tasm peter parker or james potter x anxious ! reader ??? i literally get so stressed and anxious at night that my heart starts beating rapidly and i can’t do anything let alone sleep 😭😭😭😭 wishing that i wasn’t all alone in this and had some company, but we can imagine ! 😭
Thank for requesting lovely
cw: symptoms of anxiety
tasm!Peter Parker x fem!reader ♡ 628 words
Peter’s hand stopped moving on your back a while ago. It now lays flat just below your left shoulder blade. You wonder if he can feel your heartbeat from back there.
“Wanna try some more breaths?” he asks. His voice is soft with drowsiness.
You inhale slowly, mostly in the hopes that your boyfriend will think you’re calming and he’ll fall asleep. But really, the achey, dissatisfying stretch of your lungs only makes you feel your thundering heartbeat more acutely. Every time you realize how much it hurts, it’s like an invisible boa constrictor wraps tighter around your chest.
Peter starts rubbing your back again.
“I don’t think this is sustainable,” you murmur. “You should go to sleep.”
“What, and leave you by yourself?” he scoffs lightly. Your stomach sinks. If he was approaching sleep, you’ve brought him back. “Not a chance. But if you think it’s not working, we could watch a movie or something.”
“No,” you say, though it does sound nice. The past couple of nights, you and Peter have cuddled up on the couch with a movie, and when you eventually get tired enough to fall asleep he brings you to bed. It works great for you; the catch is that then he’s the one staying up.
It’s something about being in your bed, you think. It’s not an inherently unrelaxing place, but when you get into bed at night, the lights off and your home silent, suddenly dread is gripping you like a vice. Your thoughts go where you can’t stop them—you’re hardly quick enough to keep up at all—and before you know what’s happened your heart’s rattling your ribcage like it wants out and your eyes are glossy wet.
“I don’t think it’s not working,” you tell him now, trying not to sound too hopeless, “I just don’t think it’s realistic for you to spend every night putting me to sleep like an infant.”
Peter huffs a laugh. “C’mon, don’t be so fussy,” he teases. You pull back a little just so you can glare at him through the darkness. You’re pretty sure he can see you with that super vision of his, yet he chooses to ignore it. “You still wanna be my baby, right?”
You try to groan, but a little bit of laugh makes it through. “Gross. Not like that.”
“Yeah, I know.” Your boyfriend chuckles, encouraging you to do the same. Though it’s a begrudging sound, it does loosen something in your chest ever so slightly. “But hey, I don’t mind staying up with you. The anxiety is around going to sleep, right?”
You hum.
“Then we’ll give you some new feelings around going to sleep.” Peter leans forward, dropping a kiss on the top of your head. He says it like it’s easy. Like it’s a foregone conclusion, and even if it’s not he’ll just start trying the next thing. “We can do this. I’d rather be awake with you than asleep without you anyways.”
You burrow in close to his chest. You can hear his heartbeat, steady and about twice as slow as yours. “That sounds like a cheesy line you got from a romcom,” you say, your voice inlaid with fondness.
“Yeah, Sleepless in Seattle.”
“Really?”
“Nope. Never seen it.” Peter gives your shoulder a firm scrub, and you can practically sense his smile as he lays another kiss on your head. “But it makes what we’re doing seem pretty romantic, huh?”
If you asked the people who directed those movies, they’d probably be able to think of a million more romantic things you could be doing with your boyfriend than laying still in bed, whispering to each other and trying to outlast frantic thoughts. But to you, right now, it does seem pretty good.
See here's the thing with the Bungie layoffs. Either Pete Parsons' work as CEO is valuable enough to warrant his paycheque, in which case he has catastrophically failed at his job with this and should be laid off, or it isn't valuable enough to warrant his paycheque and he should not be employed.
And that goes for executives of the same level for basically all the big game studios!
Layoffs should be seen as a massive failure of their leadership and they should be first on the chopping block. No bonuses, no golden handshakes to leave. They FAILED AT THEIR JOBS.
But no, their already rich asses get to keep their 'jobs' while the people who actually do the work (including fucking Robert Brookes what the *hell* Bungie?!?!) get laid off.
After their most successful expansion.
I'm fucking disgusted.
After the dust cleared, it was dead silent. The air was thick with moisture from the dark clouds looming above them all. Someone, probably Raphael, yelled out something Two didn't quite process, his ears still ringing as his vision slowly cleared.
A faint blue glow flickered in the near distance, not too far from where Two was slumped on the ground. More muffled shouts rang out as Two attempted to collect himself, staggering to his feet and trudging over to the source of-
No.
Just the image alone was enough to bring Two collapsing back to his knees. Stupid, he thought.
"H-hey..." One's weak voice just barely got through to Two, snapping him right out of his thoughts.
He stared down at the dimming blue glow, watching it flicker and fade in and out. How the hell are you still here, breathing?
His thoughts became flooded in his head, even more so as he felt his arms cradle his brother's near-lifeless body.
"Did we win?"
Two felt his jaw clench at One's question, feeling frighteningly close to grinding his teeth until they were flat.
Did we win?
The question echoed in Two’s head, as if that would better help him process this moment. In any other instance, he would have deflected and scoffed at such an empty, meaningless question. Did it matter? he thought as he titled his head up, looking around briefly at the wasteland that surrounded them. It was over, that much was apparent.
"Yes,” he huffed, looking down at his brother in his arms as he continued, “Now, shut it and save your strength. Your heart-"
"I know," One croaked out in between a few sputtering breaths, interrupting Two in more ways than one. Two tried to ignore the cast-off of blood coming from his brother's mouth, despising the sickening feeling settling in his stomach as it hit his chin. One smiled weakly up at his brother, his eyes dull and unfocused.
How dare you, Two thought to himself.
His eyes flickered from One's exposed heart, bleeding out and hardly beating, and back to his brother’s face. His brother looked beaten, bloody...broken. It wasn't a look he saw from him often, if at all. It was that damn smile that he watched waver as One's heart beat softer and softer. What cruel irony, Two couldn't help but think, a metaphorical expression brought to life by his stupid, thoughtless, idiotic brother.
Two could still fix this. Even as he held his brother tighter against his own plastron and felt his shirt get soaked by the horrid mix of blood and empyrean; he thought to himself how he'd be the one to fix this.
There was no other choice left.
“Good…” One let out the softest of chuckles, “…we…we can s-start over.”
Something in Two’s own chest faltered, even just briefly. It was enough to shut out the feeling of One’s pathetic coughs and wheezes against him. He watched how One's eyes dulled further, his gaze wandering away from Two's face.
Starting over? That wasn’t ever an option, not one that Two had ever weighed in his mind. He wasn’t sure if that was even an option now. After everything he had done, everything he sacrificed, worked for…his brother still wanted to burn it, bury everything down and out of Two’s reach. One wanted this win, he wanted the impossible.
“Impossible…” Two muttered under his breath.
He heard yet another faint chuckle. And then the dense silence that followed.
annabeth being jealous of her friends that have powers. partially because they look fun and cool. mainly because it's the parents way extending a piece of themselves. of their powers. to their offspring. it was an act of trust and faith. and all that athena gave to annabeth. annabeth had to build from the ground up. which one could argue is a test of strength. but sometimes. annabeth didn't want to be strong. she wanted to be loved.
Mentioned this before but as much as I adore the medic Leo headcanon, my favorite type of it is when it’s basically just Leo knowing the most surface level of stuff and carrying around a super basic first-aid kit in his pack. So he knows how to use gauze, and he’s got a ton of Jupiter Jim branded bandaids, and if you really needed it then he can hit you up with some ibuprofen but other than that? Nothing.
But. I love the idea that that changes post-invasion.
They’re pretty sturdy, all of them, so they can take more than one beating and really only need a bandaid for the fun of it. But the invasion hit harder than ice packs and “lots of rest” would help with, and I can bet that a post being beaten to a pulp Leo would have a lot of time on his hands to reflect and, maybe, learn a thing or two as he waits to get better.
It’s nothing excessive, not at first, but he watches veterinary videos, and live surgeries, and other videos in that same realm (because the books are, uh, a bit too jargon-y for him) multiple times over. Just so he knows. Just in case he needs to know.
In his pack, there’s a first-aid kit. With the use of a mini portal for extra space, the kit has grown to include everything from scalpels to butterfly stitches to sutures to even fiberglass patches.
And obviously the Jupiter Jim brand bandaids stay too.