#it’s been like eight months of being on this ship and I have no intention of getting off

[unholyhelbig]

It's been a year since any vampire Kate 😭

Title: I Don't Bite [Part Eight]

Ship: Female!Reader x Vampire!Kate Bishop

Wordcount: 2297

Warnings: Mentions of sex, blood, Tony Stark, and horrible grammar.

[A/n: I straight up hate this, but I've written myself into a bit of a corner and think that you guys deserve an ending to this one soon, so here's an update! I do have more ideas for Vampire Kate just not... this]

Read from the Start | Read my stuff on AO3 | Leave Requests

There was a staleness to your home after three days of being abandoned. The sun was filtering through rolling dark clouds, a coldness filling your bones. The place you’d resided in for the last year didn’t feel like yours anymore.  A smudge of dark brown blood against the doorframe to the bathroom was the only trace that Kate had ever stepped foot here.

Her car wasn’t in the driveway. Your fingers trembled as you struggled to open the door. Bobbi and Jemma’s home was eerily quiet, as if it had been abandoned long ago. The lights leading up to the front door were the only sign of life. Your heart was pounding in your throat by the time your back pressed against the inside of your door.

It may have been foolish to return here, but you simply had nowhere else to go. The worry you held for a woman that you had spent a single night in a dingy hotel room with, was alarming, if not understandable. You were willing to risk your job for her safety and risk your life for the same.

You pulled a mug from your kitchen cabinet and filled it with lukewarm water, gulping it down without regard for the moisture that soaked into the collar of your shirt- Kate’s shirt- that you were reluctant to take off despite it being wrinkled with wear.

“You have no survival instincts, do you?”

The voice startled you, water sputtering from your lips. You coughed at the unfamiliar feeling of drowning is the most trivial regard. Your intuition kicked in, finally, and you grasped the largest knife from the butcher block by the sink. You held it between you and Jemma, her eyebrow raised.

“What do you intend to do with that thing? Stab me?”

“If I have to, yes.”

She was leaning back in one of your kitchen chairs, her legs crossed with an elegance that always accompanied her. For a moment, you considered asking how she got in, but it would be easy for a SHIELD agent to do so, and you decided not to waste your breath. Despite yourself, you were in awe of the still and calm nature she exuded.

“Y/n, we both know you don’t have it in you.” She stood and walked to the side of the counter, all the while, your grip tightened on the steak knife, the tip twisting in the air. “Maybe you do. I keep telling Bobbi not to underestimate the power of infatuation.”

“Are you even a biochemist, or was that a lie too?”

“Oh no, I’m quite gifted in the field. I’m a woman of science, and so is Bobbi. It’s why they put the two of us here in the first place, to understand Kate. What she is and what her intentions are.” There was a hint of honesty to her voice that you were inclined to believe. “SHIELD’s job is to minimize civilian involvement in the unknown. Neither of us wanted to see you get involved.”

Your arm was starting to ache, the knife between the two of you faltering before you regained your grip, steeling yourself. A laugh threatened to bubble from your chest. This was all ridiculous. There was a spy in your kitchen hunting a vampire. Just last month you wouldn’t’ dream of holding a blade between yourself and Jemma.

She was packing though, and the gesture made you feel just a tick better than if you were empty handed. “Civilian involvement, Jemma, I’ve heard all about Tony Starks ties to you. SHIELD is all over his documents, it practically bleeds ignorance.”

Jemma drummed her fingers against the granite of the counter, letting out a heavy sigh. Her eyes flicked to the front door, and then the glass of the back. She had an eye on all of her exits, and that made a deep seed of worry settle in the pit of your stomach.

“We’re not the bad guys here, Y/n. You’ve worked for Tony and Pepper for what? Ten years now? That must build some type of trust. Stark may be daft sometimes, but he doesn’t’ back ideas he doesn’t believe in. You know that.”

You did know that. Though you had started out fetching coffee for Pepper, you’d soon climb the ranks from an intern to a personal assistant that was not only privy to the companies’ deepest secrets, but the sharpest decisions. Tony, despite his peacocking, was a good guy that you’d put your confidence in.

“Bobbi, she’s good but she’s rash. I tried to talk her out of cornering you like she did. But despite her brashness she has a point. You’re putting your faith in the wrong direction.” Jemma gently pushed your hand down, moving the sharp end of the knife to the floor. She didn’t’ attempt to pry it from you. “There are things in this world, y/n, that need to be researched to be understood.”

Jemma asked you where Kate was, and your eyes darted down to the blade before retuning it to the wooden block with ease. You told her that you didn’t’ know, that Kate had left you in the hotel room for your own safety. The biochemist seemed to believe you in earnest.

She squeezed your shoulder once before slipping out the back door. You made a point to flip the deadbolt the second she took a step onto the grass. Your mouth was incredibly dry again, eyes clenched shut in an attempt to unscramble your thoughts.

You were growing exhausted with the light B&E, climbing the stairs with a heavy disposition. You’d have to return to the office tomorrow to face Pepper with your bad decisions, maybe even Tony if he had caught wind of your unresolved issues with SHIELD.

You needed to wash the filmy hotel soap from your skin, the sweat that soaked into the fabric of your shirt during your conversation with Jemma. You flicked on the water, letting the room fill with a dense steam before stripping down to nothing but your bra and underwear. You drew in a dense, warm breath.

There was a cool touch against the bare skin of your back and a yelp escaped your lips. You turned quickly, using the back of your hand to slam blindly against the stranger. Your knuckles made contact with something hard and icy.

“Okay, I deserved that. Nice right hook, darling.”

Kate’s smooth voice settled into your veins, the steam from your running shower made her eyes look glassy, but they were filled with relief. You couldn’t’ say the same. Instead, you frowned and gave her a shove, the punch to the face not seeming like enough.

“What the hell, Kate! I thought you’d gotten yourself killed. Leaving a cryptic note like that and having me foot the bill for the motel? Dick move.” You shoved her again but took a step to keep the gap between the both of you minimal. “Don’t try to stop me. We’re a little too far for that, don’t you think?”

This time, when you moved to shove her again, her cool fingers wrapped around your wrist. She held your still with minimal effort, pulling your forward to slot against her body. Kate smelled like the earth, like blood and the cleanliness of detergent. She was taller than you, only by a few inches, but it was enough for your eyes to flick up.

The pads of her fingers moved down your bare spine, sending shivers across your body. Each time you thought you were done, each time you thought that the mess you had gotten into was slowly fizzing to an end, Kate would waltz in with her suave confidence, her frigid skin, her kind eyes that betrayed her true nature.

“I meant what I said,” She whispered to you, “I wanted to come sooner, I did, but something tells me Jemma left behind a few gifts. They can’t hear us over the water.”

“You do have a plan, then?”

“Not quite.” She sighed out, pressing her forehead against yours “But I needed to see you. Your lack of clothing is just an obvious bonus.”  

She must have heard your heartbeat pick up, because Kate had a cocky smirk against her lips, tempered gray eyes clouding with lust. Despite the innate danger of simply being in her presence, you couldn’t deny your want for her.

Kate’s fingers ghosted your jawline “I can smell how much you want me, pet.”

You groaned at the words, blood blooming in a brilliant red against your cheeks. You hid your face in the crook of her neck out of embarrassment. It was infuriating, the power she had over you. But in this moment, you’d give everything up for her; your job, your home, your life if she asked.

If it were anyone else, her assuredness would infuriate you. But instead, her words, the edge of affection in her voice, made you tremble with need. Kate chuckled and the sound vibrated against your cheek.

“No reason to be shy,” Kate gently pulled back, guiding your eyes back to her.

She looked down at you, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. You weren’t quite sure who closed the distance between you, and in that moment, you didn’t care. Her lips were soft, and tasted slightly of salt. Kate made a quiet noise, brushing her tongue against your bottom lip.

Her nails raked up the bare flesh of your thighs and you gasped into her mouth at the sensation, allowing her entrance, her tongue pressed to the roof of your mouth as her fingers ghosted your ribs, the sensation making your stomach flutter.

“Is this alright?” She pulled back, and you whimpered at the loss of contact, suddenly ashamed of the effect she had on you. Kate was smiling in a way that conveyed triumph. “I promise, I’ll be gentle.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Katie.”

There was a soreness to your body that lulled you into taking the elevator up to your floor the next day. Kate, had in fact, broken her promise four times and that was enough for you to consider cashing in on the vacation days you’d built up. If it weren’t for the bloodthirsty spies, or the less bloodthirsty vampire, debacle you would have done just that.

“Well, you have a bit of pep to your step this morning Miss Y/L/N.”

“Good morning, Mr. Stark”

One of the reasons you didn’t’ take the elevator was that Tony Stark took the elevator. You’d rather dash up flights of stairs and work up a sweat than suffer through a few minutes of small talk with your boss. Especially during current circumstances.

He was dressed casually, a T-shirt and jeans, telling you that he had spent most of his morning in the lab. A cup of coffee was in his hand, steaming and filling the small space with the thick scent.

Kate had littered your collarbone with dark purple blotches, and you had let her. Ther was something intoxicating about feeling her sharp teeth brush against your skin, never breaking it but marking you all the same. You tugged the lapel of your coat, covering whatever had slipped through your collar.

“It wouldn’t have anything to do with your new friend, would it?” Tony asked.

You drew in a sharp breath and suddenly wanted to be anywhere but here. You were between floors in the elevator, the world whistling by at your back. The city looked so small as you glided towards the main office where Pepper was located.

Tony turned quickly and hit the button for the elevator to halt to a startling stop. He spilled a few drops of coffee but didn’t’ flinch as the hot liquid dripped down his hand, instead he wiped it away and gave you a deep stare. Your back was already pressed against the cold glass.

“Relax, kid, I just want to talk.”

“A lot of people just want to talk lately, and frankly I’m getting sick of everyone cornering me like this.” You said, hands gripping the railing. “Stark, I’m claustrophobic.”

“This will only take a minute.”

“If you’re going to tell me to give up Kate, forget it. I’ve heard it before, a-lot. But from where I’m sitting, the only people that are a danger to me is you and your secret organization, with your spies and your tech and your-“

“Y/n, I agree with you.”

He’d cut you off with a simple sentence. Your heart was pounding and you were white-knuckling the railing. You narrowed your eyes at him, lifting a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. There was a level of trust here, sharing a small space with an Avenger. The cockiest, most impulsive one, but an Avenger all the same.

“What?”

“I’ve done a lot of bad things in my life, and I’ve spent years trying to remedy them, protect the world from myself more than anything.” He frowned into his coffee, not looking you in the eye. “There are some people out there that without a doubt, don’t deserve a second chance. But neutralizing someone before they’ve gotten a first? That’s not how I run things.”

“You can call them off, then?” You asked.

“It doesn’t’ work like that. I work for them, not the other way around. I can make a few calls, but I can’t promise anything. I just…” He hesitated, chewing the inside of his lip “You’re like some weird, fucked up daughter to me, and I don’t want you to get hurt. Or undead, or whatever comes with what she is.”

You pried yourself from the railing and embraced him. He let out a startled breath but eventually relaxed into the hug, rubbing his hand against your back. “Alright kid, alright.”

[chaotictarlos]

I’ve always dreamed of me and you, now here we are

ship: Tarlos | fandom: 911 Lone Star | author: chaotictarlos | read on ao3

Rating: Explicit | Warnings/Tag: Secret Dating AU, Social Worker!Carlos Reyes, Professor TK Strand, ex’s to lovers, warnings to be added, smut in later chapters, m x m, anal sex, m x m smut

Summary: It’s a tale as old as time, meeting the right person but during the wrong time of life. TK Strand and Carlos Reyes dated in college but parted ways when they graduated, not knowing they would ever see each other again. Six years later, Carlos is working as a social worker in Travis County and TK has just accepted a position as a professor at The University of Texas at Austin. They run into each other when a mutual friend invited TK out for the evening.

Authors Note: I stepped away from this fic for a few months because some people can be so mean and hateful that they made me feel like I shouldn't continue it because they didn't like the direction the story was going / how the characters were being. I'm still struggling with this fic, but I'm trying to overcome it because not every fic has to be liked be everyone. Not every fic is written for everyone. There are millions of fics out there and I don't like every single one of them. That's okay. There are plenty of Tarlos fics that I don't like, but I don't make it the author's problem because it's not their problem. If you don't like this fic, that's okay but keep that to yourself. If you do like this fic, I would like to hear about your thoughts. I'm going to try and get back into this and get it finished up soon, but we'll see how I feel about it.

Thank you to @noxsoulmate for beta'ing for me. I hope you guys are enjoying this fic as much as I am! Leave me a comment and check out my other fics!

Prologue | Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven

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Chapter Eight

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When Carlos shows up at the place he’s supposed to meet the guy that Marjan has set him up with, he’s early - almost too early for it to be considered normal but he’s nervous. It’s been some time since he’s gone out on an actual date and not just found someone at a club or bar to hook up with for the night.

He takes a look around the restaurant, trying to decide if he wants to find a table to sit down at or get a quick drink at the bar - when his eyes land on TK.  

Carlos feels his stomach turn slightly. 

TK’s out on a date and for a moment that’s all Carlos can focus on. He looks hard at the man he’s with and realizes it’s not Michael. Carlos also knows Michael - there was a time when Paul tried to set him up with Michael but he wasn’t really Carlos’ type.

No, this is another guy. A new guy.

Carlos feels his stomach twist into knots and the unfamiliar and ugly feeling of jealousy fills his veins too. He hates the feeling but the longer he stares at TK and his date, the more it grows. He turns on his heel and heads straight for the bathroom, needing a moment to breathe and get his head on straight before his own date arrives.

Carlos steps up to a sink and grips the edges, looking down and letting out a deep breath. He’s being ridiculous, is what he’s being. There’s no reason for him to continue to pine after TK and what could have been. If TK wanted any part of that - of him - he’s had plenty of time to say something but instead he’s gone on a few dates with other men - which is fine, TK owes Carlos nothing and Carlos knows that.

He looks up at his reflection and reminds himself that he has also had plenty of chances to tell TK that he still has feelings for him and has thought about what it would be like to try again, but he hasn’t said anything either. He rubs a hand over his face and tries not to mess up his hair.

He squares his shoulders and looks at himself intently.

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tags: @strangefurychaos @sapphire11 @first-kanaphan @noxsoulmate @rangergurlgleek1211 @detective-giggles @lonestardust @bubblesandroses8 @thebumblecee @mooshkat @importantbailiffpaperpony @a-j-cowwley @meditating-honey-badger @paperstorm @otter-love-asl @kiloskywalker @angeltk @firstprince-history-huh @brouill3r

[ereardon]

Come Back [Chapter 11][Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw x OC]

Summary: Eight years ago, Bradley Bradshaw was just a college boyfriend who broke your heart. Now, he’s back in your life after a coincidental reunion, and he’s adamant about starting up a friendship. Will it be possible to be just friends with Bradley, or is he inevitably going to end up ruining everything you’ve spent the better part of a decade rebuilding?

Pairing: Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw x OC [Nurse Maggie Brooms]

WC: 2.4K

Warnings: Cursing, angst, mention of death

Series masterlist

You hesitated, the letter heating up in your hand, as you sat in your car outside of Bradley’s house. 

The paper felt white hot and you wanted to drop it on the floor of the car, drive away and pretend you had never made the trek out to Gooseberry Lane. 

It was the middle of the day on a Wednesday, there was only a very slim chance he was home. Still, your heart pounded in your chest as you got out, making your way up the path to the front door. Yes, you had written the letter with the intent that he would read it. But you were afraid to see Bradley in person. Talk to him face-to-face. 

You still weren’t ready. 

Thankfully there was no movement on the other side of the door as you slipped the letter underneath. 

Back in the car, you leaned your head back against the head rest and took a deep breath, your heart still pounding. 

Leaving that letter felt like taking the first step back to him.

***

Dear Maggie,

Tell me something about yourself. Something that I don’t know. I’m desperate to learn about the woman that you’ve become. 

Do you still love banana cream pie, and sleeping during a rainstorm? Have you done any traveling over the last eight years? We talked about going to Paris and London together, and Hanoi in Vietnam. Did you ever make it to any of those places? If not, there’s still time. 

What do you like to do on a day that you’re not working? For some reason, I picture you having some kind of hobby, like a book club with the other nurses, or volunteering at an animal shelter. I wish I had more hobbies, honestly. But most of the time I can barely drag myself home from work, make dinner, maybe veg out in front of the TV for a bit before going to bed. It’s a lot of work, Mags, and coming home to an empty house makes it a lot less incentivizing to come home at all. 

Thank you for writing me back. I didn't expected you to. I read your letter six times back to back until my vision started to blur. 

You’re right. You were always right, even when it bothered me to admit it. You have a habit of always being correct and it would be infuriating if it wasn’t also one of the best things about you. You’re a natural leader. Always have been. 

I hate that you thought I left with no regard for how you felt. Like it didn’t kill me. Every step I took that night that took me further away from you felt like a knife was twisting itself deeper into my chest. 

You’re still the only woman who has ever said she loved me. You’re the only person I’ve said I love you to. I’ve never wanted to be loved by anyone but you. 

You told me a long time ago that sometimes people stay. The boy on the receiving end of those words was too afraid to admit that you were offering a lifeline. He thought you were just saying that because it was what you were meant to say in those types of situations. He didn’t realize that you meant it. He didn’t realize that choosing you would change everything. 

I took you for granted. I took your love for granted, Maggie. And I’m sorry. 

Now I know I promised a letter every day for the foreseeable future, and I’m sorry to have to backtrack on that promise. We just got word that we’re shipping off for a mission tomorrow, so this will be the last letter for a while. Not sure how long I’ll be gone. Could be a week, could be three months. If I get a chance to write, I will, I promise. Don’t worry about me, OK? Not that you would, but if you did just know that we’ll be fine. It’s the job, after all. 

I love you, Maggie Brooms. I’m not afraid to say it or shout it or morse code it or buy a light up sign that says it and put it in my front window for the neighborhood to see. Even if one day, maybe tomorrow, maybe in five years from now, you wake up and want to call it quits on me, I will still love you. I’m going to love you my entire life, no matter what. 

I promise to come home soon. It’s different when I know that you’re there, potentially waiting for me. You make everything so much better. 

Love, 

Bradley 

***

A week went by. And then two. No other letters arrived. You resorted to rereading the ones he had sent over the three weeks between your fight and when he left on the mission.

What kind of Christmas traditions did you have growing up? My parents always let me stay up until midnight on Christmas Eve and I’d get to open one present and sit by the fire and in the morning my mom would make chocolate chip pancakes. I still think about those pancakes every Christmas. 

***

Do you remember Professor Keller in the English department? How he always smelled vaguely of Cheez-Its and there would be little smudges of coffee on the papers he graded and handed back? I saw him a few years ago, when I went back to UVA for a visit. I was doing some Naval recruiting and he spotted me and instantly recognized me. I thought that was so funny because I had to rack my brain for a second to remember his name. And he’s probably had ten thousand students in his classes since we graduated, but he still remembered me. Makes you wonder who is just out thinking of you at any given time. 

***

I think I saw you, once, a few years back. At the time I didn’t know you were a nurse. You had scrubs on, and were getting into your car. It was the parking lot of a grocery store. The team had sent me out on a beer run on a Friday afternoon. I saw your hair and part of your face, before you turned and shut the door. It was like every single cell in my body started to hum at once. I felt like I was shaking from the inside out. I thought about running up to you. Part of me was so fucking desperate to see if it was you. But then the rational part of me said there was no way. It couldn’t be that easy to find you again after all these years. But then that stupid darts game. I shouldn’t call it stupid. If I hadn't bet Hangman that he could throw the darts after two shotskis and with a blindfold, he never would have missed. That dart never would have almost taken my eye out, Coyote wouldn’t have tackled Hangman, the three of us never would have ended up in your ER that Tuesday morning. It was fate, Mags.

***

There’s talk of a mission. You haven’t been through this before so I’ll give you an overview. I can’t tell you much. Just when I’m leaving. I won’t know how long I’m gone for, and I can’t tell you where I’m going. All I can tell you is that knowing you’re on the other side waiting for me is going to make this the hardest mission I’ve ever flown. I watched my mother grieve my father for years. I was too young to really understand when it happened. But I know that life isn’t easy. Waiting for someone who may or may not come home. 

***

I can’t believe we’ve spent years living in the same twenty square miles without knowing it. If I had known, all this time, how close you were, I never would have been able to stop thinking about it. I would have driven down every street, rang every doorbell, if it meant that there was a chance one day someone would open the door and it would be you. 

***

I’ve missed holding you in my arms while you sleep. You’re not a cute sleeper, Mags, sorry to break it to you. Your mouth hangs open a little, and you get this tiny patch of drool that pools in the corner, and your hair is always a mess because you never wear it in a braid or a bun to sleep. But guess what? You’re the most beautiful person that I’ve ever seen when you’re like that. I think I fell more in love with you every time I woke up next to you. You captivated me. 

***

What you didn’t realize the first night we met was that I had been watching you for weeks before that night. Not in a creepy, stalker way. We had intro to art history together that semester. I spotted you right away. Shiny brown hair, your easy laugh as you slid into a seat next to Kailey in the second row of the cold auditorium. The way you pushed up the sleeves of your sweatshirt and hunched over your notebook in deep concentration during the slideshow presentations. Anyway, I had spotted you weeks before you laid your eyes on me that night at Trinity. I watched you make out with Bernie Colemine that gross junior. Watched as he flicked his inexperienced tongue down your throat, saw you almost gag right there into his mouth. So I spilled that full beer down his back. It might have been the only shot I had with you. Despite what you thought, Mags, I was not as much of a player as you made me out to be. From that night on, you were the only girl for me. You showed up to my room and stripped down to your underwear and I swear I almost had a heart attack. It was one of the most difficult things I’d ever done not to touch you. My hands burned at my sides all night from the deep desire to run my fingers across every inch of your skin. Memorize you. Map you. Worship you. But I didn’t want to scare you away. A part of me has always been terrified of scaring you away. I know you like puzzles, Mags, but sometimes I worry that I’m one problem you just can’t fix. 

***

The team wants to see you again. Bob got all pink in the ears when your name was brought up and I have half a mind to tell him that you’re mine. But it wouldn’t be true, would it? I can’t stop you from dating Bob. He’s a good guy. Now if you got within ten feet of Hangman, that’s another story. Anyway, they liked you. Phoenix asked where my friend was the other day. They don’t know about our fight. They don’t really know the whole story. So what do you say, Mags? Come out with us again. I promise, I won’t let you get as drunk as last time. 

***

Twenty days after his last letter, you came home to see the corner of a new letter wedged inside the mailbox. You couldn’t pull it out fast enough, bending it in half trying to yank it free from the metal jaws of the letter box, swinging open the front door of your townhouse and tossing your purse haphazardly on the ground, finger already sliding under the seam of the seal. 

Dear Maggie,

We made it. I’m writing this letter on the carrier home as we speak, and I’ll drop it off the moment we hit land. 

That wasn’t an easy one. They never are, but seems like lately they keep getting worse. Every time I look around at the team we look older. Wearier. It weighs on us. 

I missed you. I wrote you a few letters while we were gone, but I never got a chance to ship them off, so I’m sorry about that. I’ll give them to you sometime soon. 

Sorry for the short note tonight. I’m exhausted, sweetheart. I wish more than anything that I could come home to you. Wrap my arms around you from behind, breathe in the smell of your hair. Do you still use rosemary and mint shampoo? I used to love that smell. 

I miss the way you feel in my arms. I miss the way the mattress would dip as you’d crawl in beside me. I miss the way you press your thumbs into my temples to rub away a headache. I miss the sound of your voice in the morning and the way you sigh when you think I’m being insufferable. I miss the fact that you butter your bread before making a peanut butter sandwich and the way that you insist on driving with the windows rolled down even when it’s cold outside. 

I realized on the carrier that I am so fucking lucky to have loved you enough to miss all of these things. You have no idea the hole you left in my chest, Maggie Brooms. 

I love you. 

Bradley 

***

Your fingers hit dial before you could even put the letter down. 

“Hello?” his voice was groggy, like he had just woken up. You looked down at the phone screen. It was almost midnight. 

“Bradley? It’s me.” 

“Mags?” You heard the rustle of sheets, like he was sitting up in bed. “Honey, is everything alright? What’s going on, why are you calling me?” 

You rolled your eyes, mostly to yourself. “Friends call, Bradley.” 

You had expected him to chuckle at the call back to your first friend date months before. But there was only silence on the other end of the phone. Then, “I don’t want to just be friends, Maggie,” Bradley said softly and you felt yourself gripping the phone tightly, your fingers wrapped around the edges. “If that’s what you want, I’ll do it. I’ll do whatever you need. But I want you. I want all of you. I promise I will do my best not to fuck it up this time. But God, Maggie, I want you to come back to me. I really do.” 

“I don’t want to just be friends either,” you admitted quietly. 

“No?” he asked, shock threaded through the word. 

You shook your head. “How soon can you be here?” 

Tag list: Tag list: @abaker74 @hotch-meeeeeuppppp @luckyladycreator2 @marantha @tayrae515 @xoxabs88xox @mak-32 @bradshawsbitch @lilianashomaresparza @double-j @hangmandruigandmav @blue-aconite @shawnsblue @minamisulemisa @momc95 @hangmandruigandmav @seresinhangmanjake @taytaylala12 @pulisvertz

[davnittbraes]

The Fourth Step - Chapter Twenty-Eight

Part of The World Is Light, Embodied.

Pairing: Din Djarin x F!Reader

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 3700

Warnings, etc.: anxiety, anxiety spirals, negative thoughts, negative self-talk, overall intense emotions, FLUFF see I can write balanced fic, the briefest of brief mentions of smut

Notes: I think a little explanation will help put reader’s mindset in this chapter into perspective. Those who deal with cognitive dissonance can hold conflicting thoughts in their head at the same time, and they have equal weight and significance even if they’re complete opposite lines of thinking. It can be confusing, lead to a disconnected sense of reality because you never know what’s true, and you distrust your own perception. Cognitive distortion is like a poisoning of positive thoughts, your mind twisting the good things into bad things. It’s very clever, very sneaky, and very difficult to tell the difference from a healthy thought process.

I deal with both, and lemme tell ya, when I first learned about it a lot of stuff started to make sense. If you’d like to learn more, go to your local library or do some googling. I hesitate to suggest direct links because there’s a lot of kooks out there who preach psychology without any actual education in the field, so please just do your research and check sources. And above all, love yourselves 🥰

Mando’a translations and spoiler notes at the end of the chapter.

Please check out the Series Masterlist page for more info.

Dank farrik, you’re tired. 

Even now, after curling up in your blankets and letting sleep dull the edges of that ache in your chest. Apparently you’ll need more than a few hours rest to get rid of the weakness in your muscles, that borderline tremble that keeps trying to take hold of your body again. 

You need some kind of normalcy to truly shake it - not the normal you had lived before Din and the kid. Not the normal your treacherous mind was pushing you toward, back in Mos Eisley. 

You need the routine of content domesticity that you’ve found only in the last few months. That gentle feeling of belonging. 

The warm, bright thing in your chest flares, weak but still there, pushing against the hollow ache that had been scraped out, reaching for something. 

You need Din. 

Shoving the blankets away along with the threatening memory of just how far you’d spiralled, you stand up and stretch, muffling a groan at how good it feels, the pull in your muscles and back, the prickle of the cool air over the bare skin of your arms and legs left exposed by your nightshirt. 

The rush of blood moving through stiff limbs fades from your ears and you pick up on the hum of the engines, that specific frequency that tells you the Razor Crest is moving through hyperspace. 

No other sounds drift over the engines, no quiet chatter or soft coos. The hold is dark, in the middle of night cycle - the kid must be asleep. 

Where’s Din?

You glance down at the blankets, as if his tall, broad frame would suddenly materialize there. 

A curl of unease swirls in the pit of your stomach.

Why hadn’t he come to bed with you?

Pressing a hand over the place where unease threatens to start building, you dig the tips of your fingers into your skin just enough to sting, distract you from falling back into those thoughts. 

He had suggested you get some rest, the moment the ship had broken Tatooine’s atmosphere. Nothing in that had been unusual, it was a typical Din gesture, always looking out for your well-being, reminding you to take care of yourself.

Your cheeks warm with the memory of how his hands had cupped your face, large and steady, helping you remember how to breathe. 

Unease surges under your palm. 

He hasn’t touched you since then. 

Pfassk. 

He hasn’t even looked at you. 

In fact, he’s kept his distance with something almost like intent. Striding toward the cockpit without a glance behind him as the door slid shut. Initiating the launch sequence in silence, black visor focused on the control console. Keeping his back turned to you in the cockpit, even while verbally prodding you to go lay down.

Your stomach turns slowly, nauseating. 

Something is wrong. 

A thousand thoughts burst across your mind, disjointed and sharp. 

Was he injured? Kriff, you hadn’t noticed, so caught up in your own head -

Something had happened, something to make him pull away from you after you had calmed down but what could -

He’s hurt, somehow, you can sense it, he’s not acting like himself. 

The urge to go to him pushes your feet toward the cockpit. He must be there, if he’s not in bed. 

Carefully, you pick your way through the hold, muscle memory guiding your steps despite the pitch-dark of the night cycle. Pausing by the bunk, you press your ear to the closed door, wave of relief passing over your skin at the muffled sound of soft snores. 

At least the kid’s ok. 

The durasteel floor is cold under your bare feet as you pad over to the ladder, pausing at the bottom. You take a deep breath, then climb into the cockpit, a frantic energy buzzing in your limbs, concern for him worrying your teeth over your bottom lip. 

It’s dimly lit, the lines of hyperspace the only light source, flooding the small space with a white glow tinged faintly blue, flashing ever-so-slightly. The unease dips low in your stomach when you see the glint of his helmet, and you quickly take him in, noting the straightness of his spine and shoulders, the tension pulling them back, holding him stiffly upright in his chair. 

Something is wrong -

But then he’s shifting, just a little, gloved hands moving over the console to pull up some kind of data report. There’s no indication of injury in his movements, and you release the breath you didn’t know you were still holding. 

Maybe you’re imagining things. Maybe everything is fine and you’re just feeling whatever residual anxiety is left after what happened on Tatooine. 

That craving for normalcy swarms over the unease. Yes, you need that, you need this to get your head back on straight. Routine. Quiet conversations with Din as the light of hyperspace flickers over the two of you. Just as it has countless times. 

You settle into your chair, tucking your legs close to ward off the chill. The nightshirt leaves your arms bare and only falls to mid-thigh, you probably should have brought a blanket with you, or taken a moment to change into clothes, but you’d been so worried about Din and now - well, now that you’re back in his presence, even the cold isn’t incentive enough to leave him again. 

It’s quiet in the cockpit. Just the engines, a distant pulse. It’s soothing on your frayed nerves. 

For a moment. 

Then it stretches, pulls tight. Fills with something unknown, a tension that radiates out from the beskar-clad frame in the pilot’s chair. 

Your tentative peace shudders, heartbeat picking up, hurting that scraped-raw spot behind your ribs. 

Something is wrong. 

His modulated voice startles you, sounding loud in the thick silence. “How are you feeling?”

A mix of relief and uncertainty makes you shift in your seat. It’s a normal question, one he’s asked before, voice warm with concern for your wellbeing. 

But there’s no warmth in his voice, now. No cold bite, either. 

It’s just empty words. 

You shake your head a little, blinking. Come on, pull out of it. Normal, you need normal. 

Forcing a smile on your face, you idly pick at the hem of your nightshirt to give your fingers something to do. “Much better, thank you. How’s the new coolant system working?”

“Fine.”

You wait, but he doesn’t say anything more, the black visor trained on the data scrolling across the screen in the console. 

Something is wrong -

Normal you need normal -

You clear your throat, trying again. “That’s good. So, where are we headed now?”

He shifts, helmet turning away from the console, corner of the black visor coming into view. But no more. The tension running through his frame seems to stop him short of looking at you. “Tionas. What happened?”

Unease is boiling into dread and you shove it down deep. “Oh, it wasn’t a big deal, really. Bad Knee Creep saw me on the street, tried to claim I owed him. I obviously argued otherwise, his nose may or may not have gotten broken during the conversation, and he had a few friends with him so I ended up running for it. They didn’t track us as far as Motto’s hangar, I know that, so there’s no need to worry about them recognizing the Crest or - “

“I’m not talking about that.” His words slice through your rambling, efficiently cutting it short. “What happened two days ago?”

Two days ago? You frown, thinking back. What - oh. 

A rush of embarrassment warms your skin, and you try to shrug it off with a casual lift of a shoulder, a self-deprecating smile, just in case he catches a glimpse of it out of the corner of the visor. “Oh. Right. I was in my own head about some things, but I’m better now. We can just move on.”

He’s still, silent. Motionless. 

Something is wrong -

You scrub a hand over your face, trying to brush away the itch of discomfort that settling over your skin. “Honestly, it’s fine. I mean, I still have some things to work through, but I won’t let it get in the way of the mission. I’ll stay focused on taking care of the kid, finding your people, the Jedi, all of it.”

Your hand drops to your lap, suddenly weak. Something like desperation grips your heart, squeezes. Why isn’t he saying anything? “I’m really fine, I swear. We can just move on and forget it happened.”

The white lines of hyperspace flash through the transparisteel, unsteady light that seems to amplify the silence.

Something is wrong something is wrong something is -

He suddenly spins toward you, chair squeaking with the movement, broad shoulders blocking out the light. The modulator crackles as his voice pushes through it forcefully. 

“No.”

You blink. “What?”

His gloved hands fist on his thighs, the line of tension pulling so tight it might snap. “No. I’m not going to forget it happened and move on. You shut me out. For two days.”

A rush of guilt floods your stomach, gnawing, dull and aching. “I know, I’m sorry. I got caught up in my own stuff and… never mind, it’s stupid.”

“You pushed me away so hard that I -“ his voice cracks, barely noticeable but enough to resound in your own chest - “You were so distant, you wouldn’t talk to me, then you show up with him and I thought - fuck, I sat here for the last few hours, waiting for you to wake up and tell me you were leaving.”

A sting of pain nips at your fingertips - your hands are curled too tight into the hem of your nightshirt. “I - none of it was your fault. I’m not - it’s not… it’s my own stuff to deal with, my own hangs up and anxiety to work through. It’s not your responsibility.”

His shoulders shift with a deep breath, fists flattening against his thighs as he visibly calms himself down. “We’re supposed to be in this with each other. Step by step, together. Remember?”

“We are, we are in this together.” Your own fists unfurl, damp palms sliding over your bare knees in an attempt to copy him, do the same and calm down, but guilt and desperation claw their way up your spine until your throat squeezes tight. “It’s just that I should deal with my own stupid mental shit, not you.”

A harsh sound of frustration snaps through the modulator. “It’s not stupid, and it’s not just yours. If we’re doing this together, then it’s mine, too.” 

He pauses, suddenly slumping as if exhausted, voice losing the edge of anger to soften into something gentle. “You don’t have to take it all on yourself. I want to help you, tionas. I can’t be with you and not care about you.”

Darkness creeps at the edges of your vision. It’s blinding, all-consuming, throbbing as it fills the hole it had already occupied just a few hours ago, using your tongue to speak. “Then maybe you shouldn’t be with me.”

No no no stop - 

You wrestle your thoughts back. The palms of your hands press tight to your eyes, trying to block out those whispers telling you to go run away it’s what he expects he knows you will he even said so -

Don’t please don’t -

I want to live -

But it’s too much, too much emotion battling for control and you can’t keep it contained. 

It bursts out, a flood of choked words that come from deep, deep down, beyond that dark throb and warm bright thing warring in your chest.

“I can’t do this, I can’t anymore. I can’t keep fighting that voice in my head telling me to run, hide, get away from you, because you know me, you know too much of me and -“ the words stop up in your throat and you cough, swallow hard, they rush out once again - “I don’t have the strength to keep pushing and trying and - it’s too much. I’ll never win. I’m so screwed up that I see people who are trying to help me as a threat, even the man I love.”

Tears are hot hot hot on your cheeks and they sting, you shove them away with fingers that shake and shut your eyes tight to keep more from falling. “You deserve better than this. Better than me. Kriff, Din, you’re so strong, so brave and thoughtful and kind and smart - you should be with someone like you, not a terrified coward who runs away from everything. Crikking hells, you’re a Mandalorian, and I-I’m a runaway slave. I ran to get my freedom, and I have never stopped running. Not really. Not deep down, where it matters. And I don’t think I can stop. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry I wasted your time. I’m so, so sorry.”

Your heartbeat is so loud, frantic, uneven, heavy, and you can’t hear anything over it, over the rush of air pulling through your constricted lungs, the grind of your teeth as your jaw clenches tight against the invisible force that presses down on you -

Something warm envelopes your hands, a gentle strength pulls your fingers into broad palms and holds them there. 

The warmth flows through your fingers, wrists, arms, pools in your chest and eases the pounding of your heart as it continues down, through your body until the weight lifts and your breathing steadies.

It’s ok. It’s going to be ok. You just need to open your eyes. 

And let him in. 

You obey, eyelids flickering slightly as they lift, and the black visor is right there, a familiar slash of dark through silver that makes the warm, bright thing in your chest surge to the forefront.

He’s holding your hands in your lap. The leather of his gloves smooth against your bare thighs. 

Yes. Good. 

Calm. Focus. Control. 

Breathe deep. See him there, in front of you, holding you. Listen to him. 

His voice is so soft through the modulator. “I am a Mandalorian. And a bounty hunter. And a… a father to a little green dude. But I am not just one of those things, I’m all of them and more. You told me that once, remember?”

The corner of your mouth ticks up, an almost foreign feeling. “Yeah. That was the night you first called me ‘tionas.’”

He hums in agreement, helmet tilting as he looks down at your joined hands. “Tionas. A question. A mystery. A namana berry farmer, and an eopie herder, and a distiller. All of them and more.”

His hands turn yours over, thumbs tracing the curve of your palms. “A mother to a child who loves you. A slave, and a free person.” 

The black visor meets your gaze once more, voice a hushed whisper. “A woman who has lived a thousand lives. Ne’kotir.”

You want to believe him - to let yourself believe him - so badly it’s palpable, a bittersweet bite on the back of your tongue. “How can I be undefeated if my own head is against me? I’m not strong enough to fight it by myself.”

“Needing help doesn’t make you weak.” He releases one of your hands to brush a fingertip over the curve of your cheek, tracing the path of your tears. “Defeat only comes upon us when we deny ourselves that which gives us strength.”

You jolt, surprised by the huff of laughter that bursts from your chest. “It sounds so simple when you say it like that.”

“I know it’s not that simple. But those words have helped me many times.” His hand cups your face, steady as you lean into his touch. “My people believe in the power of personal bonds. The strongest are those with a clan to support them.”

“I… I’ve never had that. I don’t know how to be part of a clan.” Your voice trails off into a whisper, emotion closing your throat again. 

The helmet tilts. “Yes, you do. Because you are.”

You frown, searching the visor for that hidden gaze behind it. “I’m what?”

“Part of a clan.”

Time stops. The cockpit disappears and it’s just him and you as he pulls your joined hands to his shoulder, presses your palm to his pauldron. 

To the signet of the mudhorn. 

The hand on your face nudges your gaze back to his - you hadn’t realized you were staring at where your hand covered the signet. 

His voice moves gently but firmly through the modulator. “This is yours, just as it is the kid’s. As it is mine. We are the same, kar’ta. Family. Aliit. Nothing can break that.”

He hesitates, breath stuttering, but then his hand pushes yours tight against the pauldron, rounded edges of the signet imprinting on your palm. “Mhi solus tome, mhi solus dar’tome.”

There’s a formal cadence, an importance to the words that settles deep, beckons you to know more. “What does it mean?”

A pause, then - “We are one when together, we are one when parted.”

Tears of a different kind sting the corners of your eyes, and you can’t help but try the weight of those words on your own tongue. “Mhi solus tome, mhi solus dar’tome.”

His thumb presses to your lips, like he’s preventing you from saying more but also desperate to feel those words that just fell from them.

You look at him, seeking answers to a question just starting to form in your thoughts but then there’s a flurry of motion, a hand covering your eyes and a clink of metal and then his lips are on yours and you forget everything else. 

His hair is soft between your fingers, his scent replaces the air in your lungs and you welcome it. The faint scratch of stubble on your cheek as his lips move over yours sends a shiver down your spine, and his free hand slips under your shirt to follow its path, blazing heat over skin still so new to touch.

The combination of sensations reminds you of the secrets you share with each other, the mutual trust that remains unbroken.

That warm, bright thing in your chest glows. 

You pull away, reluctant, but you know you need to say it. “I meant it, you know.”

A faint tremor moves through the hand over your eyes, the only sign that he understands what you’re referring to. His lips press another kiss to yours. “I know.”

You slip your hand from his hair, trace the line of his jaw with your fingertips. “I was waiting for the right time to say it. Guess my own foolish tongue ruined that plan.”

His huff of laughter is everything. “Your tongue is anything but foolish, paklalat.”

“What does it mean?” 

“Clever-tongued.”

Your smile doesn’t feel as strange anymore, curves of your cheeks brushing the edge of his hand. “Yet you called me mir’sheb, first.”

“It’s a fine line.”

He lets you tug him forward again, trail your lips over his jaw. “Is there a Mandalorian word for ‘love?’”

The hand on your back sweeps up, resting between your shoulderblades, holding you at an angle so he can tilt your head back, kiss you deep, leave you breathless. “Not exactly. We say it in different ways, depending on the person.”

You catch him off-guard with your teeth on his lower lip, savouring the shiver that runs through him. “Everything is different with you.”

“Yes. Like that.” His mouth curves into a smile against the skin of your neck as he presses a kiss to your pulse. 

You hum in agreement, tempted to let him continue his path downward, but the warm, bright thing in your chest makes you pull him back up. “I think I still need to say it, the way I wanted to, given how terrible I clearly am at communicating.”

He hesitates, thumb stroking the line of your shoulderblade, breath falling hushed over your lips. “You don’t have to, I know -“

“I love you, Din Djarin.”

It’s then, in that moment, that you feel it. 

Finally, just. 

Feel it. 

No second guessing, no attempting to distract yourself. No picking everything apart to find errors, doubts. 

No fighting to convince yourself you don’t deserve to feel it. 

It spreads from your chest, bright and warm and love and everything. 

His lips brush yours lightly, letting you feel his words. “I love you, tionas.”

Then he’s kissing you, and you’re kissing him, and every last shred of darkness evaporates from your thoughts until there is nothing but light. 

You only stop when it gets to be too much - not enough - and your panting breaths ghost over warm skin, quivering with an underlying barely-there urge to laugh for no reason - or maybe for the only reason that matters. 

He shifts, a sound of contentment in the back of his throat, and pulls you into him. You bury your nose in his cowl, breathe deep, smooth your hands over his shoulders, biting your lip to keep the laughter contained when your fingers glide over the signet on his pauldron. 

Your signet. 

Your clan. 

His hands trace steady circles on your back as you both come back into yourselves. Time starts up again and a few seconds tick by, your thoughts meandering through everything you had talked about tonight. 

They stick on a memory, and you turn your face into the curve of his neck so he can hear you, keeping your gaze down to avoid accidentally seeing him. “You know what else happened that night, the night you first called me ‘tionas?’”

He kisses the top of your head, groaning softly. “You almost made me lose it and fuck you right there on a storage crate. If the hyperdrive hadn’t blown, I would have.”

A little thrill of arousal warms your core at the memory of his solid form behind you, the hard length of his cock pressing against your ass as you rolled your hips back into it. “Yes, that. But it was also the night I found out about your obsession with HoloNet dramas.”

He sighs heavily. “Mir’sheb.”

“Ah. There’s the line.”

*****

Mando’a translations

Tionas - question 

Ne’kotir - undefeated

Kar’ta - heart 

Aliit - clan, Mandalorian equivalent of family

Mir’sheb - smartass

Other notes:

*takes deep breath* 

Mhi solus tome, mhi solus dar’tome is the first half of the Mandalorian wedding vows 

*screams into pillow**sobs*

My interpretation of how Mandalorians express romantic love - I know the fandom commonly uses “Ni kar'tayl gar darasuum” which loosely translates to “I will know you forever” as a Basic equivalent of “I love you” but I haven’t seen it used in official works enough to feel like these two should use it in this fic. Since Mando’a is such a flexible language, I think it makes sense that they would find their own ways to express romantic love, in a way that reflects their specific relationship. Am I overthinking this? Yes. Am I picking and choosing what I want to be “true to the universe” and what I want to play around with? Absolutely. And that’s fanfiction, darling 💋💃

***** Previous Chapter Next Chapter

[ereardonlibrary]

Come Back [Chapter 11][Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw x OC]

Summary: Eight years ago, Bradley Bradshaw was just a college boyfriend who broke your heart. Now, he’s back in your life after a coincidental reunion, and he’s adamant about starting up a friendship. Will it be possible to be just friends with Bradley, or is he inevitably going to end up ruining everything you’ve spent the better part of a decade rebuilding?

Pairing: Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw x OC [Nurse Maggie Brooms]

WC: 2.4K

Warnings: Cursing, angst, mention of death

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You hesitated, the letter heating up in your hand, as you sat in your car outside of Bradley’s house.

The paper felt white hot and you wanted to drop it on the floor of the car, drive away and pretend you had never made the trek out to Gooseberry Lane.

It was the middle of the day on a Wednesday, there was only a very slim chance he was home. Still, your heart pounded in your chest as you got out, making your way up the path to the front door. Yes, you had written the letter with the intent that he would read it. But you were afraid to see Bradley in person. Talk to him face-to-face.

You still weren’t ready.

Thankfully there was no movement on the other side of the door as you slipped the letter underneath.

Back in the car, you leaned your head back against the head rest and took a deep breath, your heart still pounding.

Leaving that letter felt like taking the first step back to him.

***

Dear Maggie,

Tell me something about yourself. Something that I don’t know. I’m desperate to learn about the woman that you’ve become.

Do you still love banana cream pie, and sleeping during a rainstorm? Have you done any traveling over the last eight years? We talked about going to Paris and London together, and Hanoi in Vietnam. Did you ever make it to any of those places? If not, there’s still time.

What do you like to do on a day that you’re not working? For some reason, I picture you having some kind of hobby, like a book club with the other nurses, or volunteering at an animal shelter. I wish I had more hobbies, honestly. But most of the time I can barely drag myself home from work, make dinner, maybe veg out in front of the TV for a bit before going to bed. It’s a lot of work, Mags, and coming home to an empty house makes it a lot less incentivizing to come home at all.

Thank you for writing me back. I didn't expected you to. I read your letter six times back to back until my vision started to blur.

You’re right. You were always right, even when it bothered me to admit it. You have a habit of always being correct and it would be infuriating if it wasn’t also one of the best things about you. You’re a natural leader. Always have been.

I hate that you thought I left with no regard for how you felt. Like it didn’t kill me. Every step I took that night that took me further away from you felt like a knife was twisting itself deeper into my chest.

You’re still the only woman who has ever said she loved me. You’re the only person I’ve said I love you to. I’ve never wanted to be loved by anyone but you.

You told me a long time ago that sometimes people stay. The boy on the receiving end of those words was too afraid to admit that you were offering a lifeline. He thought you were just saying that because it was what you were meant to say in those types of situations. He didn’t realize that you meant it. He didn’t realize that choosing you would change everything.

I took you for granted. I took your love for granted, Maggie. And I’m sorry.

Now I know I promised a letter every day for the foreseeable future, and I’m sorry to have to backtrack on that promise. We just got word that we’re shipping off for a mission tomorrow, so this will be the last letter for a while. Not sure how long I’ll be gone. Could be a week, could be three months. If I get a chance to write, I will, I promise. Don’t worry about me, OK? Not that you would, but if you did just know that we’ll be fine. It’s the job, after all.

I love you, Maggie Brooms. I’m not afraid to say it or shout it or morse code it or buy a light up sign that says it and put it in my front window for the neighborhood to see. Even if one day, maybe tomorrow, maybe in five years from now, you wake up and want to call it quits on me, I will still love you. I’m going to love you my entire life, no matter what.

I promise to come home soon. It’s different when I know that you’re there, potentially waiting for me. You make everything so much better.

Love,

Bradley

***

A week went by. And then two. No other letters arrived. You resorted to rereading the ones he had sent over the three weeks between your fight and when he left on the mission.

What kind of Christmas traditions did you have growing up? My parents always let me stay up until midnight on Christmas Eve and I’d get to open one present and sit by the fire and in the morning my mom would make chocolate chip pancakes. I still think about those pancakes every Christmas.

Do you remember Professor Keller in the English department? How he always smelled vaguely of Cheez-Its and there would be little smudges of coffee on the papers he graded and handed back? I saw him a few years ago, when I went back to UVA for a visit. I was doing some Naval recruiting and he spotted me and instantly recognized me. I thought that was so funny because I had to rack my brain for a second to remember his name. And he’s probably had ten thousand students in his classes since we graduated, but he still remembered me. Makes you wonder who is just out thinking of you at any given time.

***

I think I saw you, once, a few years back. At the time I didn’t know you were a nurse. You had scrubs on, and were getting into your car. It was the parking lot of a grocery store. The team had sent me out on a beer run on a Friday afternoon. I saw your hair and part of your face, before you turned and shut the door. It was like every single cell in my body started to hum at once. I felt like I was shaking from the inside out. I thought about running up to you. Part of me was so fucking desperate to see if it was you. But then the rational part of me said there was no way. It couldn’t be that easy to find you again after all these years. But then that stupid darts game. I shouldn’t call it stupid. If I hadn't bet Hangman that he could throw the darts after two shotskis and with a blindfold, he never would have missed. That dart never would have almost taken my eye out, Coyote wouldn’t have tackled Hangman, the three of us never would have ended up in your ER that Tuesday morning. It was fate, Mags.

***

There’s talk of a mission. You haven’t been through this before so I’ll give you an overview. I can’t tell you much. Just when I’m leaving. I won’t know how long I’m gone for, and I can’t tell you where I’m going. All I can tell you is that knowing you’re on the other side waiting for me is going to make this the hardest mission I’ve ever flown. I watched my mother grieve my father for years. I was too young to really understand when it happened. But I know that life isn’t easy. Waiting for someone who may or may not come home.

***

I can’t believe we’ve spent years living in the same twenty square miles without knowing it. If I had known, all this time, how close you were, I never would have been able to stop thinking about it. I would have driven down every street, rang every doorbell, if it meant that there was a chance one day someone would open the door and it would be you.

***

I’ve missed holding you in my arms while you sleep. You’re not a cute sleeper, Mags, sorry to break it to you. Your mouth hangs open a little, and you get this tiny patch of drool that pools in the corner, and your hair is always a mess because you never wear it in a braid or a bun to sleep. But guess what? You’re the most beautiful person that I’ve ever seen when you’re like that. I think I fell more in love with you every time I woke up next to you. You captivated me.

***

What you didn’t realize the first night we met was that I had been watching you for weeks before that night. Not in a creepy, stalker way. We had intro to art history together that semester. I spotted you right away. Shiny brown hair, your easy laugh as you slid into a seat next to Kailey in the second row of the cold auditorium. The way you pushed up the sleeves of your sweatshirt and hunched over your notebook in deep concentration during the slideshow presentations. Anyway, I had spotted you weeks before you laid your eyes on me that night at Trinity. I watched you make out with Bernie Colemine that gross junior. Watched as he flicked his inexperienced tongue down your throat, saw you almost gag right there into his mouth. So I spilled that full beer down his back. It might have been the only shot I had with you. Despite what you thought, Mags, I was not as much of a player as you made me out to be. From that night on, you were the only girl for me. You showed up to my room and stripped down to your underwear and I swear I almost had a heart attack. It was one of the most difficult things I’d ever done not to touch you. My hands burned at my sides all night from the deep desire to run my fingers across every inch of your skin. Memorize you. Map you. Worship you. But I didn’t want to scare you away. A part of me has always been terrified of scaring you away. I know you like puzzles, Mags, but sometimes I worry that I’m one problem you just can’t fix.

***

The team wants to see you again. Bob got all pink in the ears when your name was brought up and I have half a mind to tell him that you’re mine. But it wouldn’t be true, would it? I can’t stop you from dating Bob. He’s a good guy. Now if you got within ten feet of Hangman, that’s another story. Anyway, they liked you. Phoenix asked where my friend was the other day. They don’t know about our fight. They don’t really know the whole story. So what do you say, Mags? Come out with us again. I promise, I won’t let you get as drunk as last time.

***

Twenty days after his last letter, you came home to see the corner of a new letter wedged inside the mailbox. You couldn’t pull it out fast enough, bending it in half trying to yank it free from the metal jaws of the letter box, swinging open the front door of your townhouse and tossing your purse haphazardly on the ground, finger already sliding under the seam of the seal.

Dear Maggie,

We made it. I’m writing this letter on the carrier home as we speak, and I’ll drop it off the moment we hit land.

That wasn’t an easy one. They never are, but seems like lately they keep getting worse. Every time I look around at the team we look older. Wearier. It weighs on us.

I missed you. I wrote you a few letters while we were gone, but I never got a chance to ship them off, so I’m sorry about that. I’ll give them to you sometime soon.

Sorry for the short note tonight. I’m exhausted, sweetheart. I wish more than anything that I could come home to you. Wrap my arms around you from behind, breathe in the smell of your hair. Do you still use rosemary and mint shampoo? I used to love that smell.

I miss the way you feel in my arms. I miss the way the mattress would dip as you’d crawl in beside me. I miss the way you press your thumbs into my temples to rub away a headache. I miss the sound of your voice in the morning and the way you sigh when you think I’m being insufferable. I miss the fact that you butter your bread before making a peanut butter sandwich and the way that you insist on driving with the windows rolled down even when it’s cold outside.

I realized on the carrier that I am so fucking lucky to have loved you enough to miss all of these things. You have no idea the hole you left in my chest, Maggie Brooms.

I love you.

Bradley

***

Your fingers hit dial before you could even put the letter down.

“Hello?” his voice was groggy, like he had just woken up. You looked down at the phone screen. It was almost midnight.

“Bradley? It’s me.”

“Mags?” You heard the rustle of sheets, like he was sitting up in bed. “Honey, is everything alright? What’s going on, why are you calling me?”

You rolled your eyes, mostly to yourself. “Friends call, Bradley.”

You had expected him to chuckle at the call back to your first friend date months before. But there was only silence on the other end of the phone. Then, “I don’t want to just be friends, Maggie,” Bradley said softly and you felt yourself gripping the phone tightly, your fingers wrapped around the edges. “If that’s what you want, I’ll do it. I’ll do whatever you need. But I want you. I want all of you. I promise I will do my best not to fuck it up this time. But God, Maggie, I want you to come back to me. I really do.”

“I don’t want to just be friends either,” you admitted quietly.

“No?” he asked, shock threaded through the word.

You shook your head. “How soon can you be here?”

[julietkirsh]

Hi! Just dropping by this secondary blog to post fanfics and such, hope you enjoy 'em!🎶

As said in the description, I'm currently writing for Bungou Stray Dogs, Jujutsu Kaisen and Attack on Titan, but who knows what'll happen from now on?

(probably the same things I've been doing since forever)

If anyone's interested, here's my AO3 profile: julietkirsh

More about the works you'll see there under the cut!⏬️

Attack on Titan

The Sound of Grief (posted on March 15th, '22)

The first and only Gallirei fic I have ever wrote, it consist of three chapters and it's complete (one of the veeery few that met their conclusions💀).

It is set before the events of the narrative arc that is currently being shown in the anime, and contains minor spoilers from much older manga chapters.

It is about finding a kind of fleeting solace in relations dictated by loneliness and grief, and the inevitabe emptiness that follows.

When the Sun Went Down on Us (last updated on November 22nd, '22)

This is meant to be a long one, and even if it's been months since I've last updated it, I have still intention to continue it up to the end (I have posted two chapters out of approximately twenty eight in total, so it's going to be a slooow journey) and I also have many chapters already planned out, so it's not completely abandoned!

This one is full of spoilers since it's canon compliant and also set after the end of the manga, so I don't recommend it for those who would prefer to avoid them⚠️

The main couple is Reijean (I think the official ship name is this one, but I'm not entirely sure yet) and both of them present a good share of difficulties and traumas while dealing with the horrible thing that life can sometimes be, so the story is full of angst to say the least.

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Bungou Stray Dogs

The Fate Of Traitors

Dazai dies, and Chuuya has a hard time processing his unspoken feelings and mourning altogether.

Or at least, this seems to be the plot, or is it?

Basically my mind exploded and decided that this story needed a plot twist and also Meursault, overall it came out full of angst, death, blood and other incredibly happy things.

It's Called: Freefall (posted on January 6th, '23)

Inevitably Soukoku, this one shot has its own conclusion! It's pretty short and full of thoughts about delicate matters of life and death, and it is inspired by the song that gave it its title.

Nothing more to add, there are spoilers from the early seasons of the anime but nothing too severe.

How to Rip A Heart Apart (last updated on January 26th, '23)

Also Soukoku, it is a multichapter story (nothing longer than five chapters in total) and I've already begun to write the second one, so it will see the light, eventually. This one contains spoilers from both the main story and other spinoffs, but they are all listed in the summary.

It gets pretty graphic and violent, the main characters tend to act like assholes in this one (as if they usually are slices of cake😅) and lots of people get unalived.

Angst everywhere and also some canon compliant inaccuracies (you'll find them in the first chapter which I think I'll revise and correct sooner or later) but overall it is going to be lighter than my other stories, or at least I hope so.

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Jujutsu Kaisen

In Dreams

My first jjk AND stsg fanfic, written by tears and hurt alone, it is set a few months after the infamous events of volume 0.

It mainly focuses on Satoru, burdened with the neverending task of holding the whole sorcery world together but still incapable of letting his past go once and for all.

He finds shelter in his sporadic dreams, in the long lost image of a youth that will never return, until he can't help but mix up reality with what his sleeping self begins to perceive.

It all goes downhill from there.

[lindsaystravelblogs5]

Days 12-14 The North Pole!!

Saturday

I doubt if anyone but me noticed it, but for the first time in history, my blog was up to date when I went to bed last night.  (Yet another first for this expedition!!!)  I can’t promise that it will ever happen again, but this voyage is quite unlike the others we have done, with a bit more personal time, so we will live in hope. (Having said that it might never happen again, I have great hopes that I will achieve it again in the next couple of hours!)

It was a relatively quiet day today, dull and overcast all day, with the temperature hovering between about minus three and minus eight.  Despite this, there were plenty of smaller activities to engage the plebs, and as plebs, we enjoyed a few of them.  The daily challenge is a little highlight of my day, and so far, I think we have only lost a total of three points in the six or seven challenges they have had so far – and some are REALLY challenging.  We didn’t spend much time on deck, but we certainly needed our parkas when we were out in the elements.

We had a couple of lectures and an ‘exposition’ of this amazing ship by the captain and chief engineer (that I almost missed because I fell asleep in our cabin).  I won’t say much more about the ship because if anyone read my Antarctic blog last year, I think I described quite a bit about the ship, its features and its amazing electronic artwork (lindsaystravelblogs1.tumblr.com – Antarctica from Argentina).

There was also a very special brunch today, with the chef delivering an amazing array of food in the ‘posh’ restaurant – our usual slightly less formal ‘café’ being closed for the occasion.  The food was extraordinary but like almost all French cuisine, much too rare for my taste.  I have also commented before on the wine – all French (but of course, Monsieur) – a poor imitation of the wines we have grown to love in Australia and South America.  But still, someone needs to keep the French wine industry afloat, and I reckon they owe us a medal.

We have had a little more snow today, all very fine flakes and not a lot of it, although the table on our balcony had a couple of centimetres of it this morning.  Amazingly, we have had no bad weather at all – a bit windy at times, but not a soul could complain of even a twinge of mal-de-mer!

During tonight’s recap, they told us that our reaching the Polar Point of Inaccessibility had been officially recorded in the annals of maritime achievements.  They promised to give us a copy of the official record and I will post a photo when we receive it. (It arrived next day. See the last paragraph under the Arctic heading.)

The ice continues to fascinate me.  It is not really possible to show photos of it but, apart from its exquisite beauty, its physical properties and the way it moves and interacts with nearby areas of ice is mesmerising.  As the ship ploughs through, the thin grey ice-film on the surface (the ice that has very recently frozen due to the frigid air) is barely interrupted – I imagine it must disappear under the ship.  But the metre or two of pristine white ice, churns and cracks and bustles its neighbours, roiling the water and turning turtle, cracking and breaking almost like the five and six metre ice in the Antarctic.  We stand on our balcony and watch until it gets too cold, but it is quite phantasmagorical.  The wonders of nature.

During the recap, one of the scientists told us about their intention to leave a case of scientific instruments on the ice when we leave the North Pole on Monday.  These instruments will measure the ice depth and temperature gradient through the ice, as well as the depth and pressure below the ice, continuously over the next few months.  All the ice is continuously moving and as the ice on which the case is left heads towards the Atlantic Ocean, it will slowly melt and the case will eventually sink to the bottom of the sea.  They have done similar experiments over a few years and the ice has always taken the same course until it melts somewhere near the northern end of Iceberg Alley and they expect this case will follow suit - does that make it a suitcase?   We all had the opportunity to write our names on the case so when it sinks, a little bit of us will sink with it.  We both inscribed our names on it so when it goes down to the depths, we will go down in history. 

Just in case........

Sunday – 15 September – the North Pole

We awoke this morning to the most amazing sight.  The captain made an announcement that we should all look out on the port side to see the Sun Dog, or parhelion - an amazing view of the sun pillar between what looked like two segments of a rainbow.  It persisted for a few hours and is caused by the sun shining through, and being refracted by, ice crystals.  As the sun rose higher, the mini-rainbows faded slightly, but appeared to spread further apart and extend further along the ‘bow’.  I read that the distance from the sun to its associated rainbow parentheses is around 22 degrees.  It was an incredible phenomenon that lasted for quite some hours until it became lost in the fog.  

Of course, the highlight of the day was reaching the top of the world - the Geographic North Pole.   It was a huge event and we were all summoned out to the helicopter deck with the captain broadcasting that he was not crossing to the North Pole until we were all on deck - not that he had any way of knowing if we were all there or not.  There certainly was a huge crowd of passengers and staff with the countdown from 89 degrees, 59 minutes and 50 seconds to the magical 90.00.00 being broadcast to huge anticipation, and then acclamation, from the entire assemblage.  For almost all of us, it was a lifetime of wonder and anticipation coming to pass in a magic moment.   There was a long blast on the ship’s horn (followed by several more a little later), with a long line of flares being lit, much singing and dancing.  The helicopter was parked to one side and there was a quarantined area in the middle of the deck that opened and the helicopter elevator slowly arose covered in tables crammed with glasses of French champagne and many kilos of black caviar – all to be consumed by the excited horde.  (The helicopter is normally housed below deck and the deck opens up and the elevator platform lifts the helicopter into position for its deployment - but they made better us of the device today.) The captain has been beside himself with excitement all day. (He has the enthusiasm of a roomful of little kids and it is completely infectious. He has really added enormously to this trip - in complete contrast to the captain of the same ship we were on inthe Antarctic!) He made a short speech to commemorate the occasion before popping the cork on a magnum of bubbles (using a short sword in the traditional way) and spraying all who were close enough to cop it. Then we all got into champagne and caviar! What an event!!!

I tried to photograph the screen on Deck 5 when the ship was at exactly 90 degrees North but missed it by a few seconds.  Because the ice is always moving, it is almost impossible to hold a ship in an exact position for more than a couple of seconds.  (As an example, during our first walk on the ice a couple of days ago, the ship and the entire enormous icefloe on which we were tethered moved 1.7 kilometres south, despite them keeping the engines running throughout to stabilise the ship. And overnight last night, the ship moved about 17 kilometres, despite being embedded in the huge icefloe.)  Once the celebrations died down a little, the ship moved to a better position for our afternoon landing and I was watching the screen as the ship nudged westward to its new position.  Because we were so close to the Pole, the lines of meridian are very close together and as I watched, the screen showed us moving from 50 degrees East to 22 degrees West (almost a third of the way around the world) within about a minute.  I wonder how many other people have observed that in the last few thousand years? Certainly less than I could count on my fingers.

They let down the gangway on to the ice so everyone could enjoy a few hours on the ice during the afternoon. It snowed most of the day, often a bit heavier than on previous days, but almost everyone went our for some time. The Chinese, in particular, revelled in it, jumping around, lying in it and taking tens of thousands of photos - probably hundreds of thousands.

The crew set up some items in the snow to focus the photography and we indulged ourselves too for an hour or so. We posted some postcards in the international letterbox (I wonder what stamps will appear on them) and posed at the signpost showing distances to many places around the world. Interestingly, no matter which way the signpost pointed every single destination was due south from our location. The only Australian destination on the signpost was Sydney at 13,773 kilometres away.

We also posed with a fake walrus and polar bear and several of the signs, as well as tasting a couple of hot drinks and helping to eat the profiteroles outlining a giant '90' on the snow. There was also a ginormous '90' outlined in rope, and all the passengers lined the rope for a photo demonstrating our position. The whole team had worked hard to make the occasion unforgettable and they really excelled themselves. We only stayed out in the cold for an hour or so, but then stood freezing on the deck watching the scientists take their case of instruments out on the ice, at least fifteen hundred metres by my guess, until they were mere dots in a world of ice. It took them ages to set it all up out there and we got very cold watching them through my telephoto lens, but they eventually abandoned their treasure with our inscribed names and returned to the ship. They wanted to take it well away from the edge of the floe in case pieces broke off and they lost it before it gave them much data.

Leaving the case behind. At least a kilometre and a half out on the ice and at the extreme limit of my telephoto to even focus on them.

The nightly recap was interesting with a lot of avid passengers enormously excited about their day on the ice. Some of the more sensible ones (like us) enjoyed watching the ice, rather than lying in it or trudging through forty centimetres of snow, and freezing in the process, but the whole day was great fun and had a great sense of achievement about it.

Monday

We have stayed on board all day today, blogging and doing quite a few little tasks that had accumulated over the past week - never a quiet moment when there is work to be done. The daily challenge was two extremely difficult Sudokus that took ages to complete, but at lest we got them done eventually to keep our reasonably good record intact.

A lot of people are out in the cold, enjoying their exercises at the North Pole, but we stayed warm inside and just watched from time to time. Santa called in on a sled (we think his reindeer were on holiday somewhere warmer) and lots of people were photograaphed with him. He exorted several of them to eat their vegetables, or to clean their teeth every day, even to drink more milk - all good things in themselves, but he also regretted that so many people didn't believe in him these days and that made him sad.

A few more people did the Polar Plunge - in a big hole chain-sawed out of the ice. They had to keep skimming the ice that kept forming on the surface so it was certainly cold.

I am going to post this now and if there is anythhing more to report from the rest of the day, I will start with that tomorrow.

[momwithdog]

My Humans Came Calling

It was in March 2022 that I arrived, part of a litter of eight. We were two boys and six girls, and spent the first few weeks climbing all over our mama – Raksha, they called her — getting our tummies full and then proceeding to nap. In a matter of weeks, my eyes opened and I discovered a world beyond the cozy corner we had been sleeping in all this time.

We began to venture out, little by little. First, out of the little crate we called home, then onto a large terrace that seemed too big for our tiny little legs. Mama, who’d cuddle and feed us all this while began to grow a little tired of us but I didn’t care. My belly was full and there was all this terrace to explore. Then, one day, a bunch of humans picked up my brother, and off he was shipped to what they called his ‘forever home’.

I was too young to care. To me, it meant that I could boss around my sisters and that was a lot of fun. When were not asleep, I would chase them around the terrace, nibble on their floppy ears, and make them tumble and fall. And just like that, I was closing in on two months of being around. And then they walked in, two big humans and a tiny one.

I, of course, had no idea who they were or why they were on my terrace. All I knew was that I had to be the first to get to them, and so I raced my sisters to be the first one to inspect the people on my turf. And the little human’s frilly little dress had me intrigued. So, I tugged and tugged till my pin-needle teeth had drilled nice little holes in that dress.

One of the humans then picked me up and said, “Who is this naughty little guy?” And mama’s human responded, “Well, he is the one you’re here for.” And they laughed and hugged me, and smothered me with kisses while I struggled to free myself so I could back to ripping off the little one’s dress. By now, the sisters were equally intrigued and so we all proceeded to greet them with a generous dose of nibbles all over their feet and legs — mainly because that was as far as we could reach.

This went on until the humans decided to get away from us — because mama human was awfully ticklish — and sat on a bench placed in a corner of the terrace. My sisters tried to climb all over it, but I was smarter than them all and decided to sneak under the bench. Et voila, the little human’s dress was dangling from the gaps, and so back I went to tugging and pulling, intent on ripping it off. She squealed, and that just made me try harder.

All this while the humans were talking. I didn’t speak human at the time, so I have no idea what about. Besides, I was too engrossed in that dress, and the other humans’ shoes and laces to care. This went on for a while, I was having a blast. And then, they petted all my sisters, mama human picked me up in her arms, and said, “Drogon, let’s go home. Shall we?” And so I did!

Ref:- https://momwithdog.com/humans-came-calling/

[jamesbuchananxsteviegrant]

I Pick the TV Show, Rogers Shuts His Cake-Hole | Bucky x Steve x Reader (Angst, Fluff)

Category: Angst, Fluff (Suggested) Age: 14+ Trigger Warnings: none, other than the standard explicit language Ship: Bucky x Steve x Reader Summary: Steve Snaps At Reader When He’s Stressed, Resulting In Her Being Very Upset Request: "can u write where steve/bucky is overwhelmed with something and when reader asks to help or is telling them to relax they snap at reader and reader is hurt which makes them feel really bad afterwards. thank you sm. i love ur writings. and this is anon right? is it alright if u dont post my response if its not anon? im sorry. thank you so much. ur blog always pictures great stucky imagines. 💗💗💗" Contains Spoilers for: N/A Word Count: 2,488

---

A given, the super-soldier had been on nonstop missions for the last month or so, but she thought she was helping him feel better, not making him feel worse.

“Would you like anything to eat, Stevie? You’ve barely moved all day.” (Y/N)’s voice is small. Quiet.

She’s leaning through the door of his study where he’s sat putting together his mission reports from the last three or four missions he’s been out on.

He shakes his head but doesn’t even turn to look at her.

Sighing, the woman walks further into the room where her boyfriend is slouched over the desk.

“You gotta take a break, Stevie.” She whispers, resting her hands on his shoulders.

She notices the way they tense up, but he still remains silent.

His fingers continue to write up his report on the laptop.

“I’m worried about you, Stevie; talk to me.”

“I’m busy, (Y/N).”

“I know you are, baby, but you’ve gotta look after yourself too.” She attempts, leaning down to press a kiss to his cheek. He pulls away.

The woman furrows her brows.

“Steve, please, you’ve got to-”

“(Y/N), just stop!”

The shout is sudden and it makes her flinch back away from the man as he turns to face her.

“I’m fine, alright?! I don’t need you babying me all the time!”

She doesn’t respond for a second, surprised at her lover’s outburst.

He says nothing more, simply turns back to the laptop and continues typing away.

“Steve, look how stressed you are. Can you please just-”

“STOP! Okay?! Just stop! Leave me the fuck alone while I finish these neverending mission reports. For once in your life can you just understand that not everything is about you?!”

(Y/N) swears that being shot in the heart wouldn’t hurt half as much as the words that just came out of the man’s mouth.

Her mouth opens and closes as if searching for the right words to say, but that hurt.

Is she really that bad? Is that the truth behind all of this? That she’s clingy? Thinks everything is about her? That was never her intention. (Y/N) is well aware of how important being an Avenger is. Hell, she is an Avenger, for Christ’s sakes.

She says nothing more and leaves the room.

She can’t even decide if she feels sad. No. She’s not sad, she’s not angry, she’s not… anything.

Numb.

Naturally, her feet lead her to their room. Steve’s room. They all basically share the super soldier’s abode since they all got together, but right now she doesn’t dare open the door.

Doing a full one-eighty spin, (Y/N) takes herself back to a place she barely touches anymore. Her room.

It’s pretty empty. Most of her clothes are in Steve’s room, in her own walk-in wardrobe. Her bed is perfectly made from the last time she slept in here - maybe a year ago?

The woman walks around her bed and straight onto her bedroom balcony, overlooking the lake at the back of the compound, and stays there. For three-hours. Until Bucky comes looking for her.

He came home from his mission about thirty-minutes ago only to find their shared room of Steve’s empty. He searched just about everywhere, completely clueless.

“FRIDAY, where’s (Y/N) and Steve?” He finally gives in.

“Captain Rogers is in study five, and Agent (L/N) is in her private quarters.”

Now that makes the brunet furrow his brows.

Why would (Y/N) be in her room and not his or Steve’s?

He prioritises finding (Y/N) first, knowing Steve will be writing up mission reports, no doubt.

Despite them being together for over six-years now, he hesitates when reaching for the handle of her bedroom door. Instead, the man opts to knock.

No answer.

“(Y/N)?” Nothing. “Doll, it’s me; can I come in?” Nothing.

Bucky tries the door handle and finds it unlocked, yet still hesitates.

“Baby?” He calls out. Again, nothing.

He’s cautious now. Scared.

Her room looks as untouched as the last time he saw it, which was a few months back when she was after one of her plushies.

“(Y/N)?”

It’s when he feels the chill of the midnight winds ruffle his hair that he realises her balcony doors aren’t fully closed.

Striding straight over, his eyes widen at the sight of his girlfriend curled up in the corner of the outdoor area, crying.

“(Y/N), baby, hey, what’s wrong?!”

Bucky immediately drops to his knees in front of the woman, reaching for her hands and gently tugging them away from her tear-stained face.

“(Y/N), doll, look at me.” His voice is gentle. Soothing.

She does almost instantly but her sadness stays.

“What happened, baby? Are you hurt?”

The fear and sincerity in his voice is enough to prompt the woman to shake her head. Yes, she’s hurting emotionally, but he needs confirmation that she’s not dying.

The woman immediately sees the relief take over his features, but he’s still concerned.

“What’s wrong, doll?”

Her eyes stray away from his, not wanting to tell him what’s got her so upset.

“Hey, no, look at me, baby,” He whispers, hand lightly grasping at her chin to raise her face back up to his. “What’s got you so worked up, (Y/N)?”

Another shake of her head as she tries to escape her lover’s hold.

“Baby, please, you’re scaring me.”

Her face contorts into something close to heartbreak as she wants nothing more than to reassure the man in front of her.

“It’s okay, Buck.”

“It’s not okay! Doll, I haven’t seen you cry since Stevie nearly died on that mission in Ohio like two-years-ago! Talk to me.”

She takes a deep breath and wipes her face of the shedding tears.

“Do you want me to get Stevie?”

The question is innocent and makes sense, but her eyes widen and she shakes her head desperately.

“No! No, please, no.”

That truly makes the super soldier concerned.

“Doll, please can you tell me what’s happened?”

Never in the last eight-years that Bucky and (Y/N) have known each other has she been so reluctant to see Steve.

Another sob escapes her and it’s breaking his heart.

“Baby, please.”

“Steve got mad at me, alright?!” She manages an attempted shout. “I just wanted him to look after himself.”

“What happened? What did Steve do?”

He’s concerned. Massively.

“I was trying to get him to eat; he hasn’t eaten properly in so long. He’s so overworked and he’s hung up on all these mission reports. He told me that not everything was about me - shouted at me; told me to stop.” She’s whimpering and sniffling again now. “Please get him to eat something, James.”

That last sentence is the one that crushes him. She’s upset, yeah, but above all that, she’s still worried about the blond super soldier.

“Come on, baby, let’s go to our room and get into bed, yeah? I’ll go and speak to Stevie.”

Her eyes meet his and she looks scared, but the ocean blue gaze that he returns makes her bound to his every command.

The woman nods.

“Okay.”

“That’s my girl.”

With the help of the Winter Soldier, (Y/N) manages to stand up, letting him lead her out of her private room and into their shared one of Steve’s.

“Here, let’s get you into your PJs, yeah?”

He doesn’t leave room for negotiation as he helps his girlfriend strip out of her casual dress and into one of his oversized t-shirts.

“You get snuggled up in bed, doll. I’m going to go and get Stevie, okay?”

He hates how she looks nervous at the mention of their other lover’s name.

“He loves you more than words can describe, baby girl, I promise you. He shouldn’t have lashed out at you, I’m gonna talk to him, okay?”

A hesitant nod and forced smile is enough for now.

“I’ll be back shortly, I promise.” He leans over and gives the woman a kiss on the lips, leaving her with one of her favourite shows playing on the TV.

“Bucky,” Her choked up voice calls out just before he leaves.

The man turns from his place in the doorway.

“I love you.”

The smile that takes over his expression is contagious.

“I love you too, baby girl. More than anything.”

Despite his reassurance to the woman, he’s pretty damn pissed for a number of reasons about Steve losing his cool with their girl. Reason number one being, how dare he? Reason number two being, he knows better than to overwork, yet here we are.

Bucky doesn’t even knock once he approaches the glass doors of the study where Steve is sat typing away on the laptop.

The blond doesn’t even glance up to see who entered. He barely heard the door open which enrages Bucky further.

The brunet slams the lid of the laptop shut without saying a word, prompting Steve’s head to shoot up, glaring daggers at whoever has interrupted him.

“What the fuck, James?!”

That makes Bucky really get annoyed.

“Are you serious right now, Rogers?”

“I’m in the middle of about seven different mission reports, Buck, I’ve gotta finish them.” The man sighs, going to open the lid of the PC once more, only for Bucky to hold it down. “James, seriously,”

“No. What you need to do is explain to me why our girlfriend has been crying for the last God-knows how many hours?”

That makes Steve snap back to reality.

“What? (Y/N) has been crying? Is she okay?”

Bucky literally rolls his eyes at that.

“Are you fucking serious, Steve?” He repeats, Steve looking confused, expression contorting as he realises that his boyfriend is seriously angry at him.

“Bucky, what’s wrong? What’s happened?”

The Winter Soldier’s head lolls back as he groans in frustration.

“You seriously have no idea?” He asks, rhetorically, watching Steve look almost scared. “Do you often shout at your girlfriend and forget it happened?”

Cap’s eyes widen at that, and he visibly gulps.

“What?”

“She came in here to make sure you were looking after yourself, which you weren’t, by the way, and you tell her that not everything is about her?! Are you fucking stupid, Steve?!”

He remembers it all too well in that moment, turning his head down to avoid the frustrated glare of his male lover.

“No. No, you don’t get to look away from me. Look at me.” Bucky demands, watching the blond super soldier reluctantly do so. “I come home from my own exhausting mission, search for (Y/N) for thirty-minutes, and find her crying her God-damn heart out on the balcony of HER room; not our room, Steve, no. Her room.”

Steve’s heart shatters and his eyes widen once more.

(Y/N) hates staying in her room. She’d always be in his or Bucky’s without a doubt.

“I- Buck-”

Bucky shakes his head and stands back upright as Steve is lost for words.

“I’m not mad at you, Steve. I get it, you know? You’ve been overworking for the last month, I know you’re stressed, but fuck, baby, you can’t hurt her like that. Do you know how much my heart fucking shattered when I saw her curled up in the corner of her own God-damn balcony?! It tore me apart. She hasn’t cried since you nearly fuckin-” Bucky chokes on his own word as he walks away from his lover.

“I’m sorry! Buck, I’m sorry, okay? I shouldn’t have let Fury send me on that many missions, I- I should’ve said no. I’m sorry.” Steve attempts, standing up and following the brunet, turning him around to face him once more.

“It’s not me you need to be apologising to, Stevie.”

Captain America nods and leans up to press a kiss to the man’s lips.

“I’m sorry, James.”

Bucky takes a deep breath and forces a smile.

“I forgive you. Of course I forgive you, I know you didn’t mean it, but I swear to God, if you hurt her again…”

Steve is already shaking his head.

“I wouldn’t dream of either of you getting hurt. Where is she?”

“Our room.”

He nods and begins heading toward the woman to which he owes more than he can give.

The door is half ajar when Steve gets there, he slowly opens it to reveal his girlfriend in all her glory, curled up under their Captain America themed duvet - which Sam bought the trio as a joke last Christmas. Her face is clear-as-day red from her earlier upset, and it breaks his heart.

The man knocks gently on the day as if not to startle the poor girl.

“Hey, sweetheart.” He offers a solemn smile when she turns to see who’s there.

He hates the way he can see her hesitation to speak to him as opposed to her usual squeal of his name, arms opening wide to welcome him into her cuddle-fest.

“Hi.” She manages, forcing her own smile.

There’s silence floating between them, the only sound being Jensen Ackles, in his role of Dean Winchester, talking a load of nonsense about pie on the TV that’s streaming Supernatural.

“Baby, I’m so sorry.” Steve manages, taking a step toward the bed. “Nothing can excuse the way I yelled at you, and I’m so sorry for that, but, sweetheart, trust me when I say I didn’t mean it. I was so stupidly stressed, and I should never have let it get to that point.”

She nods, truly believing his words, but it still hurt.

The blond sits down on the edge of the bed, not daring to cuddle his girlfriend until she’s comfortable.

“I love you so much, (Y/N) (L/N).”

A bigger smile taints her lips at that.

“I love you too, Steven.” Her voice is barely a whisper but he hears it clear as day.

“Can I hold you?”

(Y/N) smiles and shakes her head as if he was being silly.

“You never need to ask permission for that, Stevie. No matter what.”

With another sad smile, he pulls the woman into his arms and holds her tighter than ever before.

“I’m so sorry, my love.”

“I forgive you, but no more missions for a while.” She whispers.

“Yes, boss.”

Bucky’s leaning against the doorframe, watching the interaction. He took a detour to Tony’s office and made sure to give the billionaire a piece of his mind about making sure Fury didn’t have Steve on any missions for a long time.

“Is this the last episode?” The brunet speaks up, stripping himself of his clothes as he enters their room properly.

“Yeah.” (Y/N) nods.

“I still think we should watch Vampire Diaries instead.” Steve chuckles, mirroring Bucky’s actions.

“I pick the TV show, Rogers shuts his cake-hole.” (Y/N) teases, mocking a line from Supernatural and snuggling herself in the middle of the bed, sandwiched between the two super soldiers - where she belongs. “I love you both.”

“Love you too, sweetheart.”

“Love you always, doll.”

TAGS

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[mypoisonedvine]

𝖗𝖔𝖈𝖐 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖇𝖔𝖆𝖙 || pirate!Jefferson x reader

summary: Captain Jefferson is feared by every would-be sailor, every tradesman of the British isles, even his fellow pirates; yet, he's oddly gentle with you... for now.

word count: 4.2k

warnings: smut (dub con, this is a dark fic! mostly soft dark tho!), unwanted creampie, verrryy slight breeding kink, implied/threatened noncon, unwanted touching, lots of praise, mentions of the plague (but this time it's not the current one), pregnancy mention, alcohol consumption, religion mention, use of a knife (not quite knife kink but not violence either), slight yandere vibes

Perhaps if you had woken up sooner, earlier in the siege of your ship by the pirates, you would’ve had more time to flee and make it to one of the lifeboats. If you hadn’t been so exhausted from a long day beforehand, you would’ve surely roused from sleep at the first signs of trouble. If you had thought to put on boots and not tried to run from your room barefoot, you might have made it further before the invading crew had taken over.

Then again, this all could’ve been avoided if your fiancé had helped you onto the lifeboat instead of leaving you behind to die. Useless fucking bastard. Now here you were in the hands of your ‘saviors’ who pulled you from the flaming wreckage of the ship they themselves had destroyed. Their intentions were anything but altruistic, though; you weren’t a survivor, exactly, but a captive. Survivors didn’t typically have their wrists tied in front of them.

“Pretty,” one of them growled as he ran a finger down your cheek; you turned away as best you could but you couldn’t do much with them holding your arms and circling in so close around you. Another finger pushed against your lips and probed your mouth, the salt of his skin easily the worst taste you’d even experienced.

“Got all her teeth, too,” he noted. “Must be rich.”

“Who gives a fuck if she’s rich?” yet another sneered, reaching to start pulling up your skirt as you tried to kick him away. “All that matters is she’s warm.”

“You know we have to bring her to the Captain,” someone behind you noted.

“Yeah, but can’t we have a little fun first?”

“No,” the voice answered back firmly, making all the men around you visibly deflate.

“Fine then,” said the man in front of you as he dropped your skirt, and you were relieved slightly just to know they had to leave you be for now. “You’d better be a good girl for the Captain, then,” he informed you through his rotted grin, “and maybe we’ll get reacquainted when he’s done with you.”

With that, though they didn’t seem too ecstatic about it, a few of the men in the crowd guided you across the ship, bringing you to a windowed door. at the stern of the ship. It was likely the first mate that knocked; you were too busy being restrained to do it yourself, and the other men were too busy restraining you.

“Come in,” a voice answered from the other side.

The door creaked a bit as it was opened, and you felt the need to recoil further when you saw the man in his chambers, staring you down coldly.

“We found her in the wreckage,” the first mate explained, “figured you would know what to do with her.”

“Oh, I know what to do with her,” he agreed flatly, and you heard a few snickers behind you. “Bring her here.”

You figured ‘bringing’ would involve more walking, but instead they essentially threw you into the room, laughing as you stumbled to the floor since you were unable to catch yourself with bound hands.

The door slammed shut behind you unceremoniously, and you were left to look up at your new, singular captor with watery eyes. He wasn’t nearly as repulsive as the rest of his crew, he was even… not bad looking, if you tried hard enough to see him that way. It helped that he was better dressed and groomed, though he still looked plenty erratic in his own peculiar way. At least you were indoors now, protected from the cold ocean breeze of the evening, and with someone whose gaze was a bit less ravenous than the others that had been on you so far.

He offered his hand to help you up, but you defiantly made your own way back onto your feet.

“A bit of an independent type, I see,” he noted with the slightest smirk. “You must really hate this, then.”

“Would anyone enjoy being captured by pirates?” you asked, voice a little too shaky to really sound properly indignant.

“Many prefer it to drowning in the Indian ocean,” he frowned tightly. “Some might even be thankful to those that show them mercy.”

You were about to ask what he considered mercy, but then he took a knife from a leather holster at his side, stepping closer and carefully slicing the ropes off of your sore wrists. “Th-thank you, sir,” you whispered, rubbing the tender skin, raw in a few places.

“Captain Jefferson,” he corrected instantly, voice tense even though his body language was still relaxed; nonchalant, even. “You’ve yet to enlighten me to your name, darling.”

For a moment you watched him twirl his knife around in his fingers and almost forgot your own name to answer him with. When you did stammer it out, he gave you a smile that lied just between friendly and predatory, white teeth sparkling in the dim light of his lanterns as he sheathed the blade at his waist.

“Lovely,” he cooed. “It suits you. That dress on the other hand,” he frowned slightly as he looked you up and down, “is atrocious.”

“It’s only a nightgown,” you defended, “and it was much nicer before it was torn and sullied by your men outside.”

“Well, I’m afraid it just won’t do,” he decided. “You see, I have a lovely dinner prepared this evening and I couldn’t allow you to dine with me in tattered rags.”

“You’ll feed me?” you realized aloud.

“If you choose to accept my hospitality,” he clarified, and the way he said it made your skin crawl; there were no friendly dinners with pirates, you knew that much.

“Your kindness is… appreciated,” you half-lied, “but I cannot accept. I’ll go to the brig.”

“No, you won't. You’ll be spending the night in my quarters. With me,” he added, making his intentions exceptionally clear.

“I most certainly will not!” you defended, incensed. His jaw tightened as he glared at you, just for a moment, before he turned calm and polite again.

“I could leave you to my crew,” he offered casually. “Forty-eight drunken sailors who haven’t seen a woman since we left port eight months ago... I imagine they would be considerably less kind with you.”

You swallowed, but the lump in your throat didn’t go down.

“So, get changed and join me for dinner,” he instructed. “There’s something you can wear in that closet over there,” he explained as he motioned to it, “and a screen you can change behind.”

It was an odd request, but frankly, you were in no position to refuse it. He walked to the other end of the expansive quarters to examine something on his desk, and you awkwardly made your way to the closet to acquire the garment before you ducked behind the screen.

You didn’t really feel comfortable changing at this point, and you didn’t really trust that he would give you privacy; you stalled for quite some time, just waiting for him to suddenly appear and try to catch you nude, but the moment never came, and you finally relented and began to undress.

Admittedly, it was nice to peel the wet, cold nightgown from your skin and slip into something warmer. The dress he’d provided was a burgundy silk pattern, much more flamboyant and revealing at the bust than anything you would wear in your spare time, but you still indulged in running your hands over the soft fabric and toying with the lace hem of your sleeves briefly. It was slightly old-fashioned and it made you wonder how he’d come upon a dress like this in the first place, let alone what compelled him to keep it.

You tried to tie the lace up the back but couldn’t quite get them all, bending your arms awkwardly to try to reach but sighing as you realized it was useless.

“Um… Captain?” you called out sheepishly.

“Yes?” he answered immediately, voice echoing from across the room.

“Could you help me with the bodice here?”

You didn’t really see him step behind you, but you heard him come closer and felt the warmth of his presence. He delicately brushed his fingers over the back of your neck, ostensibly to make sure your hair was out of the way, before taking the strings in his hands and lacing your dress the rest of the way, tightening it slightly. “Not too tight, is it?” he asked quietly.

“It’s fine, thank you,” you nodded as he tied them. You expected him to walk away but when you turned around he was still there, staring down at you with eyes that were darkened at yet sparkling in the candlelight. “Should I put on jewelry as well?” you asked nervously.

“No, this will do nicely,” he announced, his voice a little deeper than it had been before, his fingers reaching up to brush over your exposed clavicle. “You look beautiful.”

“Um, thank you,” you answered hesitantly, glancing away from his all-consuming gaze.

A heavy silence filled the space between you before he finally broke it with a smile. “The table’s set, you can take your seat,” he explained, stepping back and giving you room to walk to the dining table; it really was a fine meal, one you recognize as stolen from the kitchens of the ship you had been on before, the one that was rubble at the bottom of the sea now. “Is it to your liking?” he prompted, making you realize you were forgetting to mind your manners. It was probably best to stay on the good side of such a dangerous and unpredictable man.

“It looks delicious, thank you,” you rushed as he pulled your chair out for you, and you flattened your skirts to take your seat.

And it wasn’t a lie; around the candelabra was an array of meats, cheeses, and fruits, even some small tarts presumably for dessert. Any other circumstance and you would feel comfortable digging right in.

He didn’t sit across from you right away, moving instead to a liquor cabinet which he knelt before. “I have red wine, aaaand some mead,” he offered as he searched through bottles, picking two to show you. “Or are you a moonshine sort of girl?” he asked with a wink.

“I’ll just take the wine, thank you,” you mumbled. He nodded and poured you a goblet, unsubtly eyeing your cleavage from his new vantage point. You motioned that he’d given you enough, leaving him to pour his own drink and cork the bottle again before taking his seat.

“I hope you don’t mind if I pray before the meal,” he interjected suddenly, “I’m a devout Catholic.”

“Oh, go ahead,” you nodded.

He chuckled slightly, making you feel foolish. “I’m joking, obviously. I’m a pirate.”

“I didn’t want to make any assumptions,” you mumbled. “I’ve heard pirates are superstitious, after all.”

“So religion is superstition?” he mused, lifting his goblet to take a drink.

“That’s… not exactly what I meant,” you compromised as you shifted in your seat.

He just looked at you, seeming to relish in your discomfort, as he began to eat from his plate, still staring at you. "You're not eating," he finally noticed.

"I suppose I've lost my appetite," you weakly explained, pushing a grape across the plate with your fork.

"Is it me? Do I… repulse you?"

You couldn't determine if the question came from insecurity or was some sort of trick. "Um… no," you answered. "But it is the circumstances you've put me in."

"I really mean no harm. It's been many years since I've had a chance to enjoy the company of a beautiful woman for dinner, that's all."

"But I'm spending the night here?" you remembered.

"Yes," he agreed.

No harm indeed, you thought to yourself as you nearly rolled your eyes. "You dishonor me," you protested. "My fiancé—"

"I think we both know he's dead," he interjected sternly.

"He made it to a lifeboat," you informed the Captain.

"Do you not hear the storm outside?" he scoffed, standing up to approach his window and throw open the curtain, revealing the heavy rainfall and lightning strikes on the water. "No lifeboat could withstand that."

Just as you hoped to find something to say to break the silence, something that would distract from his obvious and unfortunate truth, but he spoke again first.

"Say, shouldn't it have been the women and children first?" he realized with a furrowed brow, turning back from gazing out the window to examine you. "How did he make it on and you didn't?"

"There… there was only room for one more…"

"He took your spot," Jefferson realized, before suddenly bursting into laughter. You frowned and felt your eyes sting as you looked at the napkin in your lap. "And you say I dishonor you, when your betrothed left you to die so he could save himself!"

He walked closer, and you tried harder to fight your tears as he leaned in right in front of you.

"We really should thank him for his cowardice, shouldn't we? He's made you the only survivor of the wreck of the Princess Marianna," he grinned, and in a moment of weakness to your anger, you looked up and slapped him across the face.

"It wasn't a wreck, it was a siege," you corrected with shaking anger as the Captain rubbed his cheek, "and I'm not a survivor, I'm a prisoner!"

"Is this how you think prisoners are treated?" he snapped, grabbing your wrist tightly when you reached out again. "Dressed in silk, given fine wine?"

"Stolen wine," you grimaced, "and I assume the same for the dress?"

"No, the dress wasn't stolen. It belonged to the woman I loved before she died."

You straightened suddenly, stunned by his confession. You hadn't even considered that a pirate could really love. "I… I'm sorry."

"So forgive me if I can't muster much sympathy for your dead fiancé, it's just that I can't imagine claiming to love someone and choosing myself over them," he explained with ill-concealed contempt, looking away. "I'd have given my life to save her. But there are no lifeboats in a plague."

Your eyes that watered with rage before now brimmed with sympathy; the hand that reached up strike him before now delicately cradled his face, soothing where his cheek began to turn red. "My mother…" you trailed off. "The plague took her as well. It's cruel to see someone you love rot away."

He looked back at you again and you felt exposed to his stare, like he could see right through you.

It made a chill run up your spine, but it was oddly pleasant. He held out his hand for you to place yours in, guiding you to stand before him as he drank in the sight of you.

"You haven't had any wine," he realized softly. "Drink."

Hesitant but entranced by him, you grabbed the goblet from the table and took a sip. His hand gently tilted the bottom further, encouraging you to drink more, until you were gulping down the whole portion. As you finished, a drop fell down from the corner of your lips; his thumb wiped it away, and he brought the digit to his mouth as he sucked off the flavor from his own skin.

You didn't even mean to watch him dart his tongue out and lap up the liquid, but it made your thighs clench of their own volition. "Sweet," he whispered, and you forgot he was talking about the wine.

He took the goblet from your hand and set it down, turning his attention back to you as he ran his fingers over your shoulder, gentle enough to make little goosebumps prickle your skin all over. His gaze trailed over your face in the same pattern that his fingers did, his delicate touch making you shiver as he caressed your cheek, your jaw, your lips and finally your chin which he lifted slightly.

“Kiss me,” he requested softly.

More willing than you expected or were willing to admit, you leaned in closer to him and pressed your lips to his, chaste at first before he started to pull you closer and move his lips with yours. It was him that traced the shape of your mouth with his tongue before sliding it between your teeth, breathing heavier through his nose and wrapping his arms around you tighter.

You found yourself being pushed back, guided to his Captain’s desk, which he lifted you just enough to set you on. Without breaking the kiss— though it did become much hungrier and more intense— he roughly hiked the skirts of the borrowed dress up your legs, grabbing you tightly as he held you by your thighs.

Perhaps you could blame it on the alcohol, but you weren't even really feeling it yet and you were melting into his touch, moaning softly against his lips. Just when you were beginning to really like his fingers rubbing circles on your inner thighs, he removed his hands from your skirts. Instead his hands fumbled at your back to loosen the very same lacing he had helped you to tie before, releasing you from the dress just enough that he could tear the front down to expose your breasts, which he instantly reached up to grope in the palm of his hand while you both sighed a little at the feeling.

"Beautiful," he sighed as he started to kiss his way to your ear, biting gently around it. "So beautiful…"

You were devoid of words or even thoughts, operating only on primal instinct as you shuddered and fumbled with his coat and vest, hoping to see more of him in return. He smiled against your skin, apparently pitying you enough to lean back and help remove his layers of clothing. When you pulled his scarf away, you gasped at the sight of a scar that encircled his entire neck.

"How did you—?" you began to ask with a concerned whisper.

"I was sentenced and hung for piracy," he explained quickly. "It didn't take."

He kissed you again as he kept stripping with your rushed assistance; you didn't get it all off, just enough to leave him in a loose-fitting undergarment that revealed his scarred, masculine chest which moved with every deep breath he took.

Your fingers trailed down the expanse of skin, your breath a little heavier as you found the belt of his trousers. He grinned and opened it himself with one hand, while the other moved under your skirts again, drifting higher and higher until he finally swiped a finger through your sex.

The feeling made you choke on nothing, and he did it again, gathering and encouraging your arousal. You never got a look at his member, your clothes blocking you from seeing anything useful, but you could feel the shape of it pressing into your thigh.

You didn't know enough about what to expect to be sure that it was particularly large… but you were intimidated either way.

His forehead rested on your shoulder as he guided the thick, spongy head through your folds, seeking your entrance hastily. Even just that pushed your lips wide apart, your head getting dizzy as you realized he intended to put that inside of you. When he found it, just barely beginning to push forward, he straightened up to stare down into your eyes.

“Look at me,” he demanded. “Look at me when I take you.”

Blinking quickly, you did as you were told, looking up at him and feeling your gut sink and your heart twist at the idea of being stripped of your decency in such a way by this man. It was hard to believe it was really happening; it was hard to comprehend the way it titillated you.

All at once, he shot his hips forward and filled you, making you nearly scream though you managed to suppress it to a gasp. He watched you closely the whole time, giving only one moment of stillness to adjust before he began to pull back and start the cycle all over again, each movement stretching you wider than you had ever dared to imagine.

His expression was almost blank, almost unreadable, except for his eyes; they burned with enough passion to consume you in the flames, seeming not to blink as if he couldn’t miss even a moment of your pain and your pleasure.

Releasing you from his stare, he looked at your lips instead which he captured in another dominating kiss, one that trailed over your jaw as he began to really find his pace and increase the brutality of his body carving its space inside yours. More than anything, you focused on keeping your eyes shut and trying to distract yourself from it so wouldn’t audibly moan.

His tongue and lips laved your neck as he thrusted into you, the shadow of stubble on his face just enough to scratch your skin while his hands guided your legs to wrap around his hips. You would surely fall limp onto the desk if he didn’t cling onto you so tightly, strong and calloused hands clutching your back.

When he reached some very specific place inside you, a jolt of energy through your body shot your eyes wide open and your hands up to clutch at his shoulders. “Oh—!” you choked, gasping for air as he drove the head of his cock right into it again. He pulled away from your neck to smile down at you proudly, watching you moan and shiver at the overwhelming sensation.

“Didn’t know it could feel good, huh?” he taunted huskily. “Didn’t think you’d like it?”

He continued his assault on your neck, sure to leave a mark now, and it was all you could do to hang on for dear life as he slammed into you, the loud noises of his skin on yours filling the room.

Pressure built and built inside you, threatening to seize up at any moment. His speed kept increasing, kept pushing you to the edge faster and harder until you cried out, your nails digging into his shoulders as your body tightened and relaxed rhythmically.

“Oh god,” he moaned, right against your ear, “beautiful… you can’t imagine how wonderful it feels when you let go for me.”

He didn't slow down even slightly, keeping you suspended in pleasure with every desperate thrust into your pliant body.

"Do it again," he demanded darkly, but you were already spilling over the edge and sobbing at the onslaught of sensations filling you from the top of your head to the ends of your toes (which curled without you even realizing). He grunted as your walls gripped him with every wave of pleasure, his fingers digging into your supple flesh, sure to leave marks in the morning. "That's it," he purred, "give me everything."

You realized with dawning horror that his moans were getting louder and deeper but he showed no signs of stopping to finish outside. “Wait—”

“Fuck,” he hissed against your ear, holding you tighter as you started to squirm. “You’ll make me come.”

“Not inside,” you whimpered, swinging your arms to try to push him away, “you have to— please take it out—”

He growled and grabbed your wrists roughly, making you yelp a little. “You’re mine now. I’ll do with you what I please.”

“No, I can’t,” you whined.

“You can,” he promised through his teeth. “You can take all of it, beautiful… you can take every last drop of my seed inside you.”

You sobbed and struggled but ultimately as you felt his cock begin to flex against your channel and heard his panting breaths against your ear, you knew it was too late and he was spilling himself within you. He groaned and you let out one last weak whimper, going limp in his arms as you felt warmth begin to bloom from your core where he’d filled it.

The only grace he could’ve given you in that moment was just to leave you alone, toss you into the brig like you would’ve preferred in the first place, but he couldn’t even do that: he stayed inside you, holding your face and kissing you slowly while he caught his breath, mumbling praises you didn’t care to parse.

He carried you to his bed, undressing you from the gown until you were bare and had only his body to shield you from the draft in the room.

"I never told you something about my beloved," he whispered in your ear as he cradled your body under the blankets of his bed. "When she passed, she was with child. I lost both of them… and now you'll be filling their space and giving me what she couldn't, what I'm owed."

You blinked blankly through silent tears that streaked down your temples.

"Oh! And I never told you the name of this lovely vessel you'll be residing on," he realized with a breathless chuckle. "Welcome, darling, to the Devil's Fortune. I hope you enjoy it here… because I won't ever let you leave."

[didyoutrydynamite]

JNRZ Year 1 Prologue: Warlock

Lucas Clark must have had the most boring job in the world.

Being the security guard for an Schnee Dust Company Equipment Outpost located in the coldest part of nowhere gave a man a lot of time to think. And in his several months of being stationed here at his new gig, meditating to the sounds of howling Solitas winds and humming fluorescent lights has helped him conclude that yes, his job sucked.

It was his turn for the graveyard shift, so once again he was all alone in the security room, a space full of monitors for various cameras around the outpost, some rolling chairs, a gun locker in one corner and a small kitchen in the other corner. Well to call it a kitchen would be stretching it, the set up consisted of a folding table, a mini fridge underneath, and on top sat a crappy coffee maker and a microwave that was currently cooking Clark's dinner.

He mindlessly watched his cup of ramen noodles slowly spin inside the microwave, listening to the same rock n' roll playlist for what must have been for the twenty fifth time. Damn, if he had known that you couldn't get wifi out here in the middle of the icy wastes, he would have downloaded way more songs, maybe even a few books on tapes about science or something?

Lucas had taken the position because it sounded like a cushy job with little stress. Even with the recent rise in White Fang activity within Atlas, Outpost 210 was of insignificant value for attack. This outpost was built for the purpose to house extra parts of various SDC mining machines such as cogs, wiring, treads, etc. If something broke down within flying distance of the base, this outpost could ship the replacement part in no time. Gotta make sure Mr. Schnee's precious mines don't stop overflowing his pockets for even a second, right?

Oh well, it's not like he could complain since Mr. Schnee's pockets were the ones that filled his pockets as well. Sometimes you just had to complain about pointless shit in order to pass the time. The compound had about eight security guards, and only about two times as many various employees to keep the lights on and organize stock. The perimeter was surrounded by tall concrete walls aligned with automated turrets to keep any Grimm out, along with a small army of security droids that could handle any Grimm that made it past that. So in the end the only reason the SDC decided to leave guards out here at all was to make sure none of the employees contracted cabin fever and went on a killing spree.

The microwave beeped, Clark took the ramen cup, held it in a makeshift glove of paper towels and started blowing on it to cool it down. With dinner in hand, the security guard sat on his throne and rolled over to the security desk to get back to work.

He half-watched the dozen monitors as he lazily stirred his noodles. It's not like there's anything new to see. Most of the base was asleep at this point, and the only personnel that would still be walking around would be a couple other security guards and some maintenance guys. Grabbing his plastic fork, Lucas coiled up some ramen noodles and went for a bite, ready for yet another boring night on the-

"Do you hear me?"

"OH SHIT!" Clark yelped, startled by a deep pitched voice speaking over his ear piece. He had only just managed to save his cup of noodles before he could respond. "God damn! Don't scare me like that!'

"My apologies. I was testing the communications for a bit to see if I could get through. It was not my intention to scare you."

Clark was shaking his hand from some of the hot water that spilled out of his dinner while he saved it. "Ugh it's fine. Made me nearly spill my noodles over the security console though. It would have been both of our asses if I spilled food into the keyboards again."

The voice let out a garbled chuckle on the other end. "Well we wouldn't want that now would we?"

As Clark listened to the voice over the ear piece, he had a hard time nailing down who among the staff the voice could belong to. Whoever this was talking to had the most gravely deep voice he'd ever heard, to the point it almost sounded distorted…

"Hey who is this by the way? How did you get access to this channel?"

"I had to borrow an ear piece from one of the other guards. As for who I am. You can call me Warlock. What should I refer to you as?"

Warlock? What kind of name was that? And borrowing a comm piece? Sharing equipment with unauthorized personnel was a huge breach of security and a fireable offense. "This is Officer Clark of SDC Security, now I'm going to have to ask you to describe in clearer detail how exactly you've come to be in possession of another guard's ear piece, Warlock."

"In due time Clark, but first if I was hoping to ask you for some assistance. I am currently in Warehouse B, standing next to a maintenance console near dock C. Can you see me waving towards the camera?"

Puzzled by the request, Clark looked over the several monitors in front of him, looking for one that had a view in the warehouses. He eventually found a screen that gave him a view into Warehouse B, his cup of noodles fell to the floor as he looked at the live feed.

Right there on the screen was a figure casted in light from an overhanging industrial light, casting upon him like a stage light. He wore a dark purple winter's coat and a gray fedora with gold trim. Any detail that could be given about his facial features were entirely covered by what looked like a buzzing swarm of pixels, several of which glowed bright aqua, eerily giving the distorted face a pair of glowing eyes. He was waving right towards the camera as he stood next to the limp body of a security guard slouched against the bottom of a nearby wall.

"What the? Uh i-intruder in Warehouse B!" Clark quickly voiced over the security comms. "Officer down! I repeat, officer down! All units respond!"

"I'll take that as a sign you can see me. Good." Warlock said, with an eerily deep voice that Lucas could now recognize what must have been under the effects of a voice modulator. The figure then moved to the wall where a hard light maintenance screen was mounted, his hands deftly moved against the screen. "Next, I need you to tell me if something happens when I press… this."

The lights in the security room flickered for a second before the exit to the hallway was suddenly blocked off by a blast door, several metallic thunks locking it in place. Clark ran up to the door and started banging against the solid steel. "Shit! Help! All units respond! Why isn't anyone saying anything!?"

"And I'll take that as a sign that I have successfully locked the security room door. Oh and as for the comm silence, before we made our introductions I hacked the communications network so that the only person that receives your call will be me, so don't waste your breath trying to call for backup."

Shit. This was bad. The outpost was under attack and he couldn't warn people about it. He had never bothered getting other peoples contact numbers here so he couldn't call them to wake them up, the fire alarm was outside in the hallway, and the base wide emergency alarm was on the head of security's key chain! Fuck! Why didn't these cheap bastards put an alarm inside the security room?!

"You don't need to worry about your colleague here, I've simply knocked him unconscious. He should have a thorough recovery after I'm done here. As for you, Mr. Clark." Warlock's blue pixelated eyes peered back towards the camera as if looking directly at him through the screen. "Just sit tight and enjoy the spectacle. We wouldn't want you breaking anything trying to do something heroic. I'll be seeing you soon enough."

Warlock resumed pressing a few more keys on the hard light display on the wall, he then pulled out his scroll to hold it up against the screen, seeming to download something.

After the phone's task was completed, Warlock retrieved something from his coat's pocket. It was a sort of old looking locket, a golden brass chain and center piece which the intruder opened up, the contents inside facing away from the camera.

Lucas could hear over the comm piece that Warlock's breathing got harsher, quickly overwhelmed with emotion. The man looked to have almost buckled over as he placed a hand against the wall to steady himself, quickly breathing in and out.

Just after a few more breaths, Warlock closed the locket with a clenched fist. The man slowed his breath. With a few sniffs and a cough, the intruder stood straight up, adjusted his collar and whispered under his breath, barely caught on his earpiece's mic.

"No more hiding."

With the press of a button on his scroll, red lights started flashing around the outpost, a loud siren piercing through the snow filled night that there had been a security breach.

"W-what?" Was all Lucas could say as he watched the stranger walk deeper into the outpost with his pistol drawn.

"Clark? Do you read? What's going on?" A new voice appeared on the comms, thankfully one Lucas recognized as the head of security, Lieutenant Irving. He sounded tired from being suddenly woken up, yet anxious to know what's happening.

Despite remembering Warlock's words of how he can't talk to anyone else, Lucas still thought to try and warn his lieutenant, that was until someone else beat him to it.

"There's an intruder in the building sir!" said a voice that sounded like a statically warbled version of his own voice, and it could only have been one man. "He's taken down Bloomstein over in warehouse B! Now he's heading towards the main lobby, right towards security. There is a single intruder and he is carrying a gun, I repeat, the intruder is armed!"

"Got it, we'll group on security then, keep an eye on him and update us on anything he does. See you soon."

"Yes sir."

"FUCK!" Lucas threw his chair back in frustration, he's leading them into a goddamn trap! He looked back to the screens, from here he could see the entire facility waking up from the alarm. The workers were all running to their designated shelter to bunker down until an all clear could be given, making sure they stayed out of the way so the security could do their job. Everyone in the security barrack had quickly jumped out of bed and hastily put on their winter coats and picked up their company issued sidearms, quickly wrapping the holsters around their waists over their night clothes. Lieutenant Irving himself had a large ammo belt lung over his sweat stained undershirt and his very own shotgun in hand, having preferred to keep it stored on a mount on the wall above his bed instead of the security weapons locker like he was supposed to. Looks like his lax attitude for gun safety was gonna come in handy for tonight.

Lieutenant Irving brought up his own scroll in his hand as he ran through the frigid snow towards the main building and pressed 'activate'. The security droids resting at multiple charging centers around the base came to life, stepping off their platforms, pulling cables taught before snapping off their backs. The machines followed unheard orders and autonomously swarmed around the base. All looking for a single man as he now carefully made his way through the building's corridors, sweeping the area around every corner as came to hallway junctions or passed by closed doors.

"This is Milo and Sandy. We're making our way through the south wing towards the warehouse, we're gonna try and catch this guy by surprise. What's his current position?"

Warlock stopped and looked around for a second till he spotted a wall plaque that had a map of the outpost on it.

"You've just missed him, he's made it past the south wing toward the center wing, if you hurry you can catch him from behind." He responded over the radio, as he pressed up against the wall at a junction. He heard the footsteps before Milo even responded.

"Roger that, Clark."

"It's a trap!" Lucas yelled at the screen, going unheard as he saw the two guards draw near the hallway junction where Warlock was waiting. On the screen directly in the junction, he saw Warlock place a small circular device on the wall beside him, pulling out another one of devices in his hand, waiting.

As soon as the guards rounded the corner to the right, opposite direction of where Warlock was hiding, the intruder threw the disc in his hand at the back of the closest guard, followed by him shooting the furthest guard right in the back of the knee. The shot guard must have had their aura down, not expecting an ambush from behind, because the bullet went straight through.

With Milo clutching his knee and wailing in pain, Sandy quickly turned around and raised her gun at Warlock. Suddenly her body lurched towards the wall where the original disc was placed, both discs now glowing a bright purple. She slammed face first into the wall as the discs closed the distance between themselves, knocking her out instantly.

Warlock strolled forward continuing his original path towards the security room, making sure to kick away the gun Milo was reaching for with his bloody hand, and giving him a nice pistol whip for good measure to make sure he didn't try again. He then placed a finger to his comm piece.

"I've lost contact with Milo and Sandy. He must have gotten them while out of sight of the cameras."

"Fuck." spat the lieutenant. "That bastard is going to pay." Lucas started to hear a low thud against the security room's blast door. A quick look at the camera pointed outside in the main foyer showed that Irving, the last three other guards, and about a dozen robots were right outside. "Open the door Clark, it's us! We need to get to that weapons locker!"

"I'm afraid I can't do that sir."

"It's not me! I can't open the door!" Lucas yelled as he banged on the metal. Whether or not the Lieutenant could hear him through the thick metal he didn't know, but he did speak again on the radio to one of them.

"What do you mean?"

There was silence on the radio until the doppelganger's voice spoke up again. "...He's coming this way."

Lucas stayed by the door, waiting to see what the Lieutenant would say next, but if he had any response, he didn't voice it over the radio. The security guard quickly ran back to the console to find a screen with Irving angrily ordering the other guards into position, turning over the room's furniture over into a makeshift barricade as two-thirds of the security droids marched through the door entering the south wing, the rest staying behind with the guards.

On screen, the droids marched down the hallway in two groups of four, their dual arm machine guns already deployed and aimed down the corridor, waiting for their target to walk into their sights. On another screen he could see Warlock peering around a corner just a few doors down from the metal guards.

"It appears the ruse is up, Mr. Clark."

"You're outnumbered Warlock." Lucas announced as the droids closed in on the assailant's position. "You have no choice but to surrender or be gunned down."

"Then let's even the odds then."

Warlock pulled out a metallic ball with red dots on it, then with an underhand throw, sent the ball rolling right towards the robots. The dots on the ball started blinking with red lights as it's momentum slowed right in the middle of the first four bots, blinking faster and faster until glowing a brighter solid red. The machines surrounding the little ball all powered down, their shoulders and heads slumping for a moment, before rebooting and slowly standing straight again, this time with their clear black visors glowing red.

The four machine's twisted their torsos towards the other four machines that had been following behind them. Their metal brothers stopped just a few meters away from them, in silent standoff. The silence broke when the two groups of machines opened fire on each other, filling the hall with a storm of wild gunfire. In between the flashes, Lucas could see the robots gunning one another down and wild sprays, causing any camera that was in that hall to be caught by stray bullets, killing the live feeds.

The last thing Lucas saw in that hallway was Warlock calmly strolling towards the mayhem, another metallic ball in hand before the video was cut off with static snow. With eyesight now lost on the intruder, he had no choice but to set screens to focus on the foyer just right outside the security room.

What remained of security was hiding behind makeshift barricades, all guns trained on the south wing door. Lieutenant Irving was directly in the middle, flanked by three guards on either side, and the last four droids divided evenly on the far ends of the barricades.

The wait was agonizing even for Lucas, safe behind the screens of the security desk, intensely watching the double doors for any sign of an incoming attack. It must have been a minute or two before Warlock finally made his move, but when he did, the man made sure it was loud.

The explosion could be heard from behind the thick blast doors, the computer screen flashing a bright white before returning to normal again, just in time for the tail end of the trajectory of the double doors as they ninja starred across the foyer, slicing through the barricade and crashing into the opposing walls on the other side.

As the security guards got themselves off the ground after diving for cover, the security droids opened fire on the entrance, five droids covered in battle scars and visors glowing red as the charged in, some returning fire, the rest charging the barricades with their arm blades drawn.

The room broke out into a mindless brawl. Lucas saw a guard quickly try to gun down a charging droid with his pistol before it cleaved straight into the man's aura, sending the guard flying. Irving had parried another droid's blade with the butt of his gun, before flipping it in his hands and shoving the barrel straight under the robot's chin and firing. Luck was not on one guard's side, as apparently he was targeted by two droids at the same time, his aura showered in bullets before it broke and quickly brought him down as the bullets flew through his limbs.

The droids still loyal to the SDC were holding out better though, seeing as they were still in fresh condition compared to their traitorous brothers. The tactical advantage didn't last long though as Warlock entered the fray. The intruder had a hardlight shield in one hand, expanding out from his open palm providing him cover as he walked into the room, and his revolver in the other hand, taking carefully aimed shots at each robot one at a time. The shots were devastating, impeccably aimed, and charged with electricity Dust quickly eliminated the opposing droids.

By the time Warlock had taken care of the last SDC droid, the battle as a whole was coming to an end. The last standing security guard was in a melee with a hacked droid, striking it with his baton til the machine delivered a devastating strike that destroyed the guard's aura, followed by a debilitating slice to the guards leg, sending him to the ground.

It was just Warlock and one last hacked droid that was standing amongst the broken metal and wounded guards, groaning on the floor thanks to the "Non Lethal Takedown" protocols of the security droids. The hacker took one more sweep of the room before lowering his gun. It was then that Irving made his move.

With a loud yell, lieutenant Irving hurdled over the barricade he hid behind and charged the last droid. Before the machine could make a strike, the large burly man had already wrapped his arms around the robot's waist, picking it up with his forward momentum and carrying him towards Warlock. Before Irving closed in, the lieutenant hurled the droid towards Warlock, causing the intruder to dodge out of the way and the droid crash to the ground in broken heap.

The mysterious intruder attempted to raise his pistol at the head of security, but was quickly pulled in when the large man grabbed his shooting hand into an arm lock, followed by a head butt that sent Warlock backwards, his Aura flaring a lime green color as it absorbed the impact, while also wrenching his revolver out of his hand.

Now prone on the ground, Warlock could do nothing but scoot backwards, away from his assailant as Irving pulled his shotgun out from behind his back and started firing at him. Warlock managed to block the shotgun shells with his hardlight shield, but even on camera, Lucas could see the cracks forming.

Warlock continued crawling backwards until he came upon a broken droid. Thinking quickly, the hacker placed one of his purple discs on the machine's arm, then quickly threw another disc onto the burly man's chest as he pumped his shotgun for another shot.

If Lucas had blinked in that moment, he's positive he would have missed it. But brother gods did he wish he did.

Both discs glowed a bright purple, their artificial gravity wells connecting together. The disc on the robot immediately wrenched its arm right out of its socket, sending the blade arm shooting straight towards Irving's chest like a ballista. The force of the gravitational pull between the Lieutenant's chest and the metal arm instantly destroyed the man's Aura, piercing him right in the heart.

The man looked down at the blood that started soaking his already stained shirt, before his eyes rolled back into his head and he fell backwards to the ground. Lucas's stomach dropped along with the lieutenant.

Warlock himself was still prone on the ground. With his face concealed in a swarm of pixels, Lucas couldn't tell what the man must have been feeling. Eventually the man got up from the floor, fixed his collar, then walked over to where his gun laid nearby.

It was then, much to Lucas's horror, he started walking toward the security room.

In a panic, the last officer standing rushed for the weapon's locker in the corner, failing a few times to input the code 1-1-1-1, quickly grab a shotgun off the rack, and and accidentally spill shells over the floor. He was down on his knees picking up the shells one by one and loading them into the gun when he heard a voice.

"Mr. Clark, are you alright in there?"

"S-stay away!" Clark's voice cracked with fear. "There's nothing in here, so fuck off!"

Warlock waited for a second before responding. "I need to come inside Mr. Clark, I can't leave until I do."

Lucas snarled and stood up from the ground and pumped his shotgun, making sure it could be heard in the mic. "I. Said. LEAVE! Step one foot inside and you're dead!"

"There's no need to be afraid. I do not want to kill you."

"Bullshit! You murdered Irving!"

"No. I didn't." Warlock said plainly. "Your Lieutenant decided to continue fighting in order to stop me, so I killed him. It isn't murder when you're slain in war. I wish I could assure you that it was an honorable death, but it wasn't. What do you think he was fighting for? For Atlas? Defending innocents? To stop a killing spree I have no desire to start?"

"No. He died for money. He threw his life away because someone told him it was his job to do so. That it was his job to protect the investments of a man who doesn't know he exists. He died defending crumbs that belong to a bastard who already has everything!" Lucas could hear anger build up in Warlock's voice the more he talked.

"Lieutenant Irving did not die a hero, he died as Jacque's lapdog!"

Lucas was nearly to tears with frustration, he wanted to yell, cuss him out, blow his goddamn head off and tell him he's wrong. But he couldn't. He knew that Mr. Schnee didn't give two shits about lower level pawns like him and the Lieutenant. Warlock was right that Irving never even met Jaque himself. He was hired by a suit that was currently hiding in a bunker somewhere else on this base, while the man laid dead just in the other room.

What did Irving die for? Spare parts so machines could be fixed slightly faster? Lucas remembered what he thought to himself just barely twenty minutes ago in this very room. 'Gotta make sure Mr. Schnee's precious mines don't stop overflowing his pockets for even a second, right?' Bile rose up in his mouth. Was Lucas really going to die for him? Would anyone care that he was killed defending a warehouse in the middle of nowhere?

"Mr. Clark." Warlock's voice was now calm again, almost monotonous. "In three seconds, I'm going to open this door. Walk into that room. And ask you to surrender. I simply ask you to do the smart thing and not make the same mistake."

Lucas, despite his shaking, kept his shotgun trained on the door as the seconds ticked by. The man nearly jumped out his skin when the blast door quickly slid open, revealing a familiar silhouette in the doorway. The man almost looked like a specter with his glowing teal eyes against the dark shadows, slowly walking into the room with his gun drawn at his hip, not so threatening as if he planned to shoot on sight, but ready enough for Clark to make the first move.

The two men were in complete silence as they had their guns trained on one another. Now that Lucas was seeing Warlock in person, he looked even taller than he did on screen, almost towering in presence alone. The pixels that had swarmed his face like flies were now gone, replaced by a pair of glowing teal goggles and a bandana snuggly fit over his nose and mouth, decorated in geometric shapes. If he had to hazard a guess, the shapes must have been some weird scan code that automatically scrambled Warlock's face when on footage.

After a few more seconds of tense silence, Clark slowly lowered his shotgun. Their silence continued on though, the only form of communication between them were Warlock's slight flicks of his wrists as he used his gun to direct Lucas. Down to put the gun on the floor. Left to kick it away. Down again towards the handcuffs he threw at Lucas's feet to pick them up. Then lastly right, to tell him to handcuff himself to the minifridge in the kitchen.

As the handcuff locked in place, leaving Clark thoroughly at his captor's mercy, Warlock holstered his pistol.

"I'm glad you could come to see reason Mr. Clark. There's been enough death tonight." The masked stranger said with a still distorted deep voice, he must have had his voice modulator hidden underneath that bandanna as well. He holstered his pistol and walked over to the security screens covering the entire wall in the room.

"What now?" Clark asked, sounding defeated. "You have the whole outpost to yourself. Unless you brought a train with several carriages attached, or snuck an entire bull head past the perimeter defenses without us noticing, the most you're leaving here with is a few duffle bags of spare machinery parts with fuck all resale value."

"True. But what this outpost lacks in valuable goods…" Warlock's hands rapidly typed away on the security console, bringing up recordings of the attack he had just carried out on all the screens. "It more than makes up for it in high definition cameras."

Before Clark could ask why he cared about the cameras, Warlock's hand hovered over the system's hard drive, a shimmering lime green light emanated from the intruder's arm. Shortly after the glow started, little spectral numbers started floating up from the console straight into his palm. Upon closer inspection Lucas could tell they were little ones and zeroes. One by one the screens scrambled with error messages until they returned to their home screens, SDC logos taking their place on every wallpaper.

"What did you just do?"

"I got exactly what I came for."

Lucas's mouth fell open in disbelief, wrapping his head with such a simple answer yet mind boggling revelation. "All this… was just so you could steal security footage from a storage outpost?"

"Well, when you say it like that, it sounds ridiculous." Warlock shook his head. "It's elementary my dear Clark. Think, what exactly would be on those video files, now that I have them?"

Lucas racked his brain for every possible answer. That footage would mostly show empty hallways, foot traffic of employees, the janitor dancing when no one is looking. It even gave him a great view of Warlock's attack on the outpost… high definition cameras.

"You wanted to record yourself attacking the SDC…"

Warlock snapped his fingers. "You are smarter than you let on, Mr. Clark." he congratulated. "This," Warlock said, gesturing an arm around the room, "...is my declaration of war. A taste of things yet to come, and a demonstration to both my enemies and potential allies."

A… war? Lucas remembered back to what Warlock had said about himself killing Irving, you can't murder someone you're at war with. This man in front of him was declaring war on the Schnee Dust Company. But…

"... but why? Why do any of this?"

The tall man looked down at Lucas with ghostly eyes, as if pondering how to answer the question. He saw the intruder place a hand over one of his coat pockets. If Lucas remembered correctly, it was the same one that housed the locket Warlock held earlier.

"... To undo a mistake."

Warlock stood there a second more before speaking again.

"By the way Mr. Clark, do you happen to be left or right handed?"

"What?"

"It's a simple question Clark, with which hand are you most dominant?"

"I'm left handed, but what does that-" His sentence was cut off when he was shot in the right shoulder. "FUCK! Y-you shot me!"

"And you're welcome." Warlock said as he reholstered his smoking pistol. "When the authorities begin investigation into this attack, it wouldn't look very good for you if you had sat around in the security room unharmed as an armed assailant had taken a stroll through your colleagues and machines. At least this way it looks like you put up an actual fight."

Warlock began to take his leave, heading out the door before sharing parting words with the wounded security guard.

"I'd advise you to start looking for a new line of work before things get worse. Maybe go back to school? A sharp mind like yours would be a terrible waste, Mr. Clark."

With that, the masked stranger tipped his hat, and opened his scroll to push a button as he walked out.

All the computer monitors flickered in and out for a short second, the prominent Schnee Snowflake that adorned every screen fizzled out and were replaced with a new symbol, or to be more exact, a single letter.

A golden, elegantly written, cursive "W".

[phoenixyfriend]

Systems' Scourge: Addendum

I don't actually have an intent of writing more of Systems’ Scourge, but I do have associated daydreams specifically based around other surviving padawans and their legions coming back, which is deeply unfortunate, because neither Cal nor Kanan was actually aware of the fact that, you know, the clones were mind-controlled.

So they just wake up on Venators surrounded by all the clones that survived that far (which is a skeleton crew, because Palpatine doesn't care and kept replacing them with natborn soldiers), and have panic attacks.

The clones are also unaware of the fact that they turned because of chips, so they're not having a great time either. ("A chip in my brain made me do this" sucks but it's better than "I did this and I don't know why." So, you know, the 501st is a lot better off, honestly.)

Luckily, nobody gets shot in either circumstance, but it's a close thing.

Then whoever's on the bridge and handling communications just lights up because there is one other GAR ship showing up, so maybe they should ring that up???

They do. It's the 501st. Ahsoka issues all the orders--she's three years older than Kanan, and Cal looked even younger so I'll say he's five years younger than her--and the first thing she tells them is to get the CMO and do a level five atomic brainscan, because even if they aren't active, and nobody on the bad guy side really knows how to activate them, the chips are there and as the Tup incident showed, they can malfunction as a result of a head injury.

Which leads to a whole uncomfortable Conversation about brain chips.

Ahsoka has them route to rendezvous and explains the whole Thing with the time travel and getting bankrolled by Dooku and technically being terrorists but they're targeting criminal empires and slavers so it's fine.

I think Kanan and his legion show up about two and a half years after the 501st, and Cal about six months after that?

Enough time that she's older by an even bigger margin than before, and already married, and has had time to set up this absurd military game she's playing.

There's a tangent where she just complains about how Dooku keeps interfering with her personal life because she told him she was part of the lineage and it backfired because he made her have a big wedding instead of just the small Mando thing she and Rex were thinking of-- "Wait, you're MARRIED?" "I mean... I haven't been a Jedi since I was seventeen. Not exactly breaking the code if I'm not beholden to it in the first place, you know?"

"Yes, Dooku. I know. I know. But still. Dooku's gonna be all misanthropic and jaded anyways, let’s just direct that somewhere useful." The Dooku thing is the what has Kanan and Cal both hanging back on trusting her because really? Really, bitch?

They admittedly don't have the advantage of being his great-great grandpadawan for negotiating with him.

(Cal and Caleb were both just running around trying to survive as scrappers and whatnot for years after O66, and I recognize they were teenagers and even doing that much was phenomenally difficult, but I find it really funny that while they were just trying to keep their heads down and eke out a living, Ahsoka took like one year to be depressed and then went to Bail like "knock knock motherfucker, I know you're fighting the Sith, gimme something to do.")

Anyway this is mostly an excuse for the Republic and various others to freak out about the fact that General Fulcrum has acquired two more Venators and they still can't figure out where from. Kuat is denying up and down that they had anything to do with it, but...

"Those serial numbers don't exist. They won't exist for another... decade."

Also there are a lot of rumors going around, including that they're an offshoot of the Children of the Watch because everyone refuses to show their faces. The actual reason for that is because they all have Jango Fett's face, but they can't just say that so

Also I'm imagining that she bullies Dooku into at least trying to reconnect with Qui-Gon and Rael (the Komari situation is a bit more complicated), but what that turns into is:

1. Ahsoka has to go save Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan when they get captured by pirates, and she can't go as General Fulcrum so she has to go as Freelancer Mercenary Torrent (different mask/helmet)

2. She then has to reintroduce herself as Sokari, Dooku's adopted granddaughter and heir apparent, and they're side-eyeing her because she's definitely the same girl from the pirate ship but? Sure, okay?

3. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are then bullied into attending A Fancy Party in Fancy Clothes (which they hate) and Ahsoka drags Obi-Wan out and onto the roof halfway through because he's not enjoying himself and she feels bad.

4. All the masked security guards are just clones. Dooku lets that happen because, hey, he knows they're good, and they're all loyal to Ahsoka.

5. Rex joins them but doesn't take his helmet off, is introduced as Sokari's Husband, which is hilarious for both of the time-travelers because Obi-Wan's face does a lot of weird things as he tries to parse his new friend being married. He's pretty sure she's not that much older than him (he's underestimating, she's like eight years older than him), and also Dooku used to be a Jedi, and Ahsoka had shown some Force-Sensitivity and combat skills as Torrent, so... he'd been mentally processing her as equivalent to a padawan, and her being married is suddenly reminding him that Actually No.

[samwpmarleau]

these aren’t revolutionary observations or anything, but can i just say i really, really love the way the conversation in 1x08 comes about and unfolds? in part because of ship reasons obvs, but primarily because of the glimpse it gives us into jamie and all the introspection he did. we can see from his hair-trigger, antagonistic, and hurt mention of ted that jamie, as anyone would, had thought about how he literally got to where he is — ted had the power to transfer him and, from jamie’s perspective, had motive to do so as well (he needed jamie to help unite the team, but jamie himself didn’t matter — yet he also thinks about how he figuratively got there.

he’s back in manchester, without friends, without teammates who care, without playing time, without all the prestige he enjoyed in richmond ... and, most critically, without keeley.

the fact that he went to her house at all devoid of any ulterior motive whatsoever says that all on its own, but i think his wording is really interesting, too. most of it is basic — e.g., “you saw an even greater jamie inside an already great jamie.” yet one part is so specific: “you also taught me to try to not get in my own way so much.” from the line delivery and his expressions, the clear implication is that it’s a subject they’ve spoken about, probably argued about, many times before. except this time, jamie is actually approaching it from the right side, keeley’s side, the side he should have from the very beginning.

jamie had been thrust into a bleak, dark nightmare of a situation, one that would’ve been worse than ever because a) his dad no doubt would have insulted him and gotten pissed at him for being dropped from a mid-table team as richmond and b) all those months away would’ve put him out of practice with dealing with everything so it would’ve affected him that much more.

yet instead of closing himself off or reverting to the man he used to be either out of despair or because it’s a nice protective shell, jamie sat himself down and took a good look inward. we of course see this manifest in the finale with him passing the ball instead of taking the shot himself, but i think it shows up arguably even more beautifully in the conversation he has with keeley.

and while it came as a huge surprise for her — speaking with jamieperiod but mostly because of his thank-you — it must’ve been so gratifying for her to hear as well. while jokes were surely made to keeley throughout their relationship about her boyfriend being an airhead, unappreciative, etc., she always saw that that there was so much more to him. yeah, he wasn’t going to invent a vaccine for cancer, yeah he was rough around the edges, yeah he sometimes was shortishgted and not the most considerate.

but he had the ability to be more, if only he would, well, get out of his own way.

so there he was dropping by her house with nothing but innocent, respectful intentions showing her that she wasn’t wrong to believe the things she did about him. that he did and does have the capacity to identify his shortcomings, to humble himself, to recognize where he went wrong, and to thank her for having unwavering faith in him.

now, are those things that shouldn’t be something to write home about? sure. but not in jamie’s case. because of his background and the defense mechanisms he had to create in order to survive, he’s been so far behind the eight ball when it comes to emotional maturity and the willingness to put himself out there.

so his trying and succeeding — without any ongoing help and while being in a situation that by all rights should’ve led to him shoving all that down instead! — is something to write home about, and keeley rightfully recognized and appreciated all of it. she gave credit where credit was due, just like she always did, she validated him (”he responds well to positive reinforcement” indeed), she assured him that yes, his instincts about doing the right thing aren’t misguided.

there are the big moments we get that showcase the start of jamie’s growth — the curse fire, jamie passing, season 2, and so on — but the scene in 1x08 i think gets overlooked a lot, which is a damn shame.

[the-last-kenobi]

Since the request is still open: #3 for part 3, give us an ending to the Sith!AU?

All right! The end of the QuiObi trilogy. Thank you for this little series, you practically invented it. And thanks for being patient!

Part One • Part Two

From this various prompts list.

_

“Why didn’t you run when I told you to?”

Qui-Gon was dreaming hazily of long-ago-days and impossible futures, of a smiling red-haired boy holding out his hand to be helped to his feet after an exhilarating spar, of a man with that same red hair sitting beside him on a lakeside dock, his head resting on Qui-Gon’s shoulder.

He was woken abruptly by two gloved hands, one grabbing his arm in a bruising grip and the other clamping over his mouth before he could even open his eyes.

Qui-Gon gasped and jolted, eyes flying open, and in the semi-darkness he saw Obi-Wan leaning over him, his Sithly golden eyes gleaming unnaturally in the shadows.

“Shhhh,” Obi-Wan said, so very softly, his hand still tight over the Jedi’s lips.

Qui-Gon waited. He forced himself to keep still, waiting for whatever was coming next, doubting but also trusting.

“Shh,” Obi-Wan said again, and this time Qui-Gon gave a minute nod to show he understood.

Slowly the Sith removed his hand, only to haul the Jedi to his feet, his hands on his shoulders, keeping his eyes fixed on Qui-Gon’s. There was something strange in his eyes, something cold and urgent. Qui-Gon held his tongue as he was forcibly escorted to the door — the door he had not crossed the threshold of since he had first been brought here, nearly a year ago by his estimations.

As Darth Renovan pushed him harshly into the corridor, Qui-Gon began to struggle, but still held his silence.

Obi-Wan’s face split in a snarl. With a harsh gesture, he broke the force inhibiting cuffs around Qui-Gon’s wrists, the ones he had so rarely gone without all this time. The Sith raised a finger to his lips as if the Jedi’s hesitating feet were causing a thunderous noise and gestured sharply down the hallway to where a guard droid stood waiting, electric pike in hand. “Go,” Obi-Wan hissed, and his voice was so low as to be little more than thought.

“What?” Qui-Gon hissed back, much less quietly.

The hand gripping his shoulder tightened, and a burst of agony shot through his body like electricity, pinning him to the spot. When his vision returned, he blinked dazedly at his former apprentice, who glowered at him, face set. “Go,” he said again. “Run, Jedi, and don’t come back.”

“But why?” Qui-Gon breathed, suspicion coiling in his gut. He would not be used as a tool, would not be used to distract his fellow Jedi—

“Run, Qui-Gon, and if I see you again—” Obi-Wan said. He did not need to finish his sentence. The bloodless lips, the yellow eyes, the cheeks flushed with rage, the iron posture; these all spoke much more clearly than words might have done.

And, daring to hope that he might escape whatever plan was revolving around him, Qui-Gon turned and stalked up the hall towards the droid.

When he glanced back, the Sith had gone.

-

The droid guided him through winding passages, narrow halls, and cramped stairwells, leading ever downwards.

It took Qui-Gon eight minutes to realize he was being led through back ways — maintenance passages and unused corridors.

It took another three for him to realize that this unintuitive route was not to confuse him, but to make it harder for someone else to follow them.

Qui-Gon took a slow breath and waited. He measured his steps carefully, treading in the wake of the wary droid guard, and bided his time until they reached a fork in the halls.

Now.

Qui-Gon grabbed the droid by its head as it turned to look each way and threw it into a wall, pinning it there with the Force. Before it could cause a commotion, Qui-Gon dove in, delving into the Force in a way he had not been permitted for so long. His senses dissolved, taking in every detail of the droid’s mechanics, its inner workings. With the flick of his wrist he disabled its voice and removed its weapon, and with another he accessed its memory drive. He activated it on the droid’s holo projector, which was built into its palm.

A moment later he had what he needed.

“Darth Renovan,” said a hooded figure, looming ominously. “Prepare for my arrival.”

A long pause.

“You have disappointed me,” the Lord of the Sith added softly.

And that was all.

Qui-Gon froze, realizations washing over him, crashing like waves.

The Sith Master was coming. He was deeply unhappy with his Apprentice. And Obi-Wan’s reaction had been to send Qui-Gon away, away from him, forever.

Because the Sith Master would hurt Qui-Gon.

And why else if not because to do so would hurt Obi-Wan?

…Because Obi-Wan cared.

Qui-Gon ran back the way he had come.

-

Darth Renovan stood on the landing platform, gazing beyond the setting sun, watching the dark spot on the horizon grow larger and larger, nearer and nearer.

The amber light lay over him in shafts, setting fire to his neatly brushed hair and the embellishments in his sweeping black robes.

He knew he looked pristine.

He also knew he had only hours, at most, to live — hours spent in torture in agony.

Punishment for derailing the plan to enslave the Clones to his will.

Punishment for choosing sentient freedom over his Master’s will.

It was an exquisitely painful reminder of defying another Master, on Melida/Daan, saving other sentient beings from the tyranny of bloodthirsty others.

Obi-Wan would not define himself as a hero.

For so long he had cared only for his own power, for proving Qui-Gon Jinn wrong, for making himself into something beyond what the Jedi had ever believed he could be.

He had succeeded. He was wise beyond the years of Elders, with powers to rival the greatest Masters of the Order, clever and cunning and blindingly charming, able to bend people to his will by various means.

He was a villain. A corrupt politician, a predator, a mastermind, a servant to a Dark Lord.

He was going to die for the soul of compassion he had held on to beneath the surface.

For his disgust for slavery.

For his rage against being controlled.

For his love for the man he had held prisoner for months on end, at first for the triumph of seeing him laid low, and then for the pleasure of seeing him resigned…

…to keep him safe from the war, to keep him close, to make sure he still lived and breathed.

Obi-Wan would now die to ensure it.

He wanted to laugh at himself.

Brought low, once again, by his love for Qui-Gon Jinn, his need to please him, make him happy and safe and proud.

He truly had never grown beyond the rejected Padawan he had been all those years before.

Black gloved hands tightened slightly, and he folded his arms across his chest as the sleek ship descended to a smooth halt on the platform. Steam issued from the pipes, and with a soft hiss the door fell open, the ramp descended, and a black figure emerged like the hand of Death itself.

Darth Renovan, once Jedi Kenobi, lifted his chin and met the gaze of Sidious squarely.

Sidious began to laugh.

-

Obi-Wan was screaming.

A terrible, high-pitched, out-of-control sound that grated against Qui-Gon’s soul like fingernails on chalkboard.

If he had held any lingering doubts about Obi-Wan’s intentions in sending him away, they vanished now, as Qui-Gon raced towards the sound of the screaming.

As he drew nearer, he could discern the sound of electricity, and beneath that, the sound of jagged, cruel laughter.

Anger burned within him.

Obi-Wan continued to scream.

-

Obi-Wan had been taught many times to wish for death.

At this moment, all he could hope was that his death would be swift enough to save his mind and long enough to ensure that his Jedi escaped.

He was engulfed by blue lightning, real enough to make his throat tear with the force of his uncontrollable screams but not quite real enough to kill him as real lightning would in this amount.

Qui-Gon, he thought dimly. You bastard, you had better appreciate this.

And then fire exploded across his vision, and the pain ceased.

Obi-Wan curled on his side, twitching and shaking, blue light still cracking along his limbs, watching in disbelief as the platform between himself and Sidious exploded into flames, and first one, then two, then over a dozen of his own guard droids leapt from overhead, crossing the flames to descend upon the Sith Master.

A callused hand clamped over his lips, muffling his cry of shock and fear, and he was dragged backwards across the platform, away from the fire, into the shadows of the hangar bay. Obi-Wan struggled.

Hands took hold of him and hauled him to his feet, and when he could not stand, strong arms pulled him close and held him upright. Obi-Wan struggled weakly, his vision spinning nauseatingly.

The hand was still tight over his lips, and he cried out against them.

Someone sighed softly, and the hand shifted from his mouth to the side of his face, and his vision suddenly seemed to resolve itself.

Obi-Wan stared into the eyes of Qui-Gon Jinn.

His limbs betrayed him, still shaking with pain, and his vision flickered, giving the whole scene and even greater sense of unreality.

Obi-Wan’s lips parted.

“Why didn’t you run when I told you to, you fucking idiot?” he gasped.

Qui-Gon laughed and held him closer, glancing over his shoulder at the battle going on behind them.

“Run with me,” he said.

Obi-Wan stared. Golden eyes flickered dimly. “What?”

“Run with me,” Qui-Gon said again. “Run with me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, I’ll run forever if I have to, if it’s with you. Otherwise I’ll stay, like a stubborn idiot, and fight with you. Whatever you choose.”

Obi-Wan was a mess, his burnished hair and beard ruffled after torture and a kidnapping that had become a rescue, and he stared at his stupid Jedi with pure amazement.

And then he began to smile. “All right,” he said, and his trembling arms came up to wind around Qui-Gon’s neck, slipping underneath the hand the Jedi was still resting on the Sith’s pale face.

“All right?” Qui-Gon asked, sounding surprised. “You will? With me?”

“With you,” agreed Obi-Wan. “And no one else. It seems you’re destined to pull my life apart, Qui-Gon.”

“Well,” Qui-Gon pointed out very reasonably, “I wouldn’t have to do that if we would just stick together like we’re meant to.”

And so they ran.

[svltburn]

Snow Globe

Summary: For the vague idea 'ice skating girlfriends' from @y0itsbri. Thank you for the prompt, I needed it.

Ship: Karen Jackson/Mandy Milkovich

Word Count: 951

Read on AO3

“Mandy, come on! Finish whatever you’re working on and let’s go.”

Mandy glanced up over the top of her laptop, mildly amused. “The rink isn’t gonna melt away if we don’t get there the second they start renting out skates.” She turned her attention back towards the screen, knowing that there was no way she was going to get away with that for very long. She had made a promise for today, she knew she would be held to it.

Sure enough, there was a huff and then a hand reaching over to close the laptop on the table, giving her just enough time to drop her hands into her lap before her chair was being pulled away from the dining room table and she was gifted with a lap full of girlfriend.

“Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve been ice skating, Mandy?” Karen asked. She rested her arms against Mandy’s shoulders and pushed both hands up into her hair. “It’s hot as balls in Arizona, I feel like I’ve barely even seen snow since I moved, like what, eight years ago? You said we could go ice skating today, we’re going ice skating.”

Mandy wrapped her arms around Karen’s waist, glancing up at her through her lashes. She huffed a breath, trying to sound annoyed, but ultimately failing. Something she’d discovered in the two years since they reconnected - or, more accurately, connected for the first time - was that Karen was excellent at getting what she wanted.

“Okay, okay. Go get dressed so I can finish this up. I’ll be in in a few minutes.” And since moving in together four months ago, Mandy had also discovered that trying to get dressed in the same room at the same time was kind of a nightmare. They were both prone to getting distracted. Plus, sending Karen to get dressed first gave Mandy time to open her laptop up again so she could finish her holiday shopping for Karen. It was about to be their first Christmas as a couple, she wanted to make it special.

“Can you come help me for a minute?” Karen’s voice drifted down the hall. Mandy doubted whatever Karen wanted help with would be conducive to them getting out the door any time in the next hour, but she pushed away from the table and padded towards their bedroom anyway.

“What do you need?” Mandy asked, more than a little surprised to see that Karen is dressed and sitting in front of their vanity mirror.

Karen turns on her seat, holding an arm out until Mandy comes close enough that she can hook her fingers in the waistband of her pants and tug her the rest of the way. She spun again though, taking Mandy’s arm and wrapping it around her neck as she turned back to the mirror. For a moment, she just smiled at their reflections before she was turning her gaze up towards Mandy again. “Braid my hair?”

“What?”

“Braid my hair. You know those braids you wore down the side of your hair for a while? Do that?”

Mandy’s reflection blinked in confusion when Karen returned her attention to the mirror. Her hand found its way into Karen’s hair, fingers brushing gently over the scar underneath it. After a moment, Mandy straightened up and let her arm drop from around Karen’s neck. “Okay, but you’re not allowed to be mad at me if we’re late to our ice skating date.”

Karen grinned as she reached back, tugging Mandy down and stretching her neck up to meet her with a kiss. “No promises.”

----

“Let me tie your skates for you.”

“I can tie my own laces, Karen.”

“But I,” Despite any admittedly weak protests, Karen knelt down in front of Mandy. And despite what she said her intentions were, she rested her hand on Mandy’s ankle, just above where the skate ended. Started running her fingers up over Mandy’s calf, “would do it so much better. So you should let me.”

Karen was excellent at getting what she wanted. Mandy let her lace up both of her skates, only shivering a little when Karen leaned in to kiss the inside of her knee before she stood. What? It was cold out, of course she shivered…

Apparently, Karen was also excellent at ice skating. Mandy had never actually been ice skating before. She was unsteady and kept close to the wall, mostly leaning back against it and watching Karen skate circles around the few other people that remained at the rink over lunch hour. She was graceful and beautiful and looked like she was putting no effort at all into gliding around balanced on one skate, her other leg lifted high in the air behind her.

Mandy caught her the next time she skated close enough to her safe position near the wall. Karen was easy, let herself be caught and gathered up by her girlfriend. “I think the point of ice skating together was to ice skate together, you know?” Karen teased.

“Yeah, well, I suck at ice skating.” Mandy answered. With her arms around her waist, Karen was successfully trapped against her, and Mandy took the opportunity to just look at her. Not that she didn’t see her everyday, but sometimes, she was still surprised by how stunning Karen was, especially with the sun and the snow sparkling against her blonde hair in the early afternoon. Especially when Mandy had just been watching her doing something she clearly loved for the first time in years. “You’re beautiful.”

Karen beamed. “Yeah, you do have a pretty hot girlfriend, don’t you?” She teased, leaning up for a kiss. “Then again, so do I.”

[mandolovian]

behind the console

pairing: din djarin/the mandalorian x reader

warnings: none! lots of fluff! (sleep what’s sleep)

word count: 1.7k

A month or so after you had joined the Mandalorian on the Razor Crest, the baby had taken a very strong liking to your dangling earring. Just the left one - the one he would chew idly on whenever you carried him in your arms. The Mandalorian had long since stopped trying to get him to stop, and instead watched with a curiously tilted helmet as the baby slowly fell asleep, the earring firmly held between his teeth.

It only took a few days for the baby to slowly slip the earring out of your piercing, and his big plaintive eyes made it extraordinarily difficult to ask for it back (to which the Mandalorian chastised you later - ‘You need to hold your ground! Who knows how many earrings you’ll lose like this.’)

The baby’s little ball was long forgotten, and had slipped down the console to rest against the glass of the cockpit windshield. You leaned over the controls to pick it up, intent on screwing it back onto the gear shift, but the Mandalorian’s gloved hand wrapped around your wrist, holding you back.

(and you try your best to control your breathing, to lower your heart rate, but there was no way he missed the way your pulse rose at the touch.)

‘It’s okay,’ he murmured as he shifted his gaze back at the stars. You held your arm against your chest, rubbing a little absentmindedly at your wrist. Behind you, the baby snuffled a little in his sleep. 

‘You don’t want it back on the gear shift?’ you asked, and didn’t receive a response in return. 

Taking that as an affirmative, you let the small ball roll against the console, and left the cockpit for the night. 

---

You were surprised that it lasted as long as it did. 

An unfortunate combination of a Twi’lek with impressive combat skills and Mando’s flamethrower had resulted in his fleece cape being burned beyond repair. With the ship safely in hyperspace and stoically on autopilot, Mando sat on a crate on the hull to sort through the damage of the day. 

It was rare to see him without much of his armour. Hunched over, the fabric of his simple shirt stretched over shoulder blades, and his sleeves were dutifully folded up to his elbows. A sigh escaped the reaches of his helmet, quietened by the static, and he turned the scraps of the cape over in his hands.

‘Nothing you can do?’ you asked as you climbed down the ladder, and he just sighed again in response. He inclined his helmet in invitation, and you took the cape from his hands. There truly wasn’t much left - the remaining salvageable fabric was scarcely bigger than the length of your forearm, and the edges had somehow been melted down. You frowned at the fabric, and Mando let out a dry laugh at your pout.

‘A lot of my weapons were damaged,’ he said. He tipped his helmet side to side, stretching the cords of his neck with a soft groan. ‘We might have to stop for supplies sooner than I thought. Could you put in the coordinates for Dantooine?’

You rested your hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently. Mando hummed, and you suppressed the urge to press your fingers harder against the muscles, just to hear him groan again. 

‘Of course,’ you whispered.

Later, when Mando joined you in the cockpit, you kept your eyes firmly on your datapad. You definitely didn’t see him running his fingers over the fabric of his cape, nearly folded into a small square, tied with scrap of ribbon, pressed between the edge of the console and the windshield. 

---

‘Have you ever been here before?’ Din asked, his boots making soft crunching noises against the sand. 

‘Never,’ you said. ‘Well, definitely never here, on this planet. But I’ve also never seen water like this before.’

The beach was lined with activity - little marquees of pop-up markets, and vendors selling the most eclectic of goods. Here, a young girl sat at a wicker table under a blue tarp, painstakingly applying paint to the face of a toddler squealing with glee. In another stall, several hangers displayed scarves in a dizzying array of colours, and a portly woman, wearing several scarves herself, was arguing passionately with a customer. 

You shifted the baby against your hip, and he cooed at the sites of the sea. ‘See there, adi’ika?’ you said, pointing towards the glittering reflection of the horizon. ‘Water!’

The baby looked at your hand, and waved his own in an imitation of your pointing. He giggled, tapped your cheek with his waving hand, and babbled against your shoulder.

You laughed a little. ‘That isn’t how you say water,’ you teased gently, pinching his cheek, ‘but we’ll get there eventually.’

It was peaceful. A momentary reprieve from the nomadic lifestyle of planet hopping, and you allowed yourself to idly daydream of a small beachside cottage and quietly furnished it in your mind - a front garden with rows upon rows of vegetables. A sunroom with a loth-cat lounging lazily on a wicker couch. A bed, half-covered in plump pillows and patchwork blankets. 

A framed crayon drawing in the front doorway. Maybe a pair of boots outside the front door. 

Din lowered himself to sit cross-legged next to you on the sand, leaning back on his hands behind him. He tutted at the baby, who was puttering around happily in the shallows, squealing in delight at every small wave. 

‘It’ll be difficult to get him back on the ship,’ Din said quietly. He nudged your shoulder with his, urging you to lean back, and you do just that, resting your bodyweight a little against his. 

‘He’ll tire himself out,’ you replied gently.

It was an odd appearance, and you knew that. You, dressed in one of Din’s old tunics, leaning against a fully-armoured Mandalorian on a lively beach, watching a little green baby wrinkle his nose at accidentally swallowing salt water, and you were loathe to think of what the beachgoers thought of the combination. 

‘I found some sea glass,’ said Din, and he held out his hand for you. Three small pebbles sat on his palm, light blue and translucent, faded by the wind and the sea. The light of the suns flickered off the surface of the glass, and they knocked against each other with soft clinks. 

He found some sea glass. You couldn’t really explain why your eyes became watery.

Din kept his visor trained on the baby, who was now sitting in the water. ‘We can put them behind the console,’ he continued, not noticing your sniffles. ‘I think we still have space there.’

---

Ground protocol had been activated, and good thing too, because the dust storm on Er’Kit was all but tipping the Crest over. The hollow low whistling of the wind was not the most comforting and, given that the power had somehow been knocked out, you only had the dim emergency runner lights to keep you company. 

The side ramp of the Crest opened slowly - manually, you gathered, given the creaky clunks of the hydraulics. You sat in the pilot's seat and stared ahead into the sheets of dust battering the windshield, counting the heavy footfalls in the hull. Eight to get from the doorway to the ladder, and four up the ladder. 

He sounded tired. 

The smooth beskar helmet pressed against the top of your head, and you heard the soft rustles of gloves being removed before Din wrapped his arms around your chest. You leaned down and pressed a kiss against his forearm.

‘Sand is stupid,’ Din mumbled, and you hummed in agreement. ‘Anyone who lives on Er’Kit is stupid. Whatever made the wires on the Crest so friable is stupid.’

You let Din grumble a little more, rubbing his forearm absentmindedly. 

‘As soon as we get enough credits, we’re buying a house.’

That brought attention sharply back into focus. You spun yourself in the chair out of Din’s grip, frowning at the visor. ‘A house?’ you said incredulously. 

Din took off his helmet with a soft grunt, frowning when a steady stream of sand fell out of it when he tipped it over. He had already removed the rest of his beskar, leaving behind a man in dusty blacks. He was so beautiful, you thought, admiring the lines adorning the corners of his eyes, and the way his hair had flattened against his scalp. You stood to face him, reaching up to brush your fingers through his hair, returning volume to it. Din shut his eyes at the action, and leaned forward to press his forehead to yours. 

‘A house,’ he said. ‘One with the garden that you want. And all the loth-cats you want. You don’t have to spend another day on a ship if you don’t want to, and especially not on a desert planet like this.’

He leaned back to look at you, and pressed a sandy kiss to the corner of your lip. ‘If anything, we’re running out of space for our trinkets.’

The walls of the cockpit were covered in paper artworks of shaky crayon handprints - some five-fingered, some three. Small beaded bracelets hung from almost every control on the console, and a little clay pot of dried flowers sat right in the middle of the console. 

To the right of the pilots seat, your earring hung off the unscrewed gear shift - the metal hook bent into a loop so it wouldn’t slip off. The baby held the other firmly in his little hand while he slept in his pod. 

‘We do need more space, don’t we,’ you said finally, and Din kissed you slowly in response. You could feel his smile against your lips, and you tugged gently at his curls. 

‘Nowhere with sand, though.’

‘Of course not.’