#i stole this frame from my uncle (fuck him) that had a picture of his ex (she sounds like a wonderful person so so glad she dumped him)

[mxwhore]

dont talk to me or my framed sketch of MK Blackwood ever again

[diamond-coral]

The Heist- Part One

dark!Steve Rogers x Reader

You were just supposed to rob a government official’s apartment. Not Captain America’s. Right?

Series Warnings: Dark, Rape/Non-Con, kidnapping, strip club stuff, swearing

Chapter Warnings: Mentions of a strip club, swearing, committing crime ig, nothing much really.

You sure as hell weren’t a criminal. Well- your record would say otherwise, but it’s not like this was your dream profession. You wouldn’t call yourself a criminal. More of a Walmart Robin Hood; stealing from the rich and giving too...well...yourself. Fine. You were a criminal. But a girl had to pay the bills. At least you got to stick it to the man, right?

You let out a sigh while evaluating your life choices. It wasn’t every little girl’s dream to be breaking into houses and apartments for some cash or valuable possessions. Technically, you were an artist by day, going to art school in New York, living the aesthetically pleasing dream of student loans and a sky-high rent that your shifts at the strip club were hardly making a dent in. But hey, at least one time you got to dance for Captain America, even if he was reluctant and a bit shy. You were certain very few women could say the same.

And that’s how you found yourself in the elevator of a cozy apartment complex, traveling upward toward your new objective. Bella, your roommate, literal partner in crime, and the only good thing that came out of socializing with your coworkers at the club, had given you a new lead of a man who was supposedly loaded and yet lived in an accessible and modest living space. He was single, and worked some sort of political job that left his apartment constantly vacant, specifically on the day you planned for your heist. A perfect target. Some corrupt government worker who wanted to live a ‘low profile life’ yet was dumb enough to settle down in a complex who’s only security was a couple cameras and guards. Bella would easily be able to freeze the frames on the cameras for an hour, giving security the false pretense that the hallways were empty and giving you the perfect window to snatch some fancy watches and some cash.

The elevator doors opened right as you received a text message from Bella.

Cameras taken care of. Now go pay our rent ;)

You exited the elevator only to collide with a blonde woman carrying a laundry basket.

“Oh god, I’m so clumsy I’m so sorry!” she exclaimed while bending down to pick up the clothes that had fallen out of the basket.

You bent down to help her collect her clothing. “No, I’m so sorry! That was completely my fault!” You offered a smile as you stood back up, but was met with a calculating gaze as she studied you.

“I’m sorry, are you new around here?” She seemed to catch herself and her demeanor changed. “It’s just, I’ve never seen you around here before.” She gave  a small smile.

“Oh ,I’m just a girlfriend!” you replied. “Just stopping by.”

“Are you Steve’s girlfriend?” she asked while gesturing to the door at the end of the hallway with her head. It was your target’s door. So the political scumbag’s name was Steve. Lovely. “I don’t think he’s home right now.”

Your brain churned out a fast response. “Yeah, I know. Unfortunately for me, he’s always working. I just left my purse, and he gave me his keys to stop by and pick it up.”

“Well I’m just glad he’s found someone with all his work. I know it’s been hard for him.”

The two of you exchanged one last goodbye smile before she stepped into the elevator.

“I’m Sharon by the way. And you are...?”

“Olivia,” you replied, the fake name came out as a second nature as the elevator doors closed.

You let out the breath you’d been holding. 

“Well that could’ve gone worse,” you mutter to yourself as you approach the door at the end of the hallway.

You slipped the lock picker out of your sleeve before checking your surroundings cautiously. A minute after proceeding to insert the pick into the lock, a soft click resounded from the wooden door, and it easily swung open with a turn of the knob.

As you entered through the doorway, you took into account the little bits of vintage decoration that was dispersed amongst more modern furniture. A small Uncle Sam poster, a couple of war antiques, and some old photos with figures that remained unrecognizable in the distance. This government official seemed to have fought either in World War II or Vietnam, probably making him old. You shuddered at the fact you’d called yourself his girlfriend, but Sharon hadn’t seemed to bat an eye. Either way, you didn’t care for antiques, as much as they would have sold for a hefty price. They were probably personal to him and as you walked around, you realized there were quite a few personal items that were no use for you. As you walked into the bedroom a glint from the dresser caught your eyes, and your chest filled with giddiness and excitement as you neared. Three beautiful watches were on display under the mirror that sat atop the dresser. A Cartier that would probably sell for 8,000, a Rolex that would go for 10,000 easily, and then a beautiful older Rolex. With careful hands you snatched up the two newer watches and placed them into the small knapsack you’d been carrying. After consideration, you decided to leave the older one as it probably held a sentimental value and wouldn’t give you as much money as the other two.

You walked around some more, occasionally picking up valuables like solid gold tie clips and little pieces of Stark technology, which you were surprised he had. You had to be filthy rich to support, much less afford, anything made by that war profiteer. You picked up stashes of cash lying around, which seemed to be a lot. This man definitely seemed to use cash more than credit card which wasn’t as common around people your age. As you were rummaging around his study for any pieces of fine art (which you had already gotten two of) or government documents you could sell on the black market, you knocked over a picture frame which had landed on a file that read CLASSIFIED in red letters...right under the six letters that spelled S.H.I.E.L.D. This fucker was a S.H.I.E.L.D official. You were gonna kill Bella for the vague intel.

“Shit I need to get out of here,” you mumbled. Senators and representatives were fine targets, all usually too old and skeevy for you to care about, but a S.H.I.E.L.D. official was dangerous and could get you somewhere worse than jail. Hell, you could’ve accidentally broken into Nick Fury’s place. You were screwed. So screwed. And you needed to get the hell out of this apartment. As you went to put the picture back, you glanced at it, before doing a double take and squinting at it in the dark room. Oh. This was much worse than accidentally breaking into Nick Fury’s place.

The two men laughing with an arm around each other in war uniforms with an arm around one another was innocent enough until you could finally make out their faces. Steve Rogers an easy enough one to make out, especially considering you were on his lap a couple weeks ago, and James Buchanan Barnes looked practically unrecognizable without a murderous glare on his face.

“No,” you muttered before quickly placing the picture back down. 

You once again assessed your surroundings. It all made sense. The subtle 1940’s vibe, the war antiques. Bella had said he did work for the government and that wasn’t a lie. In the corner of the room you spotted a large circular leather case that was partially unzipped. Through the slight opening of the brown leather, the red, blue, and glinting bright silver was unmistakable.

“No, no, no, fuck,” you muttered frantically as you checked your watch. You still had 38 minutes before the security cameras in the hall unfroze. That was enough time to put everything you stole back. You’d much rather work open to close shifts at the club every day for three months straight than get fucked over by Captain Fucking America. 

You scrambled out of the study, moving to the living room first to put back the authentic paintings. You grabbed a stool from the high bar counter in the kitchen so you could rehang the medium sized work of art. Your mind was racing. This had to be karma for all the horrible shit you’d done in the past. God decided he had enough of your delinquent shenanigans and set you marching straight into the arms of America’s righteous hero. As you finished hanging the painting you spun around on your heel, completely forgetting you were on a wobbly wooden stool. Your heart stopped for a moment before you regained your footing. Carefully climbing down the stool, you almost missed the subtle turn of a lock coming from the door.

Oh you were so done for. Your limbs flew everywhere as you scrambled to the bedroom, sliding under the bed right as you heard the door open. The rumble of Steve Roger’s voice was clear as he talked on the phone and it cut through the walls from the living room.

“Well yea Buck, obviously Tony’s gonna be a little cold toward you. Not that I blame him. I’m just thankful he didn’t start an entire civil war over it. I guess it’s just a good thing we’re not war criminals.” He let out a chuckle before pausing. “Hey Buck? Yeah. I’m gonna have to call you back.” Another pause and you heard some rummaging around. “Why? I think my apartment was just broken into. I gotta go down to security. Yeah, thanks bud.” 

Steve hung up and you heard some angry muttering as he walked into his room. From under the bed you saw his tennis shoes and dark jeans as he paced at the foot of the bed. You covered your mouth to stop your anxious breathing, afraid he’d hear you from your hiding spot. 

The few minutes he spent in his room felt like eternity before he stomped out and you heard the opening and closing of another door as he exited the apartment. You crawl out from under the bed, your head spinning as you attempted to think of a way out of your predicament.

The window.

Quickly and quietly, you stood up and made your way to his bedroom window, looking out for a fire escape and letting out an annoyed huff when you saw none.

‘Maybe there’s one for the living room window,’ your brain chimed.

You rushed to the living room, scooping up the two watches and your empty knapsack on your way, and almost screamed with joy at the sight of the fire escape next to the window. Your fingers curled around the bottom of it and give it a sharp tug up, opening it just enough for you to squeeze through. 

Just as you were about to lift your leg over the ledge and climb down the stairs to sweet sweet freedom, being able to forget about everything that ever happened tonight, a large hand wrapped around the back of your neck and wrenched you back with such force that you tumbled backwards and landed on your butt.

He was massive. Six feet of pure muscle towered over you as you trembled from your position on the floor. He squatted down, resting his elbows on his knees as he took you in, blue eyes practically cutting through the darkness, and you let out a small whimper.

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you stealing is wrong?”

[byorder-fanfic]

Finn’s Lost Loves

Summary: Finn’s lost more than anyone else knew because of the war, and every stupid thing his family have done afterwards to keep themselves in charge.

Word count: 2019

Warnings: Mentions war and blood, talks about eating disorder, self harm and self-esteem, and homophobia (only a little bit, period accurate), a lot of toxic masculinity 

Author’s note: This is a lot of angst with little bits of fluff and a sad ending. Sorry. It’s basically an overview of Finn’s character, backstory and his relationships with the family that we’ve never gotten to see! It’s based off a piece of prose in my drafts, so if you guys like this, I might post that as well. Hope you enjoy, and please comment, I love hearing your opinions and any constructive criticism you might have xx

Finn loved books. Once upon a time, he really did. He loved the way Tommy did the voices, and Arthur made those wild motions with his hands, and John could always make him laugh as he told him about that thing that happened in the pub last week. He loved how Ada and Polly would tuck him up in bed, place a kiss on his temple and read the letters from the boys. Then they came back, and he didn’t need to read letters. Or books. Or anything really. Soon, he didn’t even go to school. He just wanted to be with his brothers. Now they tell him to piss off more than they beg him to stay. Tommy and Polly scold him for not being able to read off the betting boards, and John makes everyone else laugh when he holds a big volume under Finn’s nose, so that everyone knew that Finn was still illiterate. Finn hates books.

Finn loved Church. He didn’t need Polly to drag him by the heels as he sobbed under the Virgin Mary’s stare like his brothers when he hopped, skipped and a jumped all his way down the road. He always sat by Isaiah, the two boys out-screaming each other in the hymns and seeing who Polly would scold first. He wore the crucifix everyday, and treated his rosary with all the sacred carefulness a six year old could manage. He loved the psalms and Jeremiah’s voice ringing through the streets and the way everyone was always together (even Charlie) on Sunday. Then he had to light candles, praying for his brothers’ safety that was only answered with their damnation as they dragged back blood and French mud into Watery Lane. Now he cries through the paper thin pages of a Bible and his only prayers are that the boys never see his tears. What did he have to cry about after all? He was never a soldier, but he should learn to be a man. Finn hates Church.

Finn loved healing. Ada dragged him along to her nursing classes and soon his only reason to come to Church was to learn how to tie bandages and fix up cuts and bruises. No one noticed his long absences- they either assumed he went to school still, or they were far too busy with the race tracks to care for the whereabouts of their youngest brother. But then he'd slipped up, and he'd never seen his brothers laugh so hard when he proudly told Polly he was going to be a nurse one day. Even his aunt and sister, usually the ones on his side, had to purse their lips together as Arthur roared out: "Hear that, Tom? We got ourselves a Nurse Shelby here! Want a dress and hat to go with it?" He told them all to fuck off and stamped out, but he didn't understand what he said that was so funny. When he asked Isaiah, who had just turned fourteen and starting to see Finn less and less, he just said that being a nurse was a woman's job. He didn't like being laughed at for being a girl, but he didn't know why. He still hoarded textbooks about anatomy and the like under his bed, tracing over the detailed pictures with his skeleton finger as he wished. And wished. And wished. And almost prayed that he could read the little ink words. When he found Arthur with another red line on his neck, he offered him some medicine to cure his big brother's blues, thinking just a bit of Tokyo would keep his brother here with him. No one asked why Finn was sad. Oh well, at least he could protect his brothers now. Finn hates healing. Finn loved food. Always the big eater in the Shelby household, he managed to always have a full stomach despite the poverty that reigned. He was a stickler for sweets, though, and as soon as he mastered the art of sneaking rings and wallets from unsuspecting strangers, he soon graduated to thieving lollipops and boiled sweets and even some toffees that he proudly deposited into his aunt's hand with a toothy grin. But the boys would look into his empty plate and his skinny frame and tell him he'd better watch out, soon he might actually have a shape under those bulky clothes. They always laughed, and he felt himself completely embarrassed at the dinner table. He dumped more sugar than milk into his tea and stole chips when they went to the seaside. He'd always offer to share, wanting to provide for them for once, but they'd tell him he was the one who needed it. He sees his ribs and the little vertebrae of his spine and wonders why can't he just be strong like his brothers. Even though he despises it, he picks up boxing to fill out his form. Maybe training with Isaiah was an extra benefit, but the older boy had long since talked to Finn on the regular, and made a point to laugh at him when he fell onto the floor. So, Finn graduated from second helpings of lunch and too-sweet tea to the sour delights of whiskey and cigarettes. Just like his brothers. Finn hates food. Finn loves his family. He loves Polly, the mother he never had, and will never feel like he does enough to repay her for his entire childhood. Then Michael came back, and soon there wasn't any chore lists on the downstairs table for someone to read out for him, or little check ups throughout the day as she makes sure he's okay. That was when he realised exactly why Polly raised him in her empty arms. He loves Arthur: his eldest brother, who used to lift him up on his shoulders and teach him to draw. Finn still has faded old pictures of galloping stallions (signed in block letters: A.W.S) slipped between the filled out pages of the sketchbooks he hides in his wardrobe. Then Arthur came back, with what everyone calls Flanders Blues, but no one explains, and Finn feels like he's losing his brother everyday when he comes back smelling like a brewery with blood on his fists. Finn loves Tommy. A father figure to him, the kind of man he wants to be when he grows up. But then Greta died and Tommy went to war, and the man who took him horse riding every weekend was gone, and this Tommy was colder. Finn loves John as the best friend he's ever had, always laughing together, giving sometimes useful advice and finding days to just spend time with each other. Despite John's bazillion kids, widowerhood, and then his new wife, he's always had time to spare for his little brother. John was the one who told him what bisexual was when he found Finn sobbing in his room, he was the one that took him to the doctor when he passed out from malnutrition, and he's the one that made him swear to never use razor blades on himself again. Finn loves Ada. He sees why Freddie calls her an angel, and used to love it when she pretended to take Finn to the library when in fact they were both slipping away to a Communist meeting, which would usually end up in Ada and Freddie slipping away and leaving Finn in the trusted supervision of leftist radicals that he happily chatted away to. Ada always took care of him, making sure he was never involved in the business (on either side) and telling him that being a soldier is a life sentence, not an honour. He lives because Ada keeps him safe and sane. Then Ada leaves. Finn hates the Shelby name that everyone screams at him like a condemnation, that invites slurs and hatred that only he gets because he doesn't look like a proper Shelby man. Finn hates his family. Finn loved Isaiah. A childhood crush that brought butterflies to his stomach and blushes to his freckled face. He sketched the boy's face so many times, he knew it by memory. They held hands when they were chased down the streets, laughing and sprinting as their spoils stayed securely in their pockets. But Isaiah was older than him. Soon after adolescence hit the Jesus boy and Peaky Blinders offered him a role, without the constant of Church, the two greatest of friends became almost strangers to one another. But Finn still loved him. He never told anyone, of course. He knew he wasn't a real homosexual, because he most certainly did enjoy holding hands and kissing the cheeks of girls his age (poor boy was flustered to ever do more!) but his heart still belonged to the preacher's boy. With more faithful women in the family than ever before, Finn knew he would be crucified if he ever told anyone. John was the only one who knew, and that was based on the fact he paid more attention to his brother than anyone else combined. He said he should just go for it, but Finn knew Isaiah couldn't be like him. And even if Jeremiah was always the kindest man that Finn ever met, he still didn't trust that the cross on his neck wouldn't shame him or laugh at him for the fact he was completely enamoured with his son. Then Finn got drunk, and when he woke up, his entire family knew exactly how he felt and Isaiah wouldn't look at him in the eye. He ran away to the stables, crying on Uncle Charlie's shoulder who told it would be alright. He made sure to keep an eye on Finn ever since, keeping an eye on his wrists and fists. The incident was soon forgot by everyone but him. Finn couldn't find it in him to hate Isaiah, but he knew he didn't love him any more. Finn has never loved Michael. He thought he could, at first, when he saw the tweed suit and a face more innocent than his. But then Tommy promoted him almost on the spot, and Finn had never at once felt so much rage bubble inside him. Everything he has done for his brothers, every passion he sacrificed, every humiliation he shouldered, just so they could see him as an equal. But no, there are only three Shelby brothers as far as anyone else is concerned, and Finn carries on as errand boy. He ignores all Ada's good advice, and swear that he will make his brothers proud of him one day. So, he puts on the thorn crown of a Peaky cap and wears the waistcoat and wool coat of his brother's likeness, and parades about Small Heath like he actually was apart of the makeshift royal family. Then Finn found Michael and Isaiah kissing in the alleyway. Even though Finn had made a point to announce that his brothers had started giving him more work, Isaiah still fucked off to the pub with Michael every night, devoting his time and attention to only him, and Finn couldn't understand why. Now he did. If Finn had been violent like Arthur, he certainly wouldn't have thought twice about taking the cup on his curls and cutting the smirk off of his cousin. He had stolen his brothers' respect, his surrogate mother's attention, his place in the business, the affections of the one boy Finn had ever loved. He had stolen Finn's everything, and Finn hated him. They both froze and stuttered. Excuses about just being friends, just experimenting, but he saw the way they held each others shaking hands just as he and Isaiah used to hold onto each other as they raced through the streets. "I'm glad you're together." He shocked them both with a forced smile. "You both deserve to be happy." The two were kinder to him after that, almost back to the old friendship he had missed, and Finn knew he didn't hate Michael. Or Isaiah. Or any of his family, really. No, Finn hated himself.

[hanniiesuckle17]

Anything But Normal

A/n: this was such cute Idea I hope I did it justice. It’s been a while since I’ve written a comedy piece. There are probably spelling errors I’ll go back and fix them later. also I love Jon Favreau as Happy so I had to put him in. (i swear he is one of my favorite actors) btw this is not edited (i’ll come back and do that eventually)

Requested by: @tokiokiedokie​

Warnings: Cussing,(come on it's me guys), partial nudity.

Member: Han Jisung

Summary: When Y/n’s best friend goes through a drastic change he starts keeping secrets. Secrets that include him being New York’s one and only friendly neighborhood spiderman. Shit hits the fan when his new secret life is exposed and she gets dragged into it.

Genre: Spiderman!au, romance, comedy, friends to lovers!au, little bit of angst

There are only three things that truly matter in life. Good friends, good pizza, and a good story. So far I had two of those at the moment. Sadly I was lacking a good story. Our school newspaper had been quite dry despite my efforts to discover new and intriguing stories. 

“Stop sulking and eat.” My best friend said, shoving a piece of cheese pizza in my face. Jisung laughed when I bit the end before returning to look at my laptop. We were at our usual pizza place seated next to the window with the big bright red neon sign lighting up our faces. The sun set over the New York skyline making the moment almost perfect. If only I was writing an exciting article. Instead, I was putting together a riveting look into the school’s menu changes. 

“You know I invited you because I thought you were going to be good company.”

“Please. You invited me because Felix was busy with a stupid Lego project and no one else will eat pizza with you.”

“Whatever.”

Jisung and I weren’t the most popular people in our senior class. To be frank, Jisung was my only friend. So going out and eating pizza every other day at ten o’clock at night was often the highlight of my week. Having had enough of the lack of attention Jisung slammed my laptop closed and removed it from the already small table. “Hey! I didn’t save!” 

“That’s what Google Docs is for.”

He was right. I needed to stop working. I had been slaving over that stupid and boring article all week. He didn’t have to be such an ass though. “You are such a teenager.” I scoffed, watching him shovel yet another slice of pizza down his throat. “Oh, and you are such an adult!” The mocking tone of his voice threatened a laugh. 

“I swear you are God’s punishment for enjoying sex. Everyone’s libido just disappears when you are around.”

“Hey don’t ruin our date. I was considering sleeping with you tonight.”

He laughed when I threatened to smack him. It had been like this for as long as I could remember. Just me and Jisung. My parents had been friends with his before they passed away in a car accident. Now Jisung lived with his Aunt May and his Uncle Ben a few blocks away from me. 

I remember after the crash I would wake to a tap on my window to see an eight year old Jisung on my fire escape. Not wanting to bother his Aunt with his nightmares, Jisung had run all the way to my apartment and climbed the fire escape to my room on the sixth floor. I would open the window and let him sleep in my bed. My eight year old brain used to think maybe my bed was like force field keeping away the bad dreams about his parents.

“Hey, what are you doing tomorrow?” Jisung asked bringing me out of my thoughts. 

“Mr. Finoli asked me to take pictures of the science field trip so I’m going with you guys. Why?” A look of realization crossed Jisung’s face making him freeze. “Did you forget to ask May to sign your permission slip?”

“I forgot to ask May to sign my-...you can be a real ass sometimes, you know that?”

Laughing I pulled a ten out of my wallet and left it on the table. “Come on, you’ve gotta get your slip signed, dummy.” “I can pay, it’s no problem.” He said watching me pack up my stuff. “Nah, you can get the next one.” Bellies full of pizza, we left Tony’s Pizzeria and headed in the direction of Jisung’s apartment, his arm draped over my shoulder and talking my ear off about some random experiment they had done in Physics that day. 

The next day I woke up bright and early to meet the class at the New York Museum of Science. Camera bag on my shoulder and camera around my neck I stood outside the museum with about ten other students and two teachers. My tired eyes brightened when I saw Jisung step out from the subway, May right behind him.

I laughed as he wiped a kiss from his cheek before waving goodbye to her. His dyed blonde hair was messy and blew slightly in the wind. Jisung waved when he saw me and jogged over. His hoodie lazily hung off his shoulder and his shirt and jeans were somewhat wrinkled. “Don’t you look nice?” I couldn’t help but chuckle at his appearance. 

“Shut up.”

He laughed throwing an arm around my shoulder, leading me closer to the group. Soon the tour began and I busied myself with taking photos of the group for the paper and yearbook. Jisung followed the group, only half-listening to the teacher as he looked at other random exhibits. 

At around one in the afternoon, the group moved outside to have lunch on the steps. I sat off to the side with Jisung, his legs spread out across the stairs and his elbow rested on the step above us. It was refreshing to be next to him talking about absolutely nothing. Even if he stole my food. 

Eventually, we were all called back to resume the tour. I angled a shot of two students looking at a bug exhibit, but just as I took the picture Jisung jumped in the frame throwing up a peace sign and crossing his eyes. “Hey! Stop hitting me!” He yelled as I smacked his shoulder over and over again. “Look I’m just innocently observing the exhibit. Leave me alone crazy woman!”

Sighing, I pushed him away and resumed taking photos. As the group was moving onto the next room I noticed Jisung was missing. It wasn’t unlike him to wander off into a room he wasn’t supposed to just to look at probably like some DNA model or some other weird science shit. I could never get over the fact Jisung was super into science when he gave zero fucks about his other classes. 

“Jisung?”

“Ji?”

“Ji, we are moving on,” I said looking for him. My eyes landed on a semi-open door marked ‘Lab’. He wouldn’t. He did. Just as I started to walk towards the door, he exited with a goofy smile on his face. “Y/n! Dude, they have all these cool spiders and test tubes in there it was so cool! One of them bit me!” Like an excited three-year-old, he showed me his wrist where he indeed had a red spider bite. 

“Ooooooh! Take a picture!” 

He shoved my camera into my hands and held up his arm pointing to the spider bite making the dopiest smile. Knowing he wouldn’t shut up until I complied, I took the picture. 

“Let’s catch up with the group,” I said taking his hand and dragging him back to the class. When we reached the group a teacher looked over at us his brows furrowing. “Excuse me, Miss L/n, is your friend okay?” He pointed to Jisung, a concerned expression on his face.

“Jisung? There are certainly things wrong with him but he’s oka-”

My words stopped when I turned to look at my best friend next to me. “Ji- Oh my god! Ji are you okay?” His face had obviously paled and he looked dizzy. A thin layer of sweat lay on his forehead. 

“Hell yeah. I’m doing fine, baby.” His voice sounded drowsy.

“Miss L/n he is not alright. Does he have anyone who can come get him.” The teacher said pulling out his phone. I shook my head. May worked in the day and his Uncle Ben was on a business trip. “No, they are working.” 

He sighed and turned to me. Jisung was clearly getting worse by the second and was wobbling a little. “What about you? Can you take him home?” Jisung laughed and wrapped his arms around me loosely. “Fuck yeah, I’d her take me home.” 

“I have a test in my last period.”

“I’ll write you a pass and send it to your teacher. Take him home please.”

Nodding he typed something on his phone and returned to the group who had started to move once again. “Okay Ji, let’s get you back to May’s.” Slowly we started moving to the exit. Before we made it to the doors, Jisung practically turned green. He pushed away from me and burst towards the nearest restroom. 

“Jisung!” 

Ignoring the looks and yells I followed Jisung into the restroom and looked for the stall he was in. “Hey, lady get out of here!” A man standing at the urinal screamed. 

“Oh please. Get over yourself.”

“Ji?”

Following the coughing and gagging sounds, I pushed the final stall door open. Jisung sat on the floor his mop of blonde hair hanging over the toilet. I crouched next to him and rubbed his back gently. “Oh god, I hate puking.”

“Jisung everyone hates puking.”

“Yeah well.....your face likes puking.”

“Nice comeback.”

Feeling too terrible to respond, he just threw up the contents of his stomach again. When he seemed able to stand the two of us made our way outside and down the subway. Jisung leaned most of his weight on me as I slid my metro pass through the scanner. How I managed to get him through the turnstile and onto the metro I have no clue. Thankfully there was once last seat free for Jisung to sit down in. 

“Y/n, I don’t feel good.” 

“I know,” I said softly as he rested his head against my stomach. The train turned sharply making me hold onto the strap, not wanting to fall into Jisung. Soft whines and groans came from him every now and then. This was the worst I had ever seen Jisung. 

I listened to the stations being called out as I ran my fingers through his hair, hoping that would calm him down a little. We were only four stops away but more people were getting on the train. Jisung looked up at me a sick expression on his face. It changed when he looked at the passengers boarding the car. 

“Here, Ma’am. You can take my seat.”

“Thank you so much, young man.” An older woman said taking his seat as he got up. “Jisung, you feel terrible. Are you okay to stand?” He shrugged latching onto the strap next to mine, his face paling again. “I’ll be fine, it’s only four stops.”

Jisung’s eyes started to droop as the train started up again. His body began to act heavier than it was so he resorted to leaning on me and nestling his head between my neck and shoulder. I did my best to make sure he didn’t fall over.

“You two are very cute together.” The old lady said with a smile.

“Oh- we aren’t--” 

“You better hold onto a good man like that, sweetie. Handsome and kind. Those are hard to come by.”

Before I could respond we turned again, and I had to keep Jisung from falling in this poor nice old lady’s lap. I felt his skin burning against mine. Could this train not go any faster. Soon enough our stop came. I said bye to the old woman and helped Jisung get off the train and up the subway stairs. 

“Come on, Ji. We are almost there and we both know I cannot carry your ass.” 

Eventually, I made it up the stairs of his apartment building to the fourth floor and managed to drag him to his door. “Jisung, where’s your key?” Trying not to hurt his head I propped him up on the door frame. He laughed when I started searching through his pockets.  

“Y/n if you wanted to cop a feel just ask. That tickles.” 

“Jisung where are your fucking keys?” 

“Back pocket.” He said drowsily. I sighed and reached behind him. My hands searched through his jean pockets for the cold metal keys. “Having fun back there, because I’m sure enjoying it.” 

I suppressed the urge to punch him in the stomach out of fear he would vomit all over me. Finally finding his keys, I unlocked the door and threw my stuff inside, before lugging him in as well. Jisung leaned on the couch while I put my stuff on the table.

“Y/n it’s burning up in here.” 

“Jisung, you just have a temperature.”

“It burns like fucking hell! It’s too hot!”

Before I could stop him Jisung was shedding layers like a snake. He tossed his shirt somewhere in the small living room. He was sweating like crazy, his blonde hair sticking to his forehead. “Ji, come on let’s get you in the shower.” I started running a cold shower for him before rushing back to the living room to call May. It would only be a couple hours until she got home, but I should still let her know what’s going on.

While Jisung was in the shower, I grabbed some medicine from the cabinet. I had absolutely no fucking idea how to treat a spider bite. Antibiotics? Hearing the shower turn off I knocked before entering. Jisung had a towel wrapped around his waist and was leaning his head against the wall. “Y/n...”

“I’m right here, Jisung.” Cautiously I led him to his room and watched him collapse onto his double bed. Rummaging through his drawers I found some mostly clean sweatpants. “Ji, do you even do laundry?” 

“Y/n, I feel a little too fucking sick to do chores now.”

“I know. I know.” He slipped on the sweatpants and let me dry his hair. I wrapped his arms, covering the bite so it wouldn’t get more infected then it already probably was. Jisung’s temperature flipped like crazy. One minute he was burning up and the next he was freezing. 

A sigh of relief left my chest when I heard May call out in the apartment. “Y/n thank you so much for taking care of him.” She gave me a short hug before running to go get more meds. She would know better than I would, being an ER nurse. “Ji, do you want me to stay? I can call my parents and tell them I’m staying the night.” He slowly shook his head.

“No, it’s okay.” 

“I can stay really-”

“Y/n, I’ll be fine. You can go home.” 

He gave me a half-assed smile and squeezed my hand. There was no arguing with Jisung sick or not so I gathered my things and left. May promised to keep me updated and I told her I would have my phone next to me.

The walk back to my apartment seemed longer than usual. I couldn’t stop thinking about Jisung. When I got home, my parents greeted me before telling me they would be working tonight. My dad was a cop and my mom worked at a hospital downtown. It was rare they were even home, to begin with. Exhausted from taking care of Jisung, I rolled onto my bed and fell asleep.

This boy really texted me at five the morning telling me to meet him at his locker three hours later. If he wasn’t still sick I would for sure have throttled him. Except for the fact that Jisung didn’t look sick. Not at all. He looked perfectly healthy as he walked down the hall towards me. In fact, he looked...really....good. It pissed me off. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be sick?”

“Yeah, I got better.”

Jisung opened his locker like it was any other day and got his books. “What did you want to talk about?” He sighed and looked over at me. There was something different about him. Did his jaw always look like that? No. No jaw looks like that. 

“So this morning I woke up and like I felt completely fine. In fact, I felt the best I have in years. And this weird thing happened to me on the subway-”

Jisung’s words were interrupted by the sound of his locker closing, only the entire row of metal lockers rattled as his shut. “The fuck? Did we have an earthquake or something?” I asked looking around. “What? No. New York isn’t on a fault line.” Shrugging it off I turned back to Jisung.

“You were saying?” He seemed distracted now, looking at his closed locker. “Ummm.... I wanted to thank you for yesterday.” I wrapped my arms around his neck and hugged him. “Ji, you don’t need to thank me. I’ll always take care of you if you need me.” As I pulled away his hands stayed on my waist, which wasn’t totally out of the norm. Jisung was always a really touchy and flirty person. It drove me crazy sometimes, knowing that it was just his personality and not him acting on something else. 

“So this weird thing happened on my way to school this morning. My hand-” Again Jisung was interrupted. This time by the bell ringing for homeroom. “Hey Jisung, I’ve gotta go, but you can tell me at lunch right?” He nodded, his expression becoming more uneasy. As I turned his grip on my waist stopped me.

“Ji, I know you wanna tell me now but I have to go!” I said with a laugh. A nervous breathy laugh escaped his lips as he tried to pull away from me. “Well, you know how hard it is for me to keep my hands off of you.” Arching an eyebrow I chose to ignore his weird behavior and walked off to my homeroom. 

When the lunch bell finally rang I took my food outside to where Ji and I normally ate. However, he was nowhere in sight. As if he could read my thoughts, my phone notified me of a text from Jisung.

Lix asked me to help him with some Chem work. Sry I can’t eat with you :(

I sent him a quick reply saying it was okay. It wasn’t the first time I had eaten alone and it surely wouldn’t be the last. To no surprise, Chaeyoung and one of her friends walked by. “Have you seen that kid? What’s his name? Jihyun?” She said in her shrill voice. It was hard not to hear her conversation even from twenty feet away.

“No, I think his name is Jisung. Han Jisung. He is in my physics class. Kind of a dweeb if you ask me.” 

“Well, that dweeb filled out. He was probably just a late bloomer, but like all of a sudden, he got really hot. Have you seen his arms and his chest? Oh my god! A girl could die.” 

The girls laughed and continued to objectify my best friend. They were right. Jisung had seemed to have had a huge glow up overnight. His lanky form did seem more toned and his arms were much more muscular than I remembered. 

“Can you believe he still hangs out with that new junkie girl? Like, please. He could get any girl he wants now. Why stay friends with that waste of space?” 

“That bitch is so full of herself. Literally, no one even likes her.” Chaeyoung said laughing. Having heard enough, I got up and decided to go to my next class early. It didn’t necessarily bother me what she had said. Chaeyoung always liked to mess with me.

All my classes seemed slower than usual and Jisung was answering my texts. At this point in the day, we would probably be having a meme war or a stupid conversation ignoring our teachers, but my phone was silent. Not a single notification. 

By the end of the day, I was feeling totally depressed. English was my last class and thank god I had it with Jisung. No doubt he would be late though. He rarely ever showed up on time to class. But, as I walked through the classroom door I did a double-take seeing my best friend in his usual seat right beside mine. 

He gave me an innocent smile. This was strange. Jisung was never early. He looked...normal. I mean other than the physical overnight puberty storm. He slouched in his chair his long legs spilling into the aisle, not that he cared, and he twirled a pen between his long slender fingers. 

“Yo, wassup, cutie?” He said as I sat down. “You seem to be the talk of the school.” He shrugged and shuffled through some physics work he had on his desk. “You jealous?” That stupid smirk appeared on his mouth. “No. Just confused.”

“Okay, class. Settle down. We are going to be returning to our analysis of Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility.” 

I busied myself with taking thorough notes knowing Jisung would just fall asleep again or just play a random game on his phone. The teacher droned on making a seemingly not boring book a complete snooze fest. The lecture continued without end threatening to send me to sleep as well. Out of habit, I looked over at Jisung, except he was not asleep. Jisung was wide awake and he appeared to be listening intently. 

As if he sensed I was looking at him he turned and smiled at me before returning his attention to the front of the classroom. This was too weird. Where was my Jisung? Maybe he was still sick. That could explain the weird behavior, right? 

The harsh sound of the release bell brought me out of my thoughts. Jisung was already packing up his stuff. “Hey, you wanna stop by Tony’s on the way home? You can buy me a slice!” I said latching onto his arm. The girls were right. Jisung had filled out. Feeling myself starting to blush, I let go and looked back up at my best friend. 

“I can’t. I’ve gotta run some errands fro May and then Uncle Ben asked me to pick up dinner and some other stuff.”

“I can come with you?”

“No, it’s okay. I’ll text you later!” 

Without another word, Jisung raced out of the classroom. I knew Jisung pretty well and it was clear he didn’t want me around today. Alone-again- I rode the subway back to my apartment to be greeted by an empty living room. My mom had left a note on the counter leaving me money for dinner and saying Jisung was welcome to come over. “Yeah, well he’s too busy,” I said to no one in particular. 

It got dark pretty quick. All my homework was finished. I even managed to submit the stupid article on lunch menus. Eventually, I had nothing to do but stare at my ceiling. The news was getting pretty boring. After the whole Avenger’s fiasco, things had quieted down, and no interesting stories were in sight. By 11:30 I had given up hope Jisung was going to text let alone call so I did the next best thing. 

“Hi, May! Is Jisung busy?” 

“Hi, sweetie! Jisung got home about an hour ago. He said he was out with Felix. Should I tell him to call you?”

“No, no. It’s fine. You don’t have to tell him. I’ll talk to him later.”

“Okay, honey. Goodnight!”

Han Jisung you filthy little liar. If he didn’t want to hang out with me he should have just said so. Deciding I had finally had enough of this awful day I curled up under my covers and fell asleep.

Months had now passed and Jisung had started acting normal again. Well as normal as Jisung could be anyway. Our near daily trips to Tony’s had decreased to only twice a week and Jisung always seemed to be busy after school, though he made sure to text me back for fear of facing my wrath. 

“What do you think of this Spiderman guy?” I asked typing away on my laptop. Jisung lounged across my bed, the Saturday afternoon light casting a warm glow over his face.  He looked up from his place beside me. “Uhh...I don’t know. What do you think of him?”

“He seems a little childish and amateur, but he is a great story. Vigilante helping out downtown New York? That’s gold.”

“Childish? What do you mean childish? He’s professional as fuck. I heard he stopped a bank robbery the other day.”

“Yeah, and they found the criminals hanging from a lampost by their underwear.”

Jisung laughed and ran a hand through his blonde hair before looking up at the ceiling. “You’ve been talking about Spiderman a lot lately. What do you have a crush on him?” I scoffed, fingers flying across my keyboard. “Please. I don’t date children. Besides, I just think he is a great story.”

“You wanna order takeout?” Jisung asked reaching over me to get my phone. My dad was on duty and my mom was on call so Jisung had come over to keep me company. I did my best to pretend I didn’t notice how amazing he smelled as he leaned over me. “You know you should really stop eating junk food. You are what you eat.” I said distracting myself from how close he was.

“Well then if we are what we eat, I guess I would be fast, cheap, and easy.” 

Jisung winked at me, making my eyes roll. Jisung had grown at home in his new body and somehow he got even cockier than he was before. He groaned at my lack of response and instead let his head rest in my lap, giving him a good view of my screen. “Play with my hair, bitch.”

“Excuse me, dick. I’m working.” He laughed and unlocked my phone. I often wondered why he liked just sitting with me. I think I remembered him telling me once that he liked the sound of me typing. He said it had sort of a rhythm that only belonged to me. How he could pick up on that I had no clue. Like he had superhearing. 

“I ordered sushi. Don’t worry, I’ll pay.” Jisung said, adjusting his body slightly so he wasn’t at an awkward angle. I smiled continuing to write about our masked arachnid hero. “Please tell me you got boba too.” I sighed suddenly craving the sweet drink.

“Of course, baby. I’ve got you.” 

There was a moment of silence. Any minute now Jisung was going to break it. The boy couldn’t go three minutes without talking. “Do you think Spiderman is hot?” Jisung blurted out. 

“Jisung...do we need to have a talk?”

“What- no! Oh, what- no! I mean like do you think he’s hot?”

“The guy wears a mask; how am I supposed to know?”

He shrugged and played on my phone. “I don’t know. What do you think he looks like?” With Jisung’s mind, he wasn’t going to drop this until he got an answer. Saving my work, I closed my laptop and moved it onto the side table. “He’s probably like thirteen. I’m mean he is skinny enough to be a pre-teen.”

“No, like his face.”

“You are weirdly obsessed with this you know.”

“Answer the question already. I’m getting bored.”

I thought for a minute, my hand unconsciously moving to run through his blonde locks. What would spiderman look like? “He is probably just some random white dude. Dark hair, blue eyes maybe?”

He nodded, seemingly satisfied with my answer. The topic changed after that. Jisung told me about spending time with his Uncle earlier that day and we talked about his weird physics experiments. Soon enough, the food came and Jisung paid for it like he said he would. We spent the next several hours sitting in my bed eating sushi, drinking boba, and watching a drama Jisung insisted I ‘needed to see or my brain would explode out of my ears from being lame’.

After several episodes, my room was obscenely dark and my parents had yet to come home. My back rested against Jisung’s chest letting me feel the vibration of his laughs. “Hey, it’s late. You should probably head home.” He smiled when I made no attempt at moving or letting him up. “Do you want me to stay?” “Yes  please.”  He chuckled and pulled out his phone, calling his uncle and letting him know. 

Soon I began to grow tired, my head slumping back onto his shoulder. He poked my side, trying to wake me up. “Hey, go change for bed.” Sleepily, I nodded and shuffled out of bed to sift through my closet for a nightshirt. Jisung moved around getting comfortable while I changed. 

As I walked back over to the bed Jisung shut my laptop and placed it on my nightstand. When I climbed back into my bed he pulled me on top of him, wrapping his arms around my waist. It had been quite a while since Jisung had stayed over. It felt so nice just to be next to him, feeling the warmth radiating off his bare chest. The sound of his heartbeat lulled me to sleep. 

Jisung’s ringtone blared in my small room quickly waking me up. “Ji-” I said shoving my head under the covers. “I got it. Go back to sleep.” A quick glance at my clock told me it was two am. Who the hell was calling Jisung at two am? Jisung reached over me and grabbed his phone off the stand. He tried not to move a lot because my head still lay on his arm. “Hello?”

“Happy? What’s wrong?”

“Jisung tell the Disney dwarf to hang up. I wanna go back to sleep.” I whined, drowsily. Snuggling back into his chest, I reluctantly listened to him sleepily talk on the phone, Jisung not being fully awake himself. “Where am I? I’m at Y/n’s.....Yes....Yes, you can add the location to the list.” I felt Jisung run a hand through his fluffy hair and sigh.

“Mr. Stark said what? Yeah, yeah I have it in my bag....What now?....She’s gonna kill me....I can be there in ten.” Jisung hung up and started to get out of bed. “Woah, where the hell are you going? I need my personal space heater.” Jisung let out a tired laugh as he slipped his baggy shirt back on and rummaged through his bag looking for something. 

“I’m really sorry, but I have to go.”

“Jisung who the fuck is calling you at two am? What is so important that you have to leave?” I asked still not really awake and comprehensive. “Uhhh....my....internship.”

“Your what?”

“My internship.”

“Your what?” 

“My internship.” 

“Yeah-Ji- you keep saying ‘your internship’ like my half-asleep half murderous mind will understand what your saying.”

 “I got an internship with Stark Industries. They have uh... a problem....with some of the...code that I wrote....last week.” 

Jisung started slipping his socks back on as I stared at him in confusion. “When did you get an internship with freaking Tony Stark -You work with Ironman?!” He laughed and started searching for his shoes. 

“Y/n, go back to sleep. I’ll see you on Monday.” Then he left. I was alone once again in my room. A random siren went off in the distance and I just sat in bed. Suddenly, the police scanner on my dresser crackled to life. My dad had given it to me for my birthday a few years ago. 

We have a 647g Disorderly Conduct at 284 Hickom Av.

647g? Why bother calling that in at this time of night? That was just loitering. Sighing, I got up and walked over to turn the radio off. Another voice coming through stopped me. 

Disregard suspect has left the premise with another group of guys. Headed south down Hickom. 

South down Hickom street? What had my dad said earlier this week? Something about several high arms deals going down near there. If I could catch one in the act this would be a great story! Throwing on some pants and slipping on my sneakers, I grabbed my camera and put on my jacket. “Finally a great story!” 

Hickom Avenue was maybe about ten minutes away. The streets were pretty dark at two am, but it didn’t really bother me. My curiosity overpowered any fear I should have. My eyes scanned the area looking for any sign of the guys the scanner mentioned. Just as I was about to cross in front of an alley I saw them. Quickly I doubled back and pressed against the wall. 

“If I’m paying 4k for some lightsaber shit, I’d better get a demonstration, man.”

Carefully I peeked around the corner. Seven men stood in the hallway. Three were next to this heavy-duty van with blacked-out windows. This was definitely an arms deal if I had ever seen one. Which....to be fair...I hadn’t. But it was pretty clear. 

A guy with muscles bigger than my head pulled out a large weapon with green glowing lights. Quickly I pulled out my camera and started snapping pictures. They proceeded to fire this huge light cannon around the alley. Holy shit. This thing was powerful.

“Okay, you got a deal. I’ll take four-”

Let’s dance the night away,

Let’s  dance the night away,

Yeaaaahh

One, Two, Three! Let’s go!

“Fuck,” I whispered ripping my phone out of my pocket and struggling to turn it off. “Turn off, come on.” Finally, I silenced the phone and turned to see if they had heard. Instead my eyes met a broad chest only a couple inches away. 

Okay....think, think, think. Too busy panicking. Can’t think. Uhhhhhh......fuck. I followed my first instinct and threw a punch at the guy’s nose. His head did not recoil like it was supposed to. He just simply cracked his neck and glared down at me.

Okay.....instincts bad.

Before I knew it I was struggling against the man’s grip as he dragged me into the alley. “We’ve got a visitor.” He said throwing me onto the ground in front of all the other men. They sneered and inched closer clearly quite upset I had interrupted their little party. 

“Make that two. Hey, how are you guys doing?” 

All heads turned to the roof of the liquor store we were next to. My eyes widened. There was Spiderman. Complete with the red and blue suit and cocky childish attitude. “Who the fuck are you?” The buff guy, who now had his foot digging into my stomach, said.

“Bro....Come on. I’m Spiderman. You know. I shoot webs and kick ass.” 

“Isn’t he that guy from YouTube that did the flip on that building?”

“OH MY GOD, THAT WAS ONE TIME!”

The man scoffed and pressed further onto my stomach, making me wince slightly. “Scram, Arachne Boy.” The men around me laughed at I assumed the leader’s joke. The hero sighed and shook his head.

“See now I have to beat you up. You can’t just make fun of my name. That shit hurts, bro.”

“What the fu-” Before he could finish his sentence a web shot and grabbed onto his face and flung him into the side of the building. Soon a fight broke out. Trying to remove myself from the situation I crawled away as Spiderman fought all the men. 

“Ah!” 

A strong hand grabbed the back of my neck and hoisted me off the ground. “You aren’t getting away that easy, little girl.” The man sneered. A huge welt was on the side of his face from Spiderman’s attack. My airway’s started to close as he squeezed tighter. My hands tried to pull his fingers away and slapping at any place I could reach. Meanwhile, the last thing I would hear before I died would be Spiderman yelling something about Naruto running a dude into the next Millenium. 

As the edges of my vision started to fade, I heard another voice come closer. “Get your fucking mutant hands off her!” It screamed. I was dropped to the ground. Air filled my lungs as I took huge gasps. Looking up I saw Spiderman taking on the huge monstrosity of a man with nothing but his own two hands. 

“I was told never to play with guns. But I think today might be the exception.”

A web shot out of his fingertips and pulled the weird contraption into his hands. A bright light emitted and fired at the man, blasting him into the building wall. Within seconds Spiderman had wrapped up the villain in a little cocoon of sticky webs, keeping him secure. A quick look around told me he had already done the same to the others. 

The boy in the red suit danced around like a weirdo, while I sat on the ground. “Go Spidey! Go Spidey! Hell yeah! I made all of you my bitches!” I coughed still trying to get air back into my lungs. The white eyes on his mask widened. It must be some pretty advanced tech in that suit.

“Holy shit- Are you okay, Y/n...........I mean...wait-...random citizen I don’t know who means nothing to me personally. Are you okay?”

His voice weirdly got lower halfway through his sentence. Dazed, I looked back up at him. He offered me a hand up and gratefully I took it. “Thanks for helping back there,” I said, voice coming out a bit sore. He shrugged and puffed out his chest. 

“Yeah, I did kick some serious ass didn’t I?”

Rolling my eyes, I grabbed my camera and started to walk away. “Wait! Where are you going?” He swung from a lamppost and landed in front of me the suit’s eyes widening and shrinking again. His suit must have facial readers or something. 

“I’m going home. I’ve got my story; I’m done.”

“Hey it’s not safe. Let me take you home. What would your friends say if you weren’t at school tomorrow?” 

Spiderman continued to follow me as if he were a lost puppy. I laughed when he almost tripped over a trashcan. “Okay, one- how do you know I’m a student? And two- I don’t really have any friends. People don’t like me at school.” He stopped in his tracks. 

“What do you mean- Are you getting bullied at school?” His words stopped me. He sounded genuinely concerned. By now we were halfway to my apartment. I simply stared at him as the old streetlights flickered and struggled to light up the sidewalks we were on.

“A couple people bother me, but I just ignore them. Look I’m gonna go home. Thanks for back there. You were a real hero.” 

He looked between me and my hand as I stuck it out for him to shake. Slowly he took it, his grip firm, but cautious. “You know, usually heroes get a thank you kiss for rescuing such a gorgeous girl.” I scoffed and pulled my hand away. 

“Sorry, Spidey. I’m not interested in cocky little shits who run around wearing masks.”

“Yeah well, you’d be surprised. What is your type? Bet, I’m still it.”

My eyes lit up thinking about him. “I guess I’m more of the boy next door type. They say you always fall for your best friend right?”

He blinked as if he was processing my words. What I thinking? A horny fourteen-year-old boy wouldn’t understand. “Night, Spidey. Thanks for the save.” Not letting him say another word, I headed back to my apartment. My apartment was still empty when I returned. My parents wouldn’t be back until after I left for school in a few hours. Reluctantly I went back to my bed, missing the space where Jisung lay only a few hours earlier. It was harder to fall asleep without him next to me.

My legs carried me as quickly as they could. I ignored the crazy looks from people on the street as I raced to May’s apartment. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I burst through the building’s main entrance. Knowing the elevator would take too long and it was probably broken again, I took the stairs up to the fourth floor. 

The door was unlocked when I ran into the apartment. “May? May!” I called, looking for her in the living room. Hearing small cries I turned to find her exiting the kitchen. With open arms, I let her hug me and cry into my shoulder. 

We sat in the kitchen in silence. Occasionally one of our cries would slip, but the emptiness would return. He wasn’t answering any of my calls. I was beginning to worry. May said they were together. Where was he? It had been hours since May had called me. The sound of the door opening made us both stand from our seats. 

Jisung walked in with heavy shoulders and blood on his forehead and smeared across his shirt. He had dried tears staining his cheeks. I had seen the footage of the shooting on the news with May, but the sight of Jisung standing before us made my heart break. 

I held myself back as May went to her nephew. They needed each other. I could wait. Whispers between the two were shared, most likely about her husband. She had already gotten a call, but hearing it from Jisung seemed important to her. After a moment she excused herself, saying something about wanting to go to bed. 

The two of us stood in silence. I had no idea how to comfort him. How could you comfort someone who just watched their uncle die? Jisung started to slowly move towards his room. Wordlessly, I followed. 

After I closed his door, I turned to find him staring at the walls small cries coming from his form. There were pictures of him and his uncle all over his room. Jisung sighed when I wrapped my arms around him from behind. He turned around so he could hold me to his chest. Hot tears fell against my neck as he cried. 

It felt like hours before he calmed down. Gently I led him over to the bed and sat him down. All he could do was stare at his hands as I grabbed a clean shirt from his closet and a wet cloth from the bathroom. There was no fight from him as I lifted the bloodied shirt from his body and put it in the hamper. 

Carefully, I lifted his chin and gently started cleaning the blood away from his face. I tried not to wipe away the tears that slowly ran down his cheeks. He looked broken-and tired like he hadn’t slept even before today’s events. My heart shattered when he finally looked me in the eye. 

“I’m not ready for this.” He whispered, more tears falling. 

Wrapping my arms around him, I let the clean shirt fall to the floor. “I know...” I tried to keep tears from falling from my own eyes. I concentrated on running my fingers through his hair and how tightly he held onto my waist. “You’re never going to be ready for it.” He cried even harder, making me want to scream for him. 

Slowly, I laid back onto his bed, holding him on top of my chest. “No one is ever ready for what you are going through,” I whispered. His body shook from crying and he buried his nose into my neck, holding onto me as if I were the only tether keeping him from floating away. “But, you are so strong. We aren’t faced with challenges we can’t overcome.” His breathing started to steady as my hand traced patterns on this bare skin of his back. “Sometimes I wish I was normal,” He whispered.

“Ji, you are anything but normal. And that’s okay. But for now...you can just be here. I’ll be with you. When you’re ready you can do whatever you need to. But...just stay here for now.”

He nodded and held onto me even tighter. I listened to his breath, gently rubbing his back and playing with his hair. When I knew he was asleep, I let myself do the same. Tomorrow would be another day. I would most likely have to leave and let Jisung and May grieve, but for now, I could be with him. Hopefully, that was enough. 

Early the next morning, I woke up to an empty bed. Jisung’s covers were loosely wrapped around me and his window was cracked open, letting a strip of sunlight in. Slowly, I sat up and rubbed my head. It was quite unusual for him to be up this early. Well, it was quite unusual for me to be up this early, but it was like my body had a sensor for when he was gone. I pulled my phone from the table and started to text him.

The sound of the window opening caused my attention to turn. I froze as I saw Jisung climbing through the window. “What the fuck!” He froze when he saw me. My eyes widened, taking the sight in. Jisung was standing before me wearing a familiar red and blue suit, a mask in his hand. 

“Y/n, I can explain...”

Was Jisung Spiderman? Was my best friend Spiderman? Holy shit! “Okay explain!” He simply stared at me, eyes wide. His hand came to scratch the back of his neck. His eyes avoided mine as my arms crossed my chest. 

“Jisung, might I suggest explanation protocol #38 for Miss L/n?”

“Oh my God! Friday, shut up! You aren’t helping.”

I watched as Jisung said to the AI apparently in his suit before he tossed the mask onto his desk. “You have an explanation protocol for me?” The look on his face showed that he knew he was in trouble. 

“See the thing is...I’m not Spiderman-...” He stopped when I glared at him. “Okay, I am Spiderman. This is my internship with Mr.Stark.” Without hesitation, I got up from his bed and started slapping his arm.

“This doesn’t even hurt, does it? You have superstrength. Oh my god, I’m going to fucking murder you.” An aggravated sigh left my chest. “So this whole entire time you have been swinging around the city saving people and doing flips on buildings and I was none the wiser?” I said turning back to him.

“That was one time! But...yes.” He stood awkwardly in his own room. “Look, I’m sure you have a lot of questions.” He gulped when my stern gaze turned back on him. “So, anything you ask I’ll answer.” 

“Who else knows?”

“Mr. Stark, Happy- the guy who is my supervisor-, and Felix.”

“FELIX?”

He flinched as my voice raised. Taking a breath, I calmly sat back down on his bed. He watched as I crossed my legs and turned off the sound on my phone. No way was I gonna let my parents interrupt this conversation. “How did you become like...this...” I asked pointing to his clearly toned physique.

“At first I thought it was just like another puberty thing. But, like puberty doesn't make me shoot webs out of my hands. I think it was that spider from the lab.”

“So do-...are all your...bodily fluids...like...webs? Like do you shoot webs out of everywhere or-”

“You wanna find out?” Jisung said with a smirk, coming closer. I did not hesitate to slap him. 

“You couldn’t think of a better name though? Spiderman, really? You couldn’t come up with something more aggressive?”

“Well, I mean...like - spiders are cool, okay!”

I could tell he was uncomfortable. Usually, Jisung always stood up straight and had some sort of a smile or smirk on his face, but he was truly nervous. He watched me expectantly, waiting to answer whatever questions I asked next.

“So when you said you were away on a company retreat for the weekend. That was actually you who was fighting Captain America and all that shit in Prauge?”

“Yes.”

“When you left that night, did you go to the arms deal?”

“Yes.”

“So, it was you who saved me.”

“Your welcome.”

“Don’t push it.”

Nervously, he let out a laugh. No matter how many questions I asked...he was still my best friend. I was proud of him. He was doing so much good. Don’t get me wrong I was still very pissed at him for not telling me. “You owe me pizza at Tony’s for the rest of the fucking year.” A sigh of relief left his chest and he wrapped me in a hug. 

“That’s fine by me. I’m honestly surprised you didn’t ask about the whole crush thing.” I pulled away to see that fucking smirk on his mouth. “I think it’s cute you’re in love with me.” He tugged me closer to his body, gripping my waist.

“Who says I’m in love with you?”

“Me.”

“You’re an asshole- you say a lot of stupid shit.”

“I’m an asshole, not a liar. There’s a difference.”

My breath caught in my throat when I saw his eyes glance down to my lips. I could practically feel my heartbeat pulsing through my entire body. It was true and he knew it. I was in love with him. “Well....what are you going do about it? Prick...” I said in a shaky breath. He let out a soft laugh, his eyes lighting up. 

“Kiss you....bitch.”

My heart went crazy as he pressed his lips to mine. Closing my eyes, I melted into his touch. This was definitely the craziest two days of my entire life. I never would have imagined I would have to comfort my best friend, find out he was a superhero running around New York, and then have him kiss me in his bedroom.

Jisung smiled as I kissed him back, draping my arms around his neck and threading my fingers through his blonde hair. Never in my wildest dreams had I thought kissing Jisung would be like this. Without his mouth leaving mine he pushed me up against the wall of his bedroom. He sighed when my teeth caught his bottom lip.

“Fuck...do you know how long I’ve thought about this?” He asked before returning to my lips. 

“Kissing me?”

“To be honest I’ve been thinking about more than that since I was thirteen.”

Ignoring my scoff, Jisung continued to attack my lips like he had found water for the first time after walking in a desert. His hands slid under my legs, making me shriek when he picked me up. In one swift motion, he turned around and threw me onto his bed, before hovering over me. “I love you,” He whispered, before placing a soft kiss on my lips. Slowly, he moved down to my neck, my hands running through his soft hair. Impatiently, I pulled him back to my lips. 

Our little makeout session was interrupted by the sound of Jisung’s phone ringing. He sighed and dropped his head onto my shoulder. “I have to get that,” He sighed and pushed himself off the bed, walking over to pick up his phone. My eyes couldn’t help but rake over him. Now, I could freely ogle how gorgeous his body was. I bit my lip, looking at the lines of his broad shoulders go down to his slim waist.

“Happy, now is not a good time.”

“Yes....among other things...” A blush flooded his cheeks as he looked back at me still laying on his bed. 

“Can’t Mr. Stark send someone else?”

“I’m not just going to up and leave.”

Getting bored, I got up and wrapped my arms around him. He tried to look over at me, but I just buried my face in his chest. Patiently, I waited for him to finished the call with Happy. Finally, he threw the phone onto his bed and kissed me again. “Do you have to go?” I asked against his lips. He pulled away another smirk filling his face.

“You want to go to Berlin for a week?”

“What?”

“Mr. Stark needs me in Berlin. Something about S.H.I.E.L.D and an Avenger thing. But, there is no way May will let me go. Especially after yesterday.”

“Why am I going?”

“Happy said I could take you with me, you know to convince May to let me go.”

I laughed and kissed him again. “Sure. I’ll go to Berlin with you.” He laughed and spun me around the room. “However, you are gonna be the one to tell my dad that we are going alone with no chaperone to a country where the drinking age is sixteen.” 

“Fuck.”

“Good luck, Ji.”

Requests are open, just send an ask my lovelies!

Masterlist

[reddeadtwofics]

Bloopers RDR2 Headcanons 1

so like, last night at like 1am i was laying in my bed and i remembered a image i seen before on tumblr a long ass time ago, of assassins creed 3 as bloopers, also i was watching bloopers and fan made movie trailer of rdr2 so have this and i might end up making more cause i have so many ideas and i love this AU so much

---

To start us off

They are all jokesters no way around it

Makes it hard to film at times but it's great

Arthur and John are like real brothers and love to randomly dance when they wait, like on set they where waiting and just started a random gig.

Arthur forgets his lines a few times, he mostly gets tongue tied a ends up bending over laughing about it

Dutch fumbles over his words in  Speeches and it's amazing cause everyone laughs if he fucks up and he's confused before he catches on 

John is a menace when they have close up shots. He has something called "the butt stick" it's one of those sparkly poles with a hand on it spooning like teachers use, there are like  40 hidden around set and he uses it to poke ppl 

His victims are mostly Arthur, Javier, John, Sean and sometimes Lenny

John and Abigail are actually a couple

Back on a dance again, in random spots in the background waiting ppl might dance around 

A lot of time there might be something that doesn't belong in 1899, once there was a Starbucks on the table, or a phone maybe someone forgot to take off a watch aka, Javier, Trelawny, Dutch

One time there was a break Javier was drinking coffee and leaned back on a crate, said crate was for a stunt and he fell backwards. He just laughed there on the ground laughing 

Micha was trying to hold a mean face once, but couldn't cause Cain got excited and jumped on him making him laugh

once in a shootout, bill was behind the camera a little away and all you here is him having a sneeze attack everyone stops and starts to laugh a little and all you here from bill is a faint "SORRY MY FAULT" 

A lot of times they have makeup on or dirt or fake blood and touch their face messing it up

A lot of silly faces to make ppl crack

Also the horses are a mess to deal with, but it's fun. They like to steal hats and fuss

Kieran was in shit and a horse stole his hat off his head refusing to give it back

Tamia is a sweetheart tho, she wants everyone's attention

The count is nippy a lot, only likes Dutch like normal cause sugar cubes

Kieran and Sean slip away to sleep in random places on set, it happens a lot

Hosea and Dutch are like RDJ, they hide food in random ass places

Like at one point they have a close up on someone and just off at Dutches tent you hear a crunch and these old guys are just eating a bag of chips. The camera points over to them eating like, what they got hungry

There is a picture floating around of Javier dressed in his stuff, but dirty and fake blood but sitting in his chair at makeup on drinking Starbucks but had his sunglasses on and someone doing something to his hand and it says "anyone missing a sassy Mexican" or something like that 

There is another photo of Dutch and Hosea staring off set with a small disappointed look at Sean or Lenny or both of them. It's from Arthur and it says "Disappointed Gay Cowboy dads"

So many vines are recreated on set 

Also small spoiler for the game but when Arthur Was hung upside down he forgot what he was to say or do, and he kept spinning in a circle so he started to very loudly and off tune singing about how he forgot what to do and say as he spined

Also the Jean's hands down are tight and we know that, the guys get wedgies a lot

Like some place there is a video of Arthur passing his coffee to John "hold this for a second, Wedgie" and just awkward squats trying to fix it, while John casually stands there drink his coffee waiting for Arthur his brother trying to fix it.

Charles is a big guy, he always knocks shit over

He is also a giant joker

John does the Jurassic park think of the Raptors with the horses 

Also hands down John and Arthur are half brothers and John is married to Abigail

Like the Supernatural blooper, Dutch does the same "I'm Dutch Fucking Vand der Linde" also Arthur did it to "I'm Arthur Fucking Morgan"

Lenny and Sean once opened their mouths when a siren if a police or fire truck came by once for a solid 5 minutes 

Arthur has ripped his pants so many times getting on and off his horse 

John had a few times

Dutch did it when he was getting on a box to talk

Arthur once did it on the downswing of the axe and there was a loud RIPPP and he just stood there reached back and said "I ripped my pants" he was in the background if Dutch and Hosea talking in camp everyone lost it laughing and wheezing

They are gassy guys to as we know

Bill is the worst in a part of the barn with Arthur, Uncle and Charles. Bill cleared the barn laughing as they tried to ignore the smell

Lenny's Silent and deadly so is Hosea 

Hosea escapes before anyone notices

Trelawny and Javier are fashion buddies, and are deadly together for outfits

Pearson is so unbalanced and falls a lot, drops everything 

When in Colter and Arthur was sitting next to John he told him "don't make me lick your face" making John laugh loudly

Once a fly vote around then as Sean swatted it and scared Lenny

Lenny jumped on Sean, be committed and carried him… for a while before Sean tripped and fell

Mary-Beth got scared cause she thought it was a bee

Charles filled someone's trailer with balls, or packing peanuts 

Blamed it on someone else's 

It's so hard to do close ups cause Arthur is trying to make them laugh

lots of random singing

One time John was so tired and has a little to much coffee and couldn't stop fucking up his lines and laughing

When Sean was to mill over he had to do a drop out if frame and he just kinda laid there like "am I out?" And he wasn't, bill jokingly stomped him laughing. 

They break so many props guns

Once John was gonna clean a prop Jun and is slapped him in his jaw, it hurt and left a bruise 

One time Susan was cleaning the rifle and Micah came to say his line, but the gun broke in Susan's hands making then break

In colter there is a part of Arthur laying in the snow with Lenny and Sean making snow Angels with Jack

When someone fucks up hard, like I mean HARD and it's just gibberish it is a running joke for a while

A few times serie got activated on someones phone in set and it broke everyone

On the boat with Hosea, Dutch and Arthur they did it and Arthur moved a little making Dutch lost his balance and fell into the water

It's a full joke that Dutch and Hosea are all of there dads and Susan hands down is there mother 

Micah loves the animals and his horse Baylock always follows him around refusing to leave

Like if someone is messing around they just yell "DDDAAADDDDD ARTHURS BEING MEAN"

Or the same with Susan

There are a lot of videos on Twitter or other stuff if the gang messing around on set

Javier likes to do a funky cowboy walk from a distance

Karen forgot her line once and just pulled Sean in for a kiss

Cain is a blessing, he is well trained, but it's funny

He gets over excited way to fast

He once brought Kieran to the ground in excitement

One time when the train thing with John on the clip Arthur Forgot his line and just stared out over the cliff and was quiet

John tried to hold it in but couldn't

thats pretty much all i got last night it was like 3am when i finished, i plan on making like more parts of this cause i just love this so much, what do you guys think or any of you have more to ass on? i want to hear ittttttt

another thing have all these amazing Trailers i watched that also sparked this idea for it

https://youtu.be/uAG9--YkouU

https://youtu.be/TUXNhbIopcw

[s-j-ace]

New Plan!

Characters: Shuichi Saihara, Ouma Kokichi

Words: 9,119

Summary:

Kokichi Ouma, leader of the mysterious group of thieves that go only by DICE, is going through the motions of orchestrating their biggest heist ever when an unexpected bump in the road changes everything. That bump in the road is a detective and his name is Shuichi Saihara.

Essentially the events of That’s the Thing About Airplanes from Kokichi’s POV

Read on AO3

Kokichi Ouma was ready to be bored out of his mind for the next eight hours as he boarded the flight behind his motley crew.  He was trying to keep himself busy by being generally exasperated with them. They were supposed to be posing as different family units or strangers that didn’t know one another, but King was supposed to be Rook’s uncle and they were touching each other’s butts while handing the lady their boarding passes. Bishop and Hearts were practically leaning on each other like they were tired or whatever, but they were supposed to be total strangers. Maybe they could be rewritten as half siblings or a whirlwind romance or something? Ugh whatever.

Kokichi would normally kick their asses about this, but he’d already anticipated their horrid 2 AM acting skills. The lady taking boarding passes was a plant. Jack had wriggled herself in as a flight attendant three days ago. She was currently taking boarding passes because of an understaffing issue. An issue that may or may not have been of natural causes... 

Anyway, she’d get on the flight and smuggle the tea on board. The heist plan didn’t really involve the plane at all, so this was kind of unnecessary, but god would he want that half-way to Paris hot tea party. Besides, he wasn’t really one to leave much to chance when it came to scheming. Although that characteristic was more out of habit than any sort of innate perfectionistic tendencies. He was a king of thinking on the fly, but nowadays he rarely ran amok in that court because he just so happened to also be just as much of a genius at premeditated mischief.

It was a good thing Jack had volunteered herself for the plant job. He’d call her the most competent of DICE at 2 AM if she hadn’t drawn a dick on his boarding pass while checking it.

“Wow, it’s almost like you’ve actually seen one, you virgin loser.” He had told her as he tucked the pass into his hoodie pocket. 

She smiled at him like he had complimented her handwriting or something inane like that. “Thanks! I’ve been working on my portraits. My boss is a real inspiration in my art you know…”

“I’d love to meet him someday,” Kokichi replied congenially, “He sounds handsome and brilliant and like he should always be listened to.”

She gave a thoughtful humm, “Actually he’s kind of a prick.” She blew a raspberry at him.

He frowned. “Well that’s rude,” he commented with an offended tone, “And out of character.” He shifted to an angrier persona. "Do you want to ruin everything?" Maybe it wasn’t entirely persona, he was a little tired too after all.

“Relax boss,” Jack said, looking at the screen in front of her with all the boarding information, “It says here you’re the last passenger.”

To be honest Kokichi’s concern-o-meter for this heist was in the negatives. He was pretty much bored by how well thought out this plan was, but he felt like he had to make a point and he was rarely ever honest besides.

Kokichi huffed moodily. “Yeah sure, but what if that detective from the smithsonian, like, stole the security camera footage from this airport or something totally plausible like that.”

He was kind of planning this conversation out a couple steps ahead. He did that sometimes, when he was bored. She’d refute him by calling the detective a goody-two-shoes or something and he’d say something about caution and she’d dismiss him and then something would pop up later where he could say ‘I told you so’ and re-establish his authority. The same happened when Ace wanted to prove how buff he was by lifting the mammoth bones from the Smithsonian. They'd had to stash it insecurely and the police got to it before they could come back for it later. That was a big ‘I told you so’ moment and as a result no one questioned him on his plans for the Louvre this time around.

Weirdly enough, his conversation forecast did not come to pass this time around.

Jack frowned, looking at the screen. “Hey, what was that guy’s name again? The guy from the Smithsonian.”

Kokichi frowned. “What, the mammoth?”

“No, like, the detective.”

Kokichi squinted at her. He was an evil mastermind, he could recall the exact angle of every laser scanner in the Louvre, of course he could remember the name of some guy. Shuichi Saihara. The novice detective whose dumb friend had tripped that allarm the night of the Smithsonian heist. They’d only had three minutes to get out with the picture frames and hide the mammoth because of him. The detective had showed up at a couple heists and had gotten in the paper, but honestly the mammoth thing was a bit of a fluke. They really hadn’t had a lot of time to stash it. Overall not a big deal.

Which was why it was weird that happy-go-lucky Jack of all people was bringing him up.

“What about him?”

“He’s, like, on the flight I think.” 

She showed him the screen and sure enough, Shuichi Saihara was sitting in economy class by the emergency exits. Well, it didn’t really say that on the screen, but given his seat number Kokichi could triangulate it from the diagram of the plane he had memorized. Not that he had really needed to that, but… wait… what if he did need to...

A light bulb went on in Kokichi’s head. In cartoons lightbulbs were just a little blink that meant a switch had flipped for a single eureka moment, but for Kokichi it was more like the real life current of electricity as all of the steps of a brand new heist plan tripped over each other to course through his mind. He forgot to be bored for a second as his brain was lit up with a new scheme and all the possible scenarios that could accompany it.

He had been missing this.

Something... unexpected.

Something... exciting.

Something... unnecessarily convoluted!

Jack took one look at his carefully not grinning face and groaned with exasperation. “Awww boss you ain’t changing the plan again are ya? You already wrote us like a 100 page novel about the first one…”

“Eh, fuck that plan.” Kokichi said doing some mental calculations, “Get me ten parachutes and see if Clubs has extra sleeping drugs I want you to put them in the passengers’ drinks. The strong stuff. Direct Queen towards the rooftop diagrams I shoved in his carry on. Tell me when it gets to be around 1:34 AM Paris time.”

She looked at him with annoyance at the sudden deluge of tasks. “Oh yeah, sure thing. And what are you going to do?”

He gave her his biggest, bestest, shit-eating-est grin. “Be myself, of course.”

Then he turned and boarded the plane, imagining and relishing in the weirded out look she was definitely giving him.

When he got to the entryway of the plane from the boarding hallway, he came upon Rook gossiping with one of the flight attendants. Kokichi heard something about a wedding and a honeymoon before Rook spotted him and excused themselves to find their seat.

“Good evening, sir.” The flight attendant said, still clearly coming off of the social high of talking about his personal happiness. Kokichi decided to slam him down from it, hard.

“It will now that I’m finally on the same damn plane as my husband.” He gave his best impression of a disgruntled everyman, which meant it was a great impression because his best was always great.

“R-right.” Ah yes, the security of making someone else feel socially awkward. Kokichi would make a great playground bully, that’s for sure. At least he was self aware. And putting his talents to good use! Bullying pseudo-law-enforcement was 100% valid according to all levels of morality.

As he walked down the aisle he noticed the rest of DICE ahead of him chattering like sparrows as they moved to the back of the plane. Originally they had planned to keep a low profile and have a pre-heist tea party before touching down in Paris, but now…

Kokichi spotted him, sure enough right by the emergency exits. He looked dead tired and about to doze off, so Kokichi took a second to make some quick observations he hadn’t gotten the chance to get on the night of the Smithsonian heist. The guy had this very detective-esque trench coat with lots of pockets, which was a shame because it meant that if Kokichi decided to pickpocket him he’d have trouble figuring out where his wallet was. Something that didn’t really fit Kokichi’s imaginings of a stereotypical detective, however was that the guy was around his own age in the mid twenties and didn’t seem like the grizzled gumshoe type at all. In fact he was kind of anti-grizzled. He had a boring pretty boy face like a model or something and instead of the full beard and square jaw Kokichi had half imagined any time the word “detective” came up in his mind’s eye he had eyeliner accentuating the only hair on his face and a very breakable looking face. Ok that was a very play ground bully thing to think. Except young people weren’t really as fun to bully as old people because they actually might be poor or emotionally insecure or something, which always made Kokichi feel a semblance of an emotion akin to guilt. But this guy was flying to Paris in the summer season and had been in America a couple weeks before, so fuck him basically. Didn’t he have a job or something?

Oh shit the guy was looking at him, how long had he been doing that?

Don't panic, analyze then act.

He seemed freaked. Probably because Kokichi had been staring at him for a couple seconds now. 

He put on a menacingly friendly grin and slipped into the seat next to the detective. Not the one in front of him, or one of the ones in his completely empty row, or even the aisle seat,  literally the one right next to him. He put his elbow on the armrest the detective had so kindly pulled down for him.

The guy still looked super freaked out, so Kokichi tried to shift his grin to the more congenial side of menacing.

“Hey, aren't you Shuichi Saihara?” He asked, extending his hand. He thought about coming up with a pseudonym but was too busy being delighted by the absolute terror on the detective’s face. “I'm your biiiggest fan.”

The guy shook his hand like it was the lever for his very own personal electric chair. Dramatic much?

It seemed to freak him out so Kokichi decided to run with the ‘biggest fan’ thread, chattering on, “I read aaall about that thing with the hairy elephant and the stupid ugly criminal you've been tracking.”

He would keep talking about the ironic impudence of this imaginary criminal but it really seemed like Saihara was having a dissociative episode while he was talking.

He frowned. That was kind of boring. “Hey are you like deaf or something?” That would be kind of extra boring because then Kokichi would be trying to bully a deaf dude and that would be lame. “Hey. Heyyyy. Earth to Shuichi Saihara.” Maybe he could thread some truth in here. “Geez I didn't expect you to be this boring in person…”

That seemed to get him.

Saihara shook his head like he was getting the dust out and stuttered out an "I-I-I'm sorry, what?"

Well maybe he had the soul of an old man, if not the looks of one, Kokichi thought to himself as he blithered on. “Have you been ignoring me? Not a very nice way to treat your biggest fans." He crossed his arms. "I, like, totally hate when heroes don't live up to your expectations."

Guy still looked half asleep… Maybe a change of scenery was in order… 

Kokichi noticed the chatty flight attendant from earlier coming down the aisle. It was time to act on his earlier framework...

He said something like “You can make it up to me,” but honestly even he wasn’t paying attention to what he was saying anymore. That was the only warning he gave before reaching over the detective to break his chair. If he had stopped to think about it, he might have thought it was awkward, but it wasn’t like he had to care about what this guy thought. He was going to leave him on the plane and probably never see him again.

Kokichi held himself back from giggling when the detective toppled over backwards.

“Oh no!” He feigned surprise, “How could this happen?”

"What happens to be the problem here gentlemen?" The flight attendant asked right on cue.

Saihara was looking pretty dubious but also not that talkative so Kokichi thought about the right words to spin this.

Distract. You’re the threat here, Kokichi.

"What's the problem? You're asking me what the problem is?" He shifted his tone to that of a white soccer mom used to getting what she wants. "The problem, good sir, is that this Rusty bucket of bolts you call an airplane just tried to give my husband a concussion! I could sue for this, you know."

The flight attendant broke easy.

"I'm so, so sorry sir." He quibbled. "Here, we'll make it up to you. It's a long flight and we don't have many guests so I can upgrade you both to first class with no additional charge."

Kokichi gave a rather hearty harrumph. Not bad as far as harrumphs go.

"You better. Or my lawyer will be hearing about this."

Hah. If Kokichi tried to talk to a lawyer he’d probably get arrested. Small claims lawyers were like cops but with even less spine and more capitalistic tendencies in his book.

The flight attendant didn’t seem to care about the rot of society, though, and tarried forth to first class. Saihara hadn’t quite caught on yet, so Kokichi grabbed his arm. For some reason he didn’t expect the detective to be so draggable. Detectives just didn’t seem that way. Like they could be dragged, but Saihara seemed too tired and confused to not be dragged. Thrilling! Boring. Okay okay don’t get ahead of the horses here. Horses? Uh.

First class was more Kokichi’s style. He let Saihara shuffle into the window seat so he’d be able to keep a look out for Jack’s signals in the aisle. 

"Let me know if there's anything else I can do to help you." The flight attendant said as Kokichi sat down.

Ugh it’s like he actually cared about his job or something. Being in customer service must be insufferable. 

Kokichi didn’t actually want to harrass this asshole when there was a perfectly good fake cop right next to him, so he replied with an apologetic smile, “Of course. Ah, I'm so rry for causing so much trouble, it's just the honeymoon you see and everything just has to be perfect, you know?”

"No, it's quite alright, I understand completely." The flight attendant seemed to relax a little, “I went through the same trouble with my husband. Really let me know if I can help you at all.”

Droll. “Thanks sooo much!" he intoned gratefully. He turned to Saihara who still looked like he was in shock. "Wasn't he just the nicest Shuichi?"

Saihara blinked at him. "... If you had enough money to hire a lawyer that could sue an airline so frivolously then you would've already been in first class."

Hey! That sounded like something a detective would say!

"I'm just stingy." Hah. Beat that logic. Nice one Kokichi.

Saihara squinted like he was about to bless Ouma with another brilliant deduction. 

"... Did you sit next to me so you could convince that gay flight attendant to put you in first class?"

Wow!!! He was thinking!!! He was totally wrong but at least he was trying.

"I can't believe you figured it out!" Kokichi did his best impression of a widow revealing a dark secret on prime time television. "It's true…Detective Saihara I was lying about being married to you the whole time. I thought you knew..."

"Wha- of course I knew that!" Saihara sputtered.

"Oh! How can you ever forgive me?" The flight attendant was definitely out of range by now so this seemed like a good time for some melodramatic tears. "Waah!"

"H-hey! Stop that." Wow what a bad detective. Is that how you comfort people? Sad.

Kokichi was about to weep even more for the loss of chivalry when the asshole shoved something at him. Was that… a handkerchief? This guy just had a handkerchief? Is that not something that only people in movies do? 

Weird.

Kokichi snatched it from him, exclaiming, “"Oh wow! What a gentlemanly thing to do!"

He proceeded to make his most grotesque snot noises imaginable.

“A-are you alright?” The detective stuttered out.

Kokichi pondered a couple iterations of “no, and it’s your fault” before deciding that was boring and saying “Perfectly fine.” He flicked out the handkerchief and held it a bit to make sure Shuichi noticed it was clean before tucking it in his pockets. “Just a liar is all.”

"A-a liar?"

Kokichi frowned at him. "No, where did you hear that?" He made an expression of disgust. “Ick, I hate liars after all.” He put on his manic pixie dream girl sees a light bulb for a first time look. “That's why I'm such a big fan of yours, Shuichi.”

"I-is that so?" Ah, the panic of a person unprepared for social interaction at two am was a sight for sore eyes. “Um.” Or maybe it said nothing of Ouma’s own skill that this guy was an awkward glob. "Y-you seem to know my name, but, uh, what's yours?"

A question! An inquiry! One for which Kokichi had the perfect answer....

"Kaito Momota."

“What.” 

Wow! What a flat tone Saihara had! Almost like he didn’t believe him or something absurd like that.

Kokichi waved his hands dismissively. "I know, I know, isn't that the name of your friend who was in the paper? That's why I read it, by the way," he said matter of factly. "Because we have the same name."

Ugh, he was adding too much supporting detail. That’s something bad liars do and he wasn’t a bad liar. He was the best liar. Accept no substitutions. Unless they were really good at lying about being a substitution… then they would probably be the best liar… 

Ok whatever ranking of liar he was it was probably good enough to fool-

"... I-is that another lie?"

Ah fuck.

"Neeheehee… ya caught me." Best to bail early on this kind of thing. "If you guess my real name by the end of the flight I'll give you a prize!"

"Like Rumplestiltskin?"

Really? Was his own charade getting that cartoonish already?

“Aww man. You guessed it the first try. That's no fun.” Logically this was boring but he was doing okay as far as airplanes went. "I guess now you'll just have to guess my second, less cool, real name instead."

As great as he was at being evasive in all situations why was the subject not changed by now.

"... Honestly I'd much rather be sleeping through this flight." The detective rubbed his face, and Kokichi noticed the darker shades of his eyelids weren’t all eyeliner. He must have business. Something that was keeping him up at night.

Kokichi determined some short term goals for this conversation. Find out why the detective was going to Paris was primary among them. That information would narrow down his field of options for how to spend the rest of the flight.

Kokichi scoffed. “Why would anyone get on a flight to Paris at 2 AM if they weren't prepared to be up all night?" He shifted back into the fanboy thread, "Oh! Oh! Oh! I bet you've got another case you're hot on the trail of, huh Mr. Detective?”

Saihara seemed to hesitate. “Uh, sort of.”

Kokichi thought he was going to say something more but after a few seconds of silence, it was clear he needed further prompting.

"What kind of answer is that?" His words seemed to surprise the Detective, which was a bit silly considering that they had been having a conversation, where words being exchanged should be the norm. "How can you only sort of be solving a mystery?" Kokichi lied through his teeth. "You know, I just so happen to also be a world class detective."

“Really? Saihara’s skeptical and unassertive response was less of a question in this conversation and more of a way to measure how gullible he was.

"Yes, really!" Kokichi replied, storming ahead, "And as a real life detective I just so happen to know that when you're working a case you work it with 100% of yourself!"

Saihara made this weird, soft sound. It took Kokichi a moment's consideration to realize it was supposed to be a laugh because it sounded not at all like the howling cackles growing up with DICE had familiarized him with.

"I guess you're kind of right about that…” He fidgeted with the edges of his coat. “There's, uh, this case that I've been looking into for a long time now and I guess I have really been putting 100% of myself into it. My friends think I'm going a little crazy…"

Ooh, that was something. 

“Your friends? Like that purple haired guy who was in the paper? The one with the dumb name?”

Considering the nitwit Saihara had been romping around the Smithsonian with, the detective must really be off the deep end on this case to be considered looney by his friends. 

Kokichi was predicting a silly story that he could use to justify to DICE his choice to sit next to the detective the whole flight beyond satiating this little whim of his for a taste of the unexpected. He imagined them laughing about the detective from the smithsonian who thought the Eiffel tower was a secret spaceship or something as Kokichi explained how he just had to stick around to make fun of him.

Oh shit the detective was saying something.

"-him and one other friend think I'm making this thing about the Louvre up… and maybe I am a little crazy."

… The Louvre, huh?

Kokichi scrutinized the detective. He couldn’t mean… “The Louvre? Like, someone's gonna steal the Mona Lisa?"

"Uh, no." The detective looked away as if mildly embarrassed. "I think, uh, someone's going to take the plumbing from the renovated bathrooms…"

Kokichi’s brain registered two things about Shuichi Saihara at the same time. One: he was a real detective. Not a hopeless buffoon of a gumshoe like the ones you saw in video games about dystopian court systems and gay lawyers. He had made a real life deduction and had done so accurately. He was on a case. The second thing he realised was that Shuichi Saihara was a direct threat to his entire operation.

People usually categorize threats as something to induce fear. Some would describe the fear as “bone chilling.” 

When Kokichi registered a threat his toes got cold. Not because he was scared or something dumb like that, but because his blood suddenly had a better place to be. 

Kokichi’s brain raced with possibilities, brand new scenarios and personas that he could put on. Like he had been sitting at a boring ass company play only to realize that the curtains were rising to reveal a dramatic opera where he was the star. Ok, Kokichi wasn’t exactly a poet laureate when it came to analogies, but he was excited okay?

Kokichi shuffled the deck of options and picked a card.

"Wow. You must be really smart to have figured that out." Ok, good thought to start with praise. He has a low self esteem. "You know…" Kokichi leaned in. Shuichi leaned away. Good. Make him uncomfortable by getting in his bubble.

Now, just for fun, lie wildly. 

 "I just so happen to be the leader of a secret organization with about 10,000 members. We rule the world from the shadows. I think we could use a detective like you."

Shuichi obviously didn’t believe him, which was, to his credit, absolutely fair. “That- that has to be a lie. There is no possible way for such an organization to exist.” 

Sad detective, falling for the classic hiding in plain sight maneuver. Disguise the truth of DICE in an unbelievable lie and he doesn’t believe any of it.

"And here I was thinking you were particularly clever." And, twist. "Seeing as you've refused to join my organization… it seems I'll have to kill you."

Oh man that really seemed to frazzle the good detective. What, had he never gotten a death threat before? Typical. It would be funny to see his expression if Kokichi were to just stab him right now. Except ew because blood and also ending human life. Yikes. Weird train of thought.

"But I'll let you leave this flight with your life if you can beat me in a game."

That seemed to calm the detective down a bit, like he realized Kokichi was just joking. It’d be funny when Kokichi pulled out the knife later. Ah, ah, ah, no spoilers.

"How about Russian Roulette with a full barrel?"

Shuichi sputtered, "This is a plane, you don't have a gun!"

Kokichi considered the ‘my ruse has been discovered….’ line again before he realized he’d used it like twice now and tossed it aside for: "Oh that's right, left it on my tchotchke shelf, silly me. Well I guess if you just want to beg like a dog and then split your guts open that would be acceptable."

Wow ok a little harsh there. Kokichi’s single brain cell devoted to tact whispered. What? No. No filter. Fuck you brain trying to conform to social conventions, shut the fuck up and stay out of my personality.

"Um, no that would kill me."

"Damn, nothing gets past you… Hmm… Ok, how about…" Kokichi reached into the pocket he usually left his Yu-Gi-Oh deck in. "A shadow game!"

He held up the cards only to realize they were actually just a normal playing deck. Oh yeah, he left his deck at home because he thought Rook might steal his blue eyes while he slept on the plane. Shit. Oh well, playing cards could be fun too.

"It's time to du-du-du-du-du-du-du-duel!"

Shuichi blinked. "A...duel? Shadow Game...?"

"Hmhmhm... Yes, the loser's soul will get sent to the Shadow Realm…" he shuffled them so that Shuichi and him would draw the same cards, "We each pull one card from this deck, and whoever has the largest number wins!"

Shuichi looked rather befuddled but Kokichi kept going full steam ahead.

This wasn’t really a game of chance anyhow. That wasn’t the point. The game had two motives, the first being to gauge Shuichi’s reactions to different scenarios, the second being to build up Kokichi himself as someone intimidating and mysterious. The card game wasn’t extremely telling, but the ensuing bout of rock paper scissors was. 

Kokichi was keeping pretty busy predicting what Shuichi was going to pick next in order to make it a tie, but Shuichi didn’t protest at all to the mindless repetitive game it must have been for him. He was either easily impressed by rock paper scissors or just too awkward to tell Kokichi to fuck off.

Apparently the guy sitting in the row in front of them had no qualms about such things. He hit the back of his seat and grumbled “Oh my God shut up already.”

A bunch of weirdly indignant thoughts ran through Kokichi’s head. 

Wow! Rude asshole! Mind your own fucking business! Get some damn headphones!

Shuichi looked like being told he was annoyed by a random asshole was his equivalent of seeing a ghost as he muttered out some inane apology. 

Not that he cared about how this guy felt, but him suddenly clamming up just wasn’t very fun at all. 

Just when he was making headway too…

… Maybe it was time to get rid of the distractions.

"Gosh Shuichi you really were being just too loud. You're like the loudest person I've ever met."

Shuichi looked at him like he was crazy which Kokichi appreciated for a millisecond before raising his voice to say, “Ugh that game was getting boring though, and no one won so it's probably time for something else.” He leaned over the aisle, noticing that Jack was standing in the aisle at the back of the plane chit chatting with Spades as Queen stole pretzel packets from the snack cart.

"Hey,” he called, “When's drink service?"

The three DICE members under his scrutiny froze like they had been caught doing something they shouldn’t be. They were probably gossiping about him again. Great.

Jack got her bearings fairly quickly, pushing the drink cart up the aisle. "Coming right up~" She trilled cheerfully.

As she passed by to start service at the front of the plane, Kokichi noticed a little green vial tucked into Jack’s sleeve. Most likely the sleep drug Kokichi had requested before he got on the plane. Hmm. He wanted to get rid of the distractions, but he wasn’t exactly sure distractions included Shuichi anymore. The flight was still pretty long and Kokichi knew he’d be bored out of his mind forever if he didn’t get through this whole game gambit with the detective.

Another spur of the moment change of plans was in order and it hit Kokichi with yet another wave of excitement.

"Hey, Shuichi!” He exclaimed, “We should have a tea party!"

Shuichi gave him another look. “A tea party? I don't think they ha-”

Kokichi didn’t have the patience not to speedrun Shuichi’s disbelief.

“Well oooobviously you wouldn't know anything about it.” He interrupted. “I'm the leader of a super secret organization after all, so of course I know about the super secret drink menu available on all air planes.

Shuichi frowned. "But they couldn't bring anything to-” 

He stopped listening. Something something blah blah blah doubt doubt doubt. 

Kokichi shook his head dismissively, getting ready to set up an I told you so moment. 

“Just watch.”

When Jack rolled up with the drink cart she made a hand signal that told Kokichi things were going well on DICE’s end of things. "And what would you fine sirs like to drink?" She asked in a register slightly higher than usual. Jack was being smarter than Kokichi about this and had basically contoured all of her distinctive facial traits away, so Kokichi wouldn’t have to worry about Shuichi tracking her down from this interaction.

"A cup of hot green tea."

Pretty much the only reason he was going along with this impulsive plan of his was that the only person who would get any heat for it if things was south was him. He wouldn’t put DICE’s livelihoods in danger for a whim such as this.

"Sure thing!"

Was this even a whim anymore?

"And what about you?"

Of course it was.

"Shuichi here will have the same thing."

If it wasn’t then it would have to be something else.

And if it were something else, then Kokichi wouldn’t know what it was.

He couldn’t afford to be that stupid.

"Of course.” Jack smiled almost a little too fakely. “Anything added in like sugar or cream?"

She was obviously double checking that Kokichi didn’t want this bastard drugged.

"No, we're both taking it plain today."

"Oh, really? Alright then." 

She poured the tea.

“"I hear you two are on a honeymoon? That's so lovely. Can I see the rings?”

Kokichi usually appreciated that Jack was quick to catch on to things, but she was bordering on insubordination at this point. 

"You know what I hear?” Time to play real housewives of DICE with this gossip again. “That lonely flight attendants should realize they're sad and nosey losers who should keep their noses out of happy people's business."

Aw shit she was going to think he was flustered and covering up something wasn’t she.

"Teehee~ Yes sir! Enjoy the flight." Yeah she totally was on to him

Wait no because to be on to him she would have to be right and she wasn’t so there.

Oh shit wait Shuichi was still here. Looking extremely awkward and unsure if he was also supposed to start bitching at flight attendants like it was common etiquette or something.

"That was all code you know.” He brushed it off. “Super secret organization stuff. You probably wouldn't understand."

"Uh, yeah." He said, "I probably wouldn't." 

Wow this guy was funny. Kokichi was moderately glad he wasn’t in a drug induced coma right now. Moderately glad was pretty good for an airplane vis a vis emotional stability.

"Neeheehee…” He let himself laugh a little. “Drink the tea Shuichi, I've got to pull you into a false sense of security before your final trial."

Shuichi frowned. "I feel like by pointing out that you're trying to lull me into a false sense of security you have essentially not done so."

"See, but because you feel that way it means I have succeeded in lulling you."

Shuichi frowned again, but seemed to see no logic in arguing. He decided to take a sip of his tea instead. Kokichi noticed the asshole in the chair in front of him was asleep. So was the guy in the seat across from his, and the woman in front of that guy was dozing too. Everyone else had a drink and would be soon to follow.

Everyone except for…

“So how do you like the tea, Shuichi?” Ouma asked.

Shuichi was drinking that hot leaf juice like a pro who didn’t even feel the burn. He made a contemplative expression.

“It’s pretty good as far as tea goes.” He shrugged. “I’m more of a coffee guy.”

Kokichi felt a little offended on the behalf of DICE’s custom blend as well as all of the classy tea drinkers in the world. He shook his head

"Fff, what are you, a cop or something? Next you’ll be telling me you like donuts more than cupcakes." 

Shuichi made a weird face before looking away. 

"Holy shit," Kokichi said. This was the perfect time to both change the subject and do a little investigating of his own. " Are you a cop? Like a really funny undercover cop who decided to pretend to be someone with the exact same job?"

"Uh, no, that's not it." 

Was it something about the donuts then or- wait no that was stupid it was obviously the cop thing. 

Shuichi was looking out the window now. "I, uh, did used to be a force detective."

"Huh," Kokichi remarked, trying to peek around at Shuichi's face, "Were you fired or something? You must've been pretty bad to get fired from some backwater police station."

"No that's not it." He seemed to be leaning into some sort of memory, "I quit actually…"

Ugh, who gave this fucking loser the right to be interesting. It was totally unfair.

Kokichi kept digging, "Man why wouldn't you want to be a cop. Clearly the most respectable public service someone can provide for their country…" but that was totally a lie. Cops suck.

Shuichi frowned. "I, uh, kind of disagree with that." He was pulling at his fingers like he was trying to stretch them like taffy. "I met a lot of people on the force who really did care about making the community better, but I feel like the existence of law enforcement is really a symptom of larger societal problems, and that the structure of power doesn't work to reduce crime or violence but instead works increase it by giving a group of privileged individuals the power to instill generational trauma in communities."

Uh… huh. Kokichi took a moment to process that because he had never thought about “cops = bad” beyond their innate fuddy duddy inclinations to stop him specifically from doing whatever the hell he wanted. What the fuck? Did this guy actually have, like, opinions??? And legitimate reasons for them??? Who gave him the right??? How could Kokichi hear more of them???

Pff wait he was probably some rich kid who took maybe one social justice class in college and became a stooge of the state anyway. Maybe he was, like, a real policeman's embittered assistant or something.

"That's lame." He lied, "cops are the cops, do you want folks to be murdering people left and right all the time??? I bet you've never even met a criminal." Hehe that one was a bit ironic, he'd laugh about it later.

Shuichi furrowed his brow at him, "Well, I have… I was a homicide detective, actually. I've arrested murderers in person many times..."

What???? Is this what talking to all strangers for extended periods of time was like? You found out they actually had lives? And cool careers? That they made their livings in murder?

Nah, Shuichi was probably an exception. You don't meet an anti cop homicide detective everyday after all…

Kokichi decided he was being too endeared so he planned out a new branch of conversation that would hopefully make Shuichi squeamish, or at least unnerved.

He put on his best enthusiasm face. "Tell me about a murder! Tell me, tell me, tell me!"

Shuichi blinked at him, surprised at his sudden shift in mood. "Uh, alright then…" he said.

Shuichi started to go into detail about a case he had solved his first year on the force. Some guy turned up dead in a public pool and everyone else had basically given up on the case. Shuichi was describing how he figured it out through deductions and use of specific forensic techniques, and to be honest he wasn't exactly a master of suspense. Kokichi was able to deduce the murderer from the details Shuichi chose to include. No, none of that was why he was completely mesmerized with Shuichi while he talked.

Hearing about the things that Shuichi did to get to the evidence in the first place was… impressive???

No that couldn’t be right. 

Maybe it was just weird to see a mousey guy like him get as jazzed up as Kokichi about solving murders, and not even in a weird or vaguely creepy way. He just seemed like… Kokichi hadn't thought about it in a long time but when he was a kid he read a shit ton of mystery manga, where the heroes were detectives. He had since then moved on to more sophisticated literature such as airplane diagrams and police radio transcripts, but Shuichi reminded him of those detectives instead of the old fuddy duddies with which he had begun to associate the profession. He was just kind of… cool. Yeah that was the word for it. Cool. Like he was always going to get around to the right answer no matter what. Yeah, he had that abstract "coolness" factor that had drawn Kokichi to protagonists as a kid.

Kokichi wanted to steal it from him. Break his composure, become the center of the stage in this narrative. Yet, at the same time he suddenly dreaded his own inevitable heel turn. This was something rare, he decided, getting to talk one on one with Shuichi like this. It would probably never happen again.

So Kokichi listened. He teased, interjected, and prompted superfluous explanations, but he listened. 

And Shuichi talked. He talked about murder most foul, crooked cops, elusive evidence, and the friends he made along the way. Shit straight out of a manga that Kokichi was spending his Saturday morning hyper-fixating on.

The conversation only ended when Shuichi had to get up to use the toilet. A stark reminder that manga wasn’t real and in meatspace human beings had to shit every now and then. Kokichi watched him go and felt a little sad. Like he knew whatever it was worth, the moment had passed. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity and now all he had was to dissect it over and over again in his head until it became mangled beyond recognition...

Yeah yeah ok, world's tiniest violin, scattered ashes, ceremonial boat burning, yadda yadda.

Kokichi had a heist to pull off, no time for any of this silly stuff. He dismissed whatever weird feelings were bubbling in his chest and decided to go with the more practical inspiration that struck him. He took a couple seconds to plan out his grand exit. He decided to leave Shuichi a note and justified to himself that heists had been getting boring lately and as a proper game master he should give Shuichi a hint. Hmm were his initials too much? It might seem like…

Well he didn't really know what it seemed like, which was weird because he was a genius. Was he actually trying to figure out how Shuichi would react to this? He hadn't really thought about what Shuichi's opinion of him had been because he had only started thinking of Shuichi as an actual person halfway through the flight. That was the thing about being in a close knit organization, he always thought about DICE as an extension of himself and everyone else as some sort of nebulous other he had to predict the movements of. Sometimes he forgot that if you spent a lot of time talking to some stranger you find out they have brains and lives and stuff.

Speaking of things that probably have brains and lives and stuff, things seemed to be going good with DICE. Jack had signaled him that she told everyone about the plan when she came by to collect trash. 

Of course, he and Shuichi were the only ones she took trash from. Everyone else was fast asleep, all according to plan. Kokichi had written some last minute details on a napkin he had put in the trash bag, so they all knew they were dropping soon. 

They were also all probably gossiping about him. He supposed that's what he got for ditching them to sit with a detective dressed in black like a sexy motorcycle. Wow that was terrible where did his brain even get that line and how could he use it to make Shuichi freak out. Probably pretty easily...

Except if everything went according to plan maybe he wouldn't have the chance. Not like this. He imagined himself yelling the comment at Shuichi from the safety of a getaway chopper, like in the movies…

Ok his note was basically done now. Oh hmm. This actually seemed kind of desperate, the note. It kind of screamed "track me down to the end of the world please" like some sort of piss baby cry for help. 

Aw shit. He was thinking about what Shuichi thought about him again...

Speak of the devil and he shall appear but Kokichi was already here and hadn't talked about himself in a bit, so Shuichi showed up instead. His hands were wet which meant he washed them and goddammit it was insufferable how tolerable this guy was. Did he have no weaknesses besides being generally awkward and also being someone who used to be a cop? Ugh wait the latter was kind of cool too. Insufferable.

Well you know what they say, if you can't beat em plan to jump off an airplane because you did beat them they just don't know it yet.

Kokichi decided their final trial together deserved some dramatic build up, so he bowed to Shuichi as he got up to let him sit back down. 

"Welcome, combatants." He illustriated, "Take your seat and prepare for the final trial."

Shuichi gave him a wary look as he slid back into his seat. 

"What is it this time?" he asked.

Kokichi considered pulling out the crying on that one, but got too excited about how Shuichi would react to his pulling out the knife instead. Thusly he reprimanded the detective’s lack of enthusiasm with a single tsk.

“You could stand to be a little more concerned mister detective, it’s your life on the line after all.” 

Shuichi gave him a dubious look, like he trusted airport security and general societal norms to keep him from being murdered. 

Kokichi wanted to tear down the walls of that trust.

He pulled out the knife.

Shuichi’s reaction was instantaneous. He practically jumped away from Kokichi in his seat. Weirdly enough... that just made Kokichi realize they had been sitting pretty close before...

How did that happen?

Eh no time for that.

“Is that a knife?” Shuichi yelped, “How did you get a knife on the plane?”

It was weird how Shuichi stuttered about everything except things that were actually dangerous. Well maybe Kokichi having a knife wasn’t really dangerous, but Shuichi didn’t know that and here he was saying complete words. Sentences and all. And yet it still had the streak of incredulity running through it that shot through to Kokichi’s head faster than his own signature panta-redbull blend.

“Oh, a villain's got his ways.” He said in a way that he thought was pretty cool and mysterious.

Shuichi still seemed to be panicking a bit and Kokichi was getting a little tired of that so he brushed past it.

“Now this game's pretty easy to understand, but you gotta be skilled,” he explained matter of factly, “I'll go first to show you how it's done.”

When some other kids had showed him this game when he was an even tinier bastard they had started off slow and slowly sped up. But he was still kind of leaning into the shock factor, and going slow was lame. He started stabbing the table through his fingers at a breakneck pace.

“H-hey!” Shuichi exclaimed (oh so now he stutters), “You're gonna hurt yourself doing that!”

“Pff, as if I would.” 

The thing about this game is that it required rhythm, and rhythm required predictable repetition, and being predictable was the antithesis to everything that brought him joy in life.

He sped up.

“Here it's really easy.”

He went even faster.

The knife went *thuck thuck thuck* as it massacred the table.

When you did something the same way for a long time it gave you time to think about things. It didn’t really give you anything specific to think about, though, so Kokichi always felt like he was wasting time.

The knife went *thkthkthk* between his fingers.

He wanted to consider next steps. How long he would do this for and what would he do if Shuichi lost the game… Instead he started thinking about when he learned the game. He remembered he had picked it up from some of the older kids at one of the homes. The only other thing he remembered about them was one time they had stood by a rose bush with him, tearing off thorns and pushing them into their fingertips. Kokichi had done it and remembered that it didn’t feel like anything at all.

*Schlick*

Your fingers are full of blood vessels and nerves, but if you push down to the cartilage-

Oh wait. 

“Agh!” Shuichi exclaimed from beside him, “You’re bleeding!”

Kokichi was bleeding.

He was looking at his hand. His knife had nicked a millimeter of skin on the inner side of his ring finger, just at the junction between the tip of his finger and the second part of the ligament. It occurred to him that he was in pain.

“Ow,�� He said on instinct. Or maybe he thought it in his head. It didn’t matter because he was busy also thinking about how Shuichi had just grabbed his wrist and pulled it over to him.

The detective placed Kokichi’s hand in his lap like a sandwich he was saving for later while he ruffled through his coat pockets. He drew out a bandaid and lifted Kokichi’s hand again. His fingers were longer than Kokichi’s, and they felt sort of cold, like his blood had better places to be than his fingertips. They were very, very gentle as they wrapped a bandage around the bleeding finger. Almost like Shuichi cared or something.

The detective’s greyish green eyes flickered up to him and Kokichi realized Shuichi had really long eyelashes. “You really ought to be more careful.” He said in his soft way.

Kokichi was honestly having more emotions than were necessary about this, so he focused on the annoyance.

Man, good at figuring things out, is interesting, has opinions, and actually cares about other people? Was this guy even a real person??? That seemed like too many character traits. Geez Shuichi, why did mom let you have all of the attractive personality qualities?

Did he say attractive? He meant annoying. 

Shuichi squinted at him. His eye lashes weren’t that long, he was wearing eyeliner. Kokichi had already noticed that. He just had to start thinking coherent thoughts again.

“What is it? Are you alright?”

Yeah, for sure.

Shuichi was still holding his hand and Kokichi decided it was time to not be touching another person again, so he quickly whipped it away. He tried to settle into a boastful kind of hands behind the head pose, but worried that the effect was lost by the sudden squirming of emotions in his gut.

"Geez," Kokichi said petulantly, "I can't believe you actually beat me."

He stomped everything down. It was time for action not... not whatever this was.

Shuichi blinked at him in confusion. "Beat you? But I didn't even play…"

"Doesn't matter." Kokichi shifted to a new pose where he leaned his arm on the rest in between them and propped his head up, positioned for his next steps. "The rules were if I cut myself I lose, and I lost."

“...Although, it doesn't matter if you join my organization or not anymore, Shuichi."

Shuichi looked at him in confusion and Kokichi found it kind of frustrating that he didn’t know which aspect of this that Shuichi was contemplating. 

“Uh, it doesn’t?”

Very eloquent, Shuichi, that clears things up.

"Nope." Kokichi moved a bit so that both elbows rested on the arm rest and propped his head up closer to Shuichi’s. "Because I've already done something much more important than winning."

As Kokichi leaned in Shuichi leaned back. Shuichi was staring pretty intensely at his eyes which made this the perfect opportunity. Kokichi’s hands went lightly down to Shuichi’s waist, where he put the detective’s seat belt into a dreadknot.

“W-what's that?” The detective stammered, no doubt as alarmed by the proximity as Kokichi had anticipated.

Kokichi hadn’t really anticipated what he would say next though.

He went with, “I've stolen your heart.” He felt a millennia of DICE movie nights spent making fun of romantic comedies crash against his soul and decided to change the genre before he embarrassed himself. “Because I'm a thief you know?”

He was practically breathing in Shuichi’s ear by now, which made this next part a little hard. He unbuckled his seatbelt. Then, in a fluid motion Kokichi’s hands went behind his head as he arched to place them on the aisle armrest. He did a handstand for an instant on the arm rest before landing his feet across the aisle on to some poor bastard’s tray table.

When he came up for air he observed that he had knocked a cup over and that Shuichi had just noticed his own seat belt malfunction. The detective’s look of dawning realization felt like a standing ovation.

"Hmmm, I really should kill you, now that you've seen my face," and maybe he would if DICE were that kind of organization. It was kind of troubling that the police would get sketches, and the gang would probably harrang him about it. But eh, what can you do. 

Certainly not murder. You can’t just murder people. That’d be dumb. Boring even.

Kokichi hopped down from the tray table and grabbed his heist bag. It would’ve been bad to forget that, he considered as he pulled out his mask, Louvre cameras are a lot more reliable than a half asleep detective’s recount.

Said detective was certainly fully awake now, looking at Kokichi in an utterly gobsmacked manner. Kokichi felt like he was sinking his teeth into the stem of a rose thrown from the audience.

"... But I think that'd be a waste, don't you?" Maybe the trouble was what he was looking for, after all. He wondered if they would fingerprint the arm rests when the plane touched down. They wouldn’t find any matches in any criminal database, so it didn’t matter much to him. He put on his gloves anyway before tossing Shuichi the note he had written.

No time for second drafts. He thought as he started walking down the aisle.

“Somebody! Stop him!” Shuichi yelled from behind him. It was so manga detective that Kokichi wanted to scream.

The rest of DICE was already getting up with their parachutes on, and a few turned towards Shuichi’s call. Thank goodness they were wearing their masks because he wasn’t sure if Shuichi could still see down the aisle or not. He might’ve seen Jack’s face, but she had been wearing a lot of makeup so it was probably fine.

She certainly didn’t seem concerned. She was checking the knots the only actual flight attendant on the plane was trussed up in.

Ace, always a little over eager, wrenched open the emergency exit as Kokichi was still putting his parachute on. He felt the drastic change of air pressure in those spaces you feel it in your skull and stomach. He hadn’t realized how warm the inside of the plane was until the cold air sucked it out. 

He used convenient zippers to close up his hoodie pockets, knife included, and buckled up the rest of the parachute’s straps.

He looked back, just once. Shuichi was peering out at him in the aisle. He looked like his world was ending and Kokichi reveled in the power of that. That he was just that important to this detective.

The curtains are about to drop but there are still people screaming in the balconies.

He smiled.

The encore wasn’t up to him.

“So long, Mr. Detective!" He got to the window. "Better luck next time.”

Kokichi jumped back first out of the plane and the walls and the aisles and the lights of the plane slipped out of view through the emergency exit one by one.

And he fell.

He fell and flipped over to take in the view of Paris below. The city of lights indeed. It was beautiful, he supposed.

He fell, letting himself enjoy the breeze a bit before reaching terminal velocity. 

He didn't though. 

Enjoy it. 

It felt like getting on a fucking awesome roller coaster except it’s also your every day ride to your job at some dead end minimum wage desk.

It was… boring. Routine.

Just victory, just the Louvre, just air.

Even as the other members of DICE whooped and hollered on their descent, Kokichi realized the fun part of the heist was already over. The whole heist was over.

He could predict it all.

He would deploy his parachute, he would float down to the Louvre, and he would orchestrate a perfect heist.

But Kokichi Ouma realized then that he would never stopped falling.

[eleanor-writes-stuff]

and my heart goes boom, boom, boom [ficlet]

When Ben first decided to start a rival fireworks shop near his father’s place at the young age of eighteen, he didn’t really have much of a plan aside from “piss Dad off”.

But he can’t exactly say that to the beautiful girl behind the counter now, can he?

Earlier this week my sleep-deprived mind and I were scrolling down my dashboard when I came across this post about rival fireworks shops. @orkindofamazing had reblogged it with a couple of Reylo tags, and next thing I knew I had a ficlet on my hands. 

So here’s the fireworks shop AU no one ever asked for.

First posted here. Also available on AO3. And hey, maybe check out my Twitter and Ko-fi?

Ben Solo might well be the only kid in the world who can say he grew up splitting his free time between a Senator’s office and a smuggler’s illegal fireworks shop.

His father has been running Dishonest Don’s for as long as he can remember. Hell, his very first memory is of the shop, of being shut away in the back office and slowly sinking into the lumpy couch while his parents made annoyed faces and wild gestures at each other just beyond the window. It was all so funny and entertaining to young Ben until his mother stormed into the office, scooped him up, and shouted something about child-appropriate environments at his father while Ben waved goodbye over his mother’s shoulder.

He was back in the shop less than a week later, when his mother couldn’t find anyone else to watch him during her filibuster. Just this once, she told him and his father. This is the last time, she promised him two months later.

It wasn’t.

The last time was when he was thirteen and rumors were spreading about Senator Organa’s shady husband and Ben watched his father pick the stupid shop over his family.

The next time his mother tried to drop him off at Dishonest Don’s, Ben tried to convince her that he was old enough to stay home by himself. His mother agreed almost immediately, in what was probably the shortest argument in her entire life.

So from then on Ben stayed home and watched his father head off to work, and he sulked, and he seethed, and he plotted.

In lieu of a big bash with non-existent friends for his eighteenth birthday, Ben gets a typical Organa-Solo family dinner.

His father is actually home in time for dinner, for once, but he and Chewie talk about work all evening anyway.

Uncle Luke tries to ask him about school, then girls, then his future, until his mother takes mercy on him and drags her brother away under the guise of needing to consult him on a very important, very confidential matter.

There are a few others scattered here and there, familiar faces always in the background of nearly every birthday he’s ever had, but there’s only one Ben is interested in talking to.

“Happy birthday, kid!” Lando grins as he approaches, and Ben knows he’s made the right choice when his uncle toasts him with a beer and immediately proceeds to hand said beer to him. “Probably time to stop calling you that, huh? Eighteen. Eighteen,” he whistles. “Feels like just yesterday you were hiding in my cape to block out the fireworks. And now look at you. There’s no cape in the world big enough for you to hide in, young man!”

Ben drops his eyes to the ground, scuffs his feet for a bit, holds back a satisfied grin at Lando calling attention to his newly filled-out frame.

His uncle knows him well enough to change the subject.

“So, any plans, Benny? Eighteen’s a pretty big deal.”

He looks up, holds eye contact as he knocks back his beer. Is alcohol supposed to be involved when you pitch a business idea to your mysteriously rich uncle?

Either way, Ben figures it can’t hurt.

“Actually, on the subject of fireworks…”

At the ribbon cutting for Honest John’s, Han laughs until he’s doubled over on the sidewalk, tears streaming down his face.

It’s not exactly the reaction Ben was looking for, but he almost doesn’t mind when his father comes up to him later that day and squeezes his shoulder.

“This is… this is really something you’ve put together here, son. Much better than anything I could’ve come up with.”

Much more legal, too, but Ben keeps that thought to himself for once. Because his father is looking up at him, and he’s got a hand on Ben’s back, and for once Han smiles, actually smiles, when he says, “I’m proud of you, Ben.”

So maybe it’s not the confrontation Ben’s been itching for since he was thirteen and he saw tears in his mother’s eyes for the very first time as she tried to make his dad understand the consequences of his actions.

And yeah, it’s probably not going to turn into a fistfight that’ll finally give him the chance to wipe that cocky smirk of his father’s face.

But there’s a telltale shine in his mother’s eyes as she runs her hands over the counter he built, and there’s no sign of a smirk on his father’s face as he admires the rest of the shop, and when his parents meet in the middle they take each other’s hand and turn to him with a look of pride and joy that nearly chokes him up.

That’s good enough, Ben decides, and throws himself into running the best damn business he possibly can.

“Hey, Mitaka. Been a while,” Ben comments as he walks out from behind the counter to assist one of his oldest regulars.

He doesn’t mean anything by it, just a simple observation, but then Mitaka avoids his eye and looks down at the ground and-

“Sorry about that. It’s just, everyone said it’s different now with the new regulations, and of course you’d have to follow them because you’re above the board and all that, which is great, really, it’s great, but no one wants boring fireworks at a 4th of July party, you know? Not- not that I’m saying your stuff is boring-”

Ben frowns as he steps forward, resting a hand on the red-faced man’s shoulder. “Dude. Breathe.”

Mitaka does as instructed, even as he continues to twist his fingers together nervously. “So yeah, sorry it’s been a while. But I’m back now, and I’ll never go to Dishonest Don’s again, I promise-”

“Wait, wait,” Ben interrupts. “Dishonest Don’s? You’ve been going there?”

Mitaka looks like a kicked puppy as he nods.

“Why? You’ve been coming here for years! And you know they’re illegal-”

“But they’ve still got the meteor shower ones, and I know you’re not allowed to sell those anymore.”

This is news to Ben, who just received a box of said fireworks two hours ago. “Says who?” he demands incredulously.

“Um, well, everyone really, but mainly-” Mitaka pulls his phone out and opens up a familiar-looking website before handing it over to Ben.

The design is unmistakable, and the URL at the top can’t be a coincidence.

His father’s latest post is titled The Silent Night Act and what that means for you, which sounds nothing at all like the succinct announcements Ben’s gotten used to. New stuff, the posts usually read, followed by a slew of pictures and prices and nothing else. This… this article about new sound and light pollution regulations warning against hefty fines for those caught red-handed and watered-down versions from licensed sellers trying to toe the line sounds nothing at all like his usual style.

It’s also not like his father to stoop this low and try his hand at sabotage, but here they are anyway.

Ben throws the phone back at Mitaka and stalks towards the front door.

“Hux, watch the shop! I’ve got a fucking bone to pick with Han fucking Solo!”

Dishonest Don’s is both fifteen minutes and worlds away from Honest John’s. While Ben’s shop operates in a perfectly respectable area, it’s just a short walk away from shady repair shops, hole-in-the-wall spots, and, of course, the city’s worst-kept secret.

For fuck’s sake, his father even has the name of the shop spelled out in neon lights. The sign stopped working properly a long time ago, way before Ben hit puberty, but it’s still there, flickering every once in a while like some kind of prolonged death rattle-

Ben stops short right outside the door. For the first time in nearly fifteen years, the lights are working. Dishonest Don’s is spelled out in full, rather than the usual hoe on that’s greeted customers for as long as he can remember.

Inside is even more baffling. There are lights, actual lights bright enough for him to see where he’s going. There’s a bell over the door that announces his arrival. And most unexpected of all, there’s someone other than his father and Chewie standing behind the counter.

“Hi there, looking for something?”

She’s young (probably younger than him) and tall (for a girl) and beautiful (in every sense of the word) and Ben almost, almost blurts out you because when she smiles, it’s brighter than a thousand fireworks lighting up the night sky.

He shakes the thought away, stalks further into the shop and towards her to show her the post. “Where’s Han? We need to talk about this.”

The girl tilts her head. “What about it?”

“It’s- it’s-” Ben splutters, dropping his phone on the counter. “It’s slander! Fake news! Total and complete bullshit meant to sabotage me-”

“Wow, I did not expect this big of a reaction.”

Ben stops, considers her in silence for a beat. “Wait, what? What do you mean- you knew about this?”

“Of course I did,” the girl shrugs as she scrolls past the article on his phone. “I wrote it, after all.”

Everything comes to a screeching halt. The world stops making sense. Up is down and down is left and why in the hell would this random girl use his father’s website to sabotage his business?

“Why the fuck did you do that?” Ben demands, snatching his phone out of her hands. Small hands, rough hands, hands that look like they would fit perfectly into his own- “You lied about me!”

The girl shrugs. “Thought I’d make things interesting.”

“You stole my customers!”

“Mm-hmm,” she hums, shifting her focus to the register. “Gotta meet those sale targets somehow.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

At this, she finally looks up. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” she retorts without missing a beat, without losing control. “What kind of asshole sets up shop right across the street just to piss off his father?”

Truth be told, sometimes Ben does look back at his teenage self and feel a slight bit of shame over his actions. But this stranger doesn’t need - or deserve - to know that.

“You wouldn’t get it. It’s a long story,” he says dismissively, crossing his arms over his chest as he looks around the shop and takes in the small changes she must be responsible for. Things are… things are actually organized, for once. And he can stand here without worrying that one of the highly flammable, highly explosive piles his father likes to keep things in is about to roast him to a crisp. It’s… nice, and Ben’s happy just looking around until-

“And I’ve got a long lunch break,” mystery girl replies easily, pinning him down with a challenge in her eyes. “So start talking, Honest John’s.”

There’s a chair on the other end of the counter, a little waiting seat of sorts. Ben remains silent until he’s settled down. “It’s, um… it’s Ben, by the way. Not John. Or Honest John.”

She smiles at him again; just one more and his heart will probably fail him. “Yeah, that sounds better. Fits you.”

And then she holds her hand out and offers him the beginning of everything.

“I’m Rey, in case you were wondering. Rey like sunshine, but with an E.”

Of course the only thing brighter than all the fireworks in the world is the sun herself.

So, um... yeah, that’s that. This is what happens when you attempt to write while severely sleep-deprived, kids.

As always, thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed at least some part of this. Please don’t hesitate to like/reblog/comment!

[gaypasta]

do you want fries with that?

chapter 13 Read on Ao3 Chapter Directory

The quiet blanket of darkness shrouded the quarry, enveloping the group of teenagers in their own bubble, untouched by the universe. The fire that Mike had managed to get blazing, even with the dampness of Winter settling in every tree branch and log, had set a warm glow around the Marsh, the light from the flames gently bouncing off the thick forest that surrounded them. Their own little pocket of Derry that was just for them.

The little clearing of the Marsh had quickly become the group’s usual hang-out-spot, so much so that all of them - bar Ben, who was working - had biked through the frosted streets of the town, trekked down through iced leaves and mud, with only a pair fo flashlights between them and the moon peeking from behind the trees to guide their way (not that they needed it, they knew the area surrounding the Quarry and Marsh like the back of their hand). It was cold, being December, but none of them had ever queried their collective decision to sit in the great outdoors - all too fond of their time spent there to ever really contest it.

So there they were sat, a group of somewhat misfit teenagers all bundled up in thick coats and scarves and whatnot - thankfully the thickness of the forest around them managed to keep some of the heat from the fire from completely dissipating into the air, and their coats were thick enough to fend off any shivers or teeth chattering they would have. Stan noted that even Richie had forgone his usual outfit of shorts and t-shirt for a frayed pair of jeans that rose high on his ankles - clearly he had dug them from the pits of his closet - and a heavy knit sweater that hung off of his frame so much that Stan had originally mistaken it for a blanket at first.

Richie was sat on the ground, opposite where Eddie and Stan were sitting on the soft fabric of the camping loveseat that Mike had adorned them with one evening after helping his Uncle clear out their garage. Previously, they had all sat on the cold ground, or fought over the log which allowed their pants to avoid the worst of the mud and moss stains - there hadn’t really been much of a fight in reality, just some light-hearted complaints as Eddie and Stan claimed their seats, sat close as to not fall off, shoulders usually pressed together.

The camping couch had been the first addition, a mossy green fold-out seat, that had definitely seen better days.It came with small holes in the arms, netted in mesh to hold drinks presumably,  Stan usually pulls off his wool mittens and folds them in it instead, hating the way the fabric rubs against his wrists - which were burning more than usual tonight, after Stan scratching at his left one earlier in an effort to calm his need to skirt around and fix everything.

The next addition had been a plain white plastic deck chair, small splinters running through the back and a couple of strange stains that didn’t quite rub out under Eddie’s furious scrubbing with disinfectant wipes. Richie refused to tell anyone where he found it. He stole it from his neighbour’s front yard after they ran over his bike in their shitty pickup truck, he had told Stan later. Stan doubted they would even notice it was gone. Ben had procured two camping chairs from his parents, who were happy enough to part with them, they were in better shape than the one that Eddie and Stan shared, but they were smaller - only fitting one person at a time. Sometimes Stan or Eddie would sit in those, but today they had sat down together, enjoying each other’s company.

In total there were five seats for their rag-tag group to sit on, or seven if the large log was included. Richie still maintained the ground was way better, being ‘one with nature and all that shit’. Stan knew he just liked to pick tufts of grass from the ground - which is exactly what he was doing now, tugging at the cold grass and plucking it out of the ground, letting it fall onto a small pile on the thick plaid blanket that Bill had rolled out for him.

Richie was in an animated discussion with Bill, who was sifting through his beaten up backpack, while Richie was fiddling with the grass in a pointed effort not to meet eyes with Stan, who was watching the two with a twinge of a headache in his forehead. Stan wasn’t sure why he was staring at Richie with such venomosity - he wanted Richie to know he was mad at him, but with the way Richie shifted to face Bill made Stan painfully aware that Richie could tell he was mad at him, and was purposely avoiding him. Stan clutched his thermos in his hands, feeling the ridges of the handle ache into his fingers a little.

Eddie eyed him up from under his thick wooly hat that was so large on his small head it kept falling over his eyes, his knees up to his chest, holding his tiny hot water bottle into his stomach - an attempt to ward off hypothermia, which his Mother had told him he would catch if he so much as left the house during Winter. “What’s the matter with you?” Eddie quipped, sounding mildly annoyed which everyone had grown to accept was just the way Eddie’s voice sounds, holding no real contempt.

“Nothing. Why do you ask?”

“You're about to geiser your fucking chicken soup.”

Stan forcibly relaxed his hold and turned to meet Eddie’s eyes, not that he could see anything more than a row of small dark lashes from the bottom of his eyes, “It’s tomato soup.”

Eddie mumbled a whatever and changed to topic of conversation to criticism of Bill’s choice of snacks for this evening.

“Are you fucking kidding, you know I can’t eat that much sugar! I’ll go into sugar overload or whatever and fall into a diabetic coma - are you trying to fucking kill me, Bill?”

Bill laughed as he laid out the crackers and chocolate on his blanket, “I duh-don’t think that’s how it works. Besides, you’re not even duh-duh-diabetic.”

“Yes I am, I can’t eat much sugar - don’t you remember when all I had in my lunchbox in fucking elementary school was a cheese sandwich and sliced cucumber - I wasn’t even allowed an apple because it sent my sugar levels up!”

“Juh-just try it?” Bill pleaded, stabbing a marshmallow onto what looked to be a piece of barbeque equipment, Bill must have noticed Eddie eyeing the tool with disgust because he quickly followed up, “I washed it and it’s duh-disinfected.”

Eddie opened his mouth in another complaint, slapping Bill’s outstretched arm away as he tried to poke Eddie with the marshmallow.

“You didn’t seem all that concerned with sugar when you were knocking back cocktails like a stripper in Vegas.”

“Yes, dickweed and then I passed out.”

“Puh-pretty sure that wuh-was more the alcohol's fault than the sh-sugar.”

“That’s a lie!” Eddie flustered, stumbling over his words as he does when he gets agitated. Beverly laughed from between Richie and Stan, perched with her legs crossed in the stolen chair. Eddie turned with a sharp, “What!”

“Eddie, you probably don’t even remember climbing up Richie like a monkey.” She said and judging by Richie’s face - he didn’t either. Beverly laughed again at Richie, “Oh my God - Bill definitely took a picture  - I think he took about a hundred.”

Eddie’s face fumed a violent pink, “I didn’t do that.”

“Awww, Eds! You couldn’t keep your hands off me, just wanted to climb me like a tree you little devil, don’t worry - if you wanted my bananas all you had to do was ask.” Bill laughed and elbowed Richie lightly, “Ow - shit - I don’t want to hear you complaining about me being boney, Big Bill - I feel like I just got stabbed in the ribs.” Bill elbowed him again.

“You wuh-were asking Stan what it felt like to be tuh-tuh-tall, then you just stuh-starting climbing Richie, to guh-get onto his shu-shu-shu-shoulders.”

“You ended up hitting your head on the doorframe and started crying, then passed out like three minutes later.” Mike finished for Bill, who had started to choke on his words as he tried to bristle down laughter.

Stan could hardly remember that, replaying it in his head was like watching TV from ten feet underwater, but he found himself biting his own laughter at the mental image nonetheless.

“I fucking hate you all. Give me the stupid marshmallow and shut the fuck up.”

Bill handed everyone out their marshmallows, all but Eddie and Stan getting theirs pierced onto a clean-enough looking stick, clearly snapped off from a tree. Stan wasn’t overly partial to sweet things, but he toasted his marshmallow nonetheless. Mike was telling Bill all about a baby lamb he had helped be born, pretending not to find it amusing when Eddie blanched and grew a little green at the details, while Bill looked at him in awe, his face interested and completely drawn into everything he was hearing. Bill never had anything but love for his friends painted across his face, Stan briefly thinks that whatever girl Bill ends up falling in love with just might be the most loved girl on the planet. His eyes flicker to where Richie was lying sideways on the log, fully leaning on Bill and conversing erratically with Beverly about some show they had both been keeping up to date with, his cigarette leaving trails of orange amber in the air as he wildly gestured, almost burning himself a couple of times.

Stan feels slightly out of place, sitting where he was, because for the last week or two - ever since he and Richie had began sneaking beer and wine and all sorts into their bedrooms and kissing behind the secrecy of their closed doors - they had sat beside each other. It had earned a look from Eddie as Stan gestured Richie onto the foldable double seat, but nothing was said as Eddie sat on one of the single fold-out chairs, rubbing it with a disinfectant wipe before sitting down. Stan feels slightly lost without Richie shouldering him to encourage him into a conversation, or slinging an arm obnoxiously around his shoulder to draw Stan into whatever shitty monologue he was doing. His eyes followed Richie’s cigarette and he found himself tasting the nicotine from Richie’s breath.

He swallowed as the thoughts of Richie’s dirty cigarette breath panting into his own started swimming through his head. He tried to roll the tension from his shoulders as he imagines Richie panting his dirty cigarette breath into someone else’s mouth.

Richie catches his eye for a moment, his mouth stuttered a little around his story before he furrowed his brows and made a point of looking away from Stan. It didn’t help Stan get any less mad at him.

Stan was finding himself brewing over the incident that had happened at work, the very thing causing the current tension between the two. When Stan returned from outside to continue work, Richie just sailed past him with a cigarette dangling from his lips without looking at him. In fact, Richie hadn’t looked at Stan the rest of the shift. It made Stan livid. It wasn’t enough that Richie was using him as a practice fuck, but Richie was trying to drag his name through the mud just because he’s getting pissy about everything.

“Well, I think we see why Stan never does any of the cooking.” Eddie’s voice snapped Stan out of his trance, he had been staring at Richie - who had looked up at the noise and gave him a strange look. Stan’s marshmallow was burnt - to put it lightly - to shit.

“I’ll remember that when it’s my turn to bring the snacks,” Stan said, scraping the burnt food off of his prong against a rock in the fire pit, wincing at the long white strings of sugar that connected the two - it reminds him of when him and Richie pull apart after kissing and their lips are joined by a string of their mixed saliva. Gross.

Not gross.

Stan’s stomach twisted as Richie let out a loud “OOOOOOOOOO - Eddie’s favourite chocolate brownies? Withheld!”

Stan usually baked his own goods to bring down, it relaxed him and it gave him something to busy his hands with. His friends have tried his food enough between Stan bringing in something to sell in the dessert counter every weekend, to him whipping up some pastries or cakes to bring down to the Marsh. And true to Richie’s statement - Eddie was borderline obsessed with Stan’s brownies - always moaning obscenely when he ate, much to the joy of Riche and the exasperation of literally everyone else. Somehow his ‘diabetes’ was always forgotten about those days.

Eddie’s face was instantly bright with panic, “Well - I - no, right - Shut up Richie, God you’re such a tool - cooking and baking are completely different, right?” He looked around the group for support, all of them feeding quickly into this little bit they had started and looking deep in thought.

“I don’t know, Eddie - it doesn’t seem very convincing…” Beverly started.

“I buh-believe Stan has the right to withhold any buh-buh-baked goods he sees fuh-fit.”

“You’re the judge, Stan.”

Stan hummed in mock thought, tapping the pad of his finger against his chin as Eddie vibrated next to him, “Both sides have compelling arguments, this might take a while to reach a fair decision.”

“Oh wow! Stanley on the fence about something, what a shock.” Richie said, lowly, wiping a bit of chocolate from his smore off his mouth. He missed a bit, Stan noticed - just on the corner. Richie met his eyes and forced out a laugh to punctuate his statement. Stan knew better of course, as the rest of them let out small chuckles at Richie’s playful jab - Stan knew there was little playfulness behind it.

“Is Richie Tozier making obsolete observations in an effort to make himself the center of attention? It’s been a while since we’ve seen that.” Stan forced with a sordid smile, biting his tongue a little.

Richie scowled at him for a second, just quick enough so that no one but Stan - who hadn’t lost eye contact - would notice, “Stan the man gets off on a good one. Let’s roll out the red carpet for that one.” Richie lightened his tone and mimed himself unfurling a large carpet, shaking it and laying it in Stan’s direction. Stan shot him the finger in response.

The rest of the night had followed pretty much the same pattern, Richie and Stan throwing digs at each other under the guise of jokes, with laughter in their voice but venom in their eyes as they stared each other down.

“Aw, your Mom’s a bitch? Sorry to hear Eds - but hey! Look on the bright side, she can’t be any more of a bitch than Stan.”

“Beverly - we know you’re not a slut - or whatever those assholes in your class call you. That title goes to Richie.”

“Hey, Stan - wanna show us how much of your dick the Rabbi cut off?”

“Stop molesting Mike - none of us know how many STD’s you’re carrying.” “If that stick up your ass was any deeper it would be tickling your prostate.”

“No, I don’t think those are jokes, Eddie. I think Richie is just truly that desperate that he would fuck anything with legs at this point.”

“Do you guys reckon that Rabbi’s diddle kids the same way priests do? Maybe that’s why Stan’s such a frigid.”

The two quipped back and forth, raising the occasional look of shock from Bill or Eddie - who had known the two for so long that they knew when both Richie and Stan had overstepped the unspoken line in the sand. They said nothing, however - just shooting curious glances at the two and continuing the conversation along its way.

It wasn’t until Richie made comments about the small string of bruises on Stan’s neck that Stan had desperately tried to cover during the week that Stan had decided he had taken enough of this petty back-and-forth bullshit. He’s had enough of Richie painting him as something he’s not, enough of Richie being bitchy, enough of Richie saying shit just to get a reaction out of him and his friends. It wasn’t fucking fair.

So he had stood up, grabbed Richie’s arm mid-smoke and pulled him out of the clearing, out of the Marsh and downhill, just far enough that the wind wouldn’t carry their voices and concealed enough in the trees that they would muffle them too. Richie had tried to tug his arm free and remain seated, but Stan threatened to dislocate his shoulder and he followed suit with a look of displeasure.

Stan all but threw Richie’s arm out of his hand when they reached what Stan deemed a good enough place to talk. Richie looked offendedly at his arm, rubbing it gently and not meeting Stan’s eyes.

“What is your fucking problem .” Stan seethed.

Richie had the decency to look somewhat sheepish as he backed himself into a tree and laid his weight against it, trying to shrink a little under Stan’s eyes, which were sharp and small, squinting at Richie with anger. Richie didn’t respond but he had the look on his face of wanting to say something, but deciding against it.

“Richie, you can’t push my buttons all day, embarrass me, point out my fucking hickeys to my friends - which, by the way, none of them had even noticed - only to decide to stop the trash talk when I’m asking you why. Asking you why you’re acting so weird about everything all of a sudden.”

Stan stopped himself before he went any further. Not looking to rant at Richie anymore than he just wanted Richie to stop being weird. All this aggression and spite was coming out of left field, and between Stan trying to deal with the sinking feeling in his chest every time he thinks about Richie moving on, to the clutching of his stomach he gets whenever he thinks of Richie in ways that no one else has seen him and with the addiction he’s found himself within Richie’s mouth - it was leaving him stressed and worn thin. His disorder had fed into the stress and he found himself sleepless most nights because he could swear the gentle ticking of his watch fell out of beat every twenty-three seconds. He was confused, he was upset, he was angry and he just wanted his best friend to be there with him, side-by-side like they had been.

Richie cricked his neck a little, making Stan cringe when it made a cracking sound. Richie stays silent for a moment, but the look on his face makes Stan let him - Richie looks like he’s mulling over his words, opening his mouth every so often just to close it and start the process again.

It was rare that Richie really thought before he spoke.

“I didn’t mean to embarrass you. I was just messing around.” Richie looked like he didn’t even try to believe his words.

“Don’t bullshit me, Rich.” Richie’s eyes flickered to Stan’s at the nickname, prompting him to pull out another cigarette - having lost his previous one when Stan yanked his arm a little too hard and he had to drop it to regain balance. “You - you can’t just decide to start lying to me now.”

Richie struggled to get a flame from his lighter, twisting his body against the wind a little to catch a pocket of still air. “What am I lying about, then?”

“You tell me.”

“I don’t get it.” Richie took a drag, face relaxing with the rush of nicotine.

Stan moved closer towards him, only maybe four feet between them now. He could see the tobacco curling as it burned in his cigarette. “Stop it. I’m not going to play this game - I’m not playing cat and mouse with you so that you can skirt around the topic and confuse me into dropping it.” Richie shot him a look, “Don’t look at me like that - you know that I understand how you work. I know that you’d love to pretend not to know what I’m talking about, dodge my questions until I get frustrated and then you feed into it, making comments and being a trashmouth until I walk away. I know your game plan, Rich and you know me well enough to know I won’t play it. ”

Richie’s face bled from a look of shock into a small smile. A gentle smile that comes naturally to your face when you’re content, like when you step into a particularly warm patch or sunlight, or when you smell something that reminds you of a good memory, or when you’re sifting through old photos of you and your friends. A small smile that isn’t overly conscious or prominent on the features, but a comfort nonetheless.

“Of course you do.” Richie looked at Stan with an atypical softness, Stan felt like he was under a microscope for a moment, “I just - uh,” Richie trailed off, taking a drag of his cigarette and blinking in thought, “It’s just messing with me a little, us going from two innocent little church boys who want to do nothing more than make their Mommys proud to fuckin’ like rabbits in heat. Forgive me for getting a little whiplash, Staniel.”

Stan’s face heated a little, “We had sex once.”

Richie laughed and winked, taking another drag - for dramatics probably.

“I- is that the issue?” Stan’s stomach had started to hurt a bit, “We can stop. You didn’t have to get all defensive and bitchy about it, all you had to do was say, Rich.”

Richie almost choked on the smoke in his lungs, “No! No, we uh - we don’t need to stop.” He eyed Stan with a little uncertainty, “Unless you do?”

Stan shook his head, toeing the ground with his thick winter ankle boots, “Not really. It’s fun, right?” Stan met Richie’s eyes then, and they both felt a small smirk creep onto their faces before Stan quickly looked away, his face heating up - God it’s cold, no wonder his face is heating up.

“Yeah, it is.”

Stan cleared his throat, “But - why are you getting weird about it, then? It was your bright idea, dumbass.”  Richie shrugged, relaxing into the tree, “Hey - don’t get complacent, Richie. We’re not done.”

“I told you why I was acting out, now let’s kiss and make up.”

“No - I want you to apologize.”

Richie blinked, hand falling from where he had gone to grab Stan’s arm. “What for?”

Stan took a deep breath, “For calling me gay in front of my friends, Richie.”

Richie’s jaw clenched a little, his words were spoken forcefully, like he was trying his best to force them out of his throat, “Oh I didn’t realize being gay was so disgusting -”

“Don’t be a dick about it. You know what would happen if rumors spread, Richie. I’m not just some kid, hell, I’m not even just some Jewish kid - I’m the Rabbi’s son. This fucking town hates us enough, what do you think they’ll do if they find out the Rabbi’s son is gay? What do you think all the higher ups in the Synagogue will think? It would ruin us.”

Richie bit his tongue, “But you’re not gay, right?”

“Obviously.” Stan’s fingers dug into his forearms.

“Obviously.” Richie said, a sardonic smile on his face. “So, what? Do you think one of our friends is going to go spread around Derry a rumor that you like dick? Does that fit the script of this little fantasy movie you’ve got playing in your head?”

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

“No! I don’t, Stan. Because you’re the one getting so paranoid at the fucking horror that any of our friends might possibly think you’re gay. I don’t care if you like dick or not - and neither do they - do you really think Big Bill is going to give a fucking hoot if you start swinging for the other team? Hell, Bill probably wouldn’t even bat an eye if you got down and started giving him a fucking handy - he would just give you a great ol’ pat on the back for being ever so brave.”

Stan stepped closer to Richie and gave him a light shove, “Stop it.”

Richie glared and flicked his cigarette off to the side, barely half smoked, “Stop what? Telling you the truth? The truth that not a single one of us will give a shit if you’re gay, if I’m gay - if fucking Mike’s horse is gay - the only person that has an issue with it is you.” Richie stabbed a finger into the center of Stan’s chest.

“I’m not gay, and I don’t hate gays, either. The reason it irritates me is because it’s gross. I don’t like you fucking talking about me and sex at all.Keep our fucking sex life out of your trashmouth and in the bedroom.”

Richie moved his finger from a point and just … rested his palm on Stan’s chest. “Ha - like it’s our dirty little secret, Stanley?”

Stan’s chest tightened at that, a flush of heat washing over him so fast it made him a little dizzy, he found himself shifting slightly closer towards Richie without really realizing it. “Yuh-yeah.” He choked around the word, his voice cracking. Thanks a lot, puberty.

Richie seemed to catch onto that, a knowing smirk creeping onto his face. The same smile Richie usually shoots Stan after he locks his bedroom door, creeping over to Stan who’s sitting patiently on his bed and leaving Stan all but ravaged in a matter of minutes. Shirt collar unbuttoned down to his chest, lips swollen from gentle tugs and light bites, neck sheening with saliva - and sometimes light peppers of blue and black - if Stan was particularly inebriated either from the alcohol or the need coursing through his veins.

Stan barely had a moment to stall himself before Richie grabbed his coat, pulling him forward to crash into his mouth. Stan immediately becoming pliant under Richie’s mouth, following his movements and moving in tangent with him as though it was a dance they had rehearsed for months on end. Richie pulled away soon after pulling Stan forward, too soon.

“Is this okay?”

Stan found himself moving towards Richie in impulse, lips just brushing against Richie’s every time he lets out a short puff of breath. “Huh?” Great contribution, Stanley. Stellar performance.

Richie kissed into him lightly, a smile ghosting his lips, “We’re one-hundred percent sober. Does that not bother you?”

“Didn’t last time.”

Richie paused for a moment, a sentence clearly dancing on his lips before he swallowed it, taking Stan’s mouth in the process, “Alright.”

They kissed for a while, open-mouthed with Richie sucking on Stan’s bottom lip every now and again, the cold air nipping at the wetness of their lips, Richie’s hands still grappled in the front of Stan’s coat  - as if Stan would melt away into the icy ground if he let go. Stan doesn't think he could move away from Richie if God himself pulled at him. A tongue would occasionally trace Stan’s lips - which he would open - only for Richie to trace his lips again and go back to dancing his lips over Stan. Fucking tease.

“You like this being a dirty little secret, huh?” Richie said, words murmured into Stan’s mouth - who let out a groan in response, “You like running around with your best friend in secret?”

Stan groaned a little louder as Richie pulled away only to move to kiss along his jaw, working his way from Stan’s chin to his ear, before pausing and burying his head into Stan’s temple. Stan could feel him mumbling something into his skin, but Richie just shook his head when Stan asked what it was. The thought was pushed out of Stan’s head when Richie gave a firm kiss to his temple - making Stan’s stomach twist heavily. Then he imagined it. Them touching, mouths wet against each other, Richie clutching onto Stan’s coat and face buried in Stan’s hair. Everything -  but instead of Stan it was someone else and the twisting in his stomach turned into lurching, a hollow almost painful feeling. He twisted his head, shaking Richie off his temple - who frowned at him through his stupid coke-bottle glasses.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Stan knew it was ridiculous, selfish even, to bring up. He had no right to feel like Richie owed him anything, he knew that this was for fun, that it was just a bit of fooling around for whoever their future partners may be. Stan briefly wonders how much of this could be applied to a woman. He shook the thought.

Richie looked unimpressed, “Don’t make me repeat your big spiel about you knowing when I’m lying back to you - because I will. Well, not word for word, cuz, to be honest, I wasn’t really paying that much attention - but the same sentiment, yeah?”

Sten just stared at Richie, trying to fumble over words in his head, trying to gather all the rogue thoughts in his head and staple them into a cohesive sentence, with Richie’s stupid fucking face half an inch away.

“It’s just uh -” Stan stopped himself, not quite knowing why he started with nothing to say. Richie made a ‘go on’ motion with his hand, “It’s stupid.”

“I know you are but what am I?” Stan pinched his neck roughly, “Ow - who pinches a neck what the fuck - sorry, go on.”

“No.”

Richie looked amused and painted a stupid puppy-dog look on his face, “But what abwout us being fwiends? Fwiends don’t keep secwets…”

“I’ll tell you under the conditions that you never do that again.”

“Deal.”

“I just - it feels weird that we’re doing … this stuff,” He gestured between their mouths, “and someday we’ll be doing it with other people. It’s just a bit strange to think about.”

Richie looked somewhere between aghast and intrigued, “Like… a threesome?”

Stan briefly wonders if the coroner would believe Richie just choked himself to death. Yes, officer - he just wrapped his own around his neck and choked himself to death right in front of me! I have no idea how he did it. “No. Like with our future girlfriends. Or uh - boyfriend, I guess.”

Richie looked crestfallen for a moment, a strange look ghosting over his face that Stan had never seen before. It made him look much older - an appearance of seriousness and the face of someone who was far too tired for someone so young slowly took over his features. Stan didn’t move his eyes off of Richie’s face even as his friend slowly rose a hand to his face, resting his palm on his face. It was so light, Stan wondered if Richie was actually touching him at all or if it was his imagination - yet it was the most definable feeling that Stan had felt all evening. More than the harsh cold, more than the biting anger, more than the open mouthed-kisses and Richie murmuring into his mouth.

“I don’t think I could have anyone after y-” Richie shut his mouth closed, so quickly that his teeth clinked together, Stan just blinked, “You’re my best friend.” He settled with. Stan’s heart felt like it was going to beat right out of his chest and lie in a heap on the dirty ground.

“You’re my best friend too, Richie.” Even if you are a jackass.

Richie stared at Stan, in the same expression he sees Beverly staring after Ben with, or Bill after Georgie. Without leaving room for argument, it was a look of pure, unadulterated love. Stan’s heart was beating in his fucking guts when Richie placed the most gentle kiss in the world on Stan’s mouth.

“Then that’s enough for me.” Richie said it as though it was final. Like the final piece of the universe had just been slotted into place, planets aligning and stars burning and supernovas beaming, as though that single sentence was enough to stabilize everything that had happened, a final explanation and final prescription to Stan’s worries. It just made Stan’s stomach ache even worse.

Richie parted, the look wiped off his by face now, replaced with a neutral expression, if not with a little tug upwards of the lips. He tugged on Stan’s arm - parallel with how Stan had pulled on Richie’s not minutes before. Richie was laughing as he tugged Stan through the trees - almost slipping and sending them sprawling down the hill, never once loosening his grip on Stan’s arm until they made their way back to the Marsh, to be met with questioning glances.

Richie waved it off with a joke about Stan beating him up, evading the questions at hand, covering up the truth with a grin and walking effortlessly into a separate conversation. Stan thinks he’s very good at that.

Despite Richie’s loud laughter ringing out at Eddie as Mike tries to place a daisy chain on his head, while Eddie desperately tried to shake him off, there was something off about Richie. An air of sadness floated around him, his shoulders didn’t jump as much as they usually did when he laughed, his fingers constantly around a cigarette, consistently filling his lungs up with smoke without a second thought, his spare hand faintly fidgeting with the hem of his massive jumper. Richie could fool everyone else - but not Stan.

Stan briefly sees the flash of Bill’s camera, but he ignored it - the picture of Eddie with a daisy crown and a huffy face will no doubt be catered into his hands in a couple of minutes. He continues to watch Richie - who Stan had decided - is much more of an enigma than he first appears.

Stan can’t help but shake the feeling that their conversation only left him with more questions than answers, and that it had been little more than a thin sheet of wallpaper spread over a growing expanse of mildew, a cheapshot temporary cover-up of a deeper seeded issue. Stan can’t quite shake the feeling of his heart fluttering every time Richie does much of anything.

He spends the rest of the night wishing he could kiss that smudge of chocolate on the corner of his mouth off. Company be damned.

[wordsdrippinginink]

Ace & Sabo, put five things in a pentagram to summon me meme where ace wonders what sabo woulda been like if hed grown up and accidentally manages to summon still alive albeit amnesiac sabo

“Fine,” Marco sighs, because he’s tired and it’s been weeks of Ace bugging him about this since one of the crew brought up the time that Marco had summoned Roger for a meeting with Whitebeard back when the Pirate King had made a name for himself. “Fine, I will make you a pentagram, what are you trying to summon?”

“My brother. He died and I was hoping-”

“It’s not going to bring him back older, that’s usually what people want, but it doesn’t work like that,” Marco scrubs a hand over his eyes. “Thought you would have asked me to summon your mom, honestly.”

“I don’t know five things that she would have liked.”

Fuck, that’s sadder than Marco would have thought the answer was, “What’s her name?”

“Huh?”

“Your mom. I’ll see if one of our contacts can pull up something about her. Might be able to find things she liked, I’ll summon her for you too,” Marco says standing up and stretching. “Any one else you want brought back?”

“No, just my brother.”

“And your mom later. Name?”

“Portgas D Rouge, she lived on Batterilla when she died. I don’t know much ele about her life, sorry.”

“More than I’ve had for a few of the others,” Marco taps his pen beside the name for a long minute. “I know that name. Fuck, I’ll figure it out later. Do you have what you need to get your brother?”

Ace nods, holding up a bag, “I got those first. Had to send home for a couple of them.”

“Alright, hand me that chalk by your foot and stay out of my way until I tell you that you can put things down,” Marco states starting on the pentagram. It might not be what summoned the person, but it did help to contain it to a small area, should something go wrong. “There. I’ll be outside the room when you’re done. Scuff this out,” he taps one of the runes. “To release the spell. Understood? Should activate about a minute after you put everything in place.”

“Thanks Marco.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

It’s a battered, small top hat, the journal that Sabo kept in their hiding space, a picture of Ace and Luffy- because Luffy said that Sabo loved them both-, a rusty pocket watch that they had stolen from Outlook, and the brightest, reddest strawberries that Ace could find placed on each corner of the pentagram.

Ace’s hands shake, because it might not be the adult Sabo that he was hoping to see, but it would still be Sabo and Ace could still apologize. Something shifts between one moment and the next, leaving a man standing in the middle of the pentagram, frowning at the paperwork in his hand.

“Koala, I thought you were suppose-,” he pauses looking up. “You are not Koala.”

“You’re not Sabo.” Ace returns, because this is not Sabo. There’s similarities in the nose and eyes, but it’s hard to tell with the giant scar curling around one of them. “Marco, it didn’t work!”

The door opens and Marco leans against the door frame, frowning at the center of the pentagram. “No, it worked. Who are you?”

“I think, since I was magically transported to another place, I should get the first question.”

“That’s fair,” Ace nods, “Ow, Marco!”

“We don’t let captives have the first question. I’m Marco the Phoenix and this is Portgas D Ace. Ace wanted to talk with his dead brother and I learned how to summon people using their favorite things,” Marco answers. “You’re turn.”

“I’m Sabo, so I suppose that I’m a Sabo. Are you sure that you used something that your brother would want to summon him?” Sabo, not Ace’s bother, asks.

“A picture of our little brother and me, his favorite hat, the watch he stole from his dickbag dad, his favorite food, and his journal.”

“Oh,” Sabo says softly, shifting to glance at all the corners. “May I?”

“Don’t break it. We didn’t have much left of him after the fire.”

Sabo makes a sound, “fire?”

“The nobles burnt Grey Town, the dump where we lived down. Sabo’s folks were nobles,” Ace answers. “He died trying to set sail to be a pirate, got shot down by one of the fucking super nobles.”

“Ah,” Sabo stares at the top hat for a long moment before turning another page in the journal. “That’s how I got these. A world noble shot down my ship, Dragon saved my life.”

Ace knows that name, why does he know that name, “You mean Monkey D Dragon? Gramps has a kid by that name.”

“Dragon has a last name?”

“I mean if he’s the one that I think he is?” Ace shrugs. “Got tattoos on his face and runs a revolutionary army, I think Gramps called it that. He’s Luffy’s dad, the picture, that’s him in the straw hat.”

“Dragon has family,” Sabo mutters, almost in awe, but his forehead wrinkles. “Gramps?”

“Dragon’s dad. I was,” Ace wonders if there’s a term for ‘my father was the pirate king and convinced a marine vice admiral to hide me, he pretended to be my uncle/grandfather’, he hasn’t found it yet so, “adopted. He’s a marine.”

“Dragon’s dad is a marine?”

“Monkey D Garp.”

Sabo blinks slowly, “That makes more sense then I thought,” he closes the journal. “I have amnesia, had it since Dragon saved my life years ago. Apparently I sailed away from Dawn Island and was hit-”

“For daring to cross paths with a world noble,” Ace finishes, softly.

“That’s right. So, while I have no memory of you, these,” Sabo, who might actually be Sabo, gestures at the pentagram. “Did summon me and this,” he taps the journal. “Is my handwriting. So I suppose I had a brother.”

“Two, Luffy was your favorite.”

[katdvs]

Author Note: I saw a prompt from @plotsandpromptsforall  this morning, and since I’ve been in a funk for weeks—on top of all the family drama of moving/looking for a house drama I thought I would see if I could write anything, and well Rucas is still speaking to me and gave me this.

The Letter

“The moon glowed brightly in the December night sky.” She read aloud from the letter in her hand as she looked out her window, up at the moon, tonight it did seem to glow brightly.

She studied the handwriting, a faint smile crossing her lips before looking back at the post mark, Texas, Lucas. She brought the paper up to her nose, the faint scent of cedar, pine, pure masculinity greeted her from the paper. Oh, how she missed burying her head in the crook of his neck and breathing it in. What she wouldn’t give to have one more night with him.

Looking back at the letter she continued to read it, “The fields and meadows look like a painting when the moonlight shines down on the property. Some nights when I can’t look at my text books any longer I go and stand at the big picture window at the top of the stairs, I stare at the vast landscape before me, and Riley I miss you.”

She put the letter down, rising from her chair to pace around, she hadn’t expected him to say that. She couldn’t remember the last time he admitted he missed her—no that was a lie. She could remember it.

Almost exactly two years ago on the roof of her building. She could still see the pain in his green eyes, she hadn’t been expecting him, she hadn’t been expecting anything that night when her boyfriend Carl dragged her up to the roof, dropped to one knee and proposed. It was half a second later that the door opened and Lucas had shown up.

It had been silent, except for the sound of something breaking—Lucas’ heart. “Riley, I miss you, I love you.” He’d told her, his mouth hanging open as he reached out for her, while Carl wrapped his arm around her waist and told him to get lost.

Riley had known the second Carl dropped to one knee that her answer was no, but the way he’d treated Lucas made it doubly so.

Her mind had been spinning, she threw her hands in the air, her stomach a knot of confusion, “Fuck you both.” She could remember the way her lips quivered, a man she couldn’t see a future with, and the only one she ever had both looked at her as though she destroyed their worlds.

She hadn’t been able to face either of them. She packed a suitcase at four in the morning, caught the first train to DC that morning, and went to see her uncle Eric. He helped her find a job, that soon had her moving to Paris to work for an Ambassador.

She wrote to Carl, explaining that he wasn’t the one for her. That the longer they’d been together—and it had only been two months at that point, she realized they didn’t have that spark. She confessed that the cowboy who had interrupted his proposal stole it years ago on a subway ride.

When she wrote to Lucas, she held back. The feelings she still felt for him were confusing. She needed this time away from him, away from the expectation of Riley and Lucas. She needed to stretch, see the world.

She’d gotten to do that the last couple of years.

She got to attend balls, meet influential people, see the good that was being done in the world, that most people don’t know or understand.

She had a few flings.

Flings were all they could ever be.

Her heart belonged to a cowboy, she couldn’t get it back from him if she tried. Her own heart was connected to his—at least she still hoped so.

Looking out at the view of Paris at night, she took a moment, letting herself have the hope, the need, the want for him still. At any moment, as she finished his letter it could all come crashing down around her.

She wasn’t ready yet. She wasn’t sure she could handle the thought.

The idea.

The nightmare of knowing he moved on.

Why else would Lucas have written her after all this time?

Riley closed her eyes after staring at the Eiffel tower glowing in front of her. She took a long breath, it wasn’t deep it was focused as she prepared to have whatever was left of her heart broken.

“I still love you Riley. When I look out at the property, I can see you learning to ride, I can see you planting a flower garden with our daughters, and a vegetable garden with the boys.”

She felt her heart jump, her eyes started to burn with tears. The paper jumped in her hands as her fingers shook.

“I tried to move on, I know you have, first with Carl, and then with men you’ve met in Europe. But none of those men are me Riley. None of the women I’ve met are you. So please put this letter down and go open your apartment door.”

She blinked, “Open my apartment door?” That made absolutely no sense. She dropped the letter on a table, running her hands through her hair, which was loose around her shoulders, a wave to it after being pulled back in a tight bun all day. Her eyes red, her lips plump, her cheeks red as she studied her reflection in one of the many mirrors.

One deep breath.

Another deep breath before crossing the apartment to open her door, anticipating to find the hall empty.

The door opened, her senses came alive as she saw him. Hopeful green eyes framed by sun kissed skin, and the lips she dreamed on hers. “Lucas” was all she said before her arms were around him, and his around hers.

Unspoken they held each other, breathing the other in before she pulled him in, closing the door. “How, why?”

“I love you” was all he said before his fingers tangled in her hair, his lips captured her, love enwrapping them.

[chemical--chaos]

Blanc (Mafia Au - Himchan x Reader) - B.A.P

Word Count : 3216 

Warnings: Blood, violence, kidnapping, slight (implied) sexual content 

Plot: Being the leader of a dangerous mafia, you wouldn’t want to fall for the wrong person...

"Hyung is so smitten by that girl." Zelo laughed, earning a glare from Himchan as the six of them entered the bar. Ignoring the teasing from the 5 of them, he made his way down to the bar counter, taking his usual seat as he waited for her to arrive. Her older sister owned the bar, Le Blanc and since she was a couple of years younger, she was still studying but came to help out every night.

"I see you're early." Came a familiar voice and Himchan looked up, meeting her (e/c) eyes as a small smirk played on her lips as she stood behind the bar counter, dressed in a black chiffon blouse and black jeans. "I wouldn't miss my favourite poison for the world." Himchan smirked back, leaning closer to her, resting his head in his hands as his elbows rested on the counter. She threw her head back and laughed, her soft voice ringing through Himchan's ears like music.

"So I presume it's the usual then?" She asked, and Himchan nodded. (Y/N) had been working at the bar for a year now, she'd always see the six boys come in every night, with Himchan being the leader of the group. It didn't take long for her to catch Himchan's eye, to him, she was perfect in every sense. Her voice, her eyes, her witty comments, her sharp tongue, she was perfect.

It didn't take long for (Y/N) to prepare Himchan's usual drink for him and she placed it in front of him. "Has the mother ditched her little ducklings?" She questioned, leaning against the counter, causing Himchan to cock an eyebrow at her words. "Isn't it obvious? You're the mother, Yongguk is more the fatherly figure that tries to be scary but isn't, Zelo is your little baby, Daehyun being the embarrassing child, Youngjae is more of the chill uncle and Jongup being the rebellious teen." She finished, causing Himchan to chuckle.

"The mother eh? What time do you get off?" He questioned, running a hand through his dark red hair and adjusted his thick back framed glasses. (Y/N) laughed, before replying to him. "Is mummy worried about me?" She questioned, batting her eyelashes seductively at him.

"Well if you tell me, I'll make you forget everything, the only think you'll remember is how to scream my name." It was Himchan's turn to smirk now as the girl in front of him blushed like crazy. The pair had been flirting with each other for the past 8 months now, continuously going back and forth.

__________

2 months later

"Do you really have to go?" Himchan questioned (Y/N) as she pulled on his hoodie on top of her white blouse. She had spent the night over at his place, watching movies with the six of them and now she had class in an hour. "I gotta have brains, beauty alone won't get me many places." She laughed, leaning down on top of him and placing a kiss on his bare shoulder, Himchan grabbed her wrist, pulling her fully on top of him and flipping the pair around so he was hovering over her.

"Come over tonight, I have to show you something." He smiled at her, before leaning down to capture her lips in a sweet kiss.

____________

"Hyung, stop worrying, it's all fine." Daehyun smiled, watching Himchan pace around the room. "Yeah Himchan, stop it, you're making me feel giddy." Yongguk laughed, watching his friend get so riled up over nothing.

"She's meant to be back by now, something's wrong." Himchan muttered, looking up at Yongguk. As if on cue, the doorbell rang. With Himchan's head snapping towards the door, his concern alleviated slightly as he hoped it was (y/n).

He wasted no time in going towards the door and opening it, anticipated to be met with familiar (e/c) eyes and the same silky (h/l) (h/c) hair he loved so dearly. But instead, he was met with air and the darkness of the night. Furrowing his eyebrows and moving slightly outwards to see who had rung the bell, he heard the familiar sound of crinkling paper under his shoe. Looking down, he saw an envelope on which he had stepped. Being sure he hadn't seen this before, he bent down to pick it up, only to see it was addressed to him.

 "Who is it?" he heard Yongguk ask but ignored it with his thoughts running wild as he unsurely looked at the envelope having a foreboding feeling. With curiousity, he started opening it and reached his hand inside to see what was placed in it. Whatever caught his hand, he pulled it out and one gaze was all it took for his blood to run cold and his heart to bleed crimson pain as his eyes widened and it became hard to breathe. It was (y/n).

Beaten to a bloody pulp with her hands tied behind her back, blood dripping from her forehead and duct tape on her mouth. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath trying to calm his body which was trembling in rage and fear.

He crushed the photo in his hand while clenching his jaw trying to remove the photo from his head. He looked down and something caught his eyes. There was writing on the back of the photo. He opened the palm of his hand and straighten the crinkled picture to read what was written behind it.

'Bring back what you stole from us and she'll be yours. Come at midnight under the Kuzanagi bridge and the exchange will be made -T'

"Hyung why ar-" Daehyun stopped midsentence as he caught a glimpse of what was on the photo. "Has she.. Has (y/n) been-"

"Yes" came Himchan's forced reply as he thought of the brutal ways to kill them once he got his hands on the ones who dared touch a single hair on her head. "Make preparations. We'll leave at 11:30" he monotonously replied, moving inside with cold eyes. "What's wrong?" Youngguk stood up when he saw the look on Himchan's face. Not wanting to voice what was going on, he threw the photo at the table and went straight towards the weaponry room.

_____________

"Come out!" Himchan narrowed his eyes with his hand hovering above his gun holster in case something went sideways. His hand tightened around the bag in his hand which had 10 million and cold breeze hit his face as he, along with his other members, went deep under the bridge.

He heard a small whimper coming from the shadows which made his head snap and he pulled out his weapon. On high alert, he ventured into the shadows and the sight he was greeted with made his stomach flip.

There lay his (y/n) covered in blood and half unconscious. "Shit. (y/n)!" he yelled in panic and was about to make a run for her when he heard stomping of feet and lights flashing in their direction along with shouts, "Drop down your weapons and raise your hands in the air! Drop them now!" He heard yells. Cops.

Grunting in annoyance and hearing sighs of exasperation from all around, he turned towards the glaring flashlights, scrunching his eyes and lowering his weapon with other following his actions, trusting their leader. Tazuna sold us out he thought with a dangerous storm of rage brewing inside of him, threatening to burst out. "Hands above your head!" he heard the SWAT team say as one of them inched closer, while others surrounded them completely and he could see (y/n)'s body through the gaps.

"Ma'am, you alright?" Himchan glanced towards the source of the voice in confusion when he heard a grunt from (y/n). "Yeah. Is it done?" he heard her say and scowled, having no clue what was going on and it made him anxious. "Yes ma'am!" the officer saluted and stepped back allowing her to stand making Himchan's eyes widen in disbelief. It was her. It was her all along he thought completely dumbstruck, not wanting to believe his eyes as she wiped the fake blood off of her body with a small 'tsk' and looked up with a smile.

"Nothing personal boys. Just my job" She strolled over to them as the SWAT members backed away for her to come close to the baffled boys. She locked her (e/c) gaze with Himchan's fiery orbs. He had his jaw clenched in anger and gazed at her with cold, calculating eyes.

"(Y/n)?" her head turned towards a very confused Zelo which made her chuckle. "Agent (l/n)" she smiled flashing her badge at them all making Daehyun's temper skyrocket and he lunged at her not caring about the vast amount of guns aimed in their direction.

"You fucking betrayed us" he spat while aiming his fist towards her face and she dodged it with ease.

"As I said before, nothing personal." She nonchalantly replied dodging his yet another blow, but getting a hold of his hand this time and twisting it behind his back with tremendous strength making everyone stare at her with their jaws dropped. Daehyun grunted in pain and dropped onto the ground.

"How? There was no mistaking the writing. It was The Tazuna's" (Y/n) heard Youngjae's melodic voice with a hint of venom who was glaring daggers at her. "Yes, of course. We had to make it seem real now didn't we?" she devilishly smirked.

"They wouldn't stoop as low as to help the cops." She heard Youngguk's strong voice. "After what you guys did to the poor bastards, they were more than ready to get their revenge. Especially since we promised them what was lost" She leisurely strolled around them. "Speaking of, now where is the money?" she turned to look at Himchan and her gaze landed on the duffle bag on the ground next to him. "Ah" she went towards it while feeling his eyes burning holes in her head. Picking it up, she threw it towards the captain.

"Give this to The Tazuna's for their cooperation" she added in a business like voice and turned towards Himchan again who had his hands behind his head just like everyone else. She went towards him and tenderly placed her hand on his cheek making him flinch away and turn his head with a growl leaving his lips. Landing her lips near his ear, she gently whispered, "I'm sorry" and placed a small kiss on his cheek with her lips lingering there for some time. Stepping back and with one fleeting glance, she turned around and walked away.

"Take them to the precinct for now"

_____________

"I can't believe this" Daehyun groaned while banging his head against the cell wall lightly. "None of us can" Zelo sourly mumbled with his eyes downcast. They all had sensed the dark, murderous aura around Himchan and none dared to speak a word to him.

Hearing some hurried footsteps, they curiously turned their heads to look who was paying them a visit. They were greeted by the sight of a police officer with blonde hair, neatly combed back and beads of sweat glistening on his forehead who hurriedly turned the lock of their prison cell

"Walk straight up ahead towards the back exit which opens in an alleyway. From there, turn right and run towards the beginning of the alleyway. Over there are two cabs waiting for you. I've dismissed everyone for the time being but they will be back so get your asses out of this cell and get moving" he said in panic and opened the door fully. Himchan looked at him dumbfounded.

"Why are you doing this and who are you?" he asked standing up along with everyone else.

"I owe someone a favor" he replied and stepped aside making way for the boys to leave. Himchan nodded his head in appreciation and beckoned for his members to come. He had millions of questions running in his head but he wasn't stupid to waste this opportunity of a smooth escape from these prison walls before they got moved to max security jail the next day.

___________

"Yeah?" (Y/n) answered her phone. She'd finally gotten a break, thanks to Himchan and his group escaping, her task force was back in action, searching for them. Even the higher up officers had gotten involved, after all, they were a significant gang.

"Wait, I can't hear you. Let me go outside" she replied moving out of the briefing room towards the back exit. "Hold on. I don't get a word you're saying" she said in exasperation while creasing her eyebrows. Opening the door, she stepped out and was greeted with silence in the thin alleyway. "Go on" she sighed while stretching her tired neck

"The forensics report for the Valkyrie case is ready. Come and pick the files up in an hour" she heard Emma's soft voice from the other side."Is that seriously all you wanted to say? You could've texted me you know" she chuckled while shaking her head.

"Who knows when you would've seen the text I-" (Y/n)'s attention got diverted immediately as soon as she felt something cold touch her neck. "Drop the call" She heard the familiar voice of Jongup but remained oddly calm.

"Emma, I'll call you back. Something came up" she didn't wait for an answer and immediately put the phone down about to face him. "Don't" he hissed, burying the barrel of his gun deeper into her neck. "keep walking now" he said, talking a hold of her arm and leading her to the black SUV parked at the end of the alley.

"Where's the rest of the gang?" She smirked, getting in the car to see Daehyun in the backseat and Youngjae up the front, both glaring daggers at her. Daehyun clenched his fist, memories of her betrayal still fresh in his mind but before he could act, Youngjae stopped him, "Himchan hyung is dealing with her, he said not to touch her."

"Ahh, Chanie, how he is?" She chuckled, only for Jongup to lean over and place a blindfold on her eyes as Daehyun tied her hands together and unaware to all three of the boys, she let them, after all, she was more than capable of fighting all three of them off.

______________

"Hurry up, the police patrols were here 10 minutes ago." Came Zelo's familiar voice as (y/n) was being led through random places, her blindfold still on. "Good to see you too Zelo." She smirked as the young boyas Daehyun pushed her forward, causing her to walk forward.

This ordeal soon stopped as Daehyun forced her to sit down on a chair and removed her blindfold, leaving her hands still tied. "Thank you for your hospitality." She commented as Daehyun left the room and she looked around, before her eyes landing on a familiar figure leaning against the window, Himchan. He slowly walked over to her, taking his dear time, patronising her.

"Nice to see you too." She rolled her (e/c) eyes as she tapped her foot on the ground, the sound of her heel echoing through the small room. Himchan came forward, only for his hand to go under her chin, yanking her head up so she could meet his fiery gaze. He didn't want to hurt her, heck, he loved her, with every fibre in his body but her betrayal had almost cost him his family, his 5 brothers who he'd vowed to protect, he couldn't let his own emotions get in the way of that promise.

"I'm not going to kill you, you don't deserve the easy way out." He growled, letting her head fall as he made his way towards the door. (Y/n) smirked, knowing he couldn't do anything to her, after all, the headquarters by now would know what she had done. She sighed as she continued to struggle against the ropes, twisting and turning her wrists and not caring about the burn marks.

"Himchan!" Came Yongguk's loud yell, even (y/n) heard it. There it was. Himchan rapidly followed Yongguk, only for him to stop him in front of a TV. There it was, her ID photo, flashing bright on the screen.

"Renowned FBI Agent (Y/n) (L/n) is said to have been involved with the escape of notorious gangsters under Kim Himchan. Sources report that she'd had been undercover for more than two years in an attempt to arrest the gang. An insider at the FBI gave the statement that she had become romantically involved with Kim himself and her betrayal to the FBI was coming. For the past three days, sources say she'd been leading her team in circles and CCTV footage has shown her leaving in a black SUV not far from her office." The reporter continued as Himchan's eyes widened. The footage of Jongup and (y/n) entering the car was flashing on the screen, however, the gun Jongup was holding against her was not visible from this angle, making it all look realistic.

"As off now, anyone with any information on her is urged to come forward and an officer at the precinct the group were held in is under investigation." The report concluded and Yongguk turned the TV off as all six of the boys watched in shock. Himchan wasted no time in getting back to the room she was in, only to find that she'd pulled her knees to her chest as her heels rested on the edge of the chair with her head resting upon her knees.

He slowly untied her hands, and she looked up, her bloodshot eyes meeting the soft gaze of Himchan. "I fucked up." She softly said, lowering her gaze and using her left hand to massage her right wrist, which was bleeding.

"They warned me, to not go, Emma warned me, she said that once you go, you can't come back out." She chuckled bitterly, wiping the tears from her eyes away, not wanting to seem weak in front of Himchan who crouched in front of her, slowly extending his hand to her cheek and making her look at him.

"I couldn't live knowing I'd put you away. I just couldn't, my brain fucked up-" And before she could continue, Himchan leaned forward, silencing her with his lips, to which she eagerly responded, by wrapping her arms around his neck, launching herself at him and the pair fell to the floor with her on top of Himchan. Neither of them cared as they devoured each other and there was no mistaking it that these two were insanely in love with each other.

Needless to say, the other 5 boys in the house had quite a hard time falling asleep that night.

_____________

"You threw your entire life away for him, you're actually insane." Emma laughed, drinking her juice as the pair stood in the kitchen of (y/n)'s new house.

"I can't help it, I can't live without him." (Y/n) smiled in response, sipping her coffee as her fiancé came up behind her and wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her close to him.

"Thank you Emma, thank you for bringing this crazy girl into my life." Himchan smiled at the retired FBI agent. After all, it to Emma whom the police officer owed the favour.