#it’s not a problem until i’m dead and still have a to-read stack four times my height

[bonemeadows]

some of the books i read in 2022

[strandnreyes]

tagged by @alrightbuckaroo @carlos-in-glasses @reyesstrand <3

a little more than usual because it’s a nice and happy part for a change

“Alright, let’s go try this chocolate thunder brownie.”

“Do you think Mateo will kill me if I get something else?” Carlos asks as he gets out.

TK shoots him a look from over the top of the car. “Oh, please don’t tell me you’re one of those people who likes pistachio.”

“I wasn’t going to get pistachio.”

“It’s butter pecan, isn’t it?” he asks like he’s personally offended. “Carlos, you have to understand that that’s worse.”

Carlos ignores him, scanning the packed tables for an open one. Nancy seems to notice the problem, too. “Should we grab one while you order?” she offers.

“Sure,” Carlos nods, listening to their orders and then following TK to the line. 

“Maple Walnut? Rum Raisin?” he reads off the menu posted next to the window. “C’mon, which one of these monstrosities is your favorite?”

“They can probably hear you, you know.” 

“I don’t think that sixteen year old behind the counter will care too much that I think Rum Raisin is a bad flavor.” 

“What if that’s the one I want?”

TK stares at him, dead serious, and says, “I’m not buying that for you.” 

Carlos raises a brow. “I didn’t know you were buying it for me at all.” TK doesn’t say anything to that, still studying the menu, and Carlos adds, “I was going to get mint chocolate chip. Is that an acceptable flavor for you?” 

“Toothpaste?” TK looks disgusted and Carlos shakes his head, laughing. 

“You’re impossible,” he mutters until he sees TK’s grin that shows he’s just joking.

They place their order and TK pays for all of them without thinking twice. He shoves the rest of his change in the tip jar and then he and Carlos shuffle over to the pick up window. 

“I’ll take a bite of yours and maybe Mateo will spare me,” Carlos decides after TK actually ordered Mateo’s recommended flavor.

TK looks affronted as he pulls out a stack of napkins from the dispenser. “Who said you’re getting a bite of mine?”

“Payment for the ride.” 

TK purses his lips, a gleam in his eyes as he leans closer to Carlos and murmurs, “I didn’t know we had that type of arrangement, Carlos.”

“Shut up,” Carlos rolls his eyes, hiding his smile at TK actually mentioning their deeper relationship for once. 

The bored teenager chooses that moment to come over with four cones and they take two each, carrying them to the group and bending their legs awkwardly to sit down at the sticky picnic table. TK’s knee brushes against Carlos’ and it remains there all through Mateo’s interrogation on why Carlos’ ice cream is green and Carlos steals TK’s cone, taking a lick to say he tried it. TK pretends to be disgruntled with how unsanitary it is, but they both know that he’s not exactly a stranger to Carlos’ tongue.

They were one of the last ones in line for the day which means the place starts clearing out while they finish their ice cream. Carlos licks off the bit that dripped down his thumb and then smiles while TK tries to find the bit of chocolate on the corner of his mouth. Carlos has mercy on him and takes the napkin, wiping it away. 

It’s dark by the time they’re bidding goodnight to Nancy and Mateo and TK takes advantage of that, leaning over the middle console of the car to kiss Carlos. Their tongues swirl together in a mix of both of the flavors. 

As Carlos is about to break some speeding laws to get them back to the house, TK points him in a different direction instead. He ends up parked at the end of a dead end road overlooking the bay where TK clambers over into the driver’s seat as soon as the car is off. His elbow hits the horn, his head bumps the ceiling, and his knee comes too close for comfort for Carlos to be up for anything that’s about to happen, but eventually he makes it to Carlos’ lap, laughing as Carlos scoots the chair back and they fall into a kiss.

tagging @three-drink-amy @heartstringsduet @liminalmemories21 @rmd-writes @taralaurel @welcometololaland @hoko-onchi-writes if you’d like!

[shirakumos-sandwich-shop]

🍂Zhongli x fem reader 🍂

🍂Single Dad, modern au. 🍂

Feat. Xiao as a kid cause why not.

(Idk why I wrote this, let me just die of embarrassment while I post it anyway.)

“Did you have a good day at school Xiao?” You asked the tiny four year old.

“No.” He said bluntly.

“Why not? Did something happen?” You crouched down to his level.

“Ajax was mean to me again.” The little one whimpered. “He said my hair was stupid.”

You made a mental note to tell the child’s father once he got home.

“That’s not nice of him.” You tousled the boy’s colorful locks. “Don’t listen to him, your hair is perfect.”

“You think so?” He gave you big round golden puppy eyes that made your heart melt.

“Yes of course I do!” He smiled at your words. His little arms held out asking for you to pick him up. You scooped him into your arms and carried him off to the car. He was tiny but still heavy.

“Y/n?” He questioned.

“Yes Xiao?” You smiled.

“Why doesn’t daddy pick me up from school?” He said sadly.

“Your daddy has to work.”

“Oh…” the little one sighed. “Why does daddy work so much?”

“He has a very important job.” You answered.

You got to the car and buckled him into the car seat.

“Ajax said my dad works for dead people! Is that true?”

“What?” It took you a second to realize he meant the funeral parlor. “No sweetie, he doesn’t work for dead people.” You didn’t want to traumatize him with the details at such a young age.

You got into the driver's seat and drove out of the school parking lot. He was quiet all the way home and just stared out the window. After a short drive you pulled into the driveway of the large house. You let Xiao out of his car seat and he held his arms out to you to be held. He certainly was a clingy child. You carried him through the quiet house to the living room and set him down.

“I’m gonna make you a snack, is there anything you want?” You asked him.

“Almond tofu!” He exclaimed.

“You can’t have that for every meal, Xiao.” You chided.

“Oh..” he thought hard. “Apples then… but can I have just a bite of almond tofu?” He persisted.

“Would you rather have some now or save it till dessert? Cause I know you’ll ask for it again after dinner.”

“Fine… I’ll wait.” He sighed.

You patted his head and went to fix him a plate of sliced apples, you added some crackers and juice for good measure and brought it to him. He nibbled on the snacks happily and then decided it was time to color.

Time went on like this till nightfall. Xiao drew a dragon that he wanted to give to his dad. He was really just the cutest. You checked the clock, Xiao’s father should be back soon. It was getting late and Xiao was getting peckish again so you decided to get dinner ready for them so they could eat when he came back from work. You went to the kitchen and started preparing a good meal of chicken, rice, and vegetables.

“What about almond tofu?” The persistent child asked.

“I’ll do that next.” You calmed him. You went ahead and got started on the dessert so it would be ready later. Cooking wasn’t really required in your job description but you did it once in a while. The boy’s father always seemed to be so tired when he got back.

You heard the door open and Xiao scrambled to run to the door.

“Daddy!” You heard his exclaim from the other room. “Look what y/n helped me draw today!”

“That’s amazing!” You heard him reply. “Let’s go put it on the fridge!”

Zhongli entered the kitchen with his son dragging him by the hand. He looked very tired but tried to be energetic for his excited child.

“Hello, y/n.” Zhongli said softly.

“Hello, I went ahead and made dinner for you.”

“Oh you didn’t have to..”

“It’s okay, I wanted to. There is enough for leftovers. Let me just finish Xiao’s favorite and I’ll be on my way.”

“Would you just like to stay for dinner?” He asked.

“Oh no I couldn’t impose.” You blushed nervously.

“You're not imposing, you made the dinner after all.” He smiled at you awkwardly. “We’d love to have you stay, right Xiao?”

The little one jumped up and down and ran to hug your leg.

“Please stay, y/n.” He gave you the irresistible puppy eyes again.

“Of course, I’ll stay. I can’t say no to you.” You ruffled his colorful hair.

Zhongli smiled to himself while he witnessed the interaction. No one had been able to get Xiao to open up like you had. He used to be such a quiet child until you came along. Maybe it was just his imagination but he felt that you were having a similar effect on him as well.

You felt a bit awkward at dinner, Zhongli had never invited you to stay before. Your crush on him was driving you crazy, thinking of all the reasons he could have asked you to stay. You were just Xiao’s nanny so you didn’t want to overstep any boundaries. Throughout dinner Zhongli grew more comfortable as the evening continued. It felt natural having the three of you there together. He wondered as he always did when he saw you, if you might be the answer he was looking for. Xiao had always been begging him for a mother. Zhongli wanted to make him happy, he tried to go on dates but no one seemed to fit. No one except you. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t considered asking you out, but every time he considered saying something it didn’t seem like the right time.

“Y/n! Come read bedtime story!” Xiao was already dragging you off by the hand to his room. Zhongli cleaned up the dishes and then followed you to the boy’s room. It would be a difficult task getting you out of Xiao’s clutches so you could go home and get some rest. He was also feeling the fatigue of the day and felt like he could fall asleep any second. He found the pair in Xiao’s room looking at books. The little boy already had a stack of all his favorites that he wanted to read with you. The little one looked up happily at his father when he entered the room.

“Xiao, I’m sure y/n needs to get home and rest. Why don’t you save the books for another time?” Zhongli told the boy.

Xiao’s eyes widened and nearly teared up. He looked at you for confirmation.

“Y/n? You don’t have to leave yet do you?” The little one whimpered. He gave you the adorable puppy eyes once again.

“I can read one book with you.” you looked up at Zhongli. “Is that okay? I’d hate to disappoint him, he’s so excited.” Zhongli smiled at you and wondered how he could possibly deserve someone like you.

“As long as your not too tired.” He agreed.

Xiao looked at his bed skeptically. It was not big enough for all three of you. He was accustomed to his father laying on his bed with him while being read to. With you there now there was simply not enough room. He came to a quick conclusion on how to fix the problem and grabbed onto both your hand and Zhongli’s and led you off to his father’s room. He climbed up on the big bed and waited expectantly. You blushed at the idea of even just sitting on his bed. Zhongli had similar thoughts and looked away awkwardly. Xiao had already opened the book and was sitting there expectantly. Neither of you wanted to disappoint him so you went and sat on either side of the child.

Xiao nestled into the crook of your arm and gave you the book to read. As you started reading you felt yourself get more comfortable and sleepy. You were so sleepy you became unaware of Zhongli’s arm behind your shoulders or the adoring glances he gave you.

Zhongli was drifting off as well, it had been a long day for him. And now with you leaning against him and quieting his mind with the story you were reading he felt at peace. Your head fell onto his shoulder and he sleepily pulled you closer. The scent of your hair was the last thing he remembered before drifting off to sleep. Xiao stood up on his tiny legs and patted your head and then Zhongli’s.

“Lumine said that only mommies and daddies sleep in the same bed..” his little brain tried to work out what this meant. He climbed off the bed and jumped on his own bed and fell asleep almost immediately.

Zhongli woke to find you cuddled against his chest with his arms around you. He gently tucked your now messy hair out of your face and your eyes fluttered open. You gasped when you saw who you were snuggled against and jerked back from his touch.

“I’m sorry.” You squeaked. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

“Y/n.”

“I’m sorry, I should go.” You scrambled out of bed and made for the door.

“Y/n wait!” He jumped up and hugged you from behind. You felt like your heart was going to burst out of your chest. “Y/n, I really like you.”

You twisted around in his arms to look at him.

“I like you too Zhongli.”

He smiled softly at your words and looked at your lips. You melted into his arms as he leaned down to kiss you. It was short, sweet, and perfect. He pulled away and gave you an unusually mischievous look. You squealed as he scooped you up and carried you back to the bed. He peppered you with kisses and held you close. You snuggled against him as he pulled the bed covers up over you.

“It’s Saturday, I don’t have work. Want to stay here for a while?”

You nodded at his request and pressed a kiss to his lips. At this moment Xiao came in search of the two of you. He climbed up on the bed and you gasped in surprise. He bounced his way into your arms and giggled. The little boy snuggled between you and Zhongli.

“Does this mean you’re my mommy now?” He asked seriously. You blushed furiously but Zhongli just looked at you happily.

“I hope so.” He told his son.

You blushed even harder and hid yourself in his chest. And so the three of you cuddled in bed until Xiao announced he wanted breakfast.

[tsukikento]

Empathetic Chapter 17

Pairing: Bakugou Katsuki x Reader

Summary: After your mom, the number 1 hero in America, gets offered a teaching position at U.A., you two pack up your things and head to Musutafu, Japan to start a new life. Pressure for you in America was at an all-time high, and now you’re in Japan, where almost no one knows you, or your family’s past.

This tale starts on your first day of class where your new teacher decides the best way for you to fit in is to fight against the strongest person in your class: Bakugou Katsuki.

Warnings/Genre: This piece will feature some angst and reference to an abusive parent, if you are ever worried about other tw’s feel free to send me an ask and I will let you know. There will also be fluff, slight angst, pining, and slowburn.

A/N: Had to write this chapter three times because somehow everything kept getting deleted!! I’m sorry for my inconsistent posting. Please leave comments, reblog, or send me asks if you like! They always keep me motived :)

(masterlist)

When you came back out for dinner, Bakugou was already sitting at the head of the table, eating away, and chatting away with Kirishima and Sero. To his left was an empty seat, but a plate filled with food.

I wonder if Bakugou made that or if someone nicer prepared it, you wonder as you and Ashido made your way to the table. If Bakugou made it, then damn. However, you wouldn’t be surprised if Kirishima made it or Kaminari who was on dish cleaning duty and needed to put away the leftovers. Regardless of who did it, they still sat you down next to Bakugou in your usual seat.

Don’t read into that, you told yourself as your sat down at the table. Instead, you focused on the delicious food in front of you that you immediately began to chow down on. You found yourself, much like Bakugou, simply eating away while Ashido, Kirishima, and Sero kept the conversation going. Both of you were much too hungry to stop and add your own commentary to the conversation.

Bakugou finished before you and chugged down his water before taking both yours and his glass to the kitchen to fill them back up. Gratefully, you mumbled out a “Thank you” before you continued to eat. Play it cool, he’s just being polite, you told yourself and Ashido proceeded to elbow you and wink.

You rolled your eyes at the pink girl and focused back on what was left on your plate.

Conversation flowed easily until Bakugou came back. The blond placed the cups onto the table before holding up his arms and stretching in a way that clearly showed his stomach. At this point, each of you were still in casual athletic clothes and his simple t-shirt lifted just enough to show his stomach.

It was an action you should be used the at this point. The blond often stretched without a care or used his quirk in ways that ruined clothing. And yet, you still found your face heating up and your eyes glued to the sight.

When he finally sat back down, he leaned in close to you. “I’m ready to go whenever,” He explained before leaning back into his chair and sipping on his water.

“Go where?” Sero, who was to Bakugou’s immediate right, questioned.

You looked to Bakugou, expecting him to reply. Not only were you hesitant to explain the situation and possibly misunderstand what Bakugou was thinking, but the blond typically made habit of answering anyways.

“The gym for yoga and cardio,” Bakugou explained, just like you expected. Luckily, it wasn’t any different than what you thought.

“Really?” Kirishima questioned, his eyes lighting up. “That sounds so manly!” He turned to look at Ashido, “Do you want to go do yoga and cardio too?”

“Um,” Ashido immediately turned to you, concerned that she and Kirishima would be intervening on your alone time with Bakugou.

Part of you wanted to welcome the company, ultimately nervous about having to hold up a conversation when neither you nor Bakugou were all too talkative. However, you spent hours alone with Bakugou each week and it wasn’t awkward then so why would it be different?

Bakugou also hates how couple-y they are so he may be more inclined to talk to me and spend time with me if they are there doing PDA, you thought before subtly nodding to Ashido.

“I’d love to go if Bakugou and Y/L/N don’t mind,” Ashido finally spoke after a few moments.

“I don’t care,” Bakugou measly replied.

“What about you, Sero?” Kirishima questioned, “Do you want to go too?”

“No way,” The black-haired boy replied, leaning back in his chair. “I had interning today and had to chase a villain down seven blocks, ugh!”

“Weren’t you using your tape though?” Ashido shot back curiously.

“So? It still drains me and my poor arms. I could not do yoga like this.” Sero flailed his arms around before letting them fall to his sides, effectively showing how absolutely dead they were. “I’ll just stay here with Kaminari and make him watch the new season of Galactic Guard again or whatever.”

“Your loss,” Kirishima jokes before chuckling lightly. “I’m going to go get changed, be down soon.”

Ashido followed him with the same explanation.

Awkwardly, you looked at Sero, expecting him to say something. You and Bakugou were already changed and had your waters with you, there was no reason for you to go upstairs. Unfortunately, due to the silence and the awkward atmosphere of a nervous you and an ever-rigid Bakugou, the black-haired boy immediately slid out of his seat, claiming to need water. However, you watched as he dropped his empty glass on the counter and simply talked to Kaminari.

You rolled your eyes and took a sip of your water, wishing there was more to do. Thinking on your feet, you stood up abruptly. “I’ll clear the dishes,” You said before stacking the plates and silverware. “Do you want your water anymore?”

Bakugou shook his head so you proceeded to grab his water, place it into your cup, and make your way to the kitchen slowly.

Kaminari and Sero greeted you happily and Kaminari immediately took your dishes.

Their rather boring conversation did not leave room for you to interject, so you simply made your way back to the dining table. Sighing, you grabbed your half-full water and reached for Bakugou’s as well. The blond watched you wordlessly.

You wondered if his lack of comment was a bad thing or if it showed comfortability and a willingness to let you touch his belongings.

As you debated the notion, you silently, almost like you were on autopilot, filled up the waters, and went back to the table. With nothing left to do, you sat back down into your seat and awaited the arrival of Kirishima and Ashido

“Thank you,” Bakugou said as you sat down with the two glasses of water.

“No problem” You replied. Despite this comment being typical for literally anyone to say, it still felt nice for him to say thank you. Maybe it was because he rarely used his manners.

Bakugou grabbed his water from the table and put it back into his bag. The two of you sat in a comfortable silence as you waited for Ashido and Kirishima. The only noise was the people talking in the kitchen and the small group watching television in the living room.

A few minutes passed by before the couple finally emerged from the elevator and greeted you both with wide smiles. Kirishima had on black basketball shorts with a red stripe down the side as well as a red hoodie. Ashido adorned a matching two-piece set of leggings and a conservative sports bra that was cheetah print. She also had on a black zip-up jacket that was currently wrapped around her waist.

You and Bakugou quickly got up from your seats, grabbed your belongings, and slowly made your way to the door. Ashido was by your side while Kirishima ran the kitchen to fill up his and Ashido’s waters. The pink girl moved from being attached to Kirishima’s side and was now attached to yours.

Giggling, she whispered in your ear, “Yet another double date!”

Sheepishly you rolled your eyes and dismissed the thought. “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.”

“What?” Ashido questioned, moving away from you to give you a confused look.

“What do you mean ‘what’?” You shot back.

“I mean,” She began, emphasizing her words, “What does that even mean?”

“What does what mean?” You replied, absolutely clueless to the confusion.

“She’s asking what ‘don’t count your chickens before they hatch’ means,” Bakugou butted in as he stood opposite you by the front door. “Personally, I think it’s rather obvious.”

“Oh, shut it, Bakugou!” Ashido exclaimed, giving the blond a dirty look.

Laughing, you explained, “It’s just an American saying.” You debated how exactly to explain it before once again continuing, “Just because you have, say, 10 chicken eggs, 2 could break before they hatch and 3 more could be simply eggs, no baby in them. So, they saying means that you shouldn’t expect something until it happens. You can’t expect to have 10 chickens just because you have 10 eggs.”

Ashido harrumphed, clearing having trouble understanding. “Sounds dumb.” Something you also expected her to say considering she was the one ‘counting her chickens before they hatched’.

You shrugged, “It’s hard to understand sayings from other countries if you didn’t grow up around them. I’m sure some common Japanese sayings don’t make sense to me.”

At this point, Kirishima joined back in and made quick work of putting on his tennis shoes.

“My mom used to always say ‘even monkeys fall out of trees’ when I made mistakes,” Ashido explained, testing you to see if you would understand a common Japanese phrase.

“Everyone makes mistakes,” You replied after a few seconds to think it over.

“Dang!” Ashido replied as the four of you made your way out of the dorm and to the gym.

“What about this one,” Bakugou interjected. “My dad would say this all the time, ‘the stake that sticks up gets hammered down.’”

Oh, this one is definitely more complicated.

You tried working through the saying out in your brain, sure it had someone to do with being seen in society. “Um,” You began, “The person who stands out will…” You paused, unsure how to finish. Sighing, you shrugged your shoulders, “I don’t know.”

“Ha Ha!” Ashido shouted in joy. “It means the person who stands out is often subject to criticism.”

You nodded your head in understanding as she explained.

“How were you so good at those?” Kirishima asked.

“Well, word association is taught in elementary schools,” You explained, reminiscing on the problems you solved in second grade. “For example, we would get something like “cow is to barn as man is to ‘blank’ and we would have to fill it in.”

Ashido and Kirishima proceeded to exclaim “house!” while Bakugou simply nodded, actions that represented each of them rather well.

“Nice!” You laughed, high-fiving the two who guessed.

You rounded the corner at this point, entering one of the school buildings with multiple classrooms. You followed the group as they made their way upstairs and weaved through hallways. Fairly naturally, the conversation died down as the couple of Ashido and Kirishima clung to each other and dawdled behind.

Aggravated, Bakugou led your group, clearly annoyed with how slow they were. Honestly, you were pretty sure Ashido planned this so you could have alone time with the blond.

Trying to utilize this opportunity, you kept stride with the blond. “Pretty annoying, huh?” You asked, gesturing to the couple and silently apologizing for throwing them under the bus and using them as a conversation starter.

“Aren’t they always?” Bakugou replied, looking to the couple before rolling his eyes and groaning.

“Sometimes they are cute,” You shrugged, flashing a smile to the blond. “At least they’re happy, you know?” You asked, attempting to reason with them.

Bakugou simply “tsked” in reply. “Doesn’t mean they aren’t making me nauseous.”

“Very true,” You responded, unable to stop yourself from chuckling loudly. “Especially when they talk in baby voices and make little smooching noises!” You altered your voice slightly to mimic Ashido’s baby voice that you hear her only use with Kirishima.

Bakugou cackled loudly at the comment, clearly amused by your impersonation. “Or when they go off to each lunch by themselves, cuddling under a tree, and then coming back like giddy teenagers,” He added.

“Oh, yeah!” You animatedly exclaimed, “How could I forget? Kirishima ends up staring out the window all of class!”

As your laughter died down, the two of you arrived at the double doors that led to the small gym. Luckily, no one else was inside due to how late it was. In fact, you four might be here past curfew. Despite this, you entered into the gym which had a few different weight machines and treadmills as well as a room to the left that was dim and specifically designed for yoga.

You knew this was the gym that Ashido frequently used late at night but weren’t familiar with the layout. Slowly, you put down your belongings, chugged down a few gulps of your water and made your way into the yoga room. The room had too large baskets on wheels that came up to about your waist. Inside, were blue and white yoga mats with the school’s logo on it. It was for student use and cleaned every week, a small perk for going to such a prestigious hero school. By the time you grabbed a mat, you heard the large metal and glass doors once again opening. Waiting for the couple, you rolled out your mat and brought your water to your side.

Although you did yoga frequently and could easily start your own routine, you figured the four of you would want to do a routine together. Once inside, Kirishima and Ashido quickly came into the yoga room and set up mats.

“I’ll hook up my phone to the projector so we can play a video,” Ashido explained as she plugged her phone into a wire that connected to the projector.

You watched the pink girl search up a yoga routine that was primarily focused on stretching the body pre-workout. The video was about half an hour-long, so you simply prepared yourself by sitting on your knees and waiting for the introduction to finish.

Yoga went by rather quickly, which each of you silently following the video. You were all in your own worlds, thinking about your own problems or simply letting your mind go black as you followed the routine. You could tell it was something your mind and body was craving after a long day of theorizing and sitting at the desk.

Once the routine finally ended, you let out a big breath and stretched your body one final time before grabbing your water bottle to drink from. “Ah, that was so good!” You sighed, completely satisfied.

Kirishima and Ashido hummed in agreement as they rolled up their mats.

“And now it’s time to put that stretching to good use,” Bakugou added, as he passed by you with his own rolled mat. He grabbed yours, which you just finished rolling, and went to put them away. Once done, he made his way back to you and held out his hand to help you up. “Shall we go run?” He asked while he effortlessly pulled you up.

“We shall,” You replied, a wide smile on your face.

Bakugou had never, not even when he was kicking your ass in training, helped your up or touched your hand. Immediately, you felt heat spreading up your face and your heart beating faster.

Ashido, who was putting her own yoga mat into her bag eyed you suspiciously. Subtly, you gave her a surprised look and shrugged your shoulders. Bakugou inevitably let go of your hand after you were standing up straight. He was surprisingly warm and you held quickly went cold without his touching.

In an attempt to play everything off cool, you simply followed behind him, grabbing your bag and moving to the treadmill next to his. You placed your belongings down, took one last gulp of water, and got onto your treadmill.

Bakugou, who had already started, was going at a slow pace and you decided to follow in line with him. The slow speed was an ideal way to warm up your body and prepare you for a faster pace.

You didn’t have to wait long, however, because Bakugou soon sped up his treadmill by two. He gave you’re a clear look and you didn’t even have to take out your earbuds to know he was subtly saying there is no way in hell you will run faster than me.

After a few more strides, you also increased your speed, clicking three times to be running one faster than him.

Almost immediately, Bakugou gave you another look and increased his speed. This game of tug-of-war continued for a few minutes, each of you slowly increasing your speed in order to one-up the other. It was fun when you started slow, and you even found yourself smiling when you were running at a speed just below a sprint. However, you were now sprinting at a breakneck pace and craving this game to stop.

You once again, and quite stubbornly, pressed the up arrow to increase your speed.

Bakugou attempted to groan under his breath, but he was going too fast to have control over his voice and you clearly heard the roan of indignation. The blond pressed his finger onto the up arrow and increased his speed just as he had done before. This time, however, he notably did not go past your speed.

The both of you were now running at the same speed, and although you were tempted to go up at least one more to irk Bakugou, you knew it was best not to. It was all down to endurance now.

You focused your attention on running, moving your arms to help your speed, and focusing on your breathing to make sure you were taking in big and consistent breaths.

“Woah, Bakugou and Y/N-chan!” Kirishima’s voice rang through your ears. Despite only being two treadmills over and a total of 12 feet, you could barely hear him. “So manly!” If you were looking at him, you would see him send a cheeky smile to Ashido before increasing his own speed.

However, you were all too involved in your own competition to worry about him.

You felt your legs burn and crave for a break. You felt so hot that you were sure you were steaming. In fact, you saw steam.

Steam? You looked to your left from where it was coming and saw steam emitting from Bakugou’s palms. You could have gasped in surprise if you weren’t so already short on breath. The next thing to smelled was an intense caramel. Or is it burning sugar? You questioned as you realized it was coming from the blond next to you.

It smells so sweet, you thought, clearly distracted. It made you think of caramel apples at amusement parks, chewing on the delectable treat as you walked around, surrounded by vibrant lights.

You inhaled deeply, trying to take it all in. Suddenly, you tripped. The floor fell out from under you, and you did not have enough speed or traction to keep up. Quickly, you clutched onto the railings and got back up to speed. The difficult action, which would surely leave bruises on your arms, lasted only a few seconds. Although Bakugou noticed, he didn’t say anything, so you simply kept up with running.

However, now your body ached even more. All you wanted to do was stop and you couldn’t drag your brain away from the idea. You felt your limbs begging to slow down and you could no longer deny the request. Reluctantly, you slowed down the treadmill with a sigh. Bakugou immediately noticed the action and shot his arms up with a small “woop!” in excitement.

At least seeing him so excited was worth it, you thought as you finally stopped the treadmill.

With exhaustion running through your veins, you got off the treadmill and made a beeline to your water. Your legs gave out and you sat against the wall, arching your back to give your lungs room. You chugged a few gulps of the cool beverage before you brought your hands above your head. It was the best way to get air into your lungs and control your breathing again.

Bakugou quickly joined you, copying your actions but while standing up.

“Good job, guys!” Ashido exclaimed, giving you both a thumbs up as she jogged at a much more reasonable pace.

You returned the gesture before grabbing your water again. Slumped up against the wall, you closed your eyes. Mentally, you made a note to not go out running tomorrow.

While you rested, you heard Ashido and Kirishima turn off their treadmills and join you against the wall. They chatted amongst themselves while Bakugou sat next to you.

Immediately, the caramel smell emitting off him wafted into your noise and filled your senses with euphoria and anxiety. He smelled so good, and yet you were certain he was much closer to you now. You could practically feel his body heat against your left arm.

The chatter from Ashido and Kirishima provided white noise, while Bakugou’s sweet aroma and warm body provided the ultimate guide to sleep. Your tired body craved it and you slowly felt yourself falling deeper and deeper.

Too tired to notice, you slowly leaned to the left, your shoulder eventually touching Bakugou’s. It was slight, a small brush of skin, but the blond immediately noticed the action, who stared at your sleeping body which found comfort in the purchase of his body.

You weren’t sure how much time passed when you were woken back up. In fact, you didn’t realize you fell asleep until you were waking up and opening your eyes to the sight of Bakugou’s own crimson orbs.

Quickly, you noticed the feeling of a warm arm against yours and moved abruptly away.

You could feel the heat spread from your neck to your cheeks and ears. If you weren’t in such shock, you would have also been certain that Bakugou’s own cheeks blushed pink. You shook your head in confusion, pushing away the ridiculous thoughts that came to mind.

“S-sorry!” You stuttered out, your voice barely emitting a sound.

“It’s fine,” Bakugou confidently laughed, brushing off the topic. “I just thought you would want to head back soon since you are falling asleep.”

“Uh, yeah,” You mumbled, “Thanks.” Looking away, you set your eyes on all your belongings and began picking them up. Sometimes it was difficult to look him in the eyes. Despite how warm and entrancing they were, they made you feel hot all over and spread nerves all throughout your body. You swallowed the lump in your throat as you stood all the way up and awaited Bakugou.

It only took a moment for the blond to stand upright after you. Gingerly smiling, you turned and made your way to the door.

“You guys coming?” Bakugou asked, walking backward so he could face the couple.

“Later,” Ashido mumbled, waving him away as she continued to smile at her boyfriend.

Bakugou hummed in acknowledgment and turned to you, a signal to open the door into the empty hallway.

“Today was fun,” You remarked, sparing a glance at the blond as the metal door eased closed. “Although I am sure tomorrow will be tough.” You paused, thinking over your schedule, “At least I only have class tomorrow.”

Although you were too nervous to look long, you saw the blond smile shyly and nod his head. “Yeah, I’m just glad I am done with the assignment due in English tomorrow.”

“Ah,” You replied, “How I wish I only had English assignments instead of extra Japanese assignments.”

“You’ll need to learn if you plan to stay here,” Bakugou remarked.

You scoffed, “I would argue that my Japanese was quite good already.” Rolling your eyes, you spared a teasing smile to him.

“What about when you are given a paper report and expected to read it all in minutes? Or when you have to write a report after a mission?” Bakugou shot back.

You groaned loudly, simply imagining how torturous a kanji-filled report that you would need to run through quickly. “Maybe you’ll be nice enough to write my reports for me?” You joked, opening your eyes and pouting in an attempt to look cute.

Bakugou blew air out his nose in a short laugh. “Bold of you to assume that I would even hire you to work at my agency.”

“Rude,” You replied, knowing full well that this was all a joke. “I think I would be a good hire, I could keep you calm during idiotic interviews or meetings too.” You looked into his eyes, “So, you want to start your own agency?”

“Need to if I’m going to be number one,” Bakugou curtly answered, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“Well,” You began, “If I’m still in the area, and you are in desperate need of a hire, I would be happy to help.”

“Thanks.”

A small laugh and a brief look had your insides twisting. You once again felt hot. However, you were now, luckily, in the cool air of the night. You calmed yourself as the two of you approached the dorms.

Bakugou took a few quick steps to get ahead of you to reach the door. He moved to the side so you could enter in first and you smiled and nodded politely.

However, when you entered the dorm, your mood quickly changed. Practically every student was in the living room, some standing, some sitting. Most notably, Aizawa-sensei stood in the dining room, leaned up against the large wooden table, and clearly lost in his thoughts. Multiple sets of eyes turned to look at you. Your anxieties pooled in your stomach as you looked at your teacher.

Is it that bad that we are past curfew?

You felt Bakugou’s body pressed close up against yours. You were too scared to move, so the blond had to squeeze in. He was about to jokingly push you out of the way until he noticed the concerning scene in front of him.

You had no time to think about how comforting the action was, especially as he placed your hands onto your shoulders. He squeezed the slightly, but you were unsure if it was an action that was supposed to make you feel better or to make your move. You stumbled forward, but the blond hardly moved.

Aizawa cleared his throat and moved from his perch at the table. Silently, he approached you. “Let’s talk outside,” He whispered so only Bakugou, and you could hear. “Just you,” He elaborated, looking into your eyes.

You gulped and let Bakugou push you away so Aizawa could reach the door and lead the way out. You only snapped back to reality when your shoulders were suddenly cold at the lost touch.

“Okay,” You mumbled, stumbling to follow after your teacher. Maybe he was going to lecture us separately? You wondered, clinging to the hope that this was a simple scolding and not a disastrous event.

It must be my mom, what else would it be?

“Is my mom okay?” You immediately questioned when the door Bakugou closed was finally shut.

“Yes,” He abruptly replied, “Let’s talk this way.” He led you around the building to where there were multiple benches.

“My siblings?”

“Sit,” He spoke and motioned at a long bench.

You sat quickly, hoping it would make the news come quicker as well.

“There is no easy way to say this,” He began, “Please just listen.” Aizawa rubbed his eyes, clearly drained. “There was a prison escape at the North-Western prison. A total of 117 inmates escaped and are being rounded up. Your father is one of them.”

[rjzimmerman]

I’m on a silent rampage about the US Supreme Court. That rampage is part of my overall disgust with lawyers and the games they play, disrupting logical decision-making at all levels of government, destroying personal relationships over otherwise resolvable disputes and generally fucking up most everything we do every day by framing everything within legal constructs and ignoring the safer and saner approach of “doing the right thing.”

If you read this and you’re a lawyer, your face is red and you’re pissed off now. OK. However, I get to be on this rampage, because I’m a lawyer. Retired, with a retired lawyer license from the State of Illinois, but still a lawyer. I lived in that world for 40 years, including three years of law school. I never felt as estranged and alienated from lawyers and the legal process until after I retired, when the opportunity arose to take a critical look at the profession and its perverse impact on our society and who we are. That has worsened over the past five plus years, coincident with the bullshit we’ve experienced in the process of selecting judges, including US Supreme Court justices, and watching their performance.

This linked article is important, and highlights the sneaky tactics that the current conservative Supreme Court justices use to impose their personal values upon all of us, and disguise it behind procedural quirks that few of us understand, such as “justiciability” and “standing” and “res judicata,” rather than deal with real issue in front of them. The US Supreme Court is perceived by most of us as the third branch of government, part of the checks and balances that we trust works. But when the justices play procedural games and defer an honest decision, the reputation and credibility of the US Supreme Court is adversely affected. While these “shadow docket” tactics and legal and defensible, they are wrong, just plain wrong.

Perhaps I shouldn’t “blame” the tactics on the conservative justices, because those with a progressive value-set have used the lawyer rules to avoid decisions and play games (but not as frequently or strategically). Maybe the problem is that these Supreme Court justices see themselves as lawyers first, protecting that profession and its rules, rather than as appointed members of the third branch of government, with a moral obligation to act that way rather than act as if they are in traffic court.

In addition to the recent “decision” to play ostrich on the Texas abortion law, here’s another game recently played. Recall that recently a group of students sued to challenge the rule imposed by Indiana University that students had to be vaccinated against COVID. One US Supreme Court justice, Justice Barrett (aka Hand Maiden) had the power, pursuant to internal rules of the US Supreme Court, to deny hearing the case. While I personally disagree with the students’ position, how can we tolerate one justice telling the students to fuck off? They were entitled to be heard, particularly on an important issue in today’s pandemic world, and the justices were obligated to hear the arguments, think and decide.

The New York Times has another article in today’s edition (September 3, 2021) about the flaws being exhibited by the US Supreme Court. It’s an Op-Ed authored by Jamelle Bouie entitled, “In the Dead of Night, the Supreme Court Proved It Has Too Much Power.” I encourage you to read that Op-Ed as well as this linked article about the “shadow docket.”

Couple of parting thoughts:

One, four of the nine justices received their law degrees from Harvard, and four from Yale. The only outlier is Hand Maiden, who received her law degree from the University of Notre Dame. Perhaps we ban from the federal judiciary any graduate of Harvard or Yale law schools. Those lawyers are trained primarily to be law clerks, working for other judges, then jumping generally to the top tier law firms, making millions of dollars representing Fortune 500 corporations and their jillionaire executives and owners. It’s a closed loop guaranteed to deny ordinary folk a decent life.

Two, the US Constitution does not require that judges, including US Supreme Court justices, be lawyers. How about prohibiting lawyers from being judges? I sort of suspect chaos, but “good chaos” (sort of like Representative John Lewis’ “good trouble”). I like that idea best. (Plus stacking the Supreme Court, imposing term limits of 15 years, and requiring that hearings be televised, streamed, and broadcast on radio or its internet equivalent. And get rid of those fucking robes. If they have to wear robes, they are not allowed to wear clothing beneath; that will speed up the process.)

[daddysfangirls-anime]

I’ll be back

Pairing: Levi x reader

warning: language, beating, sad, angst, attempt sexual assault.

summary: Levi loved someone who was too young to love and decided to break her would be better. He was wrong.

Prompt: People think the lion fell in love with the lamb but it was the other way around. The lamb fell in love with the lion…

Right before he broke her heart;  Before he destroyed her; Before he tore her into pieces…

“And so the lion fell in love with the lamb…”

The Lion and The Lamb

 Levi Ackerman

Originally posted by aurieackerman

The Lion.

He was cruel but not cruel enough to walk past the please of a girl in need. Sighing in annoyances he followed the young girls scream into an alley. He leaned against a wall for a moment watching a young girl struggle against three men.

She kicked, punched, and clawed as the men laughed and beat her down. She looked about 12 Years old maybe younger. She wore sandals and a white dress that obviously wasn’t white anymore.

The Lamb.

He tensed up when he saw one of the men begin to unbuckle his pants. This was where he drew the line.

“hey” he shouted pushing off the wall and walked towards them “that’s enough, leave her alone”

“Hey pal, mind your own business just keep walking.” One guy steps forward he was about 5′9 with blonde hair he had a tooth gap and smelled heavily of booze, all of them smelled heavily of booze they were all filthy.

He scoffed and looked as the blonde approached and put a hand on his shoulder, a filthy hand, bad idea. As quick as he could he kicked the guy in the back of his leg making him drop to his knees then took his arm and kneeing it snapping it in two. The blonde screeched and fell back.

“Holy shit. He snapped Gavin’s arm. He fucking snapped Gavin’s arm” another guy yelled trembling as he backed away. He seemed to be the youngest of the three and the most scared.

“Get Him” the other guy shouted he was fatter and bald. He was the one with his pants unbuckled he was holding the girl’s head in his hands.

“I’m out of here”

“Charlie. Charlie, Charlie get your ass back here, Charlie”

“Fuck you Riley” the bald guy, Riley, groaned and looked towards the guy about to kick his ass.

“you think you’re tough”

the so-called tough guy pulled out a pocket knife “ I think I’m annoyed and disgusted by you pigs” taking a large step he thrust his knife into Riley’s shoulder forcing him to cry out and step off the girl. Pulling back he slashed his face and Riley fell back.

“I should get you like the pig you are” he turned away from him and to the girl.

He took a knee beside her “are you okay?” she continued to just look forward and sob. Her right eye was swollen shut her face bloody and bruised. She couldn’t feel anything.

“where do you live?” she crooked out her address he then picked her up and took her home.

“what’s your name?” he asked as he bandaged her up

“ (y/n) (L/n)”.

The Lamb.

“Levi Ackerman”.

The Lion.

“where’s the rest of your family?” Levi asked.

“My- my brother is a soldier, scout regime, left last year”

he’s probably died Levi thought “where are your parents?” the room fell silent Levi didn’t think she heard him “where’s your -”

“dead. Everyone died. I’m alone”. Her brother took care of her all of her life. Her mother was a prostitute who abandons her children when it got too hard. Their aunt was generous to pick them up and take care of them the best she could. But two weeks ago she had fallen and never recovered. (y/n) was left to fend for herself, which she was doing poorly at.

Levi finished fixing up her face then cleaned up, he meant to clean up the mess he made but ended up cleaning the whole house. (y/n) watched from her seat on the couch. This man, Levi, was very sweet and kind or at least seemed that way.

“how old are you?” Levi asked swiping the floors

“12″ she answered. Levi was 21.

“This place is dirty”

“I’m sorry”

“it’s fine I’ll teach you. How long have you been alone?” Levi asked as he checked her cabin which were empty

“four days”.

“Alright, I’ll be back” that’s what he said as he left (y/n) though it meant a few minutes or hours, in reality, he meant a few days. When Levi returned he waltzed right in and headed to the kitchen with bags. (y/n) didn’t know this and grabbed a bat she tiptoed into the kitchen seeing the intruder she raised the bat alone her head and swung down the intruder caught it.

“listen hear you ungrateful little brat” immediately she dropped that bat and began to apologize. Levi ignored her and continued to put things away. Her cabin was now stocked with food and cleaning supplies.

“I’ll be back” once again he was gone this time he didn’t return for two weeks. When he came back it was late at night and you were trying to go to bed when she got up and saw Levi in the middle of her living room she broke into tears Levi once again ignore her tears.

“I’ve brought books,” he said placing a stack of books on the kitchen table.

“where did you go?” once again ignored Levi checked her cabin she was still stocked. Looking at her he noticed her clothes were a bit small.

“I’ll be back … with clothes”

“no wait please” (y/n) said but it’s too late and Levi’s out the door.

Once again she was alone. Levi comes and went as he please which hurt (y/n) a lot. Having no friends or family (y/n) was left alone. Ever since that incident with three men, she didn’t risk going outside. The only person she had to connect with is Levi and he never stayed. And it hurt (y/n) every time he left because she never knew when he’d be back but she kept hope in her little breaking heart that he would.

The relationship continued like this for a little under a year until Levi stopped coming for good. Unknowing to (y/n) Levi was forced to join the scout regiment with his two loyal friends, siblings. For a year (y/n) learned to fend and steal for herself and once again she was alone but more alone than before. The underground was not a place for a child alone yet here she is.

A year after leaving Levi returned. (y/n) came back home to find Levi on her couch reading a book that he brought her long ago.

“you’re back” (y/n) said as she got teary-eyed she immediately tried to hug him but he got up before she reached him “ I stocked your cabin“

“where have you been?” she asked sitting on her knees on the couch “The place is really clean. You’ve done well” he ignores her question. She didn’t need to know his business what he did was his problem. She needed to stay in her child-like world and stop asking the question before she got answers she didn’t like. But she was going to have to get an answer she wasn’t going to like

“14, right?”

“excuse me?”

“you’re 14, now, right? 14 years old”

“yeah,” he nods acknowledging her.

“where did you go?” (y/n) asked again wiping tears away Levi didn’t say anything he walked over to the coat rack pulling something from his jacket a letter. He placed it on the kitchen table. It was a letter that contains an answer she didn’t like to a question she never asked.

Levi left standing outside the house he stood there he heard her crying. Now she knew her brother wasn’t coming home. Levi walked away as he knew he formed another crack in her already breaking heart. Levi never came back after that.

A few months later wall Maria fell and (y/n), The Little Lamb, made a choice to follow Levi, The bold Lion. 5 years later they’d be introduced to each other again by Commander Erwin Smith (y/n) (L/n) as a new and top recruit and Levi Ackerman as the Captain of the top scout regime squad.

“Levi I’d like you to meet Cadet (L/n) the top recruit of her class and new recruit ago he found her a child in the street him an early young man. He caught uncertain feelings for her in her young supposedly teenage years and his early adult years. He tried to keep her safe and healthy and away from danger while keeping his distance with his uncertain feelings. And also breaking her heart hoping she’d never feel the same. But she did at a very young age, she did.

The Lamb fell in love with The Lion as he tried not to love her. But in the end, The Lion fell in love with The Lamb which he had broken.

[bitchassbucky]

.eps (explicit)

Word Count: 2k

Warning/s: dark!bucky x dark!reader, MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH, blood mention, gore and dismemberment/beheading, murder, toxic/abusive relationship dynamics, sedation/drugging/use of sedative, stockholm syndrome-ish, one very special character reveal

A/N: i told y'all there's more <3 the special character treat is for @sarge-barnes-sir mwah!

this is queued shdhhsh gonna fix the links in the mornin’

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE HEED THE WARNINGS ABOVE, IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ THIS VERSION, GO AND CHECK OUT THE NON-EXPLICIT VERSION.

follow the CTRL series:

i - .exe

ii - .avi

iii - .raw

iv - .png

v - .zip

CTRL playlist CTRL moodboard

Safeness, comfortability, warmth are all but a false sense of reality.

When a prey takes down its walls, the predator moves in. Camouflaged in familiar colors, in words that you’re used to hearing, in praises, in lies. Most predators use the mask of the night to move in darkness—unyielding and calculated. Come morning, there will be only one left alive, tainted with victory and bloodshed.

You and Bucky have been engaging in a dance for two—a battle of who’s willing to take the leap of faith and unleash hell upon the other.

Stifled smiles and pursed lips.

The air is filled with unsaid irritants, little things that ticked away like bombs.

There was no time for pleading, no time for mercy, no rest for the wicked.

Did you still love each other?

How far are you willing to go to keep up with his… complacency?

Bucky’s mundane life already taking a toll on you. The endless nightmares of him feeling you. The swirling vision of Bucky being with you every waking—and sleeping—moment: it grates your soul to shreds.

“We’ll be together forever, right?”

“Yes, darling.”

“What about the day after forever?”

“That too, honey.”

Where was the man you loved so deeply? The man that broke his morals just to be with you?

Was he under this hull of a Yes Man? A poor little thing that says ‘yes’ to everything like a puppy.

The man you held so dearly now slipping away, chipping his humanity, shedding the once-human.

“Would you marry me tomorrow if I asked you?”

“Of course, baby, why wouldn’t I?”

“Would you kill for me?”

“I’m meant to do the same for you.”

It’s irritating how Bucky gave up too quickly. Too fast, moving too fast. The gazelle let the lion tear its neck as it lay there, unmoving, letting the blood seep into its hide.

When you first met Bucky, it was your own fairytale unfolding before your eyes. Kismet, reality, forgiveness from above. He was soft and shy, passionate, lively.

Far from what you expected from a man his age—you blame Steve for forcing you into his narrative before. That all men are out to get you. They will hurt you. They will use you and leave you for good. But Bucky? Bucky came in like a knight. He saved you from the carcass of your past. He saved you from the sins that you prayed and knelt for.

Bucky taught you how to love.

Bucky taught you how to live for yourself.

Bucky taught you that being alone doesn’t mean you have to be lonely.

“It was an unspoken little thing, wasn’t it?”

“What thing, baby?”

“Our love.”

“Yes, honey, it was.”

He worships you.

He worships you like a fucking God and you hate it.

Suffocating, too suffocating. You dove straight for the water and now you’re drowning.

Do you still love each other? The question hangs in the air, heavy with its weight, light as a feather.

It’s all your fault. It’s all your fault. It’s all your fault. It’s all your fault.

So you stand there with a syringe half-filled with a horse sedative. It’s a concern how easy it is to waltz into a pet store and pick up a general anesthetic. You make a mental note to look at it later.

Bucky’s body slumps forward, his forehead meeting the edge of the table with a dull thud. If the overdose doesn’t kill him, the weeping crack in his head will.

Holy fuck, humans bleed a lot. And fast. Good thing you already have that clear tarp taped down. Even with the hush money stuffed down your throat, it would take a good nick to regrout the kitchen.

“What is that for, honey?”

“I’m painting the cabinets.”

“Okay, darling.”

So you let him bleed, surprised that the liquid is redder than what you thought it would be. A soft gurgling noise came from Bucky, the last of air escaping his dead body. You stood there, syringe in hand, as you thought how to dispose of a six-foot-tall man without arousing suspicion.

Not that he’ll be missed anyway: the local news and the internet already branded him as a psycho and you as a victim. You were both victims in this fairytale. They reported his case as “skipped the town like the sicko he is.” So, no—no one’s going to look for him.

The sun was high up in the sky and there was a dead body in your kitchen.

A butcher and a surgeon walks into a bar for a drink. “What do you do for a living?” Said the butcher, “I save lives! What about you?” The doctor answers. “I save animals from dying slowly. We’re basically the same. You’re just very clean.” You see, the butcher comes into the bar covered in blood, reeking of death. The surgeon, on the other hand, wears his white coat with pride even though he’s surrounded by death every passing second.

Today was the day you learned that you have the tools of a butcher and the precision of a surgeon. Unlike before.

You carefully take Bucky’s fingers off of his left hand, leaving a skin flap on the edge of the last knuckle for you to stitch close later. Four promises. Four goddamn promises and he broke all of them.

It was his fault that he’s dead. He made you do this.

Starting with his left shoulder, you jab the knife between the bone and the soft flesh of his armpit, bringing the blade downwards. The sickening smell of blood swirled along with the image of muscle and fat being sliced made you gag.

Does the brain know that it’s seeing something it shouldn’t?

A rational part of you wanted to look away but the time is ticking, it’ll be much harder once rigor mortis sets in an hour.

You swing the knife down, cracking the bone once, and then again, and again, and again until the shoulder bone splinters and dislocates itself from the rest of Bucky’s torso. You had to switch knives and blades and a fucking bone saw to get through the rest of his limbs, leaving only his chest, head, and stomach untouched. After taping up and packing the arms and the legs, you work on putting the rest of Bucky into a nondescript suitcase.

The only problem being his head getting into the way of things.

Wanting to preserve even a shred of his dignity, you left his face untouched. Well, save from the crack in his skull.

You begrudgingly take a hefty chef’s knife and start cutting through the jugular vein, only stopping when the blade hits the spinal cord by his nape. The serrated blade of the bone saw sits on your blood-soaked gloves, scrape-scrape-scraping until it snaps into two.

The human head weighs around 10 pounds, kinda like a bowling ball.

An opaque black garbage bag containing Bucky’s head looks nothing suspicious as you put it inside a backpack—into a firepit you go.

His limbs—arms and legs alike—are going deep into the ocean, forgotten and to be used as fish food.

The limbless torso will be finding its home in a deep hole in the middle of a densely wooded area, far from the city.

But you’re not quite sure what to do with the mason jar of teeth though; the clinking noises of it remind you of the seashells you used to collect when you were a kid. Maybe you’ll stash it away with the torso.

Placing the bags into the trunk of a rental, you begin your journey to the end of your fairytale.

The drive to and from the places was tiring, to say the least. The internet connection of the diners was spotty at best. Locals were overly friendly with the city folks who came passing through their towns. The roads reek of roadkill and manure from the farm animals that were left to roam for fresh grass.

At least you get to come home in a spotless apartment, alone once again.

But not lonely.

Your space is yours again. No trace of anyone anywhere. Immaculately yours.

—

Humans are social creatures.

No one can truly be alone, especially in today’s world where we’re connected to everyone—whether we liked it or not.

Leaving your wretched job behind was an easy feat to do. No one can say no to the victim of such a vile crime. That’s all they saw you: a helpless little thing. So off you went; saying half-assed goodbyes and sending emails of courage and hope and fucking resilience.

Your resignation meant that the company’s free of any dirt from you, Bucky’s disappearance quickly becoming a joke and a rumor blending in one.

They let you leave: in your bank account a fat check ensuring that you’d shut up about the scandal for months until you can’t feed yourself no more. So you packed your bags and jet off without looking back. You never liked that apartment anyway.

Nevertheless, you found yourself looking into another dead-end job in one of the towns you stopped over before. It’s a charming place like time froze in their plaza while the rest of the world went on. You found a small studio apartment in a street tuckered away from the main avenue, you settled there as days became nights and nights turned into days.

You woke up one morning craving a healthy serving of coffee and pancakes, luckily the town’s local diner wasn’t far from your new home.

The coffee was too hot, the pancakes were amazing, fluffy, and just right. You’re sitting in a sunny booth, the warmth doing its wonders.

“Hi, can I get today’s paper, please?” Your voice is sweet as you call your server, giving her a quick smile.

A pair of Raybans adorn your face, unconsciously hiding behind its darkened glasses. The waitress gives you a thick stack of newspapers, refilling your cup with black coffee.

Upon opening the paper, you ignore the town’s headlines and went straight for the job postings. The door jingled open as patrons come in and go, waving to familiar faces.

Job Vacancy Announcements

Secretary to the Town Sheriff

You skimmed over the rest of the details, only noting the address of the office. The job looks quite lucrative for someone who would only take messages and organize files for the sheriff.

Looking over the job posting again, you read over the words walk-ins only. That shouldn’t be hard enough.

The diner looked deserted save from the man sitting behind your booth. Leaning over and tapping his shoulder, you put on a polite smile, “Hi, sorry, do you know how to get to the sheriff’s office from here?”

“Hello, darling.” The man croons in an accent, he looks over to you, “join me in my booth, will ‘ya?”

You’re in no position to reject his proposal, you’re the one who needed an answer.

Taking your coffee cup, you slide into his booth, “hi.”

“Just the face I wanted to see.” Clean-shaven, a hint of mint and smoke, and something woody; a worn leather jacket and white button-up shirt hugging his soft frame. “Some folks over on the apartment complex were talkin’ about a city girl wanting to rent a studio all by herself. That happen to be you?”

You look over to him, trying to understand how that small of news spread like a wildfire, “yeah. I moved in a week ago.”

He leans over, smiling sweetly as he unabashedly lets his eyes roam your features, “What’s a city girl like you doin’ in a place like this? I hope we ain’t too boring for you, gal.”

Chatty—he’s way too chatty.

“Just wanted a change of pace, really. Away from the bustle of the city.” You rustle the paper, clearing your throat to get back on the matter on hand, “so the sheriff’s office? Is it too far from here?”

“What business are ‘ya bringing into the office?”

“A job, actually. Says here that they’re looking for a secretary.” You might as well tell him everything, he seems too chatty to be dismissed over and over again.

“Well, darlin’, today’s your lucky day. No need to drive down the old road.” He reaches down to his seat, pulling up a brown hat, “Hi, I’m Sheriff Bodecker. Now, to whom do I owe the pleasure?”

You bite back a giggle, you’ve always wanted to be involved with the law.

[fic-for-fic-sake]

Playing with Fire

Pairing: Loki x reader

Warning: Slight foreplay but not even

A/N: This is not at all somewhat loosely inspired by events happening in my everyday life...shut up. 

You, Wanda, and Nat decided to have a girls night. In a team full of male ego’s, sometimes the testosterone got too strong to bear so you three called in a girls night. It wasn’t the typical slumber party vibes you had seen in the movies. Instead of makeovers and candy it was sparring and wine. The two weren’t exactly meant for each other but with enhanced individuals getting drunk was pretty much off the table anyway. 

You were in the middle of throwing knives at Wanda, who was expertly dodging them, while Nat was going on about her latest mission with Clint. 

“I mean it was fine but it wasn’t Budapest, you know?” She complained between reps. You chuckled under your breath and Nat clocked it. “What?” 

“Nothing, nothing. It’s just, I may have made a tiny little drinking game.” You explained, going over to the wine bottles and taking a swig to emphasize your point. “Every time you bring up Budapest I take a drink.” 

“I don’t bring it up that much.” She fired back. 

Wanda gave her a pointed look, not even having to open her mouth to say where she stood on the matter. 

“Fine,” Nat began, “if you guys have to drink when I mention Budapest then I get to drink when Y/N talks about Loki.” 

You instantly regretted bringing up the drinking game. You coughed a bit as wine got caught in the wrong pipe. “I do NOT talk about him that much.” All it took was another pointed look from Wanda to know that that was complete and utter bullshit. 

“Yeah but that’s different because I’m not in a relationship with Loki.” 

“But you want to be.” Wanda noted, taking the wine bottle from your hands and drinking a long pull, winking at you as she did. 

“Whether I want it or not is irrelevant.” You insisted, suddenly wishing you could steer the conversation into literally any other direction. 

“And why is that?” Nat asked, coming over to where you and Wanda stood and arching a crimson eyebrow at you. 

“Because, Loki is, he’s…” 

“Bad news.” Wanda offered at the same time Nat said “Trouble.” 

“Exactly.” You confirmed. “So whatever feelings I may or may not have will promptly be shoved down into the very darkest corner of my mind until they simply cease to exist.” 

“How has that worked for you in the past?” Nat inquired. 

“It’s worked out just fine, thank you very much.” 

“And how many relationships have you been in?” Wanda questioned. 

“None.” You replied automatically. “Fuck.” 

Sensing your not-so-inner turmoil Wanda gave you back the bottle of wine which you proceeded to polish off. 

“He doesn’t even pay attention to me anyway.” You tried to justify to them. 

“Didn’t you guys talk for like two hours last Wednesday?” Wanda pointed out. 

“Yeah, we did, it was actually a really nice conversation.” You recalled. 

You had been sitting in the library reading when Loki walked in, looking stunning in what he considered to be casual clothes, which had been laughable. While his forest green tunic and tailored black pants had certainly been a step down from his battle armor, it was a far cry from casual, at least by mortal standards. 

He had asked what book you were reading which then led to a discussion about the different types of Midardian literature and the crossovers with Asgardian books. And that had lent itself to him offering to give you some Asgardian books so you could see if you liked them or not. True to his word, later that night you found a stack of four books sitting outside your door with a note from Loki telling you that he had enchanted them to automatically translate from Asgardian to English.

“So...how can you say he doesn’t pay attention to you?” Nat asked, rolling her eyes as if you were oblivious to the attention he had given you. Which, of course, you weren’t. You had finished two of the books already and were chomping at the bit to tell Loki what you thought of them. But there was only one problem. 

“He hasn’t spoken to me since.” You confessed, feeling suddenly very small and stupid. 

“That doesn’t make sense...not even a word?” Wanda asked, so gently you thought your heart would shatter. 

“But see, it does make sense. Because this is what he does. He’ll talk to me and make me feel like I’m the only person in the world and then he’ll fuck off for God knows how long and swoop in just as I’m giving up hope that he’ll ever speak to me again. He has me on his hook and he knows it. But none of that even matters.” 

“Because you’re shoving your feelings down?” Nat offered. 

“Yes, and because he has a girlfriend.” You said, feeling your heart sink as the weight of your words hit you. It’s not like you had expected anything to happen between you two but him being in a relationship was like closing a door you never expected to be open to you to begin with. It hurt and you hated to admit that it hurt and you hated him for making it hurt. 

“Yeah, I had heard Thor talking about Loki and Sygn earlier. How do you feel?” Wanda asked, handing you another bottle of wine. 

“Fine, I feel fine. I literally couldn’t care less.” You lied as you pried the cork out of the bottle and drank a good portion before giving it to Nat. “Okay, enough about me, let’s hear about everyone else.” 

And that was that. For the next few months Loki kept up his sporadic contact with you but he had a girlfriend and you weren’t about to make an even bigger fool of yourself than you probably already had. So you stopped expecting him to talk to you. Stopped sitting straighter when he walked into a room and stopped being disappointed when he didn’t notice you. 

Four months after your girls night with Nat and Wanda there was a Friday night get together with the whole team, Tony’s idea. He said it would be good for bonding. You had gotten the text when you were on your way back from a date. Nothing much, just a casual meet up in Central Park, nothing to write home about. She was fine. A pretty blonde with soft brown eyes and a good laugh but that was it. She was fine. She wasn’t what you were looking for, who you were looking for. As soon as the thought entered your head you promptly shoved it away. He was taken and you just needed to go on a date with someone different that was all. 

You looked at your appearance in the elevator mirror on the ride up. You considered changing out of your light blue floral sundress before the gathering with the team but it appeared it wasn’t meant to be as you could already hear voices bleeding through the doors before they opened. 

You walked out to a mock whistle from Sam which made you dip into a mock bow before you made your way to the kitchen island and fixed yourself a drink. 

“That bad?” Nat smiled as you took a swig of the gin and tonic. 

“It was fine.” You replied, shrugging. “I have another tomorrow so we’ll see.” 

“Another what?” Thor called from the couch, his hand around a glass of amber liquid that you suspected was something much stronger than scotch. 

“Another date!” Nat called out in reply, smiling encouragingly at you. 

“Was the one today not satisfactory?” Thor questioned. 

You rolled your eyes, “it was Fine. Honestly both of you it was fine.” 

“Don’t worry doll, you’re not the only one in the dating game.” Bucky said from the fridge, grabbing himself another beer. 

“Bucky, if you’re about to tell me that you and Steve broke up I will believe that love is truly dead.” 

“Not us doll.” He shook his head and tried and failed to hide his amusement. 

“Then who?” You were very confused and nobody was making things any easier on you. 

“Me.” The voice came from behind you and it chilled you to the bone. You turned to find Loki leaning against the wall fixing the cufflinks on his black suit. His demeanor showed a complete lack of interest but the way his emerald eyes held you in place had a predatory grace that both excited and scared you. 

Loki had been gone for a month on a diplomatic mission and you had heard nothing from him in the meantime. It had been so easy to put him out of your mind, but now you wondered how you could have thought of anything but him. 

“Oh.” Was all you could bring yourself to say. As your heart sped up to a gallop and heat flooded through your body at the way he was looking at you. He shouldn’t be looking at you like that, he had just said he broke up with his girlfriend. You shouldn’t want him to be looking at you like that, you had moved on, hadn’t you? Apparently your body hadn’t gotten the message from your head yet, stupid body. 

One hour and two drinks later you were all sitting around the large kitchen table, each absorbed in their own conversations. You were talking to Tony and Bruce and Loki was in a conversation with his brother but he was only half listening. The other part of him kept sneaking glances at you and you could feel his eyes on your body like a physical touch. After you caught his eye one too many times you excused yourself to the bathroom. You needed to get a hold of yourself. 

You didn’t need this selective attention bullshit again. You couldn’t do it. You couldn’t stand spending hours talking to each other one day only for him to not speak to you for days on end after. No, you looked at yourself in the bathroom mirror and resolved yourself to go back out there and not care. Not to feel his glances on you, not to acknowledge his presence, not to speak to him or play into his games like a fool. Because you weren’t a fool. Pep talk done, you unlocked the door and walked straight into a wall of black. 

You startled and tried to push yourself away only to feel slender arms wrap around your waist and legs walk you back into the bathroom. You managed a few paces back and found yourself looking into Loki’s eyes. They really were the most magnificent shade of green. Damnit. 

“Loki, what are you doing here?” You asked, still too stunned to wonder why he backed you into the bathroom. 

“I’ve been gone for a month and that’s the question you ask me?” He leaned against the door, folded his arms over his chest, and crossed one slender leg over the other. Fuck him for being so attractive right now. 

“You don’t get to do that.” You stated, leafing through your emotions until you found one that suited you, anger. You were angry with him for having you on his hook, angry with him for his sense of entitlement, and angry with him for being attractive. To be fair, the last one wasn’t really his fault. 

“Do what?” He asked, like he really didn’t know what he was doing. 

“You don’t get to go literal months without speaking to me and then demand why I’m not talking to you when you’ve been back all of two hours.” 

“Actually I got home last week.” He replied coolly, pushing off of the door and taking a step closer to you. You rebuffed his advance by taking a step backwards. 

“Thank you for proving my point to me.” 

“What point?” 

“Don’t be obtuse.” You chided. “You’ve been home a week now, haven’t sought me out at all in that time mind you, but now you’re upset that I didn’t speak to you?” 

“I broke up with Sygn.” He said, taking another step towards you, and you took one back in kind. 

“So I’ve heard.” 

“I’ve missed you.” He crooned, advancing towards you until your back was forced against the counter top. 

“And what, exactly, have you missed?” You replied hotly. “Ignoring me until the last possible moment? Making me look pathetic for wanting even a scrap of your attention?” 

He took his thumb and index finger, placed them on your chin, and tilted it up at the same time he lowered his head to your shoulder. 

“Come now darling, I don’t think you’re pathetic.” He breathed into the crook of your neck. Your pulse skyrocketed as your breath hitched and you let out a whimper. Your nails dug into the marble counter in an effort to keep from touching him the way you wanted. To keep from running your fingers through his thick black locks. 

“Loki, I can’t do this.” You pleaded in a whisper even as his hands came to settle on your waist, even as he lifted you effortlessly onto the counter top and stood squarely between your legs, making your dress ride up to your mid thighs. 

“Can’t do what?” He questioned, placing feather light kisses along the column of your throat as his hands moved slowly up your newly exposed thighs. 

You tried to steady yourself even as you felt the throbbing need between your legs and his own need pressed against you. 

“Being near you is like playing with fire, and pretty soon I’m going to get burned.” You huffed, caught between wanting him to stop and wanting him to continue, oh please God continue. 

“Oh pet, haven’t you heard?” He questioned, bringing his lips a hair's breadth away from yours, “I’ve more an affinity for ice.”

[blackcherrykiss]

BLOOD BOUNDARIES - Enhypen OT7 Fanfic (ch.10)

[CH.1] [CH.2] [CH.3] [CH.4] [CH.5] [CH.6] [CH.7][CH.8][CH.9] previous chapters [CH.11] next chapter (unavailable on tumblr but avaliable on wattpad!)

"You'll give me your blood in exchange for theirs."

You could feel his earnest breath against the left side of your neck when he spoke. The proximity was causing you to hold your breath tightly. "Sunghoon please..." You just barely breathed out,  fearing anything you said would be the death of you.

"Afraid my love? I'm not going to hurt you unless you let me in." You felt Sunghoon's soft lower lip stroke up your neck until it met your ear, "I'll give you time to think." He pulled away to caress your face with a feathery touch as the sky grew darker and darker.

...

You rested the following day with no intentions of going to classes. You got your dormmates to tell the office about the severe headache you had; too weak to attend that day. To your surprise, one of the nurses at the school had knocked at your dorm to do a brief check-up and ensure you weren't lying.

"You must be Y/N! Sweetie, how are you feeling?" A slim young woman came in with a medium briefcase of supplies.

"It's nothing too serious right now, it's just a slight headache, I think you brought a bit much..." You held your pounding head while staring at the excessive equipment she had in hand.

"Oh, all of this? It's a standard to bring it just in case." The nurse said with a Southern Irish accent, "Now sit down, I'll take your temperature first."

You sat down on your own bed and watched as she took out a pink thermometer and put it under your arm. You yawned while waiting, getting a closer look at the woman. She had naturally fawn-blonde hair that flowed down in delicate curls. Healthy skin that was rosy at the cheekbones.

"Hun, your temperature is just slightly over normal. Is it just today you've been having headaches?" The nurse said while waving around the stick that read 38.1°C.

"I get them from time... Rarely though, I think I've been stressed lately that's all..."

"Perhaps you have low iron? Are you sure no other symptoms and potential causes?"

"Lack of sleep." You admitted, "And probably low iron... My mom has so I must too..."

"I see hun... Many girls call in sick and it's usually related to their menstrual cycles. But recently I find there is some sort of common cold going around. Yesterday this young boy fainted and when I took his temperature he had a seriously high fever." The nurse said while beginning to sterilize the thermometer with some rubbing alcohol.

"He did?!" You blurted out unintentionally, your voice making an embarrassing crack, "Sorry... He's just my friend, I was there when he fainted. Do you mind me asking how Jungwon is doing?"

"Not too well... He seems very sick but... Whenever I try phoning his parents regarding a checkup with a doctor or a record of his medical history, nobody ever picks up." The nurse looked upset and frustrated that she couldn't do much for him.

Little did the nurse know Jungwon didn't even have parents... 'Heeseung would be his guardian at best' you thought. "Oh, that's terrible..."  You felt yourself tense up knowing the reason for Jungwon's illness.

"Well, if you have no other questions I guess I will be on my way. Your name was y/n right?" She said while scratching a couple of words on a small pad of paper.

"That's correct."

"y/n... That name sounds familiar... Perhaps you are friends with Kyungeun?" The nurse put her pen and paper down on your nightstand.

"You know Kyungeun?" You rubbed the back of your neck.

"Of course! I visit her often. She's mentioned your name from time to time." She gave a healthy smile before getting up to leave, "She loves you to bits!"

You were touched Kyungeun would mention that to the nurse, it made you feel a little better knowing that.

"I'll get going now then, hun!" The nurse grabbed her case and exited your dorm after you thanked her.

When you went back to your bed you noticed the nurse had left her pad of paper. Taking the paper to go and run after her, you squint to read what was actually written on it. The paper just had blue ink notes in some wavy font about your condition and personal information. When you lifted the notepad up, you noticed a paper fell from the stack. Bending down with just your back, you saw Kyungeun's medical information swirled on the front.

"Anemia?" You read aloud before a  semi-aggressive knock was heard from behind your dorm door. You quickly stuffed the paper where it was originally attached, feeling guilty you saw what you should not have. "I was just about to chase you down!" You began speaking before the door was even completely open.

You saw the young nurse once again with a troubled face, "I'm so sorry, I'm so disorganized! Thanks, darling!" She looked relieved as you handed over the stuff she had left behind. You smiled to cover up the actual shock that shot through your veins after seeing Kyungeun's records.

Anaemia is a low blood condition and knowing Kyungeun had it still surprised you. Were you really trying to deny that Sunghoon drinks Kyungeun's blood?

...

You napped the rest of the day, catching up on the sleep you had missed over the past week. The throbbing in your head gladly helped you fall asleep in an instant, but your wishes of having a quiet sleep would not come true.

-

You found yourself in a fever dream, scenes flickering in your mind at the speed of light. You saw Jungwon's complexion glitter against a deep velvet as he drove his fangs deep into a prominent vein. The vein however on his own wrist; drinking his own blood. The amber-red liquid began streaming down his chin and into an empty wine glass in large opaque droplets. The imagery of the blood in a wine glass was one you had never thought you would see, especially in a dream. The blood was much thicker in consistency compared to alcohol and it made your stomach churn with absolute sickness as Sunoo picked up the glass to swish it around as the adults do with classic red wine. Sunoo then bit down on the heel of his palm, planting a deep bite mark. He began squeezing his hand tightly to release more blood into the glass. When the glass had filled midway, Sunoo chugged it down.  

-

"Y/N?!" You felt Nana shake both of your shoulders, waking you back conscious. You twitched while sitting up from your bed, "You're sweating like crazy. I got scared seeing your distressed face..."

"Fever dream... It's whatever..."  Surprisingly your headache hurt a lot less even after the vividly strange dream had seemingly interrupted your off day. The problem was now your stomach that felt awful over the constant blood being displayed in your head, "I think I'll be fine to go to school tomorrow after I sleep on it tonight, my headache has become a mild stomach"

"More rest? You probably just need to get up and out of your bed, it's too warm and stuffy plus you've barely moved the entire day." Nana nagged. To which you agreed, you were getting unbearably hot which might've been the trigger to the fever dream.

"Yeah, I'll go for a walk..." You stared down at your sheets while thinking about what the strange dream meant. Why did Sunoo drink Jungwon's blood? And can vampires drink each other's blood? You immediately thought of the book you had left in the woods the previous night, perhaps there were answers in it. You were just too horrified that day to pick up the book and take it with you. But it seemed it might be of use to you now.

"Have you eaten yet? Hyesun and Dahee are at the dining hall right now and I just came to check up on you."

"No, I haven't eaten the whole day... But I think I might vomit if I eat..." You fastened your eyes shut at the recollection of what you had seen, "Just go without me, I'll go for a walk in the meantime." You said with the means to go off into the forest and find that damned book.

...

You feel refreshed, with the clean autumn breeze gusting your hair back, and out of your face. It was around the time most people ate an early meal, so you weren't surprised to see few pairs of people in the courtyards. Students seemed to be taking it nice and slow under the calm weather, one on one conversations and cloud watching on the wood benches.

You strut along the same path you had gone down the other day, your mary jane shoes getting wet from a puddle on the way. The woods had looked a lot less intimidating during the early evening compared to after sunset. You just had to ensure you were taking the path Sunghoon had led you down and you'd find the book, right? It would be a quick and simple job.

But after taking the seemingly correct path, you found yourself getting more unfamiliar with where you walked. Regardless of where you ended up, the place was a lot more peaceful and pretty than your first impression of it. You skipped along, turning your journey into a leisurely hike now. The sun heavily coated one particular part of the forest, creating a mystic olive glow onto the dried grass. The section of forest, in particular, had fewer trees with a giant rock in the centre of it.  As you approached the area, you noticed someone far in the distance laying on the rock, basking in the sunlight with skin so white it looked teal under the reflection of the trees. The young boy didn't have your school's uniform but instead, a rust coloured flannel and some tatteredly torn jeans with cuts all over them. You were willing to just leave the delinquent alone, turn back and give up. That is until you noticed the boy reading.

As you came into a four-metre radius to get a better look at if the book he possessed was the one you were searching for, the boy sat up to gaze dead on at you. You probably looked worse than a deer in the headlights, surprised at his alertness. "Who are you?" The ash haired boy asked before you could.

"I'm looking for a book I dropped around here the other day." You bore your eyes at his hands.

"This wouldn't be it, would it?" The young stranger stood up to scoop the book off the rock so you could see it clearly. He was a lot taller than how he appeared while lying on his back.

"I'm pretty sure it is my book... May I have it back?" You asked politely after noticing the colour of the backing was identical to the one you picked up from the library.

"What's it to you?" He raised a brow while swirling his tongue around the inside of his cheek.

"It might answer some questions I have..." You bit your tongue as to whether or not the boy in front of you was among the vampire pack. It seemed his hesitation to give the book back was telling you undermining something.

"Ahh, so it's you who they talk about?" He nodded to himself, "Heard you were some clever girl who would eventually figure out our little secret." He dozed off into the distance at some withering pine trees. It was clear he was associated with the bunch by now, no surprises there.

"Sunghoon t-told me the other day you were all vampires... He was the one who took the book in the first place and used it to bait me here."

"Then why did you leave the book?"

"Got too shocked and sick, just wanted to escape the place after he told me you were all vampires. Thought I was going to die." You began to sweat. Recalling the situation made you realize you were in the same position once again; alone with a vampire in the woods far away from people.

"Alright? So you have questions about us that you think this silly book will answer? Why ask a book when you could ask the vampire right in front of you." He faced his palms up on either side of him.

You stood astonished by his response. Instead of forcibly taking your blood he was offering some useful information to you, "You mean you're not going to kill me?"

"I considered it... Until I found out who you were." He commented with a hint of disappointment. "Luckily you've caught me at the right time, so ask away."

"Found out who I was? What do you mean?"

"Who knows what kind of shit I'll hear from the guys if they found out I got a lick of your blood." He shut down your further questions about the matter, "Now ask the questions."

Looking around as if you were about to tell a secret, you dived right into the ideas you were given from your dreams, "Can vampires drink their own blood?" You gulped remembering Jungwon drawing blood from himself.

"They can... It helps with blood cravings but it tastes very bitter. Next." He said, treating the conversation as some speed round questionnaire.

"Okay...? Can vampires drink each other's blood?" The last scene of your dream coming to mind of Sunoo taking a swig of the wine glass filled with his blood mixed with Jungwon's.

"Who have you seen doing that? Sunoo? Jaeyun?"

"No one, it was just a dream!? Sunoo and Jaeyun actually do that?" It seemed weird hearing Sunoo's name being directly suggested. It was as if your dream was a potential reflection of reality. How could that be?

"Drinking other vampires blood tastes better than drinking your own blood but it's not often we do that." The boy tapped his head to think.

"So then what occasion would you drink each other's blood?"

"Usually when we can't get ahold of human blood. Survival purposes in short. Put it this way, drinking your own blood won't make you stronger because you're not getting any new nutrients. Drinking other vampire's blood will fulfil that it's just not as vital as half-humans or better yet, full human blood."

"Half-humans?! They exist?"

"Yeah, their blood tastes a lot better than full vampire blood but it's definitely not better than full human blood. Pretty sure Sunghoon feeds off some half-blooded girl, not that I can remember her name."

[softly-savage-mint-yoongi]

Heat Seekers I

Genre: Dark Cyberpunk AU Pairing: Chanyeol x f.reader Words: 5k Fic Warnings: Dead Dove: Do Not Eat. I’m serious people. If any of the chapter warnings are uncomfortable or triggering for you, please do not read this. Do so at your own discretion. Lots of angst and hurt, eventual smut. Chapter Warnings are below the cut. Author’s Note: There are some specific things in this fic that I’ve personally experienced, and some that I have not. Please understand my intention with this fic is a way of healing not just for myself but hopefully for others who unfortunately have experience with these types of situations. I did a lot of debating about whether or not I should even post this fic, and have spoken to a few individuals about it. Ultimately, with the intent of healing and moving past such trauma, it’s been decided OK to post. Please take my warnings seriously.

Chapter Warnings: Metaphoric descriptions of statutory rape. Assault, sexual assault. Gaslighting. Attempted murder. Brief mentions of substance abuse and prostitution. Minor character death.

You always believed there was no such thing as Heaven, but surely there was Hell. Several iterations of the grotesque and horrific afterlife; because humanity is a plague and that is what each of us deserved.

Perhaps in your younger days, you didn’t know it… no, even then you knew. Deep down inside you remember nothing of happiness or blessing. No memories of a person’s presence, actions, or words doing anything considerably good for anyone else. Certainly not without a motive. Certainly not out of empathy.

Before you could walk, throwing yourself into the repetitive ease of programmed machines and technology brought you peace. Technology is predictable and massively accessible to anyone. Technology is your comfort.

Electricity became nearly free and unlimited after the revolution that ended the War on Power in 2045. So long as the sun rose every day, there was never a shortage, and the resulting surge of technological advancements that boomed, as a result, have made most fairly new tech obsolete.

Sustainable, economic, and eco-friendly power became the way of the world. Wind energy became the norm. Buildings were now made from fiberglass solar panels, stronger, taller, and widely available, so every surface collected energy from the sun. Window glass collected heat to use in the winter, eliminating the need for natural gas heat altogether. More room for technology to grow. More surface area on the ground for parks and forests. Resorts built above an ocean’s surface harnessed the energy of the currents moving below their supports. Anything that wasn’t hovering in midair could collect energy from earthquakes and natural disasters alike, as long as humankind was lucky enough to have built something that could capture the energy and withstand the storm. The earth was well on its way to healing by the time you were born in 2051, and although humankind flourished along with it, the world was still a dangerous place. Corporations rose even higher and politics declined, dissolving into a place wrought with criminal activity and fear. Yes, humans were healthier, stronger, lived longer if they were lucky. But was that really such a good thing? Your parent would throw anything she didn’t find valuable at you whenever you locked her out of the apartment, and she was too weak to force her way inside. You were smart enough to know you would be no match in the likely event someone tried to break in, so you had to defend yourself. You wear wary of the men she brought inside, always idly wondering if any of them were your father, but so few of them ever returned.

You don’t remember ever knowing you even had a father before that, unknowing until she told you about sex and what makes a human child when you were four. Not that you’d asked and not that she would care to speak to you when she was anything other than suffocatingly drunk.

In a room that was barely such, the feeble plywood walls held together as if by magic and the curtain strung up as your door sagged so low it only served to be a nuisance to your agenda. Outdated machines and technology stacked high around the walls, most were scrap parts for your projects.

You dedicated every day to sitting in the same spot, surrounded by computers and machines, and learning what makes them function. The finite possibilities, yet the scope of their differences, is something that brought you peace and kept the gears in your own head turning. Sometimes, you would pretend and daydream as if you were an android yourself. You were not lucky enough to be born as one with artificial intelligence.

You attended virtual school whenever you felt like it, or at least you knew the basics. Your parent didn’t care. She nearly pretended like you didn’t exist, which suited you just fine. From the time you were five, she began leaving you alone at home. You knew how to pull the cracked plastic stool over to the counter and get yourself some goldfish crackers or something else simple. You weren’t allowed to use the stove even though you’d repaired it twice, but the microwave was fine.

You knew how to bathe and how to use the restroom and clean up after yourself because you had to. There was nobody else for a long time. Days came and went when you weren’t sure if she would ever come back, only for her to come banging on the squeaky front door or crashing through it slurring her words and waking you from a fitful sleep to wipe at your tear-stained cheeks in the middle of the night. The notion of your tears on her behalf was always something unpredictable and confusing to you. Why would you cry over such insignificance, you sometimes wondered to yourself.

If she stopped coming back one day you would figure it out. The nice man across the street from your apartment building ran a tiny tech store and he always had a smile for you and something that needed fixing. Most days he would ask you math problems as something he called a “lightning round” of questions for an extra quarter for every right answer. Surely the three dollars he gave you for what your fixed every time was enough to put what little food you needed in your stomach.

By the time you were eight, the habits you and your cohabitant fell into became routine. You became accustomed to sleeping during the day while she was out, setting your school live feed on record so you could watch it later. At night, while trying to drown out the sounds of her screaming or sex or shattering bottles, you would work. In the world you knew, the industry wasn’t as slow as it used to be. Too fast-paced for most new phone models to make it past their six-month mark before it was time to stop manufacturing and making capital, moving onto the next one. From what you understood, a new model of home security cameras could go on the market one day and be in the clearance pile before you got your next paycheck. Security tech became your playground after a few years, and you didn’t have enough money to buy anything. It never bothered you that you were always a step behind the latest tech because you had to wait a week until the latest model began showing up in dumpsters. It was never your intention to be faster than that. By the age of ten, you knew your priority was survival and in order to do that, you had to protect yourself with whatever means necessary. You had six different checkpoints in security on your living space not long after you became familiar with it. An additional four security cameras had been installed by your own two small hands around your building as well, at the entrance, elevator, your floor’s hall, and in front of your flimsy front door. All secretly controlled by you, without the knowledge of the outdated model of AI that ran your front desk, passively named Al- born of the building owner’s lack of creativity or care. Probably both.

You spent your days alone, in the tiny, insufferable hole in the wall place called your ‘home’. Where, as the years propelled to 2063 on your twelfth year, you chose to ignore most of the other inhabitants of this world. On a worn-out and broken faux leather armchair, perpetually stuck in the reclining position. Where you sat to work and where you slept and where you held your breath at the groaning sound omitted from its cushions every time you moved. You kept fixing it whenever it would break, dumping you from the side of it with a ‘plunk’ as the bars jumped off their tracks. You scowled every time they snapped the tracks completely. You worked to hone your skills in the world of technology, tinkering and learning every detail of every machine you could get your hands on from the dumpster behind your building. Sometimes if you were lucky, the building owner would forget to pay the trash removal services and it would pile up for weeks. Heaps of smelly trash were a small price to pay if it meant you could hit the jackpot and take several trips up and down the rickety old elevator with your arms full of tech.

Those were your happiest memories. Your body felt like jelly by the time you finished sorting through it all and bringing it up to your stash, carefully removing casings of microcomputers or game cartridges to get to the gold inside.

Everything was fine and although you couldn’t say you were content with your life- you didn’t hate it. You loved the freedom to be left alone and the peace of your tinkering tech. Perhaps a little impatient to grow up, but with every passing year, you celebrated quietly to yourself during the days you had been told your birth date fell. Somewhere between these seven days, you pulled up the same app on every smartphone you had in your possession and ran quickly around your makeshift room trying to blow out twenty digital candles in one big breath- careful not to trip over small piles of tech as you went.

It became a blur after you turned twelve. Somewhere along the timeline not long after that, a man started showing up to the apartment and threw off the balance you had so carefully maintained. You never knew his name, but you remember his face, his cologne, and his voice, and the way his eyes sparkled with something that sank in the pit of your stomach the first time you laid eyes on him. Most of all, even now, you remember him in your restless nightmares and the raw feeling of vindictive rage that in your weakest moments, reminds you that you’re alive, if only by the boiling heat of your blood rushing through your ears. In those moments, when your vision goes fuzzy with the desire to see him suffer and rot miserably in the deepest pits of hell, preferably bleeding and screaming.

You remember him from a time past, standing in the kitchen with your parent, one of her arms curled around his thick neck and the other raised in the air, his fingers closed around her slim wrist. The suit he wore looked expensive, and their bodies were slowly bending over the kitchen table in a strange dance, waiting for her back to snap and flatten against the wooden surface. Their eyes flashed to yours for less than a heartbeat as you walked to the refrigerator, laughing at something that lulled in the silence.

The next time you saw him he had fed your cohabitant something so toxic she passed out on the floor beside the couch. Then he spoke to you. In his deep baritone, he sounded like he smoked too many cigarettes too often. Or drank a bottle of razor blades.

“Pretty little thing ain’t ye?” he asked, dipping his head through the curtain that thinly veiled your world from outside eyes.

You ignored him, choosing to pretend as if the headphones situated on your head were actually producing audio. So he hit you.

Then he hit you again, screaming at you for ignoring him and calling you a bitch, whatever that meant. You heard it slung at your parent enough to know it was derogatory.

You didn’t even scream, you remember. Very clearly you sat shocked, but tears spilled down your cheeks from the pain alone. The heat you felt on your cheek, swelling and rough as if you’d fallen off a motorized bike and gotten road rash on your face.

Your fingers rose and you can recall them vividly, shaking as they reached to touch at your cheek and the hiss of pain as you recoiled from yourself.

Then, you try not to visualize it, but it won’t go away. You remember the feeling of his hand grabbing yours as it froze in midair, yanking you from the protection and warm affection of your old faux leather chair. It growled as he ripped you from its grasp in protest, pulling you so hard the force nearly dislocated your shoulder while he simply tossed you on the floor.

You remember the feeling of his fingers pulling at your clothes and then pain. Extreme pain, so brutal and fast it took your breath away. Your face throbbed as his palm fit perfectly across your whole skull, pushing your head onto the rough wood planks below.

You screamed, but you don’t remember if any sound came out, or if it was just that nobody cared that you did so. You screamed and cried, trying to crawl away as he grabbed at you. There was a ‘whoosh’ feeling as the air was ripped from your lungs when something burning sunk, forcing itself a home of darkness that never should have been between your soul and your corporeal form.

And then nothing.

You remember waking up to the sharp scent of blood, confirming it when you saw it on the floor around you, glistening and wet in the faint glow of computers. You remember the pain that shot between your legs as you tried to sit up properly, groaning as fresh tears worked down your cheeks. The cry that left you rippled pain across your face, too, and you remember crawling yourself over to your beloved chair and leaning against the comfort of its worn fabric as you reached for any of the smartphones you had.

For the first time ever, the brightness of a screen made you flinch back in the darkness. Persevering, you opened the camera and turned it to selfie mode, inspecting your face in the digital reflection. Your right cheek was fat and red, and two purple circles were clearly left in the wake of where his gaudy rings hit your skin. The stain on your skin crept up below your eye.

You made yourself calm down enough to quell the sobs wracking your chest to softer whimpers and tears to help the pain in your cheek stop.

It happened again some unknown weeks later. Your parent so stoned and drunk she passed out blissfully somewhere else and he came to you again. Your begging did you no good, and you were no match for his strength. Why hadn’t you run the moment you could stand on your legs again after the first assault? Why hadn’t you hauled every piece of your tech and saved dime from your bank account or gone to the nice old man across the street for help? Deep down, you knew. You were confident enough to know he would find you and smart enough to know he would kill you when he did.

The second time, you wished you had a gun or a knife. Not just cameras to catch him in the act. Or something that would make him stop and leave you alone. It was just as bad as the first, except this time you didn’t pass out. You did your best to stay still, compliance your only weapon in hoping he goes away that much sooner if you let it be over with. It still hurt just as bad, and he still left you in a puddle of white and red wetness on the floor. The scent of blood made you dizzy.

For the first time in your life, you begged. You begged the adult that raised you and fed you until you could do it yourself. For just once you desperately wished to talk to her and confirm. To make her do something to save you. You were terrified you wouldn’t be able to save yourself, and if this were the last thing she would ever do for you, if it were the last time you would ever see her, you would be grateful if she would just do something to save her daughter.

Hopelessness and an unending free-fall of terror are what you received. You were stronger than she was, and nearly her height by now, with a young healthy body not wrought with substance abuse. You forced her to sit still and keep her eyes open. To keep watching the video even though you couldn’t watch it yourself, barely able to weather the sounds coming from the captured footage.

When it was over, you hadn’t realized you were crying. Your vision blurred when you opened your eyes, with wet cheeks that felt the rush of air as you maneuvered in front of her and gingerly knelt on the floor to beg at her knees. You gathered her hands in her lap, struggling to hold them as you repeated your pleas.

She ignored them, literally shaking and gasping for breath and telling you it wasn’t real. Telling you it never happened. When you forced it upon her and threatened to go to the police with it she pulled your hair and screamed at you. Screamed that you were an idiot and that he would kill you both because didn’t you know who he was? Didn’t you know the power that man held over so many? No, you didn’t.

And it suddenly dawned on you, she was just as scared. She was scared and terrified and unable to grasp any semblance of control over what that man did anymore. She was a fool to think she ever did, and you were a fool to have a sliver of faith in her. So you left to clear your head, much to her cries not to. Born out of anxiety, fearful you would go to the police.

You walked farther than you thought you could as you attempted to regain the strength in your legs. Slowly, and by the time you returned the sun had fully set, but an orange glow caught your attention from the rooftop, one floor above yours. Wisps of smoke, too. Odd, nobody ever went up there.

A single stray cord and a plastic piece of backing laid on the floor between the elevator and your door, and your heart sunk back down all fourteen floors. You were out of breath and the pain between your legs was searing by the time you shoved your way through the metal door to the roof.

Sitting on the ledge was a gaunt, familiar face. She was smoking a cigarette, watching the flames and smoke from three rust-stained barrels. Inside of them was most of your tech. Your cameras, a few handfuls of smartphones, seven computers, gaming consoles, tablets.

You barely remember what happened after that, but you know it was a lot of screaming and a burn when you attempted to kick one of them and stomp out the flames. That day was the catalyst that made you take action, planning to escape from hell. If there was no chance to be saved by someone else, you would have to do it yourself.

Racing the clock on a high of anxiety, you only prayed that for three days he wouldn’t show up. You only needed three days.

On the afternoon of the second day, you hadn’t realized you were alone in the small apartment of your old and outdated building. You were too busy working like lightning to beat an imaginary deadline on your heels. You hadn’t noticed she had left until you came out shortly to use the restroom and find some crackers.

There he was at the kitchen table, the cheap metal legs of the chair bowing under his mass. You froze, watching him in shock and briefly you let your eyes wander around the living room to realize she wasn’t there. His voice was low as he told you she passed out in the elevator hours ago.

The chair made a horrible scuffing sound as he stood up, and you flinched. It didn’t matter once he took your wrist in his grip, and he made you suffer once more.

Something unhinged him this time, and even through the pain and nausea and the attempt to make yourself faint just to not have to live through it, you felt it. Felt the psychotic shift in his brain as he laughed at your pain.

It broke something inside of you. Escape. Do not let him do this to you. Definitely do not give up and let it happen. Retaliate. Fight. Get away. Run. Live.

You barely recall how you came to the conclusion, or how you stomached the grotesque way, when he leaned over your back, you turned your head. How you took the easiest thing to reach- his right ear lobe- between your teeth, and mangled him for all you were worth.

The gratification was immediate as he sprang from you, shoving you forward and holding his head. You remember no pain in that moment, and smiling with adrenaline, breathless but with lungs full of oxygen at the same time. You bolted before he could come back to his senses, grabbing your bag from your chair, thankfully nearly complete, and ran out, fixing your clothing along the way.

He tried to get up fast enough to stop you, lunging for you with one hand as you made it into the hallway, but whatever adrenaline you were on was potent, and your senses were razor sharp. You ducked his hand, hearing him barrel into the wall with his momentum as you made for the elevator.

You watched in slow motion the hopeless rage morph onto his stubbled face, knowing he wouldn’t catch you in time. Letting go of his ear, you saw it maimed, the bottom half missing, an obvious mouth-shaped crest bleeding heavily onto the floor as he reached instead to procure a gun from his jacket.

Although your heart leaped at the sight of it as the metal door creaked open behind you, his hands were messy, and the gun slipped from his bloody grip.

Turning to get on, you hesitated for just a second when you saw her there, passed out in the corner of the elevator. You shoved the button for the lobby as hard as you could, planning to rip the wires from the panel behind Al’s desk the moment it reached the bottom. It would give you enough time to get away as he descended the stairs.

You remember watching her sleep, but an eerie sense of foreboding grew in the intimate space the lower the elevator went, despite the beauty of golden hour cityscape from the window that served as the back wall of the capsule.

It took a few moments for you to realize the sun looked odd against her skin. Her hair didn’t catch the rays, nor did her lips hold the same color or fullness of your own, a feature you had in common. She looked sick.

An unfamiliar emotion welled in you. Some concoction of fear, sadness, and a heavy sense of solitude congealed in your chest and your throat as you crouched beside her quietly, afraid to make a sound.

Hesitantly, you touched her shoulder, immediately recoiling at the unnatural stone of her form, refusing to be pliant under the gentle press of your fingers. Swallowing the bile that rose in your throat, you grasped her shoulders, shaking her. Her body slid further down the wall when you let go. It remained there on the floor in an unnatural and rigid stillness, heavy.

You tripped as you receded backward, falling against the smooth metal of the door. Terror overcame you and a bewildering sense of lonely unknown stood towering before you in your mind’s eye. Not that you expected to ever see her again. Not that you expected to care, you hated her. But you hadn’t wanted her to die.

“Mom,” you remember choking up her title in reverence, the one and only time in your life you’d ever said the word.

You groaned with pain, suddenly powerless without the adrenaline that was just coursing through your veins. Everything hurt. Your vision, your head, your body, your heart. You were going to throw up. But you’d be damned if you did it before you escaped. You were so close. Just a little further.

Your mouth watered with the impending expulsion of your gut, but you managed to fall backward out of the elevator and stumble to your feet, feeling heavy as you trudged past Al’s inquiry of your health to the panel, ripping every wire out with your fist.

Just once you threw up beside the revolving door of your building before entering. You staggered through it after, feeling a rush of fresh air that told your very soul it was over.

You did it. Now you just had to make sure you survived, but you were good at that.

_________________

April, 2072

You pursed your lips, scowling at the bitter, sour flavor of the lollipop settled on your tongue. Leaning to the right, you lifted your hand from the grip of your bars, reaching through the thickness of your helmet through the open visor and whipping the candy from your mouth with a grimace.

You slowed, unable to afford a littering fine if you just threw it to the wind behind you, even though you wanted to rebel in that way. Too many high-tech cameras on the city streets to get away with anything unless you had the money to pay off the cops.

Which, unfortunately, you didn’t.

Twisting forward to squeeze the brake, you let your bike lull into a quiet purr as you pull off onto a quiet road, looking for the correct receptacle. You let it crawl forward, along the curb, and over a storm drain so you can lean over and drop the candy into the trash. For a moment, you lick your lips, pulling your backpack around to rummage through the bag of lollies inside for a better flavor.

While you search for a strawberry- your favorite- you weigh the pros and cons of just buying a bag of strawberry flavor instead of the assortment. Price, for starters, you scoff to yourself, remembering to pluck the sour apple wrapper from your pocket to toss into the trash. Exclusive flavor bags are more expensive, but you don’t waste as much by throwing out every god damned green apple you pluck from the bag.

Frowning when you come up empty-handed, you take the second-best choice, unwrapping the dark red of a cherry lolly when a presence catches your attention. A man, tall and thin, clothed in dark colors standing still against the bustle of the city. There’s a black baseball cap on his head, pressed down over dark red curls that peek out at the edges.

He’s wearing square, dark-tinted sunglasses that block out his eyes, with ears that bow out from his skull, and you briefly register that he’s built the same all around, in large proportions, from his hands to his face to his towering height.

Even in the late afternoon, his visage glows with artificial color as he basks in the light of a large television displayed in the storefront window. Although his attire tells you he’s trying to conceal his identity, he doesn’t seem to stick out, going ultimately unnoticed by the people passing by him.

His face is turned towards the television as a news channel covers a fire at a large corporate building from last night. It shows impressive plumes of flame and thick smoke, even darker than the night sky, glowing faintly with billions of lights.

The man watching the television bounces a short stick between his teeth, but you can’t tell what it is from this distance. You notice his face moves, the apples of his cheeks rising high as he smiles wide, easily a head above the crowd.

The sound of sirens from the recording of the fire dins away to the sound of an audio clip taken from a phone call. A man’s voice, clearly distorted with an autotune. Raspy, dark laughter, and a bitter promise to chase someone to hell.

A small part of you is smug, rooting for the villain even, and his vicious words to whomever the message are, or was, intended.

The sun is starting to set, and you hate having to watch the skyline glitter with the golden light as you drive on. It’s an unwanted and unnecessary memory, unforgiving in the distance of your timeline.

Luckily, you enter the undercity just as the light grows intense, escaping into the sleepless neon of your world. Into the black market and the tech industry, rife with people who thrive on a never-ending night, as if their veins are made of glass and filled with inert gases to make them glow just as brightly as the buildings here.

You’ve got a lead from a friend of sorts. Someone who you’ve got a history with from your days at the bordello, and who kept you alive once upon a time when you first came to the undercity, terrified but determined to forget yourself and be born as someone stronger, smarter, better.

He’s never given you bad intel before, so long as you could get to it before a clan or a faster loaner. Luckily, you have a natural gift for hacking and the latest model of ‘unhackable’ Hyperbikes are no exception to your deft fingers.

You pull up outside Blue House, scanning the digital bulletin for the job he mentioned. You press your finger to it, holding your breath for the marquee to inform you whether it’s still up for grabs, or if it is unfortunately for you- in progress.

A smile cracks your lips when the green light pops up, and you whip your glove off when the prompter asks to scan your left thumb. A second passes as the soft blue light moves across your finger, chirping in confirmation when it’s done.

You don’t even care what the job is- but Chan promised it would be something you could do. All you remember is hearing a payment sum that could put good food in your stomach for a month straight. The only question you had was why a tech hacking job was showing up on a brothel’s bulletin board.

Ultimately, what was one more undercover prostitution job? You were familiar with the work that came through the bordello, and its basic services. In the last two years, you’ve moved away from it little by little, having made some waves with your work as a hacker in the undercity. Your moniker started to be whispered across the shadows as the underdog, a  genius ‘for the people’ hacker that put bad men where they belonged. Only Chan knew you by two names. The rest of the world only knew one.

The name Maneater.

[loving-barnes]

RED, SUS! - BUCKY BARNES

(A/N): I mean, come on, I had to write one where the team is playing Among us.

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x f!reader

Summary: Tony calls everyone to play the current video game trend - Among us.

Warning: language, a bit fluff at the end

Words: 2800+

FULL MASTERLIST

RED, SUS! - BUCKY BARNES 

The gaming world was absorbed by the new game. Everyone was streaming it, playing with friends. It was the perfect game to play during a pandemic. Unfortunately, the illness got into the Avengers compound too. Some of the agents and workers were in isolation due to the virus. Also, even though some people could be considered as Gods, this nuisance got them too. Clint remained isolated in his room, Natasha and Wanda were sick too. Their symptoms were mild, fortunately. 

Tony’s orders were strict: social distancing for at least 14 days; checking via FRIDAY if anyone was in the kitchen; no gatherings or work meetings; those not affected had to be prepared for urgent or unexpected missions; masks were necessary for the hallways and common rooms and many more.

Every day, between two and five in the afternoon, they had to remain in their rooms due to obligatory disinfection that was happening in common rooms, hallways and other rooms. 

They were in the middle of their two-week personal lockdown when Tony sent everyone a message to log onto their laptops. Y/N was reading a book, slowly falling asleep when it happened. She checked her phone: Conference call, urgent, now. 

Y/N knew Tony pretty well. These types of messages never meant discussing work or missions. It was something for his amusement - mostly. Unwillingly and without a choice, she turned on her laptop and joined the conference call. 

Natasha: Hey, YN, you joined!

Y/N waved with a hand and then scratched her neck. She looked like a mess - baggy jumper, hair in a bun and her face looked sad and tired. In conclusion, she didn’t care less. The team saw her in her worst already - drunk and almost dead. 

Sam: What happened to you, Y/N? You look terrible. 

Y/N: Shut it, Wilson. I am well. This is my pandemic outfit. 

Bucky chuckled. She knew it was him because she could recognize his voice and other sounds anywhere. 

Steve: Tony, what is the meaning behind all of this? 

Tony: I’m glad you asked. Now that you are all here, and as you can see, I wanted you to join me in an adventure like never before. 

Y/N: Tony, I will not drink with you while being on a conference call. 

Tony: Y/N, I am not a madman. I don’t believe in virtual drinking. No, this one does not involve alcohol. All you need is your brain and the ability to lie. 

Natasha: Sounds interesting, continue. 

Tony: There is this new video game called Among Us which is an online multiplayer game. This game is pretty simple, there are crewmates or impostors. Crewmates have to do tasks to win and Impostors have to sabotage, fake tasks and kill to win. The goal of the game is to identify impostors and vote them out - yes, there will be meetings where we have to vote out someone or skip. The meetings also happen when someone reports a body. 

Both Wanda and Y/N made a sound that reminded of howling. They were interested. 

Bucky: Come on, you really called us to play some stupid video game. 

Wanda: Hey! Shush! I want to play. I am so bored in my room. I need some distraction. 

Y/N: Yes, exactly. This sounds so good. Let’s play, everyone, please.

Steve: Honestly, I am bored so I will join. However, I need instructions. 

Tony: Not a problem, buddy. I have already installed the game and sent you everything necessary. Just to explain one last detail. We will be on a conference call while playing. But, once the round starts, everyone has to mute their mics. When a meeting is called, you have to unmute and we discuss who to vote out and why. Once you are dead, you have to stay muted until the end of the game. At the beginning of every round, you will see whether you are an imposter or a crewmate. Don’t forget, impostors have to lie. 

Y/N: Give us ten minutes to check the materials and to start the game, alright? We have some people that are not too good with this type of technology. 

Y/N mocked Steve and Bucky especially. They were friends and she occasionally had to tease them. And when Sam was getting on her nerves, she would treat him the same way, if not even worse. 

Clint: Oh, that is easy. 

Natasha: Finally, something that will keep me occupied for more than ten seconds. 

Bruce: Do I have to play? 

Tony: Yes. Ten people are needed for two impostors and for it to be fun. You are playing, Banner.

Y/N: Does everyone understand? 

The team simultaneously agreed, each person with a different tone. Y/N turned on the game, as well as the rest of the team did, putting on the code Tony had sent them. She spawned in a lobby, as a little lime figure. 

Tony: You can also customise colours and accessories by coming to the laptop and using it. 

Y/N quickly did as Tony informed them. She changed the colour to purple and put a golden crown on. It was adorable and it did represent her a little. When she was finished, the rest of the team was in the lobby. They also customised their figures to represent them. 

Y/N: Oh my god, this is already so much fun.

Tony: Just to clarify - the crewmate’s vision is lower than the imposters have. The kill cooldown is 30 seconds. Voting time is 120 seconds, etc. You can see it on your left. I am starting the game and don’t forget to mute your mics. 

Y/N muted her mic as the game started. She was a crewmate. They all were standing around a table. She started to move to the right. That was when she noticed a map on the screen. When she opened it, a blue map appeared with yellow exclamation marks. When she ran to the first room, she noticed a chair was illuminated with yellow colour. 

"Alright, asteroids," she mumbled and did the task. 

Other players passed her, or stayed near her, even Bucky’s character did. His figure was white. When she moved, he moved with her. “That’s sus,” she commented and moved down the map to find another task. Bucky was still with her until the lights went off. 

“Fuck,” she whisper-shouted when the light around her was just a tiny circle. Several figures were around her and a report button appeared. She quickly clicked it. 

A board with all the names showed. Wanda and Sam were dead. She quickly unmuted her mic to talk to the rest of the players. “What the fuck was that?”

Tony: Where is the body?

Y/N: Down in the O2 I believe. The lights went off and suddenly, so many people were around me. Just a report button appeared. 

Steve: Who was there except you? 

Y/N: I saw Bucky, who was following me - by the way, sus, Barnes. You did your asteroids way too quickly. 

Bucky: I didn’t have that task, I just wanted to stay with you. 

Tony: Sus!

Natasha: Steve and I were in the admin. That fucking card swipe. I failed it like ten times! 

Y/N: Anyway, I think I saw Sam, Bruce and Clint with us. Now, Sam is dead. 

Clint: What if it’s you?

Y/N: How dare you, Barton? 

The time was slowly coming to its end and it was time to vote. Y/N had no idea who did the kill. She quickly voted skip. 

Bruce: We can skip because there are still eight of us. 

Tony: Banner, sus. 

Everyone skipped except Tony, who voted Clint. No one was ejected and the game could continue. They reappeared in the cafeteria around the table. This time, Y/N went down, because her map showed her she had some task there. Again, Bucky followed her. He stayed at the very beginning of the room while she went in and did the card swipe task. She was lucky to finish it on her second try. Once she was finished, Bucky was nowhere to be seen. 

She moved to the wires task. She heard the door to the cafeteria close. When she cleared the task, Bucky was again with her. Maybe he was just protecting her. She had no idea. 

The reactor was called. It was time to fix it. Bucky and Y/N moved through storage, under the electrical where they were met with Natasha, Tony and Bruce. They all moved to the reactor where Vision was. Everyone stacked on the upper reactor while Y/N was down alone. The reactor was saved and a body was reported. Natasha and Steve were killed. 

Bucky: What the hell happened? Natasha is dead and there are like four of us. 

Y/N: Was that a double kill? 

Tony: No, it was only Nat. Captain was killed somewhere else, obviously. 

Bruce: Most of us were together except Y/N, Bucky and Clint. 

Bucky: Y/N and I were in admin, doing our tasks. 

Tony: What about you, Vision? 

Vision: I am afraid I was alone most of the time. I did see people on cameras where I spent most of the time this round. 

Y/N: Clint, what about you? 

Clint: I was in… I don’t know the name but I came from the upper side of the map. 

Tony: I saw Steve going the way where medbay is. 

Y/N: Barton, you killed Steve!

Clint: No, I didn’t. 

Tony: Barton, get out of here. 

The voting was quickly coming to its end and almost everyone voted. Clint was the last one. He refused. When the time was up, the gang voted for Clint and he was ejected. 

Bucky: That’s what you get.

Y/N: That’s sus.

The game continued and Y/N was almost done with her tasks. Bucky was most of the time with her, again. When the lights went out again, she had decided not to go into the electrical. She didn’t want to die. It had been a long time since something happened. No bodies were reported, the taskbar was almost full. Alone, she quickly ran to the cafeteria and pressed the report button. When the board appeared, Only Bruce, Bucky and her were alive. 

Y/N: What?!

Bruce: Bucky, how could you? 

Bucky: Honestly, Bruce, I saw you kill Tony. Don’t blame me for this. 

Y/N: Oh no.

Bruce: Y/N, please don’t believe him, please. I am not the impostor. I was about to report the body when you hit the emergency button. 

Bucky: Wow, you are such a good liar. 

Y/N: No, don’t do this to me. 

Both of the men voted for each other, leaving her to decide the fate of the game. Who should she vote out? Bucky was with her most of the time and she did not see Bruce a lot. It made sense it was Banner. However, Bucky could be very good at this, using tactics like being in a field. 

Bruce: Y/N, you have to vote - vote for him. I am a crewmate. I saw him kill Tony in the lower reactor. 

Y/N: I mean, to be honest, Bucky was with me almost the whole game. I don’t think he would be able to do this. 

Bruce: No, Y/N, don’t do this. He needed you as an alibi. 

Bucky: How the hell would I do that? I was by her side the whole time and did my tasks. 

Y/N quickly voted for who she believed was the killer. When the results had shown, she voted for Bruce. For her, it made a lot of sense. How else would Bucky be able to do it? The rest of the team unmuted, screaming her name, laughing and making scenes. After a few seconds, the revelation came - they lost. Bucky was, in fact, the second impostor. 

Y/N: I mean, fuck both of you. What the actual fuck. You fucking tricked me!

Tony: Kids calls it marinating. 

Bucky: I am sorry, doll. You were the perfect person to stick with. 

Y/N: Again, fuck you. 

Bucky: You wish.

Sam: Wow, can you feel the sexual tension? 

Natasha: Sam, why do you make such stupid comments. You are such an intelligent man. 

Y/N changed her colour to Red, taking Wanda’s colour. She didn’t mind because she changed it into yellow. The next few games were funny. Two rounds Tony was an impostor. First with Steve than with Bruce. Two hours later, it was Y/N’s turn and she was paired with Bucky. 

“Holy shit,” she mumbled and sighed. This was her moment and she wanted to win, fast. She created a strategy. Before she could play by it, her phone rang. Bucky’s name appeared on her screen. “Yes?” 

“Well, what a dream team,” he chuckled. “What is the plan?” 

“First two kills, at random. After the first report, we will make a graveyard,” she said. “Honestly, that is going to be quick and funny.” 

“Sounds good. Where are you now?” he asked. 

She looked at the game and then at a map. “I am in admin, pretending to fail card swipe. I will turn off the lights once someone enters and then vent.” 

“I see Sam!”

“Kill him,” she encouraged him and turned off the lights. Vision came into the admin alone. 

They both took their opportunity and killed both people. Y/N vented into the cafeteria and went to weapons and Bucky quickly went into the comms, pretending to do a task. A few moments later, Sam’s body was reported. 

Natasha: Where is the body?

Wanda: Between O2 and shields. I think that is shields. 

Steve: Any suspicions? 

Y/N: I was passing by the cafeteria from medbay. When the lights were off, no one was around me. 

Tony: Bruce and I were in the reactor, doing the Simon says a thing. And I will fucking kill you for the report because now I have to do it again. 

Clint: Barnes, where were you? 

Bucky: On my way to storage. Did my quick task in coms. 

Bruce: So, no one is suspicious? 

Natasha: Honestly, we can skip. There are still eight of us. 

They all agreed and skipped voting. No one was ejected. When Y/N muted her mic, she went back to the call she had with Bucky. They both were laughing about the situation. “It’s a graveyard time.” 

“Where should we do it?” Bucky asked. 

“Reactor. After the first two kills, we will call the O2. During it, someone will come, searching for a body.” 

They both ran together into the reactor. Wanda was following them. She was about to become their first victim. After they arrived at the reactor, Bruce was also there, working on his Simon says. Their kill cooldown was almost at the end. 

“Come on, Buck, now!” 

Simultaneously, they killed Bruce and Wanda. Y/N waited almost ten seconds and called the O2 as she mentioned. Bucky quickly closed the doors around them, to slow them down. Their kill cooldown took thirty seconds and they needed time. 

The O2 was called off. They noticed the door around them opening and Tony was the first one approaching them. He reached the reactor and Bucky killed him. “One more and we win.”

“We have to hope someone else will come, otherwise they will call the button,” she explained. 

They were lucky. Steve and Natasha were on their way. Y/N quickly approached them and killed Steve. With that kill, the game was over and the impostors, Y/N and Bucky, won. 

Clint: What the fuck?

Natasha: How did you do that? 

Tony: They did a graveyard! 

Sam: Fuck you, Barnes, for killing me.

Bucky: It was my pleasure. 

Y/N: Oh my god, this was hilarious. Oh, my favourite round of all we played today. 

Bucky: Same. 

Tony: Want another game? 

Y/N: No, I want to take a break and make something to eat. We have been playing for hours. Let’s play tomorrow. 

Natasha: You are right. I need to take a nap after this. 

Steve: It’s almost seven. 

Natasha: My nap will take until tomorrow morning. 

Y/N’s phone beeped. She looked at the screen again. There was a text from the other impostor. Can I come over and watch a movie with you? It made her smile. 

Only if it involves the good popcorn you make and some kisses - she replied. They had been dating for over a month and things were going great. The team had their suspicions but they had decided not to meddle in their private life. Steve was happy and Tony was overly protective of Y/N but didn’t say a word. 

Y/N: I have to go. I am going to watch a movie. 

Clint: Oh yeah? Can I join? 

Y/N: No, I would like to enjoy it alone. 

Nat: Huh, that’s sus. 

Y/N: What is sus about it? 

Nat: Watching a movie, alone. Why would you want to watch it alone? 

Y/N: Because no one is making stupid comments during the movie I want to watch. 

Tony: Red, sus. 

Y/N: Alright, bye-bye friends. 

She ended the call and put her laptop on the night table. Rolling her eyes, she made her bed and went to the bathroom. Bucky would come any minute and she wanted to set the place. 

Who would have known this game would bring the whole team together? 

[kit-kat21]

“IF” 

…

“And now, the assignment,” Mrs. Hother said, returning to her desk among a chorus of groans and boos from the students sitting at their desks. She turned back around, facing them with a wide smile. “Oh, stop. This one will be fun. I promise.”

Jon Snow, sitting in the third row, fourth chair back, doubted that. Mrs. Hother was an enthusiastic teacher, he’d give her that, and she wanted all of her students to love what she clearly loved. But the problem was Mrs. Hother taught 11th grade poetry – a requirement for every student in their high school to take and very, very few kids actually liked 11th grade poetry.

“Now, everyone is going to pick a partner and from this list-” the woman held up a stack of papers in her hand. “You are going to recite it – from memory – in front of the class this Friday.”

This was only met with louder groans and boos. Jon didn’t join in with the noise but he whole-heartedly agreed with his classmates. Reciting a poem in front of the class from memory? That was considered fun?

The Old Gods help him. He hated speaking in front of classes. He had gone to school with all of these people since first grade and he knew just about all of them but for whatever reason, he got up in front of them and forgot every word he had ever known. Last year, he had to give a short presentation on phobias and just showed a five-minute clip from the movie Arachnophobia to get him through it.

“Now, stop your overdramatic reactions,” Mrs. Hother said as she sent to the first chair in each row to hand them the papers so they could be passed out. “This is going to help with vocabulary and figurative language. These both are considered important things to be somewhat competent at out in the real world.”

Jon took the papers and taking one for himself, he passed the last one to the kid sitting behind him. He held the list up, studying it carefully. He recognized a few. He didn’t know them but he recognized them. Robert Frost. Edgar Allan Poe. Emily Dickson. And Shakespeare. Those were all the obvious one. The rest of them, Jon had no idea what they were; how long or how difficult it would be to memorize.

“Now, you pick your partner, you and your partner choose from this list which one you want and you have until Friday to work on it,” Mrs. Hother said with a smile; as if this was the best thing she had ever said. “Now, some of these poems, as you will find are quite long so if a poem has four or more stanzas, you and your partner will only be expected to memorize the first two. Once you pick, come up to see me and I have them on easy printouts for you to work off of.”

Jon immediately looked to one of his best mates, Grenn, who was in this same second-period class. Grenn sat two rows away and was talking with Alys Mors, who sat next to him. When Grenn caught Jon looking at him, he pointed to Alys, and though he wanted to frown and sigh, Jon, instead gave a short nod.

Damn it, Grenn, Jon grumbled silently to himself. It didn’t matter if Grenn had had a crush on Alys Mors forever. Jon needed him more than Alys Mors. But again, he said all of this silently.

With a sigh, Jon looked around at his other classmates, all teaming up together. He then looked to his left; to the seat next to his in the last row against the window.

Sansa Stark was new that year, having moved to Last Hearth and almost immediately caused a stir because she was beautiful and also seemed nice – kind of a rarity when it came to the beautiful girls in high school; at least in Jon’s opinion. He assumed, the first time he saw her on the first day of school, that the popular crowd would snatch her up for themselves immediately. And maybe they had tried but Sansa Stark made it obvious to everyone within the first week that while being so nice to everyone, she also didn’t seem to be interested in making friends.

It wasn’t like he was always watching her but he noticed that she was on her phone often throughout the day, in between classes, and as soon as the final bell rang, she was practically running from the school. He just figured it was something to do with her family or maybe she had an after-school job to get to.

Sansa was looking at the list but feeling eyes on her, she turned her head to Jon. She gave him a small smile and Jon returned it.

“Partners?” He suggested.

“Alright,” she nodded. “Do you have a preference?”

“Something short and easy.”

Sansa laughed at that. “I know most of these. Mrs. Hother did not give us any of those.”

“Of course she didn’t,” he frowned. “Where’s the fun in that?”

She laughed again and Jon noted how light and soft it was. “We can do “IF” by Rudyard Kipling. It’s a good one. It’s long so we just have the first two stanzas to worry about. Unless… do you want to do another one?”

“No,” Jon shook his head quickly. “That sounds like a good one,” he said as if he had any idea what the Hell any of these poems were. And Sansa smiled at him; as if she could read his mind. He smiled a little, too. “Do you want to meet after school and start working on it?”

“I have to go home right after school,” Sansa said and she began to shake her head. “I… I know we do have to work on it though. If you’d want to, you could come over.” She said those words but he could tell that she was unsure about saying them; as if she wasn’t entirely sure that she should be saying them.

“That sounds good,” Jon agreed before he over-analyzed her behavior. “My mom has a divorced women’s support group meeting at our house this evening and except for the good delivery they always get, it’s best to stay away from it. The women have told me they all love me but I’m also a guy so they hate me at the same time, too.”

Sansa smiled and let out a laugh.

Seven Hells this girl was beautiful. He wondered why she didn’t have any friends; or rather, why she didn’t want any. He wondered what she was always looking at on her phone. He wondered where she was always rushing off to every afternoon. He wondered about her.

Maybe Grenn wanting to be partners with Alys Mors wasn’t the worst thing. Now, he was partners with Sansa Stark and no offense to Grenn, but this seemed much better.

“Meet you on the front steps after final bell?” Jon quickly suggested before he could say something really stupid – like telling her how beautiful she was.

Sansa paused for only a moment before she gave a single nod. “Meet you there.”

…

Jon had a car and he drove them to Sansa’s house, he following Sansa’s directions. Her messenger bag was in her lap and he saw the way her fingers curled around the sides of it, her grip growing tighter; as if she was growing more and more nervous for some reason.

“I looked up this poem during lunch,” Jon broke the silence between them. “Thank God we only have to do the first two stanzas.”

Sansa’s lips twitched at that and she turned her head to look at him. “Did you like it?”

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “I was more distracted with wondering how I’m going to memorize at least one of these stanzas.”

Sansa didn’t comment on that but she still smiled faintly and looked back out the windshield. “I live with my uncle and aunt,” she said rather suddenly. “My Uncle Benjen and his wife, my Aunt Willa. I…” she took a deep breath and looked at him, Jon glancing at her before back to the road but he let her know that he as definitely listening. “My mom and dad and siblings live in Winterfell. But it was decided that it would be best if I moved up here to live with my aunt and uncle.”

That gave Jon a Hell of a lot more questions but he realized that he was probably the only person at Last Hearth High School to know that about her. Maybe this meant that she would tell him more. He hoped so. Sansa was nice and beautiful and he wanted to know a lot more.

“It’s right up here,” Sansa said, pointing ahead.

It was a gray ranch house with a bright yellow door and white wicker outdoor furniture on the front porch. Jon pulled into the driveway but parked near the end in case someone needed to get in or out of the garage. Sansa looked downright pale now. Well, more pale and Jon wanted to ask her if she was or if he was just imagining it.

He followed her from the car, up the driveway, up the front walkway to the porch and the front door. He saw her as she physically paused with her hand on the doorknob, exhaling a deep breath. She looked at him and Jon began to frown, wondering what the Hell was going on. Did she, with her aunt and uncle murder people and there was going to be dead bodies or their parts all over inside?

“I need you to promise me something,” she then said.

“Alright.” Jon didn’t think about his answer because he didn’t think that he had to.

“It would really mean a lot if you didn’t tell everyone at school about…” she took another deep breath and swallowed. “Just don’t tell anyone about this.”

“About what?”

Sansa didn’t answer. She pushed open the front door and Jon saw that it opened into a small entry way and the living room. The television was on and he heard the television was turned to some cartoon.

“Mama!” He then heard and as Sansa stepped into the house, Jon was able to see more.

The toys on the carpeted floor, the blanket spread out, and the little toddler sitting on it, stretching her arms out for Sansa as soon as she saw her come into the house.

“Hi, baby girl,” Sansa quickly dropped her bag and went straight for the toddler – obviously, her daughter – and scooped her up, kissing her on the cheek. “Oh, I missed you today. Did you miss me today?”

“Yes!” The girl exclaimed, clapping her hands, and Sansa laughed, kissing her cheek again.

She looked back to Jon, who was still standing at the door, seeing what was in front of him but also, not really seeing it at all.

Sansa had a baby? But how? They were in high school.

Well, that’s stupid, Jon, he swore at himself. His mom was eighteen when she had him and Sansa was far from the first teenager in this world to have a baby.

It made sense now. Constantly on the phone between classes, she was probably checking on her daughter. And rushing out of school right as the day ended, she was hurrying to be here. Was this why her parents sent her up to Last Hearth to live?

With the smallest smile, Jon closed the front door behind him.

“Clara, this is Jon. He goes to school with me,” Sansa said. “Can you say hi to Jon?”

The little girl looked at Jon and was still smiling. She looked like Sansa, he noted. Jon smiled back.

“Hi!” She chirped.

Jon’s smile widened. “Hi, Clara.”

She giggled, bringing her hands to her mouth, and Sansa smiled, too. She then looked to Jon and kept smiling. And Jon was grinning like an idiot but he didn’t really care.

…

[staranon95]

DinCobb Week Day 4: AU/Freebie (SFW)

for @dincobbweek​ this time we’re returning to a favourite AU of mine. The Halo universe!

i’ve previously explored a Halo/Mandalorian AU. the first story is very much NSFW but this story acts as a prequel showing how Cobb and Din meet in that verse

before we get started here is some very handy terminology

ODST - Orbital Drop Shock Trooper Spartan - a term for someone who was a child soldier and given physical augmentations to become a weapon ONI - Office of Naval Intelligence (so like the in universe FBI) UNSC - United Nations Space Corp (the army but in space) Covenant - invading alien forces and the main villains in the series Reach - a planet humans had settled that was destroyed by the Covenant

AO3 Link

Blast Radius

When Cobb was told by his CO to expect some heavy infantry of reinforcements, he was expecting another ODST squadron, not a Spartan III whose black and silver armour made him look more like an ONI operative than a functioning war machine for the UNSC.

Now granted, Cobb had nothing against Spartans. Spartans were the reason they were even managing to hold their own against the Covenant. But he did have a problem with this Spartan.

“Sergeant Vanth?”

Cobb looked up from the view into New Mombasa to see his Lieutenant Jo leading forward a heavily armed Spartan.

“Infantry’s arrived,” she said, and Cobb wished she didn’t have her helmet on so he could read her better.

“Sergeant Vanth,” the Spartan said. “Spartan A114 reporting in.” The Spartan then snapped to it and saluted him to show that he knew how to respect his superiors, but Cobb knew better. Spartans had a reputation to Lone Wolf it, and Cobb didn’t need that shit on his team.

“A Spartan,” he said incredulously. The Spartan easily towered over him by nearly a foot. All those augmentations and front of the line armour specs only added to the mass that made all Spartans seem unkillable. But in Cobb’s eyes, it made them cocky as well. “Wasn’t expecting a Spartan.”

“It was all they had on hand to offer,” 114 said.

“Right, well, settle in, big guy. We’re mainly search and rescue. Free hostages and get them to safety while clearing out the nests, you hear?”

114 nodded. “Loudly.” He unhooked a sniper rifle from his back and moved forward to join the rest of Cobb’s team with the look out—without needing to be told or looking to be told.

Cobb sighed. It was going to be a long fight.

…

“Vanth, come in.”

“Go ahead, Issa.”

“I’m spotting Jakal reinforcements on the rooftops. Beam rifles from the looks of it.”

“All. Squad, keep your ears on and your heads low and—”

Cobb heard a crack over head and ducked low as a second one followed shortly after. He held his battle rifle up as he looked for the source of the shots.

“Jakals are cleared. You’re free to go.”

That was 114.

Cobb sighed and clicked his tongue. “A heads up would be nice next time, 114.”

“Time’s of the essence, Sergeant.” Then he heard a ‘click’ and Cobb knew the bastard had likely muted on his end.

Fucking Spartans.

…

New Mombasa was a fucking mess. Based on the chatter they were picking up, the Covenant forces seemed to become more and more contained to one part of the city, like they were congregating. Other ODST squads had been deployed to hotter areas in the city, and Cobb’s smaller strike team made it easier for infiltration to minimalize casualties. They were the cleaning crew, really, and Cobb didn’t mind that.

But he did mind that his Spartan was deathly silent most of the time.

He had 114 act as their eyes. With his high-powered scope, he was able to get a better view of the terrain before Cobb’s team went down in to clear it out, and Cobb had to admit, 114 was a good shot. Those enhanced reflexes sure came in clutch in the best ways possible, but Cobb was expecting at least some communication on his end.

114 acted like a brick wall and Cobb hated it. He knew nothing of the Spartan, didn’t even know his name, and while it was nice to be fighting with someone who was this well skilled, Cobb didn’t know if he’d choose 114 over another top notch ODST squad.

“Looks like we got a standard fair here,” Jo said. “Couple of Brutes. Grunts as back up and a Jakal nest.”

Cobb nodded. “You see a Chieftain?”

“Nah, looks like pretty standard fare for them.”

“Good. Listen up! We clear this intersection and that gets us one step closer to the bank. You play it safe and you play it hard. Cover always. Focus fire on Jakals and Grunts and then the Brutes. Clear the field before we got in heavy. Got it?”

He received a chorus of Oo Rahs! and then utter silence from 114. “Hey, Spartan, you got that?”

The Spartan nodded and said nothing.

“Good. I want you on that roof top. Take the Jakals and then we move in. Provide cover from the Brutes if they get close.”

“I think it’d be better if I were on the ground with you,” the Spartan said, and Cobb was surprised he said anything at all—let alone battle advice.

“No,” Cobb said. “You’re best on the rooftops.”

“But—”

“That’s an order, Spartan.”

He could see that 114 was frustrated with how he tightened his grip around his sniper, but he fell in line all the same and marched off to find a perch of the sight before the team moved in to clear the junction.

“Get into position,” he said to his team, and they all crouched for cover and waited for 114 to get into position.

He looked through the scope of his battle rifle and scoped out the scene. Four Brutes, half a dozen Grunts, and two Jakals. Nothing in comparison to what Cobb had dealt with before, but it was better to play things safe and slow rather than to rush in.

“114, check in,” he said.

Silence.

“114, this is Sergeant Vanth. Check in.”

Again, silence. And then he knew why.

Rather than targeting the Jakals first and letting the squadron in there was a sudden explosion that caught Cobb off guard. 114 had discharged a round into one of the plasma cells stacked in the area that took the Covenant force by surprise, killing one Brute in the onslaught. Then Cobb saw 114 jump into the fray from what should’ve been his perch, taking a running jump to clear a distance of a dozen or so feet and come to the ground in a roll to lessen the impact from a fifteen foot drop. Then he struck with deadly precision on the Covenant left recovering from the shock.

“Fuck,” Cobb said. “Issa, eyes on the Jakals.”

“You got it, Sarge.”

“The rest of you, eyes forward! Now!”

He leapt over his cover, raised his rifle against his shoulder and began to pick off the Grunts one by one, while 114 aimed for the Brutes. And he was doing so with just a magnum pistol and a knife.

One of the Brutes raised his spiker in Cobb’s direction, and he dove down behind a concrete barrier as the deadly spikes imbedded themselves into the asphalt where he had just been standing previously. A Grunt jumped into his field of vision on his left and he turned and fired, hitting the Grunt’s methane tank, which he saw spark and catch before it blew. He raised his hands for cover and then looked over the barrier to see the field. The Grunts were fleeing. The Jakals were dead, and 114 was locked in combat with the only remaining Brute until he managed to drive his knife into the Brute’s throat and finish it off with a shot from the magnum until the Brute fell dead.

Cobb charged up to him. “What was that!?”

114 wiped his knife off his vambrace before sheathing it. “I told you. It was better to have me on the ground.”

“You disobeyed an order!” It was hard to feel commanding in contrast to a Spartan, who towered over Cobb in every way and could likely throw him up against the wall.

“It was efficient. You aren’t using me for my skills.” It also didn’t help that 114 was a calm speaker, rarely showing any form of inflection.

“Your skills are firing cover. My team can handle the job on their own. Disobey me like that again and I’ll see you reassigned.”

The Spartan looked at him, head tilted down in his direction. For the longest time he didn’t move until he took a half step back.

“Clear?” Cobb said.

“Clear, Sergeant.”

“Good.”

He looked over his shoulder to his team and waved them forward. “We’re moving.”

…

Scrounging in conditions like this were hard. Training to be an ODST required a certain amount of time in the field already before jumping into training specifically to handle an orbital drop. And then from there it was ‘survive until you group up or you’re pulled out’, which meant with the sun falling on the city that was burning, it was time to break for an MRE and some water before the final push into the heart of the city to help with the withdrawal of ONI scientists. It was the last job before the UNSC was pulling out the troops, which meant that ONI was going nuclear with its facilities so it wouldn’t fall into the hands of the enemy. New Mombasa was being abandoned in the short run. Once the Covenant was off Earth, they’d probably try to rebuild, but for now, it was pull back and see what happened.

It was nice, for a moment to sit on the ground with his back against the wall and his helmet off. It could’ve been a nice day in the city. The sun was warm. There was a breeze cooling his sticky skin from the sweat when the internal fans in his helmet couldn’t cool him fast enough.

But then he saw the Spartan who stood there rigidly off to the side of their little encampment. He had his back to the rest of them and seemed as if he was still on patrol despite the fact that the area was safe and they needed to rest before the final push.

Cobb sighed and got to his weary feet. He walked forward, grabbing at his pouch for one of the MREs he still had left. “Hey, Spartan.”

114 only turned to look over his shoulder.

“You eat yet?”

“Not hungry,” he said, before looking over the highway they were on and the sheer drop it led to.

“Come on, partner. You gotta eat. We’ve been going for near twelve hours and at least another twelve yet before we’re out for good.” Cobb stepped in front of him and handed out the MRE. He didn’t know if Spartans had the same standards as ODSTs. Did he carry MREs? Looked like he had water at the least.

Then 114 did lift his hand and take the MRE from Cobb’s hand. “Thank you.”

“Nothin’ to it, pal.” He stepped back, slapped 114 on the arm, and went back to his squad.

Then, when Cobb was sitting on the ground once more, he saw the Spartan move to a concrete barrier and take a seat. Then he removed his helmet, showing only a shock of dark hair, overgrown by UNSC standards. He didn’t see his face, but at least the Spartan ate.

…

Their final push into New Mombasa was the ONI facility itself, a giant cube looking building built in the center of a manmade pond to look fancy. It was a rough sight, but under the cover of darkness, it wasn’t like Cobb could see it all that well. All he was looking at was the sight of four ONI scientists being overlooked by a Covenant strike team—which included a Brute Chieftain.

Chieftains were worse than the usual foot soldier Brutes. Their armour was heavier, including armour that could only be struck through or cracked at the very least with specific armour piercing rounds. Chieftains also usually carried heavier weaponry, and this one had a gravity hammer on his back.

“They’ll want to keep the scientists alive,” Cobb said. “That’ll be our advantage to get in. Issa, what do you see?”

“By my count? Five Brutes on top of the Chieftain. A dozen Grunts. Jakals with shields but no beam rifles.”

“The structure doesn’t make good for sniper nests,” Jo added.

“114, you there?” Cobb asked.

“I’m here.”

“Report in.”

“I’m in position. Not the easiest place to leave in a pinch if you need back up.”

“We’ll go slow,” Cobb said. “Target the Brutes and get them broken up. I don’t want to fight the back.”

“Hear you loud and clear.”

114 went quiet on his end but didn’t mute.

Progress.

Then he turned to the scene at hand to plan the best way forward.

“On your count, 114. You take the lead. We’ll pick off the stragglers.”

“Going loud in three.”

Cobb looked down his scope and breathed in deeply and watched as 114’s first shot landed and struck a brute dead.

“Keep them clear from the hostages,” Cobb said. “I don’t want them taking them anywhere else. Issa, Jo, on me. We’re moving.”

They moved in as a unit before breaking and posting up at the windows that lead into the building they were infiltrating, most of which were broken. Once Cobb had a clear line of sight, he opened fire.

The darkness gave them a natural cover, and with their spread position, the enemy had no idea where they were. They kept the Brutes at bay away from the hostages where they were pressed flat on the floor to cover from the spray of bullets and plasma. For the time being, they had the upper hand until the Brute Chieftain roared and pointed in their direction.

“They’re coming out! Heads up!” Cobb said.

First the Grunts and then the few remaining Jakals which were picked off with deadly precision until the Chieftain himself charged out with his hammer swinging in Jo’s direction.

Cobb stood up from his cover and peppered the Chieftain’s back with bursts of rounds until he turned on Cobb and came in his direction.

“Cobb!” He heard Jo’s concern over the radio, but it was too late.

He rolled and dropped to avoid the Chieftain’s hammer as it discharged a burst that affected the CPU components in Cobb’s armour. But then the Chieftain swung again and the force of it sent him to his back, momentarily stunned before the Chieftain swung the weapon around, showing the sharp edge on the other side of the weapon head before crashing it down on Cobb’s chestplate.

The chestplate cracked under the pressure, and Cobb felt a burst of pain before the force drove the air from his lungs and he laid there, prone and stunned.

His ears were ringing, and he gasped like a fish which only made the wound worse until spots clouded his vision and he blacked out.

He blinked and saw the Chieftain’s armour cracked by an armour piercing round from a sniper.

He blinked again and saw Issa and Jo corner the Chieftain before a second round struck his back before a third struck his neck and he began to tumble.

He blinked and lost sight of what was before him.

…

“Cobb? Cobb.”

“Sarge, lift your right hand if you’re awake.”

“Is he okay?”

“We need to get the hammer out. His lungs could be damaged.”

“I’ll handle that. Hold him steady.”

Pressure on his shoulders, gently so before a wrenching and—

He gasped and coughed, felt pain radiating out from his chest and he tried to raise his hands to cover it, but he was held down gently.

“Spartan, there’s biofoam at his hip.”

“Got it.”

He heard the sound of an aerosol can being applied to his chest before the pressure on his lungs was abated and he could take a deep breath and relax.

“You there, Sarge?”

He nodded and tried to reach back and pat for Issa’s hands.

“Chestplate is cracked,” he heard 114 say. “The biofoam will hold for a few hours, but he needs medical attention.”

“I’ll get to the hostages,” Issa said.

“Evac point is over the bridge,” Jo said. “I’ll post up with Issa and get the hostages to safety. You good with the Sarge?”

“Just fine.”

Then he felt himself being lifted from the ground and cradled close to someone’s chest.

“Hey, Spartan,” he mumbled.

“That was damn reckless. You’re lucky you’re alive.”

“Knew you were watchin’.”

He heard 114 sigh. “Keep your words to yourself, Vanth. This fight isn’t over yet.”

…

He had heavy bruising to his chest and a hairline fracture in his sternum. He was on bedrest for a least a month with another month of light duty. He was lucky his lungs weren’t pierced.

Regardless, he had the luxury of his own private room in an actual hospital and not just a field tent. He was on some medical grade painkillers, and his team was being commended for their bravery. All around successful.

But now with this free time, he intended to do some research—never could abide stagnation for long. He pulled up a datapad and using his UNSC credentials, managed to get into the databases of every active soldier on the ground. He searched for Spartan A114, and as he suspected, he was given a lot of redacted material.

The Spartan III program was still tightly under wraps, but parts of it were being declassified, and through the grapevine, Cobb knew they were different from the old Spartan IIs.

Not as good training facilities. Not as good outcomes or survival rates.

He saw the name ‘Reach’ in 114’s file and knew if the Spartan had survived the planet’s destruction, he was a survivor to reckon with, and also why he didn’t have a fireteam of his own. He probably lost them all in the fray.

Everything else including personal details like date of birth, home planet, and name were redacted, so there wasn’t much else he could look into for the time being. But he did file a request to have 114 placed permanently on his team. He wanted to keep the Spartan close.

…

Friends and teammates would come by and visit him. Issa and Jo in pairs, but then one strange visitor came: a very, very tall man with dark hair, dark eyes, and a neatly kept moustache.

“This seat taken?”

He’d heard that voice of his helmet dozens of times, and Cobb looked at him and couldn’t believe his eyes, that he was seeing the Spartan—his Spartan—out of his armour.

Cobb waved his hand to the chair and pushed a button to have his bed elevated so he could face 114 head on.

It was almost comical to see 114 sit down in a chair not meant for someone of his size, but he made it work. He was dressed in a uniform and not standard military fatigues. There were metals pinned to the beast pocket, and Cobb could see what many of them meant.

“Ceremony?” Cobb asked.

“No. Meeting. I heard you put in a request for me to be made a permanent member of your squad.”

“Well. I liked you. Felt we fought well together eventually. We could use another on our team.”

“I’m surprised you’ve been managing well with only the three of you.”

“Used to be four, but I sacked the other guy.” Cobb shook his head at the memory of Toro and his hot-headed ways. The kid was lucky he hadn’t lost his head if Cobb hadn’t pulled him back time and time again.

“How are you holding up?” 114 asked, eyes drifting to Cobb’s chest and how its swathed with bandage and gauze.

“Eh. Could be worse. Chestplate took the brunt of it though.”

“That’s what it’s for.” 114 breathed in deeply, licked his lips, and looked down at his hands. “It’s . . . it’s good to see you. That you’re okay.”

“Thanks to you.”

“I barely had my sights on him.”

“Hey, Spartan. Look at me.”

He looked up, and Cobb was struck with how upset 114 looked. Upset in almost a sad way.

“I’m here. You killed the Brutes. Hostages made it out. That is a hundred-percent in my books.”

“Still, I . . .” He breathed in, a shuddering breath. “I don’t like watching from afar when my teammates are in the direct line of fire. It makes me feel . . .”

“Like you can’t protect us.”

114 said nothing.

“Listen,” Cobb said. “We can discuss this. Figure out new strategies. My team, we’re new at this. We’ve worked alongside only a handful of Spartans but not directly with one. We’ll figure it out, see what works for the both of us. But I’m not tolerating Lone Wolf shit. We’re a team.”

114 nodded.

“You good, soldier?”

114 raised his head. “Sir, yes, sir.”

Cobb smirked. “That’s what I like to hear.”

Satisfied with that answer, 114 stood and prepared to leave but just before he could get to the door, Cobb called out, “Hey, Spartan. You got a name to add to the A114?”

The Spartan turned to look at him, pulling open the door as he did, and after a moment of hesitation, he said, “Din.”

“Nice to have you, Din. Rest up if you can.”

“Yes, sir.”

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

She [2]

Warnings: non-consent sex (series)

This is dark! Steve and explicit. 18+ only.

Series Synopsis: Steve Rogers’ life is turned upside down by a reporter.

Chapter Summary: Steve deals with the aftermath of his recent notoriety.

Note: Alright, so I know this starts slow but I promise it is a steady creep towards the finish line. 

Thanks to everyone for their patience and feedback. :)

I really hope you enjoy. 💋

<3 Let me know what you think with a like or reblog or reply or an ask! Love ya!

Steve

It was a morning like any other. Steve woke up, pulled on his track pants and a light blue tee, and took his time tying his old sneakers. He stretched as he neared the door and hopped down the front steps of his walk-up. It was early and as quiet as New York got.

He set off on his usual route. It was his only chance to just lose himself. He could just run and not think about everything that awaited him. He was due at the compound that day; another briefing. That one thought tugged at his mind. Was it time?

When he returned to his townhouse, he jogged up his steps and let himself inside. He had some water and made his usual breakfast. Two eggs and four strips of bacon with rye toast. He sat and ate alone. The place felt empty.

It had taken him over two years to renovate the place and he missed the flurry of activity. He hadn’t felt so lonely then, even when half the world had disappeared. Now it was just him. He felt less and less himself every day. Bitter, resentful, tired.

He rinsed his dishes as he stared at the deep red tiles above the sink. He sighed. He’d tried dating. He was about as great at it was he had been when he weighed as much as his left leg. He dried the plate and placed it among the stack. He didn’t know why he had so many; it was only ever him. The glass went with the rest and the utensils clattered loudly into the drawer. 

A buzz sounded. The noise was quiet but nagging. He often ignored it. He left his phone by the door when he got home to charge and only took it when he went to work. It continued to vibrate. It was ringing. He unhooked the cord and answered as Fury’s name flashed up at him.

“Rogers,” He answered as he headed upstairs. “I’m on my way. I’m not due for another--”

“You’re due when I say you’re due,” Fury snapped. “Which is now.”

“Alright, just let me get dressed,” Steve huffed as he sat on his bed and kicked off his shoes. 

“Maybe start answering your phone,” Fury snarled.

“It was charging.” Steve argued. 

The line went dead. He tossed the phone on the mattress and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. For all he did, it was never a please or thank you, it was only more, more, more. 

He stood and pushed his hair back. He’d take his time just to spite Fury. The biggest act of defiance he could muster. He went into the bathroom and cranked on the shower. He closed the glass door and let it steam up before he stripped. He glanced in the mirror. 

He wondered what life would have been if he had stayed the skinny boy who punched up. He was certain even that would be a happier existence than this. He had sold his soul for what? It didn’t have to be him, it could have been anyone. Why had he always insisted on being the big guy? The hero?

He pulled open the shower and stepped inside. The cloud of steam settled over him and he closed his eyes. No, it did have to be him because there was no one like Steve Rogers.

🖋️

Steve walked into the compound. He was agitated. He had been accosted coming out of his house by some photographer and had resisted the urge to swat him away like a fly as he unlocked his car. The compound was worse. A dozen people with cameras awaited him as he pulled up to the parking lot gate and waited for the booth operator to let him in.

He took the stairs. Fury greeted him with crossed arms and his usual one-eyed sneer. This couldn’t be good. He held a magazine and turned it to reveal the cover. Steve squinted and shrugged as he stopped before the irritable man.

“Look closer,” Fury shoved the magazine towards him. 

In the corner, Steve recognized himself. An edited photo which showed half of his face with his cowl on and the other without. A small tagline stood out below: ‘The Man Without A Plan: Steve Rogers’ Struggle for Stability’. He grabbed the issue and looked closer at the glossy cover in shock.

“Shit,” He swore.

“Shit?” Fury repeated. “So I guess I don’t have to remind you of what you said to that reporter.”

“Why are you mad at me? You approved the interview.” Steve flipped through the pages to the exclusive.

“But I didn’t give the interview. If I had, it wouldn’t have made the front cover,” Fury hissed.

“No, it would all be redacted,” Steve started to read through. “I didn’t--”

“You didn’t say any of that?” Fury challenged.

“No…” Steve looked up. “I did but I…”

“You let a journalist get the best of you.” Fury shook his head. “And now your plastered all over the city.”

“It’s one magazine,” Steve said.

“You need to start using that goddamn phone of yours.” Fury reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell. He quickly typed and turned it to Steve. “Search yourself once in a while. I know it’s tacky but shit.”

Steve read over the top news articles; ‘Steve Rogers lashes out at journalist in report’ and ‘Rogers’ Dilemma: Hero condemns ungrateful civilians’. He pulled back and looked at the magazine again. The stabbing in his heart turned to fire.

“That little--” He clamped his lips together to keep from swearing. 

“Come on,” Fury glanced around. “Let’s talk somewhere else. This much attention on you, we can’t be too careful.”

He followed Fury through the halls and past several training rooms. He thought of the reporter and her pensive eyes. The way she’d watched him so closely as she scribbled on her notepad. She’d seemed harmless until she started asking questions. 

After he calmed down, he’d nearly forgotten about the whole debacle. He assumed it would be buried like most of his interviews. One day of press and then done.

Fury led him into the plain office which looked like it was never used. It was as clean and clinical as an operating room. Fury leaned on the desk as Steve pored over the last lines of the article and paced.

“There’s not gonna be a briefing this morning,” Fury said. “Not for you.”

“What--?”

“It’s best we keep this quiet but… Rogers, you need a break. Take it.” Fury pushed back his long leather duster as he gripped his hips. “Maybe get away from the city until this all dies down.”

“Get away? This is my city,” Steve hissed. “I won’t be run out by some… some…”

Bitch! He wanted to say but he held it in. Even in front of this man, he had to put on a mask. He could never just say what he was thinking. What he was feeling. He bent the magazine and hit it with his palm.

“It’s just an article. Christ. I think my job is a little bigger than some gossip rag.” Steve huffed.

“I’d agree but it’s not just my call and it’s not just about you. We have a team, a younger team now. They can’t be distracted by all this.” Fury said.

“How long?” Steve asked.

“Two weeks.” Fury replied. “For now.”

“For now?” Steve repeated. 

“It should all die down before then but if it doesn’t…”

“This is bullshit.” Steve barked. “What did I say that was so wrong?”

“The concern is your temper and as ridiculous as I thought that was, I’m starting to see the sense in it.” Fury sneered. “You need to calm down, Captain.”

“I don’t have a temper problem.” Steve snarled.

“Why don’t you read that again? You were hostile and some would think intentionally trying to intimidate that reporter. A female.” Fury said pointedly. “Who, by the looks of her, isn’t much of a match for a super soldier.”

“I was across the room from her,” Steve argued. “I didn’t even raise my voice.”

“People won’t know that. They know that you got aggressive, quickly it seems, and then shut down the interview abruptly.” Fury took a breath. “You’re only lucky she stopped where she did.”

Steve glared at Fury. He gritted his teeth as he gripped the magazine tighter.

“Fine,” He uttered. “Two weeks.”

🖋️

Steve didn’t realize he still had the magazine in his hand until he got in his car. He sat, staring blindly out the windshield, then slowly looked down. It was bent in his grip and as he let it fall onto the passenger seat, it remained warped. He shoved his key in the slot and turned the engine.

Still, he didn’t budge. He grasped the steering wheel and a rumble began deep in his chest. A carnal growl. He invited her into his home and she ruined his reputation in return. 

Perhaps he was still the naive little Brooklyn boy. He thought she was so sweet over the phone. She was just as self-serving and apathetic as everyone else in this world. The very same he had saved, time and time again.

He pulled out sharply and flashed his pass to the booth. There were still photographers out on the sidewalk; waiting for him. He drove without thinking. He had never felt so angry. He had never let himself be this angry. Always holding it in for the sake of others. Always compromising his feelings because it was ‘right’.

He stopped parallel to the curb. His vision cleared and he peered up at the tall building. He shouldn’t have come here but he was there and he couldn’t stop himself. He turned off his car and waited.

He muted his phone as it kept buzzing; Bucky, Sam, all his team members. Asking where he was or maybe about his new found infamy. Well, he wasn’t their leader anymore. Not for the next two weeks so they could take care of themselves as he found something else to do. Something for himself, for once in his life.

He didn’t know how long he waited. Probably too long. An hour or two. Then he saw her. She appeared through the front doors of the building, her attention on the open purse in her hand. She dropped it as a camera flashed and Steve leaned his seat back as he watched her scramble for the overturned contents.

She didn’t look malicious. At a glance, she was just another girl. She picked up her purse and resumed her route past the photographer. He watched her through the rear view as she disappeared into a sandwich shop just a few buildings down. 

He readjusted his seat and hovered his hand over the ignition. He paused and closed his eyes. What was he doing? Let it go. It would all just go away.

He started the car and pulled out into traffic. He was edgy and found himself leaning a bit too hard on the gas. He stopped short as he almost hit another car. He punched the dash and swore. She could play innocent but she wouldn’t get away with it. Not if he had anything to say about it.

🖋️

Steve went home but not for long. Another photographer outside his house as if he would give them a show on his front stoop. He went inside and paced his front room then went to the kitchen and looked in the fridge. He wasn’t hungry. He went upstairs and changed. Black pants, grey hoodie, a dark blue ball cap to cover his blonde hair. He fished out his only pair of sunglasses and found his way back to the first floor.

He peeked through the window. The photographer was still there. He went to the back and glanced out into the small fenced yard. Nothing but the patio set he had yet to use and overgrown grass. He went back and grabbed his keys and wallet. He sneaked out through the back gate, careful that no one saw him slip down the next street.

He walked to the subway and strode down into the station. He checked the time as he climbed on the train. He sat by the door and his leg jiggled impatiently. He stopped it with his hand and looked around. No one else seemed to notice his anxiety or him. It had been a long time since he felt invisible.

He got off and slipped past the crowds. He walked the same street he had lingered on hours before. He kept to the other side of the street as he checked the time again. Would she already be gone? He kept to the mouth of the alley and watched the photographers as they waited by the front doors.

When she came out, it was the same as before. She scurried away from her own ilk as they attempted to talk to her and catch her in their lens. They left her at the subway entrance; their cameras too expensive to chance in the underground. Besides it would be difficult enough to get a shot in a car full of people.

He crossed the street and quickly descended the grimy steps behind her. He caught sight of her just before she disappeared onto her platform. He kept his distance, far enough that he’d get on the next car. The train pulled up and he watched her step inside before he mirrored her.

When the train shifted, he waited a minute before he slipped through the doors to the next car. He sat at the end as she huddled in a seat on the other side. She kept her head down, her eyes on her phone. The old New York solitary. She looked entirely vulnerable and it made something inside of him flinch. A subtle snap as he couldn’t look away even as she did nothing at all. 

She was nothing compared to him. He could break her as easily as he did criminals and villains. Probably easier. He gulped as he pushed his shoulders back and tried to resist the thoughts. No. He wasn’t that. He didn’t do that. 

But what was he doing? Following her; watching her. He hadn’t thought about that. He’d just done it. What would he do from here? Follow her home and what? He could try talking to her but for what? The damage was done; she couldn’t undo what she’d done. And she likely wouldn’t want to. 

She had used him to climb her way up the ladder. Now her name was featured alongside his and the world was at her feet. She was the innocent and he was her antagonist. Well, if that’s what she wanted.

As the train stopped, she stood and he did too. Almost too quickly. He slowed and kept several bodies between them as he followed her out onto the platform. She continued up onto the streets and he stayed with her. Close enough to see her but far enough she wouldn’t see him.

Her building was among many sentinels looming along the New York skyline. Boxy overpriced apartments which were often barely more than a single room. He watched her flit inside and waited. Slowly, he approached the door and stepped inside the small entryway. It was empty. 

He searched the rows of buttons for her name. The speaker was outdated and dirty. Even he could tell. Her last name was half-faded. He memorized her number and went back out into the street. He inhaled and shoved his hands in his pockets as he coolly walked on. He stopped just past her building and looked down the alleyway between it and the next.

The dimming sky contrasted the wrought metal of fire escape. He glanced over his shoulder and turned down the alley. The dumpster stunk and broken bottles littered the ground around it. He stopped beyond the stinking box and looked up. He bent his knees and jumped, catching himself on the bottom rung of the ladder.

He pulled himself up. Second floor, he noted. He climbed the first set of stairs and the next and on until he reached her floor. He counted the windows across the side of the building but it barely helped. He didn’t know where they started and ended.

He went to the end of the escape and the window beside him lit up. He ducked and listened. He could hear every step on the other side of the wall. His enhanced ears could even measure the heart beat within. He slowly raised himself and peeked over the window ledge.

He couldn’t believe his luck. Or the coincidence. It was her. Her purse was on the table as she removed her blazer. Her small apartment was cluttered but not messy. She yawned as she went to the fridge. She took out a slim can of sparkling water and opened it. She searched the shelves and pulled out a styrofoam box. She picked at the contents with a fork as she leaned on the narrow counter.

She slid her phone from her pocket and set it beside her leftovers as she scrolled with her finger. She turned it over and pushed it away from her. She sighed and flipped the lid closed. She tossed the container in the bin and crossed to the couch on the other side of the counter. 

She dropped down and flipped on the television. She spread out with her head against the arm. He could see her face as she wriggled and pulled the tails of her blouse from inside her pants. She unbuttoned just the first few buttons and then let her arm hang off the side. She fiddled with the remote then set it on the low table in front of the couch.

He watched her for a while. She didn’t do much. She just laid there. She turned onto her side and took off her socks. She closed her eyes but opened them shortly after. She changed the channel again and he backed away from the window.

He thought of forcing it open but didn’t dare to think beyond that. The little tug at the back of his mind scared him. What would he do if he just went in there? What could he do? He shuddered and crawled over to the stairs. He descended carefully.

When he reached the ground, he dropped down and took a breath. There was a heartbeat racing in his ears. It was his. He looked up and licked his lips. It took all his strength to walk away.

[woopboopboop]

caffeine crash

A/N: fashionmajor!harry has been living rent free in my mind and i thought i need to get it written so here it is! tell me what are your thoughts on this or if you have any other fashionmajor!harry ideas or any ideas tbh. my ask is always opened. happy reading! :)

TW: one or two foul language

[coffee binging, demon dummy and disturbed sleep with fashionmajor!harry]

The ringing sound grows closer each second before she opens her eyes to realise that she has fallen asleep on the couch, again. y/n sits up groggy and disoriented, blinking for a few times to adjust her vision against the bright light illuminating the longue. She doesn’t pick up the call right away but rather shifts her gaze from her phone to the clock on the wall.

11:47 o’clock at night.

It is still early but for someone who haven’t been sleeping well for over a week, all that she can think of is that she is finally going to have more than four hours of sleep. More than four hours of heavenly sleep.

When her eyes return to her phone, the ringing stops. She waits for a few more seconds for another ring while picking up her book from the floor and shuts her laptop. The sleepiness catches up fast when the flat is silent and comfortably cold. Both make her look forward to her precious slumber. Since there is no sign of upcoming call, she stacks her book on her laptop, ready to carry them to her room.

Then her phone rings.

Voice cracking and breaking with sleep, she answers the call without looking at the screen which left her wondering who the hell decided to ruin her potential four hours of sleep. “Hello?”

“Hey. It’s Harry.”

“Hmm?” The voice on the other line is low causing her to take a moment in recognising who it is. From the top of her head, there’s only one Harry that she knows.

“y/n, you’ve gotta help me,” he says in a hushed tone, “I think this studio is haunted.” Well if it isn’t her beloved flatmate and his untimely joke.

“Styles,” she says, stifling a yawn, “I know I barged in your room in the middle of the night last week. I’m sorry, alright? Doesn’t mean that you can pull a prank on me like this –”

“I’m not joking, y/n. I swear the fucking mannequins in this studio moved!”

Leaning back on the couch, she closes her eyes and sighs. “The mannequins? Really?”

There is rustling and she can hear his whispered curses. “y/n, please. I need your help.” There’s a slight quiver at the end of his words and her eyes open. “Can you… can you come get me?”

Any other day, she would ignore the call but she doesn’t find it in her to do so at that moment. She is a bit surprised to be honest. It’s rare to hear her flatmate who is usually confident (overly confident most of the times) and a tease that scared.

What if something is in fact happening to him? Certainly, it is not ghost but there are other possibilities. She sighs once again; guess she’s not going to have her good night’s sleep any time soon.

“Fine… just – where are you?”

///

The hours spent looking at the bright laptop screen where he is currently working on his sketches is straining his eyes and the angle in which he has been hunched at in the chair is starting to grind the muscles on his back. He finally let go of the mouse, rolling his head back and taking off his earphones as he closes his eyes.

The studio at night especially during a non-assignment week feels a little… off. At any other time, the place is filled with ticking of sewing machines, typing of keyboards, clicking of mouse and of course questions of who have extra pins or needles echoing around the room.

It’s lively.

Now, it’s empty except for him and there are only two sounds that he can hear; whirring of the air conditioners and also the faint music from his earphones.

Creak. His eyes snap open, head turning to the left side of the studio where the sound comes from. Okay, make that the third sound he can hear.

Maybe it’s not a good decision to do so because as soon as he turns to face that side of the studio, he is looking straight at all of the mannequins placed there. And it is silent. And creepy. One of the mannequins stand out more than others. Its dead eyes are looking directly at him.

“God, who think that giving them eyes is a good idea?” He grumbles to himself, shaking away any weird feelings and quickly turning to his laptop.

For the next minutes, his earphones are discarded on the side of his laptop while he focuses on his work. Halfway through adding shading and shadows on the sketches, out of the corner of his eyes, there is a slight movement. He tries to act unbothered despite his heart picking up pace at the thought of anything other than him in the room is moving.

Creak. He freezes then, heart thumping while he glances surreptitiously over the eerily looking mannequins crowd. He is not sure which is worst; the one with the dead eyes looking straight at him and is still doing so or one of them, that he is pretty sure has been facing the large studio window minutes ago, has its head tilted towards him.

The latter. For sure.

“Fuck’s sake…” he whispers, trying to control his breathing from getting too rapid. Looking over his fourth cup of coffee, he is nodding towards the array of disposable brown coffee cups on the table. “Of course, it’s the coffee. Too much coffee probably. God, I’m so tired and this took hou –”

He shuts up immediately when there’s another creaking sound. This time, when he turns his head ever so slowly, there is no movement but the mannequin that has its head tilted before has its arm stretched out half way.

God forbids if he is looking away from that thing again, he is surely going to be attacked. Eyes still on the mannequin, he grabs his phone blindly and call whoever is on his recent calls list without even planning on a proper course of action. All done from the corner of his eyes.

The sound of ringing fills his ear as he watches around him, taking in if there’s any shift happening. “Come on… pick up… pick up!” He hisses over the line. It feels like forever before it clicks and he hears a female voice, groggy with sleep. He takes off his phone from his ear for a moment to see who exactly is he calling.

y/n.

She is rightfully irritated over the phone given the fact that he is interrupting her sleep but his safety is more important. There’s no way he is going to be dead before finishing his study and totally not because of those damn mannequins.

However, he is also very much aware that he is not in any way equipped to deal with spirits, ghosts or demons. Not alone, at least. So, any chance that he has to get help is important even if the last resort is to beg for it. Since saying the studio is haunted and one of the mannequins is moving are not enough sign for help, he relents the last of his pride and go for the last resort.

“y/n, please. I need your help.”

There’s a three very long seconds after his short plead. And in that seconds, he keeps his eyes on the mannequin, waiting for it to make another move. Then, at last, he hears her sighs heavily and asks him where he is.

As soon as y/n hangs up, he realises that he is left alone with the creepy crowds on the left side of the studio. Fear creeping up his spine and he just hopes that if anything could happen right that moment, it is for y/n to be there a little bit faster.

///

It's not until she is out the door the question of how she is going to get to Harry strikes her. Hers and Harry's campuses are not that far from their flat with hers being closer compared to his. The only problem is that he is approximately 10 minutes away from the flat and she sure is not going to walk 10 minutes to his campus at night.

Re-entering the flat, she checks if she is lucky enough to find his car keys hanging by the wall hook near the front door. And she is, which brings her to this moment of driving his car to pick him up.

At times she wonders why he opts for walking when he could just drive. It defeats the purpose of having a vehicle she thought but then again, it’s Harry. Most of the times, she doesn’t know what is going on in his mind.

As she reaches the gate, she prays with every fibre in her body that she will get through the guard without any bombarding questions. Surprisingly, entering the campus is made easier with a piece of vehicle registration sticker with a campus logo. She gets in with a once-over and friendly hand raise.

"Well... that's easier that I thought it would be," she mutters to herself while navigating her way to the fashion department building by following the signs and remembering what Harry had told her.

Thankfully, the studio is on the ground floor and the large windows gives her access to see whatever is happening inside. From afar, she can make out a side profile of a figure. Afraid that she is going to honk at a possible stranger, she reaches out for her phone and dial his number.

The person seems to be startled before bringing their phone up to their ear and she hears his voice. It is in fact Harry.

“I’m here,” she says. She sees him straightening up, presuming that he is going to stand up and leave. Yet, he is still fixed to his previous position.

“Oh! Okay, alright. Um… can you come in?”

She rests her head against the steering, exhaling slowly. She swears if it isn’t for the fright in his voice, she would turn the car around and drive home. “I don’t know the wa–”

“Use the main door. The studio is on your right, first door.”

///

He doesn’t know he has been holding his breath until he exhales slowly when he heard the door to the studio opens. To know that he is not alone is relieving. So relieving that he wills to peel his eyes for few seconds from the mannequin to look over to y/n who is standing at the door with exhausted frown on her face.

He looks tired, she decides, but unscathed which is good. Her eyes trails following his to the other side of the studio and sees a herd of mannequins. She has to admit, they do look creepy. And with those eyes? She understands why Harry would be petrified because holy mother of god those dead eyes are looking straight into your soul.

Harry senses that she is not going to be standing there and waiting for him for the rest of the night. After all, he is the one who asked her to come and get him from the studio. Eyeing the demon dummy (a very fitting name if you ask him), his hands are doing the work of closing his laptop without shutting it down and practically just shoving all of his stuffs in his bag.

“It’s 12 on a Thursday night. And here you are, making friends with whatever spirits there is in this place,” she says to him bitterly, leaving Harry who is frantically locking the door behind her.

Harry is not really in a clear mind to give a retort. The rest of the coffee cups had been thrown into the bin in the hall as he follows her out of the building to the car park.

“Tell me, Styles. Am I not right if I say you’re hallucinating?” She asks as they drive away from the campus. She would love for him to drive the car home in return of disturbing her sleep. That is if she doesn’t notice his restless hands.

“I am not hallucinating! I see it with my own eyes!” He says defensively, turning his head to have a proper look at her while making his point.

“They are just plastic. Why don’t you just get out from there? It’s not like they are going to chase you.”

“Mannequins. I can’t just look away!” He shifts his gaze out the window, occasionally glancing to the side mirror, hoping those creepy herd don’t suddenly have functioning legs. “What if they grip me by the neck when I turn my back from them?”

She shakes her head. “You had too much coffee.”

At the mention of coffee, he remembers all of the sketches that he needs to finish. If he can’t finish all which he intended to do before all his plan went down the drain, at least, he can finish half of it. And he almost did. “Well, I need to finish my sketches,” he grumbles.

The tires spin beneath them. y/n shifts gears and the car rolls to a stop in front of their flat building. “No. You need sleep.”

The rest of their way up to their shared flat is filled with silence. Even when they are already in it. Both don’t feel like talking; y/n can’t wait to finally sleep while Harry starts to feel whatever happening just now is a little bit ridiculous.

“Hey, y/n,” he calls out. She has her hand on her bedroom door handle then, ready to push it down. “This stays between us, right?” He gestures the space between them, internally cringing a bit on the how he is embarrassed about the whole thing.

It is annoying to have him call her at ridiculous hour of the night but the reason behind the call is amusing nonetheless. “Your secret’s safe with me,” she shrugs.

Well, he half expected that. He thought that he is never going to hear the end of it for at least two days. Seems like she let it slide like she always does with most things.

“Besides, you’re worrying about the wrong thing. You should be worried about the mannequins standing outside your bedroom window tonight. Watching you sleep.” She says as she wiggles her eyebrows with a smirk on her face.

Okay, maybe he speaks too soon.

He gives her side-eye, seeing her entering her room. From the look of it, she surely is enjoying taking the piss out of him. “Hahaha. Very funny.”

As he enters his bedroom and flicks the light switch on, he hears her laughing and bidding him a ‘Good night.’ One thing that he knows is that it is not going to be a good night. He also knows that his bedroom light is going to stay on until the sun rises.

[blitzturtles]

Title: It Starts Like This, Ch. 4/7ish

Rating: Teen and Up

Fandom: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind

Pairing(s): BruAbba, Platonic Bucci Gang

Summary: Leone stays with him almost twenty-four-seven, and he seems to absorb the information better than Bucciarati. Probably because he isn’t trying to find escape routes or attempting to dig his way out of flashbacks while some new medication zaps him of his energy. Still, Bucciarati is grateful. He can’t do this alone, loathe as he is to admit it.

Notes: Turns out being dead has a bit of a long term effect. Who would have thought?

This fic got away from me, so I'm breaking it down by character interaction (sort of). This was supposed to be Nara's chapter, but that will be the next one. Instead, have some Bruno-centric chapter in this Bruno-centric fic.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8

-

The next three days are something of a blur for Bucciarati. He refuses to be admitted, which complicates matters a bit. The neurologist starts him on a new medication and tells him that it can take days or weeks before they can be sure whether it works or not. There’s something called a ‘steady state’ that can take up to three weeks, though the doctor claims that Bucciarati will know sooner than that whether the medication-- it has a name that’s long and unpronounceable in Bucciarati’s opinion-- works for him.

And that’s the other thing. There’s a learning curve here that Bucciarati can barely keep up with. He hadn’t finished secondary, for fuck’s sake, and they talk at him like he has a clue about anything they’re saying. He hasn’t felt self-conscious about his lack of education in years, but he wants to pull his hair out and snap at them, ‘I joined the mafia at twelve, I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

If he’s being honest, part of it is the fog that doesn’t lift from his brain until the third day. Simple tasks seem so much more complicated than they ever have before, and he doesn’t know how to cope with that. He’s been independent for as long as he can remember, making decisions beyond his years even before his father had been shot. He’s quick to adapt and intelligent regardless of his education, but he feels like a child now.

The other part, he knows, is his anxiety and past experiences. The memories all of this dredge up every time he steps foot in the hospital. It’s the reason he can’t handle staying overnight, and he knows that’s dragging the whole process out longer, but what else can he do?

Leone stays with him almost twenty-four-seven, and he seems to absorb the information better than Bucciarati. Probably because he isn’t trying to find escape routes or attempting to dig his way out of flashbacks while some new medication zaps him of his energy. Still, Bucciarati is grateful. He can’t do this alone, loathe as he is to admit it. He needs the help.

And then there’s Panna, who approaches the problem the way he always has: by throwing himself into research. He pulls every medical book they possess in the library and buys several more when he thinks Bucciarati isn’t paying attention. His brain might be moving slower than he’d like, but he does notice the stack of Fugo’s getting taller.

It’s helpful. To have Pannacotta. Bucciarati knows where he can go when he doesn’t understand something. He hasn’t, yet, but he might eventually. For the most part, Pannacotta offers him information in a way that presents as the younger simply sharing his research, and not as Pannacotta reading Bucciarati the way he does his medical texts.

He tries not to get irritated with either of them. To find only the endearing parts of what they’re doing. They only want to take care of him, in their ways, and it isn’t just those two. They tend to be more hands on, but it’s the whole group that shifts their behavior around him.

Giorno’s eyes always linger, in his off time, and he hasn’t called on Bucciarati for consulting, which means he’s working Polnareff more. Bucciarati wants to point out that Polnareff’s own health isn’t anything spectacular, but that isn’t his place.

Mista might be the closest to normal, though the Pistols betray his inner worries. He can barely have them out with Bucciarati without them attaching themselves to him. He doesn’t mind it as much at face value. They’re being affectionate, but the root of why is what agitates him a bit.

Narancia is anxious around him. He does his best to hide it, but he’s clearly waiting for the other shoe to drop. Bucciarati hopes that it doesn’t. Hopes that Narancia doesn’t have to deal with the fallout of another seizure, but he can’t guarantee that.

Trish… Trish is avoiding him entirely. Bucciarati suspects that he knows why, but he tries to give her space for now.

Fugo is the most reasonable, despite his research. Or possibly because of it. Bucciarati is so used to that being Fugo's coping mechanism that it doesn’t actually bother him. Fugo collects information the way some people collect trading cards. His intelligence is the one thing he’s always been consistently praised for, and he has a habit of leaning into it even now. Besides that, it keeps his mind occupied, and gives him something to infodump about later. When he feels comfortable with the person he’s with.

And then there’s Leone. While his presence is appreciated, it’s a constant reminder that there’s something wrong. The love between them is indisputable, but Bucciarati is nothing if not independent. He’s feeling far from that now, though he understands. He isn’t an unreasonable man. He would do the same if Abbacchio were in the same position as himself. He does, in fact, when Leone’s lung is inflamed or his chest wall is spasming ceaselessly. But, right now, it’s serving as a reminder of everything that is wrong. Everything that has changed, right underneath his feet.

There’s some frustration in the fact that he hasn’t had a seizure since they induced the three in the hospital. It makes all of this seem blown completely out of proportion, and he wants to forget that it’s a problem, but the neurologist had been sure to let him know that the lack of seizures doesn’t mean a lack of epilepsy-- and it is epilepsy; the tests say as much. What it actually means is that his baseline seizure activity may be sporadic, or it could mean that the medication is doing its job. Either way, it’s impossible to tell without more time and possibly more tests; the latter of which Bucciarati refuses for the time being.

It’s on the fourth day that he finally convinces Leone to go back to work. The investigations division needs him, even if he only goes into his physical office for a couple of hours a day. The rest can be done from his laptop, but there are meetings to be had and reports to be taken. He can’t completely neglect his work, and Bucciarati refuses to be the reason for any additional stress on his partner.

Which is how he finds himself alone, in the library at the group’s shared home, when he smells popcorn burning.