#jazz is just making sure they have an escape route

[elithemiar-blog]

WELL THIS DIDN'T TAKE LONG TO COME BACK TO:

Another dpxdc prompt

Danny, Sam, and Tucker are slowly dismantling the GIW due to their unethical approach on researching ghosts, potentially putting themselves in trouble with other agencies and even the JL. The GIW believe they can easily lie their way out of an investigation by hiding information.

At one of their locations, Jason is being experimented on which causes him to gain ghost abilities and possibly become a halfa, but due to the stresses his body takes from the various testing he doesn't know how to use them properly. The antiecto cuffs keep him down.

Tucker finds info on Jason, a file about PROJECT JULET ROMEO [military codes since the GIW are all for that. Juliet is substitute for Jason and Romeo is substitute for Resurrection]. Finding out that its a person. The trio rescue him and somehow get away to heal him, probably by Frostbite.

Eventually Jason is healed and works with the trio to get that branch of government defunded by calling the JL himself or while still fucking around with Batman in Gotham. But helping the trio became top priority. Maybe he just stays in Amity.

If going the with JL ignoring Amity, Jay scathes them with a lecture.

[phoenixgrl1412]

Jazz is Damian's bio sibling, not Danny

I see tons of Demon Twin AUs, and I love them, but I started to wonder about what the universe would look like if Jazz was Damian's sister.

Not sure what her birth name in this AU would be (Yasmin? Yasmina? Something else) so I'm going to just refer to her as Jazz.

I'm thinking that Jazz was attempt #1 at getting the perfect heir, and for whatever reason, she was deemed to be inferior. Is there something actually wrong with her? No, but Ra's is an asshole. If you'd like to go a more sexist route, Jazz could be unworthy because she's female (in this AU, Ra's keeps Talia around to make an heir, not to be the heir).

Despite not being the perfect child they wanted, Talia and Ra's train Jazz until they are able to try again. She's taught as if she was the heir, even though everyone knows she isn't, because there isn't a better choice at the moment.

When Jazz is three, Damian is born. Damian is her little brother and she loves him as best she can, but Damian is raised to treat her as inferior, and it shows. Everyone looks down on her, especially Ra's, and that attitude is the example Damian follows.

Jazz is still trained, because if nothing else she could still be an assassin, but no one holds out much hope for her. She isn't as talented as Damian, even though she's older. She's not as strong or as stealthy or as cutthroat. She is more clever, but she is older than him, so it's brushed off. Besides, good assassin soldiers don't need to be clever, they just need to obey.

But where Damian excels in the physical arts, Jazz excels at the mind arts. Solving puzzles, recognizing patterns, psychoanalyzing her opponents to predict their moves - that's what she's good at. It's clearly inherited from Batman (no one can explain her red hair, though).

When Jazz is eight and Damien is five, Jazz flees the League. Why and how is your choice. Maybe Damian is supposed to kill her in a show of superiority. Maybe Talia helps her fake her death and escape as a final act of motherly love. Maybe Jazz flees on her own, wanting to be something else even if she doesn't know what.

Jazz makes it to America, and then to a little podunk town in the middle of nowhere, Illinois, called Amity Park. She meets the Fenton parents and their almost six-year-old son, Danny. And somehow, they take her in. And for a while, it's the family she wished she had, with loving parents and a little brother who didn't want to stab her.

Danny isn't Damian. He isn't a replacement. She knows that they aren't the same. They are radically different, even if they both make her want to cuddle and love them (at least Danny doesn't try to stab her for doing it). She can miss Damian and what could have been while embracing what she has found.

And for a while, she's happy.

Sure, she didn't expect her little brother (Danny is her Little Brother, Damian is her Baby Brother, there has been and will always be a difference to her) to die and come back, but she's seen weirder stuff when she was in the League.

She also didn't expect Danny to use his newfound powers to become a hero, but it's his choice, and she's going to support him. At least she has her League training to fall back on, even if she's a bit rusty.

And yeah, she was hoping that her adoptive parents would take Danny's halfa status a lot better than they did, but she'd always known it wasn't going to end well. She's always been good at recognizing behavioral patterns, and theirs said nothing good. But she'd hoped, for Danny's sake, that she would be wrong.

She never thought she would flee for her life for a second time, but here she is, driving a stolen car with her unconscious and bleeding brother in the backseat, heading towards the one place she swore she would never set foot in: Gotham.

[little-pondhead]

The Folly of Men -

Chapter 2: #78866B

AO3 - MASTERPOST

[GENERAL TW: Swearing, lukewarm violence, lots of POV changes, and mild body horror.]

[I sacrificed Damian's POV for more time of Jazz, and everything jumps around a little, but I refuse to feel regret. Notes on the timeline are at the bottom.]

-

Two hours went by way faster than Jazz thought. Between gathering the emergency bags, counting cash, and raiding the lab, she barely managed to herd her parents out the front door on time. Luckily, the two doctors didn't put up a fight, so she still had ten minutes to lock up. Like she said, Jazz hadn't touched the portal besides locking it down. The portal's power supply had been re-routed to an emergency shield, blocking anything from getting in or out. As long as it was still on, that shield would hold.

Jazz blew a strand of hair out of her face as she sat on the front porch for a moment. The door was locked, she had everything, and her parents were waiting like scared kids for her a few feet away. All she had to do was arm the security system using the bug Tucker had sent her. It was relatively easy; she had to take off the casing to the alarm next to their doorbell and use a connector to plug her phone in. It took her a moment, admittedly. It wasn't easy to mash tiny buttons when her hands shook with adrenaline.

While she waited for the virus to load, Jazz glanced at her parents, watching them. They looked lost. A little guilty, perhaps? They both looked gaunt and had unshed tears in their eyes, looking positively miserable for all the world to see. They hadn't said a peep after she had stormed off. Not even when she came back to clamp 'Shade Shackles' onto their wrists, hissing something to them about behaving. The shackles were heavy and bulky, restricting them from their wrists to their elbows and locking their arms together.

The shackles wouldn't hold Jack for long, she knew. Not if he was actually trying to escape. But honestly, the man was probably worse off than his wife. He just kept staring into space, dissociating.

Jazz thought they deserved it. After a few more seconds of fiddling, her phone finally beeped, indicating the upload was complete. She unplugged her phone, packed the cord into one of her bags, and stood again to close the alarm casing. Shutters slammed shut over every entrance into Fentonworks. Maddie flinched at the loud noise.

"And now," Jazz muttered, picking up her bat. "We can't go back." The redhead swung like a professional, slamming her weapon into the alarm, setting it off like a loud pig. She took her anger out on the plastic, smashing the buttons and hardware to bits, sending wires flying. Even the brick beneath the alarm was chipped in many places. Well, if there was one thing her parents did right, it was make a decent bat. The creep stick didn't have a scratch when she finally stepped back.

Wiping sweat from her brow, Jazz took in her handiwork. Getting some extra aggression out of her system slightly cleared her head, and she smiled at the ruined building. The alarm was going off at max volume, and some of the floodlights her parents had installed a few years ago lit up the whole neighborhood with flashing red. If the Fentons hadn't had people’s attention before, they sure as hell did now.

"What'd you do that for?" Maddie said, horrified. Guess she was breaking her silence.

Jazz scoffed, turning to pick her bags up and sling them over one shoulder. "Because while I'd love to burn this place to the fucking ground-"

"You can't!"

"Shut up. It's not up to you, Maddie." Jazz spat. "And it's not up to me. Danny gets to decide what happens to Fentonworks. Whether you like it or not, this is his final resting place. I'm not going to rob him of closure."

Maddie snapped her mouth shut.

"Final resting place?" Jack finally returned to himself as he cried at his daughter's words. Thick tears dripped down his face. Jazz had never seen her father so distraught, not even when Vlad moved away to Europe last year. He looked heartbroken.

Jazz sneered, poking her father in the chest with her bat. "You heard me. That fucking portal, your goddamn pride and joy, is what got Danny killed in the first place. That lab is where he died in front of his friends because you two are idiots who refuse to follow any sort of rule."

"No, that's not-"

"Not what?" Jazz rounded on her mother, who shrunk back in the face of her fury. "Not right? That's not what happened? Is that what you were going to say?"

They were attracting a crowd. People were being drawn out of their houses by the alarms and shouting, staring at the two Fenton parents with mild distaste. Everyone knew their children put up with a lot, even if the doctors were well-meaning. Did they finally cross the line?

"It was hard for us too!" Maddie insisted. "All those late nights, his avoidance of us, how he looked at us! It was horrible."

"THAT'S BECAUSE YOU KILLED HIM!" Jazz roared. She was as red as her hair now, and the little ectoplasm that ran in her veins made the edges of her form blurry. As if she was a heat mirage. "YOU KILLED HIM, AND NOW YOU'RE KILLING HIM AGAIN BY HANDING HIM TO THE GHOST INVESTIGATION WARD!"

"Th-they just wanted to study him," Jack sobbed. "T-to avoid and prevent any ghost disease breakouts."

"BULLSHIT!" Her voice echoed down the street. It boomed unnaturally, drowning out the sound of sirens that were a few blocks away. A few neighbors were going pale as they realized the severity of the situation. "You two are doctors! You know how science works! You two built and sold weapons to them! Don't pretend to be ignorant and blame it on the fucking ghost flu."

"You disgust me," Jazz continued. She descended the steps and shoved past her parents. Maddie landed on the ground with an oof! "I hope I never have to see you two ever again." She adjusted her bags and started marching toward Nasty Burger, cutting through the crowd like she was fucking Moses. The police were a block away now. She didn't want to be there when they got to the house.

"Where are you going?" Her mother called. Pleaded, really. "We can talk this out!"

Jazz ignored her calls and walked on. When they spotted the murderous look in her eyes, everyone on the sidewalks quickly got out of her way. She had two minutes now, but the others probably wouldn't mind her tardiness. Her phone buzzed, and she snapped it open.

From: TheFuck

4:12pm yo ms evie just blasted ur rant 2 myspace and yt

4:13pm for an old lady she sure has quick fingers

4:13pm dani just showed up at nb we just waitin on u

Rather than replying, Jazz pushed the door to Nasty Burger open and beelined towards the trio's usual table. Tucker was glued to his phone while Sam and Dani mumbled, pouring over several sheets of paper. She tapped Tucker on the head, making him jump.

"I'm already here."

Tucker spun around. "Nocturn's starry underwear, Jazz!" He whined. "You could have just texted me!"

"Didn't feel like it," she shrugged, suddenly feeling very tired. The restaurant was mostly empty, so she threw her stuff into the booth beside them and slid in next to Tucker. The Fenton creep-stick was rested against the edge of the table, acting as a warning. The others had already set aside their bags and weapons in the other booth. Not a single Nasty Burger employee came over to tell them they couldn't have swords at the table, so Jazz didn't bother thinking about it.

Danielle, her free-spirited youngest sister, glanced up at her with a weary smile. She looked rough. The wind had tangled her shorter hair, and her clothes seemed horribly displaced and damp. (She'd passed through a tropical storm half an hour ago.) Dani was swaying where she sat, desperately trying to stay engaged with Sam even though exhaustion was no doubt clawing at her mind.

Jazz felt her mood soften. Sometimes, she had to remind herself that Dani was only a few years old by human and ghost standards. While Danny was also a baby ghost, he had a lot more stamina as a human to make up for it. Flying from New Zealand had taken its toll on the girl.

"Here, Danielle, switch me." Jazz stepped out of the booth, guiding her little sister to sit next to Tucker, who wouldn't mind if the girl fell asleep on his shoulder. Dani didn't protest and conked out almost immediately, soft snores being the only indication she was alive. Sam nodded her greeting and shuffled some papers Jazz's way.

"Here's everything so far," she stated. "We're doing this on paper until Tucker can set up a server."

Jazz flipped through the pages. Each one had a little tab in the corner sticking out so things wouldn't get mixed up. The pages were even color coordinated, just how she liked it. She scanned through sheets of numbers, reports on agent activity, stolen research, manufacturing contracts, and so on. Everything she saw was dated back at least a year, and Sam had taken the time to highlight the discrepancies between all the paperwork. It was the very definition of thorough.

Time for business, I guess, she thought. "To start with, how's the town?"

Tucker got right into it. He turned his PDA around to show her the screen. A tiny map of the town was displayed, with red dots pinned to random spots. "All the monoliths Danny set up are primed and ready. They'll tap into the ley lines in the area to power the ghost shield we set up. I'll set it off when we leave the city borders."

"I called Cujo and Wulf," Sam added. She had a paper version of the town map with more random spots marked in green. "They are rounding up the ghost animals, and I got Grandma Ida to scare a few more human ones into helping. Some of the A-listers are doing a sweep to drive out anyone who stays behind."

"What about the GIW equipment?"

"Dash is getting his football and baseball teams together. Wes is going to load them with a virus before they smash it all to bits."

"Teenage boys are always destructive no matter the species." Jazz remarked dryly. Sam gave her a Look, but she ignored it. Yeah, she was being hypocritical. Who cared? "How's the tracking going?"

Tucker patted the sleeping Danielle on her head. "Thanks to a little miss, I got a lock on his ecto-signature much faster this time. But his aura is big, and we'll still need to raid at least four locations before I can pinpoint him."

Jazz sighed in relief, tilting her head back. Everything was falling into place, and soon, Danny would be safe by her side.

-

Danny woke up with a knife in his chest.

He choked, breathing in the air for the first time in a while. He couldn't feel a heartbeat, but the knife was too close to his core. It was too close to his fractured core. The weapon twisted, digging itself deeper, and he screamed silently in fear. His limbs spasmed, knocking into whoever was standing over him and throwing them across the room with a thud.

Free of the pressing weight, Danny rolled to the side, dropping to the floor and scrabbling at the knife still in his chest. Fabric was tangled with his legs, making it difficult to stand. Had he been placed in a bed? He jerked the knife out, letting it clatter to the ground.

Danny keened as precious ectoplasm leaked from his chest. From his core. Flaps of skin that hadn't healed yet tore back open, ripping fresh scabs and making him lightheaded. Half-formed organs were trying to slip free of his body, and he could barely scoop them back in. His fingers felt thick, and the task seemed endless. What if his core slipped out? How would he know? Could he catch it?

Was this how Dani felt when she was melting? He briefly wondered. A sob tore its way out of his throat. God, everything hurt so much. He tried to inhale, to breathe through the panic attack, but his lungs were either shriveled from disuse or missing. He couldn't breathe. Oh god, he couldn't breathe. The fabric felt like shackles against his legs, stiffing and trapping him further as ice crept through the room. He couldn't feel his lungs, he couldn't feel his heart, he couldn't feel his core. His core was here; he knew it. Where was it? Where was his soul?

Danny curled in on himself, letting go of his skin in favor of shoving a hand into his chest, searching for his tiny core amongst all the ectoplasm and body parts. It was like trying to find a ping pong ball in a pool of Oobleck. The base of his head felt heavy, and he just wanted to cry even more than he already was.

where is it where is it where is it

His body shuddered as Danny started folding in on himself. The heavy feeling got worse. Bones slipped from his joints and pressed oddly against his skin, making it poke out in strange positions. He screwed his eyes further shut as he kept reaching past his ribs. His fingers were ice cold and sent shocks up his spine, making him spasm again. Flimsy organs were slipping past his arm; he tried not to pierce them as they landed back onto the floor with an ugly splat.

Danny kept crying, even as he felt the tips of his fingers finally brush his core. It was ice cold, colder than his skin. He could feel a deep crack in the surface, and he mourned for himself as he pulled his arm back out of his body. He wanted to scream so bad. To yell. To wail. To call for his family and friends and heal in his haunt surrounded by love.

But he didn't have any of that right now. His parents had given him away to the GIW, saying he just needed help, that he just needed to be fixed. That he needed healing. His haunt wasn't safe anymore, and Sam and Tucker had to stay behind to protect the other ghosts. Jazz wasn't even home the last time he checked. And now he was somewhere new, having a meltdown as he lost more blood than he cared to think about. He felt so goopy.

Danny's ears twitched as footsteps rushed towards his room. Was he underground? Everything was echoing. The person he'd tossed sat patiently against the far wall, probably staring at the mess he'd made. He was still whining in a high-pitched kind of way, which was his version of a ghost sob. The door burst open, making him flinch, but he was too weak to defend himself with ice. Danny could only lay there and try to pull himself back together.

-

"The boy is awake."

One of Ra's messengers bowed deeply to him, eyes cast to the floor. The papers he'd been going over were forgotten as he shoved them aside and focused on the messenger.

"I heard he was not due to wake until his organs regrew." Ra's commented lightly.

The messenger's frame tightened up a fraction. "The Demon's Thumb has returned," they intoned. "And has decided to greet the new Demon's Heir."

Ra's hummed, standing up. "I suppose I should have expected this. News does travel quite fast these days." He gestured for the messenger to lead the way, and they stood to do so. The walk from his main office to the medical wing was short as more of his retainers gathered around him. Dr. Vanessa, a thin woman with a vicious fire in her eyes, rushed to join his little circle as they passed the research hall.

"I apologize, sir." She seemed harried, if not a little ticked off. "My calculations must have been off. I-"

"It was not your fault, doctor." Ra's cut her off. "My granddaughter seems to have stopped by for a visit and wanted to pay her respects to the new heir, it seems."

"Ah." Dr. Vanessa's anger at herself vanished, and her face was carefully blank. "In that case, I shall adjust the boy's treatment plan accordingly."

They said nothing else as they approached the boy's room, admittedly at a quick pace. The bind around Ra's heart was urging him forward, to be faster and be by the boy's side when he awoke. The mere knowledge that the boy was in danger made his blood boil as his body revolted against this mind. By the heavens, he couldn't wait for this contract to be fulfilled. He hated magic so much.

Turning the final corner, a loud, keening cry assaulted everyone's ears. Dr. Vanessa flinched. A few guards pulled out their weapons, adopting a more defensive position. Ra's could barely stop himself from rushing through the group during the last few steps. He grits his teeth as another opens the door.

They were treated to the sight of a frost-covered room. The boy was on the floor, tangled in his blankets as he tried to shove unfinished organs, which was a gaping hole that led to nothing. Lazarus water was leaking from his body in copious amounts. His skin was practically translucent, and Ra's could spy his bones shifting unnaturally underneath it all, creating strange angles and planes that did not belong to a human. The boy's eyes were screwed shut, and he was crying even more Lazarus water, but Ra's would bet that his eyes were glowing that same bright green. The keening noise seemed to be coming from him, even though his mouth was shut tight.

Ra's glanced around again. A knife was on the floor next to the boy's head, covered in his blood. Mara al Ghul, his granddaughter and leader of the Demon's Fist, was sitting against the far wall with thick sheets of ice covering her from the neck down, trapping her in place. She was still wearing her mask, so Ra's couldn't see her face, but he knew she wasn't happy. Foolish girl.

Dr. Vanessa glanced at him. "May I approach the patient?" She asked. Ra's nodded his approval, and she cautiously stepped forward, trying to avoid the puddles of bodily fluids.

The doctor knelt, and she adopted a soft look to soothe the boy. "Hello, young man." Her voice dripped with honey. She reached out to tap the boy on his shoulder. "My name is Dr. Vanessa, and I'm-" She got cut off as soon as she made contact. A flash of light blinded everyone, and suddenly, Vanessa was encased with ice. She was essentially a statue now, still with a sweet look on her face.

Interesting. Ra's thought. One of his attendants moved the frozen doctor out of the way so he could walk forward, stopping right at the edge of the Lazarus water.

"Boy," he ordered. "Listen."

The boy's cry petered off at the sound of a human voice and he cracked his eyes open, staring straight at Ra's unblinkingly. He warbled something in a language that grated on everyone's minds. Ra's understood him, though, and switched tongues as easily as he would clothes.

"Boy," he repeated. His voice cracked, and Ra's could feel his granddaughter's burning questions engraved into his back. No one had heard him speak like this before. However, the boy finally opened both eyes wide, which he counted as a win. His interest was piqued. "Boy, listen to me."

The boy's mouth didn't move as he replied, "Hurts..."

"I know. But you are hurting others, and hurting yourself. Let us help."

The boy shivered. "Hurts. Can't. Pain."

"My people will not harm you," Ra's promised. The weight of the promise hung in the air like a bird, and the boy's eyes widened. Making promises in the tongue of the dead was a serious thing. "Calm yourself, and let us help you into bed. You are losing lifeblood. We cannot help if you freeze my people."

A humorless laugh was his reply. "Already dead." The boy informed him. "Almost dead again. It hurts. Please?"

Ra's motioned for the assassins to pick the boy up. He squeezed his eyes shut as hands touched his body but relaxed as one of them handed him his liver like it was a stuffed toy. The ice in the room started melting, releasing the two ladies from their bonds. The attending nurse quickly got to work collecting all the extra things that had fallen out of his body and placing them gently back inside the boy's gaping chest like he was playing Operation.

Once he was situated with all his goopy organs back in his body, the boy tried apologizing to Mara and Vanessa. "Sorry for the cold." He rasped.

Mara glanced at her grandfather, who didn't bother to translate. "I will be informing Mother Soul of this development," she said stiffly before turning and marching out of the room, two assassins at her heel. Dr. Vanessa was likewise escorted out to be taken care of.

Ra's stepped closer to the boy's bed. He didn't pay any mind to the blood, Lazarus goop, and now melting ice that stained his robes; they could be replaced. But he needed answers. He needed to figure out how to get out of this deal with the Gardener. And he needed to know how much power one child could offer him.

"Child." The boy looked lazily up at him. The effort of being awake was taking its toll. "I am Ra's al Ghul, the leader here. May I have your name?"

"Mmm." Some of the boy's bones shifted as he wiggled around, trying to relieve the weird pressure pressing against his skin. Ra's reckoned his whole skeleton might be out of place. "Call me Phantom," he eventually hummed.

Ra's knew that wasn't the boy's true name, but he'd work with it for now. He simply inclined his head in acknowledgment, watching as Phantom started nodding back off to sleep. Oh dear. He couldn't let him rest yet; Ra's needed answers.

"Do you know why you are here, Phantom?"

The boy licked his cracked lips, but still couldn't use his voice. His words were just echoing into the air like he was projecting his thoughts for everyone to hear. "No..."

"You were given to me. By a being who called themselves the Gardener. I am to take care of you."

"In exchange for what?" Phantom was struggling to stay awake. But he instantly caught onto the double meaning, which proved he had a brain somewhere.

Ra's considered his words. "Power," he said simply. "I care for you as if you were my own, and in exchange, you would be the key to granting unimaginable power and knowledge."

Phantom wrinkled his nose but seemed to accept that answer. "Undergrowth is so shady sometimes. But I'll acknowledge the deal between you two. Let me take a quick nap, and then you can let me know what you need..." He trailed off as sleep finally claimed him.

The Demon's Head wasn't pleased that the conversation was cut short, but the bind around his heart had loosened its noose, and he felt it was unavoidable. Now that his foolish granddaughter was out of the way, he would leave and return later. Phantom, while boyish in nature, seemed quite mature once he was lucid enough to talk. Perhaps Ra's wouldn't regret making him the Heir.

-

Jazz was getting antsy. It had been weeks, and they still hadn't found Danny. Raiding GIW bases with just the four of them took a toll on the group, especially since they kept losing supplies (like her beloved creep-stick, RIP). A few times, Danielle had to fly off and keep the peace in other cities, as the ghosts were finding different ways into the mortal realm now that Amity was shut off from the world. She'd taken up Danny's name as Phantom and was exhausted from flying across the country constantly. So, really, it was mostly the three of them.

Luckily, Kitty and Johnny showed up recently, and Dani got them to spread the word about Danny's disappearance and the group's country-wide manhunt. No ghosts had shown up since then.

"We're here," Tucker snapped her out of her thoughts, pulling her to an instant stop. This was one of the four bases Tucker had narrowed their search to. They'd destroyed the other three, gathering evidence and doing what was necessary to defeat the agents inside. And now they were standing in front of the final one, deep inside Yellowstone National Park. It looked like a rest stop with a bathroom, but Jazz knew that the compound was actually underground and most likely ten times the size of the shack.

Sam wrinkled her nose. "This place looks abandoned," She noticed. "At least the others had a front going on. I don't want to ride in a dirty bathroom that's really an elevator. I'd rather go back and fight those creepy clown performers from the pizza place."

"I can just phase us down." Danielle offered.

Jazz shook her head. "Nah, you need to save your energy, kiddo. Who knows how deep this one is."

Tucker crouched, fiddling with his PDA. "This spot does have a front," he told Sam. "It's a rare geocache spot. The only hint for it online that I can find is a shitty riddle that was posted, like, last week."

"Oh, what is it?"

"Uh, here. It says:

Below the keep, just six feet deep, lays a weathered path, born from wrath. A white beast rests, who troubles his guests, so find the key, and beware the banshee."

Danielle snorted. "You're right. That riddle sucks. Who wrote that? Skulker?"

Jazz smiled but considered the words seriously. "I mean, it seems pretty literal if you know the context behind it. Why not search for the cache and see if it has a key?"

"Good idea."

With that plan in mind, the four split up to scan the terrain. None of them had ever been geocaching before, but it was a popular tourist activity around Amity. It shouldn't be that hard, could it?

The answer was yes, it was. The group searched for an hour before Tucker finally gave in and sat on a log to take a break. The log promptly crumbled in half, and Tucker shouted in surprise as he landed ass-first on a hard tackle box.

"Oh, come on!" He groaned. "This log isn't even made of plastic! It's cardboard! Who makes a geocache out of cardboard?? It literally rained last night, my ass is wet now!"

Danielle giggled for the first time in weeks. Jazz ruffled her hair, earning a swat of protest, and then walked over to help Tucker to his feet. Sam swooped in to claim the first dibs on the box as soon as he was clear.

The lock was no issue for her as she simply bashed it open with a sharp rock. Sam seemed eager to find more clues and crowed triumphantly when she dug out a key card still attached to a GIW lanyard. "Fucking finally!"

"Good job, Sam." The four gathered around the tackle box. The card seemed legit, right down to the near-invisible security numbers engraved on the back. Their enhanced eyesight allowed them to spot that detail, which was a blessing when sniffing out fake leads.

Dani shot up excitedly. The fact that they were so close to finding Danny renewed the spark in her eyes. "I'll go look for the entrance!" She sped off, turning invisible to avoid any inside cameras. She found it within minutes, and returned to share the good news.

It was, indeed, in the tiny bathroom.

Sam groaned. "I need to learn to keep my mouth shut."

"I'm fine with that, honestly. You loud-mouthed mother-OW!" Tucker stumbled through the doorway to the bathroom, too slow to avoid the whack Sam had given him.

"That's 'loud-mouthed BITCH' to you," she scolded playfully.

The eldest shook her head and ignored them. The bathroom truly was tiny, and hadn't seen the loving touch of a mop in years. Spiders were making webs in the corners and Jazz was pretty sure something had been using the toilet as a litter box. It looked awful and smelled even worse. A smug look from Danielle told her that the girl had simply stopped breathing, and therefore didn't have to deal with the scent of actual bear shit.

She ignored Danielle, too. Jazz could feel her little sister's smugness radiating as they searched everywhere for the secret card scanner. Jazz couldn't stop her organs at will yet, and the twins always took full advantage of that to mess with her. They eventually figured out that the empty soap dispenser was what they were looking for, and the scanner beeped when they swiped the card. The whole room started to shake as they moved down.

Sam and Tucker stopped their petty back-and-forth as they heard the grinding of the elevator cable. "When was the last time this was used?" Tucker sounded alarmed.

"Probably when they built it." Sam grimaced at the sight of the dirty toilet water moving and pointedly moved to stare at the wall. "I want to set myself on fire right now. This is so gross."

"I'll hand you the match."

"I will douse you in gasoline, Tucker."

"Not the time, guys!" Jazz glanced at the ceiling, where she imagined the cable would connect. It squealed and screeched, but eventually, the world's worst elevator trip came to an end, and the one wall with nothing attached to it split open to reveal the pristine tunnel of a GIW facility. All four of them bolted for the hallway, and not just because they were eager to start trashing the place.

"Danny better fucking be here because I do not want to ride that thing ever again." Gasping, Sam rested her arms on her legs, breathing in stale, underground air. At least it didn't stink.

Danielle giggled again (that was twice now!!) and changed forms. "I'll go scout ahead," she informed them. Jazz bid her good luck before she faded from visibility. She wasn't too worried about the girl. Dani had her radio and knew to avoid GIW sensors as a ghost.

Tucker lay on the ground, staring into nothing while they waited. "My ass is still wet," he commented after a few moments of silence.

"No one needs to know that, Tucker."

"Too bad. I might get a rash from this. Did you know I ran out of underwear last week? I'm on my last pair, and now I'm gonna get a fucking diaper rash from them."

Sam gagged. "That's disgusting. Don't tell me this shit. I'm cursing your bloodline just for that."

"You gotta tell me these things," Jazz chided. "I would have gotten you a new set."

Tucker waved his arm in a 'whatever' motion. "Eh, honestly, it isn't that bad right now. I've done worse. Danny and I once tried to see how long we could go without showering or changing in middle school. I went two weeks before my parents hog-tied me and hosed me down in the front yard. Danny managed to go a full month before you did the same."

Realization struck Jazz and her eyes widened. "That's what that was about? Oh my god, he was yowling like a cat when I caught him, and it took three rounds of shampoo just to wash his hair! He's never forgiven me for it!"

"Sounds about right." Tucker shrugged. "I promised him a ticket to the observatory if he won, but you caught him the day of the showing, and he missed it."

"Why don't I remember this?" Sam demanded.

"It was right before y'all moved to town. It's the incident that caused the 'Fenturd' nickname."

Jazz put her head in her hands and groaned. Sometimes, she really wanted to smack her brother.

Danielle popped back into existence, making all three of them jump. Her mood had drastically changed, and she seemed really uncomfortable. "As interesting as that story is, and I definitely want to hear about it later," she said nervously. "This whole place has already been raided. There's no one here except a couple of soulless bodies. And an open portal. Someone was here before us."

All three shot up. "Lead the way," Jazz demanded. Everyone ran down the still-pristine hallway. Barely any dust had settled, and none of them smelled blood. Who had gotten here first?

They slid to a stop before a big metal door. Dani ducked through it to open it from the other side, and everyone was assaulted with the smell of rotting bodies and days-old blood as soon as it started moving. The door was literally so thick it had trapped everything inside. Including some agents, it seemed. A few bodies were pressed against the door and fell toward them when it opened. Tucker screeched and jumped back.

Sam, a true crime girlie at heart, crouched to examine the closest one. "Their fingers are worn through, almost to the bone," she noticed. "I bet if we closed the door again, we'd find scratch marks."

Dani floated above the corpses. "Yeah, it looks like something cut off all the exits and hunted them one by one."

"But what killed them?"

Sam toed a body until it flipped over. The eyes of the agent had been ripped from their skull, and frostbite warped their skin so bad she couldn't tell what their original features were. Danielle floated closer to Jazz, looking highly uncomfortable. "Danny's ecto is all over the place," she whispered. "He was definitely here."

"Right." Jazz hardened her heart. She was here to find her brother, not feel sorry for brutally mutilated government agents. "Let's get going. Stick to the battle buddy system, and keep your comms on."

They proceeded cautiously, only touching a body if it blocked their path or to find a key card. Tucker remarked that if this was a horror game, he probably would have played it, but living it was so much worse. Every single corpse had its eyes removed, and it was starting to wear on Jazz's mind. Dani mentioned their souls were gone, too.

Eventually, after some detours and backtracking, they reached the labs where Danny would have been held. Rage filled Jazz's chest as she saw ectoplasm mixed in with the bloodstains. A table had been set up to restrain a ghost with specialized handcuffs that had FENTONWORKS printed across them in bright green letters. Shattered glass was scattered across the floor and a few organs were decaying quite rapidly. A scientist was slumped across the table, a small knife still in hand. Jazz kicked the corpse.

Without Danielle telling her, she could feel it. This is where Danny had been tortured. Probably vivisected, too. Those were his organs that were rotting on the floor. His blood stains the ceiling. She was seeing red. She wanted to scream. Her baby brother had been tortured by these horrible people, and she didn't even get to kill them??

Danielle tugged on her arm, quietly bringing her back to herself. "The portal," she reminded Jazz. "It's in the next room."

"Sam, Tucker, see what you can recover from in here." Jazz gritted her teeth and let Dani guide her away from that room. "Dani's gonna show me the portal. Scream if you need us."

"Be careful!" Sam called back.

They left the room, going two doors down to what looked like a near-perfect copy of the Fenton's lab. She stiffened as she spied the portal. It wasn't set into the wall like the original but rather floated a few feet in the air in front of it. It looked like a tear in reality, similar to something Wulf could make, but on a much larger scale. She felt dwarfed by it, and dreaded to think about what could come through a portal this size.

Dani pointed out some blinking computers, the only ones still with power inside the entire compound. "They were working on a new portal," she said. "The Fentons sold their research. I'm not sure how we missed it, but they were really close to getting it figured out."

"This isn't from the GIW?" Jazz asked, gesturing to the behemoth of a disaster still swirling next to them.

"No, I don't think so," Danielle zoned out. Her eyes glowed, and she looked at things Jazz couldn't see. "This was opened from the other side. I think someone broke in, took Danny, and left after killing everyone."

"Someone from the Ghost Zone?" Jazz frowned. She bent over the computer, trying to click around for security footage. "But who do we know that is strong enough to kill everyone so physically? Vlad swore to never interact with us again, even if it was life or death. Undergrowth would have left plants behind, Nocturn doesn't like killing in the mortal realm, and Vortex can't sustain himself underground. None of the normal rogues are strong enough, either. Unless they got Desiree to help?"

"Nah, she may be a bitch, but she refuses to participate in murder of any kind. Plus, she's a neat freak. This isn't her work. It isn't Ghost Writer either; he doesn't like writing horror stories."

"What about Frostbite or Pandora?"

Dani wrinkled her nose. "Maybe? Frostbite is a pacifist who is more likely to rescue Danny without killing anyone. And the portal is too small to let Pandora through. She could've sent her warriors, though."

"It was Danny."

Jazz glanced up from the computer. Sam and Tucker were standing in the door, looking pale.

"We pulled recordings from the labs dating back two months. Danny was the one who killed everyone."

"...Pardon? It's only been a few weeks since he disappeared."

"I don't know." Tucker frantically typed away at his PDA, pulling up the downloaded footage and shoving it in Jazz's face. "But it's definitely him. I pulled their files, too. They were looking into time travel, Jazz. The day Danny showed up in their records, Operative K and Operative O were also logged in, even though they were 100% still in Amity during that time. They suddenly added on the time travel stuff a day later."

Jazz zoned out, numb to Tucker's near-hysterical rant. She just watched the tiny screen blankly as Danny was tortured over and over again but refused to give up the secrets the agents were asking for. Every time he refused, he was punished by having his organs taken away and put into jars for study. Then he'd be pumped full of pure ectoplasm, and just like Prometheus, he was back the next day with fresh organs for harvest. The dates in the recording went back weeks. Way before Danny disappeared.

Dani sobbed and looked away from the screen. Jazz couldn't even blink. The turning point in the experiments was when they brought in a little girl, a human girl, in front of Danny. The girl was about five, probably homeless or kidnapped, with pretty blonde hair done up in pigtails. Jazz noted she had been crying and had the number '27' pinned to her shirt. Danny was wary, sure it was a trick until he spotted something off-screen that they couldn't see. He jerked forward, straining to reach the girl, panic in his eyes.

But he couldn't reach her. Two scientists simply wrote down some observations before nodding in the same direction Danny was looking. Without asking a single question, the agents killed the little girl in front of Danny.

Jazz's hands shook as tears filled her eyes. Danny, her sweet baby brother, looked on in horrified shock as the cameras switched. Agents dumped the girl's body in a barrel of ectoplasm and waited patiently until a blue wisp rose from it. Then, using a Fenton peeler, they zapped the child's soul without mercy. Normally, the peeler stripped the disguise off a ghost to reveal their real form. But to a fresh soul as weak as that?

Her soul was burned into nothing.

Danny started screaming and imploded in on himself like a star.

The camera blacked out for a few moments, flickering between glimpses of her brother and blackness. She barely recognized him. His form had warped into something unrealistic. Something straight out of a movie. He was impossibly large now, barely able to walk on two legs when he stood amongst his broken restraints. His chest was a gaping cavern, and when he turned towards the camera, she could spy his tiny core exposed to the world. It was acting like a black hole, pulling at Danny's own skin and flesh like it was trying to suck him in. It was beautiful and strange in a horrible way.

He was too fast for the camera to really keep up with, but Tucker had doctored it to slow down each frame. Danny's face was splitting in two from a silent scream. His hair was flowing wildly, falling over his body, so it looked like he had a white, shaggy cloak.

His hunt never stopped. He didn't slow or hesitate to pounce on everyone he saw. His body was stained red from the gouging of people's eyes, which was the fastest way to reach a human soul. The group watched in horror as Danny leaned over his victims, opening his splitting maw even wider and devouring every soul he could, ensuring that they wouldn't even get peace in death. The churning of his core was getting worse, and at some point, he was spreading ice with every step he took. It looked like he was really struggling to stay standing by the time a few scientists were the only ones left in the compound. Jazz was afraid of what would happen if he collapsed completely. Would his core devour him?

At some point, the cameras really did die, and the screen went dark. Jazz realized she was crying, and moved to give the PDA back to Tucker.

"There's more," he shook his head. "But we didn't watch that far ahead because an outside force added it when I downloaded everything."

Like he said, the screen crackled back to life after a moment. The group realized it was from Danny's point of view. All the agents were dead, and he was stumbling through the halls in a daze, unable to keep his bigger form. He finally made it to the room they were in now, probably drawn to the familiarity of the lab layout. Before he could reach the unfinished portal, however, the freestanding one opened and out stepped a very familiar figure.

"Clockwork?" Jazz muttered, surprised.

As if hearing his name, Clockwork looked directly through Danny, straight at her. "The flow of time has been disrupted." He said softly. "I'll take our young Guardian here to a safe place. We have much to talk about, Miss Jasmine. You, too, Samantha, Tucker, and Danielle. I'll see you soon."

Then, the older ghost's focus switched back to Danny, and it was like he'd never spoken to them at all.

"Daniel," he coaxed. "It's time to go."

Danny groaned but stumbled forward and passed out in Clockwork's arms, promptly ending the video.

Silence descended over the room. Jazz could hear blood rushing through her body, and her heartbeat was pounding in her ears. She thought over what they'd found in the facility, about the state of Amity Park, her parents, and most importantly, her brother. About how he was tortured to the brink of insanity and how he still found it in his heart to love others. To protect them. To care and grieve for someone he'd never met. He must be feeling so much hurt.

Deciding on the next step was easy.

"We need to find Clockwork."

-

[I realized the timeline is kinda confusing, and I promise it'll all match up in the next chapter, but here's a chart on what it looks like right now so it's easier to understand.]

[The top one is the timeline Ra's and the rest of the DC characters are on. The middle is Jazz and the others. Danny is separate from both timelines right now because of the Time Medallion that Dan forced into his core. Right before the start of the story, which is marked in bright colors, Danny and the agents he's traveling with get involved in a time anomaly and are transported two months into the past. The agents still take him to the Yellowstone compound, but the incident makes the GIW speed-run their research on the Ghost Zone and, now, time travel. The timelines sync up again when Tucker finds the video from Clockwork. The total amount of time that has passed since the start of the story to the sync-up is about three weeks.]

[clockwayswrites]

OKAY, so I have been rereading some of your stuff, as anyone with a wonderful taste does /j. And I got to the One Stop Soup Shop? I hope that titles right lmao; anyway. So rereading that, and I got to the part where Jason and Danny are talking right after Jason wakes up, right? And I managed to overlook it for the first few rereads but the conversation where Danny is explaining what he used to be and what Jason is now makes me think of a couple different theories on what Danny could be now? Because he's almost, or he is implying, he isn't a Halfa anymore.

So, Fascinating. And I have a couple theories on that? So; here they are,

My first thought was Danny is the ghost version of a liminal. Like the opposite of a liminal. Ghost with human traits, instead of a Human with ghostly traits.

My second one was that whoever had him/captured him basically forced him, either permanently or until something can be done ie with Frostbite the yeti doctor or some other means, into his Ghost form, unable to turn back into human/living form.

My third was that, on the basis that a halfas core is connected to their heart, they tore Danny's heart out from the core, Either by the Fentons misguided attempts at believing Phantom was hiding in their now dead-from-the-portal-opening boys body, so taking his heart out to both kill Phantom, seeing him as some kind of parasite now, and allow Danny to be laid to rest, or the GIW got him, saw it, was wishing to experiment on it, did so, and when Danny was escaping, he tried grabbing it, and the pieces wouldn't rejoin, having been apart for a little too long, leaving Danny as this Halfa Husk, almost but not quite. A Core with a human body but missing the most vital piece of being alive, a heart. So he's essentially stranded to be a ghost, unable to turn human without dying slowly, and painfully. Again.

.... As you can see, I am so normal about OSSS. Clearly. Lmao, anyway, yeah I have gone slightly insane but it is so good, it's worth it, honestly. I think i have said enough to last a thousand years about OSSS. But I will leave with the fact that I am so excited to go reread, and spin in my head with OSSS, LBFD and BWAO. Hope you've been taking care of yourself, all the writing and head thinking you've been doing, okay? Great writers must be kept happy or something like that

I had to sit down and reread the first fic of this just to make sure I was thinking right LOL which was enjoyable, so thank you for that. It's always nice to have a reason to reread my own work, even if it's at the cost of your sanity I suppose? ^_^;

Like most of my fics, I have the scaffolding but not necessarily the details. Bobi esp was written more on vibes than on a plan. That said, your third one is closest.

Spoilers, I guess lol

But Jazz talks Danny into revealing Phantom to their parents, who go the route of being convinced that Danny is dead and his corpse is just being puppeted by Phantom. And in their experimentation he tips from being balanced to being more dead. The details I don't know, though your idea of heart is chilling! Basically Danny has a 'living' form that breaths and bleeds and is solid, but it's only that way because he started as a halfa. Unlike before when he had to transform to use some of this powers, he's always basically more ghost than not and so can turn off any of that. And he's still alive in his unique way.

JLD would have a fit meeting him lol.

[stuffymcstuffsworld]

Favorite?

"I don't have one." You stated firmly hands on hips. "Oh, come on, everyone has a favorite. Even Kalego has a favorite." Orias pointed to the brooding demon who sneered at the accusation. "I most certainly do not have a favorite."

You raised an eyebrow and gave him a look. "Your mouth says one thing, but your actions say another." You watched as he stormed off. For someone who is so mature, he can throw so many tantrums.

"I don't have a favorite." You stated again. "That can't be true, what about baby-chan?" Raim asked. You gave her a blank look. "What about my little jellybean? I don't favor her over the others." Robin popped up from behind. "Wouldn't they favor Iruma more anyway he is their flesh and blood."

"That's not a very good reason to favor someone, Robin-San." You state calmly. "I have no favorite." You repeated. "Why, though? It must be hard to remain neutral, yis?" Suzy-san asked. You blinked. "Not really. They're all mine." The stern tone in your voice left no room for arguments.

"How can I not love all of them? Or think that each one has the capability to drive me insane? They are all my children, and I won't let them think that they are second to anyone when it comes to my love."

It wasn't a competition. How dare they try to make you choose. "Okay, but say the building is burning. Who would you grab?" Prompted Dali-San. You glared at him.

"Alice can control flames, Kerori has ice, which can me melted into water, dropping the temperature and slowing the rate of the fire. Goemon has the power of wind, which, if used properly, can help the flames die out or be redirected. Picero can smother the flames with his earth magic, I have personally made sure that Clara carries at least 10 full fire extinguishers with her everyday as well as med kits and other emergency supplies."

You began counting on your fingers while maintaining eye contact. "That's five capable children that don't need rescuing right there. Next, we have Soi, who is smart enough to always stick by at least one of his classmates at all times. But for the sake of the argument, let's assume he is separate. Soi understands that he can't remain invisible in this situation. Nor is he allowed to remain quiet. He'll have to make noise and be heard so that one of his classmates can reach him if he's in danger and they will come."

"Elizabetta is never alone. There is no scenario where she is, so don't try to convince me otherwise. She's smart enough to know she needs to help the others remain calm in this type of situation. Soi was kind enough to help me help her learn the entire school's layout and all possible escape routes, and both of them will be fine."

You tilled your head a moment. Seven down six to go. "Lied would be able to locate his classmates and figure out which zones are the most dangerous by using their senses. So he'll know which areas are safer for him to reach. Then there's Kamui who will not have the assistance of animals at this time. Kamui needs to find a safe area cause he's a burn risk with those feathers but that doesn't mean he's helpless. His classmates will most likely be using their familiars for help or to track others. Kamui only needs to find one and he's safe."

Nine, you smiled thoughtfully. "To be honest, Sabro is reckless and will jump through the flames without a thought. He'll most like find others while risking the most exposure to the flames. Then there's Allocer who knows about 40 different ways to put out fires, multiple flame resistant spells, has the entire place memorized to a T, and most likely knows where all emergency supplies are all while contacting emergency services on his phone cause I know out of all of them he'll use a brain."

Eleven... leaving iruma and Jazz. "Jazz knows all escape routes for any emergency before he even steps into a building. He has a good sense of magic and is not the kind to just overlook his classmates needing help. He's not gonna give up easily, especially if he thinks someone is counting on him. And as for Iruma." Taking a deep breath you just gave them a plain look.

"Do you honestly think after all that boy has accomplished a mere fire is going to be his downfall? I'd be more worried about the building than the kids." How dare they underestimate your kids.

"So no, I wouldn't save any of them." Folding your arms across your chest, you set a firm line in your belief. Orias whistled. "Little cold, don't you think?" You frowned.

"Cold is not having an ounce of faith that any of them would make it out alive. I don't have favorites. They all get 5 minutes, then I go and grab all of them. There is no only one crap."

You walked out of the room, still pondering. Maybe you should make the kids have backup walkie talkies in case their phones don't work. Kalego-San might take interest in watching them perform in safety situations. Who knows? It might come in handy later.

[flamehairedwritings]

Stray: Chapter One

Characters: Lt. Simon 'Ghost' Riley x Female Reader 

Rating: E, 18+ ONLY

Words: 5k

Summary: Ghost has a fine time making you admit you need want him.

A/N: Chapter One of Six. A chapter posted every Monday!

Entire Story Tags: hurt/comfort, angst, enemies are lovers, porn with plot, they're not nice people, but are they

Chapter Tags:  Dub-con, only because reader says no when she really means yes, slight degradation, affectionate degradation if you will, praise, praise kink, biting, marking, use of love/ma’am/kitten/slut/good girl, belt around back of neck but no choking, cock-drunk, MDom, maybe even a bit of gentle MDom, rough, dirty talk, man-handling, gloves, fingering, blow-job, deep-throat, unprotected sex, slight possesiveness, permission to cum kind of, creampie

Read on AO3

Stray Masterlist

Please don’t copy or steal my work, and please don’t post it on any other sites. I do not consent to my work being used for AI purposes.

─

Chapter One - The Safehouse

His boots thud on every step of the wooden stairs, echoing a little in the stairwell.

Bone fucking tired, he's opted for the nearest safehouse; a flat in a crumbling, shitty block. It's one of the smaller ones in the area, but it's quiet, got some good escape routes.

Still, habits being habits and training being training, he'd scoped out the surrounding area anyway, finding it quiet, not a soul around. No threats. Not really a place you'd want to be out in after dark, anyway.

You might bump into someone like him.

He softens his steps as he approaches the front door, pulling the key out a pocket on his trousers. Nothing on the seal suggests interference, and there's no sign of tampering on the lock so, really fucking ready to put his head down, he unlocks it, opens it, steps a boot inside─

And pauses.

Music.

There’s fucking music.

Coming from down the hall, in the kitchen.

It couldn't be one of the others, this is one of his safes.

Fuck.

It's the last thing he fucking wants or needs, whatever this is.

Silently, he steps fully through the door, closing it behind himself. Unholstering his largest knife and a handgun, he squares his shoulders and moves down the hall. Entering the kitchen, his eyes dart about the small space. There’s the battered radio, his radio, sat on the centre of the circular table, soft jazz music playing from it. It’s so old the sound is slightly distorted, the instruments crackling.

There’s pots in the sink, too.

What the fuck…

Someone's made themselves a nice fucking meal.

And the shower's running too.

Lifting his eyes to the door ahead, his jaw moves as he stills.

A distraction or someone's actually having a fucking shower in his safe house?

Adjusting his grip on his weapons, he nears the door─ 

The water stops.

There's the distinct, faint squeaking of the taps as they're tightened shut, and then the sound of the curtain being pushed aside.

He decides to wait instead of barrelling in, not knowing what he could be facing.

Could be a civilian squatting.

Could be a fucking psychopath.

Steeling himself either way, next comes the sound of the door unlocking, then the handle's being pushed down and it's opened and─

You stand there.

Paused in the doorway, unsurprised.

In a robe. A fucking plush white, looks like it came from a spa, too fucking big for you, robe. Of course it's not fucking his, which means you actually brought it here yourself. He'd've laughed if he wasn't so pissed off.

And then you smile.

Fucking psychopath it is, then.

“Hello, Simon.”

“Stray.”

Of course it fuckin’ is.

Short for Stray Cat, you’ve been so named through the channels, and never supplied any other, because you belong to no unit, are loyal to no one, instead aligning with the highest bidder.

Should be because you just fucking turn up when you like and use other people's shit.

“The fuck are you doing here?”

You shrug. “I was in the area. You can put those down.”

He's not sure he can yet, but he does. Holstering both weapons, he remains where he is, watching you move into the kitchen, grabbing the kettle and filling it with water like you fucking own the place.

“Cup of tea?”

“Nah.” His eyes don’t leave you.

You, on the other hand, have your back to him. “Sure? I found some bags of Earl Grey─”

“I'm sure. Why are you here.”

Flicking the tap off, you shut the lid of the kettle and settle it back on it’s holder. “I needed a shower.” You glance at him, lips twitching. “And I like the head on that one.”

He grunts. “How'd you get in.”

“Reveal my secrets?” You flick the kettle on and turn to him, folding your arms as you lean back against the counter. “You know better than that, Simon.”

He presses his lips together, an action you can't see but can practically sense at this point. Your lips twitching again, you tilt your head.

“You're looking well.”

He doesn't answer.

“Tough job wasn't it?”

His eyes narrow a fraction. “What do you know?”

You tut lowly as the bubbling of the heating water grows louder. “I asked first.”

“Actually, I asked first, and I'll ask again: What the fuck are you doin’ here?”

The kettle reaches its boiling crescendo and flicks off, and you smile as you turn to it.

“Sure you don't want Earl Grey? There's no milk and even you surely can't stomach milkless Builder’s.”

“I don't want one,” he grunts as you set two mugs down.

You glance at him over your shoulder, the robe sliding off it a little as you drop a bag into each mug. “I'm not going to poison you, Simon, not intimate enough for me.”

He opens his mouth to snap a retort, when his gaze catches the drop of water that slides down your neck. His teeth grit momentarily as he follows it, watching it disappear under your robe, most likely about to slide down to─

His brow twitches into a frown as he sees it.

“What's that?”

Placing the kettle down after pouring water in each mug, raising your eyebrows, you look over your shoulder again, then tilt your head down to where his gaze is.

“Oh, nothing.” You grip the robe, pulling it back up. “Don't suppose you have any lemons hidden away?”

His eyes are on the back of your head, and you feel it. 

“That's new.”

“And?” Scooping the bags out of the boiling water with two fingers, you half turn, tossing them into the sink.

And you've forgotten how quick he can be.

Before you can turn back, he's closer, grabbing your extended arm at the bicep with a gloved hand.

“Ghost─”

His other hand yanks the robe off your shoulder again, lower this time, giving him a full view of the fresh, jagged, angry scar that stretches the length of your shoulder blade.

He exhales a harsh breath through his nose, mouth in a thin line.

“What─”

“Get off.”

He lets you shove him away, the hand that had pulling the robe up once more. He watches you as you adjust the cord at your waist, tightening it. All humour has vanished from you now as you tear your gaze from his, turning back to the mugs.

You’re pissed off now and he doesn’t even want to start fucking analysing why.

Silence descends as you shove the mug you’d prepared for him along the counter, water sloshing over the sides, and lift your own to your lips, taking a small sip from it.

He releases a long breath, hands settling on his belt.

“Was it from one of his jobs.”

“I'm fine, Simon,” you mutter, taking another sip.

“Why have you come running to me, then.”

You scoff, setting the mug down and turning suddenly to him, an incredulous smile on your lips.

“You think that's what this is?”

His head tilts minutely. “I know it is.”

You laugh, folding your arms as you lean back against the counter again. “You're so cute. I was just in the neighbourhood.”

“You're never ‘just in the neighbourhood’, Stray.”

“‘cause you're the authority on me, are you?”

“I know what can make you cum, that tells me everything I need to know.”

You stare at him. Then, you snort, a wide smile spreading across your lips as you reach for your mug.

“Very cute, Simon.”

He watches your lips settle over the rim of the mug, watches your throat move as you swallow. 

Well, seeing as he won’t get the sleep he wants…

“You know…” Exhaling a breath, he pulls his headset off and sets it down on the circular table. “... You’re still a fucking shit liar.”

“I’m not, I do think you’re cute.”

You’re smiling again, pleased with your funny little quip, you’re always pleased with them, and it doesn’t falter as he moves closer.

“Well, now I know that is the truth…” It does falter slightly as he takes the mug from your hands, places it on the counter behind you, where his hand then rests, arm nearly brushing against yours. Tilting his head down to look at you, you have to tip yours back. “... That’s why you’re here, isn’t it. He can make you dance to his tune, but he can't give you what you need. What you crave.”

Your smile has eased, but he sees the darkening in your eyes. “Your presumptuousness is grating.”

“Leave then.”

You don’t move. Predictably.

Your arms are by your sides, and he’s already noted the quickening of your breath, your chest rising and falling a little faster. And your smile’s gone.

He shifts his weight to one foot, leaning more on the hand behind you, leaning closer.

“Go on,” he murmurs. “Play your little game, mouse. We both know how it's going to end. Or I could just…”

You inhale sharply as suddenly his other hand is at your inner thigh, making your hands flatten against the counter door behind you. 

Movement around his eyes suggests he’s smiling.

Fuck, you hate being too easy.

Gritting your teeth, you lift your chin a little more, silent.

He releases a sound, almost a chuckle. His gloved fingers glide against your sensitive skin, tracing up and down, and you hate that he can probably see how tight your jaw is.

“Tell me you want it,” he murmurs.

You lick your lips. “No.”

“No?”

His fingers inch higher, so close to your aching pussy.

Your lips part. “No…” You lift a hand to his face. Then, you grip the material of his cloth mask.

Instinctively, his hand darts up from your thigh, gripping your wrist tightly.

You still, gazing at him. After a moment, you lick your lips again. 

“Just want your mouth, Ghost. Please,” you murmur.

He stares at you.

Then, his grip loosens.

“Did you just fuckin’ say ‘please’?”

“Shut up.”

Pushing his hard mask up and off, and the material one up off his mouth, you then claim his lips. He groans against your mouth as he hears his mask clatter to the floor, your arms wrapping around his neck. Sliding his arms around your waist, he tugs you against him, making your lips part with a gasp.

“Always so fucking needy, aren’t you,” he rumbles as you bite at his lower lip.

“Funny, I thought that was your hard cock I can feel…” you breathe, trailing off with another gasp and a smile as he tightens his grip on you.

“Shut up.”

He kisses you fiercely, so hard it’s almost bruising.

You love it.

Rising up on your toes, you press as hard against him as you can, and he holds you there, but it’s not enough.

“… stupid, fucking vest…” you hiss as you draw back suddenly, and then your hands are fumbling with the fastenings. He just watches you, hands gripping at your waist.

“Thought you liked feeling it against your tits.”

“Not today.”

Shoving it off of him, it joining his mask on the floor, you return to your position, and… yes… it will do.

He’s never gotten entirely naked with you, and it drives you insane sometimes, but you don’t dare to push, lest he make you stop completely, so you don’t try today, just let him take the lead.

And he does.

He captures your lips in one, long, firm kiss that nearly steals all the breath from your lungs before he’s kissing down your chin, jaw and neck, making your head tip back.

Well, kissing is generous, it’s more like he’s biting and sucking.

Trapped between him and the counter, all you can do is arch against him as he mouths at your skin, your eyes closed, mouth open, harsh breaths escaping you.

“Beg for me,” he mumbles against your skin.

“No…” you breathe, and his hand is suddenly between you, pulling at the robe cord.

Parting it, his gloved hand glides from your stomach, up over your tits and down to your hip

“Beg.”

“No…” Even you would admit how breathy and pathetic the single word sounded.

He bites down where your neck meets your shoulder, making you cry out softly, and then his fingers are tugging at your hard nipple.

“Beg for me, then I’ll give you what you want,” he murmurs into your ear.

All you do is moan, gripping at his biceps.

“Mmh… I…”

“Beg, love, then I’ll play with your needy, puffy little cunt.”

Turning your head closer to his, you bite hard at his jaw, your saliva slicking the skin and stubble there as you moan, and he knows he nearly has you.

“You want that, don’t you, love… Want my fingers stroking your aching little clit… My cock stretching your hole open…”

You would be embarrassed at the moan you release but you don’t care.

“Simon…” you breathe, and he presses an almost soft, open-mouthed kiss to a bite-mark that’s forming, and you crumble. “… Please, I want that, I want you, please─”

Snarling, he grips your waist and spins you, walking you backwards swiftly and shoving you against the table. Gasping as your hip bumps against a chair, you gaze up at him with half-lidded eyes as he shoves you up, making you sit on the table. Falling back onto your forearms, you send the radio and his headset clattering to the floor.

One of them sounds like it breaks, probably the radio from how the music suddenly cuts off; you don’t care.

“You’re gunna fuckin’ pay for those,” he rumbles as he unbuckles his belt, eyes fixed on yours.

“How would you like me to do that?” your murmur, corners of your mouth lifting as you rub your ankles against his hips.

“You know.” Pushing your legs further apart, he stands between them. “You want my fingers first, want to be stretched open for my cock?”

Licking your lips, your chest rises and falls swiftly as you look at him. “Yes.”

“Want the gloves on or off?”

“Off. Want to feel you.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Removing his right glove, he settles his left hand on your hip, before he runs the other straight down your inner thigh, to your pussy, where he slides his forefinger right into your slick hole.

You cry out as your back arches, eyes falling shut.

“Yeah… That’s good, isn’t it…” he murmurs as he starts to fuck you with it “… Tell me that’s good, kitten.”

Lying back, your head nearly hanging off the table, you don’t want to give into him fully too quickly, so you just moan. And he allows it, for now.

“So fuckin’ wet already… Were you drippin’ from the moment you fuckin’ saw me… I bet you were, weren’t you, you needy little slut… Bet you could take another finger already…”

He eases a second, long finger in so easily, and you fist the robe that’s spilled around you. 

“Oh, God…”

“Not quite, love.”

When his thumb moves from your hip and starts to slowly circle your clit, you’d happily call him so.

You rock your hips into his hand as you moan, almost mewling like your namesake.

“That’s it, fuck yourself on my fingers…”

Gazing up at him, you could cum just from the sight. His eyes flick from your own to your cunt, his shoulders loose, relaxed, and, looking at his chest, you can see his breathing has picked up. You love what you can do to him… but you know you can do more.

Locking your ankles at his lower back, you drop your knees down to the side, giving him better access, and a better look, at your soaking cunt.

“Why don’t you get on your knees, Simon…” you purr. “... Why don’t you taste how wet you’re making me…”

He grunts, though it almost sounds like a groan.

“Now that’s really cute…” Suddenly, his hands are off of you, and before you can whine at the loss, he takes the fronts of the robe in both hands and pulls you up and forward until you’re on your feet, held between him and the table. “... You think you can give the orders here, love? Don’t fuckin’ think so.”

Then, he releases you, and takes a step back. 

“On your knees.”

Lips parted, your body thrumming with pure fucking lust and adrenaline, you smile.

And then you sink to your knees.

“Good girl,” he gravels as he unbuttons and unzips his trousers.

“Fuck you, Simon,” you murmur, your smile lingering and your thighs squeezing together as you tip your head back and open your mouth.

Creases appear around his eyes again; he’s smiling, too.

Pulling his cock out, his groans in the back of his throat as he strokes it a few times with his ungloved hand before he places his heavy tip on your outstretched tongue.

“You know what to do.”

His hand falls away as, instantly, yours takes its place, and you start to stroke, squeezing lightly, as your mouth closes around his cock and you suck hard.

“Oh, fuck…” he hisses, fingers flexing at his sides as his hips buck.

You let his cock sink in deeper from the action, and then you take him all, his tip hitting the back of your throat.

You’re used to it. Or, rather, used to him.

“Christ…” he grits out, a hand flying up to grip your shoulder.

He never touches your head when you suck his cock, unless you ask.

You draw your head back, and then take him all in again, then again, then again, until, looking up, you see his eyes have closed. As if sensing you looking at him, his eyes snap open, and he tightens his grip on you.

“Yeah, you look at me with those big fuckin’ eyes while you suck me off… I’m gunna empty that pretty fuckin’ head of yours until all you’re thinkin’ about is my cock.”

Drawing your head back, you use your tongue to push thick globs of saliva out of your mouth and down his cock before smiling. “You think I’m pretty?”

“Shut up. Put your mouth to better use.”

Exhaling a laugh, you then take him all the way in again, keeping your eyes fixed on his. He grunts and watches you, drawing in sharp breaths. You fucking love sucking his cock, feeling the ridges and veins with your tongue; it’s thick to the point where your jaw will have a delicious ache tomorrow if you carry on for too long, and, well… On your knees, sucking the cock of the feared Ghost and having him grip at you for it? 

That’s pretty fucking intoxicating.

When you have him all in once more, nose brushing against his trousers, you then still, holding all of him in your mouth and throat.

“Yeah, get it all wet for your cunt…” he breathes, voice tight as his eyes flutter, trying to keep them open.

You nearly have him. He’s so very close to the edge.

And you want to push him right over it.

Pulling your lips back, squeezing them around him, until you reach his tip, you suck hard at it, swirling your tongue as your hand strokes up and down his thick shaft swiftly. He gives a strained gasp, quickly gritting his teeth as he hisses out breaths, and you moan against him.

“Cum in my mouth…” you murmur, gazing up at him. “... Cum down my throat…”

You suck at his tip again, swirling and swirling your tongue and─

He steps back, his cock leaving your mouth with a wet, unceremonious ‘pop’.

“What─”

He’s gripping the front of your robe again, hauling you up, and shoves you against the table once more.

“What did I say…” he half-pants, gripping the backs of your thighs and making you sit up on the table. “... about givin’ fuckin’ orders.”

Your heart pounds with excitement and a smile pulls at your lips as he shoves the two chairs either side of you away, sending them toppling to the floor.

“I can’t remember…” you breathe as he stands between your open legs, his wet, heavy cock pushing against your stomach. “... All I can think about is how much I want your cock inside me, Simon…”

He makes a sound akin to a growl, and then his gloved hand is between your breasts, pushing you down. Lying back on the table, you place your heels on the edge of it as he grips his cock, other hand gripping your knee.

“Say it again.”

“Want your cock in me…” you mewl, rolling your hips as you run your hands from your stomach up to your breasts, tugging at your nipples and drawing a soft moan from yourself. “... Want you deep inside me, want to cum on your cock…”

He’s staring at you, your eyes, your fingers, your tits. He’s at the edge of his control… but he’s also a bastard.

“Magic word.”

You exhale a short breath through your nose, rolling your nipples between your fingers. And then you lift a leg, settling your ankle on his shoulder.

“Come on, Simon…”

His hand slides from your knee, up your shin to your ankle, cupping it, and he turns his head to it.

And then he presses a soft kiss to the skin there, keeping his eyes on yours.

Oh, fuck you.

Inhaling a ragged breath, the word sounds like it’s almost punched out of you.

“Please.”

He smiles.

“Good girl.”

You’re moaning before you even feel his tip. When he sinks into you, your eyes fall shut and your head tips back… and it’s bliss.

“Fu-uck…” you breathe out, and you feel his grip tighten on your ankle.

“Fuckin’ hell…”

The groans he releases, so fucking low, so carnal, has you instantly starting to rock your hips, feeling his thick length slid so easily in and out of you, stretching you. Hissing out a breath, he suddenly grips your other leg and lifts it onto his shoulder, taking over and thrusting into you, already setting a hard and fast pace.

The table creaks beneath you with each snap of his hips, but you can barely hear it, all that’s left of your mind focusing on the pleasure that’s pulsing through you.

“How does that fuckin’ feel…” he grunts, hands locked on your shins.

You gasp out moans as you hold his gaze. “... So fucking good, you feel so… so fucking good…”

Shoving your legs off his shoulders, he leans down, settling his arms over your head, mouth hovering over yours.

“Again.”

“So good, so fucking good, so fucking good, fuck, Simon…”

You try to kiss him, lifting your chin an inch, but he moves his head away, instead ducking it to your neck and fixing his lips there.

And then you hear him take a long, deep inhale.

“Fuckin’ Christ…” he breathes.

He thought he’d smelt it earlier.

You smell of the basic, shitty, own-brand soap he keeps here, and it’s driving him fucking wild.

You smell of him.

He thinks of you gliding the bar around your body, soaping your tits up…

“Fuck…” he groans against your skin, spreading fast, sloppy kisses there, sinking his teeth in.

He chuckles darkly when you cry out, your slick walls clenching around his cock.

“Yeah, you fuckin’ like that, don’t you… Like when I mark up your pretty fuckin’ neck?”

He bites down again, revelling in how you instantly clench again, hard, a ragged moan torn from you. Pressing his lips to your ear, he rumbles, “I’ll be on you for days.”

Fucking hell…

Your hands gripping at his jacket, fisting and tugging, you cling to him as he bites and bites and bites, always covering each one straight after with a lick or a sloppy kiss. And he just keeps fucking you hard through it.

When he suddenly pulls back, you actually whine, hands falling from him.

It takes you a moment to realise what he’s saying.

“... Look at me… Look at me…”

Your eyes snap open, and he fucking loves the almost blankness he sees there, how cock-drunk you are.

Yeah, only he can do this for you. Only him.

“Come here…” He slides an arm under you and pulls you up so you’re sat on the table, his cock continuing to spear into you. The angle allows him to plunge deeper and your eyes almost roll back as they close.

“Nah, keep those pretty eyes open, and stay up, look at me as I fuck you open…”

Pulling his belt out of the loops with a snap, without breaking rhythm he wraps both ends around his hands, and then wraps the shortened length around the back of your neck, keeping you up.

Keeping you looking at him.

“This is why you’re here, isn’t it…” he murmurs, nearly panting. “... To be fucked and spread open by my thick cock, to cum on it over and over and over again…”

You’re gasping in your breaths, hands now gripping his forearms, nails digging in, his words probably circling round and round your empty mind.

“… Say it, love… Admit it…”

Your mouth is open, hurried little breaths and moans all that leaves it. “... I…”

“Go on… Say it… It’s why you’re here, isn’t it… Say it.”

“Y… Yes…” you gasp.

“Good girl.”

You clench hard around him.

He growls. “Yeah, that’s it… Squeeze my cock like a good fuckin’ girl…”

You clench again, releasing a ragged moan.

“You need to cum, don’t you, you need to cum on my fuckin’ cock.”

You can’t take your eyes off his. “Ye-es.”

“Beg me for it.”

You’re talking before he’s even finished, words breathless and moaned.

“Please, please, let me cum, wanna cum on your cock, please let me, please…”

He chuckles, the sound catching in his throat with a groan. “You think you fuckin’ deserve it, huh… Think you can break in here and ruin the quiet fuckin’ night I wanted…”

You don’t know how, but you smile, and manage, “Don’t tell me… you don’t prefer this…”

“Well, now I’ll never know.”

Using the belt, he yanks you closer and claims your lips in a fierce, bruising kiss. You give back as good as you can, but you soon falter as an orgasm starts to build and twist in your lower stomach, making your muscles clench.

And he can feel it.

“Go on,” he mumbles against your lips. “Cum for me, rub your little clit and cum on my cock, let me fuckin’ feel you, squeeze me, make me cum…”

The moment he had said it, your hand had flown between you, fumbling, finding your clit and rubbing swiftly as well as you could. You cry out as the pleasure rises and rises, hurtling closer, your hips bucking. 

He tears his lips from yours, pressing his cheek against the side of your head, murmuring into your ear, “Cum for me, fuckin’ do it, cum now, cum on my thick cock, let me feel you, love.”

Your orgasm erupts through you.

Body jerking, you release a strangled scream as you cum, nails digging through his jacket nearly to his skin. He fucks you through it, grunting nearly incoherently in your ear now as your pussy squeezes him so fucking deliciously.

“... Yeah… Good fuckin’ girl… Fuckin’... Good… Tight pussy… Squeeze me… Take it… Take it… Take my fuckin’ cum… Yeah… Yeah… Oh, fuck…”

He thrusts hard and deep once, twice more, and then he cums inside you with a guttural roar, his grip tightening on the belt. Weakened, blissful moans fall from your lips as you feel him fill you, your back arching.

So fucking good, every single fucking time.

When he stills, his hands fall down to the table, taking the belt with them.

Swallowing hard, in turn your forehead drops down onto his chest, and you close your eyes, just focusing on trying to slow your breathing.

Your hand has softened on his arm, your other gently against his thigh.

His chin rests atop your head.

Neither of you speak, for how long you don’t know, and you almost hope neither of you ever do.

Suddenly, enough to startle you a little, his head lifts.

“Suppose you won’t be polite and fuck off now.”

You exhale a laugh, rolling your shoulders as you lift your head, arching an eyebrow. You find his cloth mask is back in place.

“No, I was here first.”

He just grunts out a sound that might be a chuckle as he pulls out of you, making you inhale sharply. Pulling the robe up over your shoulders as he steps back, you slide off the table with a small groan, rolling your shoulders again. His gaze drops down to your thighs, lingers, then meets yours again, and you give him a slow smile.

“Is that my cum leakin’ out of you.”

“Yes it is, Simon.”

You note the way his shoulders drop as his back straightens. 

And he jerks his head towards the bedroom door.

“Get in there. I’m gunna shower off.”

You give him a faux-pout, your brow dipping as renewed lust surges through you. “You don’t want company?”

You know he doesn’t.

He’ll give you everything but his face. And you give him everything but your heart.

He closes the distance between you, lowering his head to you. “You just get on that bed and keep those legs spread for me.”

A corner of your mouth rises higher than the other as you gaze at him. “Don’t tell me what to do, Simon.”

Letting the robe slip from your body to the floor, you turn from him and step over a fallen chair and the radio, moving into the bedroom.

Watching you go, his jaw moves as he releases a long, slow breath.

Fuckin’ hell…

─

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[theguardiansseries]

From the Beginning - Chapter 2: Saying I’m Fine Doesn’t Make You Fine (Although That Doesn’t Stop Dani From Trying)

A/N: Let's see if I can't get an upload schedule going! For now, tentatively, we're going to see if I can't get a chapter up every Wednesday and Saturday! Will I stick to it? Let's find out!

--

Rating: Teen Audiences

Summary:

Dani Fenton (who is sometimes starting to go by Danny Fenton) is a fifteen-year-old almost sophmore who was just going about her normal life when she figured out she sort of liked being seen as a boy. Oh, then he (he had definitely been a he at the time) got shocked by a machine his parents built to view into another world that they believed contained a world of 'ecotplasmic entities.'

Danny really isn't sure how to tell them that they were right and that he was in the machine when it turned on and that maybe he isn't so human anymore. (He might also not be a girl anymore, but that one was a little more difficult to explain than the fact that he ((she?)) might be half-ghost.

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54944266/chapters/139461646

Chapters: <<First>> <Prev || Next>

—

Chapter 2: Saying I’m Fine Doesn’t Make You Fine (Although That Doesn’t Stop Dani From Trying)

Sitting patiently, Dani was absolutely certain that she was going to lose her mind if her sister didn’t finish taking her temperature for the thousandth time- “99.9.” Ah, crap. Here it came. “Okay, I see that face you’re making, and I know your first day is coming up, but-”

“Jazz come on, I’m fine,” Dani groaned, trying not to think about how it felt as if she had been ripped out of her body and then stuffed back inside only for the entire fit to feel wrong. “Besides, 99.9 isn’t a fever. It’s me being trapped in bed under half a dozen blankets because our crazy parents seem to think ‘sweating it out’ is the best cure.”

Jazz was quiet for a moment, tapping the thermometer against her palm with the look she often got when they talked about their parents’ attempts at actually parenting them, “Yeah, because sweating it out during summer under an extreme amount of blankets is healthy alright.” Ah, she did so love sarcastic Jazz — even if that came at the expense of parent Jazz. “Dani, you were in a major accident-” 

“It’s been almost two weeks.” It had felt more like two years, but Dani liked to think she was handling the time with grace. “C’mon, even the doctors said I was fine after that first night-!”

“They did not say you were fine, they said you were stable,” Jazz stressed, nervously trying to take her temperature again. Dani probably would have fought more if she still didn’t remember just how terrified Jazz had been during that time. Her first memory of seeing Jazz after her Accident had been her looking wrecked. It definitely wasn’t a stretch to say her sister, who was a very firm five years older than her, looked after her more like an actual mom than a sister. 

Considering too that Jazz had seen everything every step of the way, she was probably right to call Dani out on her bullshit of being fine. It was after Jazz started glaring at the thermometer again that Dani sighed and conceded, “Alright, maybe I’m not exactly fine, but I’m definitely doing better than I was.” 

Jazz gave her a long, hard stare before it softened and she pulled Dani into a warm, familiar hug. She then ruined it by saying, “99.9 is still a fever, like it or not.” 

“Ugh!” Breaking the hug and collapsing back on her bed with a groan, Dani gave Jazz her best betrayed look. “Come on, already! Haven’t I suffered enough by missing the rest of my summer vacation? You’re going to make me a social outcast and doom me to a life of failure and flipping burgers by making me miss my first day back in high school?”

The first day back at their age was the same as being given an armistice to scope out enemy lines, map out escape routes as needed, and decide who would be allies and who would be sacrificed for the greater good. It wasn’t something to take lightly-! Hm. That sounded a little too much like Sam, actually.

Still. It wasn’t a day she could dismiss just because she had gone through some stupid ‘major traumatic event’ where she had apparently been actually, honestly dead for a couple minutes after being shocked by millions of volts of electricity- “I just don’t want you to overdo things and hurt yourself, Dani. You and I both know you have a habit of pushing yourself when you shouldn’t.”

Looking up at Jazz, it didn’t take much to see that worried, scared look in her eyes again. If they were being technical, Dani hadn’t been the only one to go through a major traumatic event — she was pretty sure Jazz thinking her baby sister was dead for a few minutes was traumatic all on its own. 

“Jazz.” Dani sat up, taking Jazz’s closest hand and giving a small squeeze. “Look, I know you’re probably sick of hearing me say I’m fine and everything, but I’m… I’m getting better, okay? I’m healing. I’m resting like I’m supposed to. I’m taking whatever meds they shoved at me. I’m even eating whatever awful healthy crap you give me! I know you’re worried, but come on. I’m still here — pulse, annoying attitude, and everything else.” 

Finally — finally — Jazz gave a startled snort of laughter before squeezing Dani’s hand back with a shake of her head. “Okay, okay, I get it. As long as your fever breaks then fine, you can go to the first day of school.” 

“Yes!” Dani threw her arms up, ignoring the aches and pain from where she had been doing nothing but lying in bed for weeks. “It’s legally binding we were holding hands when you said it! And 99.1 doesn’t count as a fever!” 

“99.9, however, does.” Jazz snorted and shook her head before standing up and gently pushing Dani back down into the blankets. “So that means rest, fluids, and not overdoing it. I’ll go start on dinner and check on you in a couple hours, okay?”

“Yes, mom,” Dani rolled her eyes, the familiar teasing name making Jazz roll her eyes back just as sarcastically. It was great. “I’ll just sit up here in my room lazing around with nothing to do but play video games and talk to my friends.” 

Jazz gave another laugh, not leaving until after a ruffle to Dani’s hair and a warm smile. As soon as the door closed, Dani didn’t waste a second before she pulled out her phone and immediately called up Sam and Tucker for a video call. Her friends, gems that they were, answered immediately. 

“Took a while, but Jazz’s paranoia is calming down and it looks like I’ll be good to go when it comes to the first day of school.”

“That’s my boy!” Sam cheered before pausing. “Or shall it be girl, today? Or neither. Neither is also a valid option!”

“It’s just girl today,” Dani said, thinking back to Jazz’s reaction when she had finally asked about the new clothes. Dani was pretty sure she knew it was something a little more than just ‘a new look,’ but she hadn’t pried about it. Her parents, so far as she could tell, hadn’t noticed anything, but that was par for the course, and they were probably more distracted by the whole electrocution thing. “And probably will be for as long as I’m trapped in bed. Not like there’s any reason to go all guy or whatever.”

Ah, and there began Sam’s rant about gender experience and expression and identity and how it all connected and didn’t connect. Tucker, sharking a look with Dani, removed his headphones. Truly, Dani could time it all by clockwork- 

Ringing. There was a sharp ringing in her ears loud enough to make her eyes slam shut, breathing hitching as all sound then vanished, an afterimage of bright green light blinding her as words were pressed into her skin, a deep thrumming of too dangerous to let this come to pass!

Swirls of blue replaced the green and there were more words, wrapping around her throat, a shimmering, sickly must stop this at once, Clockwork! 

Tick. 

Tock. 

Tick. 

Tock. 

Purple overwhelmed her and I’m afraid this has long been set in motion. Perhaps if you deign to look beyond the surface you’re so fond of skimming over you could see the change that… Ah. Interesting. 

Colors overwhelmed her where there should be nothing but black and the sound of ticking just at the back of her head made her struggle and gasp for breath and- 

“Dani!” Immediately wincing at hearing her name screamed by both of her friends, Dani groaned, hating how it sounded more like a whimper. God, it felt like head was about to explode.

“Ugh, guys, take it easy, I’m fragile and almost dead here. What’s with all the shouting-” 

“Oh, gee, lemme think.” Oof, that was Sam’s upset, sarcastic tone of voice that meant she was going to yell some more. Dani wondered if her earplugs were nearby. “Maybe the fact you just went silent, stared at nothing-” (stared at nothing? but her eyes had been closed, hadn't they? “-and didn’t so much as twitch for minutes!”

“Less than,” Tucker chimed in, waving a stopwatch in view of his camera. It was hard to read it over a video call on her phone, but she was pretty sure it hadn’t gone that far over a minute. “Timed it, but yeah, no, that was scary as fuck. Are you alright? Did you have a seizure? I don’t know how to help with seizures, Dani!”

“Whoa, whoa, guys, calm down.” Jeez her friends could be overprotective — and that was coming from her, who had a very bad case of using too much energy to help people when she didn’t really need to. “I didn’t have a seizure, I think I just dozed off for a bit. Haven’t been getting much sleep.”

The looks she was given made her feel both offended and like she needed new friends. It was a shame she was stuck with her current ones. (Alright, so she loved them and adored the fact they cared and worried for her, but still.)

Sighing, Dani slumped back against her pillows, adjusting her phone. “Look,” she settled on. “I know it wasn’t some kind of seizure and I had some weird dream thing flash in my head for a few seconds, so I think I’m just very close to REM sleep because my body’s trying to recuperate from what happened.” 

“Ooh, science Dani,” Tucker teased, ‘looking’ at Sam. “That’s how you know she’s being serious about it.” Right. Tucker had five more chances before Dani gave up on him and dropped him off at a nice geek orphanage. He’d at least build them a router out of scrap metal just so he could keep having Wi-Fi. 

“Fine,” Sam said after a long moment, pouting about the matter. “But if it happens again I’ll tell your parents.” Ha. That wasn’t a threat- “And Jazz.”

Tucker laughed even as Dani whined and that wasn’t fair. “C’mon, Sammy, you know she’d fuss and hover over me for weeks if you do that! You’ve seen how bad she is already!” It had been bad enough when Jazz found them while they were still down there- Not thinking about it. Nope. This was her. Not thinking about it. “And… In case I didn’t already say it, thanks, you guys. For covering for me.” 

“Of course,” Tucker snorted. “It’s not like we were going to tell anyone that you went in there on your own — especially Jazz. She would have killed all three of us.”

Sam hummed, stroking her chin in thought, “Do you think we would have gotten a discount if we were buried at the same time? Triple funeral?”

Relaxing as she watched and listened to Sam and Tucker start planning out their funerals, Dani gave a soft sigh, her friend’s antics making weird dream-induced anxiety into nothing more than a whisper. 

Reaching for her laptop to properly get some serious gaming done, and switch the call to something without shitty phone speakers, Dani had to pull her hand back with a swear because fucking static shock. 

“A miracle! Lightning does indeed strike twice!” Tucker declared, Sam giving a horrified laugh while Dani tried to decide whether to laugh or curse some more. She decided he was down to four chances. “Seriously, how many times have you been shocked since you got home?”

“More than enough,” Dani huffed, poking at her laptop before finally dragging it onto her bed. “Not too worried, though, just some static shock from lying in bed with these stupid blankets all the time. Now, who wants to help me conquer the world?”

While her friends rushed to their own computers, Dani flexed her hand where she had, yet again, been shocked. If there was one thing she was looking forward to most about being able to leave her bed and Jazz-forced quarantine, it was no longer getting shocked by just trying to pick something up. Thankfully, though, that wouldn’t be long. 

Her life would be back on track and back to normal and Dani could go about surviving the next year of high school. 

⁂

Danny wasn’t sure if he was going to survive long enough to get to high school. Like, yeah, okay, almost shocked to death and now he had some heart problems and a couple of breathing problems and was a lot more clumsy, great, that was fine- Not fine. It wasn’t fine, but it was something he was coping with. 

No, that was all liveable, at least. The whole not surviving thing came about because everything electronic around him decided to hate him. 

It had started with his phone. Being confined, trapped, and chained to his bed for an eternity had left him with little to do besides dick around on his phone and constantly call and talk to his friends whenever they weren’t able to come over and infect his room. The problem that arose that prevented him from constantly calling and talking with them, however, was that his phone decided to die twenty minutes after a full charge. 

The first few times Danny could forgive. There had definitely been times before when he thought he had a full charge and his phone, his stupid, stupid phone, hadn’t given him a low battery warning before it shut itself off. The fifth time of it happening, however, had Danny beginning to craft an argument to use on his parents for why he needed a new phone because his was obviously broken. 

And it would have been fine at that — because phones died and phone companies were jerks and new models came out all the time — but it wasn’t just his phone. It was also his laptop. And his lamp. And his bedroom lights. And basically everything electronic with wires that he managed to come into contact with. 

“I dunno, Danny, maybe it has something to do with you basically being struck by radioactive lightning in a lab accident- Ooh! What if you got superpowers-”

“Be serious for once in your life, Tuck. An accident like this is more likely to give him radiation sickness than it is to give him powers-”

“Hey, guys, yeah, the whole talking about radioactivity and me dying thing? Really not helping with this experiment.” Danny shot a glare at his phone — which was propped up against his wooden table and windowsill with nothing metal at all anywhere near it and Danny not so much as touching it.

Over the video call Sam rolled her eyes while Tucker snorted. Danny ignored them both and kept a careful eye on the battery power left in his phone. It was, at that exact moment, at forty-seven percent. Slowly, so slowly, Danny reached out and tapped a corner of his phone. It dropped to forty-three. “Are you kidding me?!”

“How much did it drop by?” Tucker asked, already sitting back and pulling a pen and notebook into view. 

“Started at forty-seven. I tapped the right bottom corner, since it’s propped up sideways, and it dropped to forty-three.” Danny was satisfied only by the fact that Sam and Tucker gave winces with the proper amount of pain. 

“Yeah, that- Yeah, no, that’s just weird,” Tucker shook his head, looking down at his notes and then back at Danny. “Hey, have you considered it’s something to do with that mirror portal thing being on? I mean… how much power does that thing use? It’s probably blowing through the generators and making everything in the house flicker or have power problems.”

Danny paused, leaning back in his chair and that… that would make a lot of sense, now that he thought about it. Especially if what his parents and Tucker said were true about how much power it ate through. “I mean… I haven’t heard Jazz or anyone complain about problems, but that actually makes a lot of sense. Especially considering the lights have been flickering in almost every room I’ve gone in.”

“Sorry, but how does your unplugged and battery-run phone relate to power problems caused by generators?” Sam looked at them both like they were idiots and Danny realized he and Tucker had skipped ahead a couple steps and explanations. 

“Sorry, Sammy, jumped ahead there. It’s because if there are power problems then it’s not getting a full charge at night through the cord, or it’s been glitchy enough that it’s been messing with the battery itself, a lot of rapid oh look it’s changing followed by oops, now it’s not. Tapping it like I did could be enough to jostle the battery and cause connection problems or something like that?” Phones were more Tucker’s territory, but Danny liked to think he knew enough to not sound like a complete idiot.

“Oh. Well then if that’s the case then you don’t have to worry about it,” Sam said reasonably. “Just wait for your parents to fix it.” Yeah. Yeah, honestly. If the power shortages were driving Danny crazy then they were probably driving his parents nuts. “Back to more important matters… What are you wearing for the first day of school? Are you going as Danny or Dani?”

“The way you said those names sounds exactly the same,” Tucker grumbled, Danny hiding a laugh and that… was a really good question, wasn’t it? While he was slowly starting to get used to, well, he, there were still times he wasn’t sure if it was just a phase that he was exploring, in Sam’s words, or if it was a him — her? — thing. 

Like, okay, he had felt totally great when he had first seen himself in Sam’s mirror after wearing his new ‘guy outfit,’ but then he remembered a couple nurses asking for his pronouns at the hospital after he had really woken up. While his dad had looked confused, his mom had looked condescending and he was pretty sure he remembered the words Of course she’s a girl! What else would she be? 

It had made her feel pretty shitty for a while, and even now it hurt a little to think back on, but it wasn’t like she could up and explain it all. Especially when in a hospital and hooked up to a bunch of equipment. Jazz had made it feel better, using a lot of gender neutral terms to the point she wasn’t even sure she had meant to, but there was still that uncertainty. 

What would kids at school say? Yeah, okay, their cover story was that Dani was going through a ‘tomboy’ phase, but the fact she needed a cover story was just… It didn’t exactly feel great. It felt like she was playing a game she didn’t even know how to play, let alone win. 

“Hey, you know, my cousin does this online thing where she sells wigs.” Startling at Tucker’s sudden comment that had been spoken way too loudly, Dani (Danny?) looked up at the video call to see Sam looked just as startled since she had been in the middle of talking and planning for, in her eyes, what was going to be their first battle of the year. “Some of them are made from donated hair, which, yeah, creepy, but it makes them look really natural.”

“And you’re interrupting my battle strategy to talk about wigs, why, exactly?” While Sam crossed her arms and looked ready to have Tucker drawn and quartered, Tucker only looked at his camera so it made it seem like he was staring right at Dani. 

“Just thought, you know, if Danny is having a guy day and wants some shorter hair or something, I can get a wig or two off of my cousin that’ll look like your natural hair. And a couple long ones, too, in case you want to cut it, but want to go back to long when you switch.” Oh. Oh. “Can also get some colored ones if you want to give Jazz a heart attack and go through some temporary teenage rebellion.”

Silent and way too emotional for a moment, Danny (much better) finally nodded and managed a perfectly normal sounding, “You’re such a dork, Tuck.” If Danny really was close to crying, his friends at least did the mercy of not pointing it out and god he had gotten lucky when it came to his friends, if nothing else. 

Right. He just had to remember what Sam had said. It wasn’t about one or the other, it was about being who he was in that moment. That was something he could do, just focus on the moment and not what came after. 

Finally settled he only paused when, for a second, he felt something brush against his skin, a sensation that had no feeling and Danny. Danny with a y Ph- 

“-stick with the NASA theme.” Sam’s sigh was loud enough to break through his thoughts. “At least it’s familiar ground.” Right. Battle strategy. First day back at school outfit. 

“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with NASA clothing,” Danny defended immediately, brushing away the thought that had fluttered through his mind. “And I’ll have you know that galaxy themed clothes are fashionable-”

“No, they’re not.” The fact that came from both of his friends hurt. It hurt deeply. Danny would have to remember to pay them back in kind as soon as he could. In that moment, though, it was a good distraction from having to think about everything else. 

Moments with her friends, though, didn’t last forever. Especially not at night when she was back to being Dani and everything was still and quiet and the loudest thing in the world was her too quick breaths. 

It wasn’t like- She knew she wasn’t fine. She could say it to her friends and family all she wanted, but… But how could anyone just be fine after something like that? Movies and books made it seem a lot easier, but… She wasn’t fine.

She knew that when she had gotten a jolt from a pile of freshly cleaned clothes and had almost collapsed from how fast her heart had started beating. 

It was in how she had smelled something like bleach or antiseptic and had immediately collapsed over the nearest sink to gag, visions of yelling doctors and pain seared against her.

She wasn’t fine because instead of sleeping she was staring at the dark, cool colors of her room, eyes hardly closing for even half of a moment. She had seen enough of white walls. 

She had only been in that hospital for two or three days at most, but it had felt like so much longer. It hadn’t helped when every time she had managed to fall asleep for just a few minutes her dreams (nightmares) were terrifying and had made no sense. She was pretty sure she had jumped at the color green way too many times after seeing it so much in her dreams. 

Then there was the fact that she had barely even seen her parents since she had gotten home — she had barely seen them while she was in the hospital. Her mom and dad hadn’t arrived home from their science whatever until the day after Dani had been admitted into the hospital. They hadn’t been there long, either, because they had to rush home and deal with whatever had happened to the Portal after hearing why she was in the hospital to begin with. 

It had definitely been lonely. Sam and Tucker hadn’t been allowed to stay with her because they weren’t blood related. Jazz was the only one who had been there the entire time and had seen what had happened from beginning to end, and, well, Dani couldn’t blame her for all the hovering and worrying that she had been doing since then. 

For hours it had been Jazz, who had practically raised her with how busy their parents were, who had watched her on the verge of death. Dani could only remember what was probably a quarter of what had actually happened and even that was enough to know just how bad it had been. The doctors had been talking about how she might have needed a new heart because of the possibility of how badly the electricity had damaged hers. She was pretty sure most of the doctors and nurses had been surprised she had actually pulled through and been alright. One of them had even gasped when she had actually managed to stand up and walk around the room.

She could say she was fine all she wanted, but it wasn’t like she hadn’t heard the recovery instructions and the debriefing the doctors had given Jazz and later her parents. Her heart was damaged and weak, so there would no doubt be problems when she was older. She might have trouble breathing and being active if her lungs stayed as badly damaged as they had been. There could be memory loss, amnesia, confusion, hearing loss, and so much could have gone so wrong. 

Yet there Dani was, sitting in the kitchen in her nightgown after getting too restless and claiming she was fine and thinking about the invention that had almost taken her life. 

It couldn’t have been any earlier than at least two or three in the morning, probably closer to past three, and considering Dani had school in a couple of hours she should definitely be at least trying to sleep instead of sitting at the kitchen table and staring at the thick metal door that separated her from her parents’ lab. 

Ever since her Accident the two of them had kept the door down into the lab locked and sealed tightly, not even a crack of light escaping from any part of it. 

Considering how busy the last few weeks had been Dani couldn’t be sure, even that late at night, whether her parents were upstairs asleep or down working in the lab. If it was the latter she wouldn’t have exactly been surprised. What she had thought would be nothing but useless scrap metal had turned into something very active. 

Dani wasn’t sure of all of the details, but she had understood enough of her parents’ excited ramblings as they drove her home from the hospital and got her settled into bed. The Portal — the Ectoplasmic Monitoring Device — was no longer just a working theory. Instead it actually worked. 

There had been a lot of big words and a lot of emphasis placed on the importance of it finally working, but Dani and Jazz had read between the lines as easily as they had always done. The Fentons had work to get done and Fentons never stopped until the job was finished. 

Her parents had been studying the ‘scientific breakthrough’ since the second they realized it was working. They hadn’t released it to the public yet, but Dani was sure it was only a matter of time. After all, it was… definitely something. It was definitely something and Dani couldn’t even see what it looked like. 

Looking at the stove, and seeing that she was right and that it read half past three in the morning, Dani carefully got to her feet, shivering at cold tile against bare feet before she was walking over to the lab door, tucking her hair back and placing an ear up against it. 

She didn’t hear her parents in any way and, while the door muffled sound from the laboratory, it wasn’t soundproof. It was a safe bet to say that her parents were upstairs finally getting some rest, but… For once, Dani had to agree with her parents over Jazz. 

While Jazz always complained about how their parents tended to ignore everything else outside of their current project, in this one case Dani couldn’t even begin to blame them. If the Portal was actually working like it was intended then… there was a whole new world down there that they could see. 

Oh, Dani had no illusions about there being life or ‘ghosts’ in whatever realm or reality or whatever that they had busted their way through to, but it was still something so new. This wasn’t a faraway planet out past the distant reaches of their own galaxy. This was a world. Even if it was empty, it was a world that was right down there.

Dani didn’t even realize how closely she was pressed against the door until she was shivering from the cold metal that leeched the heat out of her and her simple nightgown. Taking a few steps away, Dani took a bracing breath as she just… stared. 

It probably looked amazing down there. Even if it was just a mirror image of whatever they were seeing, it probably looked incredible. 

“The door’s locked,” Dani said firmly, almost jumping at the sound of her own voice after the silence of the kitchen. It was just the reminder she needed to take a few steps back. “The door’s locked because that’s a lab down there with radiation where I almost died.”

Except, well, she hadn’t died. Oh, it had been terrifying as all hell and she certainly felt like she had gone through death, but she was still there, alive and breathing. She was still there, just standing still, just like that world that was just out of reach-

“Nope!” Snapping her mouth shut as the word came out louder than she wanted, Dani risked a glance at the stairs and sighed in relief when it didn’t sound like anyone had heard her. She then immediately cursed at herself along with a halfhearted, “Idiot.” 

What was she thinking, honestly. She had wanted to go down and look at the thing that had almost killed her? Yeah, no, if she hadn’t had a panic attack before then, that would definitely do it. Nope. Nope, nope, nope, she was going straight up to bed. 

She would shake off the phantom screams that she absolutely did not hear and that absolutely did not sound like her and march right up the stairs because it hadn’t mattered what had happened down in that lab and what did matter was that it was late and she should be sleeping.

Forcing herself up the stairs, Dani didn’t stop moving until she was collapsing into her bed and staring up at peeling glow-in-the-dark stars that were judging her. She was tempted to throw something at the ceiling if it wouldn’t just come right back down and hit her. 

“I’m fine.” Whatever was down there and whatever had happened didn’t matter. As it was now she was alive, and breathing, and physically exhausted even as her mind was absolutely wired for her first day back at school- Her first day. Actually. It might have been time for Danny’s first day of school.

—

If you enjoyed this story then check out my Writing Commissions either here on Tumblr or at my personal Website.

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[anon-e-miss]

For the Praxian finmech thing, would Jazz want to get a doctor in for Prowl to see why he hadn't transformed after Smokey shows that it's possible? I feel like that would be a great way to have someone like Ratchet or Ambulon drawn into the fight to get the finmech classified as sentient- and it would be especially interesting to see how they would react since I'm sure Pharma would be part of their history, and as a Seeker himself he seems like the kind of guy to have a finmech simply to show off as a status symbol, or to impress his peers.

I feel like it would be an interesting route to go down if the DJD were involved in the market for T-Cogs harvested from finmechs, though that doesn't fit much with the rest of the Praxian finmech stuff and the Jazz + Prowl storyline. A side tidbit or an AU, possibly. Still, Praxians being unwilling organ donors to make the trade more gruesome and horrible? Or trophies of their fins and plating, just to add a more desperate level of obedience in most of the pets, as well as further incentive to escape?

Or there could be some worse sides of the market- things like their fins and their young being seen as a delicacy (I'm assuming they lay eggs if they're based off of bettas?), and wild caught or 'unfit for sale' captive bred Praxians having their fins cut off before being left to starve because they can't swim or find food, just so rich mechs can have a bite of their frames. Just truly awful stuff that Jazz finds the deeper he goes into investigating the new additions to his home.

(I'm sorry that was really long I'm just super excited for this idea and I've been thinking about it all day haha)

Don't apologize for being excited by a plot. I like the engagement. Everyone had been very decent about their asks and no nagging or weird shit and I am very much happier for it.

I would see the DJD as perhaps... procurement specialists and I'd go with Pharma working with them t-cog trade-wise. Hell,theirt-cfaexcusemeharlothasdecidedfotofuckoffagain.

[sublime-beyond-loss]

The End Of The ‘Keeping The Narrator Company’ Livestream

The end has come after 42 days of nonstop company keeping lol. I put together these two videos as a sendoff to both the stream and the game.

Make sure to watch it all the way through. The way it is structured is deliberate. This video is very personal to me and maybe a tad over the top in sentimentality, but I think I've earned the right to a little sentimentality lol. Maybe just like how I thought nobody would care about the stream and was proven wrong, others will still get meaning out of this video too. This video is meant to represent what the Narrator as a character and The Stanley Parable as a whole means to me as a creative inspiration after a long bout of depression destroyed so much of my creative energy. All of this has helped me to begin the long and ongoing process of escaping the awful place I have been in.

The video is also about how fictional works inevitably take on new forms through the creativity they inspire in others. The death of the author is also the (re)birth of the author. An endless cycle of inspiration branching off and growing only to inspire more branches to grow. Ideas building upon one another. The end never being the end does not have to be a cycle of stagnation. There will always be sparks of inspiration to carry us onward.

It's also mild commentary on one of the big things this stream showed, that the game fundamentally denies you a means to interact positively with the Narrator in almost all cases. Skip button? He will never notice that you're not pushing the button. Zending? He has nothing to say unless you start to defy him. Even the freedom ending, where you do play out his story in the way that he wants, you are denied because he remains an impersonal narrator lacking any of the nuance the other routes give him. But for me, and staying true to the hopeful theme of the stream, it doesn't matter much because I still found meaning in the act. I like to think that I both honored and gave something back to this game in the form of a unique interaction with it. I don't think there are many other games out there that would get someone to consider sacrificing 41 days of their PS4's lifespan to it for no in-game benefit lol.

One thing that ultimately inspired this video as the sendoff for my time with this game was the unavoidably of pressing the skip forward button. The big irony of the stream is that it only happened because that button has already been pushed to its conclusion. This stream about defying pushing the button only exists because the emotional weight of pushing it has already occurred. This meaningless gesture toward this character I empathize with only takes on any sort of meaning after having pushed the button to its conclusion. You cannot escape the button, really, because you would not avoid pushing onward until after you've already seen the content that lies ahead, but on the other hand, defying it only has its impact once you've seen how bad it gets.

As I spoke of in my blog post about running this stream, I saw a lot of myself in the skip button scene and I think the desert that comes after it scared me in a different way because of all the unpleasant implications it has. I cannot know the true meaning behind the desert and I have a million different theories, but the general conclusion I come to about it and the epilogue is that, yeah, the unknown is scary, and when facing the unknown but likely sad fate of this character I empathize with, I have made the choice to interpret it in a hopeful light because of what I see of myself in it, even if everything about it points toward cynicism. Death of the author and all that jazz. This desert is a bleak thing to be confronted with, but one must confront it. I understand that all too well. It is so easy for me to envision the effect my own depression has had on my mind as the same sort of desert and I know now that it was never the end that I thought it was. It's the start of something new after what has felt like several eternities filled with pain, solitude, and apathy. I think the post-skip desert is a place of endings but also a place for new beginnings. A place for new possibilities to rise up out of the dust of what came before. Maybe I'm just a hopeful fool who wants to see hope in a game so lacking in it. Maybe it's because the game can feel like a mirror at times, but I guess I just like to think that there is hope to be found in this game that so badly wants you to interpret it as a hopeless spiral. I leave this game defying it to the very end lmao.

Well, this is the end of the road for me. I could not keep the Narrator company forever, even if it was fun to pretend like I could for a little while. Regardless, I'm going to carry this spark with me into whatever I create next. It is that which inspires inevitably taking on another new shape as the cycle continues.

Take care, pal. It's a desert out there, but I think we'll be fine.

This second one is even more personal and unlikely to resonate with anyone but me, but it still carries the theme of sincerity mixed with silliness. It's flawed due to my own inexperience (I didn't catch that I was filming in vertical mode till it was too late to fix it, for one lol), but I've decided to accept the imperfection of it. I'll let you in on something so that maybe this video will have a little more meaning. When I was a kid, my grandma would take me and my sister to this park all of the time and we would never miss a chance to walk this forest path. Even as an adult I would still get together with her every once in awhile to come to this park and walk the path with her. This is the first time I've walked it since her death. It's a lot lonelier now, but I'm glad to have finally walked it again. All it took was a stupid little livestream that made me want to take a video outdoors so that I could end it on a joke about touching grass lmao.

EDIT: There is also a post-livestream Discord chat. If there is anyone left who isn’t already in there who wants to keep chatting now that the stream is gone, message me and I’ll get you an invite.

[thefoldedbird]

ASFoS Chapter 10 Brainstorm (spoilers) ?

I was going to have chapter 10 be about finally letting the ex-boyfriend out of his cage cell and having a mutual agreement occur but I forgot about his descent into madness I started two chapters ago. Whoopsie.

It's going to be very jaded and bitter instead of hopeful but I can work with that. Honestly it might go a little better than I had originally planned. Not sure how far I'm going to swing his freedoms though given his current mental state.

Just for funsies I'll probably have him negotiate supervised walks outside and throw Bluestreak in there every so often as one of the guards. He traded shifts with Cliffjumper or something cause there's no way Prowl would schedule his nephew like that.

Also Skyfire is going to catch major side-optic from everyone for suggesting it in the first place even though he makes very good points for every argument his superiors have. Even Jazz kind of shadily remarks that Skyfire has "given this a lot of thought".

Optimus Prime

Prowl

Jazz

Ratchet

Wheeljack

Perceptor

Skyfire

Skyfire does also argue from a mental health side of things. Seekers are social creatures by nature and do not handle being underground for very long. He frames this carefully as fliers (as to include himself) don't tend handle being underground well. Prowl throws out Silverbolt which Skyfire counter as being an outlier as he has an underlying pathological fear.

To everyone's surprise Ratchet agrees with Skyfire.

Is Oil Slick back? Of course not. Oil Slick is dead and has been for ages now. He was killed by his own creations. Prowl likes to argue that no one can be certain of that since a body was never recovered but Ratchet was at ground zero during the cosmic rust recovery mission and will argue Oil Slick's death until the day he dies. Not that the audience will know that. Shockwave recovered Oil Slick's notes from the ruins of his lab. He tried to use some of the knowledge when creating Sunstorm but it failed. This will come up later if/when Sunstorm appears.

Fun fact cosmic rust did not kill Oil Slick. Ratchet was partially wrong though Oil Slick did die soon after. His experimentation with scraplets did. Scraplets will not eat rusted metal willingly. He assumed since he was slowly dying of cosmic rust they would leave him alone. He was wrong. He was eaten alive by bugs essentially. He basically tried to escape the collapse of his lab using underground tunnels and instead of using a safe route tried to use a faster infected route.

[whumpzone]

Tomas and Rowe - Part 18

Masterpost

@sola-whumping @just-another-whumper @misspelledwitch @looptheloup @briars7 @black-polarf @zipadeedooda-drabbles @just-a-whumping-racoon-with-wifi @rosesareviolentlyread @thingsthatgo-whump-inthenight @jazz-0307 @kestrelsparverius @whumpsy-daisies @whumpersworld @memoriesneverforget @sky-or-something-idfk @cupcakes-and-pain @frankieswhump @ihaventwritteninsolong @mybrokenlittletoy @kiretto-laorentze @morelikepainsley @lavmars @tears-and-lilies @whump-me-all-night-long @newbornwhumperfly @itaina-anta @whump-it @haro-whumps @simplygrimly @alex-ember @rippedjeansandfadeddreams @mnmlover2002 @jordanstrophe @princessofonward @xmonster-under-the-bed @as-a-matter-of-whump @5boys1house @crystalrainwing @starnight-whump @chifechi @unicornscotty @penny-for-your-whump @getyourwhumphere @likeit-or-whumpit @jasm0307 @lightdrinker @hurting-fictional-people @captainseconds @glamrockgregory

CW: recovering pet whumpee, environmental whump, references to an amputated finger, paranoia/hallucinations

-

As he turned to lock the final door behind him, Rowe could see that he had been in a warehouse, evidently a rarely-used one. A single floodlight was on, illuminating nothing but a bare wall and the road leading up to it. Rowe had been correct- it was night. The open air was a thousand blessings as he breathed it in. His eyes felt clean, he could stand up properly, he wasn’t wearing that fucking collar anymore.

The happiness was short-lived, but he let himself have it. He was free. He just had to get home, now.

Rowe would have panicked, at that moment, but instead his heart toughened, because Kasia hadn’t been able to break him down. He was missing a finger, and the throbbing pain made sure he wouldn’t forget in a hurry, but he was still there, still himself. His nightmares would probably take a new form, and he wondered if he’d ever be able to sleep alone again, but he was fine. He was a Pet. He was a person. Surviving was a skill of his.

He rested a hand on the wall, making sure he was hidden in shadow, and let himself take some of the weight off his scarred leg. Burnt, smashed, sewn up and burnt again. He would be limping, by the time he got home. But get home he would, and in some way, it was thanks to his leg. He had been sat on his bed, back when he couldn’t walk, looking for something to distract him from the feelings of anger and uselessness and what if he throws me out?

So he’d looked down and practised his reading. He remembered it perfectly. Tomas G…Grz…. something… 12 h-a-r-t… Hartland Road… your Pet… s-p-l-i-n-t…. bed rest for up to one week…

Rowe had read the address, and perhaps even then he’d known he might one day need it. It didn’t solve the problem of knowing whereHartland Road was, or whether he’d make it there without being stolen or beaten up or killed, but he had to try.

Kidnapped, he thought. You’d only say stolen for a piece of property.

The warehouse was evidently on the outskirts of town. Was it the right town? Rowe thought so, as he studied the lights shining down the road. Several of the shapes were familiar to him. The colourful string bulbs that were hung up along the shopping streets, the glow from the theatre on the hill, the dark spot where the graveyard sat. From his bedroom window he had to crane to get a good look, but he could see it well from the office. He ached to be back there. In the warmth and familiarity of it. Back with- Master? The word sounded strange now. Especially since- since Rowe felt like he understood him now. Understood his intentions.

He started to walk. Kasia’s jacket rested on his shoulders, and he couldn’t bear to put his arms in. The idea alone made him feel trapped. The thing smelt distinctly of the bastard, but Rowe knew it was preferable to the cold of a dead night. He found a main road soon enough, built up above the rest of the grassy flatland, so he gingerly climbed down the hill and walked alongside. He would be hidden from passing cars well enough, but his bare feet soon began to take the brunt of the choice of rough land over tarmac. Stones, sticks, was that roadkill, oh, god, all were littered through his journey which was only sparsely lit by the occasional road light. After a particularly sharp stone, or possibly even a discarded glass bottle, Rowe knew his foot was bleeding. He ground his teeth together. It wasn’t real if he couldn’t see it. And right now, he couldn’t see his own hand in front of him.

He kept his eyes on the lights from the town before him, slowly drawing closer.

He thought he heard footsteps behind him, running closer with horrifying speed. As they drew near he could hear Kasia screaming at him.

You think you can fucking get away from me? You think you locked that collar? You really think I won’t come back?

He kept his eyes fixed on the town. “It-it-it’s n-not real,” he whispered past the lump in his throat. He was trembling with fear. “It’s not real, I locked him up, I st-stopped him, it’s not real, it’s not.”

The paranoia wouldn’t leave him, though. Every passing car, though they were few and far between, made him jump and crouch down, hands clamped over his mouth. He couldn’t shake the fear that it was Kasia after him, out searching for the rotten escaped Pet. His leg burst with pain every time, making him whimper and cry when he tried to stand back up.

The sounds of footsteps gradually stopped, and Kasia’s voice faded, but Rowe could still feel his hands clawing at him. His back tingled with the overwhelming sensation that someone was behind him, creeping up and reaching out to grab-

Against his better judgement, he turned back. Darkness there, and nothing more. “Fuck, f-fuck, keep it together,” he muttered.

Just up ahead, he could see streetlamps. Proper ones, glowing a gentle orange. He went as far as he could along the grass, then climbed up, wetting his hands in the dew. He checked for cars, and seeing none, scrambled fully onto the road.

He realised he couldn’t run anymore- his leg would give out, or he wouldn’t be able to contain a howl of pain- so he limped as quickly as he could towards the next patch of shadow, over and over.

Eventually he came upon a sign: Welcome to….

It was half shadowed, but it was a map. He pushed himself up on his tip-toes, eyes scanning the jumble of letters and lines and symbols. Eventually he spotted it. Hartland Road. He traced the direction in his head, making sure it was committed to memory, although he knew he wouldn’t forget it even if someone tried to beat it out of him. And then, he started walking.

He couldn’t tell exactly what time it was, but he would have guessed around three or four in the morning. The pub, as he passed it, was quiet, although he still kept his distance, hugging the shadows.

He soon reached the base of the hill he knew he’d have to climb. As he started to ascend, he saw the Pet hospital in the distance. Oh god, would he have to go back there to get his finger treated? He pushed the question to the back of his mind. If he did, there wasn’t anything he could do.

A few cars drove by, as he walked. He wanted to duck into one of the smaller streets that branched off, but he had only memorised one route home, and he didn’t trust himself to improvise in the dark. So instead he squared his shoulders, stopped hunching, tried his best to look like a person walking home in his heavy jacket, not afraid, not prey. It didn’t feel quite right, but it was easier than he’d expected. And it worked- no cars stopped, no one seemed to give him a second glance.

He finally reached the street, the name lit up. Hartland Road. The sign was scuffed, like kids had popped the cap off their beers along its edge. It was fixed to the wall of a garden, weeds poking out through the bricks, a flyer from the council tied at eye-level to the neck of the streetlamp. Rowe took everything in as he walked. The bicycle clipped to a fence, the parked cars, the black bins left out for collection. Before, he never would have taken notice. None of it had mattered. But now, Rowe felt as if he had a new connection to the world around him. He could interact with it. He wasn’t leashed or under the watchful eye of an owner, he wasn’t crawling or blindfolded in the boot of a car. He was in pain, yes, but he was always in pain, so constantly that it hardly registered anymore. He was free.

Rowe didn’t recognise the house itself. The only times he’d ever left it, he’d been unconscious, or practically so.

But when he turned around, he saw the same view he’d had from his bedroom window every morning and night. He was home.

He remembered Kasia’s key, but it no longer fit into the front door. The lock must have been changed. Rowe hated that the alternative was to make a loud noise, at this hour, but perhaps that was the smarter way than simply slipping inside like- like Kasia. So he hesitantly pressed down on the doorbell, hitting his fist against the wood as well. He waited. He thought about how he’d never rung a doorbell before in his life.

Silence. Rowe wasn’t exactly surprised, but his heart still tightened. Suddenly the fresh air didn’t feel freeing, it felt exposed. He rang again, knocking harder, not giving up. Surely he would know it was urgent? Surely he would come down, and Rowe would get to see his face again?

Faintly, he heard the creaking of the stairs. “I-I-It’s me!” he said, hushed. “It’s me, I…”

His words died as the door slowly opened. Half a face, an eye framed by blond curls peered out, full of apprehension. In a heartbeat it landed on Rowe and widened, and the door flew open.

“Tomas,” Rowe said, loving how it felt to say his name, loving him, loving everything. “I’m back, I, I’m back, I’m back.”

Tomas raised a hand over his mouth, and for once he was the one shaking. “Oh my god… oh my god.”

And then he was reaching both arms out for Rowe with a sob. Rowe threw the horrible jacket to the ground and fell into him, wrapping his arms around his waist and holding on tight. He couldn’t have known whose knees failed first, but suddenly they had collapsed on the floor, clinging onto each other, not leaving a shred of space between as they both cried. Soaked in the orange light that pooled through the still-open front door.

[andydona-chan]

Bad, bad treat!

Read it at AO3!

Scratching a bit on the wall with the spatula, Danny sighed, he had been trying to remove the mix of candy and ectoplasm from the walls on Fenton Works for at least 3 hours now. He was tired, but the memories from the day before still made him smile, so he supposed it was worth it.

Looking back at what happened, he should have seen it coming, he sighed and turned to look at his two best friends, Tucker and Sam were helping him, and even though Tucker looked like he was melting with all the activity this required and Sam, with red-tinted cheeks from the sun, who was just spraying the spots with a Fenton ecto-removing formula were also tired, they also didn’t seem to regret what happened.

Danny chuckled a bit and thought back to Halloween night (aka yesterday), the three of them had been planning on what to do for that night to make it a very interesting trick or treating experience.

While both Tucker and Danny had spent a good portion of their budget to buy candy (in which only half of it actually went for the trick or treating basket), Sam and Jazz had worked together to create a spooky corridor from the entrance and down to the lab. Jack and Maddie had been invited to talk at some conventions, the convention was actually for horror movie fans and ufo theorists and the sort, so it was nothing too serious but it will keep them out for the following three days, leaving them alone for the best night of the year.

Using that as an opportunity, they made the ghost portal the biggest attraction. Jazz of course had taken some ‘security measures to prevent things from going downside, or so she thought. The corridor that Tuck and Danny had to assemble (girls designed, so they built) guided people through some weird-looking plants and spider webs, also some splats of glow in the dark paint that looked like ectoplasm had been on the paper-made walls. The black light and some of the rumors about the portal made it for a very good-looking spooky place, especially with the lights off.

Danny and Tucker had both dressed up as scarecrows and were sitting about a meter away from the portal, there was a line there that said do not cross and they were supposed to stop any curious kid if they tried to go near. Danny had the candy basket and from time to time he would move and scare some children. Jazz and Sam were taking turns helping people go down while talking like a witch and a vampire, which helped prevent a big amount of people from coming and going.

It seemed to be working, at least until a ghost was detected nearby. Danny turned to look at Tucker who just shrugged and looked at him. Danny was sure the ghost hadn’t entered from the portal because it was closed, but natural portals were now becoming a constant so he still needed to go and check. He transformed and left the basket on the chair they’ve been using to allow Tucker to continue with the act.

Turns out it was just Johnny and Kitty, who had tried to pass as teenagers going trick or treating, they hadn’t really used their ghost powers or influence to get candies and they actually seemed to be having fun, so after negotiating a calm night with the pair Danny went back to his place. He flew around the place once before turning invisible and intangible to give the people outside something to talk about, however, when going back, Tucker was on the floor, placing the candies back on the basket.

“What happened?” Danny asked returning to his human form and helping Tucker with the candies.

“Youngblood,” he said with a frown, “just a moment ago the portal opened and he tried to kidnap the basket, so I tried to stop him, we were pulling on the basket for a moment, who would say that kid almost pulled me into the Zone, however, I negotiated to give him a handful of sweets and the brat just let go of the basket, thus the mess. He took the candies and left but yeah, nothing serious.”

“Well, at least it wasn’t anything worse and no other ghost came out right?” They finished lifting the candies and Danny placed the basket on Tucker’s arms as he sat.

“Yeah, the girls stopped the tours when the alarm went off, Sam just came to make sure I was okay and left, they must be on their way down again” Danny nodded, at least Jazz’s plan had been good so far.

“Let’s keep it spooky then”, said Danny posing again as a scarecrow. It was no surprise that after a couple of children, some teenagers also started showing up, Paulina and Star, Dash, and even Wes walked down to get candies and then left, by ten pm they had run out of candies, and people on the streets with children were less and less.

“Wow, no big incidents tonight, talk about good luck!” said Tucker after they closed the door.

“Yeah, it was also fun, not creepy and full of horror as I was expecting, but it was alright,” said Sam pulling candy from an inside pocket on her vampire cloak.

“And with all the safety measures we took, nobody got hurt, abducted, or lost in the Zone, so there’s that…” said Jazz, cut short by Sam’s scream of pain.

“What in hell…?” Sam had thrown the popsicle she had just removed the cover off to the floor and was looking at one of her fingers covered in blood, she turned to look and Danny and showed him her tongue, for a second he thought she was joking, but then he saw there was also blood there.

Tucker had gone to lift the popsicle from the floor. “That stupid thing bit me,” said Sam, and Tucker retracted from where he was about to pick up the candy. It was Danny who then moved and went to get the candy from the floor; he lifted it and touched the strawberry glassy surface of the candy, only to have it open something like a mouth trying to bite him too…

He then turned around and looked at Tucker “Dude, did the candies enter the Ghost Zone when you were dealing with Youngblood?”

Tucker opened his mouth to answer but then lifted a finger and cursed silently, it was then that they heard people screaming. Danny, Sam, and Jazz shared a look, this was a big problem. In a minute they were making a plan, with a net to pick up the candies the girls were going to visit and or try to locate the people with the candies, Danny and Tucker had to sacrifice their share to replace the contaminated ones, so they left and started doing their own trick or treat route.

Some people were already looking for them, some other people were screaming in their homes, in a matter of minutes there was chaos in the streets of Amity Park. “How many people went to the house today?” asked Danny while trying to catch some of the candies that the people were running from.

“I didn’t keep count,” said Sam, “but it was a lot!”

While she tried to catch some of the candies with the net Danny had an idea. “The shield, people will be able to go into it and it will stop these, let’s get them there” Jazz and Tucker who were also nearby heard him and took off towards the house telling people to follow them.

Jazz made sure to turn on the shield and cover the housing ratio, Tucker was calmly telling people to go in, and just as expected the ghostly candies couldn’t follow. Danny used that moment to go ghost, and tried to use a shield of his own to gather all the candies. These allowed people to go back to their houses, some of them grabbed candies from the non-contaminated pile, but others just left and the ghost shield on the house was turned off.

At that point, Johnny and Kitty showed up on the motorcycle. “Wow, the first time I see treats become tricks on Halloween night,” said Johnny, “but I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he said pointing ad Danny’s shield full of furious candies.

“Why?” asked Danny.

“Candies can only support certain contamination level, they’re not made to keep it for too long, that’s how we can eat the candies, they dissolve and become part of us, but when not part of a ghost and with a constant increase of contamination made by an ectoplasmic shield, they’ll just… boom!” said Kitty as a matter of fact.

Just then Danny looked at the contained candies in the shield, as if Kitty’s words were a command, some candies started exploding like popcorn, Danny let go of the shield, however, the candies didn’t fall, instead, they remained floating and started exploding, splatting candy and ectoplasm everywhere but mostly onto Fenton Works, some of the most colorful ones creating something that looked like fireworks.

Jazz, Sam, and Tucker were already inside, and if the look of horror on Jazz’s face was something to go by, this was going to get him grounded, it didn’t escape him, however, how his friends laughed at the whole thing, Johnny and Kitty went back to the Zone shortly after the show ended, but Danny entered covered in a sweet mixture of candy and ectoplasm.

Jazz had only asked him to make sure the house was clean before their parents arrived, something that by the looks of it was still going to take time. The ectoplasm candy he was trying to get off finally gave out and fell to the floor, he lifted it and placed it inside the ghost proof trash bag they were using, then reaching inside his pocket, Danny pulled out candy, the green-yellow candy screamed at him once and he threw it in his mouth, Tucker and Sam looked at him with disgusted faces, but he just shrugged.

“Someone’s got to eat all those sweets,” he said smiling. Sam, Tucker, and Jazz had found themselves with some ecto-contaminated candies after the whole thing, and Danny was supposed to get rid of them, but the ectoplasm actually gave it a different kind of flavor, he had been unable to keep his share of candies from Halloween, so it was only fair he at least had those.

[starsheild]

Forbidden Magic 8- Pursuit

He ran.

Bluestreak was silent in his arms, and this frightened Smokescreen, but still he ran. The way beneath his pedes was rough and uneven, but familiar. He had been this way many times with his origin, looking for local crystals.Taking a right at the giant copperfall tree would bring him to the edge of the market-

“What makes ya think he came this way?”

“A mechlin’? Where else would he go? Out inna the wilds?”

“These mecha are funny. He might have.”

“Nah. Pretty sure there was another one too, even smaller.”

Smokescreen froze, hunkering down and listening. He started to panic, hugging Bluestreak tighter to him. Though they had stopped speaking, he could still hear them moving through the rough terrain. The mechling searched for a escape route while staying as still as he could, stifling his own vents in an attempt to be quiet despite his panic. His focus narrowed so much that he squeaked when he was grabbed from behind, stilling only when he recognized the voice that hissed in his audio.

“Shhhh!” Sunstreaker warned, though any noise that they made was easily drowned out by the taunts that Sideswipe let loose.

“Hey uglies, ya looking for me?” The red mechling popped out behind the hunters and made a rude sound. As soon as he has their attention he added a few choice gestures to the noises. “Are ya as slow as ya are stupid, I wonder?”

“Is that the one we’re looking for?”

“Who cares?”

“Well if ya are, I ain’t got nothing to worry about!” Sideswipe cackled as he took off with the pair crashing along in his wake.

“Sideswipe?” Smokescreen asked as soon as Sunstreaker removed his servo from over his mouth.

The yellow twin snorted. “He’s fine. He’ll lead them in a couple circles, loose them, and the catch up with us. What are you two doing out here?” Blue optics that were far too sharp for a mechling his are took in Smokescreen and Bluestreak.

“Mecha broke inta our hab… They attacked Ori. He pushed me ‘n Blue out the door. Said to run, to Ratchet.”

Sunstreaker helped him up from his crouch, frowning as he thought. “Do ya know them? The mecha?”

Smokescreen shook his helm. “I know I have seen them in the market, but they never stopped at Ori’s stall. Ori’s been kind of upset the last few megacycles…”

“If you're looking for Ratchet, we’re gonna have ta go to the keep. We saw him headin’ that way before we left earlier. He goes there almost every megecycle.” Sunstreaker explained as he guided Smokescreen down an unfamiliar path. “Com’on.”

“My Lord?” Though he was young, Frontrunner was levelhelmed and loyal, as well as skilled and brave. All of these characteristics has earned him a postion as Jazz’s captain of the guard. For him to sound so unsure of himself, and to be interrupting Jazz when he was with family, was highly unusual.

“Yah?” Jazz turned with frown, helm tilting to the side a bit.

“Sorry ta bother ya, but there are some younglings at the gate askin; after the medic. One o’ got a newling ‘e’s holdin’, and they’re all plenty upset.”

“They are asking for me?” Ratchet straightened from where he had been checking Barricade offer. “Who are they?”

“That set of twins that is always running ‘round the market, and the Praxians. Smokescreen ‘n-” Frontrunner frowned then shrugged. “Dunno the bitty’s designation. But they’re all askin’ fer ya.”

“Bes’ go see what they need.” Ricochet said from where he was sitting beside his mate.

“If Smokescreen brought th’ bitty ‘ere alone…” Jazz pondered as he and Ratchet started down the hall, Frontrunner on their heels.

“I’m more worried about the fact that Prowl is not with them.” Ratchet commented, his stride lengthening as the longer he thought until the shorter polyhexians were practically jogging to keep up with him.

“If it was him or the bitty that needed care he could have just sent Smokescreen.” Jazz frowned. “The twin’s bein’ wit’ don’ surprise me, since they’re friends from what ‘ave heard.”

By the time the trio arrived at the gate the younglings had been pulled in and the gate closed back. The twins flanked Smokescreen, clearly uneasy but also unwilling to leave their friend. Jazz had to give them points for bravery and loyalty even as his optics took in their dull and scuffed appearance. He would need to address that before they left, but more urgent matters demanded his attention in the moment.

“Smokecreen, where is your origin? Is something wrong with Bluestreak?” Ratchet was on his knees in front of the Praxians as soon as he reached him, his gentle manner and tone one that would have surprised many full grown mecha.

“Blue’s fine. Ori gave ‘em somethin’ ta make him quiet while I ran.” Smokescreen explained, stumbling over his glyphs as he tried to push too many out at once. “Origin’s the one in trouble. They broke ‘n and ‘e made me run.”

“Who broke in?” Ratchet demanded on top of Jazz’s own quick, “Where Smokescreen?”

“The hunters. Our hab.” Smokescreen answered, then started to whimper and shake as the memories caught up with him and his panic induced energy waned. “They came… we ran…”

“Frontrunner-” Jazz started.

“On it.” The guard nodded. “We’ll be ready soon when ya join us.”

“Ratchet-.”

“I’ll see the mechlings Jazz, and see if I can’t piece together what happened.” Ratchet promised as he stood.

“Anything ya need fer any of ‘em, jus’ sing out. I’ll be back.” Jazz said, pausing long enough to look Smokescreen in the optics. “We’ll find yer Origin, Smokey. Ya just go wit’ Ratchet fer now.”

The mechling nodded, all that he could manage around his fear and exhaustion, and leaned into Ratchet as he watched Jazz sprint away.

[jeogiyall]

Two To Tango; C.SN

❥𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 𝟷𝟾.𝟺𝑘

❥𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞: 𝕒𝕟𝕘𝕤𝕥 (𝗂𝗍'𝗌 𝗃𝗎𝗌𝗍 𝗌𝖾𝗑𝗎𝖺𝗅 𝗍𝖾𝗇𝗌𝗂𝗈𝗇), 𝖿𝗅𝗎𝖿𝖿, 𝗅𝗈𝗍𝗌 𝗈𝖿 𝗋𝗈𝗆𝖺𝗇𝖼𝖾, 𝘴𝘢𝘯'𝘴 𝘥𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝗂𝗌 𝖽𝖾𝖿𝗂𝗇𝗂𝗍𝖾𝗅𝗒 𝖺 𝗍𝗁𝗂𝗇𝗀; 𝕚𝕕𝕠𝕝𝕧𝕖𝕣𝕤𝕖, 𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑚𝑖𝑒𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑠 (𝙖𝙧𝙞’𝙨 𝙛𝙖𝙫𝙤𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙚 𝙩𝙧𝙤𝙥𝙚!)

❥𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: 𝗌𝖺𝗇 𝕩 𝘮𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘥𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘳! 𝗒/𝗇 (ʏ/ɴ ɪs ɪɴ ᴀ ɢɪʀʟ ɢʀᴏᴜᴘ)

❥𝐢𝐧𝐟𝐨: 𝗍𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝗂𝗌 𝕟𝕠𝕥 𝖺 𝗌𝗆𝗎𝗍 (𝗐𝖾 𝖽𝗈𝗇'𝗍 𝗐𝗋𝗂𝗍𝖾 𝗌𝗆𝗎𝗍!); 𝘩𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳, 𝗍𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝖿𝗂𝖼 𝗋𝖾𝗏𝗈𝗅𝗏𝖾𝗌 𝖺𝗋𝗈𝗎𝗇𝖽 𝗌𝖾𝗇𝗌𝗎𝖺𝗅/𝕤𝕡𝕚𝕔𝕪 𝗍𝗁𝖾𝗆𝖾𝗌 𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝗂𝗇𝖼𝗅𝗎𝖽𝖾𝗌 𝗌𝗂𝗆𝗂𝗅𝖺𝗋𝗅𝗒 𝖽𝖾𝗌𝖼𝗋𝗂𝗉𝗍𝗂𝗏𝖾 𝗐𝗋𝗂𝗍𝗂𝗇𝗀. 𝗂'𝖽 𝗋𝖺𝗍𝖾 𝗍𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝖺𝗌 𝐩𝐠𝟷𝟹 𝗃𝗎𝗌𝗍 𝗍𝗈 𝖻𝖾 𝗌𝖺𝖿𝖾- 𝖺𝗀𝖺𝗂𝗇, 𝗍𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝗂𝗌 𝐧𝗼𝐭 𝐬𝗺𝐮𝐭!!

❥𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐬: 𝗍𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝖿𝗂𝖼 𝗐𝖺𝗌 𝖼𝗁𝖺𝗅𝗅𝖾𝗇𝗀𝗂𝗇𝗀, 𝖻𝗎𝗍 𝗈𝗏𝖾𝗋𝖺𝗅𝗅 𝗉𝗋𝖾𝗍𝗍𝗒 𝖿𝗎𝗇 𝗍𝗈 𝗐𝗋𝗂𝗍𝖾! 𝗂 𝗁𝗈𝗉𝖾 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝖾𝗇𝗃𝗈𝗒 𝗂𝗍 𝖺𝗌 𝗆𝗎𝖼𝗁 𝖺𝗌 𝗂 𝖽𝗈 ☺︎☻ -𝕒𝕣𝕚

“What do you think, Y/N?”

You had never seen choreo anything like this before.

Which was a fairly bold statement on your part, seeing as you'd had plenty of exposure to all kinds of dances. Being the lead dancer of your group, you'd trained in almost every category out there during your years in the academy, mastering each technique and style one by one.

But sensual?

You'd never been trained to dance to sensual choreography.

This was likely the reason you appeared so floored when Mimi, your company's head of collaborative marketing (and your personal manager) shared her latest idea with you, something about a duet dance with another idol; she said that bringing such a foreign concept into a collaboration stage would give your group the increase of attention that you so desperately needed.

You couldn't disagree with her logic. It was much harder than it seemed for a group to stay afloat in the idol industry.

"Y/N," Mimi was explaining to you, "I know I speak on behalf of the entire company when I tell you that you are the most talented dancer to walk through these doors. If anyone can pull off this stage, it's you."

You felt your cheeks flush from the professional compliment, but you were still trying to wrap your mind around the brief choreography video you'd just been shown.

You absolutely loved to dance; you always have, ever since you were old enough to walk.

From ballet classes when you were four years old to jazz and tap in your tweens, then modern hip hop and interpretive in your adolescent years, and then from a dance major onwards to learning choreography with your group after debuting a year ago- you were always dancing. It was a piece of your life that held so much meaning, so much joy, that you don't think you'd ever be able to live without it.

So maybe this is why you decide to ditch your initial disbelief at the proposal, your mind opening up a little to the idea. After all, the worst thing that could happen would be a failed stage, and you're sure that the company wouldn't have too much trouble sweeping things under the rug if that happened. How bad could it be, right?

You eventually give in to Mimi's attempts at persuading you, your face breaking out into a grin. You're sure that if you say yes, you'll wonder for the next two weeks who your partner will be from the group you're collaborating with; but you also know that it'll kill you inside to say no.

You nod firmly once Mimi asks you again if you're okay with this. You've made up your mind that you definitely are; you push off any lingering doubts about the sensual stage, and the feelings left behind are ones of excitement and anticipation.

Mimi is visibly pleased, and her happiness is infectious as she claps her hands together joyfully. "It's settled then! I'll let the team from KQ know that both parties are in agreement." She announces with a broad smile.

When you leave the conference room, you feel butterflies in your stomach instead of dread, and a sudden eagerness arises at the prospect of learning a brand-new type of dance.

You can't wait to see what will happen in two weeks.

Day One- 8:53 A.M

You step into your new joint studio building two weeks later, a bright smile on your face and your first-day jitters pushed to the back of your mind.

You're beyond curious to see which member of Ateez you'll be paired with for the collaboration; you secretly hoped it would be Song Mingi, as he was alluring to you both through dance and through his abnormally deep voice. (Okay, so maybe you had a bias already. There was surely no harm in that though, right?)

Mimi was now urging you to make your way up the three flights of stairs as fast as possible, having ditched the building's elevator in favor of a quicker route. There had been a mixup at your company that morning with transportation, which made you more than twenty minutes late- you were supposed to arrive at 8:30.

You could only pray that the hired choreographer wouldn't hold it against you, and that they'd still give you time to properly warm up.

Your nerves are starting to resurface when you push open the doors to your practice room. Both of the occupants have their backs to you, bending over a stereo system along the wall without a mirror. Your manager bids you a hasty goodbye and exits the same way you just came, and you're struggling to catch your breath, standing in the middle of the room gripping the strap of your dance bag for dear life.

The choreographer leaves the stereo to greet you, giving you a warm smile as he introduces himself.

You've looked forward to meeting your instructor for a while now, and you bow to the man respectfully while doing your best to repress the childish glee bubbling up within you, not wanting to seem unprofessional.

Your thoughts are so consumed with greeting the choreographer that you fail to notice the other figure in the room turning to face you.

"Hello, Y/N, it's a pleasure to finally meet you!" The choreographer says. "My name is Jung Deojun, and I look forward to working with you for this stage." You set your bag down and grab an elastic for your hair, still focused on Deojun. "The pleasure is all mine," you respond, "I truly admire your work."

Jung Deojun is happy to hear the compliment, and you're opening your mouth to ask him about his most popular moves when you finally, finally come face-to-face with your new partner.

To say he was handsome would be the understatement of the year.

While you obviously hadn't been paired with who you'd hoped for, (Mingi, the tall rapper) you weren't upset in the slightest. The dancer was standing to the side with his arms crossed over his chest, and the sight was enough to make you want to wipe your hand along your chin just to check if you were drooling.

Any words you'd been preparing to say died on the tip of your tongue as you surveyed your partner. Tall, lean, and stupidly gorgeous, he radiated an aura of confidence and striking intensity that both scared you and intrigued you. His shirt dipped low enough to make your heart skip a beat, and it looked too good on him for him to be standing there in the studio.

His eyes were dark and seemed to pierce straight into your soul- though you had to wonder just how well he was able to see you from behind his long black hair.

He was, without question, the most beautiful man you'd ever seen. But why the hell did he look so pissed?

You gulp down your wave of apprehension and stick out your hand towards him, waiting for him to take it (seeing as that would be the polite thing to do).

"Hello, I'm Y/N of Star Entertainment." You manage to stumble through your self-introduction despite his less than encouraging reaction. He makes no move to shake your outstretched hand, so you awkwardly pull it back and continue talking, "I look forward to dancing with y-"

"You're late."

You hope you don't look as much like a fish as you feel; his monotonous interruption has your mouth opening and closing repeatedly as you try to remember what you'd been about to say.

"I'm sorry," you eventually gather your thoughts long enough to respond. "There was a mixup with transportation from my company, and my manager ended up having to take me herself-"

"I don't care what happened, just don't be late again. It's rude." The guy cuts you off again, visibly impatient. You hold back a scoff at his words; he's definitely one to be talking about rude.

"The name's Choi San." He adds, but he sounds almost bored, as if he'd rather be anywhere else but with you at this very moment.

You don't deem any answer necessary. You hardly trust yourself not to make a jab back at him, but can you be blamed?

You're more than a little peeved that your partner, the man you've been wanting to meet for two very long weeks, seems to have a giant stick up his ass; but you reason out that it's got something to do with the first-day nerves you're sure must be racing through him, too.

At least, that's what you tell yourself as you begin warming up, walking away from the entrance and hoping to escape the rising tension.

Meanwhile San is cursing every dance god out there for sticking him with you. Not because he despises dancing with other people or because he doesn't want to dance with you- but because he's the exact opposite.

He loves dancing with his entire being, and he expected his new partner to love it just as much as he did.

So it was fairly annoying for him to arrive thirty minutes early that morning, excited and eager to get to dancing, and then have to wait nearly another half an hour after the first day was scheduled to begin just for you to get there.

That being said, San almost regrets snapping at you- it wasn't your fault you weren't on time.

But when he catches a glimpse of your pinched, offended expression through the mirror while you take your sweet time warming up, the idea of apologizing immediately flees his head.

He couldn't believe how many prissy dancers there were in the kpop industry- and he was certain that you would just be one more he'd have to work with.

So far, things were not off to a very promising start.

Day Four- 10:15 A.M

"Guys, I think you need to take a quick break." Jung Deojun says as he presses pause on the stereo.

You're more than happy to do so, jumping out of San's grasp so quickly you're concerned you may have pulled a muscle. San has no complaints about the break either; he springs away from you as if you have a contagious disease, and he's intent on not catching whatever disease that may be.

The first day hadn't gone nearly as well as you'd hoped it would. After the initial shock and irritation upon meeting him, you gave San as little attention as you could, and he did the same to you.

Or he tried to do the same.

You both seemed to have forgotten the key concept of the entire dance: sensuality.

And although it was only the first day, the cold and tense atmosphere between the two of you did nothing but increase throughout your time together in the studio- a factor that didn't settle well with your choreographer when you were meant to be dancing as if you were madly in love.

By the end of the second day, you were positive you and San were only ever meant to be enemies. It was like every move he made was done specifically to annoy you, and you had to admit that if that was the case, then it was working like a charm.

The way he spoke to you- when he bothered to speak at all- was so insensitive and cocky that you wanted to clock him in the face. He never cheered you on when you got another step down; all he'd said to you during the past forty-eight hours was backhanded comments on the technique you should have, or how you should move to accommodate him better.

This wasn't how dance was supposed to be.

Two people were supposed to move in sync, in the same fluid motion when they danced together; but with him, it was all give and no take.

Of course, it didn't help that you went rigid as a board every time he so much as shifted towards you.

He wanted to get along with you at first, he really did. But you were making it so difficult to be friendly when you made zero effort to put any feeling into the dance moves that required him to touch you, that any hope he had of being your friend went flying out of the window.

He'd been ready to quit right then and there during your third day in the studio, when you outright refused to let him do the first truly sensual move of the choreography about forty seconds in. San would barely even be able to graze your sides with his fingertips before you jumped away, giving him a steely look that made him all the more eager to push your buttons.

He reasoned that if you were going to be such a priss about things, then there was no danger in him getting you all riled up while you practiced.

And as if you weren't already stressed out by his antics, you were also highly aware of the pressure that was on you guys to learn the dance by the end of the month- you had only five weeks to completely master the choreography for the collaboration stage and for the performance video.

You wished the song wasn't so long- there were six and a half total minutes of choreography, and you'd only gone through about two minutes of it all.

To make things worse, the steps you'd learned so far didn't look good by any means. Jung Deojun knew it would most likely take another week or two just to get to the halfway point, at the rate things were going now.

You knew that the clock was ticking; this morning marked your fourth day at the studio.

Deojun's goal was for you and San to get a feel for each move you learned as you learned it, which was why it had taken so long to memorize such a small chunk of the song.

His philosophy was that people can learn two ways: they can learn it all and perfect it later, or they can learn it all perfectly the first time with a little more effort. (It was very clear which way of learning you and your partner were going through based on how many times you'd pressed 'restart' on the stereo.)

You made sure you arrived on time each morning after that first day, not wanting another reason for San to pick on you. Currently, the two of you were tackling the first moderately sized snippet of the song, the buildup to the chorus. You'd been at it for around two hours today, and you didn't seem to be making any real progress.

There's a move where you and San need to glide across the floor and into each other's personal space, and he's supposed to trail his hands slowly up along your sides to cradle your head. Your step is to push San away from you and then grab him by the collar to bring him right back until you were practically breathing the same air; and while the pushing away part was the easiest thing you'd learned so far, tugging him towards you again was proving to be difficult to do without scowling.

That same scowl threatens to appear after another hour of practice when San tosses you a Snickers bar from his bag, and you look down at it accusingly without picking it up from the floor.

"This isn't exactly part of my company's diet regulations, San." You huff, knowing you'd like nothing more than to eat the candy bar right this very second but remembering you can't eat anything if it isn't on your meal plan.

San just raises an eyebrow and motions for you to pick it up anyways. "I thought you'd want it. I mean, you're not you when you're hungry, so maybe if you had a Snickers bar then you'd be more fun to work with."

You don't bother hiding your lethal expression from him.

"Choi San," you hiss, "I swear once we finish doing this dance I'm actually going to strangle you."

Your choreographer chooses to break up the conversation at this moment, not hearing the whispered reply of 'kinky' that makes your blood boil.

"Alright you two, that's enough," Jung Deojun cuts in. "You don't seem to be comfortable with each other yet, so why don't we all sit down and take some time to eat lunch? You've worked hard anyways, so you deserve to rest." He offers.

While the idea of actually sitting down to eat your salad, instead of inhaling it between sessions, sounds incredibly tempting, you know you'll be too busy fuming to really enjoy a lunch break.

You kick the Snickers bar back towards San and put on a bright smile for Deojun.

"No, thank you, I'd rather get back to practicing. We've got a long way to go." You give your partner another nasty look with your last statement, implying that he's most of the problem.

This implication doesn't go unnoticed by him, and he actually has the nerve to wink at you. To wink- as if he isn't the legitimate most infuriating human being on the planet. You ball your hands into fists to refrain from pulling at your hair in frustration.

San watches on in dry amusement; he never saw it coming, but he's quickly discovered that he loves to get a rise out of you. He chalks it up to the simple fact that you interact the most with him when you're angry.

Sensing the tension in the room, Deojun shakes his head and insists on taking a real break for lunch. He doesn't miss the exchange of killer glares between you and San, and it brings a frown to his face as you begin to argue with your partner over the offending Snickers bar.

Jung Deojun has taught many choreographies in his time as a dancer. He's quite honestly lost track of the number of pairs he's worked with who had no chemistry together, or the countless dancer duos who simply didn't warm up to the other person.

He has also seen his fair share of enemies on the dance floor- the exes, the competitors, and even one couple who broke up in the middle of a rehearsal.

And yet, despite all of this, he has never seen anyone who fights quite as passionately as you and San.

But rather than getting annoyed at your nearly constant bickering, he finds himself feeling curious about it; he wants to know why your animosity towards each other seems to run so deep when you'd only met three days ago.

And frankly, he wants to see just how thin the line is between love and hate.

Your instructor sighs loudly once your voice raises in volume, wanting to roll his eyes at the childish feud taking place over a piece of candy- though it seems the argument has gotten to the point of being ridiculously useless, and Deojun is sure that one of you is bound to give it up in the next few seconds.

Your accusations of San being a total jerk continue to fall on deaf ears as he quickly proves the choreographer correct, checking out of the argument altogether by pulling his phone out and playing on it.

San's rude behavior makes you want to stomp your foot angrily like a petulant toddler, but you don't.

You instead go silent, biting your lip and getting yourself together because you are a mature and professional dancer- unlike someone- and you're already very embarrassed that Deojun has seen how worked up you get over your partner.

So in an attempt to save face, you take a deep breath, count to ten, and walk to the mini refrigerator in the corner of the studio to grab your lunch.

Deojun seems relieved that the Snickers spat is over, and immediately invites you into a less irritating conversation as you take a seat on the floor beside him.

"So, Y/N, what do you do for fun besides dance?" He asks you. You have to think for a moment about that.

What do you do when you're not rehearsing or promoting?

"Well, I spend most of my time dancing, but I guess I like to hang out with my group between promotions." You eventually come up with an answer.

"What do you do with your friends when you're hanging out?" Your instructor prompts. You shrug and finish eating the forkful of salad before you reply, "We normally go out to the city together to walk around, listening to live music and visiting cute cafés or restaurants."

San nearly snorts at how typical your response is until you add as an afterthought, "But we never have time for those things anymore."

Jung Deojun asks you "why not?" and you tell him, "We practice nearly sixteen hours a day together, and when we aren't in our studio, we're in our dorms perfecting every dance movement or every song for our company. We can't afford to slip up with so much at stake, so we just kind of... I don't know, stopped going out."

San acts like he isn't listening; but in reality he's paying close attention to your words, and he tells himself it's only because he needs more ammunition to use in order to tease you later.

You continue to elaborate on your struggles as an idol to Deojun, and it feels good to be able to talk about the pressure being put on your shoulders with someone other than your managers.

"When I first started training to become an idol, I was always content to just dance for the sake of dancing. I wasn't used to the expectation that I had to be better than someone else; I honestly never thought the competition would happen off of the stage. It caught me off guard when I realized I'd have to fight for every chance to do what I love, and even after making it into an agency and debuting in a group, we're still always fighting to be on top, to be the best."

"And to me dance was never about being the best. It's about expressing something you feel, something so deep words can't explain it well enough." You shrug, and you miss the fond smile of your instructor as he remembers the days where he was in your shoes.

San lost interest in his phone a while ago; instead he now holds his lunchbag in his hands.

And when you turn your head to steal a glance at him, you find that he's giving you the first non-irritating look you've seen on his face since the day you met.

Well then.

You certainly hadn't expected to see that reaction- nor had San intended for you to catch it.

If he's being honest with himself, he never really thought he'd connect with you, especially after the disastrous first day together. But your words resonate deeply within him, to a point where he thinks that maybe, you might not be quite as uptight as you appear.

He finds himself hoping that that's the case; hoping that there's more to you than just a prissy lead dancer who refuses to loosen up.

It makes your stomach twist to see him look at you with anything other than annoyance or spite. If you didn't know any better, you would say that it almost seems like he's... impressed? Like he might not hate your guts after all?

But you'd be stupid to forget how intently you despised each other just a few minutes ago, how you bickered over that candy bar; and the sudden change in his demeanor has left your head spinning.

Whatever it is, you're not sure why it affects you as much as it does, so you ignore it and keep talking to Deojun so that you don't have to engage with San until you're done eating.

To make things even more confusing, once your lunch break is over and you begin to go through the choreo again, he isn't throwing his usual insults and criticisms your way like he had done every afternoon for the past week.

You're not sure what to make of the unspoken truce- and you're not sure why it unnerves you as much as it does. But San is acting totally opposite of how he's been acting so far, and it lasts through the remainder of your fourth day.

He doesn't even bother to give you a half-assed "you're too stiff" the way he normally would.

You have to force yourself not to think about how easily the routine flows when you aren't arguing; and you can't help but wonder whether this random, unofficial friendship will last- and if it does, then what changed?

But when the fourth day ends and you walk into the studio the following morning, he's back to wearing his cocky little smirk and teases you for the Starbucks frappuccino in your hand, telling you that it's fake coffee and reminding you of how against your meal plan the drink is.

You nearly cringe at yourself for thinking things would ever change between the two of you in such a short amount of time. But, if you're really being upfront, you can't pretend as though you don't look forward to pushing his buttons each day, getting immense satisfaction from knowing you get on his nerves just as much as he gets on yours.

Jung Deojun, on the other hand, is simply looking forward to the day you guys get through learning the steps so that he can sit back and watch the sparks flying through his studio.

Day Twelve- 4:55 P.M

Deojun is out using the restroom down the hallway at the end of your twelfth day, and it's just you and your partner standing together in the mirror while he's gone. You're intentionally avoiding San's piercing gaze as you stretch out your sore limbs, choosing to move towards the stereo so you can play the music one more time before the end of today's session.

He had been driving you crazy throughout this entire past week. It was the usual stuff at first: pointless arguing, name-calling, bickering, and insults flung at each other for no good reason.

And then, something shifted.

On the sixth day of choreo, you waltzed through the studio doors with a bright smile and your hair down out of your ponytail, looking a bit windblown. You'd woken up late that day but you were still determined not to be late to practice, so you didn't have time to put your hair up or grab your coffee.

It was the day when San noticed just how hard it had become for him to take his eyes off of you; but how could he not stare when you come twirling into the room like you've been dancing with the wind and looking as if you've just been kissed by the sun?

You'd caught him staring more times than you could count on that sixth day, and while it unnerved you a little, you couldn't deny the pleasurable rush you got from knowing he was looking.

But it did make things a little more tense when you had your pointless arguments; you weren't sure how to curse him out when he looked at you with that strange glint in his eye- the glint that made you question if you even really hated him in the first place.

The tension only skyrocketed after that. By the tenth day, the pressure between you and San was so strong that it was bound to explode any time now. A new side of your (already strained) relationship had developed- in addition to his irritating habits and your stinging insults, you now shared burning glances, soft touches, and the feeling of wanting just a little bit more.

The change wasn't entirely unwelcome, much to your dismay. You hadn't expected him to affect you the way that he did; but when you find that your skin sears instead of crawls when his hand brushes against you, you know that you can no longer ignore the magnetic pull between your bodies, the one you're secretly begging yourself to cave into each time he holds you close during the dance.

But just because you aren't able to ignore the pull towards San doesn't mean that you won't try.

You keep your back to him as you approach the equipment; but you can hear his footsteps right behind you when you walk to the other side of the studio, and you have a hunch that he won't go away without bothering you.

San follows you until you reach the sound system and you huff in annoyance before you turn around to face him.

"Shouldn't you be stretching right now, Fireboy?" You ask tiredly, hoping he'll get the point and stop closing in on your personal space.

You didn't intend to call him that- you've referred to him as Fireboy in your mind for a while now, the title fitting his disposition perfectly; one minute he was smoky as embers, and the next he was blazing with heat. Like an unpredictable wildfire.

He shakes his head and answers ironically, "Nope, I'm already all cooled down for the day, Miss Priss."

You go back to the stereo, thinking that the discussion is through, and you practically jump three feet in the air when he spins you around again, the hand gripping your waist not making you nearly as mad as you'd wanted it to.

You can't move backwards at all with the stereo poking into your spine, but you've got nowhere to run once San places his free hand on the wall next to you, successfully trapping you. You wish the action pissed you off enough to push him away- but your hands fall weakly against his chest, and the sudden contact makes your pulse race.

"San, what the hell are you doing?" You ask him, exasperation evident in your voice.

San flashes his stupid smirk and leans closer to your body, making your cheeks flush at the proximity. "I thought maybe we should try to get rid of some of the tension Deojun keeps talking about, since it's interfering with the dance. Don't you agree, Y/N?"

You sneer at him and shove his chest harder.

"I don't know what you're talking about." You reply sharply, "The dance is perfectly fine San, you're being ridiculous. We aren't even done learning the choreo yet, so have some patience." San's smirk only grows, along with your annoyance.

You eye him distastefully and give him a once-over before looking to the doorway, continuing to insult him despite the way his sleeveless shirt makes your heart flutter. "But something tells me that patience isn't really in your vocabulary, is it?"

And just like that, you find yourself holding back a noise of surprise when his hand grips your chin like a silken vice, forcing you to keep your gaze trained on him. You're helpless to his strong hold and the feeling of his body heat radiating against your skin is messing with your head, further supporting your idea that this man is a scorching ball of fire; even his touch is hot enough to burn.

You fight off a shudder when he refuses to break eye contact. The cocky grin is gone, replaced with some foreign expression that you don't think you want to put a label on just yet.

He dips his head down next to your ear. His next words, mixed with the way his hair tickles your face, manage to send sparks through your veins as he murmurs, "You know, princess, I wasn't expecting you to be so damn bratty."

You have to remind yourself that the sentence is, in fact, offensive- and that you should be getting mad at him for it right about now.

Thankfully that part always comes easy to you.

"Oh, so I'm the brat?" You retort sarcastically. You poke a finger into his chest and question him further, "I'm the bratty one for showing up late one time and getting shit about it from you before you even told me your name?"

San's grip tightens as you speak, but you're so focused on chewing him out that you hardly even register it.

"Please enlighten me as to how I'm the brat when it's always you who has a problem with something." At this point you've forgotten that you're only venting about him to distract yourself from his touch, and now you're just plain pissed off.

"Honestly, I thought you were at least a little bit brighter than this, Fireboy. Anyone with a brain would be able to tell that the only brat here is you, but you're so set on being 'holier-than-thou' every second of the day that you don't even bother to see it. You're such a child." Your words are positively scathing.

San has had enough of your sassy remarks and cuts your rant short, "Oh come on Y/N, you don't seriously believe I'm the only one to blame. You're not as innocent as you try to appear, Miss Priss; don't think I've forgotten the names you call me when you think Deojun isn't listening. You're as much at fault here as I am. As a matter of fact, I'd go as far as to say that the 'childish' one is you."

"And this is coming from the one who called me 'more useless than an appendix' not even twenty minutes ago, right?" You scoff.

He rolls his eyes at your quotation of his most recent insult and says, "Cut the crap and just admit it already."

But between the compromising position, the bite in his voice, and the sheer irritation coursing through your body, you're getting sick and tired of your partner's little mind games.

"What do you mean?" You ask, "Admit what? What're you playing at?"

"Admit that you're no different than any other self-absorbed, uptight lead dancer I've worked with, and you only hate me because you wanted to be paired with another idol." He answers, every syllable causing you to see red. "You're just a classic prissy princess who won't cooperate when you don't get your way, and you're refusing to do the dance right because I'm not the one you wanted to dance with. It's stereotypical lead dancer behavior, and you know it."

Oh.

Oh hell no.

Did he really just call you self-absorbed and prissy?

If you weren't already mad enough, then now you're practically seething. San knows purely by the look on your face that he's fucked up, that he's taken things a little too far- but both of you are too wound up right now for him to try and make amends.

It's all he can do to stay impassive when you shove his hand away from your chin and grab fistfuls of his shirt, roughly bringing him down to your level.

"Choi fucking San," You curse, "you take that back this minute, you piece of shit."

His eyes drop to your mouth- a mistake that has enough meaning to turn the tables in your favor in an instant.

It's a mistake, one simple mistake. Just one small moment of indulgence as he memorizes the curve of your lips; yet all sanity immediately vanishes from his mind at the sudden urge he has to kiss you senseless, to shut you up in the most romantic way possible.

He's fighting the urge so hard that he doesn't even think about the next four words out of his mouth- Mistake Number 2.

"And if I don't?"

Your knuckles are turning white from the grip on his collar; you come to the realization that maybe your heart is beating a bit too fast for someone who's arguing with a mere dance partner.

You end up making Mistake Number Three- you don't release your hold on his shirt, and you don't push him away when his head drifts closer down to yours.

Three strikes and you're out.

"Then I'm walking out of this room and never dancing with you again." You pray your voice sounds at least half as spiteful as it did at the beginning of all this, but you aren't sure.

San finally tears his gaze away from your lips and is back to giving you a blazing glare. Part of him hopes you can see the passion and desire burning behind his expression so that you'll understand he doesn't really mean it when he snaps, "Fine with me, princess."

It's the same part of him that secretly thrives off of the electric tension and the lingering hands; the side of him that wants to hold you just a little longer when the music stops.

He really hopes he isn't going crazy when he thinks he sees that side in you, too.

"Fine," You snap back halfheartedly as the fight goes out of you all at once, "have it your way."

You both know your words are empty.

Unlike San, you have been intentionally unaware of how your body reacts to your partner, constantly choosing to ignore the tugging in your gut when you go through the choreo with him.

You always did your best to diffuse the tension that crackles between you two every time you dance; but the more choreography you learn, the harder it is to keep acting as though you aren't drawn to San like a moth to a flame.

You can whine and argue and call him names all day (you already do). But under the loathsome looks and sharp words, you can't deny the underlying attraction you feel to him.

You try with all your might to remind yourself of how insufferable he can be, but it's no use; the anger drains out of you the second you notice how close San still is to you. Your hands are still attached to his shirt, his face is an inch from yours, and his arms are on either side of you, with the stereo still poking into your spine.

Even the thick atmosphere around the room seems to be holding its breath as you both stay put in this position, wondering who would make the first move.

You think you should probably get going; after all, you've just given him the dance ultimatum. Shouldn't you be hightailing it out of the studio and never looking back...

...but you never get to finish that thought.

Because the second that the thought crosses your mind, San is reaching up to take your face in his hand, his heated touch softer than you would've ever guessed it to be.

His fingers skim your cheek delicately, with all the grace of a musician playing his instrument; your eyes begin to flutter closed in expectation for what is about to happen, and you unknowingly lean into the palm of his hand, not putting up a fight.

But you wouldn't dare fight against what's surely happening now- not after having the image of it plague your nights for weeks on end.

He's closer than he's ever been. He doesn't stop; he comes closer, and closer, and closer...

And then, your rotten luck seems to remember it's purpose in your life.

Jumping back in to ruin the moment, it causes your elbow to bump against the stereo and the music comes on at top volume, shattering your eardrums. It's all that the moment needed to come to a screeching halt before disappearing completely.

You wince at the sudden noise and release your grasp on San's shirt, pushing him away from you to tend to the sound system. You quickly turn the music off and put a hand over your racing heart.

San feels like he's rooted in his place, and he can't erase the image in his head of what was about to happen.

He can't shake the way you so easily leaned into his touch; the way he knew he was definitely going to kiss you, and how you were definitely going to let him. He nearly shouts when you break contact to shut the stereo up, leaving him high and dry, waiting for a fire that is no longer burning.

The clock on the wall snaps both of you back into reality, chiming to signal the end of your twelfth day- and for the first time since all of this began, you're reluctant to leave the studio.

What now?

You give San an uneasy look, an awkward smile tugging at your lips. "I, um, I guess I'll be going now." You tell him.

You're expecting him to shoo you off, to comment about how you insisted you weren't coming back once you left today; but he can't bring himself to tease you when he's still feeling so vulnerable.

The idea of insulting you is suddenly unappealing when he realizes that he would much rather be kissing you.

"Yeah, me too." He replies simply; and that's all there is to it. There's no more bickering, no more teasing or conversation once he bids you goodbye.

You stumble over your words like a runner over a hurdle. "See you tomorrow, Fireboy."

You're the first to leave the room, grabbing your bag and making a beeline for the exit. You have no idea what just went down, but you have a sneaking suspicion that things will be much, much different by this time tomorrow.

Meanwhile San is still glued to where he stood next to the stereo, cursing himself for letting you leave without doing what he's wanted to do since the day you argued over the Snickers.

Day Sixteen- 8:35 AM

On the morning of your thirteenth day of practice, Jung Deojun thinks the world must've flipped on its axis in the middle of the night.

It's the only scenario he can come up with to explain why you and San no longer act like you want to slit each other's throats when you walk into the building together, the tension pulsing between you and him having shifted without any notice or warning.

He doesn't expect the truce to last long; but you prove him wrong when three days pass in relative peace, and when you and your partner enter the studio on the sixteenth day, Deojun knows something must have happened.

However, the choreographer thinks it would be too unprofessional to pry, so he decides to pretend that his pupils have been friends all along.

"Good morning you two, did you sleep well?" Deojun greets you both with a wary grin. You nod wordlessly, and he says, "I hope so, because we're finishing up the last few moves of the choreo today. I grabbed some extra waters and snacks to carry us through, but I've informed your managers that we might stay late at the studio tonight. Are you guys opposed to that at all?"

He intentionally leaves out the fact that your manager, Mimi, had chewed him out about working you too hard for almost an hour over the phone when he asked.

You and San share an apprehensive look, but you shake your heads anyways, knowing you'd both rather stay late and finish the choreography as soon as possible.

"Great. Let's get started."

*

By the time you walk through the very last step of the dance, the clock on the wall reads 7:15 in the evening.

It was the longest day you'd had; though it seemed to you as if the hours passed at lightning speed- and you were pretty confident you knew why.

It was because you'd finally stopped holding yourself back when you danced, and neither you nor San could get enough of the new passion that was rapidly igniting at each little motion. It was like a dam had been broken; all you'd needed to open those gates was a push, just one hard shove in the right direction, for everything to fall into place.

You simply hadn't expected the shove to push yourself into San's waiting arms.

If your choreographer noticed the ease with which you and he now practiced the sensual movements, he didn't say anything about it; but you were both aware that sparks were blazing to life with every dip and sway- but neither of you wanted to be the first to put out the fire.

Rather, you found yourselves doing all you could to keep fanning the flames; it especially helped that you no longer needed to yell at each other in order to communicate. You'd been finding much more civil ways to talk since your twelfth day of dancing.

You and San reluctantly move away from each other once the dance is done and the music stops, spinning to face your instructor as he packs up. You refrain from coughing to cover up the way your insides feel like they're turning to mush.

"Awesome job guys!" Deojun claps and walks over to the stereo, a proud smile on his face. "That's it for the choreography, so if you two are ready to leave for the night then you're fine to do so. I'm finished for today, but if either of you stay longer, make sure you lock up after you're done."

You nod and gesture towards the door. "I'm starving, so I'm gonna leave, too." You look at San with a smile that is no longer lethal, and your gaze shines with something other than anger and irritation- a sweet combination that's almost too much for him to handle. "You coming?"

San licks his lips and shrugs, eyes trained on you. "Sure, but I can stay back and lock up while I grab my things, so I'll meet you out front."

You sling your bag over your shoulder and follow Deojun out of the studio, willing your brain to quit focusing on how flustered San's stare makes you.

You stop by the restroom to change out of your dance gear into a pair of light jeans and a loose shirt, trading out your dance shoes for comfy slip-ons, and you hope that the dazzled look on your face disappears soon when you head out.

You never imagined that the same guy who's been driving you insane for two weeks would ever cause you to blush; but here you were, hands pressed to your cheeks in an attempt to chase away the pink flush before you step outside, the image of your almost-kiss playing on repeat in the back of your mind like it usually did these days.

You weren't sure how it happened, but somewhere along the line, you realized that you never really hated San.

You reacted to his insults and his accusations, sure, but a part of you knew that the words were always empty; and even with as many times as you'd said it since meeting him, you honestly didn't hate San.

You just hated that you hadn't kissed him yet.

Jung Deojun has already left the building when you hear the entry door open and close, San approaching where you're standing alone outside of the studio and preoccupied with taking down your ponytail. The hand you were running through your hair halts when you feel his palm hover over your lower back, and his mere presence is enough to give you chills.

You gulp and drop your arm, spinning around.

The breath is practically knocked out of San when you turn to face him. He registers that the hand he's placed on your back now serves to pull you closer, but that's the last thing on his mind when he notices how your head cranes up to look him in the eyes, your almost hopeful expression being the cutest thing he's ever seen as your mouth forms a slight smile.

He's decided that he definitely prefers this look on you over the pissed-off ones he used to earn himself.

"Hey," He says simply, "you ready to go eat?"

You raise an eyebrow. "We're eating together? What about our managers, don't we both have places to be?"

San subconsciously guides your body closer to his, and you force yourself to ignore how droolworthy he looks in his skinny jeans and the black long-sleeved shirt he's tucked into them, keeping your eyes trained on anything that isn't the thick belt around his waist.

The outfit only does more to affirm how San is practically the e-boy of your dreams, posing a stark contrast to your light clothes and soft cardigan; your pulse quickens just from seeing the chain he's looped through his jeans. He looks dark and dangerous, and you love it.

The thought of grabbing that chain to close the gap between you is too tempting to entertain- so you banish it immediately.

"I contacted my company and they said we're free to do whatever we want until ten, as long as we stay out of trouble." San eventually responds to your question.

Your smile widens at the information, and you don't even feel yourself leaning into his arms, peering up at him happily. "In that case, I'm good to go wherever, because Mimi is always trying to get us out to eat more. As long as I get some food I don't really care what we eat." You say.

San so desperately wants to tighten his arms around you when you melt into his hold; but he isn't sure how well you'll respond if you aren't aware of what you're doing now, so he settles for keeping both of his hands placed on your hips, pushing away his desire to trace his fingers over the sliver of skin exposed by your shirt.

"Mimi is your personal manager, right?" San asks to keep up conversation.

"Yeah, but she's more like a friend than a manager," You tell him with a fond look in your eye, "she's always had my back, ever since day one. We're really close."

San has to supress a sigh at how irresistably cute you are; he doesn't know what to do with himself, aside from trying not to melt into putty at your touch. This is a far cry from the rigid stance you normally have around him, and he can't believe how much things have changed in the last four days.

If this had been happening a week ago, you would've laughed in San's face at the offer to go eat together, and he would go back to his dorm at KQ and tell his seven friends about how insufferable you'd been that day.

But now?

Now you're voluntarily spending time with him outside of the studio, and he's wondering why you guys didn't do this sooner.

"I'm feeling partial to pizza, how about you?" He suggests.

You nod quickly at the idea, "That sounds great, but I haven't had pizza in so long; we'll have to Google directions."

"I know a good place down the street, about two blocks away. It's close enough that we can walk from here." San offers. He points to your left, towards the downtown area, and you hoist your bag higher up on your shoulder.

"Then by all means, lead the way." You tease.

You don't exactly hold hands as the two of you walk towards the closest pizza place side-by-side; but you're not at all the sworn enemies you'd been at this time four days ago.

And by the end of the night, you go to bed with a full stomach and a voice in your head that says, maybe Choi San isn't as bad as you thought he was.

Day 19 - 7:50 PM

"Oh my god, you're kidding!" You hide your laughs behind your hand, elbows resting on the table.

Deojun shakes his head rapidly, affirming the truth to the wild story he's been sharing with you and San over your meal at the diner three doors down from the studio (which your other managers barely even agreed to let you go to after taking one look at the menu; thankfully, Mimi was able to convince them that you deserved a treat).

"No, I'm serious! They walked into the studio in full clown suits and told me they were ready to dance!"

You snort so hard you're afraid your milkshake might go up your nose. You couldn't believe all of the crazy stuff he'd seen as a mentor, and some of the things his students had done while dancing were amusing enough to bring tears to your eyes. But the day had been long enough- and exhausting enough- that maybe you were just feeling giddy out of tiredness.

San is currently clutching his sides and shaking with laughter across from you in the booth, and he doesn't seem to be too far from tears himself. "Then it's no wonder we seem so normal to you after you taught a group like that. That one couple makes mine and Y/N's silly fights look mature, don't you think?"

Deojun waggles his eyebrows suggestively, making you laugh even harder. "I wouldn't exactly say normal. You two were about as difficult as any other students I've ever had when you first started. I'm actually kind of surprised we're all sitting pleasantly here right now, given the circumstances up until recently..." He trails off, the playful expression slipping from his face when the three of you realize what's being implied.

It was so strange to think that you'd gone from hating your partner's guts a couple of days ago to where you were now, eating dinner together with Deojun after a long day of rehearsal.

You and San had definitely become friends at this point, much to your relief; but the passion with which you danced together always left you wondering if there was something more.

After all, friends don't dance like that- even if your managers instructed you to act like lovers.

"I know you'll need to get back to your managers soon or else Mimi might bite my head off, so I'll go on up and get our bill." Deojun announces, pulling you from your train of thought as the choreographer nudges you urgently, gesturing for you to move so he can get out of the booth.

You let him out and slide back in when he leaves for the front counter, an uncalled-for nervous rush zipping down your body when you catch San's eye.

The dancer stares you down from across the table and twirls his tongue around the straw in his milkshake, immediately taking note of the way your eyes follow his movement. He chooses not to tease you about it but smirks nonetheless, fully aware of the effect he has on you.

You stay silent; and despite the newfound friendship that has made talking much less difficult for the both of you, you can't form a coherent sentence to save your life when he looks at you like you're a ten-thousand-piece puzzle that he can't wait to solve. You know you won't last long under his intense gaze before you start blushing.

The air in the booth is practically humming with tension- it seems to do that quite often when he's in the same room as you.

"You know, I'm kind of with Deojun on what he said. I never thought we'd end up here." He admits suddenly.

You look up, wondering if he's talking about eating here at the diner or if he's talking about something else entirely. You think it's the former, but your heart flutters at the subtle double meaning.

"Me neither." You respond softly, wrapping your hands around your cold glass. Your milkshake is now nothing but a puddle of leftover whipped cream at the bottom of the cup, but your lack of words makes you wish you hadn't finished it quite so fast.

He leans forward to put his weight on his elbows, coming closer across the table, and the inexplicable gleam in his eye is back; with the intimacy of it all, you feel as though he's about to let you in on a big secret.

You gulp nervously.

"After the first week with you, I expected to just go through the motions and then move on," San says in a voice so low it's nearly a murmur, "but you proved me wrong. As a matter of fact, you proved me wrong about a lot of things when it comes to you, and this is probably the first time I've ever been glad I wasn't right."

You're taken aback by his words, and it's a little too vague for you to understand.

You hope your voice doesn't sound as wobbly to him as it does to you when you ask him, "What things were you wrong about?"

He shrugs, taking another long sip of his shake, before he regards you with a stare so intense it seems to almost pin you to your seat.

"You're not the selfish prissy princess I thought you were." He eventually says.

Your eyes narrow at this, your suspicions about his confession rising even though he's not insulted you at all since the twelfth day in the studio.

San sees the way your guard goes up and laughs, shaking his hair out of his face. "Relax Y/N, there's no need to go on the defensive." He reassures you, "I'm just saying that I assumed too much about you when we met, and I should've said sorry sooner for not giving you a chance to show me that you were different."

You feel the tips of your ears burn at the unexpected apology.

You want to tear your gaze away from him so you can stare intently at your shoes; but some invisible force is keeping it glued on him, where there's a softness you've not yet seen glimmering in his eyes.

You know that you should say something in return, that you need to accept his apology and keep the conversation going- but your thoughts are spinning and racing and wild; and they're so full of him that you're afraid of what you'd say if you opened your mouth.

You never really let yourself cave into the way he makes you feel before. After all, you were way too annoyed by him in the beginning for you to register the other feelings he stirred up inside you.

But now that you've given up on trying to hate San, the ache to know him, to really know him- his touch, his kiss, his smile and his story- is almost overwhelming.

"Alrighty, everything's paid for." Your choreographer chooses that exact moment to arrive back at the booth, effectively slicing through the thick tension. "You're both free to go, and I'll see you tomorrow bright and early!"

You and San follow him out of the booth without any more discussion, but neither of you need to speak to know that another shift has occurred between you.

He can tell you sense the rising pressure when you leave that night, walking you to where your company's car is waiting.

San is quick to open the door for you like a gentleman; but when he raises the back of your hand to his lips in a move that would normally be just as gentlemanly, the depth of his expression when he makes eye contact is more than enough to put fire in your veins.

The encounter makes you wish you were bold enough to do more than just curl your fingers loosely around his hand.

You give yourself away with the breathy tone of your voice as you tell him good night, for once letting the tingling sensation on your hand have some meaning, and his lips pull into a soft grin at the sight of your pink cheeks.

As you close your door and the car pulls away from where San stands, your heart starts pounding in anticipation of seeing him tomorrow.

You wonder if you'll finally have the courage to show him the effect he's had on you.

Day 22 - 8:15 PM

The days continue to fly by in a whirlwind of teasing touches and sensual stares, until only three more remain before the night of the collaboration stage.

You read the time on your phone as you pull off your dance shoes, the screen showing that it was currently 8:15 in the evening.

Earlier today, you and San had shot the official performance video for the song, a three-minute-long clip that you hope had captured all of your hard work and effort. It had been done in a newer section of the studio building, on a floor you'd not been to before; but you were sufficiently elated at the gorgeous floor-to-ceiling windows that lined the walls of the dance room, and the lighting they provided was perfect for the video.

But despite the pretty setup, you felt like the dressing rooms in the back were somewhat... lacking. It was too small, poorly separated, and alarmingly unsupervised- the perfect recipe for disaster.

You see San's shadow moving around behind the flimsy screen that divides the empty room, and you rush to change out of the costume into normal clothes. You shimmy your jeans up quickly and tug your favorite sweater on over your head, hurrying because you know that if you can see him, then he can probably see you, too.

You try not to yank on your hair as you pull it out of its elaborate bun. Running a hand through it, you suppress a snort when you're met with a crunchy, knotty mess; between the uppity stylist and the mega-hold hairspray, your hair is practically standing up on its own, the strands feeling more like hay than hair.

You grab your brush and get to work, carefully detangling the knots and working from the bottom upwards. Mimi wouldn't be too pleased if you gave yourself split ends.

"Is it safe for me to come in?" San's voice startles you, and you jump with the hairbrush still in your hand, catching violently on a clump of stubborn hairspray. You yelp at the pain in your scalp and shoot him a burning look, but your anger is more directed towards your brush than at your partner.

San raises his eyebrows and clicks his tongue, his footsteps sure as he approaches you. "Here, let me help you." He offers. You don't think twice before handing him the hairbrush and sitting on the cosmetics table, your cheeks flaming as you whisper a thank you.

You don't expect him to be very gentle, but you're surprised at the feather-light touch when he begins to work out the remaining knots, and it sends pleasant sensations to your scalp that make your eyelids slide shut.

He moves your hair to the side and combs through the crown of your head. You almost shudder when you realize you can feel every time he exhales, warm breath fanning over the back of your neck. You don't even notice the way you crane your head slightly back, your spine pressed against his chest, the proximity keeping your cheeks stained pink.

But oh, does San notice.

He also notices another reaction that you've failed to see- your reflection in the mirror across the room.

His grip tightens on the handle of the brush at your blissful expression, eyes closed and lips subconsciously pouted. San nearly wishes you'd stayed in your bland dance clothes, because with the way your jeans hug your hips and the tantalizing dip of your sweater's neckline, he's struggling to keep his cool.

As a matter of fact, nothing in the room was cool anymore- his hands, your face, and the atmosphere surrounding you both had all become maddeningly hot.

Your eyes flutter open when San stops moving.

"San, I can take care of the rest, you don't have to do this for me-" You begin to say, but your words abandon you when San puts the brush down and trails a finger in lazy circles on your neck. You do shudder this time, unable to conceal the way your body responds to him; and it brings a smirk to San's lips as he watches your defenses start to chip away.

He's determined to finish what you'd both started- and he doesn't plan on leaving this room until he's felt your mouth on his and his hands on your skin.

"But I want to, princess." He says smoothly, the hidden meaning of the word want driving you nuts, while the pet name makes your heart leap like it always does.

You brace your palms on the surface of the table, hoping for some sort of stability because God knows your mind is far from it.

You summon up all the courage you have and finally, finally ask the question that's been tossed around in your head for the last two or three weeks.

"Is that... is that all you want?"

You're surprised at the strength of your own voice- though now that you've said it, you want to curl into a ball and hide away forever.

San knows exactly what you mean. He knows you're not talking about hair or dancing, and he knows the answer he would give you if he were man enough not to twirl around the truth.

He knows he wants to be yours; what he doesn't know, however, is how much you'd be willing to risk to be his.

But he'll be damned if he lets anything stop him from finding out.

"I think you know by now what I want." He tests the waters hesitantly, afraid you may take it the wrong way. Because although he can't deny his attraction to you physically, San is drawn to you more by your fire and your passion than he is by your body.

You can sense it, the uncharacteristic doubt and uncertainty in his words, and it puts a lump in your throat when you realize how vulnerable you both are at this point.

You swallow hard. "I do." It's simple, short, and barely above a whisper, but it's out there now; you've placed the ball back in his court, so it's up to him to make the shot.

You never were much good at basketball, anyways.

San rounds the table to stand in front of you, eyes searing with that familiar intensity that always leaves your knees weak, and his arms reach out on either side of where you sit to balance his weight on the table. He hovers over you- but he's just far away enough to keep himself from touching you.

His voice is gruff when he speaks next. "You've known for a while now that we aren't just partners." It's self explanatory, and you don't interrupt when he tilts his head to give you a sweltering gaze. "And you're not too good at hiding how you feel, so I know it's probably a safe bet to say you feel exactly the same as I do."

His black hair falls into his face, and your hand itches to brush it away; so you let it. You're slow to comb through it and you raise yourself up a little to get closer to him as you rake through the dark strands, letting them twist and twirl around your fingers. "And what is it that you think I'm feeling right now?" You ask, meeting his stare straight on.

San flashes his killer smirk. "Attraction." He says confidently. He wedges his way into your personal space, his hands now resting on either of your thighs with his body between your legs. "Desire, maybe." He continues with a squeeze.

You know where this is heading- and you don't plan on stopping it anytime soon. Hell, you want it to go full steam ahead, because you've been waiting for this for four weeks too long.

San laces his fingers through yours and leans in to place a teasing kiss on your cheek, close to your ear. "Y/N, tell me something." He murmurs lowly, "Do you want this, too? Because if you still hate me as much as you did four weeks ago, I'll stop right now and walk out of the room."

You spring to life at his offer, throwing one arm around his neck and successfully trapping him into his position. Your faces are only a few inches apart now, the air between you radiating with electricity; you wrap your other arm around his shoulders and eliminate almost all of the space.

You have no idea where this bravery is coming from, but hey, you're not complaining.

"Don't you dare walk out on this." You say darkly, the words stealing away the last of San's sanity. "We're in too deep now, so if you're gonna kiss me, you better kiss me like you mean it." You threaten.

It's all the encouragement he needs to bring your lips to his- and the result is more incredible than anything either of you had imagined.

You don't melt together the way that you've heard others describe themselves doing. No, you and San are too passionate, too full of sparks- this kiss isn't melting.

It's blazing.

There's no uncertainty or gentle hesitancy in it; not even a little bit. From the moment his mouth is on yours, you kiss with an unmatched fervor and passion, feeling more like an explosion than like fireworks.

You're fighting fire with fire, and nothing has ever felt so good before.

You push and pull and meet right back in the middle in an exchange of powerful sparks, the kiss seeming to last for hours as you both fight to outdo the other in true 'fake enemies' fashion. San's fingers are digging into your hips and your hands are tugging on his shirt for some semblance of balance; everything is on fire, and yet everything is positively and passionately perfect.

You sigh against his lips in sheer bliss, your legs hooking themselves around his torso and bringing him impossibly closer. His fingertips skim across the hem of your sweater before slipping under it, and you nearly moan when he runs them up and down the curve of your back.

You've never felt this connected to a person before; almost as if from the moment you met, an invisible thread was strung between you and San, winding tighter and tighter over time until you were much too entangled to stop this.

You didn't ever want to stop this, anyways.

This kiss, this moment, and the last few whirlwind weeks with this man who's made of sweetness and pure sin- it all seems to be stitched together to create an emotion so strong that it rolls off of both of you in waves; an earth shattering romance that must be written in the stars themselves.

San mentally sends a thousand thanks to those lucky stars as he ends the kiss, regretfully pulling back to see what a mess he's made out of you.

He isn't disappointed either; your puffy pink lips and pretty glazed eyes make his already-tight pants feel three sizes too small, and he has to refrain from diving right back in for another soul-searing kiss.

He does his best to contain himself and leans his forehead against yours in a move he's cringed at every time it happens in the movies, though he finds it to be a lot less cliché with you.

In the aftermath of your passionate makeout, your eyes are gazing headlong into his own, and San swears he's never seen a more beautiful sight than this. He feels close, so close; his hands are pressed securely on the small of your back, though you sure as hell aren't thinking about that.

You're too busy thinking about how you finally have a name for that special look he's been giving you.

Adoration.

Sure, it's obviously mixed with a dash of unbridled lust and a bucketload of his signature sizzling attraction, but the adoring expression on his face says it all. Whether or not anyone knew things would happen this way, San has always adored you; you and your fiery temper, sweet smile, and ridiculous, incredible passion.

You feel yourself going shy again as he continues to stare at you, your blush already as deep as it can get, and you have half a mind to bury your face in his chest to escape the knowledge that your moment is beginning to fade away.

You don't want anything about the moment to fade, ever.

"Y/N," San's voice is soothing as he softly traces shapes into the skin beneath your sweater, "I hope you haven't changed your mind about wanting me to walk out."

You smile sheepishly, shaking your head. "No, nothing's changed." You manage to murmur around the tightness in your chest. It's not a bad tightness though; it's just the coil of raw emotion that's settling into your heart at the pure vulnerability of the last ten minutes.

"So does that mean we're still going to just keep doing what we've been doing this whole time?" He asks, tilting his head, "Or can I finally call you mine?"

Your lungs stutter briefly at his question, the word "mine" sounding so perfect to you when it falls from his mouth.

You don't answer immediately despite your inner self screaming at you to say yes. You have plenty of realistic things to consider, and anyone with a brain would say no in your position; but all of it is overshadowed by what you feel for San.

Both of your contracts, your fames and fanbases, and even your careers as idols are on the line, but you know with every beat of your heart that you'd risk all of that for this boy.

You'd risk anything to be his, you're sure of it.

"Yes." You agree quietly. "But only if it means that you're mine, too."

The smirk is back, and it turns the butterflies in your stomach into fucking pterodactyls at how effortlessly he can do that. It should be illegal for someone to switch the way San does, going from being a swoonworthy sweetheart to looking like a sexual fantasy on legs in the blink of an eye.

"I thought that was a given, babe." His tone has returned to its usual cockiness, but instead of getting on your nerves, now it just sounds plain hot. He gives you a mischievous wink as he says, "After all, it takes two to tango."

You don't bother hiding your laugh while you slide off of the cosmetics table; and you're still laughing at him when you walk out of the unsupervised dressing rooms hand in hand, feeling like it was meant to be this way all along.

In the back of your mind, you wonder if a mere twenty-three days is too soon to call it love.

You don't think so.

Day of Collaboration Stage - 4:30 PM

You hadn't seen San all day.

Today was the end of your promotions, and in three short hours, you'd be dancing together on a stage in front of the whole world, doing the moves you'd spent more time rehearsing than you'd spent sleeping throughout the last month.

You were on edge, to say the very least.

Currently, you were sitting in your designated room at the site of the event, staying as still as possible while being attacked with makeup brushes from all angles.

You would normally have a conversation with the group of people pampering you; but the desire to see San was making it hard to focus on talking about the weather or finding out the latest gossip.

You and San had shared three more kisses since the other night. Two of them were in the studio during rehearsal when Deojun left the room, and the third had been in the doorway of the building last night, when you and he had said goodbye after your final practice.

Your body was aching to see him. It wasn't that you just wanted to kiss him again (though you won't object to a kiss either); but you longed for some reassurance, for the steadiness you felt from a hug or even just the simple look he gave you that made all of the doubts and worries disappear in its wake.

"Mimi," You call to your most trusted manager, "has anyone heard from KQ since lunch?"

Your team giggles at your request, and Mimi gives you a fond smile as she shakes her head. "No dear, I'm sorry. We'll be sure to tell you as soon as they contact us though."

You nod quickly and try to relax a little bit, willing your hands to loosen their grip on the arms of your chair. If your stylists can sense how jittery you are, they don't let on; they continue to chatter mindlessly as they get you ready for tonight's much-anticipated performance.

*

On the other end of the building, San is only one brain cell away from calling your company and asking them if he can finish getting ready with you- because the seven lively boys crowded around in his room are becoming very, very distracting.

"Mingi, for the last time, please don't mess with my costume." The dancer chides his tall friend, who ducks his head and mumbles an apology.

The redheaded leader, Hongjoong, is trying to help San keep peace in the chaos that began when Yunho decided to twerk in the hallway- but reigning in the band of childish idols proves to be a challenge when his best friend Wooyoung steals his phone and tries to guess his password so he can text you, the mystery girl.

"Sannie!" Wooyoung pouts, "Won't you at least give me a little hint? I promise I won't text her anything too embarrassing."

Before he can answer, the oldest boy, Seonghwa, snatches the phone from Wooyoung and hands it back to its owner. "Woo, don't be a burden. Let San finish getting ready." He scolds. Wooyoung sighs dramatically and skips over to the lone couch in the dressing room to bother its occupants, Yeosang and Jongho; San's arguably more level-headed friends.

San's manager pays no mind to the loud group wreaking havoc and continues with prep, swiping on the finishing touches to the stage makeup and doing a final fluff of his hair.

The manager steps back to survey her work and smiles, already gathering up her things and packing away the tools. "You're all set San, try to keep your hands away from your face and hair. Good luck tonight." She says, promptly retreating from the noisy group and closing the door behind her.

The moment the manager leaves, Kim Hongjoong is standing behind San's chair and crossing his arms, staring him down in the mirror. The question leaves his mouth before anyone can stop him.

"San," His tone is demanding, "no more vague answers. I wanna know straight up if you're into this girl or not, and don't you dare try to beat around the bush."

San gulps heavily, not expecting to get drilled about you so soon today. He should've known better though- after all, he's always been horrible at keeping secrets from his team.

He takes a deep breath before finally confessing to his leader, "Yes, I'm into her. More than I've ever been into anyone." He admits, still trying not to make it obvious how deep his feeling for you run.

But he can't help the foolish grin that crosses his face as he continues to say, "She dances with more passion than any girl I've ever worked with, and you should see the way she looks at me when she doesn't think I'll notice. You'd never pick on me again if you danced with her like I do."

He shuts his mouth before any more mushy words can make it past his lips; but the damage is already done. Choi San has completely blown his cover, letting everyone know exactly how often you've been on his mind- or rather, his heart.

Wooyoung and Mingi both stop what they're doing at the outburst and stare at San, jaws dropping. Park Seonghwa seems frozen in his seat, Yunho and Jongho's heads both snap up at the same time, and even cool, unbothered Yeosang turns off his phone and raises one eyebrow.

"Somebody's majorly fuckin' whipped." Yunho mutters under his breath. Seonghwa only halfheartedly nudges him for the comment, and San feels his ears burn from the intense scrutiny of his seven best friends, all eyes turned to him.

It's too late to backtrack now.

"Shut up, Yunho." San whines, shoulders slumping with defeat. Wooyoung's triumphant smirk goes unnoticed in the mirror as San exposes his humongous crush on you, not even trying to deny it anymore, and Mingi sighs loudly knowing he'll have to cough up $15 to Wooyoung once the night is over.

"So it's true then?" Seonghwa voices what everyone must be thinking, "You and the mystery girl? Are you... are you dating her?" His voice lowers on the word dating, and Hongjoong holds his breath, suddenly not quite as playful as he was before.

He knows Choi San is a wonderful person, and that the last thing he'd ever do would be something that intentionally hurts the group. But he also knows that the boy tends to let his heart run away with his passion; and if he's in a secret relationship behind their backs, then there's more at stake than just the dating ban contract.

Thankfully, San's eyes widen and he shakes his head side-to-side. "No, I'm not! It's not like that! I swear, we really aren't together. I'd never hide something like that from you guys." He states honestly.

It's not a lie, either. Despite the kisses and touches that he's shared with you lately, and the heated confrontation after the dress rehearsals, he truly isn't in any official relationship at the moment.

But that doesn't mean he has no desire to be in one with you.

He knows what's at risk, of course he does; but even so, he knows that once the dust settles and the cameras are no longer pointed at him, he wants to be by your side long after the collaboration is finished.

He wants to be yours just as badly as you want to be his. And tonight, he's determined to prove it.

Yeosang sees the confidence flickering in San's expression and nods his head, hiding a small smile of pride. "Go get her, San. We'll all be rooting for you."

And with those words of encouragement, San is dashing out of the room like a man on a mission- a mission to see you.

*

It takes an hour of discreet texting while you're being pampered to death for San to come up with a valid excuse to see you.

You eventually agree that he'll interrupt your prep to do one more walkthrough of your ending scene; but you both know that it's just an excuse to have a little more time together before the stage, and that knowledge makes you giggle like a schoolgirl when San messages you.

Fireboy: wish me luck getting past ur managers !!

Your grip relaxes on your chair when you finally hear a knock at your door. Mimi shoots right up to answer it, and her polite smile grows mischievous when she sees who's on the other side.

"Hello there, Mr. Choi," Mimi greets, "how can I help you?"

San blinks and clears his throat. "I, uh, I'm here to go over a few steps with Y/N." He doesn't sound overly convincing, and you hide a chuckle with the palm of your hand. "Just to make sure we've got everything right before the performance, you know?"

Your lead manager shares a look with the other girls on your prep team, opens the door wider, and beckons for everyone else to leave.

"We'll give you some space to rehearse. Come find me if you need anything, Mr. Choi." Mimi tells him with that same smirk painted on her face as she practically tugs San the rest of the way into the room. They all go at once, leaving you sitting alone in your snazzy chair when they close the door behind them.

You glance at him with a shy smile, peering beneath your newly mascara-coated lashes at the handsome sight in front of you.

San is styled in a costume very similar to the one he wore for the performance video- black pants, a red harness belt, and a billowy long-sleeved white shirt with three buttons undone at the top. It takes everything in you to keep your jaw from dropping; though you don't really need to worry about it since San is having no problem openly staring at your legs.

But you can't blame him for looking, because you think your legs are a hundred percent worth staring at in the pretty red swing dress that you'll be wearing tonight.

"My eyes are up here, buddy." You snap your fingers playfully, and he meets your gaze with a boyish grin.

"Sorry, Y/N." He's not sorry in the slightest.

You push yourself up from your chair and cross the floor to where he stands, his back resting against your dressing room door. "What do you really need?" You ask him, stopping when he's an arm's length away.

He doesn't hesitate to pull you the rest of the way into his embrace and loops his arms around your middle, all but sweeping you off of your feet.

"This." He says, tone leaving no room for debate.

He kisses you swiftly, not even giving you a moment to breathe before his lips are on yours and he's softly tracing patterns on the fabric of your shirt. It's a sweet kiss; slow and languid, as if you have all the time in the world, but still heavy with meaning and want.

"San," You mumble, "I don't really think-"

"I'm not gonna ruin your hair, Miss Priss." He instantly answers your halfhearted concern and is back to kissing you, tongue sliding hastily along your bottom lip. It's enough to give you just a taste of what you want; but you remember that your entire prep team is probably listening outside of your room, and you have more to worry about than a messed up hairdo.

You move away to save your makeup- an action that ends up taking every ounce of your willpower to do- and press a lingering peck to his cheek. "You're cute, San. Was that all you came here to do though?"

He stops an embarrassing blush from rising onto his cheeks and clears his throat again, face turning serious.

"I actually did come to talk to you about something," He admits, taking your hands in his. "I wanted to check in with you to see how you're feeling about tonight's stage. Are there any fears of crowds or cameras that I should know about?"

Your smile droops slightly and his grip tightens, his hands warm on yours and giving you the courage to voice your concerns.

"I, um..." You manage to get out, "I've never performed a dance like this before and... well, I'm really nervous and worried. I don't know if I'll be able to pull it off well enough."

You purse your lips as you add, "And as ironic as it is to say this, even though I'm a dancer, I've never been too fond of big audiences."

"Y/N," San whispers softly, "Don't think about the crowds tonight. If we're gonna do this, then I'll need to you keep your eyes on mine, baby. Don't look away from me while we're dancing, okay?"

Your hands cling onto his the way your heart clings onto his words, hoping that they might chase away your nerves.

"I'll try." You tell him plainly. It's the truth- you don't know if you'll be able to ignore the countless eyes watching you or the cameras that will capture every move; but you're going to try. If not for yourself, then at least for him.

His face breaks into a gorgeous smile, making your heart flutter with something other than nervous panic. "Good." He says with finality, giving you one more intoxicating kiss while he makes sure he hasn't messed up your hair. "We're gonna do great, Y/N. I can feel it."

You hear your team gossiping and giggling out in the hallway, making you shake your head. He winks playfully at you and blows you a kiss before backing away.

"See you out there, Miss Priss." He teases when he opens the door. The nickname makes the edges of your lips turn upwards, and you smile against your will.

You roll your eyes but catch the kiss nonetheless. "Famous last words, Fireboy." You say as you shoo him off, and Mimi swoops back into the room, steering you back to your chair to sit you down. You're not able to summon enough words to describe your encounter when your prep crew asks; though you think the dreamy look on your face says it all.

You still aren't totally sure if you can pull the performance off tonight.

But you know that if your handsome partner is half as talented on stage as he is in rehearsals, then there's no reason for you to worry.

"Y/N, are you ready to go?" Mimi asks, "We need to meet up with KQ in the next twenty seconds if you want to be backstage on time."

You nod against your better judgment, allowing her to take your arm and gently guide you out of your dressing room and down the corridor. Your heartbeat is drumming a quick rhythm in your ears, your mind buzzing with last-minute what if's and oh no's.

Your heeled shoes alert the group of stagehands that's already begun to gather behind the sound booth to your presence, all heads turned towards you; and almost as if he could hear your internal doubts, Choi San sends you a thumbs up and winks, causing you to laugh.

"Are you ready to knock about three hundred socks off?" He asks as soon as you're in range, walking up to you. He unashamedly loops an arm around you, not seeming to care if the pose is a little too close for coworkers.

"It depends; are you ready to become the country's ultimate bias for the next month?" You tease back. He laughs playfully pokes your side before letting you go.

"Absolutely." He says without hesitating. You roll your eyes, mouth opening to crack another joke, but the stagehands start calling out directions before you can think of a good one.

It's almost showtime.

The realization is jolting, and scares the ever-living shit out of you more than any spider could.

Your heart immediately plummets to your stomach and your nerves return with full force. You all of a sudden don't feel quite as confident in your heels as you did, your ankles threatening to wobble and give away your weakness.

But as always, San swoops in to rescue your thoughts before you get too lost in them; strong fingers lace together with your trembling ones when he raises an eyebrow as if to say, get it together, y/n.

"Oh no you don't, princess. You don't get to chicken out on me now. We can't have you collapsing on stage, can we?" He taunts. You give him a familiar glare in return.

The simple question is enough to get your blood rushing as you recall all the times he's said things like that to you and meant it, all of the heated- yet pointless- fights you'd had during your first few weeks together. You remember how annoying he used to be with you; though looking back on it now, you suppose he was just doing it on purpose.

There was certainly blame to share for the childish spats you had during those twelve maddening days where you couldn't decide if you were enemies or lovers. But you think that, if given the chance, you wouldn't actually want to go back and redo it- you don't want it any other way.

You always secretly kind of liked the tension you had together.

A smile is pulling at your lips when the stage lights dim and the velvet curtain begins to rustle, San's hand still fully engulfing yours. He notices your change in demeanor and squeezes lightly, your attention turning to him and his stupidly handsome face.

"What's that look for?" He presses.

You shrug and squeeze his hand back, "Just thinking about how much I used to hate you, that's all."

You expect San's mouth to fall open in shock, for him to whine and say something like "you're not very nice!", but instead you get a dark chuckle and a meaningful stare.

"Come on, baby. You never really hated me, did you?"

You pretend to think about it, ignoring the burning blush on your cheeks. "I guess not," You sigh wistfully, "but I definitely couldn't stand you when we were starting out. You used to get on my nerves like no tomorrow, Fireboy."

The sounds from the crowd in the arena are floating backstage, but you don't even register the noise as you relive your memories with San.

He nods his head, "It's been an interesting few weeks with you too, Y/N. I don't know how I missed what was really there for so long; I must've been such an ass to you. At least now we're making up for lost time..." He trails off with a suggestive smile, detaching his hand from yours when a manager pops up out of the blue.

You nearly curse- because now you really want to make up for lost time and kiss him until you're breathless- but the manager grabs both you and your partner by the arm and drags you to stand over two red x's in the middle of the stage, and you sense the panic rising up in spite of your handsome distraction.

"Two minutes until your cue, you two. Are you both fully prepared?" The manager interrupts to check on you, and your mind boggles as soon as you hear how much time is left.

Two minutes?

How could there only be two minutes left? And weren't you kissing San in your dressing room just a moment ago? It feels like the seconds are flying by, the hours and minutes blending together in your nervous haze.

San's eyes dart to you and his tongue comes out to sweep over his lower lip; something you'd find desperately attractive if not for your frantic inner dialogue. "Yes, thank you." He bows slightly and the manager scurries off, allowing San one more moment to have you all to himself.

He can detect every ounce of anxiety in your eyes when they meet his, and he cups your face in his palms, the sweet gesture not allowing you to duck away from him.

"Y/N, what did we talk about earlier?" He prompts you with a tone that's uncharacteristically soft. Your lips form an adorable pout when you try to find an answer, testing San's ability to resist you.

"Umm... we talked about not getting nervous?" You attempt. He shakes his head, placing a single chaste kiss on your lips while no one can see you.

"No, not quite. I told you that when you get nervous, you'll need to focus on me. Right?" He tilts your chin up with one finger, "Didn't I say to keep your eyes on me when we dance?"

You're taken aback by the authoritative edge to his voice, but whatever the cause for it is... it works.

You blink and respond, "Yes. I will, San, I'll try."

He breaks into a grin that sends butterflies to your tummy for an entirely different reason. "That's all there is to it, then. Any time you aren't confident, just look straight at me and I'll take the lead."

You aren't sure why the phrase is so comforting, but you're nodding your head anyways, reassured just enough to keep your anxious doubts at bay.

"Okay." You whisper.

And before you have time to fully process what's happening, the directors and operators are flying to their booths around the two of you and the curtains rustle one last time, the din of the workers backstage going completely quiet when the lights go out and San takes you into his arms.

"Cue!" You hear Mimi say from the wings, along with what sounds like "Knock 'em dead, Y/N!"

You feel like your nerves are going to get the best of you when the curtain starts to lift, positive that they'll overtake your body and freeze your limbs solid.

But they never do, and you know exactly why.

It's because when the spotlight lands on you and San, you're already in position, and his eyes are staring confidently back into your own.

Almost like he's daring you to break away.

"Game on, Fireboy." You say under your breath.

The beginning notes float through the speakers, and the spotlight flares to life, trained on you and your partner as the music fills your bodies.

One, two, three... concentrate. You hear Jung Deojun's voice in your head when you spring upwards, officially beginning your dance. Feel the heartbeat of the music like it's your own.

Your hands grasp at San's shirt, your legs carrying out each move with perfect poise, and you're absolutely, 100% sure that every member of this audience can blatantly see the desire that burns in his eyes as he spins you into your mark.

A spark of pure confidence makes its way into your system, giving your arms the strength to wrap around your partner and let go of his collar, and the complete trust you have in him is the only thing that makes the next move remotely possible.

Your mind flashes back briefly to day thirteen, when you'd first successfully done the lift. You'd jumped into San's waiting arms with more trust than anyone would've guessed you had for him, surprising even yourself.

You remember how hot his hands had been on your sides when he picked you up gracefully, how flustered his touch had made you back then- but you also remember how proud you'd been of finally letting go and giving him the reins.

You feel just as proud now as you were then when he lifts you; you're weightless, flying like a fiery phoenix in the air with San twirling you around, and you can almost hear the collective gasp when he lays you down, sinking effortlessly into the one move that's always turned your mind into putty.

It's the move that took you two entire days of rehearsal to conquer, and holy fuck was it worth it.

San's got a shit-eating smirk on his face as he controls his hips while balancing above you, doing that roll with his lower body while keeping his legs in the air, and you get so lost in his burning stare that you almost forget to do the floor work you've practiced so often.

"You're doing so well for me, Y/N." He whispers for just you to hear, the words hot against the skin of your neck, and your eyes fall shut momentarily at the sensation.

Then he rolls up in one fluid motion while tugging you with him, and you surge straight into the next step: something Deojun had described as taking a classic foxtrot and adding a pinch of 'spice' to it. It'd be scandalous if it wasn't choreographed.

You sway to the pulsing rhythm as you glide across the stage hand-in-hand, and the dazzling lights are no match for the fire that's crackling to life between you and him. You never expected the flames to make it to the stage- but you're glad it did, because right now, it's helping you to dance with more passion than you were even sure you possessed.

His arms circle your torso sensually and you rock together like starstruck lovers, one hand trailing a path down the side of your face; and the longer you dance, the less aware you are of the eyes watching your performance.

"How's it going, princess?" He murmurs hotly, doing a flawless tango with your body pressed firmly against his.

You rake one nail across the exposed skin from his shirt, making a mark just below his collarbone, and a feeling of satisfaction bubbles in your chest when he tightens his arms around you.

"Pretty damn good, if I do say so myself." You don't know where this courage is coming from, but you shoot him a teasing smile anyways, "What about you, Fireboy?"

He runs the palm of his hand all the way from the base of your spine to the back of your neck and bends you beneath his touch, your red lips parting when he moves into a perfect dip.

Your arm is slung around his shoulder, and it takes a lot of self-restraint for you not to kiss him senseless when he raises an eyebrow and responds, "It couldn't get any fucking better than this, baby."

San has always known exactly what words to say to set you ablaze.

There's a simmering fire in his touch as he pulls you out of the dip and the tempo quickens, leading you into what you can't believe is already the last chorus of the song.

Have you really been dancing for almost six minutes now?

"Are you ready for the finale?" You ask lowly, unable to hear if he says anything once you're sent spiraling across the floor.

But when you meet back up like lovers who can't bear to be apart, he leans in to tell you cockily, "I was born ready, Y/N." You suppress an eye roll at the statement, your heart fluttering nonetheless as he puts his hands on your hips and swings in step with you.

San's hands grip you tightly as he pulls you against him, your mouths hovering tantalizingly close together when he guides your arm up to skim the curve of his neck. The sensual music drifts through the arena in time with your movements, each step flowing smoothly and each touch driving you wild as you perform your finale with your hearts on your sleeves.

You've never felt this before Choi San; you've never experienced such an intense desire for someone the way you're desperate for every brush of his skin against yours.

You slide slowly out of his arms and make your way down, down his body and to the floor, taking your sweet time walking your fingers down his chest as you sink to your knees on stage; the sight of you in such a compromising stance earns you an earful of traumatized murmurs from the crowd, but you pay them no mind.

Nothing else matters when San's knees hit the stage floor three beats later, hands tangling in your hair and pulling you close enough to give the cameraman a run for his money.

All that matters in that instant is San- his touch, his gaze, and the dance that feels like it was made just for you and him.

"That... was amazing." You comment breathlessly, careful not to give any wandering eyes a chance to read your lips. He nods and says nothing, letting his fiery eyes do all the talking for the both of you.

The moment feels incredibly intimate as the music fades out, and you're breathing the same air as your partner, only separated by an inch at the most; you want nothing more than to grab him by his too-damn-sexy shirt and make out until your lips are swollen.

But you can't do that, because you're still somehow on stage with him, crouching in a sensual pose in front of hundreds of people.

The last notes float away and you're immediately met with deafening cheers, roses and carnations already beginning to litter the platform. You're shocked by how much your performance seemed to affect the audience; but it makes you smile wide, your cheeks aching when a group of girls start chanting your name, and you feel like you're on cloud nine.

The MC's voice booms over the speakers as the crowd whistles and yells, "What an incredible performance from Choi San of Ateez and Y/N of Indigo! Let's have another round of applause for the stars of tonight's show, everyone!"

The clapping continues, following you and San off of the stage and back behind the wings as you're rushed into a hug from Mimi. She shakes your shoulders wildly, eyes shining with what looks like happy tears; she congratulates you over and over, all but crushing your lungs with her excited hug.

"You did it Y/N!" She squeals, "We're all so proud of you, honey!"

When you turn to face San, a group of boys approaching the wings from behind him catches your eye, looking more like a blur than a band. One blonde boy in particular zips ahead of the others and catapults himself into San, arms latching onto him like a leech.

"Woo, what the hell?" Your unsuspecting partner exclaims, hugging him back nonetheless.

"You fuckin' killed it, man!" The blonde screams. The rest of the group engulfs San into a huddle and say the same thing, not paying any attention to the manager trying to remind them that idols shouldn't curse.

You recognize the seven rowdy men to be San's group, Ateez; you watch on with a fond smile as they praise his performance, slapping him on the back and ruffling his hair.

He fights his way out of their embrace and rolls his eyes, brushing himself off as if he didn't enjoy their congratulations.

The blonde boy notices you standing to the side and a sly grin crosses his face, head tilting to the side.

"And who might this beautiful lady be, Sannie?" He questions mischievously. You feel yourself blush beneath his curious stare, fiddling with the material of your dress, but San walks over to you in a few short strides and wastes no time in using two fingers to lift your chin upwards.

"This is Y/N," He says with a voice that reminds you of spiced cider, "the one I've been telling you guys about."

Your eyes widen. "You never said you talked about me..." You trail off at the flicker of want in his expression, mind blanking out.

He smirks back at you like he knows something you don't. "You never asked, princess."

You don't feel the seven pairs of clueless eyes on you when San brings your face closer to his; you don't even bother to remember that Mimi is still right behind you, nor do you care that the collaboration team is probably just around the corner.

All you can feel is San- his presence overpowering your senses and blocking out anything that isn't him.

"Choi San," You murmur dangerously, "if you don't kiss me right now, I think I might go insane."

He ignores the chorus of annoying ooh's from his friends and rests his other hand on the small of your back, tethering you to him. Your eyelids start to lower in expectation, hands finding their way into his hair; and you can feel his smirk long before your lips even touch.

"That won't be necessary, darling." He mutters as you finally, finally collide, every nerve ending on fire as he kisses you like a man starved. Wooyoung's wolf whistle falls on deaf ears as you kiss with more meaning than any romance movie couple you've seen on screen; your lips clash and melt and push and pull with a spark that only true dancers possess, the world around you disappearing instantly.

Even Mimi, your dedicated manager, has nothing to say to you when you eventually break apart, San's heated gaze keeping you trapped in his arms, and he can tell you've got tunnel vision too when your eyes never leave his.

Your heart thumps rapidly in your chest- but the pace is steady and sure, as if you've been kissing this man in front of your superiors all of your life. You're utterly entranced by the look of love and adoration that dances- pun intended- in his dark eyes; and in the split second it takes to realize the weight behind this kiss, you decide that you want this to last forever.

You're ready to be his.

"Y/N," San says softly, "I know we've got a lot to talk about if we want to make this work... but I can't walk away from you tonight without asking you one thing."

You raise an eyebrow, "What would that be?"

He traces your jawline with the tip of his finger, leaving sparks in its wake.

"Miss Priss," He says teasingly, the nickname stirring up your insides, "will you officially be mine?"

You reach up to press a swift, firm kiss to his lips, sealing your decision better than words ever could. You pull away with a grin that matches his own, and he thinks he's died and gone to heaven when you answer him, "I thought you'd never ask."

The seven boys watching the ordeal clap obnoxiously, cheering just as loud as the audience had been a few minutes ago, and San pulls you in to rest his forehead on your own.

"After all, you said it best yourself, Fireboy," You meet his stare confidently, "it takes two to tango."

And after twenty-five days of wanting and waiting, playing this game of cat and mouse- you finally get what you've truly desired since the moment you met Choi San.

You get to call him yours.

the end.

[mymostimaginaryfriend]

between a heart & a hard place

♛ 5x05: Teresa and James plan the heist (1.9k words; rating T; tags: missing scene, weaponized jazz music, angsty dancing)

➢ read on ao3 or below the cut:

The Van Gogh was beautiful. It was a shame they’d have to cut it from the frame, yet Teresa knew better than most that no beauty survived long in this world without collecting a few scars. So while it was a shame, it wasn't enough to stop her. Indeed, it’d be one of the only decisions she’d been forced to make lately that she wouldn’t lose any sleep over tonight.

Losing Kostya wasn’t an option. The pain of lost beauty was nothing compared to the pain of lost power.

They gathered in the hotel lobby, using the private concert by a semi-famous jazz pianist as cover for some recon. Kelly Anne gamely chatted up the hotel owner while Pote stifled a yawn and nursed his beer. James leaned casually against the bar, seemingly entranced by the music. It was only because she knew him so well that she could see the relaxed demeanor hid a man at work, busy formulating a plan. He hadn’t said much about his time away, but it was hard to believe any of it had involved art heists.

She felt a frisson of worry about putting him in unfamiliar, possibly dangerous territory but she knew better than to underestimate him. It was a lesson she’d learned the first day they’d met.

She followed his gaze to the piano, wondering what he was studying there. Teresa had never thought herself a jazz fan before moving to New Orleans, but it had become the soundtrack of her triumphs and heartaches over the past year. She found herself drawn to the melancholy of it, the soaring heights of a trombone, the plaintive pleas of a piano. Rising, falling, rising again. Even now, each soulful note plucked at her heartstrings with the simple strike of a key.

The song was beautiful, perhaps James was merely getting lost for a moment in the music. He’d said she’d changed and she had, but she wasn’t the only one. When he’d left, there’d been sharp edges, edges that should have been honed to lethal blades by his work with Devon and yet the James who had returned had a softness she was unprepared for. A sort of fragile vulnerability that made her want to shelter it from the wind like a flickering candle flame, to nurture and feed it until it was strong enough to warm her too. Her throat ached at the knowledge of how easily it could be snuffed out.

She’d almost done it herself this past week. It’d hurt to see the light in his eyes dim when he looked at her but that had been what she wanted, hadn't it? This distance between them. If it wasn’t easy, it was necessary. She’d rather let the sun set between them than watch the light in his eyes permanently go out because of her.

Emotional attachments equaled vulnerability. Romantic attachments could get you killed. She had needed someone once and his loss had nearly destroyed her. She felt in her bones she wouldn't be able to survive losing James. If she let him into her heart, his death would take that vital organ with him. For as much as she thought about the future these days, there was a part of her relentlessly certain in the knowledge that they’d never get there. Not in one piece.

That didn’t stop her from wanting to reach out to him though—for comfort, maybe, or reassurance.  Perhaps it was the thought he no longer understood her that hurt the most, that made her want to seek communion with him skin to skin if not soul to soul. But that wouldn’t be fair to him, to push him away then pull him close just because she desperately needed someone—him—to tell her it’d be okay. That it was all worth it. She suspected his silence these last few days was answer enough.

It was for the best. The higher the climb, the longer the fall. She couldn’t afford weakness and neither could he. If he was no longer able to be as ruthless, then she would have to be ruthless enough for the both of them.

The song ended and she turned back to James to find that he wasn’t studying the room anymore. He was studying her, his expression inscrutable.

His gaze, like the silence between them, was heavy with unsaid words, words that might never be spoken at all but most certainly not here in public. Best to get back to business.

“You have a plan?” she asked, grateful that her voice remained steady.

He nodded.

“Walk me through it,” she murmured, eyes drawn back to the painting in question.

“Dance with me.”

Her attention snapped back to his face at his surprise counter offer. She’d expected a cool recitation of information—sight lines, security cameras, escape routes—not a softly uttered invitation to be close to him, to touch him for the first time since that night in New York.

“James,” she began, not sure if she meant it as the prelude to a warning or an apology.

A flash of emotion was quickly smoothed away by his normal mask of professionalism. “Relax,” he said, pushing off the bar. “I just need a reason to be in the northwest quadrant of the room.”

She shot him a questioning look and the corner of his mouth ticked up in muted amusement. “The dance floor,” he clarified, holding out a hand.

Right. Of course. The plan. Just business, just how she wanted it. She ignored Kelly Anne’s double take and took James’ hand, letting him lead her to the far side of the small dance floor.

Once it would have been a simple thing to step into his arms, but as the first few notes of the next song began, she hesitated. He might not recognize the tune, but after being a bar owner in New Orleans for over a year, she sure did.

They’re writing songs of love, but not for me. A lucky star’s above, but not for me.

If he noticed any significance, he hid it well, guiding one of her hands to his shoulder and holding the other against his chest. His other hand found her waist and turned her smoothly in the direction he needed to surveil.

She didn’t speak, letting him work in silence. She tried to concentrate on the people around them, the sound of the piano, the lights of the city beyond the windows, anything but the warmth of his body, not under the usual leather jacket, but the expensive fabric of his suit, his scent of new cologne and old cigarettes as foreign as it was familiar.

After a moment, he pulled her closer, leaning down to murmur near her ear. “We’ll do a smoke bomb, smash and grab. Extract the painting, ditch the van. Travel by motorcycle to the drop-off.”

“We?” Teresa asked, a little breathless. Some not small part of her wished she could watch him in action, especially in the kind of situation when no one was shooting back at them.

“Me,” James corrected. “You’ll be at the rendezvous point with Pote. I’ll use a two-man team—”

“One of the men?” Teresa asked. She trusted the crew that had accompanied her to Berlin to handle security but wasn’t sure who she’d recommend for a job that required the finesse of art theft.

“I know a guy nearby,” James told her and she let out a breath of laughter. Of course he did.

“You know everyone.” She turned to smile up at him but was taken aback by the seriousness of his expression.

“Not everyone.”

His words, or maybe the weight behind them, had her wondering if he was thinking of her.

She had done her best to hide her inner turmoil over the events of the last week. Suppressing her guilt and remorse over turning in Marcel. Hiding any misgivings she had about ordering the hit on the crooked cop with defensiveness or dismissal. She was la Jefa, it would do no good for anyone to see her doubts. So she'd put on strong front but hadn’t realized until now how much she’d depended on James seeing through it.  He always had before.

“You think we made a mistake,” she ventured, allowing space for his answer to clarify what was specifically bothering him the most. Perhaps it was vindictive of her to use “we” but distance or not they were still in this together.

James looked away. “It’s over now.”

“That’s not an answer,” she pressed.

He frowned, hesitating. “I did. I don’t know. You were right, the feds were ready to raid us. Bringing in Gamble would have been their next step.”

It was almost shameful, the intensity of the relief that washed over her at his words. But by James' grim expression, it seemed he grew even more troubled by the admission. 

“But?”

He glanced at her, eyes bleak. “His wife was home. She found him while I was still there.”

Teresa’s heart dropped in her chest. She knew from the news reports that there’d only been one victim that night but looking into James’ eyes she saw that it haunted him. The future that might have been. He’d have killed the wife too if she’d caught him. He’d have killed her for them.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, letting her hand find the tender skin of his neck and the staccato rhythm of his heart beat. “I’m sorry. But…”

His eyes briefly fluttered shut. “I know.”

If she couldn’t help herself from holding onto him a little tighter, it seemed he welcomed her momentary lapse. His hand sliding to the small of her back to draw her nearer until they were touching the entire lengths of their bodies, their only attempt at dancing a slight swaying from side to side.

“I just want to keep you safe,” he said, resting his cheek against her temple. She felt the old familiar panic at the implied even from yourself, but this wasn’t like Phoenix. He wasn’t trying to make decisions for her.  

Couldn’t he see that she wished the same safety for him? That everything she did was in pursuit of this shared goal?

“I didn’t think I’d be back here,” he continued, slowing their sway until he was just holding her. “And now...hope is a dangerous thing. It draws your attention to the horizon instead of keeping it on the danger right in front of you.”

She wondered if he was feeling it too: the walls closing in from every angle, the same echoing dread that haunted her midnight hours.  The ever narrowing window of daylight to that future someday.

But as the final notes of the song were played, even as the distance between them didn’t seem as vast anymore, even if for a moment she entertained the idea of not letting go, of leading him back up to the suite to finish repairing with their bodies what she’d bruised with her words, she knew that if they had any hope at all of that other life, they had work to do now.

James, as always, understood that better than anyone. He released her and smiled, eyes once again lit from within.

Many, many hours later while she waited in a safe location as he once again risked life and limb and freedom at her request, Teresa tried not to give too much credence to the sickening feeling in her stomach that the danger he’d mentioned earlier, the danger right in front of him that threatened their much dreamed about future…

....might end up being her.

(ao3)

[five-rivers]

Questions (Not Answered)

@amabsis  MERRY CHRISTMAS FEATURING CRYTIC DANNY AND HIS SPACE FRECKLES (and one other prompt you sent me, but that one’s a mystery).

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Bare feet on ice. Breathe, he reminded himself.  He was human, for now, and he wasn’t supposed to be here.

Ice.  Thin ice.  

He was human, for now, but he didn’t have the weight of it.

In slow motion, he saw the much, much heavier man—Boy, really, he hadn’t graduated that long ago—step out on the ice, brow furrowed. A kind of rage lit him up, a paper lantern that burns itself, like the last time Danny had seen him, a frustration born of not being believed and—

The ice gave way.  

It took him a moment to remember to fall.  

.

Beeping.  White. It took him a moment to remember and remember he had been human.  At least then.  At least now. Something like a fever danced over his skin.  Pinpricks. A heated blanket.  Whiteness he has come to associate with a threat.  

He—

This is a hospital.  

He breathes.  He remembers. He wasn’t supposed to be there, but even less is he supposed to be here.  

There will be questions.  

It isn’t his fault, he reassures himself.  No way he could have been anywhere else, done anything else, except by the actions of others.  Not with safety.  Not with grace.  Not with morals.  

He can smell the other person in the room.  Their sweat.  The fabric softener their suit had been laundered in.  

“You should be dead,” said the man.  Accused the man.  

“Well,” croaked Danny, “clearly not.”

“We didn’t pull you out until after Agent W.”

Couldn’t they use the guy’s real name?  Agent W.  Too many syllables.  Too long to say in the heat of battle, or to keep him from running out and nearly drowning in a half-frozen lake.  

“You’re not dead until you’re warm and dead,” said Danny. “Heard it in a documentary.  Mom and Dad say it’s why you don’t see too many ghosts who died that way.  That and the hallucinations.”

His parents don’t think happy people leave ghosts.  They’re wrong.  In that and many other things.  

He does not look at the man.  The line on the heart monitor goes up and down, dead steady. He did not think of the ghosts he left behind him.  Of the battle and journey that left him on the ice, surrounded by white.

“I think we both know that isn’t true,” said the man with an edge of a growl.  His shadow fell on the edge of the bed.  “We’ve had our specialists look into you, you know.  With your parents’ blessing.”

Blessing.  What a strange way to say permission.  Danny has received blessings.  True blessings.  One is not the same as the other.  He remembers them, towering, like storm clouds, like mountains, like the forest, like the moon, the sun, the stars.  He remembers the lights overhead, circling, and himself, looking up, beneath it all.  He remembers the well, the fountain, the door, the path.

He remembers.  

And he has none of that right now.  No lightning but what he was born with.  No ice but what the doctors chased away, if there were doctors, and not simply more men like the one at his bedside.  No knife or poison but the words on his tongue.  No shield but his disregard.

Human.  

Yes.  

“We even ran you through some of our pattern recognition programs.  Do you know what we found?”

“Enlighten me,” said Danny, dryly.  His voice cracked again, painfully.  

His effort was rewarded with a finger shoved harshly against his cheek.  He winced at the sharpness of the nail and looked directly at the man for the first time since he woke up.  He was reflected twice in the man’s sunglasses, and a third time on the warped silver casing of his overlarge earpiece.  

“Your freckles,” said the man.

“What, did your program decide I had skin cancer or something? Forgive me if I decide I want a second opinion.”

“Constellations,” hissed the man.  “You have constellations in your freckles.  The same as the ghost boy.”

Danny endeavored to raise his eyebrows as far as they could go. “I’m pretty sure that whatever Phantom has on his face aren’t freckles.  Freckles don’t glow.”

“Don’t play games with me,” said the man.  “We aren’t the only ones who’ve noticed.  We aren’t the only ones who’ve put two and two together.”

“To me, it sounds like all you’ve done is give a computer pareidolia, but whatever floats your boat.”

“What is your connection to Phantom?”

“You’ve been listening to Wes,” said Danny.  If his voice wasn’t wrecked, his words would have been dripping with disdain thick enough to drown the man.  Twice.

“Agent W is not the only one to make note of your behavior,” said the man.  “Paulina Sanchez, for example.”

“Paulina,” repeated Danny.  “You mean the girl who has used every available opportunity to tear me down and mock me since I asked her out in freshman year?  You think she wouldn’t lie to your clown squad?”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s what everyone calls you,” said Danny.  “Also, you shouldn’t be interrogating a minor without their guardian present.”

“How convenient, that you know that.  Reading up on the legal system?”

“My sister had a Law and Order phase.  Speaking of, I want a lawyer.”

“You aren’t under arrest,” clearly disgusted.

“Great.  So, can you tell the doctor I’m awake?  Thanks.”

“We aren’t done here.”

“I am,” said Danny.  He closed his eyes.  “If you don’t tell the doctor I’m awake, I might as well go back to sleep.”  He faked a yawn.  Then yawned for real because yawns were like that.

Then the GIW representative shook him by the shoulders.

He shouldn’t have done that.  For a number of reasons.  Not the least of which being that if Danny was connected to ghostly happenings, he could most likely kill the man with his bare hands.  

This is not what occurred.  

Monitors need leads, need sensors.  Disconnected, they scream.  Much like anything else.

In a hospital, such screaming attracts doctors.  

How nice to know that they were in a hospital.  

.

Snow underfoot.  Booted foot, incidentally.  His parents had brought his boots when they came to pick him up, along with other winter clothes.  The snow crunched and squeaked, declining to melt when he stepped on it.  Which.  Rude.  

The trip to the car was silent and sulky.  Or possibly accusatory.  Or morose.  The nuances of the emotions escaped him.  

“Danny,” said his mother.  “Why were you out on the lake last night?”

Danny had been dreading this.  Anticipating it as one would the end of a fall.  Except he hadn’t hit the ground yet, only the branch of a tree that had the misfortune to get in the way.  

He didn’t have a good answer.  

“There was something I had to do,” said Danny.  Which was both true and vague.  

“In your pajamas?”

Danny winced.  That hadn’t been his fault.  

“We don’t know why you keep sneaking out,” said his father. “But it has to stop.  You can’t do this anymore, Danny-boy.  Especially not if it’s going to end up with you in the hospital.”

“That wasn’t my fault,” protested Danny.  “It isn’t like I lured Wes out.  He went out all by himself!”

“Danny,” said his mother.  “You almost died.  And now the GIW is telling us that your freckles are in the same pattern as Phantom’s ecto-luminescence!”  She visibly worried at her lower lip.  “What happened?”

“And what did you go out for?”  added his father.  

Danny shrugged.  

“Were you trying to help Phantom?”

“No,” said Danny.  

“We know how you and Jazz feel about him, but, Danny, this is dangerous.  That ghost is dangerous.”

Danny looked away.  

“You’re grounded,” said his mother.  

Danny whipped around to face her again.  “What!”

“What else can we do?” asked his mother.  “What else do you expect us to do?  You won’t tell us anything!”

“It was just—” spluttered Danny.  He pressed his lips together, considering.  “I did not go out to meet Phantom,” he said.  Again, it was true.  “I went out because one of my classmates said they were being haunted, and I wanted to help.”  Also true.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” asked his father.  “It’s our job to deal with ghosts.”

“Yes,” said his mother.  “In fact, I thought you wanted nothing to do with ghosts.”

“I don’t know,” said Danny.  “Sometimes—” He winced, knowing what he was about to say would hurt. “You aren’t very good at catching ghosts.  And the part I want to have nothing to do with is the one where you cut ghosts up into pieces.”  He paused. “And I don’t know what happened after I got there.”  He did not specify where there was.  “I think the GIW had some kind of weapon?  I didn’t expect them there.  Anyway, there was a bright light, and the next thing I know, I’m out on the water.”

Alright.  He was leaving a bunch out, but the rest was still true.

“You’re still grounded.”

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He felt heavy.  Whatever had kept him from making footprints on the ice had left him entirely. Or reversed itself.  Either way, stairs, such as the ones he had to climb to reach his room, felt like an imposition.  Nonetheless, he persevered.  

Right up until he collapsed on his bed, overcome with the unfairness of it all.  

“Hey,” whispered the monster that had taken up residence underneath his bed.  “Can I come out, now?”

“You’re clear,” mumbled Danny.

The monster, Phantom, phased up through the bed to lie on it next to Danny.  

“Where did they even get the Ghost Catcher?” he asked, aggrieved.  

“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out!” replied Danny. “It doesn’t make any sense, and I can’t very well ask Mom and Dad about it.”

“Ugh.  We’re grounded, aren’t we?”

“I am.  You aren’t.” Danny pulled a face he hoped his other half would recognize from the outside.  “Be careful, though.  Your escape route is gone.”

“I will.  You need to find out how to get us back together.”

“I will,” said Danny.  “By the way, just after it happened, I think I still had access to some ghost powers.  I think I’m still a little, you know.  Not quite right.  It might be the other way around for you.”

“I’ll try and keep an eye on that,” said Phantom.  “It might be important.”

“Yeah,” agreed Danny.  “You should go, for now.  I’m pretty sure Mom and Dad are going to be checking on me all night, and if they see you…”

“Yeah.  I get it.”

“Sorry.”

Phantom bumped his head lightly against Danny’s.  “Nothing to be sorry about.  We both know what they’re like.  I’m going to patrol a bit, then I’ll probably go over to Sam or Tucker’s. In case you need me.”

“Sounds good,” said Danny.  “I’ll just… stay here.  Try to make the Ghost Catcher from scratch.”

“We have homework, too, while you’re at it,” said Phantom, halfway through the wall.  

Danny groaned and rolled over.  He would have to be careful about getting into the lab while he was grounded, and his parents were on high alert.  Perhaps he could convince his sister to cause a distraction?