would be one thing if it was one friend checking on another, but it feels like it would be a manipulative thing to say considering… considering how much Henrik wants Chase not to do this. It would be selfish, to put that idea in his head, wouldn’t it?

“Are you ready?” he whispers instead.

“I- I guess.”

They walk to the back, where the wedding party is gathering. Stacy’s mother is the first to walk; she ignores everyone else, but Jackie and Marvin give Chase quick hugs before lining up behind him. And then they’re starting down the aisle. Chase is latched so tightly onto his arm it almost hurts, but he doesn’t mind. It takes him out of this moment, where he’s marching the man he loves into someone else’s arms, reminds him of a sweeter time, the day when he first realized that he was in love with him. It was years ago, when they were in college.

It had been Henrik who decided that they should go to the library, which was the first thing he thought about when the loudspeaker announced that someone had called in a bomb threat. First Thought: Oh god, I brought us here; if we die, it’s my fault. Second Thought: Hey, we’re moving. Because Chase hadn’t had a First Thought at all. He’d heard the announcement and immediately grabbed Henrik’s hand and started running.

“What are you doing?”

“What do you mean ‘what am I doing?’ Getting us out of here! Come on!” Everyone else was still panicking; the announcement hadn’t even finished yet. The voice was still in the process of telling them to ‘proceed calmly to the nearest exit.’ A few people were starting to follow them, but the two of them were the only ones already at the front door.

Chase, he quickly realized, was a faster runner than him. There was a long cement staircase leading to the front door of the library, and Chase was more or less dragging him down it - he was sure he was going to trip and crack his head open and then get trampled by the crowd behind him, and he remembers thinking that if that happened, he hoped Chase was smart enough to leave him and get to safety, because - because oh fuck, I’m in love with my friend Chase. But before he knew it they were at the bottom, and then a safe distance from the building, and then all the way across campus, catching their breath.

Later that night, they found out that there had never been a bomb in the first place, and the student who had called in the threat had been caught and expelled. So, crisis averted, Henrik figured. There was nothing to be scared of anymore. He had plenty of time to figure out these new feelings and how he should deal with them.

One week and four days later, Chase met a girl named Stacy.

And Henrik was disappointed, but not too worried at first, because she was so obviously wrong for him. Within two months of their relationship, she was going through his closet, picking things that were “so ugly he had to get rid of them” and replacing them with clothes she bought in stores with names that Chase could barely pronounce. A few more months, and her constant “helpful suggestions” that he change his major to something “worthwhile” turned into an ultimatum: choose a ‘real’ career path or she would break up with him. Henrik had thought this would be the end, but Chase was a man in love, and Henrik woke up one day to Chase telling him he was a business major now. And then his grades fell, because of course they did - he had no passion for or understanding of business. One night, they were all hanging out and doing some homework together, and Chase was frustrated about how difficult it was. Stacy sighed. “Here, let me do it.”

“Thanks, babe. Sorry.”

“It’s fine. It’s not your fault you’re so dumb.”

It was quiet for a few seconds; Henrik was watching Chase, and Chase was watching Stacy, who kept working. Chase seemed to take her indifference as a sign that this was a totally normal thing for someone to say to their boyfriend, so he just gave a forced chuckle and changed the subject.

Henrik should’ve said something then. Should’ve taken him aside and said, ‘Hey, no one who really loved you would talk to you like that,’ be he didn’t. He knew that if Chase tried to have a real discussion about Stacy with him, he could never be impartial. He would get defensive and Chase would figure out that he was jealous. He told himself he would just wait, until Chase realized how unhealthy the relationship was, or at least until Henrik could figure out a way to intervene that didn’t risk losing his friendship.

Neither of those things ever happened. The months turned into years, years of quiet, cowardly love, of watching Stacy get even more controlling and demeaning.

But those parts of the past are too painful, so as Stacy walks down the aisle and the ceremony begins, he goes back to that day at the library. There was just something about that day that changed the way he saw Chase.

For a long time, he thought it was the way that Chase had held onto him, had kept him safe, but it was more than that. They’d been friends for years at that point - it wasn’t shocking that Chase had tried to protect him. It was something about the way he did it, how fucking fast he did it.

He hadn’t waited for any more instructions or to see how other people reacted. He knew what the right thing to do was and he did it without hesitation. That was what made Henrik fall in love with Chase.

And now Henrik’s standing at the altar watching his best friend marry someone who had hurt him, who was going to keep hurting him if nothing changed.

“If anyone has a reason these two should not be wed, speak now or forever hold your peace.”

Oh, shit. He actually has to do it. Well, bye forever, Chase. He steps forward. “I do. I have a reason.”

Such a small crowd shouldn’t have been capable of producing such a huge audible gasp in perfect unison.

“What the fuck are you doing?!” Jackie hisses in his ear.

Stacy isn’t so subtle. “Do you think this is funny? Because no one’s laughing,” she snaps, her voice loud enough to carry to the back row.

Henrik’s eyes stay locked on Chase, but Chase doesn’t say anything at all, just stares back at him in shock.

“Chase, listen to me, okay? I’m sorry to do this now. I know I had plenty of chances. Whenever you asked what I thought of Stacy, if I was happy for you - the answer was always no. Always. And I did not want to lie to you, but I thought that telling the truth was selfish. Because I knew I would not have the courage to tell you the whole truth… that I had feelings for you.”

There’s more gasping, which Henrik doesn’t even care about anymore. He does care about the tears welling up in Chase’s eyes. When he finally speaks, his voice is hoarse, fragile. “I don’t understand, Henrik. Is this a joke? Are you making fun of me?”

“What? No! Please, please listen. I thought it would be wrong of me to tell you that I disliked Stacy because I had selfish reasons for doing so. And since I couldn’t tell you how I really felt, I tried to be supportive, like a good friend. If I could be nothing else to you, I wanted to be that: a good friend. But I was being a bad friend. Because a good friend would have told you that you deserve better than this. You deserve someone who respects you and loves you for who you are. Even if that someone is not me.”

“Are you done?” Stacy snarls, while Chase stands, still facing Henrik, shaking his head a little, mouth open like he’s about to say something but can’t get the words out. “Because I think you’ve done an adequate job making our wedding about you and this pathetic little crush. I think you should go.”

Henrik has no reason to care about what she says anymore. “Chase?”

He leans towards Henrik a little, so the people watching won’t hear. “Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst idea if you waited outside, just while we work things out.”

If being kicked out of his best friend’s wedding felt like an earthquake (and it sure fucking did), Henrik is pretty sure that the realization that he’s going to have to walk back up the aisle, past every guest, to get to the doors at the opposite end of the room qualifies as a pretty nasty aftershock.

He forces himself to keep his head up, but he can’t bear to look at anyone’s face; he keeps his eyes trained straight ahead. The walk seems to take forever, but at least the humiliation is distracting. As soon as the doors shut behind him, he becomes acutely aware of how real what he’s just done is. After so much time, so many smiles, his friendship with Chase is over. He ruined it. He’s fighting back tears now, and part of him just wants to get the fuck away from there, but he doesn’t have the faintest idea where he should go. He’s also pretty sure that if he tries to drive in this emotional state he’ll end up dying in a horrific car crash, but that doesn’t sound too bad at the moment.

He sits down on the steps to try to collect himself. Makes himself take a few deep breaths. Stacy‘s going to hate him forever, but Chase might give him a second chance if he apologizes, and gives him some time, and tells him how much his friendship meant to him. Chase is a forgiver, it’s just in his nature. But how long will it take? Can they ever get back even a fraction of the closeness they once had, or would it forever be uncomfortable, a permanent awkward wall between them of unspoken feelings, regrets, and-

“So, quick update, Stacy and I did not work it out,” a voice says. He looks up and Chase is just standing at the bottom of the staircase, still in his tuxedo.

“What are you doing here?”

“After you left, Stacy and I went into this little back room to talk, and I was trying to convince her that this didn’t need to be a big deal, and that we should just carry on with the ceremony, but I wanted to come get you, obviously, and she was furious.” He walks up the stairs to sit next to Henrik. “And so she was yelling and ranting, but all she kept talking about was how you interrupted us to say you’re, uh, y’know… into me. But she didn’t say anything about how you said she doesn’t really care about me or respect me, and it made me realize that you were right. So I told her I didn’t want to get married after all.”

“Holy shit, Chase.”

“Yeah, she, uh, didn’t take that super well. She started full-on screaming at me, and then she threw the flowers, and then she was coming at me - like, not hitting, really, just getting up in my face and kind of shoving me, so I found a bathroom with a door that locks, and long story short I may or may not have crawled out of a window.”

He laughs. “A pity that no one with a camera was there to capture such a wonderful moment of your beautiful wedding.”

“God. She probably thinks I’m still locked in there. How long do you think I have before someone finds me?”

“Not long.”

“Fuck. I know I have to face her eventually, but I wish it didn’t have to be in front of everyone we know.”

“Do you have your phone? And your wallet?”

“Yeah, why? Hey!” he says as Henrik grabs his hand and drags him to his feet. “What are you doing?”

“Getting us out of here.” He starts running down the stairs, still pulling Chase behind him.

“Slow down!”

But he doesn’t. He keeps going, until they’re sprinting through the parking lot to Henrik’s car and Chase is laughing the whole time. They have to let go of each other’s hands to get in the car and buckle up, but after Henrik is out of the lot and driving away, Chase reaches out again.

Henrik grabs on tight, not intending to let go until they’re far, far away.

“Baby, I didn’t say my vows; so glad you were around when they ‘speak now.’” - Taylor Swift, “Speak Now”

[be-more-chill-evan-hansen]

Holiday fic

I know that a lot of characters don’t have canon religion, and I also know that it’s a possibility of either being Jewish or just not celebrating Christmas, so I am writing a fic that’s more for the holiday season that Christmas. As a Christian, I have come to acknowledge that Christmas didn’t even belong to Christians to begin with (it originated with Pagans celebrating the winter solstice and was practiced before the birth of Jesus and Jesus wasn't born in winter) so when I celebrate Christmas, I celebrate as a time to spend with family and friends (and I get gifts so...) and not as Jesus’ birthday, so when I write this, I am writing this as them trading gifts and spending time together. I don’t think it’s best to describe this as a “Christmas fic” since the characters are very diverse, so “Holiday Fic” seems more fitting.

Please let me know what you think.

This story is featuring, or at least mentioning, all of my OCs, and I had to update my Tumblr OC list because I forgot that my descriptions for Damien and Rich were on AO3 first and I had forgotten how I described them and had to fix it so here is the 100% accurate updated version. And I tried adding as many characters as I could, but it’s so hard and I was under pressure, so please don’t hate me. I am ageing the characters up to 18+ for reasons. And I made Dragon Fly (me essentially) Albert’s cousin because I can bend canon however I want.

It sucks, and it’s everywhere, but I wanted to get something out for the holidays. And I added a surprise at the end so you would hate me less. Please bear with me.

Featured ships: Relmer (I had to); Spalbert (for Alexa); Jatherine (they’re cute and they’re both raging bisexuals fight me); Blush; Finch/Buttons

Era: Modern

Warnings: none

Word count: 1315 (I think that’s a record)

Also, I’ve been struggling with this for a week. Please go easy on me.

~~~~

Jack was grateful that Jacobi let them rent the place out for the annual Holiday Party Extravaganza. They picked a day and time in December that worked for everyone’s schedule and did “Secret Santa” so everyone would get a gift. Usually, the party was at Jack’s house, but the group grew over the year, and his tiny apartment would not be able to hold everyone.

Everyone helped to move tables so the center of the floor would be cleared. Race hooked up his phone to a loudspeaker, courtesy of Albert, and played showtunes to “set the mood” for the party. Everyone dropped the presents they brought on the counter.

“Can I get everyone’s attention?” Jack was standing in the middle of the room. “First, I would like to thank Jacobi for letting us use his place to have our party.” He waited for everyone to quiet down before continuing. “I would also like to thank our new friends who joined the group this year. Hopefully we haven’t weirded you out too much.” He looked at everyone in the room. “And thank you guys for making this year the best.”

“Encore!” Sarah yelled.

Jack rolled his eyes and walked back to Katherine and kissed her cheek. “I’m excited. This is the biggest party we’ve had.”

“Yeah,” Katherine agreed. “It was nice for Jacobi to let us have it here.”

Davey joined the two and brought them both a cup of punch. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen this many people in a room together before.”

“Same here,” Jack said. “I just hope that it doesn’t go horribly and end with Jacobi banning us.”

“Jacobi will never ban us.” Katherine laughed at her boyfriend. “He loves us.” She pointed to the table with Race, Elmer, Spot, and Albert. “They’re acting like it’s a double date.”

“Leave them alone,” Davey joked. “Let them have fun. It’s a party.”

Spot wrapped his arm around Albert’s shoulders. “I feel like this party will be the best one yet.”

Albert looked at his boyfriend. “And why is that?”

“I don’t know. Just a thought.”

“Just a thought?” Race asked. “That’s the lamest thing I’ve ever heard come out of your mouth.”

Spot mocked laughter. “It’s not as lame as your life.”

Race pretended to be offended. “I know my life is lame, but hey!”

.

Romeo turned to August. "Have you ever thought about dyeing your hair?"

August shrugged their shoulders. "I never thought about it. I don't know what color would look okay."

"I think any color would suit you."

"Really?" August asked. "I don't think I would look good with any color. Green wouldn’t look good at all."

Romeo laughed. "Not green. Maybe something pastel, like lavender or a pale blue."

"Lavender? Really?"

"Yeah."

"I can see it," a voice said from behind Romeo. Mush looked over the booth at August.

"What are you doing, Mush?" Romeo asked.

"Listening to you guys obliviously flirting with each other." He had a smirk on his face.

"We aren't flirting," August said. "Please leave."

"Kay." Mush walked off laughing and went to find Kid Blink. When he found him, he wrapped his arms around his waist from behind. "Are you enjoying yourself?"

"Yeah." Kid Blink turned around and kissed his boyfriend on the top of his head. "Go have fun. It's a party."

"Says the person sulking in the corner."

"I am not sulking. I am brooding. There's a difference."

"Brooding?" Mush asked. "What are you? Batman?"

"Funny."

"RACE AND ELMER ARE UNDER THE MISTLETOE!" Smalls yelled.

Race and Elmer quickly shared a kiss, which was over as soon as it started. It caused some of the others to boo.

"That was boring!" Romeo yelled.

"Where was the passion?" River asked.

"My dead grandma kisses hotter than that!" Finch called out from the other side of the room. 

"Grow up, guys," Race said. He and Elmer sat back down with Spot and Albert. “Hey, Albert. I know that your cousin prefers to go by her nickname, but what’s her real name?”

Albert leaned in very slowly, trying to reach Race’s ear. When Race moved his ear, closer, Albert blew into it. “I’m not telling you.”

“You’re boring,” Race said, trying to get rid of the uncomfortable feeling of Albert’s warm breath in his ear.

.

Dragon Fly was in the corner with Katherine and Sarah, updating each other about their lives.

"How’s college, Dragon Fly?" Katherine asked. "I know that you're going for writing."

Dragon Fly quickly pulled her cup up to her mouth. "It's...college." She took a long sip from her punch. "God, college makes me want to become an alcoholic.”

Sarah held her cup out. “I’ll cheer to that.”

Liberty passed by them. “I will cheer to that as well.”

“Do you even know what we’re cheering to?” Katherine asked.

“No,” Liberty said. “But, I heard Sarah say she was cheering to something and I didn’t want to be alone.”

Dragon Fly pointed to Max, Damien, and Rich in the corner. “Go talk to them. They look really bored.”

Liberty groaned. “Fine.”

“Time for presents!” Jack called. He passed out the gifts to everyone and sat next to Katherine. “This may be our best party ever.”

She smiled at him. “I may have to agree with you on that.”

“Who got me an empty box?” Finch asked loudly. 

“You haven’t even opened it,” Buttons replied.

“It weighs nothing.” Finch shook the box in his boyfriend’s face. “Nothing.” 

“If you’re so sure it’s nothing, then open it.”

Finch rolled his eyes and ripped the wrapping paper. He opened the box and looked inside. “There’s an envelope taped to the bottom.” He pulled the envelope out and turned it over. He found text and read it to himself. “I know we’ve been dating for five years, but I just want to say....” He opened the envelope and pulled out a piece of paper. When he opened it, glitter fell into his lap. He read the paper. “The amount of time we’ve been dating isn’t important to this gift. I just wanted to mislead you into opening a glitter bomb. I love you.” He turned to Buttons. “Cute. Where’s my real gift?”

Buttons smiled. “Behind the counter. I’ll go get it.”

“That was the best fake gift I’ve ever seen,” Henry said. 

“You’re telling me,” Sniper replied.

“Hey, Finch,” Buttons said, “I need you back here real quick. You’re present is too big to move by myself.”

Finch got up, brushed glitter off of himself, and walked to where Buttons was. When he walked behind the counter, he stopped. “Buttons?”

Buttons was on the floor behind the counter, kneeling with a ring in his hand. “Finch, I know that we’re only 21, but from the first moment I met you, I knew that you were the perfect person for me. I’ve been trying for the past few months, but I couldn't find the right time. When I drew your name for Secret Santa, I knew that this was a sign. I knew that it was meant to be now. Just like I knew that we would be together. You are my best friend, my life, and my soulmate. I love you so much. Will you, Patrick Cortes, do me the honor of marrying me?”

Finch stood speechless. He was frozen with his hand over his mouth. “Is this for real?”

“It’s as real as the glitter that will not wash off for the rest of your life.”

Finch let out a small laugh, trying to hold back tears. “Yes.” He let Buttons slide the ring onto his finger and hugged him tightly. “You’ve always been dramatic.”

Mush grabbed the mistletoe and held it over Finch and Buttons. “You have to kiss now!”

Buttons pulled Finch into a kiss and rested his forehead on Finch’s. “If you thought this was dramatic, wait for the wedding.”

~~~~

I needed something cute and I was like “huh, maybe a Secret Santa proposal would be cute” so I did it and I hope it makes up for the crappiness. Thanks for reading. 

TAG LIST (message/inbox me if you want to be added):

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@suddenly-im-respecsable

[shadowreine]

The Art of Falling in Love - Chapter 2

Fandom: Mystic Messenger

Pairing: V x MC

Note: Hoo boy, this chapter is long. Not sure if all chapters will end up being this long, but I guess I just have a lot of Exposition™. I hadn’t planned to post this chapter today, but what is a posting schedule?

This chapter is in Jihyun’s POV. Jsyk, this fic will be alternating POVs between Jihyun and MC, but whenever it’s in Jihyun’s POV, it’s completely in 3rd person, including references to MC/Mirae (so, “she/her” instead of “you”). This is just a stylistic preference. 

Chapter 2: Not V Anymore

Jihyun would have recognized that low voice anywhere. Slightly disappointed at being interrupted, he turned. Jumin stood few paces away, gaping at him with his jaw slack and his brows raised.

“Hello, Jumin,” he said. He reached out his hand, and Jumin stepped forward to shake it. “I go by Jihyun now.”

Jumin’s brows lifted even higher. “Is that so? You said you couldn’t make it.”

“I did. I’m sorry. I had”—Jihyun stole a glance at Mirae before looking back at his old friend—“a change of plans.”

“How long are you planning to stay in the country?” said Jumin.

Jihyun let out a breath, suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of indecision at being asked so directly. He shook his head. “Indefinitely, I suppose.”

“So you’re back.”

“Yeah. I am.”

Jumin took a moment to process this. “It’s good to see you, Jihyun.”

Jihyun smiled, knowing that there was much more sentiment laying behind his old friend’s straightforward words. “Same to you.”

The loudspeakers in the banquet hall crackled with feedback. Everyone’s heads turned toward the podium where Jaehee tapped on the microphone. Once she made sure it was working, she spoke into it, announcing that the party was coming to an end. She thanked everyone for coming on behalf of the RFA and wished them all a lovely evening ahead.

Jumin stood beside Jihyun as they listened to the announcement. Jihyun was comforted at how naturally they seemed to fall back in line with one another. Of course, he imagined Jumin must have been frustrated over his absence for the past two years—the prolonged gaps between phone calls, the rare postcard every few months. He would have to make up for it somehow, and seeing Jumin being so accepting of his return was enough for him to know that resuming their friendship could be possible.

“Does Jaehee still work for you?” he said.

“Of course.”

“Still working her to the bone?”

Jumin glanced at him askew. “If you mean to ask whether I continue to expect nothing less than her hardest work and effort, then yes. She’s an ideal assistant in that regard.”

Jihyun sighed. “I admire her work effort, but you need to give that woman a break.”

“That’s what I keep saying,” Mirae said as she stepped between them. Jihyun bowed his head to look at her, since she was so much shorter than either him or Jumin. “He doesn’t listen to me, of course.”

“Jumin doesn’t listen to anyone. I see he hasn’t changed at all.” Jihyun couldn’t help but smile fondly at that. “Though, he really ought to listen to you, Mirae, more so than anyone.”

“I do listen to MC, in fact,” Jumin said. “I respect her opinions and thoughts more than most people’s… You’re rolling your eyes at me, MC. Does that mean you don’t take me seriously?”

“You say you listen to me, but then you go on to do whatever you were going to do despite of it. I’m not upset, I’m just saying.”

“People don’t say something for the sake of saying something. There’s always an intention behind it.”

“If you say so. I see you’ve masterfully diverted the topic away from the fact that you need to give Jaehee a break, so I won’t entertain this conversation anymore.” Mirae looked at Jihyun. “You guys have been friends since childhood, right?”

Jihyun nodded, curious at her behavior toward Jumin. They seemed close, close enough that Jumin let her speak to him like that with little retaliation. Jumin almost seemed to enjoy the banter.

“How did you put up with him?” she said.

Jihyun chuckled. “Well, you know, our personalities used to be a lot more alike when we were younger.”

“Really? I don’t believe that,” she said, surprised. “I don’t know if I could deal with two Jumin Hans in the world. One is enough.” She gave Jumin a side-eye when he wasn’t looking. “More than enough.”

Jihyun bit back a laugh at her sass. At the same time, however, he couldn’t deny the small pang of jealousy he felt at seeing how Mirae and Jumin interacted with one another. He wasn’t entirely sure where the feeling came from, or why. He would have thought he’d be glad that his best friend had taken a liking toward her, especially considering the strange circumstances surrounding their initial meeting. Jumin must have liked her so much to keep her within RFA’s tight-knit circle. Jihyun should be grateful.

But right now…Jihyun wanted her to talk to only him. He was glad to see Jumin, of course, but part of him wished he hadn’t interrupted his moment with Mirae. He wished he could have a little more time alone with her. That wasn’t possible now. As the party guests slowly filed out of the banquet hall, the rest of the RFA members took notice of his very unexpected presence and started joining the group.

Jaehee approached them once she was finished with her announcement. She greeted Jihyun politely, though the shock of seeing him was apparent in her eyes. As they shook hands, she expressed that she was glad he was safe. Jihyun had always liked Jaehee. She was one of the most responsible and level-headed members of the bunch, and he’d always seen an underlying potential in her that begged to be realized.

Zen joined the group next. In a moment rare for Zen’s energetic personality, as soon as he realized who he was seeing, he froze mid-stride, speechless. But then, without warning, he stepped forward and pulled Jihyun in for a hug. Jihyun welcomed it.

“How’s the acting career?” said Jihyun when they pulled away from each other.

“Fantastic. I’m the lead in a musical currently. I’ll get you tickets! I’m so happy you could make it to the party.”

“I’m happy I could make it too. And thank you, I would love to see your show.”

“It’s one of the biggest hits in recent memory,” Jaehee commented enthusiastically. Jihyun couldn’t have felt happier for Zen.

By the time Yoosung came along, Zen was in the middle of describing his musical. He approached tentatively, and Jihyun noticed him from the corner of his eye. He didn’t want to interrupt Zen, so he looked over to Yoosung, locked eyes with him, and nodded. Yoosung did the same, and he punctuated it with a genuine smile. After all the disagreements they’d had with each other in the past, Jihyun finally felt like they had found common ground.

Luciel was the last to see him. He’d joined the group in the same manner as Yoosung, quietly and unassuming, but when Jihyun looked at him, he found amber eyes full of emotion, as if Luciel couldn’t believe what, or who, he was seeing. A ghost from the past. Everyone fell quiet as the two men stared at each other.

“V…” Luciel’s voice was hardly a whisper. “You’re… What are you doing here?”

“I’m back, Luciel,” Jihyun said, almost tentatively. Out of everyone, Luciel was the one he was most anxious to see. He knew leaving to find himself meant leaving Luciel behind. He’d agonized over the decision, knowing how unfair and cruel it would be to just abandon him for selfish reasons, even though Luciel himself had given him his blessing. There was so much Jihyun wanted to tell him, so much that the old version of himself had left unsaid. He owed it to Luciel. He owed it to their relationship, as fragile as it was now. He just needed to find the strength to do it.

“I hope you’re well,” he said. “We have a lot to catch up on, I think.”

Jihyun extended his right hand, not entirely expecting what Luciel would do with the offering. Luciel’s eyes dropped and examined it. Jihyun could imagine the wires firing in his mind. Would he reject him? Pull him into a hug? Whatever the response, Jihyun was prepared to accept it.

Finally, Luciel extended his own arm and shook his hand. Not firm, but not delicate either. “We do. I’m…glad you’re back.”

Relief washed through him. Perhaps he could dare to hope after all.

There was an unbearable silence among the group now, and he wasn’t sure if he should be the one to break it. Thankfully, however, Yoosung took the opportunity to call over a server to bring them glasses of champagne. That lightened the mood considerably.

“To our first successful party as the new and improved RFA,” Yoosung said, raising his glass. Everyone raised theirs in turn.

“And to many more in the future,” said Jumin.

“And to our incredible guest coordinator,” said Zen, flashing a pearly grin at Mirae, “without whom none of this would be possible at all.”

“Here, here!” everyone agreed in unison.

Mirae smiled bashfully at Zen’s praise, and the sight almost took Jihyun’s breath away. It wasn’t the first time that day she’d elicited such a reaction from him. He’d dreamed of reuniting with her for so long, but even dreams were nothing compared to the reality, and he was entirely unprepared for it.

Most impressive of all, he realized as he stood among all his old friends, she really had found a place with RFA. It was hard to believe she hadn’t always been there from the start. Jihyun may have been the organization’s founder, but Mirae was the glue that kept them together, the one who inspired them to rebuild from the ground up. He would be forever grateful to her for that.

They all clinked their glasses together. When Jihyun’s glass touched hers, their eyes met. He continued to watch her as they both took a sip of their drinks. Her cheeks flushed and she shifted her gaze away from him, but she stole furtive glances back to him every now and then as if to check if he was looking at her. And he was. Like she was the only person in the room.

In truth, he was grateful to her for a whole lot more than just keeping RFA together. More than she could ever know.

“Do you remember what else I told you I wanted to be able to do someday?” he had asked her.

He hadn’t had the chance to finish.

I want to be able to love someone again, he would have said.

I want to love you.

His heart twisted in his chest as the unspoken words made rounds in his head, intensified by her presence right in front of him. It was a quiet hope that he’d held fast to from the moment he let her go in the airport all those years ago. He had never presumed that she would wait for him; he’d even told her not to wait, whether for him or for some other future. He had wanted her to live her life on her own terms, seizing every moment and opportunity. Just as he did.

But secretly, in the back of his mind, when he lay awake after a full day’s adventures and slowly peeled back his superficial layers to reveal his true self, he hoped his path would one day cross hers again. He hoped when they did that it would be the right time.

If he could ever be so lucky as to love someone—truly and wholly—he would have wanted it to be her.

He ached to tell her, just to let her know.

His thoughts were interrupted when Luciel forcibly cleared his throat.

“Since we’re all here,” he said, almost glaring in frustrated anticipation at Mirae, “I think now is the perfect time to hear some news. Of the good or bad kind. Eh, MC?”

Everyone’s head turned in Mirae’s direction. Her eyes widened like a deer caught in headlights, and her cheeks flushed the faintest shade of pink.

What was this about?

Her shyness soon melted as a smile tugged at the corner of her lips.

“Well,” she said slowly. Her eyes fluttered momentarily to Jihyun’s before she looked back at everyone else. “I got an email back from the Global Children’s Alliance this morning, and they offered me a position.”

Every member of the RFA cheered at once.

“Really?!” said Yoosung, his jaw falling slack.

“No way! That’s awesome!” said Zen.

Luciel pumped a fist in the air and let out a whoop. “I knew it! What did I tell you? You should have told me first.”

“You wouldn’t have lasted the party without blowing the secret, Seven,” said Mirae.

“Not true! I’m good at keeping secrets.”

“Sure. I know how excited you get. You could’ve had grabbed the microphone in the middle of someone’s speech and announced it to the whole room.”

Luciel opened his mouth to retort, but paused in thought, then closed it. “Fair enough.”

“Congratulations, MC,” said Jumin. “The GCA are very lucky to have you.”

Jaehee grinned at Mirae and reached over to squeeze her arm in support. “I’m so happy for you.”

Mirae’s eyes twinkled. “Thanks, guys. I couldn’t have done it without all your help. Really.”

“It looks like I owe you a congratulations, too,” said Jihyun. The joy in the room was infectious. “What position have you accepted?”

Mirae snapped her gaze toward him, as if caught off guard. She hesitated. “Oh...well, um, V, I…”

“She’s going overseas to teach children in need!” Zen said. He pressed a hand to his chest and wiped the corner of his eye in a very convincing imitation of being overwhelmed to tears. ��Our RFA angel is spreading her wings to see the world, and to help people, of course.”

Jihyun’s heart plummeted into his stomach. He could only gape at her, unable to respond. He could barely process what he’d just heard. Mirae was leaving? Just when he had finally returned home?

“Stop it, Zen,” Mirae begged with a laugh. “You’re embarrassing me.”

Luciel slipped an arm around Mirae’s shoulders and shook her. “Ooh, MC, but we’re so excited for you! Where are you going? I’ve studied abroad myself, remember? I can offer top quality advice in making a smooth transition. There’s a bunch of resources online–I can send you links, if you want.”

“Hold your horses, Seven,” Mirae said. She gracefully ducked under Luciel’s arm and freed herself. “They may have offered me a position, but it’s still not set in stone. I still have to complete the next semester tutoring my class and pass their teaching standards.”

Luciel waved a dismissive hand. “Oh whatever, you got this in the bag!”

“Haha, I guess so,” said Mirae, but Jihyun didn’t miss the uncertainty and the lack of confidence in her expression. It was a stark contrast to the excitement she’d had only a moment ago.

“Where will you be going?” Yoosung asked.

“Well, like I said, nothing is official yet, but they mentioned I could be in Thailand, Morocco, Ecuador, or Mozambique.”

“So it’s a mystery? That’s insane! The program starts in February, right? And you have no idea where you’ll be in”—Yoosung counted on his fingers—“six months!”

“It’s pretty wild. And exciting. But I can’t help but be a little nervous too.” She looked at Jihyun. “I bet you’re used to that by now, though, huh? Going where the wind takes you.”

Though only minutes before he had been brimming with words of everything he wanted to say to her, Jihyun suddenly forgot how to speak. Everything was happening so fast.

“Yeah,” he sputtered finally, trying to play it as cool as possible. “One week you’re in Barcelona, and the next you’re in an obscure town on the coast of Iceland somehow.”

“Wow,” she said, impressed. “We have a lot of catching up to do.”

He nodded. “We do.”

And I thought we would have so much more time.

By now the banquet hall was now entirely empty of party guests. Zen looked at his phone and announced that he had to leave.

“I have a show tonight,” he explained. “Congratulations, everyone, on a very successful party. We need to celebrate this in the near future.” He stepped toward Jihyun and clapped him on the back. “It’s so good to see you again, V.”

“It’s Jihyun. Please. Not V.”

Zen’s brows knit in confusion, as did everyone else except Mirae and Jumin. He expected to have this sort of reaction for the foreseeable future. It was an odd thing indeed, suddenly changing the name everyone knew you by, even if it was your given name. 

“Eh? Jihyun, hm? That’s going to take a while to get used to.”

As Zen went around the group saying his goodbyes, everyone started going their own separate ways as well. Yoosung had a LOLOL event with his gaming friends, and Jaehee was planning to watch Zen’s show (for the third time in two weeks) with someone named Soomi.

“Who’s Soomi?” asked Jihyun.

Jaehee blushed as if she caught herself saying something she shouldn’t.

Mirae leaned toward Jihyun and whispered, “Soomi is Jaehee’s girlfriend. They’ve only been dating a few months, and Jaehee’s still shy about it.”

“I see,” he said, a bit surprised but pleasantly so. He decided not to prod Jaehee about it any further. He was glad Jaehee had found someone to share her Zen fanaticism with.

Luciel announced he had to get going as well, as he had some things to take care of, and that he’d see them all on the messenger.

Finally, Jihyun, Mirae, and Jumin were the only RFA members remaining in the hall. The party staff bustled through the room around them, wiping down tables and taking down decorations. Jihyun offered to help, but Jumin dismissed the notion, saying that it was the staff’s job to clean.

It was silent among the group, and Jihyun had the feeling that no one wanted to be the first to leave. At least, neither Jihyun nor Mirae wanted to. Jumin only stuck around, it seemed, for Jihyun’s sake.

While Mirae busied herself staring at one of the staff members who was climbing a ladder to pull down the party banner, Jihyun took a step toward her. He figured he had nothing to lose.

“I meant to ask you,” he said, and she turned to look at him, “would you like to have dinner with me tonight? I know it’s last minute, but I was hoping we could catch up sooner rather than later.”

Mirae smiled. “I’d love to.”

Jihyun’s heart fluttered with excitement. But his spirits were dampened when Mirae sighed dejectedly. “But I already have plans tonight,” she finished. “I’m meeting a friend.”

A friend? Who could that be? He had to stop himself from asking. It wasn’t any of his business, of course, but the selfish side of him wanted to know who she was seeing. Once more, a jealous feeling overcame him, raw and unfamiliar, but he stamped it down.

“Oh, that’s all right,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. Maybe some other time?”

“Yes. Definitely. Keep in touch, yeah? Don’t...disappear on me,” she said, her voice soft. Then she stammered, suddenly flustered. “I mean, that is—at least, not without me knowing first, okay?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

They stood staring at each other for a few silent seconds, and Jihyun desperately wished he knew what she was thinking. She said she missed him, but how much? Did she miss him as much as he missed her?

...Did he make her wait too long?

Mirae stepped forward awkwardly, gauging his reaction, unsure whether he’d be okay with it. She didn’t need to wonder, however, because Jihyun moved toward her instinctively and pulled her into his arms. He wrapped himself around her, and he felt her stiffen in surprise. He’d expected that—the few times they had ever hugged each other, she had initiated it and he’d been caught off guard by it.

This time, however, he wanted to be the one who held her. Not to comfort or console her, but to let her know that he had changed. That the person who returned was no longer the broken man she knew back then. Her arms finally find their way around him. She was warm in his embrace. The soft sweet scent of her hair filled his lungs. It had been so long since they were this close. 

She was the first one to pull away, and even though he wanted to pull her back and keep her there, he let her go. Her face was unreadable, save for the rosy tint in her cheeks.

“Bye, V,” she said. Then she turned to leave.

“It’s Jihyun,” he called after her.

She turned and sent him an apologetic look, then she smiled and tapped a finger to her temple. He watched her walk away until she was gone.

He needed more time.

Jumin spoke up from beside him, snapping him out of his thoughts. “Jihyun, since you’ve just arrived, why don’t you stay at my place tonight? You’re welcome to my penthouse until we can find you somewhere more permanent.”

“Oh, I couldn’t ask that of you. I can find a hotel or a room someplace. I’m not too picky.”

In the two years he’d spent traveling abroad, Jihyun had gotten used to having less than ideal living arrangements. He’d move from hostel to hostel, or couch to couch, wherever he could find a place to sleep. It was a far cry from how he was raised, living in a large private estate owned by his father, and it was much less picturesque than his old cliffside house. But eventually he learned to appreciate the simplicity of having nothing but a bed and a small suitcase of his belongings. He’d shed himself of all the excess baggage he’d carried with him throughout his life, and he learned what it meant to be free. When he finally returned to Korea, he figured, if nothing else, he could bunk in some hotel downtown until he got back into the rhythm of living in the city.

Jumin, however, looked at him as if he were insane.

“Nonsense,” he said. “I won’t take no for an answer. I can’t let you stay at a hotel when my residence is more spacious and more comfortable than even five-star hotels.”

“They’re not that bad,” said Jihyun with a shrug. But he knew there was no point in arguing with him. Once Jumin Han made up his mind about something, he would see it through, whether you liked it or not. “Okay, I’ll stay at your place. Thank you, Jumin.”

“Don’t mention it,” Jumin said. “I’ll see my father off and inform him that I won’t be having dinner with him tonight. Then I’ll call my chef and have him prepare a meal for us.”

Jumin left to make arrangements, and Jihyun waited for him outside. A black car pulled up at the curb and Driver Kim hopped out to greet him. They shook hands.

“It’s a pleasure seeing you again, Mr. Kim,” he said to Jihyun.

“Please, call me Jihyun.”

“How were your travels abroad?”

“Enlightening. Very...educational, shall we say.” It was so much more than that, but it was impossible to phrase it all without sounding incredibly cliche or cheesy.

“I bet,” said Driver Kim. “You must be glad to be home, though.”

“I am,” said Jihyun, but a strange feeling settled on his chest upon hearing the word.

…Home.

He raised his eyes to the sky, to the tall buildings towering above him, then back down to the streets veering off to all the diverse neighborhoods of the city. He was born in this city; he grew up here and had stayed most of his adult life here. He knew this place more intimately and personally than anywhere else in the world. And yet...

Could he call it home? When he was out there in the world searching for himself, his thoughts would sometimes drift back to where he had come from. It wasn’t that he missed his childhood home or his secluded cliffside house or his apartment in the city. He didn’t even miss his family very much, as his remaining family lived most of the year overseas and his mother had long since passed. What he missed was the familiarity of it all, the comfort of his sheltered existence. Once all of that was stripped away, what was left?

He’d missed his friends, of course, but he’d be lying to himself if he said the only reason he came back was because of them. Traveling abroad was just as beneficial to him as it was exhausting, and after two years moving from place to place with no end in sight, he was finally ready for something more stable. A new life worthy of the person he had fought so hard to become.

Where was his home now? What was home? He wasn’t sure what that meant exactly, but a nagging voice inside him told him it was time to find out.

Jumin met Jihyun by the car and apologized for making him wait.

“My father wasn’t too pleased when I told him I had to cancel our dinner,” he explained. “He seems to think he wasted his time attending the party.”

“You didn’t have to cancel. I would’ve been fine having dinner on my own.”

“I haven’t seen you in two years, Jihyun. I’ve barely heard from you. My father can wait. Besides,” he flicked back a loose strand of hair that had fallen across his forehead, “he seemed more irritated that I’ve dodged yet another opportunity to meet his new girlfriend. She would have been at dinner with us, and I’d rather avoid having to associate with her.”

Jihyun raised his brows. “What girlfriend?”

“Her name is Glam Choi, and my father is completely obsessed with her.”

“Wait, did he divorce his last wife?” The last time Jihyun checked, Chairman Han was still married to wife number two. Or was it three? He couldn’t even name any of his previous wives or girlfriends.

“No,” said Jumin.

“Oh.” Jihyun paused. “Oh.”

“Indeed. Now, let’s get going.”

Jihyun suddenly felt bad. Though Jumin’s voice was as flat as ever, Jihyun had known him long enough to detect the subtle nuances in his demeanor. The slight dishevelment of his hair, the terseness of his words. Whatever romantic entanglement Chairman Han had found himself in, it was causing his son a great deal of distress.

The least Jihyun could do was be there for him. He owed him that.

They both got in the car, and Driver Kim closed the door behind them.

“I admit,” said Jihyun, “I’m relieved that you offered to let me stay with you.”

Jumin tilted his head at him. “Why is that?”

“Because I already sent my bags to your penthouse.” Jihyun shrugged and let out a laugh when he saw his friend’s surprised expression. “I didn’t know where else to send them, and I couldn’t just walk into the party carrying all my luggage with me.”

“Well, it would’ve been an amusing sight for our guests to see the elusive V, fabled founder of the RFA, crashing the party like some street urchin.”

“I don’t look that bad.”

“You’re wearing necklaces that look like they were purchased from one of those coin machines commoners love so much.”

“There’s a very good story that goes with these necklaces,” he defended, but he laughed all the same. Jumin’s lips lifted in the barest hint of a smile.

Jihyun’s gaze shifted to look through the car window as the city rolled past.

“They wouldn’t have recognized me anyway. I’m not V anymore.”

“You’re right, Jihyun,” said Jumin. “You’re not.”

[mgrgfan]

Memory, part 5 (mini-fic).

Compulink system active.

Please, enter login and password.

Login and password correct. Access granted.

Accessing “GY-PLFU-LOG-1″ datafile…

EDIT MODE

Goncharenko Yevgeniy, personal bioresearch log.

Third stage.

09.01.425 AFE, 21:27

Liya is most certainly getting better. I like that. The work is still hard, though, but I’m getting a “window” tomorrow. What was the last time I’ve visited my dad? Good thing he works here, in the reactor complex, so, taking the monorail ride will be sufficient to meet him (and when I finally go on vacation, I’m going straight to the capital to meet mom).

EDIT: Apparently, there’ll be a new portion of nuclear fuel, loaded into reactors. I’ve managed to get security clearance for me and Liya, so, tomorrow we are going to go even deeper into facility than before! Gah, this line is SO awful...

[Attached files: personal observation and log datafile, general health monitoring datafile, optical and thermographic photos, full biological screening record datafile, Liya’s personal terminal activity log datafile]

Compulink system deactivated.

-                                                                                                                              -

*So, are we here yet?* - somewhat nervously asked Latias, looking around. Right now, they were in one of the deeper parts of the facility, where the nuclear reactors were installed. The sheer constant roar of machinery in the turbine hall was unnerving, but now, they were closing to the reactors themselves.

- Almost... - started speaking microbiologist, when the not very old, but well-built man stopped near them and gave them a wide, even somewhat scary, smile.

- Son? Hello! - happily said aged man, pulling Yevgeniy into almost bone-crushing hug. - So, how’re the things going up here, if you didn’t have enough time to write mails to your old dad Klim at least once a week?

- Very busy, - tried to defend himself microbiologist.

- Don’t say ‘dat, where you’ve learned to defend like this, I was the one teaching it! - laughed Klim. - So, where’s my granddaughter?

*I’m here,* - replied Liya, coming out of shadow, still slightly afraid.

- So, that’s it? You know, son, I think you’ve made a damn good job! - proudly said sort-of-grandfather of young Latias. - Don’t dare you think, that we, down there, don’t know a s... something! We, power engineers, know loads of things! I’ve heard she’s very smart for her not even a year! So, Liya, can you tell me, how does the nuclear power plant work?

*Nuclear power plants obtain the heat needed to produce steam to drive the turbines through a nuclear physical process. This process, called fission, entails the splitting of atoms of...*

- Enough, I see ya’ know this. I’m damn proud of my son and you! Ya know, I think you’ll, in time, make a damn good part of the staff up there, in one of the main Divisions, and you’re sure a fine addition to our family from now on!

*So... does me not being human...*

- Shut it at once and don’t say such a stupid things! Of course you’re my granddaughter! - announced Klim, earning some strange looks from his colleagues in process. - No, it does not!

- Warning, shift number 5 - come to your stations! - sounded an announcement from the loudspeaker.

- Time, - shrugged Yevgeniy’s father, then turned to his son and granddaughter. - So, do you come with me or no? I’ve heard you have all clearances, so, just try to follow my instructions and not do anything stupid, okay?

- Okay, - agreed young man and Latias at the same time, proceeding with Klim shortly after. After some walk and taking a ride on the elevator, they’ve found themselves in the long gallery with thick glass, which encirled the fuel storage hall. In one of the corners, there was an entrance to the cabin of parked electrical overhead crane, along with remote control terminal nearby.

- We’ll be loading full set today, and I’m the crane operator. Not that hard, actually. Or, - suddenly turned Klim to the Liya, - does my nice little girl want to try to use the electric overhead crane herself?

*I... not s...* - tried to reply shocked Latias.

- Don’t be afraid, it’s very simple - right stick controls the movement of the crane itself, left - elevation of the grabber and grab-release control, screen shows you the map of working zone and all the data you need. Don’t worry, the automatics will prevent you from crashing fuel rods into anything or like this!

*But...*

- Come on, it can be once-in-a-life event! Do you want to regret it later? Even your dad rode the crane once, when he was fifteen! - continued father of Yevgeniy, not mentioning, that he got a severe reprimand from both superiors and his wife afterwards.

*Okay,* - decided to agree Liya, looking at the seat inside the cabin, turned, for some reason, towards her. - *What do I do now?*

- Take a seat and flick the switches, labeled S1 and S2. This will activate the crane and shift the seat into work mode. Afterwards... well, I’ll contact you, there’s an intercom system inside.

*Understood,* - replied dragon, disguised as human, doing as an old man advised. After two flicks, seat suddenly moved towards the very front of the cabin with a characteristic growl of low-speed engine, then shifted backwards a bit and turned around, giving a nice view on the work zone, while the doors behind her closed, cutting apart the cabin and the gallery, as well as protecting the against the air in the hall.

-                                                                                                                              -

- You’re sure about this? - asked his father Yevgeniy.

- Absolutely, I’ve let you control the crane back during the work in seaport, after all, - said Klim, taking a seat before the RC terminal. - From here, I can instantly override her controls, if she does something wrong. In fact, I can easily operate the crane remotely every time, it’s just that I prefer controlling it from the cabin.

- For thrill?

- For thrill, - agreed honorable crane operator, activating the intercom to crane’s cabin, - Shift the stick ahead, don’t be afraid!

Since the cabin was cut from the rest of the world by the double-reinforced protective glass and alloys, blocking the radiation and telepathy alike, they didn’t hear her answer, but the sound of engines and movement of crane told them more than that.

-                                                                                                                              -

“Wow,” - thought Latias, carefully pushing the control stick forward and hearing roar of powerful electric motors, as the entirety of machine started to move.

- Look at the screen. On it, you can see two points, one marked yellow, and one marked blue. The blue point is where you take the fuel assemblies, the yellow one - where you load them into refueling machine. When the refueling machine is operating, it’ll be marked green, but as soon as it’s empty and waiting for another supply, it’ll turn yellow again. Don’t worry - the automatic assist system will prevent you from colliding assemblies or mis-loading them. Move the crane to the stack of fuel, don’t be afraid!

*Okay,* - replied Liya, too concentrated on operating machine to notice, that her telepathy was not able to go beyond walls of radiation-proof cabin, which also blocked psychic abilities.

- Contact zone reached, - notified her computer, when the grabber was positioned right above one of the assemblies in the storage pool. She instantly released the right stick, stopping movement of the crane.

- Good, I see you’re in the right position. Now, open the grabber by pressing the lower button on the left control stick and then gently lower the grabber. As soon as it reaches fuel assembly, it will automatically grab it and lock, then raise itself to safe position. In fact, it shall also open automatically upon reaching the assembly, but better play safe.

This time, Liya did not attempt to reply, too concentrated on carefully lowering the grabber. Keen dragon eyes helped her a little, but the inertia of this thing and water refracting the image made it somewhat harder.

- Attention: assembly retrieval in progress! - finally announced automatic system, when the grabber locked onto a stack of fuel rods and rose up, although not leaving the water.

- Very good. Now, move the crane to the designated point and, as soon as you reach the contact zone, lower it gently. After the lower part of assembly passes the hole’s border, the automatics will take control and finish the procedure.

*Okay...* - telepathically “murmured” Latias, shifting the stick again and carefully passing the stack of the fuel rods through the small channel between pools and driving the crane all the way to the end of the second pool.

- Contact zone reached, - said the assist system once again, so Liya gently lowered the payload.

- Attention: assembly load in progress! - reported the automatics, when the gripper disengaged the fuel assembly got loaded into some machine on the bottom of the pool.

- One loaded into the transfer machine, 65 more to go! - sounded Klim’s voice from the intercom. Just as the Liya got horrified at the very thought of it, microbioligist’s father continued. - No need for you to finish this, though. Drive the crane back here, flick the S2 switch back to open the doors and exit the cabin, then let me take my place. Or you can press the red button, so the crane will drive itself back here. Wait, don’t do it - it’ll count as an accident.

Latias, which was slowly giving in to the realization of the sheer bizareness of the current events, had somehow managed to drive the crane back and exit it, allowing the rightful operator to take his place and continue the operation.

- My dad can be pretty weird sometimes, - commented Yevgeniy on it, seeing, how fast and professionally his father was driving the machine, loading fuel assemblies one after another.

*Maybe,* - agreed Liya, still somewhat shocked by what has just happened. - *So, what do we do now?*

- I suggest we get back to surface, onto test range, and you practice with your moves... your true form moves, I mean.

*Sweet!*

-                                                                                                                              -

- Aaand another Mist Ball. - said human, looking, how the fifth test dummy already was blown apart by the powerful Psychic move. - Is it your favorite attack?

*Of course!* - replied Latias, shifted into her true form and trying to commence sort-of-a strafing run, which was pretty hard, considering the not-so-big size of the range, - *No one but my kind can use it!*

- Okay, whatever. Are you satisfied yet?

*I am now!* - “said” she after blowing up the last dummy with Hyper Beam and melting a decent patch of snow around it, then slowing down and moving to Yevgeniy’ side. - *So, what do we do now?*

- Go home, I guess, - answered her human, looking at the wristwatch. - It’s almost night already, and I’ve got a lot of work tomorrow.

*Then let’s go!* - cheerfully agreed Liya, finally calming down Yevgeniy, who was still afraid worried her near-depression after the New Year disaster. Several minutes later, they’ve arrived into their quarters (though Liya was forced to temporarily switch from her form to the human one in order to pass through doorframes), then, after a small supper, each went to check their respective terminal.

-                                                                                                                              -

Compulink system active.

Please, enter login and password.

Login and password correct. Access granted.

Two new infomail messages received.

Opening message number one...

09.01.425 AFE, 19:49

From:

Klim Goncharenko, Imperial Science Facility 9, Production Division, Underground Complex, Power Production Sub-Sector

To:

Yevgeniy Goncharenko, Imperial Science Facility 9, Bioscience Division, Surface Complex, Extraregional Pokemon Study Lab.

Topic:

Grampa’s musings.

Son, I’ve seen your girl, and, let me say it again, I’m damn proud of you. I’ve already phoned your mom and she’s very happy about it. Oh, and I also sent a small edutainment program to our little Liya Yevgeniyevna, which will teach her the basics of operating nuclear powerplant. Of course, I’m sure, that she’ll find something better in her life, but it’s pretty interesting to play and is good for overall development.

Love,

Your rusty old dad.

Opening the second infomail message...

09.01.425 AFE, 21:05

From:

Vladislav Pobegov, Imperial Science Facility 9, Central Office, Underground Complex.

To:

Yevgeniy Goncharenko, Imperial Science Facility 9, Bioscience Division, Surface Complex, Extraregional Pokemon Study Lab.

Topic:

Shenanigans.

Look, Zhenya, I know you’re my favorite student and microbiologist, I know your great skills and achievements... but isn’t this going a little bit far? And I don’t mean putting just Lati into operating an overhead crane, transporting the nuclear fuel - I mean putting someone with zero experience into operating such a machinery! I know, I know, Klim was ready to take it over at any second, should such a need arise, and she operated it for only a single loading, but still... I hope you’ve got my point. Please, don’t do it again. Think of our image! Though what I’m talking about, being an overseer of this chaos... Please, just don’t make the things worse for us, you and your Lati “daughter”. Thank you for understanding.

With sincere hope,

Vladislav Pobegov.

Compulink system deactivated.

[sicklylittlesnowflake]

Hi! I know you have probably got prompts coming out of your ears and you are most likely sick of writing riverdale by now but I love your fics and I was wondering if you could do a fic where jughead gets a really bad fever (possibly whilst the gang are all staying at Veronica's) and suddenly becomes really venerable and clingy to Archie and the rest of the gang and he starts to hallucinate because of the fever and sees his mom telling him that she doesn't want him. Thanks!

(You’re too sweet anon! I don’t think I’m getting sick of writing Riverdale any time soon! So don’t worry about it! I absolutely loved this prompt!! Also, this ended up WAAAAY longer than expected, and also became way more angstier than I expected?? Also, i don’t anything about hallucinations so apologies for inaccuracies and general stupidity on my part! Also, there is panic attacks and self hatred, and verbal abuse coming from a parent, though it is a hallucination. Just a heads up! Stay safe!)

Jughead had been lied to his whole life. Not just the typical “you’ll become Spider-Man if you eat your veggies!” or “uh, about Santa Claus..” More on the line of “I promise I’ll stop, Jughead, I’ll get better” or “Yes, Jughead, you can visit one day, just not now.” It was beginning to rub off on himself.

He’d lie to himself; telling himself and everyone around him that he was a lone wolf, that he was fine like this. Fine being on the outside looking in; saying that it gave him a different, richer perspective on life and that he preferred it this way. But as much as he loathed it; there was a side to him that he would never really admit. There was still that part of him that yearned to be a part of something, to be able to live his teenage years like a normal kid. Jughead just wanted to be normal. The way his brain worked, he just wasn’t wired to be it.

When Veronica insisted they all had a sleepover at her house on the last day before Midterm, Jughead’s heart lifted. He wanted this so desperately; be able to be a normal teenager hanging out with his friends like in some 90s teen movie. He would never let anyone know this though; and he complained and grumbled about it leading up, saying how stupid and cliche this was, how it wasn’t his scene. However, deep in his heart, he anticipated it so much, he couldn’t even sleep the night before.

That was also because he had gotten sick.

Of course he had, knowing how lucky his life was. Besides; he had it coming anyway, it had been a grand total of three weeks since he had gotten sick, which was a long time for his standards, and it was going to happen sooner or later.

Friday morning he had woken up sneezing; and to his relief Archie had already gone downstairs so he was safe then. He got himself ready, made himself as presentable as possible and passed his croakiness as the fact that he had just woken up. He roughed it out throughout the day; and made it through without any suspicion so Veronica’s Sleepover was definitely happening. That was all that mattered.

Braving his illness and toughing it out the whole day, suppressing his symptoms and keeping his energy and healthy facade up completely drained him. Halfway through the day he could already feel an uncomfortable heat radiating off his body, as well as a drowsy feeling.

At the end of the day, he had a sure splitting headache as well. But he tried his best to ignore it, wanting to have this day of feeling like he belonged so badly. He kept in his little scream of protest when the group decided they would walk to Veronica’s with this chilly air–which was alright, but the fact they would walk to Kevin’s house to get his stuff, go back to Archie’s house to get their stuff, then next door to Betty’s, and then back to Veronica’s.

Had he been well, this Trek wouldn’t have been a problem at all, but he had a rampaging fever and his legs turned into jelly and he couldn’t even support himself. The gang walked in threes and twos; Veronica, Betty and Archie in front, with Kevin and Jughead not far behind.

Halfway through the walk; Jughead found himself subconsciously leaning on Kevin using him as support. Kevin raised an eyebrow; it wasn’t like he was uncomfortable or anything, in fact he loved physical affection, but this was odd. Jughead didn’t always like to be touched, and had a very limited amount of people who he allowed to touch him (Archie, Fred, Betty, Jellybean and maybe his parents).

Of course, Kevin wasn’t offended by this, respecting Jughead’s boundaries because he was a decent person. But he and Jughead had rarely touched; and while the boy was soft, it was weird. It concerned him almost. Jughead began to shiver very lightly, clearly trying to suppress it.

Kevin frowned, “Jughead, are you cold??”

Jughead shook his head, “N-no.”

Kevin thought about it for a bit, and spoke quietly so the three wouldn’t hear and make a big deal out of it. It was quite easy because the three were obnoxiously loud.

“Can I hold you?” He asked cautiously.

Jughead smiled, he appreciated how much Kevin respected his boundaries. He’d allow anything that’d stop him from this cold, “Yes, you can.”

He had an arm around him and held him close as they walked the remainder of the way to Veronica’s house.

Jughead was somehow able to further repress his symptoms for the next three hours. They had been singing to stupid songs way off key, dancing to Veronica’s loudspeaker, playing silly games and being wild. Of course, Jughead denied his enjoyment and acted like his normal cynical self, but was secretly enjoying this all. He felt like he belonged.

Then, the energy began to crash, and they ended up sprawled across the floor, making stupid jokes, sharing stupid memes. A sudden silence dawned over the group.

Suddenly, Archie’s stomach began to rumble and they all burst into laughter, despite it not being funny at all.

Veronica giggled, sitting up and pulling her phone out, “I’m guessing we should order pizza now?”

Betty turned to face Jughead, giggling, “I’m just really surprised that Jughead hadn’t brought it up the moment we arrived!”

The group began to laugh again, with Jughead laughing along to cover his lack of appetite. Jughead’s appetite was notorious, he could eat any amount of food for a long amount of time, and ate far too much. If Jughead wasn’t hungry, something was wrong. It never translated to his weight though, which effectively annoyed everybody. Perhaps his great metabolism made up for his poor immune system.

“Hello Pizza Hut? I’d like to order one 3 meateor pizzas, two pepperoni pizzas..” Veronica turned over to Betty and squinted at her, “..and one Hawaiian pizza, please.”

Betty pouted, “Pineapple belongs on pizza!”

“Shut up, Betty, get your atrocious pizza choices out of our faces,” Kevin gawked, scrunching his face in disgust.

Betty stuck her tongue out at him, “Anyway, why’d you buy 6 pizzas, Ronnie? We only needed 5.”

Veronica whacked Jughead playfully, “Because Jughead’s appetite demands for a serving for two?”

Jughead’s heart sank at the prospect of eating two pizzas, knowing that his stomach just couldn’t, and if he didn’t eat the pizza, his friends would know something was up and this would all be over.

Jughead punched Veronica’s arm gently, laughing along to mask his terror and his panic at her decision.  

As they waited for their pizza to arrive, the gang sat in a very tight circle, in that their shoulders were all touching. They told stupid stories, talking around random things, but Jughead loved it.

The group began to move on to the more traditionally “feminine” side of things as hair was beginning to be done, new makeup was swatched, makeup was being done, as well as hand lotions, creams and other things. Perfume, was also being tried on, much to Jughead’s annoyance, as it was irritating his already tender nostrils.

As the healthy four’s energy declined, so did Jughead’s, at a worryingly rapid pace. He could begin to feel the heat returning to his weakened body, beginning to feel lightheaded and exhausted again. He felt weak to the bones, so heavy and he couldn’t really focus on anything.

The group conversation took a deep and emotional turn as the pizza arrived, which brought the attention away from Jughead who had barely eaten two slices. The five ate the pizza as they discussed family life. They were all very solemn about it, very understanding and supportive.

Archie spoke about how grateful he was for his family. He talked about how it was sometimes hard that his family wasn’t quite what it used to be, and how he missed his mom greatly, but was so grateful they both loved him dearly. He spoke about how much he loved them; that he could always feel safe and like he belonged.

Kevin spoke next, talking about how he missed his mom and wished she was still on this earth. He told the gang funny stories and how much of an amazing woman she was; and how grateful he was to his dad. He was setting a good example to him, promoting justice, and how accepting he was of him. He appreciated how much his father tried, and loved him, despite how hard it must’ve been for him and how he felt like he belonged.

Betty talked about how horrible it was to pretend to be this typical, all American family with no faults. She hated how overbearing and stifling her parents could often be. However, at the end of the day, despite her parents often doing bad things, it was often out of love. Of course, it didn’t make what they did right, but Betty knew that she was wanted and loved, and that she belonged somewhere.

Veronica talked about how hard it was to see your parents, who you once believed to be perfect, turn out to be anything but that. Seeing her father and mother in a different, darker light was tough and scary, but it made her realise people were not black and white. Her parents were not perfect, and did horrible things but they had some good, that good being they loved her greatly and unconditionally. She felt safe.

As Jughead listened, he found himself leaning on Veronica’s soldier out of pure exhaustion and fatigue, feeling extremely feverish and unwell. He and Veronica never interacted beyond playful and teasing banter, which made Veronica feel very odd. It wasn’t like Forsythe Pendleton Jones III to be affectionate.

“Jug?” Archie pushed gently, letting him know that if he had anything to say and contribute it was his turn.

Jughead froze; unable to relate to anything they had said. Of course, he knew his father loved him, and wanted him, but he couldn’t feel safe with him. He wasn’t even sure about his mother, feeling unwanted and like he didn’t belong. He didn’t know what to say, and he’d rather lie than admit it. He’d rather pretend he was some other than this mess that he was, something other than broken parts.

A tickle in his sinuses caused Jughead to move off Veronica and to the side, and just before he released he realised that if he sneezed to the front, he could spray Kevin, but if he sneezed to the side he could potentially spray Archie. His mind settled on Archie, who had the strongest immune system, and sneezed into the crook of his arm, towards Archie.

Jughead sniffled, “Sorry Arch.”

Archie shrugged, “You didn’t even spray me. You feeling okay Jug?”

Jughead smirked, not wanting anyone to worry over him, “It’s just Veronica’s horrible perfume.”

Veronica chuckled softly, but didn’t even press further because she knew something was up. This whole leaning incident was not something to sneeze at.

“So, Jughead, anything you wanna add?” Kevin asked gently.

Jughead blinked, his fever seriously interfering with his emotions and he felt choked up, feeling his chest tighten a little and his breathing begin to pick up.

Surprisingly, it was Veronica who picked up on what was happening first, and smiled gently at Jughead and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. She grinned at the group, changing the topic as she knew this was something that Jughead wasn’t ready to talk about, “So, let’s stop being Shakespearean Tragedy characters, and let’s watch The Breakfast Club?”

Jughead curled up on the luxurious couch while Kevin started to set up the movie. The Sherrif’s son kept risking glances at the younger boy, concerned for him. Archie and Betty were off gathering snacks and drinks for all of them. Veronica went off to collect some blankets. The  couch was so soft and magical for Jughead’s aching, weakened body, and he curled up within himself to obtain maximum comfort.

Archie and Betty walked back in with two large trays with foods of different assortment. One tray was filled with bowls of popcorn, chips and drinks, while the other was filled with sweet foods like cupcakes, tubs of ice cream and other candy packets. The fact that Jughead hadn’t reacted immediately was extremely concerning for Kevin.

Veronica then returned, her small, petite frame completely bombarded with a huge pile of enormous, fluffy blankets.

Betty giggled, “Ronnie! You look like a little fluff monster.”

The raven-haired girl dumped the blankets on the floor, to which Jughead immediately snatched up a thick, fluffy blanket. The rest followed in his steps, and wrapped the blankets around them as the movie began.

Despite receiving a little bit of warmth from the blanket, which he had completely wrapped around himself so he had resembled a burrito, he was still shivering. He knew this had to be his fever because his friends barely had their blankets around them, claiming it was too hot.

Betty laughed at the sight of Jughead, “Jug, you look like a caterpillar in a cocoon.”

Jughead rolled his eyes, “Im going to become a beautiful butterfly, Betty.”

“I don’t think that’s possible,” Veronica quipped, sticking a tongue out as Jughead glared at her playfully.

As the movie went on, Jughead tried his very hardest to stay present, to be in the moment and relish this beautiful piece of cinema before his eyes. However; he was at a battle with this rampaging fever, a fever that was completely roasting him from the inside and out. But surely he was fine, this scorching fire within his body surely had to be normal? He was sure his fever wasn’t too bad, he was fine.

He was fine right here, surrounded by people he loved. They were a harmonious group of youth, all complex and amazing in their own senses and Jughead held this moment dear to him, knowing he didn’t get this often. This wasn’t something that was meant for people him, it was a luxury. These people, were so brilliant and beautiful, who were loved deeply by him and their families. They were wanted, they belonged.

Then it dawned on Jughead that he was not at all like them.

They were not a harmonious, thriving group.

He was not a part of anything. He watched them from a window, inside a cold, dark room, stifled and trapped. He watched them in the colourful outdoors, smiling, in the sun.

They were all the colours of the rainbow and Jughead was grey; barely human, not like the rest of them, isolated. An outcast, a danger to society, unlovable. A throwaway, a malfunction made in the factory to be thrown away into a dump, pretending it never existed.

Was he even here? Was this just his brain warping himself into some fantasy land where he could actually be loved for him. Perhaps he wasn’t even him, maybe some version of himself that wasn’t a culmination of broken parts.

His mother stepped into the living room, and time ceased to exist. Everything froze; nothing moved. So still, so silent, so eerie. Jughead’s breathing began to pick up, sweat trickling, unable to breathe properly, his lungs begging for oxygen. His mother’s stare was so cold and empty; not full of love and care like Fred Andrews.

It was perfect for an empty vessel like himself.

“Mom..” Jughead whimpered, beginning to shake violently, in fear, in misery.

For once, she smiled. She wasn’t proud, or loving. She was sympathetic, she looked down on him, looking down on this pathetic child. She took his arms, grabbing on them tight, constricting him.

“Look around you Jughead, look how colourful they are. Rich, beautiful colours..You’re grey, Jughead. You’d just ruin those beautiful shades..Do you really want to do that to them? They don’t want you, Jughead. They create a colourful painting and you just..make it dull.”

Jughead felt tears dreaming down his face, “M-mom, please, that’s not..that can’t be..”

She came closer to him and stared at him, examining his face, she looked disappointed.

“..They always said that a mother loves her child unconditionally. Why is it that I can’t? You’re barely even human, Jug. Who are you? Why can’t you be normal?”

Jughead whimpered, “..t-there’s nothing wrong with me, A-Archie said–”

“..Archie’s too kind, Forsythe. You’re broken. Something’s wrong with you. Everything’s wrong with you.”

Jughead couldn’t help the ugly sobs escaping his mouth, “..M-mom, s-stop..”

“I don’t want you, Jughead. No want wants you. Stop lying to yourself,” His mother said coldly.

Jughead shook violently, retreating into himself and sobbing.

He was broken.

He couldn’t be fixed.

No one wanted him.

He was alone.

Betty blinked as Jughead made a small noise, but didn’t quite hear him. She looked over and saw him shivering, she frowned. Betty came closer to him and hugged him lightly, so he wouldn’t be shocked by the sudden touch. They hugged like this for a while, until she got too hot under the covers and kicked them off.

As her body came into contact with Jughead’s skin, she jumped slightly, startled at the sensation. Jughead was burning. This couldn’t be right. This couldn’t be good, he shouldn’t be this hot.

“..Juggie, you’re sick!” She exclaimed, causing all three remaining friends to whip their heads towards their direction in concern.

She put a hand on his forehead, the heat way too warm to be normal. “Oh my god, he’s so warm..this can’t be good, this isn’t normal,” She said frantically.

Kevin made a frustrated noise, “Dammit! I knew it..I should’ve said something earlier!”

“Oh my god..Jug, why didn’t you say anything?” Archie asked, slightly annoyed, but mostly angry and disappointed with himself.

“..M-mom please..that can’t not..that can’t be..”  Tears began to steam down his face.

“What?” Veronica asked in confusion, looking at Jughead with concern. She waved a hand in front of him, “Jughead? What’s happening here? Your mom isn’t..”

“..T-there’s  nothing wrong with me.. A-Archie said–” Jughead slurred.

“Fuck! Guys, he’s hallucinating! This is bad!” Veronica said frantically, ridiculously worried and anxious.

Archie came closer to him, sitting on his other side and came close to him, hoping he could somehow get through to him. His heart was hurting, he had no clue what was happening to his best friend. Silent tears turned to sobbing, the most heartbreaking noise he had ever heard.

“J-Jug,” Archie whimpered, so scared and at a loss on what to do. “Please Jug, snap out of it! I’m so scared..Jug, please..”

Veronica and Kevin were dashing away, looking for a towel to soak in cold water and some medicine and a glass of water, respectively.

“..M-mom, stop!” Jughead cried, shaking violently.

Betty was close to tears, “Jug, Jug..please, you’re safe..you’re safe, please..”

Kevin and Veronica returned with the items they were looking for.

“Get those blankets off him!” Kevin instructed, and once Betty obliged, he placed the cold towel on his forehead, and another on his neck.

“..I’m b-broken..something’s wrong with me..y-you’re right, mom. They don’t want me.”

“What?!” Veronica exclaimed, completely appalled, she approached him and held one hand, “Jughead, we want you, all of you, all the best bits and the bad bits.”

Kevin held the other, “Jughead, you are so loved.”

Betty was crying at this point, scared out of her mind, “You’re like the sun, Jug. You shine on all our lives..”

Archie cuddled with him, “Jughead, there’s nothing wrong with you. You are not broken, maybe a little chipped, a little bent, but you’re still whole. We need you here with us, please, you’re not alone. We’re right here Jug. We’re not going anywhere.”

A sudden clarity came into Jughead’s eyes and he looked around, seeing loving, worried faces. He was surrounded with so much love, and care, that it was all too much for Jughead to handle and began to cry again. This time he wasn’t sad.

“I don’t know what to say,” Jughead choked.

“Then don’t say anything,” Kevin said gently, giving him a kind smile.

“You’re tired, Jughead. You should take some medicine and get some rest. You’ve got a really bad fever,” Betty instructed.

Archie looked sad.

“..Jughead, I didn’t know..”

“..that I was sick, I know Arch, I shouldn’t have hidden it from you..I was just..so excited..for all of this.”

“..no, not that. I didn’t know you felt like that. That you felt so alone,” Archie said quietly.

Jughead shrugged, and smirked to cope, “..You know how I am, the lone wolf.”

“No,” Veronica butted in, not taking it in the slightest.

“Jughead Jones III, you are not alone. I am not having it. I, Veronica Lodge, make it my duty to ensure that you are not. We are all here for you, and you are a part of this.”

Jughead could only smile weakly, before yet another headache took over.

“..Thank you.”

When Hermione came home in the next 20 minutes, she took one look at the boy and got her personal doctor to come in and help Jughead. Jughead protested for so long, but like Veronica, she wouldn’t have it.

Veronica made sure Jughead wasn’t going anywhere, and that he would have his much needed night with his best friends. She would not let him be alone, especially not tonight.

For remainder of the night, he felt wanted, surrounded by love by this weird, but amazing makeshift family. It was then when Jughead realised that grey looked stunning next to these bright, vivid colours.

[kurowrites]

Bittersweet - Chapter 4

You can find the whole fic here. I don’t know if any of this makes sense considering the rest of the fic is from goddamn 2014, but hey, I’m writing.

Tony watched quietly as his counterpart was fiddling with a motherboard he had found in some corner of the workshop, turning it around in his hands idly, taking it apart rather than actually doing something with it. Tony himself had been working on some improvements on the suit (that had really suffered in the last battle), but Other-Tony’s presence had eventually proved enough of a distraction to prevent him from getting into the “zone” where everything was numbers and symbols and the next discovery. So instead, he’d taken to watching whatever Other-Tony was currently doing.

“Why are you still here?” Tony asked into the silence of the workshop. It was too quiet, really, he noticed, none of his usual music blasting through the loudspeakers. Usually J.A.R.V.I.S. would turn it on for him without prompting.

Other-Tony looked up for one moment, before turning back to the motherboard nonchalantly. “I needed a bit of a distraction. And there are too many people in the tower. You workshop is the only place where people aren’t constantly coming and going, and I think I prefer that.”

“Can you stop deliberately misunderstanding my questions and just give me a clear answer?” Tony shot back. “Why are you still here, in this dimension? There’s gotta be a way to get you back. Go talk to Reed or something.”

Other-Tony sighed quietly, but showed no inclination to give him an answer.

Seriously, Tony was getting somewhat… frustrated. Other-Tony had arrived here, made some vague comments, inserted himself smoothly into the daily life at the tower, and never said a peep about what had happened to bring him here in the first place. While he showed a clear interest in Tony’s suits and explained to him how they differed from his own inventions, he showed no inclination to ever use one or even tinker with one, not even to satisfy his own curiosity (which, if this Tony was anything like him, he must have been burning with). He was cordial to all of the residents at the tower, and perfectly nice around Pepper and Rhodey, but he also maintained a careful distance to everyone but himself.

It was odd, to say the least. And it put him somewhat on edge.

Just what was going on?

Other-Tony sighed again. “I’m sorry if I’m bothering you. You’ve done me a great service, accommodating me without asking anything of me. Quite big of such a little man.” He finished that sentence with a teasing smile.

It was an obvious change of topic, and Tony let it happen, puffing up and declaring Other-Tony to be entirely wrong. He let it happen, again, just like he had let it happen at least ten times before that.

But Pepper and Rhodey had started watching them with worry poorly hidden in their eyes, and he knew that it wouldn’t take too long before they would take him aside and tell him that something needed to be done. That things couldn’t carry on like this endlessly.

Tony, for all intents and purposes, was tempted to try.

Business meetings sometimes happened whether you wanted them to happen or not, so Tony had unwillingly gone and made nice with people that he found completely uninteresting and phenomenally boring. He couldn’t stop the deep sigh of relief once he was finally released from their clutches, and returned to the tower feeling both drained and very hungry.

His first objective was to put something edible in his mouth, but after food had been taken care of, he slunk off to his workshop, avoiding the excited voices that came from the living room area (some Avenger hatchlings must have come for a visit). After today’s meeting, he needed a few minutes on his own, to really be able to breathe.

What he found in his workshop was not silence, but Other-Tony, standing in front of the display of his armours, looking at them with a intense expression.

He must have obviously heard Tony enter the workshop, but there was no sign of acknowledgement. He steadily held onto the tabletop he was leaned against, studying the suits.

Tony wished his counterpart had brought one of his own suits with him. He’d have loved to compare them, see where their different experiences had taken them into different directions.

 Then, Other-Tony finally broke the silence.

“I can’t go back.”

Tony looked at him, but his face showed no expression. Just the same analytical look with which he continued to take Tony’s suits apart mentally.

“I have made a mistake,” Other-Tony continued. “I tried to fix things, and I broke them even further. I tried again, and again, and in the end, I destroyed us all. I can’t go back.”

Other-Tony finally moved, putting his face into his hands.

“I cannot bear the thought of returning. To a place that is not my own any longer. I have destroyed it with my own two hands.”

Tony could see that his hands were shaking. So this was the truth. Or was it?

He walked towards Other-Tony and waited until he raised his head. His eyes were red-rimmed, and, for once, the exhaustion was written plainly over his handsome features. He obviously hadn’t been sleeping much lately. Nightmares.

“I only have one question,” Tony eventually said. “Did you destroy them, or did you simply fail to save everyone?”

“I-”

“I know myself. What are you trying to protect me from?”